Explore the vast range of titles available.

In many classic and contemporary titles of children's literature, the traditional family has no central role. The young protagonists are almost always orphans, who grow up with aunts, uncles, grandparents, but also strangers, animals and other nonhuman beings. The strangest the figures who take care of them, the most precious they seem to be for the children to develop their own identity. Children's literature invites us to think beyond conventional categories, as for who or what can be considered 'family', and it definitely does not associate this concept merely with the biological parents who are considered so important for the development and education of children in Western cultures (Hillman, 1997). By portraying children who are raised by animals, find home in the woods, or are nurtured and cared for by any kind of unexpected figures (including the dead), this literature roots the child--and thereby the human being--into a deeper, wider, more ancient, net of connections. Children's literature can therefore be useful as a meditation on our oneness with the rest of the living (and no longer living) world, and with the universe at large, it helps the reader feel part of a Whole in which no distinction needs to be made between 'us' and 'others', human and nonhuman, because everything is ontologically--but also biologically, chemically, i.e: materially--linked to everything else, in a both philosophical and ecological perspective that has inevitable influences on pedagogical theories and practices. Keywords. Children's Literature--Family--Chilhood--Orphanhood--Posthuman

Background The COVID-19 pandemic brought countless challenges to public health and highlighted the Brazilian health system vulnerabilities in facing the emergency. In this article, we analyze data on COVID-19-related deaths in 2020-21 to show the epidemic consequences in Brazil. Methods The Mortality Information System and the Live Birth Information System were the primary information sources. We used population estimates in 2020-21 to calculate COVID-19 specific mortality rates by age, sex, and educational level. Considering the total number of COVID-19 deaths in 2020-21, the COVID-19 proportional mortality (%) was estimated for each age group and sex. A graph of the daily number of deaths from January 2020 to December 2021 by sex was elaborated to show the temporal evolution of COVID-19 deaths in Brazil. In addition, four indicators related to COVID-19 mortality were estimated: infant mortality rate (IMR); maternal mortality ratio (MMR); number and rate of orphans due to mother’s COVID-19 death; the average number of years lost. Results The overall COVID-19 mortality rate was 14.8 (/10,000). The mortality rates increase with age and show a decreasing gradient with higher schooling. The rate among illiterate people was 38.8/10,000, three times higher than a college education. Male mortality was 31% higher than female mortality. COVID-19 deaths represented 19.1% of all deaths, with the highest proportions in the age group of 40-59 years. The average number of years lost due to COVID-19 was 19 years. The MMR due to COVID-19 was 35.7 per 100,000 live births (LB), representing 37.4% of the overall MMR. Regarding the number of orphans due to COVID-19, we estimated that 40,830 children under 18 lost their mothers during the epidemic, with an orphans’ rate of 7.5/10,000 children aged 0-17 years. The IMR was 11.7 per 1000 LB, with 0.2 caused by COVID-19. The peak of COVID-19 deaths occurred in March 2021, reaching almost 4000 COVID-19 deaths per day, higher than the average number of deaths per day from all causes in 2019. Conclusions The delay in adopting public health measures necessary to control the epidemic has exacerbated the spread of the disease, resulting in several avoidable deaths.

Background Following Hamas’s 7 October attack, Israel launched extensive aerial bombardments in the Gaza Strip, followed by a large-scale ground invasion. During the first 3 months of the conflict, up to December 31, 2023, the Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that 21,822 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes. This study estimates the number of excess deaths in children due to the war in the Gaza Strip in 2023 and assesses how the conflict has impacted the experience of parental loss among children. Methods We reconstructed background life tables for the Gaza Strip based on under-five mortality estimates from sample surveys and accounted for casualties due to the 2023 conflict, using the age distribution of deaths from an individual list of 13,101 fatalities reported by the Palestinian Ministry of Health. We employed a kinship matrix model to estimate the number of new orphans in 2023 and the prevalence of maternal and paternal orphanhood. Results From October 8 to December 31, 2023, our estimates indicate that 8120 children under 18 years of age were killed due to the conflict (with a range of 7099 to 9196 excess deaths). Additionally, 15,127 children (14,716–15,553) lost a father, and 9886 children (9564–10,216) lost a mother due to the conflict. Between 2022 and 2023, the probability of dying in childhood (ages 0–17) increased nearly sixfold for both males and females. The war increased the risk of losing a mother and a father by nine-fold and six-fold, respectively. Compared to the situation in 2022, the proportion of paternal orphans among children aged 0–17 rose by 1.5 times, while the proportion of maternal orphans doubled. Conclusions The dramatic number of excess deaths among children and the sharp increases in orphanhood underscores the urgent need to prioritize the well-being and rights of children caught up in the war in Gaza.

Orphanhood in Tolstoy has largely escaped critical examination, in part because though the writer himself was an orphan, his texts say little about the topic explicitly. But in fact thinking about orphans' trauma is everywhere in the pre-crisis fiction. Tolstoy draws orphans and non-orphans as fundamentally morally different. All his major protagonists are orphans and want to marry non-orphans. Further, many of his novelistic tics, and many critical insights into Tolstoy generally, actually apply only to characters who are motherless. War and Peace and Anna Karenina can be read as the author's running debate with himself: is an escape available for the traumatized from their pain later in life? If so, it would mean life is good and God is kind. Both books answer yes and demand orphans renounce their permanent sense of grievance against life for their losses. But in their final scenes Tolstoy confesses his optimism was false; life is not fair, and psyches damaged by orphanhood can never fully recover.

