Needs of Chinese Divorced Single-Parent Adolescent Families: A Shanghai Case Study

Author: Han Xiaoyan
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: The author of this book is particularly meticulous in research design. She believes that studying the welfare needs of children in divorced families must focus on the children's own subjective thoughts and feelings, rather than merely speculating based on objective environments or the intentions of outsiders. The author employs a qualitative research method of in-depth interviews and uses triangulation to gather data from multiple channels, obtaining valuable original materials from 15 children in divorced families. Through repeated data organization and analysis, she overcomes various research limitations and threats to validity, achieving highly valid results. The author summarizes the needs or concerns expressed by the children into six categories: economic and safety, psychological and emotional, autonomy and self, love/respect and self-differentiation, peer interaction and identity, and moral exclusion. Regarding the emergence of children's needs, several reasons are integrated from the perspectives of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: changes in family structure, changes in family relationships, changes in family functions, and the intrinsic drive of adolescents themselves. As for the fulfillment of needs, it is primarily determined by three aspects: the children's own active coping, family support, and social assistance. The author further analyzes the multi-factor interaction of need emergence in the book, as well as the interactive relationships between need fulfillment, resource provision, and the child as the subject. She also outlines a three-level analytical framework for need emergence and fulfillment, along with the impact of special events. Overall, the book has a rigorous structure, clear arguments, a novel research topic, and findings that offer significant insights for theories related to single-parent families, social policies, social work practices, and the transformation of social perceptions.