"Mummies and babies" and friends and lovers in Lesotho

This paper examines an institutionalized friendship among adolescent girls and young women in southern Africa. Lesotho's economy is based on migrant male labor which leaves the women dependent on male earnings or subsistence from the land, and also creates unstable marital relations. Young girls in the modern schools develop close relationships, called "mummy-baby," with slightly older girls. Sexual intimacy is an important aspect of these relationships. Mummy-baby relationships not only provide emotional support prior to marriage, but also a network of support for married and unmarried women in new towns or schools, either replacing or accompanying heterosexual bonds.     

Understanding and Using Mediators and Moderators

Mediation and moderation are two theories for refining and understanding a causal relationship. Empirical investigation of mediators and moderators requires an integrated research design rather than the data analyses driven approach often seen in the literature. This paper described the conceptual foundation, research design, data analysis, as well as inferences involved in a mediation and/or moderation investigation in both experimental and non-experimental (i.e., correlational) contexts. The essential distinctions between the investigation of mediators and moderators were summarized and juxtaposed in an example of a causal relationship between test difficulty and test anxiety. In addition, the more elaborate models, moderated mediation and mediated moderation, the use of structural equation models, and the problems with model misspecification were discussed conceptually.

Beliefs and values and the sterilization decision

A decision-making framework based on the models of personal decision making developed by psychologists and economists and a methodology based on axiomatic conjoint measurement are used to explore individuals' beliefs and values regarding contraceptive sterilization. Particular emphasis is given to demonstrating a. that there exist individual differences in beliefs and values, b. that there exist differences in beliefs and values between persons who choose sterilization—either tubal ligation or vasectomy—and persons who choose non-sterilization contraceptive methods when no more children are wanted, and c. that the effect of beliefs and values on the sterilization decision is an interactive one. The methodology used is compared to that typically used in studying fertility- and health-related behaviors.This research was supported by grants HD-10802 and HD-14403 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The technical assistance of Doreen Victor and the editorial suggestions of Sarah Gaskill, Alice Healy, and two anonymous reviewers are greatly appreciated. This paper is Publication No. 253 of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0344. Requests for reprints should be sent to the Publications Librarian at the Center.     

Complementary and alternative medicine: Interaction and communication between midwives and women

BackgroundMany pregnant women use complementary and alternative medicine. Although midwives are often supportive, how they communicate with women about the safe use of these therapies has received limited research attention.AimThe aim of this study was to explore how midwives interact with women regarding use of complementary and alternative medicine during pregnancy.MethodsWe utilised grounded theory methodology to collect and analyse data. Twenty-five midwives who worked in metropolitan hospitals situated in Melbourne, Australia, participated in the study. Data were collected from semi structured interviews and non-participant observations, over an 18-month period.FindingsHow midwives communicate about complementary and alternative medicine is closely associated with the meaning they construct around the woman's role in decisionmaking. Most aim to work in a manner consistent with the midwifery partnership model and share the responsibility for decisions regarding complementary and alternative medicine. However, although various therapies were commonly discussed, usually the pregnant woman initiated the dialogue. A number of contextual conditions such as the biomedical discourse, lack of knowledge, language barriers and workplace constraints, limited communication in some situations.ConclusionMidwives often interact with women interested in using CAM. Most value the woman's autonomy and aim to work in partnership. However, various contextual conditions restrain overt CAM communication in clinical practice.     

Injecting and Rejecting,Framing and Failing

This paper seeks to examine how female subjectivities are privileged by Canadian human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination discourse and, in turn, how homosexual male subjectivities are displaced. Employing a Critical Discourse Analysis approach, I analyze selected HPV vaccination (HPVV) promotional materials, and depict the discursive strategies which privilege and exclude gendered subjectivities. My critical analysis is influenced by feminist linguistic works that seek to uncover the discursive constructions around sexuality, gender and identity, and the discursive strategies used to communicate ideas about sexual health risks and responsible citizenship. In addition, I adopt feminist theories of knowledge and power to rethink the discursive representations of some bodies and subjectivities as normal, and Others as unintelligible within HPVV discourse in today's neoliberal time.     

