Communes as seeking better family? A misleading explanation

Using data from a longitudinal study of ideology in urban communal living groups, this paper reexamines the thesis that the commune is an alternative family form sought by individuals striving for a better kind of family life. While family-oriented themes are often mentioned by communitarians, only a minority of communes in the sample were found to be specifically family focused in values and collective goals. Individuals in urban communes differ from their non-communitarian peers less in their orientation toward the family than in the comprehensiveness of their estrangement from all institutions. Rather than seeking alternative family forms, they were found to have been seeking social support for a broad range of non-conventional beliefs and role choices. Communal groups, which flourish at times of high flux and lack of consensus in social values, represent a quest for well-integrated, circumscribed consensus in response to the unravelling of broader social unity.The research reported here was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH 25525-01MP), the National Science Foundation (SOC7711262), and Sigma XI, the Scientific Research Association of North America. Thanks to William J. Goode, Ben Zablocki, and Cathy Greenblat for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

The determinants of worry over chronic health condition for rural couples

This study investigates the determinants of chronic health conditions that worry the member of rural couples who serves as the household financial manager. A sample of 1,115 rural couples from the NC-182 regional research project Family Resource Utilization as a Factor in Determining Economic Well-Being of Rural Families is used. The logit analysis finds that the probability of having a condition that worries the financial manager increases if she or he is middle aged or older, is not employed, and has external Locus of Control. This probability also increases when the dissatisfaction with the resources available to handle a financial emergency increases and the more often the financial manager does not have money to pay for the doctor.Preparation of this research was supported in part by the Minnesota Agricultural Experiment Station project 52–056 and the Minnesota Extension Service. Data were collected in conjunction with the cooperative regional research project NC-182, Family Resource Utilization as a Factor in Determining Economic Well-Being of Rural Families. Cooperating states are Arizona, California, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, and Minnesota.Her current research interests include the economic well-being of various family forms. She received her Ph.D. from University of Illinois.Her current research interests include family financial management and consumer bankruptcy. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.Her current research interests include issues concerned with family stress management including financial stress. She received her Ph.D. at Michigan State University.Her current research interests include economic and environmental well-being for families and individuals with emphasis on the impact of environmental regulations on economic well-being. She received her Ph.D. from University of Illinois.His current interests include economic well-being of rural families. He was a research assistant for Dr. Bauer before receiving his Ph.D. degree in Agriculture and Applied Economics, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN.     

On Dutch windows

In The Netherlands, living room windows are big, left uncovered day and night, and elaborately decorated. This pattern, which is widespread in all urban and rural regions in this country, disappears abruptly as soon as the border into Germany is crossed where windows are generally smaller, consistently covered, and more sparsely decorated. Going south into Flanders, the disappearance of open and decorated windows is gradual but noticeable.The cognitive and sensory meaning of a single object in material culture, the Dutch window, is examined as a concrete articulation of the boundary between the public and private realms by thinking it with successive conceptual frames in sociology. Assuming that material objects are embodiments of ideas, the study focuses on (a) the norms for looking and for looking out of the windows, (b) the territorial boundary being established and, (c) the information game played through the windows in a context of the notion of privacy. Photographs of the cultural objects under consideration, i.e., Dutch windows, are presented throughout the text as reminders that the cultural and material realms are sensually linked. The study concludes that objects in material culture must be examined in terms of the active, purposive acts we accomplish by adapting the objects to our practical and expressive needs.The author thanks Frank Bovenkerk, Sjoerd Groenman, Jaber Gubrium, Sidney Homan, Joseph Vandiver, William and Helga Woodruff and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.An earlier version was presented in session a-125 of the XIth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographical Sciences, held in Quebec in August, 1983.An important part of this research was completed while the author was Visiting Senior Lecturer at the State University at Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1978.     

Time-management strategies used by households with home-based work

A sample of 899 households in which at least one member is engaged in home-based work is used to analyze two time-management strategies used to respond to the demands of home-based work. Analyses reveal that, first, personal time is reallocated more than additional help is obtained for either the home-based work or household production and, second, that different strategies are used depending on whether the household manager is also the home-based worker. Respondents holding both roles report reallocating personal time more often than respondents who are not home-based workers; the reverse holds for obtaining additional help. The results suggest that households generating higher incomes in which home-based work is a full-time occupation are more likely to use time-management strategies than those in which incomes are lower and the home-based work is part-time.Journal Paper Number J-14861 Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Project Number 2857. This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by the Cooperative States Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture, and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont. This article was accepted in 1992 under the editorship of Charles B. Hennon.Her current research work includes an analysis of family resource management in Mexico and of housing conditions in rural areas. She is also involved in the study of household members who work at home for pay and their associated management practices and coping strategies. She received her Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in 1970.She received her M.S. from Iowa State University in May 1992. This paper is based on her M.S. thesis.Her current research interests include household asset and debt formation, working families and employers' benefits, and home-based employment. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1978.Her current research work includes such topics as divorce settlements, at-home income generation, and management practices of households engaged in home-based employment. Her Ph.D. degree was received from Cornell University in 1978.     

