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What constitutes a family for the purposes of using work-life balance support measures?:An empirical study of parentalization of (non-traditional) families in Iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands
No full textLaws and policies have long been modeled after the traditional nuclear family. This left families that do not fit that model legally out in the cold. These are often referred to as “non-traditional” families. These include families founded in ways other than through (both) biological parents, namely by using artificial insemination, adoption, surrogacy or foster care. This facilitates, for example, single-parent family formation and families with same-sex parents. With increased opportunities to start a family in these alternative ways, the number of non-traditional family forms is expanding while the same legal recognition of parenthood as with the traditional family lags behind this. As long as legal recognition is lacking, this means that (one or more of the) parents raising the child are legally a stranger to the child. As a result, the unrecognized parent may be unable, for example, to obtain medical assistance for the child when needed or to take advantage of supportive arrangements for combining work and care such as leave arrangements or child care-related benefits. This study identified different paths to parenthood and the ways in which parents can be legally recognized and make use of facilitating arrangements for (working) parents. In doing so, the theoretical research concept of parentalization was used. The concept of parentalization consists of two components: First, it includes research examining the transition into parenthood and obtaining legally recognized parenthood. Second, it examines the availability of family leave policies and work-life balance support measures. Both components of the concept of parentalization are part of this study, with the research question: What does parentalization look like in Iceland, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and how do families’ legal and social formations affect their possibility to reach work-life balance through the access to work-life balance support measures? To answer the research questions, a multidisciplinary research design was created based on legal, social science and feminist methods and perspectives. The research consisted of a combination of desk research and literature review and semi-structured interviews with 77 working parent families with children between 0-12 years old in Iceland, the Netherlands and, lastly, Ireland. For each country, approximately three months were allocated for this purpose during the period from January 2021 to March 2022. A total of 31 interviews were conducted in Iceland, 24 in the Netherlands and 22 in Ireland. The empirical findings, set against the prevailing legal framework, clearly demonstrate the added value of the Empirical Legal Studies (ELS)’s “law in action” approach. The study concludes that parentalization is possible for the majority of parents interviewed in all three countries. However, in Ireland, restrictions are greatest for family forms that use artificial insemination and surrogacy. Non-traditional families also face certain practical challenges when it comes to obtaining legally recognized parenthood, with same-sex families of men being most at a disadvantage. The provision of child/family benefits differs in the three countries and so does the provision of flexible arrangements in terms of working patterns, work location, and the adaptability of the contractual amount of working hours. To the extent that family formation has taken place without legal recognition of parenthood, the experiences of the parents interviewed show that this also creates obstacles in terms of access to family support arrangements such as for combining work and care. At the same time, it appears that all interviewed working parents experience difficulties in combining work and care, regardless of traditional or non-traditional family form. The experienced difficulties are greatest in all three countries in terms of childcare options and their high costs. Finally, something stood out that unites all parents involved in the study, regardless of family form, namely that they all start their families and care for their children in combination with work, whether the legal framework allows and facilitates it or not. Where there is a will, there is (apparently) a way. ___Wetten en beleid zijn lange tijd gemodelleerd naar het traditionele kerngezin. Daarmee bleven gezinnen die niet in dat model passen juridisch in de kou staan. Deze worden vaak aangeduid met de term ‘niet-traditionele’ gezinnen. Het gaat daarbij onder meer om gezinnen gesticht op andere wijze dan via de (beide) biologische ouders, namelijk door gebruik te maken van kunstmatige inseminatie, adoptie, draagmoederschap of pleegzorg. Dit faciliteert bijvoorbeeld een-ouder-gezinsvorming en gezinnen met ouders van gelijk geslacht. Door de toegenomen mogelijkheden om op deze alternatieve manieren een gezin te stichten, breidt het aantal niet-traditionele gezinsvormen zich uit terwijl een zelfde wettelijke erkenning van het ouderschap als bij het traditionele gezin hierbij achter loopt. Zolang wettelijke erkenning ontbreekt, betekent dit dat (een of meer van de) ouders die het kind opvoeden, wettelijk een vreemdeling zijn ten opzichte van het kind. Dat kan tot gevolg hebben dat de niet-erkende ouder bijvoorbeeld geen medische hulp voor het kind kan krijgen als dat nodig is of geen gebruik kan maken van ondersteunende regelingen voor de combinatie van arbeid en zorg zoals verlofregelingen of aan de verzorging van het kind