Littérature scientifique sur le sujet « Parenthood – Humor »

The transition to parenthood is a stressful life event that often leads to decreases in relationship satisfaction over time. Guided by the Stress Buffering Model, we examined how pregnancy intention and humor use are associated with relationship satisfaction across the transition to parenthood using a multi-wave longitudinal design. First-time parents were initially assessed prenatally and then every 6-month postpartum for 2 years. Six months after birth, each couple was video-recorded engaging in two support discussions where each partner’s use of different humor styles was observed and rated. The results revealed a positive association between affiliative humor use (assessed at 6-month postpartum) and relationship satisfaction (assessed across the entire transition) for men and women. For men only, there was an interaction between pregnancy intention (assessed prenatally) and aggressive humor use (assessed 6-month postpartum). Specifically, when the pregnancy was unplanned, men who displayed higher levels of aggressive humor at 6-month postpartum reported higher overall relationship satisfaction. There also was a significant interaction between men’s (but not women’s) affiliative humor use and pregnancy intention, such that when men reported an unplanned pregnancy, their greater use of affiliative humor buffered declines in their relationship satisfaction. These findings suggest that, for men, greater use of affiliative humor appears to forestall declines in their relationship satisfaction. More broadly, different forms of humor may promote or sustain higher levels of relationship satisfaction in men across the chronically stressful transition to parenthood because they serve key communicative functions.

Background: Evidence suggests increased anxious-depressive symptoms in the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic, also in its second wave. High symptom variability across individuals suggests that risk and protective factors, including coping strategies, can play a mediating role. Methods: General Anxiety Disorder-7, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, and Brief-COPE questionnaires were administered to people attending a COVID-19 point-of-care. Univariate and multivariate methods were used to test the association of symptoms with risk and protective factors. Results: A total of 3509 participants (27.5% with moderate-severe anxiety; 12% with depressive symptoms) were recruited. Sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, including age, sex, sleep, physical activity, psychiatric treatments, parenthood, employment, and religiosity were associated with affective symptoms. Avoidant (self-distraction, venting, behavioral disengagement) and approach (emotional support, self-blame but not positive reframing and acceptance) coping strategies predicted greater anxiety. Avoidant strategies, including venting, denial, behavioral disengagement, substance use, and self-blame, and the humor strategy were associated with more severe depressive symptoms, while the planning predicted the opposite. Conclusions: Coping strategies, in addition to socio-demographic and life-habit factors, could have contributed to modulating anxious and depressive symptoms during the second-wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, thus advocating for interventions aimed at promoting positive coping strategies to reduce the psychosocial toll of the pandemic.

Contemporary socio-cultural transformations of family life can be observed in the area of non-specialist parental discourse in terms of both modern parenthood and the celebration of childhood. The new quality in the experience and creation of parenthood is noticeable especially in the communication performed with the help of Web 2.0 tools (which are currently among the most important platforms for the exchange of particularly valued “unscientific” – experience, because it is based on empirical knowledge). Internet messages (entries, posts, comments) create an involved parenting and glorify a small child as a subject of parental efforts in the context of post-hierarchical relationships, but they also serve to profile communities gathered around a superior idea or topic (e.g. eco-mum, modern mother, fitmum, dad in the city, dad at work, etc.). They also endorse the principle of the aestheticisation of everyday life, the messages are filled with linguistic humour and expose a non-standard way of thinking, matching perfectly the main trends of postmodern communication.

The most important criterion for assessing the well-being of society, a factor in the national security of the country is the health of the younger generation. The state of health of adolescents is largely determined by the level of valeological education in the family. After all, the family develops the skills of a healthy lifestyle, universal spiritual values, and norms of social life. The main task today, on the one hand, is to study and identify the factors of individual and family health and social risk, and on the other hand - to optimize the early diagnosis and prevention of health disorders in children. The formation of skills for a healthy lifestyle of adolescents is crucial for the spiritual and physical development of the younger generation, its formation as a social personality. The paper examines the problems of forming a healthy lifestyle of Ukrainian adolescents aged 15-18, whose socialization takes place in the information society, which is implemented by processing 1,075 sets of questionnaires ("Questionnaire of adolescents 15-18 years" and "Questionnaire of mothers of adolescents 15-18 years"), in the analysis of which only informative answers were taken into account. Information base - the international program ELSPAC - (European Longitudinal Study of Parenthood and Childhood - European long-term monitoring of parenthood and childhood), its Ukrainian fragment "Family and Children of Ukraine". It was found that the main source of information for adolescents is a computer with the Internet and television (71.3 and 66.4% of respondents, respectively). The results of the survey of adolescents on the place of work at the computer showed that for the most part - 79.2% of respondents work at home, a third at school - 37.2% and 17.2% of adolescents - in the computer club (17.2%). The maximum number of answers confirms that both on weekdays and weekends the duration of work on the computer is from 1 to 6 hours with a maximum value of 2 hours for working days (23.6%) and 4 hours - on weekends and holidays (15.7%)). Information on the negative impact on the human body of long-term computer use is known to the vast majority of respondents - 95.8% of adolescents. The majority of respondents for offline communication prefer peers, some loyal friends (63.4 and 60.7%, respectively), only 45.2 and 40.4% of adolescents like to communicate with their parents and beloved person, respectively. An analysis of literary preferences found that one in four to five teenagers enjoyed reading school literature, comics, humor and science fiction, short stories and novels, encyclopedias and dictionaries. The results of the survey of mothers of adolescents on the assessment of the daily routine and daily activity of their children prove insufficient physical activity; only 35.7% of adolescents go in for sports in their free time. Home help is most often provided by a teenager making his bed (70.8% of cases), cleaning his room and going to the store (55.6 and 51.1%, respectively). Survey of mothers on the living conditions of their children's sleep showed that the vast majority of them sleep in a separate room (70.0% of adolescents), in a room with other children - 15.3% of respondents, with parents - 9.0% of children in the room with other adults - 2.9% of adolescents. But 3.3% of children do not have a single bed. Summing up the results of the responses of Ukrainian adolescents and their mothers, it is possible to say that in our society, due attention is not paid to the employment of adolescents. Thus, improving the quality of life of adolescents can be achieved by choosing the optimal preventive effect on them, taking into account the individual characteristics of psychological and physical status.

Muscular dystrophy is a terminal muscle-wasting condition, whereby families face continuous challenges as their child’s health deteriorates. This research explored accounts of parenthood following bereavement of their child to muscular dystrophy. Narrative inquiry was used to analyse interviews with four couples. Findings suggest an importance in narrating adversities ( waking up to different futures) and positive influence ( creating legacies). The research highlighted how humour is often used to support others to witness painful accounts ( humour through the struggle). Parents appeared to co-regulate the painfulness of narrating loss ( storytelling together). Further research is needed on conjoint narrative interviews and how these may enable participants to address shared loss experiences. Practitioners who support bereaved parents could consider the potential value highlighted in this study of meeting with parents conjointly, which include that, through co-regulatory, collaborative processes, families seemed to be supported to reach narrative cohesion, sensitively and safely, when facing loss and bereavement.