Learning to negotiate network relations: social support among working mothers living in poverty

This study promotes our understanding of the complex and dynamic role that social support networks play in the everyday life of working mothers living in poverty, by focusing on the processes of negotiation involved in the creation, maintenance and mobilization of social ties. It is based on semi-structured interviews with 12 Israeli-Jewish working mothers who participated in an economic empowerment workshop. Findings indicate that the participants received much social support from relatives, friends and community activists. However, they further reveal the hard hidden work of negotiation and the process of learning involved in obtaining support. Particularly important in this context of poverty was the need to learn how to ask for support by overcoming feelings of shame and concerns about respectability, and to reduce social burdens by, among other things, refusing to participate in the ‘gift economy’ and limiting constraining social relationships. Finally, this study shows how the seemingly divergent interpretations of negotiation in social-exchange theory and symbolic interactionism (reaching an agreement that maximizes benefits versus preserving the relationship) often converge in everyday life situations.     

“We don’t have to talk about how I feel”: emotionality as a tool of resistance in political discourse among Israeli students – a gendered socio-linguistic perspective

This article demonstrates how the gendered patriarchal mechanisms that exclude women from the political sphere are being produced, re-produced, and challenged in interpersonal political conversations by concentrating on the discursive mechanisms that construct the way young Israeli women and men talk about politics. The research is based on a yearlong intra-group dialog process. The group met for weekly sessions during two semesters, in which the group members discussed and expressed their thoughts and feelings regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) demonstrated how the political space is being marked, defined and delimited through gendered discursive practices. We present the different roles participants take in the group, and in particular the different strategies women use in face of disciplinary discursive mechanisms. The process revealed that the development in the group discussion was strongly intertwined with the change in the positioning strategies of the female participants. In particular, we found that women deployed emotionality as a tool of resistance that challenges gender binaries and masculine dominance. Our conclusion highlights the importance of the daily interactions in creating, sustaining and changing the political discourse of a society in conflict.     

Improved small sample inference in the mixed linear model: Bartlett correction and adjusted likelihood

The mixed linear model is a popular method for analysing unbalanced repeated measurement data. The classical statistical tests for parameters in this model are based on asymptotic theory that is unreliable in the small samples that are often encountered in practice. For testing a given fixed effect parameter with a small sample, we develop and investigate refined likelihood ratio (LR) tests. The refinements considered are the Bartlett correction and use of the Cox–Reid adjusted likelihood; these are examined separately and in combination. We illustrate the various LR tests on an actual data set and compare them in two simulation studies. The conventional LR test yields type I error rates that are higher than nominal. The adjusted LR test yields rates that are lower than nominal, with absolute accuracy similar to that of the conventional LR test in the first simulation study and better in the second. The Bartlett correction substantially improves the accuracy of the type I error rates with either the conventional or the adjusted LR test. In many cases, error rates that are very close to nominal are achieved with the refined methods.     

JOB INSECURITY,STRESS AND GENDER

This study examined the complex relationships between gender, job insecurity and job-related stress. Previous findings have suggested that men experience greater job insecurity than women, and are more vulnerable to job-related stress. The current study tested the hypothesis that the gender ideology of employees moderates the effect of gender on job insecurity and stress. Data were obtained by questionnaires from a sample of 203 married employees. The results showed that traditional men experience greater job insecurity than traditional women. However, as hypothesized, egalitarian men and women exhibited similar degrees of job insecurity. Furthermore, job insecurity in traditional men and in egalitarian men and women was related to loss of control stress, financial stress and stress expressions at home, whereas traditional women were relatively protected from job-related stress. These findings illuminate the important moderating role played by gender ideology in the relationships between gender, job insecurity and stress.     

The Power of Unsilencing: Between Silence and Negotiation in Heterosexual Relationships

Orly Benjamin, The Power of Unsilencing: Between Silence and Negotiation in Heterosexual Relationships, pp. 1–19.
This article proposes an analysis of the social process of unsilencing in the specific context of heterosexual relationships. Unsilencing is the process in which an individual woman becomes empowered to the extent of voicing what is silenced by structural hierarchies that shape her experiences of the heterosexual relationships she is involved in. I connect the process of unsilencing to the sociological notion of "negotiated order" and a feminist notion of the self as fragmented and continually changing. Unsilencing is conceived as a response to power operating on three levels: emotional connection that empowers a contesting meaning structure; a process of distancing that empowers the individual in overcoming positioning processes; and an increased sense of authenticity in relation to the set of emotional management, language and beliefs embedded in the contesting meaning structure.     

