Search

We apply geologic evidence from ice-free areas in Antarctica to evaluate model simulations of ice sheet response to warm climates. This is important because such simulations are used to predict ice sheet behaviour in future warm climates, but geologic evidence of smaller-than-present past ice sheets is buried under the present ice sheet and therefore generally unavailable for model benchmarking. We leverage an alternative accessible geologic dataset for this purpose: cosmogenic-nuclide concentrations in bedrock surfaces of interior nunataks. These data produce a frequency distribution of ice thickness over multimillion-year periods, which is also simulated by ice sheet modeling. End-member transient models parameterized with strong and weak marine ice sheet instability processes, which predict large and small sea-level impacts during warm periods, also predict contrasting and distinct frequency distributions of ice thickness. We identify regions of Antarctica where predicted frequency distributions are diagnostic of marine ice sheet instability parameterizations. We then show that a single comprehensive data set from one bedrock site in West Antarctica is sufficiently detailed to show that the data are consistent only with a weak marine ice sheet instability end-member, but other less extensive data sets are insufficient and/or ambiguous. Finally, we highlight locations where collecting additional data could constrain the amplitude of past and therefore future response to warm climates.

As in other Western countries, Australian society has changed considerably over the past 50 years, creating demands for shifts in family-related policies, practices and legislation. The social sciences have played an important role in this process by monitoring changes, informing the development of appropriate responses and assessing the effectiveness of such responses. In this article, we briefly explore four key social changes that have had a profound impact on Australian families - women's increasing participation in the workforce; changing perceptions of fatherhood; greater recognition of the existence and destructive consequences of family violence and child abuse; and the increased emphasis on the rights of the child. We suggest that the first two of these changes contributed significantly to the introduction of the Australian Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), and that the other two changes have had a continuing significant influence on legislators' attempts to articulate and implement acceptable decision-making principles with regard to post-separation parenting. Next we consider the most recent major amendments to Australian family law, the 2006 'shared parental responsibility' legislation, and its subsequent evaluation by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. We show how this evaluation has provided a basis for examining both the extent to which the policy and practice intentions of these reforms were being achieved, and the extent to which further changes were required. We conclude by noting how the evaluation, along with other research, has contributed to further important changes to family law service provision and further significant legislative amendments.

Family Relationship Centres (FRCs) have been described as a centerpiece of Australia's 2006 family law reforms. This paper places these centres in the larger context of the reforms and their commitment to providing community-based family services in the family law area. The paper also examines the empirical evidence regarding FRCs' use and effectiveness. It notes that while the objectives and intentions of FRCs place considerable emphasis on strengthening family relationships and assisting families to stay together, the centres themselves have only a modest level of direct involvement with intact families. FRCs tend to have strong links with other community-based family services, many of whom are more engaged with intact families; but it is difficult to gauge their effectiveness in this area. Most FRCs' direct services are aimed at separating families and most of that work involves family dispute resolution (family mediation) and associated services such as screening and assessment and the provision of relevant information. A substantial majority of clients who attend FDR at an FRC reach agreement about their parenting arrangements either at FDR or subsequent to attending FDR. These agreements also tend to hold up in the medium term. A majority of parents believe that at FDR, the child(ren)'s needs were taken into account; the parenting agreement worked for the child(ren); and the parenting agreement worked for them. A substantial proportion of FRC clients come from families that have experienced family violence or other dysfunctional behaviours, and such behaviours reduce the chances of resolving parenting disputes. The paper concludes by suggesting that having been created mainly as a default alternative to legal interventions and court processes, it is likely that a major future strength of FRCs will lie in their emerging capacity to work constructively not only with other relationship services and networks, but with family lawyers and the courts.

The Australian government has recently introduced a Bill into Parliament that is intended to improve the way concerns about family violence and child abuse are dealt with in the context of post-separation parenting disputes. The move follows recent reports examining the impact of significant reforms to the family law system introduced in 2006. Motivated by a desire to ensure that children maintain involvement with both parents after separation and to place greater emphasis on non-court-based dispute resolution mechanisms, the reforms encompassed legislative change and new and expanded relationship services. The empirical evidence base on the 2006 reforms has highlighted shortcomings in the existing responses to family violence and child abuse, with one large-scale study by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) demonstrating that a history of family violence was as prevalent among shared care arrangements as other arrangements, contrary to the intention of the reforms. This article uses the emp...

It is well documented that children who experience parental divorce are more likely than those in intact families to experience a range of emotional and behavioural adjustment problems, and to perform less well academically. However, few studies of the impact of divorce have exclusively considered young children. This paper takes advantage of a recent Australian child cohort study to examine links between young children's emotional wellbeing, the quality of the co-parental relationship, and post-separation paternal involvement. We found that while children aged 6-7 years living with both parents generally had better emotional wellbeing than similar aged children living with one parent, inter-parental hostility was an important factor in explaining young children's emotional wellbeing. But regardless of family type, children whose parents had a hostile inter-parental relationship tended to have poorer emotional wellbeing than children whose parents did not have a non-hostile relationship, as reported by children and their parents.