The relationships between population and economy, and between population and education]

The relationship between population and economy is regarded seriously by China and other countries. This problem can be analyzed and studied under 2 aspects: 1) the influence of economic development on changes in population, and 2) the influence of population increases on economic development. Under the 1st aspect, improved living conditions, hygiene, and health care generally result in lowered mortality rates. Improved economic conditions in China also increased the birthrate and at the same time increased birth control among the people; the increased birthrate was due to more marriages after liberation. In economically advanced countries, due to high expenses in raising children, people tend to limit family sizes to 2 children/family. Under the 2nd aspect, population increases place strains on the food supply and nutritional requirements, especially when increases are too rapid. They also demand more educational resources and influence quality of education. As there are currently 210 million students in China, the quality of education suffers, particularly at the college level, since most of Chinese manpower, physical and financial resources are spent on primary and secondary education. In terms of housing, transportation, health care, and natural resources, they are all intimately related to and influenced by increases in population. Consequently, the living standard would be difficult to raise if population increases are too rapid. Since 1971, population increases have been incorporated into 5-yearly and later yearly national economic plans in China. The large Chinese population is a major obstacle in raising the Chinese economic level, hence a well-planned population control program is essential.     

Family Instability and College Enrollment and Completion

This research uses data from waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, N = 9,631) to consider whether and how family instability in early or later childhood affects college enrollment and completion of a Bachelor’s degree by age 24. Explanatory factors include maternal selection into unstable unions, household resources available in adolescence, and adolescents’ academic achievement, behavior, and attitudes in high school. The association of later family instability with college enrollment and completion is largely explained by household resources in adolescence. The association of early family instability with college enrollment is partially explained by each set of factors, and its association with college completion, given enrollment, is explained by pre-existing maternal characteristics. The results demonstrate that early family instability has enduring consequences for eventual status attainment and that the mechanisms that connect family instability to educational outcomes vary by the timing of family structure change.     

山东省人口发展与工业化城镇化的互动及其协调发展

改革开放至今,山东省的人口发展与工业化城镇化发展相互促进,共同推动了人口再生产方式的转变和工业化城镇化进程,进入了健康、合理、良性互动的发展时期。但是,人口规模持续膨胀、城镇化发展水平滞后、城镇体系结构不合理、人口分布与城镇分布矛盾等问题依然制约人口与工业化城镇化的协调发展。促进人口数量、素质、结构、分布协调发展,走新型工业化和新型城镇化道路,实现人口与工业化城镇化协调发展,是山东省不懈的追求。     

第五届亚太生殖健康大会

为推动开罗国际人口与发展大会《行动纲领》及“千年发展目标”在亚太区域如期实现，2009年10月18-20日，由中国国家人口计生委、中国计划生育协会、中国人口学会、国际计划生育联合会、联合国人口基金、人口与发展南南合作伙伴组织等共同举办的第五届亚太生殖健康大会在北京召开。     

Widowhood and Mortality: A Meta-Analysis and Meta-Regression

The study of spousal bereavement and mortality has long been a major topic of interest for social scientists, but much remains unknown with respect to important moderating factors, such as age, follow-up duration, and geographic region. The present study examines these factors using meta-analysis. Keyword searches were conducted in multiple electronic databases, supplemented by extensive iterative hand searches. We extracted 1,377 mortality risk estimates from 123 publications, providing data on more than 500 million persons. Compared with married people, widowers had a mean hazard ratio (HR) of 1.23 (95% confidence interval (CI), 1.19–1.28) among HRs adjusted for age and additional covariates and a high subjective quality score. The mean HR was higher for men (HR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.19–1.35) than for women (HR, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.08–1.22). A significant interaction effect was found between gender and mean age, with HRs decreasing more rapidly for men than for women as age increased. Other significant predictors of HR magnitude included sample size, geographic region, level of statistical adjustment, and study quality.     

Subjective utility and plans for childbearing and employment

Nonrecursive models of plans for childbearing and employment were estimated for a sample of white married women, age 26 to 36, with one or two young children. Women's concerns about care of children already born did inhibit their employment plans. Further, plans to have another child in the near future had a direct negative effect on full-time employment plans among women with one child, but not among women with two children. No direct effects of childbearing plans on part-time employment plans were found. In contrast to earlier research on longterm childbearing and employment plans, no direct effects of employment plans on plans for childbearing were found. It is suggested that attainment of the two-child family marks a turning point in the relation between childbearing and wives' employment.This research was partially supported by grants from the Center for Population Research, NICHD to Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers, Seattle, Washington (1-R01-HD10683), and to the Center for Demography and Ecology, University of Wisconsin, Madison (1-R01-HD05876). I wish to thank Andrew R. Davidson for the opportunity to conduct the research. I am also grateful to Pamela Oliver, Larry Bumpass, and the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article.     

Hellenism and homoeroticism in Shelley and his circle

This paper discusses two leading English Romantic poets- Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron-and three of their friends, who lived close together in Italy during the first half of 1822. Despite the censorious efforts of family, friends and biographers, ample evidence survives to establish the importance of male love in their lives and works. They were ardent hellenists, whose reference point for male love was the homoerotic ethos of Ancient Greece.     