gerelateerde uitkeringen. In dit onderzoek zijn verschillende wegen in kaart gebracht naar ouderschap en de manieren waarop ouders wettelijk erkend kunnen worden en gebruik kunnen maken van faciliterende regelingen voor (werkende) ouders. Daarbij is gebruik gemaakt van het theoretisch onderzoek concept ouderisering (‘parentalization’). Het concept ouderisering bestaat uit twee componenten: ten eerste omvat het onderzoek naar gezinsvorming, c.q. het worden van ouder van een kind en het verkrijgen van erkend ouderschap, zowel juridisch als in de toegang tot sociaal gezinsbeleid. Beide componenten van het concept ouderisering komen in dit onderzoek aan bod, met als onderzoeksvraag: Hoe wordt ouderisering ervaren in IJsland, Ierland en Nederland en hoe beïnvloedt het al dan niet erkend worden van gezinsvormen in het recht de toegang tot ondersteunend gezinsbeleid en maatregelen om arbeid en zorg te kunnen combineren? Om de onderzoeksvraag te beantwoorden, is een multidisciplinaire onderzoeksopzet gecreëerd op basis van sociaalwetenschappelijke, feministische en juridische methoden en invalshoeken. Het onderzoek bestond uit een combinatie van deskresearch en literatuuronderzoek en semigestructureerde interviews met in totaal 77 werkende oudergezinnen met kinderen tussen 0-12 jaar oud in IJsland, Nederland en Ierland. Per land werd voor de interviews met de ouders ongeveer drie maanden uitgetrokken in de periode van januari 2021 tot en met maart 2022. In totaal werden 31 interviews afgenomen in IJsland, 24 in Nederland en 22 in Ierland. De empirische bevindingen, afgezet tegen het geldende juridische kader, tonen duidelijk de toegevoegde waarde van de ‘law in action’ benadering van Empirical Legal Studies (ELS). De onderzoeksbevindingen laten zien dat ouderisering mogelijk is voor de meerderheid van de geïnterviewde ouders in alle drie de landen. Wel zijn er beperkingen qua juridische erkenning van gezinsvormen waarbij gebruik gemaakt wordt van kunstmatige inseminatie en draagmoederschap. Deze zijn in Ierland het grootst. Verder blijkt uit het onderzoek dat niet-traditionele gezinnen geconfronteerd worden met bepaalde praktische uitdagingen als het gaat om het verkrijgen van wettelijk erkend ouderschap, waarbij gezinnen van hetzelfde mannelijke geslacht het meest in het nadeel zijn. Het aanbod van kinder/gezinstoeslagen in de drie landen verschilt en dat geldt ook voor het aanbod van flexibele arrangementen op het gebied van werktijden, werklocatie en de arbeidsomvang. Voor zover tot gezinsvorming is overgegaan zonder wettelijke erkenning van ouderschap, blijkt uit de ervaringen van de geïnterviewde ouders dat dit tevens belemmeringen meebrengt qua toegang tot de gezinsondersteunende regelingen zoals voor de combinatie arbeid en zorg. Tegelijkertijd blijkt dat alle geïnterviewde werkende ouders moeilijkheden ervaren met de combinatie arbeid en zorg, ongeacht traditionele of niet-traditionele gezinsvorm. De ervaren problemen zijn in alle drie de landen het grootst wat betreft de kinderopvangmogelijkheden en de hoge kosten ervan. Tot slot viel iets op wat alle in het onderzoek betrokken ouders verenigt, ongeacht gezinsvorm, namelijk dat ze allemaal hun gezin stichten en voor hun kinderen zorgen in combinatie met werk, of het juridische kader dat nu toelaat en faciliteert of niet. Waar een wil is, is (kennelijk) een weg
Fairness in welfare:Applying Article 6 ECHR to benefit sanctions
No full textThis article examines the procedural rights of benefit recipients facing social security sanctions, focusing on the potential effects of applying additional protection from Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to benefit sanctions. While applicable to all Council of Europe member states, it primarily draws on examples from the Netherlands. The research explores whether extending this criminal law protection - which is currently limited to punitive sanctions - to cases of benefit sanctions could address disparities in procedural fairness. This issue is analysed within the broader context of increased conditionality and automation in social security, which has intensified the repressive nature of welfare systems. Drawing on European Court of Human Rights case law and social security literature, the study argues that the existing difference in legal guarantees pertaining to punitive sanctions and to benefit sanctions may be undesirable, given the severe impact that benefit sanctions have on recipients. Findings suggest that Article 6 ECHR safeguards, such as the presumption of innocence, the right to an interpreter and the right to a full review of a judicial body with full jurisdiction, could strengthen the procedural position of benefit recipients and thus help to restore the balance between rights and obligations affected by the trend towards conditionality. Extending Article 6 ECHR procedural guarantees to those facing benefit sanctions could help create a better balance, promoting fairness in welfare
On the limits of LLM surprisal as a functional explanation of the N400 and P600