Learning environments for infants

Learning environments in a sample of communal families and a sample of two-parent married nuclear families are compared for both intragroup and acrossgroup differences likely to influence childrearing and socialization outcomes. Learning environment variables include family and demographic backgrounds of parents; newborn health, developmental, and feeding patterns; personnel, size, and density in households; caretaking patterns; work loads and domestic tasks for mothers; kin and social supports for mothers; beliefs and value orientations of the parents; and change and mobility in families. Creedal and domestic types of communes also differed. The learning environment variables are interdependent with each other and with demographic features of the groups, and there is rapid change in communal lifestyles; both these features suggest that intragroup and longitudinal data are essential for generalizing about the effects of lifestyles on young children.     

Theory: The Plague of the Subject: Psychoanalysis and Judith Butler's Psychic Life of Power

In her book The Psychic Life of Power, Judith Butler explores the relation between power and subjectivity. The Psychic Life of Power presents a political account of the formation of the subject. For Butler, psychoanalysis is a crucial theoretical tool for providing such an account of the subject. This essay considers Butler's Foucauldian rereading of psychoanalytic theory through an analysis of her theory of the formation of the subject. In particular, the essay examines Butler's appropriation of psychoanalysis for her theory of subjectivity. The author argues that while Butler's theorising of the psychic life of power represents an important linking of Foucauldian and psychoanalytic theories, nevertheless, her use of psychoanalysis does not fully engage with the complexity of its theory of the subject nor with the implications of that theory for her political project.     

The utilization of child care by households engaged in home-based employment

A logit procedure is used to examine the factors associated with the likelihood of using child care services among a sample of households with both a home-based worker and a child designated as needing care. Being a single-parent, having high family income, and the presence of a two-year old child are positively associated with the likelihood of using child care. Being an older worker, having a child who is one year or less or children who are 11 to 12 years, and having a less professional occupation decreases the likelihood of using child care. Self-employment decreases the likelihood of usage; owning a business that hires employees or services increases the likelihood of usage. The major conclusion is that home-based work may be a coping strategy for some child care needs, but home-based working households often need and use child care.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the Cooperative States Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont. Authors are listed in descending order of their contributions to this research paper. Appreciation is expressed to Frank Chiang for the computer assistance needed to complete these analyses. Patsy Sellen was instrumental in formatting and stylizing this article to required guidelines.Her current research interests include household asset and debt formation, working families and employers' benefits, and home-based employment. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1978.Nancy C. Saltford, has recently been a Visiting Scholar at the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a public policy research organization in Washington D.C. where she specialized in employer policies for working families. Her Ph.D. was received from Purdue University in 1971.Her research interests include the economics of divorce and at-home income generation. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University in 1986.Her primary areas of research are rural families, household production, family time use and its meaning, and the interactive aspects of managerial, productive and affective functions of families. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1983.     

Home-based employment: Historical and current considerations

The purposes of this article are threefold. First, there is a brief review of current and historical research on home-based business with special emphasis on female home-based employment and the impact of such employment on family life. Second, a conceptual model for family work activities is advanced. Finally, concepts related to home-based employment that could be used to frame and describe the empirical study are specified.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the Cooperative States Research Service, U. S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont.Her research interests include measuring household production, at-home income generation, and rural families. She received her Ph.D. in Family and Consumer Economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia.Her research interests include home-based business and consumer behavior. She received her Ph.D from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.Her research interests include consumer behavior and family economic issues. She received her Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.     

Satisfaction with home-based employment

Using data from nine state regional research project on at-home income generation, the relationships of three satisfaction variables to demographic and work situation variables of 899 household managers in households with home-based employment are investigated. The satisfaction variables include quality of life, family income, and control over everyday life. The majority of households are satisfied with their quality of life and control over life although only moderately satisfied with income. One variable is related to the three satisfaction variables, the wage earner's control over the amount of work done in a day.This paper reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont. This article was accepted in 1992 under the editorship of Charles B. Hennon.Her research interests include evaluation of teaching/learning, program evaluation, and entrepreneurship. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University.     