This article provides the first systematic study of the short- and long-run effects of parental death on the cognitive, noncognitive (locus of control), and physical development of Indian children. Exploiting rich longitudinal data over 15 years, I use difference-in-differences with individual fixed effects to account for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity between orphans and non-orphans and investigate the mechanisms. This method is an improvement over previous cross-sectional approaches to such explorations. I find that paternal death is negatively correlated with orphans' cognition but is not correlated with locus of control or physical health. Cognitive effects are mediated by a 10-percentage-point-lower probability of enrollment and a 20% decline in monetary investments in the child, eventually leading to one less year of schooling by age 22. These negative outcomes are concentrated among the least wealthy families, who respond to the shock by reducing consumption and increasing their labor supply.

Advanced maternal age is associated with negative offspring health outcomes. This interpretation often relies on physiological processes related to aging, such as decreasing oocyte quality. We use a large, population-based sample of American adults to analyze how selection and lifespan overlap between generations influence the maternal age—offspring adult health association. We find that offspring born to mothers younger than age 25 or older than 35 have worse outcomes with respect to mortality, self-rated health, height, obesity, and the number of diagnosed conditions than those born to mothers aged 25—34. Controls for maternal education and age at which the child lost the mother eliminate the effect for advanced maternal age up to age 45. The association between young maternal age and negative offspring outcomes is robust to these controls. Our findings suggest that the advanced maternal age—offspring adult health association reflects selection and factors related to lifespan overlap. These may include shared frailty or parental investment but are not directly related to the physiological health of the mother during conception, fetal development, or birth. The results for young maternal age add to the evidence suggesting that children born to young mothers might be better off if the parents waited a few years.

IntroductionThe first 1000 days of life is a period of great potential and vulnerability. In particular, physical growth of children can be affected by the lack of access to basic needs as well as psychosocial factors, such as maternal depression. The objectives of the present study are to: (1) quantify the burden of childhood stunting in low/middle-income countries attributable to psychosocial risk factors; and (2) estimate the related lifetime economic costs.MethodsA comparative risk assessment analysis was performed with data from 137 low/middle-income countries throughout Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa and the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. The proportion of stunting prevalence, defined as <−2 SDs from the median height for age according to the WHO Child Growth Standards, and the number of cases attributable to low maternal education, intimate partner violence (IPV), maternal depression and orphanhood were calculated. The joint effect of psychosocial risk factors on stunting was estimated. The economic impact, as reflected in the total future income losses per birth cohort, was examined.ResultsApproximately 7.2 million cases of stunting in low/middle-income countries were attributable to psychosocial factors. The leading risk factor was maternal depression with 3.2 million cases attributable. Maternal depression also demonstrated the greatest economic cost at $14.5 billion, followed by low maternal education ($10.0 billion) and IPV ($8.5 billion). The joint cost of these risk factors was $29.3 billion per birth cohort.ConclusionThe cost of neglecting these psychosocial risk factors is significant. Improving access to formal secondary school education for girls may offset the risk of maternal depression, IPV and orphanhood. Focusing on maternal depression may play a key role in reducing the burden of stunting. Overall, addressing psychosocial factors among perinatal women can have a significant impact on child growth and well-being in the developing world.

This article deals with the intersection between bereavement, gender, and art in the context of the cult of the fallen in Israel, focusing on the life story and artwork of two women artists, Asnat Austerlitz (b. 1969) and Michal Shachnai Yaakobi (b. 1967) who experienced orphanhood in a military context. Adopting the two-track model of bereavement suggested by Simon Rubin in 1981, the article offers an analytical, interdisciplinary examination of their artworks as adult women artists who are aware of the fragility of life and its finite character but also understand the importance and significance of continuing emotional bonds after death. Both have developed in diverse medium gender-based artistic creations related to the cult of the fallen creating models of alternative and counter-hegemonic memory that are manifested through personal languages full of irony, fantasy, and pain.

Although parents might not live with their children for a variety of reasons, existing accounts of parental absence often examine one cause in isolation. Using detailed longitudinal demographic surveillance data from Rufiji, Tanzania, this article examines parental absence due to death, migration, child relocation, union dissolution, and union formation from 2001-2011. Employing survival analysis, the article quantifies children's risk of absence by cause and investigates sociodemographic variation in this risk. Of children born into two-parent households, 25 % experience maternal absence by age 10, and 40 % experience paternal absence by the same age. Roughly one-quarter of children are born into single-mother families with an absent father at birth, and nearly 70 % of these children experience maternal absence as well by age 10. Despite the emphasis on orphanhood in the research and policy communities, parental death is the least common cause of absence. Furthermore, although demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are strong predictors of absence, variation in these relationships across causes underscores the distinctiveness and similarity of different reasons for absence.

The aim of this study is to derive estimates of level of and trend in adult mortality in Zambia. To do this the study applies the standard orphanhood method to the data on survivorship of parents from various Zambia Demographic and Health and Living Conditions Monitoring Surveys to estimate 10q25 and 15q25 for females; and 10q35 for males, and hence, the probability of a 15 year old dying before age 60 (45q15). The study finds that the orphanhood method captures some of the trend but fails to provide definitive estimates of mortality. The levels of female adult mortality between ages 25 and 35 years have remained constant at about 15 per cent from the mid-1990s. The female mortality rate between ages 25 and 40 years has also remained constant, at between 20 per cent and 25 per cent since 2000. Adult male mortality between ages 35 and 45 years increased in the mid-1990s and has remained between 20 per cent and 25 per cent from the late 1990s to late 2000s. Adult mortality, 45q15, for both males and females, has increased over time and has stabilised at about 60 per cent for males and 50 per cent for females. These adult mortality rates are comparable to estimates from other sources.