No full textExpectations about upcoming words play a central role in language comprehension, with expected words being processed more easily than less expected ones. Surprisal theory formalizes this relationship by positing that cognitive effort is proportional to a word's negative log-probability in context, as determined by distributional, linguistic, and world knowledge constraints. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) demonstrating the capacity to compute richly contextualized surprisal estimates, has motivated their consideration as models of comprehension. We assess here the relationship of LLM surprisal with two key neural correlates of comprehension - the N400 and the P600 - which differ in sensitivity to semantic association and contextual expectancy. While prior work has focused on the N400, we propose that the P600 may offer a better index of surprisal, as it is unaffected by association while still patterning continuously with expectancy. Using regression-based ERPs (rERPs), we examine data from three German factorial studies to evaluate the extent to which LLM surprisal can account for ERP differences. Our results show that LLM surprisal captures neither component consistently. We find that it is contaminated by simple association, particularly in smaller LLMs. As a result, LLM surprisal can partially account for association-driven N400 effects, but not for the full attenuation of N400 effects. Correspondingly, this property of LLMs compromises their ability to model the P600, which is sensitive to expectancy but not to association
Taking notes with pen or laptop:Effects of medium and test preparation on learning
No full textEver since Mueller and Oppenheimer (2014), the use of laptops in the classroom has been subject of discussion. Do students learn more when they write with a pen? Follow up studies have led to inconclusive results. To move the discussion forward, we designed an experiment in which students worked on a relevant task in their natural environment. The main independent factors were note-taking medium (typing on laptop vs. writing with pen) and test preparation (reading notes vs. actively reworking them). Participants were 303 fourth-grade students in Dutch secondary education (on average 16.5 years old). They watched a video lecture of about 15 minutes in their usual classroom setting, prepared for a multiple-choice comprehension test for 10 minutes, and then took the test and filled in a questionnaire. A few days later this immediate post-test was followed by a delayed one. Crucial dependent variables were correctness and certainty on the test. Several control variables were included such as grade point average, vocabulary, writing fluency, and typing speed. Writing with pen proved to be beneficial. In the immediate post-test, medium significantly affected scores for correctness and certainty. In the delayed post-test, all test scores decreased and the effect of medium faded out. Reworking one’s notes proved to be detrimental: test preparation affected both correctness and certainty in the immediate post-test and these effects became even more pronounced in the delayed post-test. Further analyses showed that through their more active processing students forgot factual details without gaining a deeper conceptual understanding. Therefore, we advocate to make taking notes and reworking them a regular task in the curriculum
Raising eyebrows and raising pitch:How non-verbal uncertainty cues influence assessments of probability phrases
No full textIn this pre-registered study, we examined how non-verbal uncertainty cues, such as intonation and facial expressions, influence perceived speaker certainty and the interpretation of verbal probability phrases (e.g., "almost never," "probably," "certain"). Prior research on such phrases has focused on written textual cues, whereas communication often includes auditory and visual signals. Using a 2x2 within-subjects experimental design (N=100), we found that both rising intonation and marked facial expressions independently reduced perceived speaker certainty. In most, but not all conditions, these cues led to greater variability in how participants assigned numerical values to verbal probability expressions (e.g., interpreting "likely" as anywhere from 10% to 85% likely). Notably, the combination of rising intonation and marked facial expressions produced the lowest perceived certainty, while there was no such additive effect on interpretation variability. These results highlight the importance of non-verbal cues in uncertainty communication, with implications for fields such as health, environmental, and technological risk communication
Nieuwe Paus wil treden in de voetsporen van zijn voorganger Leo XIII:Wat mogen we verachten van de eerste Amerikaans-Peruaanse Paus?
No full textLeo XIV and his appeal for social question and peac
Dual-task interventions reduce vividness and unpleasantness in both old and new memories
No full textA core element of EMDR therapy is that a patient recalls a traumatic memory while concurrently making horizontal eye movements. Experimental studies show that performing such tasks simultaneously (i.e., Recall + Dual-Task) reduces the memory's vividness and unpleasantness. Memory age may act as a boundary condition on this effect as older memories have been more consolidated and strengthened over time compared to more recently formed memories, making older memories less susceptible to change. To investigate this, participants (N = 195) in Experiment 1 recalled an old or a new negative autobiographical memory and were randomly assigned to a Recall + Dual-Task intervention or a Recall Only intervention. Before, during, and after the intervention the memory was rated on vividness and unpleasantness. In Experiment 2 (N = 356) a follow-up rating was added one day later to test for delayed effects of memory age on intervention effectiveness. Collectively, the two experiments show that Recall + Dual-Task immediately reduces memory vividness and unpleasantness compared to Recall Only. For unpleasantness this differential effect remained one day later. However, none of the effects were moderated by memory age. Thus, these findings suggest that memory age is not a boundary condition for dual-task effectiveness and that dual-task interventions (as used in EMDR) could be similarly effective for reducing the intensity of emotional memories of different ages