Morality and Sexual Issues in Older Adolescent Females

A follow-up study to Carol Gilligan's work in female adolescent moral development was conducted in the presentation of a hypothetical moral sexual situation to eight older, culturally diverse adolescent females in their first year of college. The naming of a Good Friend's conflict and the personal moral reasoning of the interviewees were audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed using a sequence of four readings as subscribed by Gilligan and her associates. Examples of Justice reasoning, a Care reasoning, and an Integrated moral reasoning are presented along with suggestions for educators and therapists.     

Moral Reasoning in Interactional Context: Strategic Uses of Care and Justice Arguments in Mediation Hearings*

Previous studies of moral reasoning have treated moral reasoning as a product of the individual. This article extends the study of moral reasoning by analyzing its use in strategic interaction. I analyze how participants in a naturally occurring situation of conflict use moral arguments strategically and negotiate over the types of arguments that are acceptable. Gilligan's Care and Justice modes of moral reasoning are identified in participants' justifications for positions taken in nine videotaped mediation hearings. I found that participants may use both modes of reasoning during the course of a hearing, and that the type of moral argument used is often a response to the actions of other participants. Strategic uses of moral arguments included shifting mode to challenge or support another's position, bridging a difference in mode between two disputants, and shifting mode to refocus the topic. Because of their institutional and interactional roles in the hearings, mediators play a major role in negotiations over mode of moral reasoning.     

What They Don't Know Won't Hurt Them: Parents’ Judgments About Lying to Their Adolescents

This research examined judgments about parents lying to their adolescents. Ninety‐six participants from four primarily Caucasian groups (24 parents of 18‐year‐olds, 24 parents of 14‐year‐olds, 24 18‐year‐olds, and 24 14‐year‐olds) assessed hypothetical situations in which a parent lies to their adolescent about their past experience engaging in risky activities such as drug use and shoplifting. Evaluations and justifications for deception varied as a function of the domain of each act, the age of the adolescent being lied to, and consideration of parents’ duty to foster a protective and trusting relationship. Results are discussed in terms of parents’ and adolescents’ reasoning about deception to achieve and resist socialization goals in several (moral, personal, prudential, and multifaceted) social‐cognitive domains.     

The Mother-in-Law Mystique: A Tale of Conflict,Criticism and Resistance

While women have been described in various disciplines as the kin keepers of family relationships, empirical data show that the greatest rivalry in newly constructed heterosexual families exists between two women: the mother-in-law and the daughter-in-law. Numerous rituals are employed across cultures in order to ease the expected tension between these two rival women. Yet, the topic seems to have been overlooked by feminist and family therapy research alike. Inspired by Bowen's (1978) concept of differentiation of self and Linn's (1998) and Gilligan's (Linn & Gilligan, 1990) ideas of the resisting self, the present study examines these female rivals as moral critics in the war zone of the family. The study sample consists of 14 mothers-in-law, daughters-in-law, and sons/husbands, belonging to five Israeli families of diverse cultural origin. Gilligan's Listening Guide was used to assess how participants saw the dilemmas of their situation, adopted a critical distance, and formed an authoritative moral voice.     

Age Changes in Prosocial Responding and Moral Reasoning in Adolescence and Early Adulthood

Age changes' measures of prosocial responding and reasoning were examined. Participants' reports of helping, empathy‐related responding, and prosocial moral reasoning were obtained in adolescence (from age 15–16 years) and into adulthood (to age 25–26 years). Perspective taking and approval/interpersonal oriented/stereotypic prosocial moral reasoning increased from adolescence into adulthood, whereas personal distress declined. Helping declined and then increased (a cubic trend). Prosocial moral judgment composite scores (and self‐reflective empathic reasoning) generally increased from late adolescence into the early 20s (age 17–18 to 21–22) but either leveled off or declined slightly thereafter (i.e., showed linear and cubic trends); rudimentary needs‐oriented reasoning showed the reverse pattern of change. The increase in self‐reflective empathic moral reasoning was for females only. Thus, perspective taking and some aspects of prosocial moral reasoning—capacities with a strong sociocognitive basis—showed the clearest increases with age, whereas simple prosocial proclivities (i.e., helping, sympathy) did not increase with age.     

