Prioritizing parental autonomy: Adult children's accounts of feeling responsible and supporting aging parents

Adult children's accounts of responsibility for aging parents were explored using data from multiple, in-person, semi-structured qualitative interviews with 28 participants in Victoria, Canada. An emphasis on respecting parental autonomy and individual responsibility was present in varying forms. Controlling or bossy behaviour was often criticized in others. For some adult children, protecting this ideal made it difficult to talk about feeling responsible for their parents; others defined it as part of their filial responsibility. These findings illustrate how adult children actively employ a framework of individualism in the praxis of parent support, in order to set limits on care provision as well as cope with guilt and helplessness (e.g., arising from parents' active attempts to exert their own agency). Findings are discussed in relation to the broader level structural–cultural tension between filial responsibility and individualism.     

Danish children's and their parents' economic understanding, reasoning and attitudes

The results of the Danish survey in the international project ‘Naive Economics’ are presented and analysed. The survey is unique in also including parents in the population sample. Parents' economic understanding is found to be more precise and related to facts. The children's understanding of the labour market and the functioning of banks in particular is limited, though parents also have a surprisingly poor understanding of bank functioning. Concerning economic reasoning, the adults distinguish between real and nominal changes while children are less aware of the difference. Children are found to have an extremely limited understanding of what tax is, and of the role of taxes. Children's and parents' economic attitudes are found to be very much alike.     

Children's participation in family law decision-making: Theoretical approaches to understanding children's views

The aim of this paper is to explore children's views about their involvement in the post-separation arrangements that were made in their families and via the court process in the light of three theoretical models. It distinguishes between various aspects of children's participation, a term that carries a number of meanings and is used in various ways. In particular, it examines children's reasons for wanting to be involved or not, and the association between the amount of say children thought they had had, how much say they wanted, and the perceived fairness of the arrangements and their happiness with them.     

Material beings: Objecthood and ethnographic photographs

This paper argues that the material and presentational forms of photographs are central to their meaning as images. Drawing on work from the anthropology of material culture, it explores the significance of the materiality of ethnographic photographs as socially salient objects. The argument suggests that, while the analytical focus has been on the semiotic and iconographical in the representation of race and culture, material forms of images are integral to this discourse.     

Being a Lesbian and Being in Love:

Clinicians and laypeople alike have assumed that lesbian identity is a unitary phenomenon, a central component of which included involved in a romantic or sexual relationship with another women. This paper is an empirical examination of the ways in which lesbian women construct their identities and the role of relationships in lesbian identity construction. Based on a sample of 94 lesbian and bisexual women, three identity accounts, or the meanings that women attach to their lesbian identity, are described. The first emphasized the public, political meanings of lesbian identity; the second emphasized the importance of social and romantic relationships with other women; and the third emphasized bisexuality and relationships with men. A Final section discusses practical implications of the diversity of lesbian identities.     

Economic hardship in the family of origin and children's psychological well‐Being in adulthood

Past research consistently indicates that poverty and economic hardship have negative consequences for children. Few studies, however, have examined whether these consequences persist into adulthood. This study addresses this gap by assessing whether economic resources in the family of origin have long‐term effects on psychological well‐being in adulthood. Specifically, we test two processes—one involving interpersonal processes in the family of origin, and the other involving children's socioeconomic attainment—that may help to explain the link between early economic factors and later well‐being. Using 17‐year longitudinal data from two generations (N= 589), we find evidence that economic hardship in the family of origin predicts later adult well‐being through the parents’ marital relationship, the parent‐teen relationship, children's educational attainment, and children's earned income. Supplementary analyses suggest that economic hardship is particularly problematic when it is of long duration or when it occurs during adolescence.     

A painful labour: responsibility and photography

This paper considers the tension between photography and responsibility despite the avalanche of objections regarding documentary's false promise to awaken social conscience. By examining the encounter with images of suffering through a psychoanalytic register, the paper tries to articulate what Barthes describes as the ‘painful labour’ of responding to the photographic other – an encounter that illuminates the limit of the spectator's ability to respond. Photographs provide an occasion to register this limit, which, I argue, opens up the spectator's traditional notions of responsibility from a set of moral duties towards a questioning of the ethical relation.     

Young Men's Procreative Identity: Becoming Aware,Being Aware,and Being Responsible

Using a purposive sample of 37 single men aged 16 to 30, in‐depth face‐to‐face interviews, and a grounded theory approach, we explore males' subjective experiences as procreative beings. Our study is informed by symbolic interactionism and 2 sensitizing concepts: procreative consciousness and procreative responsibility. We focus on how males become aware of their perceived fecundity, experience themselves as procreative beings once they become aware, and view responsibility while orienting themselves toward their sexual and potential paternal roles. Our analyses deepen, expand, integrate, and ground in empirical data notions about procreative consciousness and men's experiences. We find that males use varied interpretive foci to assign meaning to discovering their procreative potential. Furthermore, we show how romantic partners help males co‐construct their procreative consciousness, in part by helping men actively attend to issues of procreative responsibility. Consistent with our grounded theory approach, we discuss 5 new dimensions to procreative consciousness suggested by our data: fecundity perception, emotional response, knowledge, temporality, and child visions.     