Time use satisfaction of wives: Home,farm, and labor force workload

Factors related to time spent in work roles are investigated for a sample of 685 wives living on family farms in seven southern and midwestern states. Data were collected in a comprehensive mail survey. Results show that variables reflecting management are the most important predictors of wife's time use satisfaction. Wife's satisfaction is also significantly related to her education and nonfarm employment. Conclusions indicate that, although wives on family farms experience work-role overload relative to their husbands, they are satisfied with their time contributions to the home/farm situation.Jeanne L. Hafstrom is Associate Professor, Consumer Sciences Division, University of Illinois, 161 Bevier Hall, 905 So. Goodwin, Urbana, IL 61801. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. Her current research interests include economic well-being and the quality of life.MaryAnn Paynter is Assistant Professor and Family Economics Extension Specialist, Consumer Sciences Division, University of Illinois, 547 Bevier Hall, 905 So. Goodwin, Urbana, IL 61801. She received her Ph.D. from Pennsylvania State University. Her current research interests include family resource management strategies.This study was part of S-191 Regional Research Project Farm Wife's External Employment, Family Economic Productivity and Family Functioning, and Project No. 60-0366 supported by the Agricultural Experiment Station, College of Agriculture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.     

Social factors in facial display and communication: A reply to Chovil and others

This paper discusses the Chovil (1991) study, questioning the assumption that the notion of facial display as communication is incompatible with that of facial display as readout of motivational/emotional response. It is argued that (a) the Chovil paper oversimplifies the view of the competition; (b) social factors can facilitateor inhibit expression depending upon the nature of the emotion being expressed and the expressor's personal relationship with the other; and (c) social factors produce strong social emotions, so that any manipulation of sociality must also manipulate emotion.Preparation of this paper was supported in part by NIMH grant MH-40753 to Ross Buck, and by the University of Connecticut Research Foundation.     

How Welfare Reform Can Affect Marriage:Evidence from an Experimental Study in Minnesota

A stated goal of the welfare legislation of 1996 was to develop policies to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families, yet states were given little guidance about how to do this. Experimental evidence from the Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), a program that tested the effects of an enhanced earnings disregard designed to encourage work and reduce poverty, shows that welfare policies can produce important effects on marital behavior even without explicit strategies aimed to do so. Three years after study entry, MFIP increased marriage rates among single parent long-term recipients and increased marital stability among two-parent recipient families. Similar effects were not found among newer applicants to welfare, possibly because many of these families leave welfare quickly. Replicating programs like MFIP in different settings and understanding why applicants responded differently will be essential to informing the policy significance of these findings.This research was supported by funding from the Minnesota Department of Human Services, the Ford Foundation, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Agriculture, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the Northwest Area Foundation.     

Guessing Teachers’ Differential Treatment Of High- And Low-Achievers From Thin Slices Of Their Public Lecturing Behavior

Groups of high school students and adults viewed 10-second clips of 28 unfamiliar teachers nonverbal behavior in public lecturing to their entire classrooms, and were asked to guess how these teachers would usually behave differently toward high- versus low-achievers in normal classroom dyadic interaction. The judges did not view any teacher–student interaction. As hypothesized, the students significantly (r = 0.40) predicted teachers differential behavior (TDB) as evaluated by the actual classroom students of those teachers, whereas adult judges could not guess TDB from the clips. The TDB guesses of the two groups of judges were unrelated to each other. Students expertise and implicit knowledge about covariation between distinct aspects of teacher behavior likely reflects a combination of cognitive and motivational factors, not shared by adult judges.Thanks are extended to Miri Avneri-Cohen for her helpful assistance; to Avraham Lifschitz for providing the high school sample; to Yaakov Kareev for his advice; to Mosko Alkalai for his insight; and, as usual, to Dinah Avni-Babad for her help and participation. The author is also thankful to the Editor and two anonymous Reviewers for helpful advice and suggestions.This research was partially supported by United States - Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant 1997053 to Elisha Babad and Robert Rosenthal.     

