Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Children Left Behind: Reactions to Parental Emigration in Ecuador

厄瓜多尔最近的政治和经济动荡刺激了移民的大量流动。这些移民中的许多人都是把孩子留在家乡的父母，因为当地有大家庭和廉价的托儿服务，而带着孩子适应一个新的国家却很困难。西方文化研究报告了母亲分离在儿童早期的有害影响；本文由文化人类学家研究了跨文化背景下移民对大龄儿童的影响。学生将研究与移民父母分离对留守儿童的影响，痛苦是如何发展的，以及在厄瓜多尔瓜亚基尔移民的背景下，文化理解如何被用来适应社会和心理上的分离痛苦。通过以人为中心的访谈、投射性测试以及对儿童和照顾者行为的观察来评估儿童在父母准备移民、实际离境期间和父母在国外时的心理状态，学生将确定儿童的心理状态以及儿童用来适应父母移民的方法。更广泛的影响：本研究对心理学家、政策制定者和照顾者如何最好地帮助这些儿童应对父母移民的心理影响具有实际应用价值。在探索一些孩子如何以及为什么能够适应父母移民而另一些不能的过程中，那些寻求帮助这些孩子的人可以更好地理解某些心理干预的效果。这种理解特定情境下的痛苦的模型可以外推到儿童面临类似痛苦的其他情况。此外，本研究将有助于培养对应用研究感兴趣的心理人类学博士研究生。

The recent political and economic turmoil in Ecuador has spurred a significant flow of emigrants. Many of these emigrants are parents who leave their children behind, because of the local availability of extended family and inexpensive childcare versus the difficulty of adjusting to a new country with children. Western culture research has reported the deleterious effects of maternal separation in early childhood; this dissertation research by a cultural anthropologist studies the effects of emigration on older children in a cross-cultural context. The student will examine the effects of separation from emigrated parents on their left-behind children, how distress develops and how cultural understandings may be used to adapt socially and psychologically to distress from separation in the context of emigration in Guayaquil, Ecuador. With person-centered interviews, projective tests, and observations of the children and caregiver's behaviors to assess the child's psychological state while their parents are preparing to emigrate, during the actual departure, and while their parents are abroad, the student will determine the psychological state of the child and the methods that the child uses to adjust to parental emigration. Broader Impacts: This research has the practical application to inform psychologists, policy-makers, and caregivers how to best help these children cope with the psychological effects of parental emigration. In exploring how and why some children are able to adjust to parental emigration and others are not, those seeking to assist these children can better understand the efficacy of certain psychological interventions. This model for understanding distress in a particular context can be extrapolated to other situations in which children face similar distress. In addition, this research will contribute to the educational development of a doctoral candidate in psychological anthropology interested in applied research.