人口计生宣传教育为“先导”的重心和支点

宣传教育为先导的战略决策,是国家人口计生委党组书记、主任李斌同志2007年年底在河南召开全国农村人口文化建设工作现场会和在宁波市召开全国婚育新风进万家活动经验交流会上提出的重大战略思想。宣传教育为先导战略决策的提出,是在科学发展观指引下尊重思想政治工作、精神文明建设和人口计生工作客观规律,总结正反两方面工作经验教训的必然产物,是今后做好人口计生工作的元点工程。本文主要论述了为什么要先导,先什么、导什么,如何先导三个重大问题。     

Altruistic and contractual remittances between male and female migrants and households in rural Thailand

Past research has questioned the extent to which remittances are altruistic behaviors versus payments in a contractual relationship between households and migrants. This article explores altruistic and contractual patterns of remittances using a gendered approach. On the basis of results with various levels of significance in regression models, male and female migrants from Nang Rong, Thailand, behave both altruistically and contractually. However, women and migrants from poorer households behave more altruistically, while men and migrants from richer households behave more contractually. These results point to the need for further research and theory development to explain heterogeneities in migrants' behavior.     

Mortality in New Zealand and England and Wales

This paper compares age-specific mortality rates in England and Wales with those of New Zealand. Differences in rates are greatest at the younger age groups, and are particularly high for infants under 1 year and children between 1 and 5 years. The age-specific mortality rates for females under 25 years and for males under 35 years are analysed by causes of death in order to discover where the main differences between the two countries occur, and for infant mortality in England and Wales a further analysis has been made by social class. The greatest room for improvement in England and Wales mortality rates, as compared with New Zealand rates, is at ages under 5 years, and in infant mortality in particular the greatest differences between England and Wales and New Zealand rates by causes of death are for those causes usually associated with environmental influences.     

Populations and infectious diseases: Dynamics and evolution

The host-parasite or host-pathogen system was analyzed from dynamical and evolutionary viewpoints using simple mathematical models incorporating vertical transmission, immunity and its loss. We first analyzed a model without density regulation of host population. In the analysis on dynamics, the condition for the pathogen to work as a density regulating factor was obtained. In the analysis on evolution, criteria for the evolution of host and pathogen were proposed. These criteria implies that the evolution of hosts should result in an increase in infected host density, whereas the evolution of pathogens a decrease in susceptible host density. The direction of evolution at some parameters of host and that of pathogen were examined when the parameters were independently and freely changeable. Among the parameters, only reduction in additional mortality due to infection was the evolutionary trend common to both host and pathogen. In all the other parameters examined, trend of evolution predicted in host is reversed in pathogen. We then analyzed whether the obtained criteria still hold in models with density regulation of hosts. Using randomly generated parameter sets, we obtained the result that the criteria should hold very likely though they do not always hold. We discussed evolution of virulence when there is a constraint between the traits.     

Mother-Child Relations and Adolescent Sexual Attitudes and Behavior

We hypothesize that children who are close to their parents are more likely to have attitudes and behavior that are consistent with their parents' values than children who are not close to their parents. Using data from a probability sample of 888 mother-child pairs of white women in the Detroit metropolitan area, we tested this hypothesis, using both mother's and child's attitudes toward premarital sexual intercourse and the child's report of whether he or she had engaged in premarital sexual intercourse. Unlike most previous work in this area, which has posited a direct association between the closeness of the mother-child relation and the child's attitudes and behavior, we found that the quality of the relation interacted with the mother's attitudes in its effects on the child's attitudes and behavior. Children with close relations with their mothers were more likely to hold attitudes and behave in a manner consistent with their mothers' own attitudes than children with more distant relations.     

Family configuration and adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior

Several measures of family configuration, derived from the number, age, and sex of siblings and the number of parents, were related to adolescent sexual attitudes and behavior in a sample of 836 high school-aged teenagers from two Western states. Zero-order correlations showed that sexual intercourseexperience was less common among adolescents who lived with both parents and also among those who had younger siblings. Similarly, the zero-order correlations showed least permissiveattitudes among adolescents who had more siblings, especially younger siblings, and among those who lived with both parents. Controlling for adolescents' age, sex, race, religion, church attendance, and parents' educational attainment, however, essentially eliminated the relationships between family configuration variables and sexual attitudes and behavior. Only parents' marital structure, reflecting whether adolescents lived with both original parents or not, continued to be weakly related to adolescents' sexual attitudes and behvior.