Analysis of Pre and Posttest Gender Differences in Family Satisfaction of Divorce Mediation Couples

To determine if divorcing spouses experience the family reorganization process through mediation differently, we tested divorcing couples before and after child custody/visitatior mediation, using the Family Satisfaction scale. The pretest family satisfaction scores of husbands as a group were significantly lower than those of the wives (p = .004), but significantly improved after mediation (p = .005). The family satisfaction of wives as a group did not change. Within-couple differences in family satisfaction did not change for either spousal group before and after mediation, an indication that an improvement in the family satisfaction of the husband is not necessarily at the expense of the wife.     

Mother and Grandmother Parenting in Low‐Income Three‐Generation Rural Households

This study draws data from the Family Life Project to examine parenting behaviors observed for 105 mothers and grandmothers raising an infant in rural low‐income multigenerational households. Multilevel models are used to examine the relationships between maternal age and psychological distress and parenting of the infant by both generations. The findings indicate that young maternal age is a risk factor for less sensitive parenting in the presence of other risks, including psychological distress. Further, young maternal age is associated with negative parenting behaviors by grandmothers only. Grandmothers and mothers displayed similar levels of negative intrusive parenting, but different factors were linked to the observed parenting of each generation. These findings contribute to understanding the benefits and risks of three‐generation households.     

Effect of Sociocultural Context and Parenting Style on Scholastic Achievement among Iranian Adolescents

School grades, family demographics and responses to the parental authority questionnaire were assessed in 240 eighth‐grade students in the southern, central and northern parts of Tehran, Iran's capital. The result showed that poorer families with traditional values had more authoritarian attitudes toward parenting than richer families with more modern values. In contrast to the studies conducted in East Asian societies, the current study found that authoritative parenting was the style associated with the highest academic outcome. Tests of mediation and moderation effects showed that the relation between parenting style and academic outcome was independent of sociocultural context.     

对地方水资源法规执行效能的实证研究

青岛市在全国有地方立法权的城市中拥有较为完备的水资源法规体系。在青岛市地方立法整体评估所收集的资料基础上，通过个案研究的方法，可以对青岛市地方水资源法规的执行效能进行有典型意义的实证分析，从中总结地方水资源法规的实施绩效和执行阻碍及原因；并从地方立法的角度提出增强地方水资源法规执行效能的建议。     

基于功效系数法的城市土地利用效益评价——以武汉市为例

城市土地是城市社会和经济发展的基础。城市土地利用效益评价是理论界研究的热点之一，许多学者从不同层面进行了有益的探讨。本文运用功效系数法，建立了城市土地利用效益评价数学模型。首先，从经济、社会与生态三方面综合筛选评价指标并运用德尔菲法确定指标权重；然后，确定备评价指标的效态及其满意值与不允许值；最后，通过Excel软件计算备指标功效系数和城市土地利用效益的综合功效系数，并以武汉市为实证，进行了模型实用性与可信度的分析与评价。     

Facing Death: Buddhist and Western Hospice Approaches

This article draws on ethnographic data to examine how moral person‐hood, emotions, and social relationships are constructed quite differently within two organizations with the similar goal of holistically caring for the dying. The analysis shows how the moral rhetoric and related practices at a mainstream hospice encourage volunteers to esteem a static conception of the self‐as‐character, whereas the Buddhist approach requires volunteers to engage in a process of transcending a self that is continually being worked on. The analysis points to paradoxes in the hospice conceptions of a “good death” and offers critical reflection on the assumption that Western and Buddhist approaches to hospice care are largely equivalent. Organizational, structural, and phenomenological strands of symbolic interactionist thought are drawn on to interpret these findings.     

A Conversation With Virus X: Outing a Malevolent and Subversive Force in Parents' Lives

The following conversation describes a narrative means of uncovering (or ‘deconstructing’) some of the invisible forces that undermine parents' capacities in caring for their children in preferred ways. In the authors' experience, parents can be hugely resourceful and provide a clear account of what they ‘should’ be doing, yet seem unable to act upon their own good advice — it is as though an external agent, named below as ‘Virus X’, prevents them from being the parents they would like to be. Through naming this external agent, identifying its influences and noticing parents' acts of resistance in the face of these influences, antidotes to Virus X can be developed. This paper describes the development of such an approach within a child behaviour management group. In keeping with the playful approach encouraged by narrative therapy, the authors of this paper join forces to act as investigative journalists in exposing Virus X to the readers.     

Looking inside the bag of tools: creating research encounters with parents with an intellectual disability

This paper examines the development of fieldwork methodology in a study that investigated the parenting experiences and parent support needs of a group of parents with an intellectual disability. It considers the ways in which the original planning for the project changed as the fieldwork unfolded, requiring adaptations to our methodological expectations and in the process deepening our understanding of the phenomena we were studying and reinforcing for us the importance of relationships in fieldwork‐based research. Three themes in particular are considered that became central to this research: research relationships; safety for participants/positioning of the researcher; suspending assumptions about impairment and disability and influences on life experiences.     

Parenting as a Dynamic Process: A Test of the Resource Dilution Hypothesis

In this paper, we tested the resource dilution hypothesis, which posits that, because parenting resources are finite, the addition of a new sibling depletes parenting resources for other children in the household. We estimated growth curve models on the self‐reported parenting practices of mothers using four waves of data collected biennially between 1994 and 2000 on a nationally representative sample of 2,082 Canadian children aged 2 to 5 at initial interview and in continuously intact, two‐biological‐parent households. Results showed that when new children were added to the household, mothers exhibited declines in positive interaction, but increased their levels of consistent parenting. Taken together, these findings suggested that parenting resources were reallocated, rather than diluted, when family size increased.     

A Vocabulary of Motives: Understanding How Parents Define Quality Time

Although discussions of parenting refer to quality time, parents’ views of quality time have not been explored. Using the Sloan 500 Family Study, this article examines how 220 parents from 110 dual‐parent families define the spending quality time with their families and finds 3 distinct views: Structured‐planning parents saw it as planned family activities, child‐centered parents emphasized heart‐to‐heart talks with their children, and time‐intensive parents believed that all the time they spent with their families was quality time. Mothers and fathers both valued quality time, but, particularly when parents within a household disagreed, mothers more often described having a more active parenting role and assumed greater responsibility for quality time, reflecting a gendered division of parenting within the home.