Browsing by Subject "Childhood"
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Item Attrition and body mass index change in pediatric weight management: the predictive value of demographic and mental health variables(2016-08) Lotz, Elijah John Strong; Keith, Timothy, 1952-; Gray, Jane; Pont, Stephen; Stark, Kevin; Rodriguez, ErinChild and adolescent obesity has increased dramatically in the last few decades, and remains a pressing health concern in the United States. Responding to the problem of obesity in youth has been a challenge, as body mass index (BMI) change is difficult to attain, and attrition from pediatric weight management programs is often very high. The purpose of the current study was to identify demographic and mental health variables that can predict attrition and BMI change in a pediatric weight management program using multiple linear regression and binary logistic regression. Participants were children and adolescents with obesity 6-18 years of age and their parents living in the central Texas area and participating the a hospital-based multidisciplinary pediatric weight management program. Results provided several significant findings. Rates of attrition from the intervention were similar to findings from prior research. No study variables significantly predicted dropout prior to the third visit. However, parent’s preferred language, taking psychiatric medication at the first visit, and symptoms of inattention were all significant predictors of dropout prior to the fourth visit. In paired-samples t- tests, unstandardized BMI scores increased significantly from first to last visit, while BMI z-scores decreased significantly. Average time between visits significantly predicted unstandardized BMI change and BMI z-score change in this sample. Last visit number was also a significant predictor of unstandardized BMI change. Implications, limitations, and areas of future research are discussed.Item Between protection and punishment : children, sexual crimes and law in Buenos Aires, 1853-1912(2015-12) Ogden, Julia Grace; Twinam, Ann, 1946-; Garrard-Burnett, Virginia; Levine, Philippa; Brown, Jonathan; Rodriguez, JuliaThis dissertation examines how “children” emerged as a discrete social group through the codification of penal law in Argentina, and the prosecution of sexual deviance in the criminal courts of Buenos Aires. Between 1853 and 1912, as lawmakers drafted, and redrafted, a national penal code, they fundamentally altered the meaning of illicit sexuality from colonial legal antecedents. Spanish laws had punished the acts of rape, deflowering, incest, and sodomy because they defiled female chastity or offended God. The national penal code censured these actions when committed with individuals younger than a certain age. This redefinition of criminal sexuality institutionalized the notion of childhood “innocence,” and extended protection to youth until the age of sixteen. An analysis of 230 criminal court cases reveals how, as a result of these legal changes, age became the deciding factor in the prosecution of sexual crimes, and judicial authorities began to consider, and treat, lower-class girls and boys as “children.” This shift in perspective caused magistrates to extend state protection to poor youth who, due to elite assumptions of appropriate behavior and sexuality, had been previously excluded. Despite new visions of childhood, however, the perpetuation of cultural and ideological biases among judicial authoritis ensured that some individuals continued to exist outside the realm of official preservation. This work demonstrates how social boundaries were redrawn in the modern period, and argues for the central importance of the law in the process of state formation in Latin America. In doing so, it provides important contributions to literature on crime, childhood, and sexuality. The creation of a protected social group characterized by age reconfigured traditional associations that had been drawn along gender and class lines. Illuminating this process provides an alternative vision of the liberal state. The hesitancy of the judiciary to intervene in the sexual lives of lower-class families recasts the dominant historiographical view of governments eager to intrude into the private sphere. Additionally, the protection of poor children in the courts reveals how turn-of-the-century elites not only criminalized poor youth but also began to protect them prior to the emergence of the welfare state.Item Malice in Wonderland : the perverse pleasure of the revolting child(2010-05) Scahill, Andrew, 1977-; Staiger, Janet; Kearney, Mary; Fuller, Jennifer; Benshoff, Harry; Mickenberg, Julia“Malice in Wonderland: The Perverse Pleasure of the Revolting Child,” explores the place of “revolting child,” or the child-as-monster, in horror cinema using textual analysis, discourse analysis, and historical reception study. These figures, as seen in films such as The Bad Seed, Village of the Damned, and The Exorcist, “revolt” in two ways: they create feelings of unease due to their categorical perversion, and they also rebel against the family, the community, and the very notion of futurity. This work argues that the pleasure of these films vacillates between Othering the child to legitimate fantasies of child abuse and engaging an imagined rebellion against a heteronormative social order. As gays and lesbians have been culturally deemed “arrested” in their development, the revolting child functions as a potent metaphor for queerness, and the films provide a mise-en-scène of desire for queer spectators, as in the “masked child” who performs childhood innocence. This dissertation begins with concrete examples of queer reception, such as fan discourse, camp reiterations, and GLBT media production, and uses these responses to reinvestigate the films