Activation programmes for women with a partner in Germany: Challenge or replication of traditional gender roles

In 2005, Germany implemented major welfare benefit reforms that encourage an adult worker model of the family. In this study, we hypothesised that, despite these reforms, women's assignments to activation programmes would in practice still tend to replicate the degree of labour market attachment to which they had become accustomed relative to their partner in the past. We compared programme entries between women in former male breadwinner, dual earner, no-earner and female breadwinner households and applied event-history analysis to large-scale administrative data. Our findings showed that in western Germany – but not in eastern Germany – women's assignments to activation programmes indeed replicated their prior labour market attachment relative to their partner. Key Practitioner Message: • Among women receiving Unemployment Benefit II in Germany, women with partners participate in activation programmes less often; • This tendency applies especially to western German women with less employment experience and lower former earnings than their partners; • A framework should be devised to inquire about previously non-employed women's interests in ALMP participation and offer them such opportunities.     

‘It's always a battle against time’. Experiencing and handling temporal conditions in homecare work

In most Western countries, the eldercare sector has undergone transformations to obtain cost containment and more efficient service provision, changing the temporal framing of homecare. Time pressure is a salient issue in homecare, but little is known about how homecare workers experience the temporal conditions of their work. Based on 13 group interviews with homecare workers in Sweden, this study examined how the staff experience temporal conditions and handle time pressure in their everyday work in a context of marketisation and increased use of ‘information and communication technology’. The analysis showed that the workers attributed their experiences of time pressure to the compression of time, the control of time and the unpredictability of time. Strategies adopted to handle time pressure included working unpaid hours, maximising efficiency and reallocating time. It is concluded that the homecare workers primarily adopted individual short-term strategies to deal with structural and organisational temporal issues.     

Negotiating motherhood: women with troubled upbringings and their self‐conceptions as mothers

This paper examines how women who experienced severe adjustment problems during adolescence, and who had troubled childhoods in families with high levels of conflict, construct their self‐conceptions as mothers. Applying data from a 30‐year‐long follow‐up study, this paper examines how participants with troubled upbringings experience social norms of motherhood. Two overall themes emerged along with their associated subcategories, and these are identified as significant findings. The first theme is the stigmatizing gaze, exemplifying how the intervention of the child welfare service is recognized as essential to the women's self‐conception; its three subcategories are prejudiced motherhood, predestined motherhood and self‐critical motherhood. The second theme is significant relationships, exemplifying the mothers' personal bonds and contributing greatly to their self‐conception; its three subcategories are the other half, next of kin and disturbed relations. The findings reveal that the way these women view themselves as mothers cannot be separated from the way that others view them, and in addition, they must negotiate their positions as mothers through the normative discourses of motherhood. The findings apply to both theoretical and practical social work, addressing the need for an understanding of motherhood within the field of child welfare.     

The Effect of Socioeconomic Status and Family Structure on Parental Warmth and Parental Control in a Chinese Context: Implications for Social Work Practice

We report the results of a telephone survey conducted in 2008 in Hong Kong, which aimed to identify Chinese parents' parental warmth and parental control (guan) and to explore their relationship with the sociodemographic characteristics of the parents. The respondents perceived themselves to be warm (mean = 3.44) and educating their child (mean = 3.46). The results of multiple regression analysis showed that the five sociodemographic characteristics explained 15.8% and 8.2% of the variance in parental warmth and guan respectively. The mothers were warmer than the fathers; parents with higher monthly household income, higher educational attainment and with their smallest child young in age were warmer than parents of lower household income, lower educational attainment and with their smallest child older in age. However, parental guan did not vary among the five sociodemographic characteristics except educational attainment. Implications of the study for social work practice are discussed.     

Commitment of Private and Public Agency Workers to Child Welfare: How Long Do They Plan to Stay?

ABSTRACT

Method: Child welfare professionals completing training to work in foster care were asked about reasons for taking their child welfare position, commitment to their agencies, and commitment to child welfare. Analyses compared responses from new public agency foster care workers (N = 100), public agency workers making lateral transfers to foster care (N = 64), and new private foster care workers (N = 105).

Results: Private agency foster care workers were less committed to their agencies and to child welfare and more likely to have taken the position because it was the only one available.

Conclusions: The practice by public child welfare of outsourcing foster care services to private agencies needs to be evaluated. This practice may not benefit children in care and may create organizational problems for agencies.     

