The effect of family structure on parents’ child care time in the United States and the United Kingdom

We use time-diary data from the 2003 and 2004 American Time Use Surveys and the 2000 United Kingdom Time Use Study to estimate the effect of family structure on the time mothers and fathers spend on primary and passive child care and on market work, using a system of correlated Tobit equations. Our results indicate that estimates are sensitive to the inclusion of a common household factor that controls for selection into family type. Estimates from the selection-controlled models indicate that single parents in both countries spend more time in child care than married or cohabiting parents, perhaps in part to compensate for the missing parent, but that there is no difference in the time allocation of married and cohabiting parents. There are substantial cross-country differences, however, as single parents in the U.S. work more than other parents and single parents in the U.K. work less.

The Impact of Parenting Style on Children’s Educational Outcomes in the United States

This paper examines the causal link between parenting style and children’s educational outcomes. The existing literature seems to lack any effort to use a nationally representative data from the United States, to properly address endogeneity, or to examine educational outcomes beyond high school level. This paper attempts to mitigate these shortcomings. Drawing upon the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, it first used OLS and logit regression. It then applied the maximum simulated likelihood approach to get rid of endogeneity, thereby isolating the causal impact of parenting style on children’s educational outcomes. Findings suggested that parenting style mattered for children academic performance. Authoritative parenting style was found to be the best among all types of parenting style. Particularly, relative to uninvolved parents’ children, authoritatively reared children were predicted to have 1.1 more years of schooling and be 18.5, 13.6, and 16.3 percentage points more likely to obtain at least bachelor’s degree, associate’s degree, and high school diploma, respectively. Also, they had 5.5 percentage points less likelihood of being high school dropouts than children reared by uninvolved parents.     

Becoming INGO: A Case Study on Taiwan’s Tzu-Chi in the United States

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper examines the humanitarian work of Taiwan’s Tzu-Chi in the U.S. and discusses how the work in the U.S. has...     

“The Motherhood Wage Gap for Women in the United States: The Importance of College and Fertility Delay”

One of the stylized facts from the past 30 years has been the declining rate of first births before age 30 for all women and the increase rate of first births after age 30 among women with four-year college degrees (Steven P. Martin, Demography, 37(4), 523–533, 2000). What are some of the factors behind womens decision to postpone their childbearing? We hypothesize that the wage difference often observed between like-educated mothers and non-mothers (Jane Waldfogel, Journal of Labor Economics, 16, 505–545, 1998a; Journal of Economic Perspectives 12(1) 137–156, 1998b) may be affected by the postponement of childbearing until after careers are fully established. Hence, we focus on college-educated women because they are typically more career-oriented than their non-college educated counterparts and also the group most often observed postponing maternity. We use individual-level data on women from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) in order to control for individual-level unobserved heterogeneity as well as human capital characteristics, such as actual work experience, in our empirical analysis. We estimate wage equations, first producing base-line results to compare to the existing literature. Then, we expand the basic wage equation model to address fundamental econometric issues and the education/fertility issue at hand. Our empirical findings are two-fold. First, we find that college-educated mothers do not experience a motherhood wage penalty at all. In fact, they enjoy a wage boost when compared to college-educated childless women. Second, fertility delay enhances this wage boost even further. Our results provide an explanation for the observed postponement of maternity for educated women. We argue that the wage boost experienced by college-educated mothers may be the result of their search for family–friendly work environments, which, in turn, yields job matches with more female-friendly firms offering greater opportunities for advancement.JEL Codes: J13 and J3     

Interorganizational Partnerships as a Strategy for Lobbying: Nonprofit Administrators’ Perspectives on Collaborating for Systems-Level Change

Participation in coalitions has been identified as a policy advocacy behavior for nonprofit organizations, although few studies have examined nonprofit leaders’ perceptions of coalition building as a strategy for lobbying. This study conducted focus groups and in-person interviews with nonprofit administrators to explore how interorganizational collaboration is utilized to address their organizations’ policy advocacy goals. The findings indicate that nonprofit administrators view their participation in coalitions as a means of achieving several policy advocacy goals, including increasing their capacity to lobby and protecting them from exposure as lobbyists. Implications for practice and research are provided.     

