Human sexuality: the controversy continues

Sex education should be an integrated component of population education programs in the Philippines. There are, however, a variety of objections to this approach, which are linked to proposals that sex education is more relevant to biology and medicine curriculums. The Population Education Program of the Philippines conducted a study of 2093 parents and 4550 teachers to determine who registered objections to teaching certain population education content, what they objected to, and why such objections were raised. Findings show that only 3% of the sample reacted unfavorably to the inclusion of controversial topics, such as sex terms, illustrations of sex organs and the naming of contraceptive devices. The issues remaining to be solved are: content, terminology, teacher competence, parents' involvement, and teaching aids.     

Factors Preventing Gridlock in Chilean Couples’ Relationships Based on the Discourse of Couples Therapists and Highly Adjusted Couples

The term gridlock describes the occurrence of rigid patterns in couples’ conflict. This study aimed to describe strategies of conflict resolution and gridlock prevention from the perspectives of couples and couple therapists. Participants were couple therapists and highly adjusted couples scored by the dyadic adjustment scale (DAS), distributed according to traditional and non‐traditional position in life and duration of relationships. Conflict gridlock scenarios were used to create video stimulus that were presented to participants. A qualitative methodology was used to analyse couples’ and therapists’ commentaries on the scenarios. Results showed differences in preventing conflict gridlock among sub‐groups of couples. Long‐term traditional couples focused on loyalty to a common project and value sacrificing to a higher good; long‐term non‐traditional couples prioritised caring and validating the bond in the relationship. Short‐term traditional couples focused on mutual love and the relief of hurt while short‐term non‐traditional couples supported the value of equity.     

持续改善你的服务

服务不能建立库存,以后再用;如果需求不稳定, 也没办法进行完美预测服务行业在运营方面有一些其他行业所没有的特征,正是这些特征,使管理服务比管理其他行业更为困难。那么,怎样才能提高服务的质量和价值?这需要提供服务的组织从战略的角度去看问题。     

DOES HIGH COST OF MORTGAGE DEBT EXPLAIN WHY YOUNG ADULTS LIVE WITH THEIR PARENTS?

Young adults leave their parents' homes at a higher rate in Northern Europe or in the United States than in Southern Europe, with broad implications on labor market mobility and on fertility. We assess if differences in household formation are associated to differences in access to credit by estimating the impact of the cost of a mortgage on the probability that a young adult leaves his or her parents' home. Exogenous changes in the cost of credit are identified using the reform in 1998 and the cancellation in 2002 of Crédito Bonificado, a Portuguese program that provided four different reductions of the interest rate of mortgages signed by low‐ and medium‐income youth. Using a unique data set that links administrative records of debt with the 1998–2004 waves of the Employment Survey, we document three findings. First, borrowing among young adults fell when borrowing costs increased. Second, the elasticity of new household formation with respect to net interest rates lies between −0.8 and −3.3. Third, young adults responded to the increase in mortgage costs by delaying home purchases or by reducing the quality of housing services purchased, but there was only a modest increase of the probability of renting a new accommodation. (JEL: D91, H24, J13)     

Building a System of Indicators to Evaluate the Right of a Child to Play

This study presents the results of a research project whose objective is to propose measures to evaluate the right of children to engage in play, as recognised in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. After exhausting documentation and statistical sources, a lack of measures related to this right was clear. This led to the formation of discussion groups about play with schools, families and social agents. From this, an initial matrix was developed and submitted to experts who selected the most suitable measures. This resulted in the SIDERJU matrix, composed of measures for the structure, process and result.     

Forced Migration,Climate Change,Mitigation and Adaptive Policies in Mexico: Some Functional Relationships

Natural disasters related to hydro-meteorological events have increased during the last few decades, both in frequency and severity. Mexico is heavily exposed to climate change, but has also suffered in the past from climate variability ( Blümel, 2009 ). The new risks oblige the government to develop mitigation processes, while the affected people are implementing strategies of adaptation and resilience-building, mostly at the family and community level. This includes forced migration due to climate change into the slums of megacities or illegal immigration to the United States. The arid, semi-arid and subhumid condition of 49.2 per cent of the territory of Mexico is seriously affected by climate change. In addition, poverty and the lack of jobs have created complex livelihood situations, in which young people leave rural areas, partly due to socio-economic pull factors. In this paper, we address the functional relationships between climate patterns and migration processes in Mexico, highlighting the linkages between the origin of migrants, their economic activity and their vulnerability to extreme events and we discuss long-term climate patterns. Agriculture still uses 78 per cent of the available water in Mexico. In the drylands the competition for water use requires an integrated policy to deal with the new threats from climate change, including mitigation from the top down and adaptation processes from the bottom up to reduce the social vulnerability of the rural population in the highly affected drylands of the central and northern parts of Mexico. The new policy for administering water resources, which promotes the efficient use of an increasingly scarce and polluted resource, still suffers from a lack of participation by the affected rural population. In this paper, we propose an integrated management system from the watershed onwards, involving socio-economic, political, cultural and hydrological variables, to deal with the rising scarcity of water, and the uncertainty and complexity of climate change.     

