Vitamin E is an important nutrient from the earliest stages of life. It plays key roles as an antioxidant and in the maintenance of the immune system, among others. Vitamin E deficiency (VED), which occurs more frequently in children, is rarely addressed in the literature. This narrative review aims to summarise the chemistry, biology, serum indicators and clinical trials that have evaluated the impact of fortification and other relevant aspects of vitamin E, in addition to the prevalence of its deficiency, in children worldwide. Vitamin E intake in recommended amounts is essential for this nutrient to perform its functions in the body. Serum α-tocopherol is the most widely used biochemical indicator to assess the prevalence of VED. VED has been associated with symptoms secondary to fat malabsorption and may lead to peripheral neuropathy and increased erythrocyte haemolysis. Reduced concentrations of α-tocopherol may be caused by the combination of diets with low amounts of vitamin E and inadequate consumption of fats, proteins and calories. The lowest prevalence of VED was found in Asia and the highest in North America and Brazil. High proportions of VED provide evidence that this nutritional deficiency is a public health problem in children and still little addressed in the international scientific literature. The planning, evaluation and implementation of health policies aimed at combatting VED in the paediatric population are extremely important.

Edward Zigler pioneered and insisted upon the integration of science, practice, and policy development to support vulnerable children and families, reduce poverty, and improve US wellbeing, writ large. His far-reaching scholarship in turn critically shaped developmental science and US policy in multiple areas. This review reflects upon Zigler's influence on US child care, Head Start, Early Head Start, and prekindergarten programs. It describes the integration of one major area of developmental science, the field of attachment theory, research, and intervention, with US child care and early childhood education programs and policy. The integration of attachment into these systems not only epitomizes Zigler's overarching canon but also has improved services and advanced attachment theory and research. Throughout the review, I suggest next steps for leveraging attachment theory, research, and intervention to improve US child care and early childhood education systems in ways that both reflect and carry forward the legacy of Edward Zigler.

Parental practices can affect children’s weight and BMI and may even be related to a high prevalence of obesity. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the relationship between parents’ practices related to feeding their children and excess weight in preschoolers in Bucaramanga, Colombia, using artificial intelligence. A cross-sectional study was carried out between September and December 2017. The sample included preschoolers who attended child development institutions belonging to the Colombian Institute for Family Wellbeing in Bucaramanga and the metropolitan area (n 384). The outcome variable was excess weight and the main independent variable was parental feeding practices. Confounding variables analysed included sociodemographic characteristics, food consumption, and children’s physical activity. All equipment for the anthropometric measurements was calibrated. Logistic regression was used to predict the effect of parental practices on the excess weight of the children, and the AUC was used to measure performance. The parental practices with the greatest association with excess weight in the children involved using food to control their behaviour and restricting the amount of food they offered (use of food to control emotions (OR 1·77; 95 % CI 1·45, 1·83; P = 0·034) and encouraging children to eat less (OR 1·22; 95 % CI 1·14, 1·89; P = 0·045)). Childrearing practices related to feeding were found to be an important predictor of excess weight in children. The results of this study represent implications for public health considering this as a baseline for the design of nutrition education interventions focused on parents of preschoolers.

Research has long observed the absence of gender in child care policy, media, and elections. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has invoked critical questions about child care and its importance to states’ economic recoveries around the world. In this research note, we analyze news coverage of child care in major Canadian daily newspapers to explore whether and how news narratives regarding child care are shifting in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, are we seeing a focus on women and gender in child care coverage amid the compounding pressures that women face in the current social and economic climate? The results of our analysis suggest that the pandemic has not shifted the conversation on child care and that current coverage principally reflects long-standing trends in child care framing. We find that gender remains systematically written out of coverage of child care, occluded by a larger focus on health-, economic-, and accessibility-related concerns about child care services.

Households in Canada and Australia have exhibited similar trends in the gendered allocation of additional child care responsibilities resulting from policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we employ survey data to analyze the extent to which policy interventions related to COVID-19 have exacerbated gender disparities in child care obligations. We find that existing asymmetrical distributions of child care obligations in Canada and Australia have been amplified during the pandemic, resulting in a disproportionate burden on women. During the pandemic we also find that, in households with children, women tend to report experiencing poorer mental health than men.

In recent years there has been increasing policy focus on keeping mature-age people engaged in the labour market. At the same time, grandparents play an important role as regular child-care providers for many families. Yet, little research has explored how grandparents negotiate these dual, often competing demands of paid employment and intergenerational care. Drawing on focus groups with 23 grandparents and an online survey of 209 grandparents providing regular child care for their grandchildren in Australia, this paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining how Australian grandparents experience and negotiate competing responsibilities as older workers and intergenerational care providers. The paper draws on the concept of gendered moral rationalities to examine the way in which grandparents’ decisions about participation in paid work are deeply embedded in idealised forms of parenting and grandparenting that are highly gendered. The paper suggests that, as the rate of both maternal and mature-age participation in the paid labour market continues to rise, inadequate attention is being paid to how time spent undertaking unpaid care is compressed, reorganised and redistributed across genders and generations as a result.

Following retirement, older immigrants increasingly tend to engage in circular migration. This back-and-forth movement introduces a variety of challenges affecting the nature of grandparenthood as well as grandparental involvement in the upbringing of grandchildren. For circular migrant grandparents, maintaining intergenerational relationships requires them to overcome not only geographic distances, but also linguistic and cultural differences. In families with circular migrant grandparents, intergenerational conflict often springs from disparate generational exposure to acculturation processes, producing divergent aspirations within the first and second generations regarding the upbringing of the third generation. This study explores how first-generation Turkish circular migrant grandparents attempt to raise grandchildren who reside in Germany by implementing ‘cultural and instrumental transfers’. This study undertakes a qualitative approach: semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of first-generation Turkish circular migrant grandparents (N = 40). The analysis finds that child-care assistance is characterised by intergenerational conflict – rather than solidarity or altruistic support – between the first and second generations. Moreover, through transnational arranged marriages, as a cultural transfer, and inter vivos gifts, as an instrumental transfer, grandparents encourage their grandchildren to return to Turkey permanently.

Propositions about street-level bureaucracy run the risk of violating the scientific precept that a theoretical generalisation should be tested by replication in a variety of contexts. Many examples can be found of writings that simply indicate that street-level discretion is pervasive. This prompts the questions, ‘but how’, and under what conditions ‘may’ that happen? Comparison is needed to answer these questions, particularly cross-national ones. It will be argued that good cross-national comparative work must rest upon precise specification of the contexts to be compared and avoiding comparing tasks that seem similar, but in fact serve different functions in different contexts. To explore this one particular task – pre-school child care – is selected. The discussion of this specific example is examined as a model for similar comparative work.

Caring for one's grandchildren has become a more common experience for individuals partly as a result of a longer overlap between the lives of grandparents and their grandchildren. Existing research shows that around 50 per cent of grandparents engage in some grandparental child care in most European countries, however, this proportion is higher among older people with a migrant background, partly due to greater economic necessity among migrant families. Research has also highlighted ethnic differences in parents’ child-care selection, even after controlling for their socio-economic status. Building on these strands of work, this paper investigates the differences in the use of (grandparental) child care among parents from different Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups in the United Kingdom, using data from Understanding Society. The results show that parents from Other White, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and African communities are less likely to use child care than White British parents, while the opposite is true for Caribbean parents. However, among parents using child care, individuals from the Other White, Caribbean and African groups are less likely than the White British majority to be using grandparental child care as a supplement to other child-care types, or on its own. Ethnic differentials in the use of child care per se and grandparental child care in particular, have significant policy implications, and may mask other kinds of ethnic differences.