Consultation on the countryside premium scheme: creating a `market’ for information

This paper explores the agri-environmental policy network in Scotland, focusing on the public consultation concerning a new agri-environmental scheme. It applies one of the standard frameworks of market analysis, structure–conduct–performance (SCP) analysis, to explore how the interactions between policy actors, and particularly the provision of information, affect policy outcomes. An important stage in policy development is gathering information for the design and implementation of subsequent policy measures. In the UK, there has been increasing use of public consultation procedures as a means to obtain information from interest groups and individuals. This can be considered in terms of the government issuing a request or `demand’ for information, which is then `supplied’ by interested parties; a `market’ for information is thus created. In the spring of 1996, a consultation was undertaken by the Scottish Office Agriculture, Environment and Fisheries Department (SOAEFD), over a proposed new agri-environmental scheme, the Countryside Premium Scheme. This paper reports the results of an analysis of this consultation in terms of an information `market'. This `market’ appeared to have an oligopolistic structure, with some barriers to entry, and involved considerable costs to the groups involved. Agricultural and environmental interest groups both appeared to have some impact on the policy outcome, though the type of impacts differed.     

The journalist as the audience: Evaluating the U.S. Navy’s “Sailor for a Day” campaign

This study demonstrates how focusing on the journalist as the audience of a media relations campaign can result in significant positive media coverage. Specifically, we examined the U.S. Navy’s “Sailor for a Day” campaign that invited media to experience a day in the life of a U.S. Navy sailor aboard an aircraft carrier. We propose that the “Sailor for a Day” campaign successfully influenced journalist perceptions and media coverage because 1) the pitch tied to programming needs; 2) uncommon access was granted; and 3) the journalist experience was a prominent feature of the media pitch.     

Teaching Note—No Peace Without Justice: Addressing the United States’ War on Drugs in Social Work Education

The United States’ War on Drugs encompasses a body of legislation characterized by punitive approaches to drug control. These policies have resulted in escalating incarceration rates and have extracted a particularly harsh toll on low-income people of color. This article argues that education on the War on Drugs is essential for effective practice with people affected by addictions and is also an important social justice issue. It is thus the responsibility of educators to incorporate a critical examination of drug policy into course work. Strategies for addressing drug policy in social work education are provided, including the use of guest speakers and multimedia presentations, case study assignments that prompt students to examine the intersection of policy and practice, and international drug policy comparisons.     

FDI’s Impact on Transitional Countries, Serbia as a Rational Choice: The FIAT-ZASTAVA Case

The privatization process and foreign direct investments (FDI) are among the most important economic issues in transitional countries. FDI has enormous influence on transitional countries that need serious structural changes. In this paper we will study FIAT’s decision to invest in the Serbian automotive industry. We will try to rationalize FIAT’s decision because Serbian car manufacturer ZASTAVA was not the only alternative for FIAT to invest in the Balkans. In order to justify FIAT’s decision we will apply the Mullins model of horizontal and vertical FDI, examine the importance of the cooperating history between two car manufacturers and compare macroeconomic conditions and Global Competitiveness of Serbia and Romania, which was the main alternative for FIAT. Finally, we will also try to explain why FIAT decided to announce the investment at the end of political campaign in Serbia when pools gave anti-European parties higher chances for victory, instead of waiting to see the outcome of the elections.

The significance of uprightness: parents’ reflections on children’s responses to a hands-free walker for children

The benefits and drawbacks of facilitating independent walking in children with physical mobility impairments, such as cerebral palsy, remain to be determined. This knowledge gap creates decision dilemmas about which mobility practices parents and children should adopt and rehabilitation professionals should foster. These dilemmas are reflected in continuing debates about allocation of time, effort and resources to optimize walking versus encouraging use of manual or powered wheelchairs. Recent studies have reported only modest measurable walking progress for severely disabled children using hands-free walkers. Despite these seemingly disappointing results, parents remained highly motivated to encourage their children to use these walking devices and appraised them very positively. In the present paper, we suggest that parents’ symbolic value of their children assuming upright comportment may explain why they perceive hands-free walkers positively and why they are so motivated to devote much time and effort to improving independent, walking-based mobility of their children.     