What Do We Do When We Discuss? A Micro‐genetic Analysis of Couples’ Conflict

This article focuses on dialogic discursive dynamics present in couples’ conversations about unresolved conflicts. The phenomenon of conflict is addressed as a semiotically mediated process of co‐construction of the self and the relationship. The purpose of this article is to report on patterns of meaning construction in couples’ conflict, with the identification of strategies that promote or hinder resolution. A qualitative exploratory approach was used to focus on the interactional process at the micro‐processing level. Eight married couples participated in the study. The procedure considered asking the couple to discuss unresolved conflict. Recorded data of couples’ dialogues were transcribed to text and assessed through semiotic analysis using a microgenetic protocol (Molina, Del Río, & Tapia, 2015). The results document the use of strategies for conflict regulation such as psychological distancing, opposition, and generalisation on the border between protecting the bond and regulating tension. The dynamics of non‐resolution manifested in polarisation and rigid patterns with increased tension. The ‘in‐motion’ nature of dialogue about conflict is pushed by the semiotic tension that induces variations in subjective positions manifested in speech and actions.     

The power to transform? Mexico’s ‘Fourth Transformation’ under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador

ABSTRACT

We engage in a conjunctural analysis of political change (Gramsci; Hall), power (Lukes) and transformation (Polanyi) to inquire into López Obrador’s political project; ‘The Fourth Transformation’ from July 2018 until December 2019. We analyse characteristics and consequences of the use of power by López Obrador as concerns the ‘power to do what?’ in the name of the 4T, shadowed by structural constraints. Additionally, inquiring the paradox of neoliberal ideas underlying changes in the Federal Public Administration in the name of austerity and the fight against corruption. We conclude that López Obrador is not exploiting this historical conjuncture to bring about ‘the primacy of politics over economics,’ and that signs have yet to emerge of a comprehensive transformation of the neoliberal economic foundations, from a structural analysis perspective. The paradox of neoliberal ideas underlying the 4T is coupled with a peculiar, backward-looking vision for national transformation; a ‘retro-formation’ in the making.     

Conflict and cooperation in environmental administration

Cleavages exist between agencies on the implementation of environmental policies and the management of environmental programs. Although these cleavages are not deep enough to cause an agency immobilisme, they slow down the pace of pollution control. Within the agencies, much time is wasted when environmental specialists quibble on regulatory matters, when relationships between environmental scientists and resource managers are strained, and when regional units suffer from the stultifying effect of divided loyalties. To compound the problem, cooperative programs that are supposed to maximize the outcome of environmental protection leave much to be desired. In light of these problems, the time has come to re-invent the whole spectrum of environmental bureaucracy and recharge the entire subsystem of environmental policy making.     

Values: their place in population education

In an attempt to resolve the crucial issues relating to dealing with the value dilemmas of students, population educators in the Philippines convened a series of conferences. The Philippine population education teachers, trainers, and administrators participating in the conferences agreed that a fusion of the affective and cognitive processes was necessary and that there should be more student involvement and self-made decisions on the part of students. An issue still unresolved is whether schools should inculcate values in the students or let them resolve or discover values by themselves; the strategies suggested range from open-ended or value processing to close-ended value teaching. Teachers and supervisors stressed that all strategies should be undertaken since they complement each other, but the choice and availability of materials to support and reinforce the strategy continues to be a problem for many participants. Preliminary studies conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a value clarification strategy support the contention that value clarification processes do make a difference in certain patterns of student behavior, attitudes, and knowledge. Research also shows that the value clarification strategy is ineffective with teachers who are highly authoritarian, closed-minded, and dogmatic. The Population Education Program has responded to recommendations of the conference participants and taken some definite action, such as the implementation of value clarification strategies as part of the teacher training program and development of a list of Filipino values to serve as guides in teaching value-laden population issues.