Human beings, technology and the idea of man

Since ancient times philosophy has dealt with the relation between technology and man. Nowadays this is especially true in the context of the philosophy of technology. Technology is interpreted as an anthropological constant to construct an environment in which man can survive. Acting in the field of technology is to act rationally with a purpose, i.e., in the framework of a means-end relation, and it is employed for coping with “experiences” (Widerfahrnisse) by means of using tools. Like technology, language can be reconstructed as a symbolic form and thus as a technological means, as a tool so that the employment of metaphors can also be described as an employment of tools. Using technology has effects on man as well as on his self-image. Thus, philosophy of technology creates different ideas of man, which have to become subject to ethical discourses.     

Power and identity: the exhibition of human beings in the Portuguese great exhibitions

This article reflects on the inclusion of human beings in the colonial representations of the great exhibitions that Portugal organised or took part in during the first half of the twentieth century. It analyses the role played by the natives (from the Portuguese colonies), as well as the way they were represented and treated, based on various documents and interviews and on the study of the exhibition creation process. These exhibitions revealed some underlying tensions. On the one hand, they provided evidence of the differences between the ‘civilised’ and the ‘uncivilised’, of the diversity of ‘races’ and of their places in a hierarchy of civilisation. On the other, they extolled the way colonised peoples adopted Portuguese models. The ways those human beings have asserted their existence, under the power of the exhibition’s organisers, provides a means to understand how they forged and assumed their identities in a context of rules.     

Small-dollar children's savings accounts and children's college outcomes

This is paper one of four in the small-dollar children's savings account series, which, studies the relationship between children's small-dollar savings accounts and college enrollment and graduation. This series of papers uses different subsamples to examine three important research questions: (a) are children with savings of their own more likely to attend or graduate from college? (b) does dose (i.e., having no account, only basic savings, savings designated for school [of less than $1, $1 to $499, or $500 or more]) matter? and (c) is having savings designated for school more predictive than having basic savings alone? Paper one of this series uses aggregate data from the newest wave of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and its supplements. Propensity score weighted findings suggest that children who have a small amount of money (e.g., less than $1 or $1 to $499) designated for school are 3 times and 2.5 times more likely, respectively, to enroll in and graduate from college, respectively, than children with no account. Findings also show that having savings designated for school might have a stronger effect on relationship with children's college outcomes than having basic savings that can be used for any purpose. The paper concludes by explaining how policies that create national children's savings programs might help cue a psychological process in which children form an identities as college-savers.     

Being Affected: Spinoza and the Psychology of Emotion

This paper describes the relevance of Spinoza's Ethics for contemporary thought on the psychology of emotion. Spinoza's account of the passions completely inverts the Cartesian primacy given to mind. For Spinoza the critical task is to formulate an ethics of knowing, which begins with an understanding that body and mind are two attributes of the same substance. Increasing the capacity of the body to both be affected and affect others is the means by which the knowing subject progresses. The article sketches out the key concepts involved in this system and shows how they sensitize us to a post-cognitive understanding of emotion in Proust's Swann's Way.     

Mediating transnational spaces: international students and intercultural responsibility

Despite the significant body of literature on international students’ intercultural development, the core issue of how they see their own responsibility in transnational intercultural spaces is largely neglected. This paper addresses this paucity by examining the intercultural responsibility perceived by international students. It is based on a four-year study that includes interviews with 105 international students and fieldwork in vocational education institutions. It draws on positioning theory and three key concepts: intercultural competence, intercultural capital and national attachment to interpret the nature of international students’ intercultural responsibility. The research underscores four main forms of intercultural responsibility perceived by international students: responsibility to represent the home country, responsibility to respect the host country, responsibility to assimilate into the host culture and responsibility to integrate into the host culture. Intercultural responsibility can emerge from international students’ national attachment and be embedded in their intrinsic commitment and imagination of their role in representing their home country in a transnational space. Intercultural responsibility can also manifest in international students’ self-determined responsibility to respect, accommodate or integrate into the host culture. However, the finding shows that international students’ act of positioning at the periphery of the host community and their perceived responsibility to assimilate into the host culture precludes their capacity to engage in and negotiate reciprocal and respectful intercultural interactions. The study highlights the role of international students’ self-positioning between and across home and host cultures in underpinning their perceived responsibility in transnational spaces.     

Being evaluated: a practitioner's view

The impacts of evaluation exercises on people and services being evaluated are examined, including those that are unintended. Using the example of a parents' centre in central London, the paper asks whether evaluators are measuring the right things, whether the resulting ‘evidence’ is valid, and what effects an evaluation may have on the service. It seeks to identify the features of research and evaluation exercises that are most likely to justify the time spent on data collection by leading to improvements in services for children and families. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Small-dollar children's saving accounts and children's college outcomes by race

This is paper three of four in the Small-Dollar Children Accounts series that studies the relationship between children's small dollar savings accounts and college enrollment and graduation. The series uses different subsamples to examine three important research questions: (a) Are children with savings of their own more likely to attend or graduate from college? (b) Does dosage (no account, only basic savings, savings designated for school of less than $1, $1 to $499, or $500 or more) matter? And (c) is designating for school more predictive of college enrollment or graduation than having basic undesignated savings alone? Using propensity score weighted data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and its supplements we created multi-treatment dosages of savings accounts and amounts to answer these questions separately for black (n = 404) and white (n = 453) children. White children's savings are not significantly related to their college outcomes. Differently, compared to black children without savings accounts, black children are three times more likely to enroll in college when they have school savings of less than $1 and six times more likely when they have school savings of $1 to $499. Further, black children with school savings of $1 to $499 are four times more likely to graduate from college and black children with school savings of $500 or more are three-and-a-half times more likely to graduate from college, compared to those with no savings account. We suggest Child Development Accounts (CDAs) may be a promising tool for helping black children get to and through college.