Viewing the differential responses of boys and girls in treatment through a feminist lens

Present day knowledge of gender differences challenges clinical social workers to become more sensitive to these distinctions in both the assessment and treatment of children. Clinical material from drawings and from explanations of moral choices gathered in a social work research study is presented. The themes in boys' and girls' responses are analyzed by gender and found to support the thinking of Chodorow (1974) and Gilligan (1979, 1982) that for girls a sense of responsibility comes through relationships of caring, while boys are oriented towards rights and rules. Implications of the findings suggest modifications of treatment programs for young children to better reflect the differential development of boys and girls.     

Culture: A Possible Predictor of Morality for African American Adolescents

This study examined the ways in which cultural orientation (communalism and material well‐being) and empathy influence the moral reasoning of African American middle to late adolescents. Specifically, this study utilized path analysis to investigate Ward's (1995) hypothesis that a communal orientation would promote morality among African American adolescents, while a material well‐being orientation would mitigate against it. In addition, it was hypothesized that empathy would mediate the relationship between cultural orientation and moral reasoning. Thirty‐seven high school students and 35 college students participated in the study. Results revealed that communalism was a significant predictor of empathy. Despite prediction, communalism and material well‐being were not predictors of moral reasoning. The findings did not yield support for empathy functioning as a mediator between communalism and moral reasoning. These findings are discussed in terms of previous findings, methodological limitations, and implications for future research.     

The moral economy of contemporary working‐class adolescence: managing symbolic capital in a French public ‘Adolescent Centre’

Working‐class adolescents of French urban peripheries are key figures in a new social debate that reactivates the nineteenth century spectre of ‘dangerous’ classes to be controlled. Since the 1990s, French social counselling has privileged two modalities of response: taking account of suffering and government by listening and speech. We hypothesize that the contemporary moral economy allows for social interactions that go beyond social control and institutional domination. This is partly because professionals engaged in this moral undertaking may keep a critical distance, and partly because the concerned populations aren't necessarily devoid of resources to advance their interests or incapable of resistance. The concept of moral economy, coupled with the ethnographic method, is heuristic for fully comprehending the complexity of these issues and their stakes. Our fieldwork was centred on a French Adolescent Centre in an impoverished commune in Paris's periphery, from January 2010 through March 2011. These institutions were established in the early 2000s to respond to adolescent ‘suffering’ by crossing social work and psychiatry. Adolescents, parents, and other institutions (especially schools) solicit the professionally diverse staff for assistance, which in turn may take on cases and/or make referrals to other support institutions. By paying attention to all the scenes upon which the story of a counselled adolescent evolves, and bearing more general social evolutions in mind by applying the concept of moral economy, we can consider the multiplicity of seemingly contradictory processes as a whole. We see the destabilization of parents and their loss of symbolic capital, partly due to the norms of contemporary parenthood and partly due to the stigmatization of working‐class adolescence. But we also discern possibilities for expressing sentiments of injustice and humiliation, for increasing symbolic capital, and in some cases a reappropriation of the system, particularly in trajectories marked by a will for social ascension.     

‘It feels right in my heart’: affective accountability in narratives of attachment

This article makes a contribution to discussions around ‘affect’ in the social sciences (Clough and Halley, 2007; Connolly, 1999; Massumi, 2002). It emerges from a research project involving a network of mothers – in London – who breastfeed their children to ‘full term’. Typically, this would be up to the age of three or four, though ranged, in this case, to between one and eight years old. For many women, the most fundamental reasoning in their decision to breastfeed to ‘full term’ is that it simply ‘feels right.’ The article therefore explores anthropological approaches to the ‘feelings’ that embodied experiences generate, as revealed in the accounts and practices of the people we work with (whether at the physiological, emotional or moral levels). It considers various means of describing the feelings experienced by women during of long‐term breastfeeding – such as ‘hormones’, ‘instinct’ and ‘intuition’– but ultimately argues for a theoretical framework of ‘affect’ to incorporate best the combined physiological and moral aspects of ‘doing what feels right in my heart,’ so critical to women's perceptions of themselves as mothers.     