Efficacy and agency among poor families with and without children

Families with children and living in poverty are vulnerable to decreased control over their lives and the ability to act in self‐interest. While having children may reduce efficacy among these families, their presence may also, in turn, increase their resilience. Using cross‐sectional data from n= 194 poor families in Southeastern USA, this study compares the constructs of self‐efficacy and agency between families with and without children. Results showed that among families with children, lack of agency was negatively correlated with self‐efficacy Δχ² (1, n= 194) = 12.65, P < 0.001, r=?0.37. Implications are directed towards practice and policy that may increase the efficacy and agency of poor families with children.     

Moral distress among social workers: The role of insufficient resources

The present study examined moral distress among Finnish social workers and the role of perceived resource insufficiencies in explaining it. The aim was to shed light on this understudied phenomenon in the field of social welfare. The study focused on work‐related moral distress, defined as impaired wellbeing that is connected to the continual inability to implement actions that one considers morally appropriate. The survey data were collected with an electronic questionnaire between the years 2011 and 2012. The respondents (n = 817) were social workers in the public social welfare services and the overall response rate was 46.5 per cent. Nearly 11 per cent of the respondents reported experiencing moral distress and perceived resource insufficiencies strongly explained this experience. Moreover, social workers with moral distress reported that they were less willing to continue in their post, were more frequently on sick leave and had positive work‐related experiences less often than their colleagues who did not experience moral distress. Key Practitioner Message: ● The concept of moral distress is useful in describing the experiences of social welfare workers when they are unable to practise their profession according to their moral code and the emotional burden related to this inability; ● Perceived resource insufficiencies are strongly associated with experiences of moral distress among frontline social workers; ● Social workers experiencing moral distress are less willing to continue in their work, take sick leave more often and less frequently have positive experiences related to their work.     

Xun Zi’s Image across the Qin-Han Period: Three Types of Discourse on a “Great Confucian” and Their Significance in Intellectual History

Abstract

This article scrutinizes three texts about Xun Zi written during the Qin-Han period: the final part of “The Questions of Yao” in the Xunzi, a rebuttal by one of Xun Zi’s disciples of the idea that Xun Zi was inferior to Confucius; “Mencius and Xun Zi” by Sima Qian in his Records of the Grand Historian; and the Annotated Book of the Xunzi by Liu Xiang. We explore the images of Xun Zi as a great Confucian (大儒) that emerge from these texts, as well as their authors’ motives for writing. These texts are understood within three contexts: first, the self-identification of a Confucian; second, the dispute between Confucianism and Daoism; and lastly, the distinction between the classics and the annals and biographies. Due to their different discourse environments, Xun Zi’s great Confucian image project a different significance in each: in one, he is a model of action who can act in accordance with perfected morality; in another, he is a model of “private words,” who can counter the philosophers of his day and become the teacher of kings; and finally, he is a model of “official learning,” able to use his knowledge of the classics in practical statecraft and elucidate the kingly Way. Overall, these three texts represent three types of discourse on a great Confucian. At the same time, they also exhibit their writers’ consciousness of their times and their views of the genealogy of daotong, or transmission of the Way; hence their significance for intellectual history.     

Non‐abusing mothers' support needs after child sexual abuse disclosure: A narrative review

The role of maternal support has been perceived as vital throughout the recovery process of sexually abused children. However, it is important to look at the concept “support” from the perspective of non‐abusing mothers' personal needs. This narrative review of the literature aimed to find out how non‐abusing mothers' need for support in their responses to disclosure of child sexual abuse has been recognized. A comprehensive search on Jyväskylä University Library interface yielded 12 academic articles based on empirical research. These articles were selected from those considered to have sufficiently investigated support for non‐abusing mothers and included a mixture of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed‐method research. The data consisted of peer‐reviewed online articles published in English between 2000 and 2017. Four themes emerged from the thematic analysis: improving the quality of the whole social support network for non‐abusing mothers; being blamed, maternal guilt, and shame; anger; and coping strategies. The findings show that the support needs of non‐abusing mothers are usually explained based on their interaction with sexually abused children. However, it is necessary to listen to women's needs independently of their mothering role. If these mothers are better understood, not only they, but also their children, could be empowered.     

The Development of a “Neighborhood in Solidarity” in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

This article presents a case study based on the “Neighborhood in Solidarity” (NS) methodology to illustrate its application in a locality of 8,000 inhabitants in Switzerland. This specific project is proposed to exemplify the global aim of the NS methodology. That aim is to increase the integration of elderly persons in societies in order to improve their quality of life. The case study demonstrates the enhancement of the capacity of the older people to remain actively engaged in their neighborhood. The article focuses on the creation of an autonomous community of empowered older people who can resolve their own problems after a 5-year project. The construction of the local community is presented throughout the six steps of the methodology: (1) preliminary analysis, (2) diagnostic, (3) construction, (4) project design, (5) project implementation, and (6) empowerment and with three degrees of involvement (community, participative, and integrative involvement). Performance and output indicators, quality indicators, and social determinants of health assess the development of the local project. The impacts of the projects which are illustrated in this specific example motivated this publication to inspire practitioners from other countries.     