Between Activation and Supporting Women – Alternative Operation of Welfare‐to‐work Programmes

With the emergence of activation policies, researchers are intrigued by the extent to which welfare‐to‐work (WTW) programmes reflect the ideological orientation of policymakers, while leaving the ideological orientation of their operators unexamined. This aspect may be of particular importance when women's non‐governmental organizations operate non‐coercive WTW programmes. Directing attention to the contribution of the operator, we ask how women who operate these programmes distinguish between the feminist goal of increasing women's independent access to material resources, and the activation rhetoric of ‘work first’. Moreover, as not enough is known about how participants benefit from the incongruence between the feminist discourse and the activation one, scholarship contemplating women's resistance to WTW programmes remains focused on specific welfare histories, and this form of feminist work remains neglected. The importance of the specific operators and the policy implications of the benefits of feminist operation of WTW programmes receive attention in the study reported on herein. We used a non‐coercive activation programme operated by a feminist organization in Israel (among other operators) as an opportunity to deepen our understanding of how programme trainers voice their position between feminism and activation discourse, and how their form of speech enables participants to insist on decent employment as a policy issue. Implications for policy are discussed.     

Youth Substance Use in a Context of Family Homelessness

Objective

This study examines the relationship between family processes and youth substance use debuts among a sample of youth residing in urban family homeless shelters.

Method

Data regarding shelter experiences, youth and family characteristics, and the use of three substances (i.e., cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana) were gathered from a sample of youth (11-14 years) and their respective parents residing in an urban family homeless shelter system. Multinomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine the influences on youth substance use.

Results

Of the 198 youth included in the statistical analysis, 72% (n = 143) reported no substance use debuts, while 18% (n = 35) indicated one and 10% (n = 20) indicated two to three substance use debuts. Within the final model, greater substance use debut was associated with being older (13-14 vs. 11-12; OR = 7.5; 95% CI = 1.8-30.9) and stressors exposure (OR = 4.8; 95% CI = 1.5-14.7). Furthermore, youth of adult caretakers that reported low levels of the three family processes considered were almost four and a half more likely (OR = 4.4; 95% CI = 1.2-16.5) to have made two to three substance use debuts.

Conclusions

Family processes may be a particularly important intervention target toward reducing the rate of substance use among youth residing in urban family homeless shelters.     

It Takes a Village to Deliver and Test Child and Family-Focused Services

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this article is to highlight the benefits of collaboration in child focused mental health services research. METHOD: Three unique research projects are described. These projects address the mental health needs of vulnerable, urban, minority children and their families. In each one, service delivery was codesigned, interventions were co-delivered and a team of stakeholders collaboratively tested the impact of each one. RESULTS: The results indicate that the three interventions designed, delivered, and tested are associated with reductions in youth mental health symptoms. CONCLUSION: These interventions are feasible alternatives to traditional individualized outpatient treatment.     

Silenced Reality: Power Relations between Marital Blueprints in Israeli Marriages

In this study we examined the effect of job insecurity on couples' relationships in the context of recent macro‐level economic changes in Israel. Based on Hajer's discourse interaction approach, we conceptualized marital relationships and particularly the marital conversation as contested terrain reflecting power relations between social forces and their related discourses. We interviewed seventeen couples in which at least one of the partners suffered from job insecurity in order to trace forms of emotion work and silence in their marital interaction. We found that couples experienced a decreased ability to speak with each other. In their accounts of this experience, gendered “story lines” that we interpreted as “new” to the relationship emerged. Women's emotion work was indicative and halted change‐directed marital negotiation. The possibility that authoritative gendered relationships are reinforced in Israeli marriages during times of job insecurity is thus supported.     

Working‐class mothers’ school involvement: a class‐specific maternal ideal?

Recent ideological shifts, along with budgeting constraints, have made parental involvement in the schooling process necessary. Such expectations have increased the toll on working‐class mothers, who now have to assume responsibility in three time‐consuming areas: child care at home, school involvement and labour market participation. In analysing how mothers deal with this threefold expectation, research has focused on class‐specific maternal ideals and practices, but rarely directed systematic attention to how these concurrent expectations shape the maternal ideals they embrace. Moreover, few studies have examined how mothers’ maternal ideals shape their employment interruptions. The current paper considers how working‐class mothers rationalize the maternal ideals they embrace with regard to school involvement and examines how they negotiate them vis‐à‐vis other possible maternal ideals. Interviews of 48 Israeli low‐income mothers reveal that educational success is consensually perceived as critical for maximizing life chances and that this understanding evolved from the gradual realization that school involvement through extensive mothering – where women rely on others to meet their children's schooling needs – must be replaced by school involvement through intensive mothering – namely, personal presence‐based nurturing. We draw some implications relevant to the debate over class‐based maternal ideals.