for sites of queer engagement. Interestingly, though child monsters appear centrally in several of the highest-grossing films in the horror genre, no critic has offered a comprehensive explanation as to what draws audiences this particular type of monstrosity. Further, this dissertation follows contemporary strains in queer theory that deconstruct notions of “development” and “maturity” as agents of heteronormative power, as seen in the work of Michael Moon, Lee Edelman, Ellis Hanson, Jose Esteban Muñez, and Kathryn Bond Stockton.Item Preparation, protection, and practicality : anxieties in progressive era education(2013-08) Perez, Laine Elise; Barrish, Phillip; Murphy, Gretchen, 1971-This project explores the anxieties and contradictions that appeared in discussions of education during the Progressive Era by examining education theory, as found in the journals Education and The Playground, and comparing this theory to children's books of the era. I argue that turn of the century educators and authors promoted practical education so that they could use the school, the home, and the playground to accomplish two goals simultaneously: protecting children from economic concerns in the present and preparing children for the future by helping them develop the skills they would need to be productive citizens. However, in attempting to accomplish both of these goals, these individuals turned the home, school, and playground into contradictory spaces. This project first explores how these educators and authors resolved the tensions and contradictions present in these spaces--and the problems of class and gender underlying their resolutions--before examining why they were invested in creating a protected space for childhood in the first place and finally showing how the protected space they attempted to create became destabilized. Ultimately, I claim that these educators and authors made the protected space of childhood contingent upon the child's ability to submit to and absorb practical lessons learned on the playground and in the classroom and the home. Consequently, it appears that these individuals believed that children must earn their right to a protected childhood, but by insisting that children earn their protection, these individuals allowed economic concerns to creep into the supposedly separate childhood space. Each chapter of this dissertation will explore a particular facet of Progressive Era education--specifically, humanities courses, vocational education, and the play and playground movement--to reveal the anxieties that surrounded the intersections among the establishment of practical education, the desire to protect children from the workforce, and the need to prepare children for their futures as productive citizens.Item The queer matter[s] of boys in dresses: boy-dress entanglements in children’s picturebooks and the materiality of gender(2016-08) Agüero, Arturo; Brown, Keffrelyn D.; Nault, CurranThis study collects the representations of boys in dresses in Spanish and English language picturebooks and works through the entangled matters not only of, boys and dresses, but also race, class, gender, gender expression, schooling, and their futurities. Building from queer theory, and new materialisms, this research proposes an orientation for understanding children’s queerness without imposing ‘adult’ readings through a methodology of reading queer matter[s] by looking into picturebooks individually and across titles.Item Trajectories, predictors, and adolescent health outcomes of childhood weight gain : a growth mixture model(2014-12) Bichteler, Anne; Gershoff, Elizabeth T.Obesity, as defined as BMI at or above the 95th percentile on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s growth charts, has increased almost 3-fold among children in the United States since 1980. Overweight in adolescence has been associated with increased fat retention and high blood pressure in adulthood, among other symptoms of metabolic syndrome. However, normative patterns of weight change in childhood have not been developed. Groups of children may follow different trajectory patterns of BMI change over time. If common trajectory patterns could be identified, and their risk factors and outcomes understood, more nuanced intervention with families and children at risk for obesity could be developed. This study used a national dataset of 1,364 children whose weight and length was measured 12 times from birth through 15 ½ years. Testing both latent class growth analysis and growth mixture modeling identified four distinct subgroups, or classes, of BMI growth trajectory from 24 months – 8th grade. These classes were compared on numerous demographic, biological, and psychosocial risk factors identified in previous research as related to obesity. Classes were differentiated primarily on the child’s BMI at 15 months, the mother’s BMI at 15 months, birth weight for age, and percent increase in birth weight. Being male, Black, and lower SES were also related to membership in the higher-BMI trajectory classes. Of the psychosocial factors, maternal sensitivity, maternal depression, and attachment classification were also related to BMI class. Membership in these trajectories strongly predicted weight-related and blood-pressure outcomes at 15 ½ years over and above individual risk factors, demonstrating that patterns of change themselves are highly influential. The best-fitting models of weight-related outcomes at 15 ½ years included change trajectory in combination with biological, psychosocial, and SES risk factors from 0-24 months, with R² ranging from .31 = .50. Characteristics predicting adolescent overweight can be identified in the first years of life and should trigger the development and implementation of early intervention protocols in obstetrics and pediatrics.