The red and the black: China’s social credit experiment as a total test environment

China's social credit system is an unusually explicit case where technology is used by multiple actors to turn human behavior into a test object on behalf of the state's goal of modifying the larger social environment, making it an intriguing setting for thinking about the new sociology of testing. This article considers how China's search for a usable “credit” score to both allocate financial resources and explicitly measure a citizen's trustworthiness creates an emergent experimental system of governance similar to, yet not quite captured by, the kinds of experimental processes observed in literature on the platform as a form of market-based governance. As a site where “seeing like a state” and “seeing like a market” converge, the social credit system is a vantage point for observing the changing relationship between moral and economic domains in an era of digital platforms. The article highlights the experimental quality of the system and its emerging system of governance structured around reward and punishment and argues that strategic ambiguity, institutionalized through the affordances of digital platforms, is an important part of the design of this large-scale social experiment.     

The European right to be forgotten: A challenge to the United States Constitution’s First Amendment and to professional public relations ethics

This paper explains how the European right to be forgotten violates the free flow of information in society, as evidenced by conflicts with the United States Constitution and ethical principles of professional communicators worldwide. As Europe imposes new data protection laws and incorporates the right to be forgotten that promotes censorship through search engine de-linking, United States constitutional law scholars ponder the implications of World Wide Web censorship, while journalists and public relations professionals struggle to understand how accurate transparent communication could occur in an ecosystem that allows for arbitrary information removal and the creation of memory holes. This article explains why the European notion of the right to be forgotten challenges U.S. constitutional law and professional public relations ethics, imperiling the online marketplace of ideas and eroding disclosure of information. The European Data Protection Directive and recent right to be forgotten movements directly conflict with the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and professional communications ethics codes. The First Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights indicates the specific rights of citizens to freedom from government intervention into freedom of expression and freedom of the press. Recent actions by Google to honor European requests to remove data upon request collide with First Amendment theoretical concepts and contemporary constitutional law. Both the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) construct ethical principles for members that call for the active promotion of the free flow of information and the ethical disclosure of information. The European Data Protection Directive’s right to be forgotten silences these core professional communication ethics and more significantly imperils the robust information exchange in a global society, ultimately altering the discourse and debate in democratic countries. This paper addresses the status of the right to be forgotten in the United States and indicates how adopting such a provision in the United States would violate First Amendment theories, as evidenced by the Marketplace of Ideas Theory, the Meiklejohnian Theory, and the Absolutist Theory, and would counter traditional public relations ethics codes, conducted in a context of dialogic ethics that calls for adherence to core values advocating for transparency, disclosure, and free flow of information.     

Making the Iceberg Visible Again: Service Delivering Experiences as a Lever for NPOs’ Advocacy Under a Third-Party Government Regime

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - Under a third-party government regime, NPOs are largely funded to implement social policies and have open lines of...     

The pricking of a sacred cow: A suggestion for reform of the manuscript review process and the gatekeepers’ response

The paper examines the review process currently in vogue in the social sciences and contends that the process is in need of reform. The authors propose multiple submissions of extended abstracts as a possibility. The paper tests this alternative and presents an analysis of the results.     

A Glimpse of the Truth: Evaluating ‘Debate’ and ‘Role Play’ as Pedagogical Tools for Learning about Sexuality Issues on a Law and Ethics Module

Social work education is familiar with concepts such as social exclusion, marginalisation, anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice. This familiarisation implies that students are adequately prepared to embrace equality and diversity, become ‘culturally competent’ and subscribe to moral and ethical standards including the rights of service users to respect and support regardless of sexual orientation. The ability of social work students to articulate and develop their own theories for practice and to handle personal issues when these conflict with ‘theories’ on equality and diversity are important aspects of learning. Educators teaching about sexual orientation issues however currently have fewer texts or support networks to draw on when addressing these. This paper looks at the effectiveness of ‘debate’ and ‘role play’ as pedagogical strategies and tools when teaching complex ethical issues on a law and ethics module. Dramatic and creative participative methods were used through the tools of debate and role play. These were used with students to explore a specific topic around gay adoption in the context of learning about anti-discriminatory law. The paper seeks to evaluate the outcomes of this approach by drawing on the students' post learning reflection.     

The new water cooler: Implications for practitioners concerning the NLRB's stance on social media and workers’ rights

This study examines the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) recent decision in Hispanics United (2012), which prohibits employers from firing employees for social media posts that contain work-related grievances. Given that social media has become a large part of corporate image on the Internet, this recent ruling has direct impact on corporate image, social media communication, and public relations. Implications for public relations practitioners and human resource management are discussed and standards for evaluating social media posts in light of this recent decision are provided.