A cross-cultural analysis of perception on ageist attitudes between Korean and American social work students

This study examined whether there are differences in ageist attitudes toward a person who is struggling from terminal illness between Korean and American social work major students at the undergraduate level. A total of 137 college students participated in this study: 66 Korean students in South Korea and 71 American students in the United States. The students were given surveys with an identical case but the subject was either a 38-year-old or an 80-year-old woman, and they answered 16 questions regarding their perception of age and death, end-of-life options, assessment and intervention, and values and ethics to care. The finding showed that there were generally negative ageist attitudes among social work students regardless of their cultural background, though there were some differences in their basic ageist attitudes. The findings suggest that social work students at the undergraduate level need more education to resolve their negative ageist attitudes in order to provide effective service for the older population.     

The Incarcerated Parent: Examining Mother-Child Conflict at the Margins through a Bio-Ecological Lens

ABSTRACT

This study examined conflict, parenting communication style, and attitudes regarding the parent-child relationship for a marginalized special population: incarcerated mothers and their children. Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological perspective served as a guiding framework, based on its ability to consider family interactions across ecological contexts, both proximal and distal to the developing child’s home setting. Fifty incarcerated mothers in the central U.S. provided in-depth interviews and individual self-report surveys. Findings indicate that incarcerated mothers most frequently used an authoritative parenting communication style in conflict situations that ended positively, and authoritarian style in conflict that ended negatively. Authoritative parenting was associated with incarcerated mothers’ reports of greater satisfaction with parenting. Study findings suggest that parenting communication style can help support efforts to reduce recidivism. Contextualizing these findings within Bronfenbrenner’s model, the present study affirms the role of proximal as well as distal factors governing relational communication between incarcerated mothers and their children.     

Visual Attention Patterns Differ in Gynephilic and Androphilic Men and Women Depending on Age and Gender of Targets

Visual attention patterns measured with eye-tracking techniques provide indirect clues about sexual response. This study aimed to test the category specificity of sexual responses to stimuli varying in gender and age by evaluating both early and late attention of gynephilic and androphilic men and women. We simultaneously presented sexually preferred and nonpreferred stimuli and measured time to first fixation and total duration of fixation on four areas of interest: entire body, then face, chest, and pelvis. Androphilic women’s early attention patterns were nonspecific, whereas gynephilic women and both groups of men showed a category-specific pattern for the entire body. In contrast, all groups showed gender-specific patterns of late attention for all areas of interest. We also found support for age specificity of early and late visual attention in all four groups, with greater attention to adult than child stimuli. This study supports the usefulness of a competing stimulus eye-tracking paradigm as a method to examine gender specificity in gynephilic women and androphilic and gynephilic men, and as a measure of age specificity in gynephilic and androphilic men and women.     

Catching Babies in Prohibition States: Midwives' Accounts for an Illegal Profession

Practicing midwifery is illegal in four states and the District of Columbia. However, midwives still practice as they and much of the public do not see their behavior as criminal. Based on in‐depth interviews with twenty‐six midwives, our findings demonstrate that midwives employed both public and professional accounts. They collectively justified midwifery in prohibition states by condemning their condemners, appealing to higher loyalties, denying injury, and justifying by comparison. We also found a new account, denial of illegality. This research uniquely applies the concept of collective accounts to an illegal but socially acceptable career.     

Differences in Visual Attention Patterns to Sexually Mature and Immature Stimuli Between Heterosexual Sexual Offenders,Nonsexual Offenders,and Nonoffending Men

Men, whether gynephilic or androphilic, show both early and late attention toward adults and not toward children. We examined early and late visual attention to sexually mature versus immature stimuli in four groups of heterosexual men: sexual offenders against children (SOAC = 18), sexual offenders against adults (SOAA = 16), nonsexual offenders (NSO = 18), and nonoffending men (NOM = 19). We simultaneously presented adult and child stimuli and measured time to first fixation, number of first fixations, total duration of fixation, and fixation count to four areas of interest: entire body, then face, chest, and pelvis. We found a significant interaction where only SOAC tended to fixate more first times to child than to adult stimuli. Conversely, we found longer total duration of fixations for the bodies of adults compared to the bodies of children in all groups; however, in both the total duration of fixations and the fixation count for the whole body, but especially in the chest, SOAC tended to fixate longer and more often on child stimuli than the other two groups of offenders, but not longer or more often than NOM. This study adds to the limited research using eye-tracking techniques in samples of SOAC.     

Supporting older youth: what's policy got to do with it?

The nonschool hours are an underused tool in supporting older youth in their transition to adulthood. Given competing demands on many teens' time and a host of other developmental realities, effective strategies for engaging high schoolers look much different from those of their younger counterparts, and those differences have programmatic and policy implications. Effective youth policies reflect an overarching vision that is about changing lives--a vision that addresses a range of risk and protective factors, simultaneously supports discrete programs and builds coherent pathways to success, and recognizes that children and youth grow up in families and communities. This chapter highlights policy innovations related to teens' involvement in out-of-school-time activities and then looks at three principles that can help ensure that youth policy supports the full range of older youth's unique developmental, social, and economic needs.     

An Economic Analysis of the Gap Between Desired and Actual Fertility: The Case of Spain

Family size is the outcome of sequential decisions influenced both by preferences and by ongoing changes in the environment where a family lives. During the last two decades, the gap between the number of children women prefer and their actual fertility has widened in Spain. The paper uses the 1985 and 1999 Spanish Fertility Surveys to study whether the tightening of the labor market and worsening of economic conditions in Spain during the last 20 years are important determinants of this change. I find that women facing high unemployment rates in their mid-twenties tend to restrict their fertility below their ideal level. Among women in the labor force, the stability of a public sector job lessens the difficulties of balancing employment and family and of achieving preferred fertility. Temporary contracts work in the opposite direction. Findings are robust to the inclusion of controls for within-couple discrepancies in either preferences or religious affiliation.

Exploring Organizational Form in the Affordable Rental Housing Sector

The nature and benefits of different kinds of affordable rental housing providers, and particularly for-profit housing developers, have been contested by practitioners and scholars. We contribute to this debate by exploring whether the missions, the resources harnessed to build housing, the human resources, and the involvement of residents in decision-making differ based on organizational form. Using case study design, we examine two third sector organizations (a zero equity cooperative and a community-based non-profit) and a for-profit located in Canada. The two third sector organizations had less knowledge of housing construction and harnessed in-kind contributions compared to the for-profit. These organizations, and again in contrast with the for-profit, also pursued social missions, including supporting other organizations and sharing their experiences related to housing construction. The zero equity cooperative featured greater resident involvement in the development and the management of the housing compared to both the community-based non-profit and the for-profit.