Undisciplining Social Science: Wittgenstein and the Art of Creating Situated Practices of Social Inquiry

There are now countless social scientific disciplines—listed either as the science of … X … or as an ‐ology of one kind or another—each with their own internal controversies as to what are their “proper objects of their study.” This profusion of separate sciences has emerged, and is still emerging, tainted by the classical Cartesian‐Newtonian assumption of a mechanistic world. We still seem to assume that we can begin our inquiries simply by reflecting on the world around us, and by allowing our conceptualizations to guide our actions in our inquiries. Beginning our inquiries in this retrospective manner, however, means that our concepts and conceptualizations are both after‐the‐fact and beside the point, for ‘something else’ altogether is guiding us in the performance of our situation‐sensitive actions than merely our conceptualizations. We need before‐the‐fact, hermeneutically‐structured inquiries that can ‘set out’ inner ‘landscapes of possibilities’, to think‐with and to provide guidance, as we try in our more scientifically organized efforts to achieve socially desired outcomes in particular socially shared situations. Conducting such preliminary inquiries is thus an art, requiring not only judgment, but also imagination and poetic forms of expression aimed at creating such shared, inner landscapes among all concerned.     

Young adults in the United States and Benin reason about gendered cultural traditions

This study explored emerging and young adults’ reasoning about cultural practices in West Africa. American (Study 1, n = 78, M = 20.76 years) and Beninese (Study 2, n = 93, M = 23.61 years) undergraduates were surveyed about their evaluations of corporal punishment, scarification, and schooling restrictions in conditions where the practices had gender‐neutral or gender‐specified targets. In Study 1, the majority (69%) of American participants negatively evaluated the practices, especially when targets were female. However, the majority (73%) assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In Study 2, the majority (76%) of Beninese participants negatively evaluated the practices, and their evaluations did not vary by gender of the target. Few (10%) Beninese participants assumed the cultural practices were consensual. In both studies, emerging and young adults who initially judged practices positively changed their evaluations with a change in consent.     

The contribution of emotion knowledge,language ability,and maternal emotion socialization style to explaining toddlers’ emotion regulation

In this study, we set out to advance understanding of the association between emotion knowledge (EK) and emotion regulation (ER) in toddlerhood, by innovatively examining a model that simultaneously takes into account both individual factors, such as age, gender, and language ability, and contextual factors, such as maternal emotion socialization styles (coaching vs. dismissing). Participants were 242 toddlers (141 girls; M_age = 28.79 months, SD = 3.48) and their mothers (M_age = 35.60 years; SD = 4.95). We evaluated children’s language ability and ER via parent‐report questionnaires, assessing their EK via a direct measure individually administered at the nursery. The mothers also completed a questionnaire on their own emotion socialization style. Children’s EK was positively correlated with their ER skills as reported by their parents. Structural equation modeling showed that emotion‐dismissing maternal behaviors were significantly negatively associated with toddlers’ emotional competencies whereas maternal emotion‐coaching styles were significantly positively associated with higher levels of these competences. Finally, language ability was positively associated with ER. We discuss the theoretical and educational implications of these outcomes, as well as potential new lines of inquiry.     

A new framework for understanding subnational policy-making and local choice

This article presents a new and innovative framework to help analyse policy-making and depoliticisation within subnational governance arrangements. By focusing on the capacity (not the autonomy) of subnational governments to achieve their political objectives, and incorporating external actors along both the vertical and horizontal dimensions, it provides a dynamic tool to understand the extent to which municipal governments influence local policy-making processes. Furthermore, it stresses that greater ‘localism’ (or independence) between vertical tiers of government is likely to weaken subnational bodies and result in them becoming more interdependent with (or even dependent on) horizontal non-state actors within the locality. This would weaken their position in local governance arrangements and exacerbate the depoliticised nature of decision-making.     