Substance Abuse,Homelessness, Developmental Decision-Making and Spirituality: A Women's Health Issue

ABSTRACT

A qualitative methodology was used to examine the relationship between homeless women's spirituality, substance abuse, moral reasoning and developmental decision-making. Findings indicated that a lack of development in spirituality and the ability to make decisions in childhood is related to homeless, addicted women's inability to maintain abstinence and achieve social independence. Spirituality impacted decisions to abstain from substance abuse and increased the women's social independence. Findings suggest that treatment needs to incorporate spirituality, family of origin, and the development of skills for independent decision-making. The authors propose that childhood maltreatment, homelessness and substance abuse impede spiritual development. Therefore, substance abuse treatment needs to include a focus on spirituality and moral reasoning in the recovery process.     

Alternative systems of ethics and their application to education and evaluation

Three schools of moral thought are presented to illustrate differences in moral reasoning and the assignment of value claims. Several educational program alternatives are used as illustrations of moral reasoning within and across the schools of thought. Finally, the schools of moral thought are used in a discussion of evaluation practice. Good practice in the current evaluation literature is shown to be a blend of the three schools of thought.     

Conspiracy culture,blame culture,and rationalisation1

This paper outlines an approach to conspiracy culture that attempts to resolve the conundrum posed by the parallel logics of conspiracy and sociological theorising, without reducing the former to an irrational response to hidden social forces. Rather, from a re‐crafting of Weber's rationalisation thesis as an analysis of the developmental logic of theories of suffering, it argues that conspiracy culture is an outcome of the means of moral accounting, or blame attribution, that inform mundane reasoning in modernity, as also are the human sciences. As part of this, the paper sketches a tentative framework of moral accounting in relation to the notion of ‘blame culture’ based in part on a distinction between a culture of blaming and the blaming of culture. This is used to argue that there is nothing irrational about conspiracy culture – or at least no more so than there is about sociology.     

“I Deserve a Family”: The Evolution of an Adolescent’s Behavior and Beliefs About Himself and Others When Treated with Theraplay in Residential Care

This article chronicles a seriously disturbed adopted adolescent’s experience in an attachment focused residential program at which the primary treatment was Theraplay^®. Adopted at age four following significant abuse and neglect, Tom lived in institutions for 5 years before participating in Chaddock’s Developmental Trauma and Attachment Program (DTAP). He now resides successfully in the home of therapeutic foster parents. Theraplay treatment directly meets attachment needs through adult-guided, highly positive, engaging and nurturing interactions to change the child’s working models of attachment and to develop affect regulation. Theraplay was especially useful with this adolescent who was born addicted and who had little ability to participate in insight oriented therapy. Topics include adolescence and attachment, Theraplay theory, process and applications, and the DTAP milieu and treatment program. This case study demonstrates that it is possible to improve the outcome for adolescent development by directly meeting the adolescent’s attachment needs through the Theraplay model.     

Why Adoption? Gay,Lesbian, and Heterosexual Adoptive Parents’ Reproductive Experiences and Reasons for Adoption

This study aimed to explore the experiences of gay, lesbian, and heterosexual adoptive parents from 130 families. Parents’ reproductive experiences prior to adoption and their reasons for choosing to adopt were compared. Heterosexual couples were more likely to have experienced infertility than same-sex couples. Same-sex couples were more likely to prefer adoption over other routes to parenthood. Parents in all three family types selected their route to parenthood according to normative expectations, attitudes to biogenetic parenthood, ease of access, and moral reasoning. Same-sex couples’ decisions were enabled by the non-discriminatory sociolegal context of the United Kingdom.     