Community-based mandatory family dispute resolution (more generically known as family mediation) is a central plank of the 2006 changes to the Australian family law system. This paper provides an overview of the data on family dispute resolution from the Australian Institute of Family Studies' evaluation of the 2006 changes. It reports on usage rates of family dispute resolution as well as immediate and medium term outcomes, perceived pathways towards resolution and the impact of family violence on both outcomes and pathways. Though the story is a generally positive one, the data also suggest a need for family relationship sector practitioners and family lawyers to engage proactively in assisting those families who are experiencing significant violence and or significant levels of ongoing serious conflict.

A great deal of research attention has been directed to understanding why marriages last or end in separation. Far less attention has been extended to cohabiting relationships, where couples live together without being registered as married. As in other developed countries, couple formation patterns in Australia have changed dramatically over the last few decades, with most “living-together” unions now beginning with cohabitation rather than marriage, and with an increasing proportion of babies now being born to cohabiting couples. This paper uses longitudinal data to track what happens to cohabiting relationships: whether the partners subsequently marry each other, separate or continue to cohabit over a two-year period. It then investigates the role of each partner’s relationship satisfaction and fertility aspirations in influencing the pathway taken.

This article examines continuity and change in post-separation patterns of parenting across a three year time span. We analyse longitudinal data from two recent Australian studies: the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey; and the Caring for Children after Parental Separation (CFC) Project. Mother-residence was found to be the most common and the most stable pattern. Though far less common, father-residence also appeared to be reasonably stable. By contrast, shared care was found to be the most fluid of these three parenting configurations. (author abstract)

This article traces some of the key historical events that have combined with Australia's geography, climate and patterns of immigration in shaping characteristics of Australian families—characteristics that are remarkable for their diversity on many fronts. These factors, along with changing patterns of family formation, stability and structure, evolving parenting roles, and the ever-increasing spatial concentration of families, have all contributed to diverse strengths, vulnerabilities and lifestyles of families. Policies directed towards helping families identify and draw on their own strengths and those of their community have gained momentum since the late 1990s. The article outlines some of these policies, along with a project on family strengths that has helped shape interventions.

As Benjamin Disraeli observed, “Change is inevitable. Change is a constant”. This is well demonstrated in families, the basic unit of society. It is reflected, for example, in the pathways to family formation, childbearing trends, patterns of family functioning, parental (or partnership) separation, and the prevalence of different family forms (see Hayes, Qu, Weston & Baxter, 2011; Hayes, Weston, Qu & Gray, 2010). The family forms of key interest in this report are those comprising couples with children (in which the child who forms the focus of the present analysis — the “study child” — was born to the couple), and the parents are legally married to each other or are living together outside legal marriage (here called “cohabitation”). This study explores the following questions: To what extent is the distinction between married and cohabiting couples relevant in terms of settings for raising children? That is, how similar or different are the parental/family characteristics and parenting practices of cohabiting and married families in which the children of interest were born? How do children in these two forms of families fare? To help put similarities and differences between these two groups in perspective, the analyses also extend to sole-mother families. Data from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC) are used in this study (see section 2 for details about LSAC).

The average hours worked by full-time employees in Australia have increased since the late 1970s. This, combined with increases in female labour force participation, has led to concerns about the impact of long work hours on family life. This paper explores the relationship between fathers' work hours, their own wellbeing and that of their families using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey. The analysis is restricted to full-time employed fathers with a partner and dependent children. Overall, satisfaction with work hours decreases as the number of hours worked increases. However, long work hours are not necessarily, or even on average associated with pervasively lower wellbeing. Work hours are negatively related to only two of the thirteen measures of wellbeing examined. For fathers working very long hours, their satisfaction with their work hours is found to be very important to the relationship between work hours and wellbeing.

A study of the writing of Lady Cynthia Asquith1 is part of the continuing response to Elaine Showalter's call a decade ago for feminist critics to rediscover unknown women writers, to establish the "links in the chain that [bind] one generation to the next,. . .the continuities in women's writing," as well as to "seek the repressed messages of women. . .the not-said."2 Asquith is of special interest to feminists because her medium of ghostly fiction, a metaphoric extension of woman as ghost in her autobiographical writing, constitutes as credible and graphic a sign of woman's marginality in her culture as does Gilbert and Gubar's symbolic madwoman in the attic. Cynthia Asquith came to maturity in a literate and literary atmosphere; her mother and mother-in-law were both diarists. Her husband became well known for his war poems, and her brothers also wrote long poetic letters describing their impressions of the war in France. She began her public writing career by sending an unsolicited manuscript to The Times of London entitled "How to Sit for Your Portrait." Quickly becoming an acknowledged lay expert on the affairs of mothers and children, she then expanded her literary career to include writing ghost stories and children's stories; in addition, she edited many collections of stories, calling upon friends in the literary and art worlds of London for contributions. For twenty years she was private secretary to the playwright James Barrie and was aided by his contacts in the theatrical and publishing worlds. Among her works are his biography, Portrait of Barrie (1954), the biography of the Duchess of York (later Queen Elizabeth, wife of George VI), an autobiographical novel, The Spring House (1936), and two book-length memoirs, Haply I May Remember (1950) and Remember and Be Glad (1952). She began her diary in 1915, but while she lived she mentioned its existence to very few. Yet she declared at the outset, "I would never write as though I were really convinced no other eye would ever see what I wrote."3 And she passed on the diary to her children with the tacit understanding that it was to be published. Asquith's ghostly fiction is not well known in the United States, but representative selections are generally accessible in libraries. The Diaries: 1915-1918 not only illuminate the Victorian-Edwardian culture of World War I out of