Where College‐Bound Students Send Their SAT Scores: Does Race Matter?*

Objective. I examine where Texas students send their SAT scores in 1998 to identify their revealed preferences for higher education and determine if race/ethnicity influences their decision. Methods. Using data from the Texas Schools Microdata Panel, I estimate the influence of race/ethnicity on various college choice sets using a multinomial logit model. Results. The empirical estimation indicates that minorities perceive their opportunities at Texas public institutions to be different from whites. Furthermore, although blacks and Hispanics are less likely than whites to send their SAT scores to selective Texas institutions, they are more likely to send their scores to selective institutions out of state. Conclusion. Although the reasons for this are currently unclear, a possible suspect is the Hopwood v. Texas decision, a court ruling ending affirmative action initiatives in the admissions decisions of all Texas public colleges and universities.     

The Effects of South Korean Social Workers' Professional Resources on their Understanding of a Patient's Right to End‐of‐Life Care Decisions in Long‐term Care Facilities

The aims of this study were to examine South Korean social workers' understanding of a patient's right to end‐of‐life care decisions (EOLCD) in long‐term care facilities and to explore the effectiveness of their professional resources in their understanding of this issue. A survey was conducted of 297 social workers from multiple long‐term care facilities in South Korea using structured questionnaires and face‐to‐face interviews. A multiple regression model was used, controlling for gender and religion. The participants' professional resources were measured by years of work, license type, number of beds, knowledge of advanced directives, experience in the EOLCD process, and training. The results demonstrated that South Korean social workers' understanding of a patient's right to EOLCD was moderate (mean 3.46), and their general (β = 0.576, P < 0.001) and medical knowledge (β = 0.117, P < 0.001) of advance directives, experience in the EOLCD process (β = 0.222, P < 0.001), and training (β = 0.028, P < 0.001) positively and significantly increased their understanding of patient rights (R² = 0.449, P < 0.001). The findings suggested that the development of academically supported and legally enforced standards and regulations for an EOLCD practice manual for long‐term‐care social workers would be beneficial.     

“The chug is coming through!” “There's two chuggas!”: A longitudinal study of the social function of imitation in children's play with siblings and friends

Imitation is argued to have an important affiliative function in social relationships. However, children's tendency to imitate different play partners during naturalistic play and associations with social understanding have been overlooked. We investigated the frequency and context of imitation in a longitudinal study of 65 focal children (T1: M age = 56.4 months, SD = 5.71) during play with their older or younger sibling and a friend in two separate play sessions. Children were observed again approximately 3 years later (T2: n = 46, M age = 94.6 months; SD = 6.6). We coded focal children's verbal and nonverbal imitation of their play partner, their partner's response to being imitated, the context in which imitation occurred (e.g., pretense), and the focal child's social understanding (i.e., mental state references). Verbal imitation occurred more often than nonverbal imitation and was used most often during the contexts of play negotiations and pretense. Although focal children's imitation of both their siblings and friends increased significantly over time, children imitated friends more than siblings at T1. All play partners responded positively (i.e., smiling, laughing) most often to being imitated. Associations between focal child imitation and mental state talk with friends at T2 approached significance. Our findings provide a deeper understanding of the nature of imitation during children's play interactions and support assertions that imitation is a process whereby children build affiliation, mutuality, and shared meanings in their relationships.     

Testing a Political Economic Theory of the Media: How Were Steel Tariffs Covered?*

Objective. The objective of this article is to test Strömberg's (2001) prediction that newspapers will devote more space to costs of tariffs than to their benefits, using the recent steel tariff issue as a test case. Method. A content analysis was performed on a sample of 123 New York Times (NYT) and 177 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) articles published between January 1 and September 10, 2002. The articles were coded sentence by sentence for pro‐, anti‐, and neutral‐tariff content. Comments or information deemed supportive of the tariffs, that is, touting their benefits, were coded +1, while those emphasizing the costs of tariffs were coded –1. A statement that was neutral with regard to the tariff issue was coded 0. The proportion of sentences coded –1 was then compared with the proportion coded +1. Results. The coders found 395 sentences devoted to the negative impacts of steel tariffs versus 124 sentences devoted to their benefits out of a combined total of 3,207 sentences. The results also reveal a mild “slant” toward free trade in the WSJ relative to the NYT. In the WSJ, the proportion of lines criticizing tariffs (0.11) exceeds the proportion supporting tariffs (0.02) by a wider margin than in the NYT (0.13 vs. 0.06). Conclusions. This article provides empirical support for Strömberg's (2001) political economy model of the media. The model implies that mass media will weaken the power of special‐interest lobbies relative to unorganized interests. Specifically, the data support Strömberg's prediction that more newspaper space would be devoted to the costs of steel tariffs—which are widely dispersed—than to their benefits—which are narrowly targeted.