Ethnomethodological studies of mediated interaction and mundane expertise1

This paper introduces ethnomethodological studies of skill and reasoning in domains of mundane expertise. In particular, it focuses on reasoning in the game of checkers. Reasoning is generally considered to be a ‘thing of its own kind’, something universal that transcends the empirical situations to which it is applied. The game of checkers suggests something quite different: that reasoning is domain specific and that it belongs peculiarly to the practices from within which reasoning arises. Through the material on checkers, the paper illustrates ethnomethodological research as a ‘tinkerer's craft’ and attempts to show the continuing vitality of small‐scale ethnomethodological studies for raising fundamental, foundational issues of social inquiry     

Adolescent Substance Use and Marital Status in Adulthood

Researchers have noted that substance use in the adolescent years is associated with a variety of consequences. The majority of studies have focused on relatively short-term consequences of substance use. Using data from the 2007 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, this study examines how early substance use and current substance use affect individuals’ eventual marital status. Higher levels of substance use in the adult years are shown to be relatively deleterious to both women’s and men’s chances of marriage. However, initial cigarette use in the adolescent years is shown to enhance adults’ likelihood of marriage, whereas adolescent marijuana use substantially reduces the chances of marriage. Interestingly, early alcohol use decreases women’s chances of becoming married yet increases the chances for men. Similarly, early alcohol use was associated with a greater risk of divorce. Overall, the results point to the intricate nature of early substance use and the long-term consequences thereof. The results are discussed within a framework of precocious development theory.     

Adolescent Pregnancy's Intergenerational Effects: Does an Adolescent Mother's Education Have Consequences for Her Children's Achievement?

Although substantial work has examined the influence of adolescent pregnancy on mothers’ developmental outcomes, few studies have investigated the influence of adolescent mothers’ educational attainment on their children's achievement. This article examined the reading and math achievement trajectories of children born to adolescent and nonadolescent mothers with various levels of educational attainment. Results demonstrate that higher levels of maternal education predicted children's higher initial achievement at kindergarten and growth in achievement through eighth grade. The achievement of children with adolescent mothers, however, never reaches parity with the achievement of their peers with nonadolescent mothers. Race also predicted achievement differences. Black and Latino children of adolescent mothers were at greater risk for underachievement.     

STRATEGIES FOR ENGAGING ADOLESCENT GIRLS AT AN EMERGENCY SHELTER IN A THERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIP: RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE GIRLS THEMSELVES

Engaging clients is an extremely important part of the therapeutic process. Although there is a literature on adult engagement, few articles discuss adolescent engagement. Those articles that do discuss adolescent engagement have been conducted from the perspective of adults. The purpose of this study was to explore, from the client's perspective, ways to engage and build a positive therapeutic alliance with adolescent girls. A focus group (N = 5) was conducted with residents of an emergency shelter for adolescent girls in an urban area. Clients were asked three questions: ‘If you could tell a counselor anything, what would you tell her/him?’ .‘What do counselors need to know?’ and ‘How can a counselor get you to talk?’ Seven messages emerged from the clients' responses, which focused on a request to be respected, listened to, and not judged. More specifically, themes included ‘Treat me like I'm on your level’, ‘Tell me a little about yourself’, ‘Ask my permission to take notes’, ‘Pay attention to what I'm saying’, ‘Tell me what you're doing’, ‘Don't tell me what's in my file’, and ‘Don't call me names’. Clients provided concrete ways in which social workers and other counseling professionals could better work with them.     

Familism Values,Perspective Taking,and Prosocial Moral Reasoning: Predicting Prosocial Tendencies Among Mexican American Adolescents

Mexican American youth often engage in relatively high levels of prosocial behaviors. We theorize that this may be due to a cultural value system that encourages familism values, which, in turn, may foster the development of sociocognitive processes that promote prosocial behaviors. Two hundred and five Mexican American early adolescent youth (M_age = 10.9 years, SD = 0.84; 51% girls) reported their familism values, perspective taking, prosocial moral reasoning, and six types of prosocial behaviors. The results indicated that perspective taking partially mediated the relation between familism values and the specific prosocial tendencies theoretically linked to the Mexican American culture. The study demonstrated the utility of integrating cultural and traditional developmental mechanisms in attempting to explain prosocial behaviors.