Home-based workers: Worker and work characteristics

The purpose of the study reported here is to describe the worker and work characteristics of 899 home-based business owners and wage earners, using a definition that excludes farmers, hobbyists, and persons taking work home from a job located elsewhere. Contrary to predictions by futurists of an influx of white-collar workers from the office to home, the home-based workers in this research are more likely to be marketing and sales persons, contractors, or mechanical and transportation workers. Full- or part-time employment status, home tenure, seasonality of work, and occupation are significantly associated with ownership status. Findings show significant group differences on age, education, years in the community, household size, and net annual home-based income. Business owners, on average, are older, have less education, come from larger households, have lived in their communities more years, and have lower net annual home-based incomes than their wage earner counterparts.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and University of Vermont. Appreciation is expressed to Ana Marie Vargas and Johnny M. H. On for their assistance with the computer analyses, and to Florence Abe, Laraine Hoffman, and Meesok Lee for their help in the final preparation of this article. The authors acknowledge the patience and helpful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers.Her current research interests include home-based employment, multiple farm income families, and computer-based education. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.Her current research interests include home-based employment, economic adjustments of farm families, and the interrelationship of management to an individual's quality of life. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University.Her primary areas of research are rural households, the impact of employment on a family, learning theories as applied to financial education, retirement, and home-based employment. She received her Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University.     

Alternative life styles: Relationship between new realities and practice

This paper discusses the relevance to clinical practice of current research on alternative family life styles. Attention is focused on therapists' countertransference reactions which interfere with the course of therapy. Source of information is an interdisciplinary research program at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, on the development of 200 children in four family styles: single mothers; from triads to large communes; and, a comparative group of traditionally married nuclear families. These alternative life styles emerging from the counter-culture may be altering patterns of family dynamics and functioning. Awareness of such changes is essential to clinical practice.     

Building family functioning scales into the study of at-home income generation

This article describes testing of scales designed to measure the ways family members interact in a personal subsystem. The scales are intended to complement data about the managerial subsystem of a family and are to be used in conjunction with a regional research project focused on home-based work. The article includes conceptual underpinnings, construction of measures, and results of factor analysis of the measures administered. Suggestions for use of a family functioning scale in the context of a household that has a member working at home are explored in the final section.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University, and the University of Vermont.Her research interests include measuring household production, at-home income generation and rural families. She received her Ph.D. in Family and Consumer Economics from the University of Missouri-Columbia.Her research is primarily in poverty and divorce and the economic well-being of women and children. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.Her research interests include entrepreneurship, especially as it relates to women and to international development. Her Ph.D. is from Cornell University.     

The impact of the family on home-based work

This article reports on a study of 899 families with at least one member engaged in home-based work. Six work characteristics are examined in relation to family structure and gender of the home-based worker: business ownership, occupation of the home-based work, amount of income generated, location of the work space, number of hours worked, and availability of help with the work. Women in single-parent and full-nest families are found to do the most restructuring of work time and space and women home-based workers generate less income from the work than do men. Male home-based workers experience less conflict between family and work scheduling, are more likely to have an exclusive work space, and tend to have help with the home-based work.This article reports results from the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167, entitled, At-Home Income Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural and Urban Families, partially supported by Cooperative States Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Experiment Stations at the University of Hawaii, Iowa State University, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan State University, Cornell University (New York), The Ohio State University, The Pennsylvania State University, Utah State University and University of Vermont.Her research interests include divorce, work and family, and the economic well-being of women and children. She received her Ph.D. from Oregon State University.He has extensive experience in research, consulting, and training for small business owners and operators, including single parents, disabled veterans, Hispanics, rural and home-based. He received his Ph.D. from New York University.     

Knowledge-based systems: A qualitative formalism

This paper examines knowledge-based systems (KBS's) and considers how they may be applied in the social sciences. KBS's are programs which use artificial intelligence techniques to solve complex problems. Characteristics of KBS's are illustrated with an example knowledge-based program (N-ACT) written in PROLOG which uses Goffman's dramaturgical model to analyze social interaction. The paper argues that KBS's offer a qualitative formalism capable of being applied to concepts and phenomena which have been beyond the scope of traditional mathematical models. KBS's can create explicit, reproducible, logically powerful knowledge systems while avoiding the Procrustean bed of mathematical formalism.This research took place in part while the author was on sabbatical leave from the University of Missouri and a post-doctorate fellow in medical computing and informatics on NIH Grant LM 07006 from the National Library of Medicine. The author would like to thank Peter H. Hall and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Employment location choices: Factors associated with the likelihood of homebased employment

The purpose of this research analysis is to investigate the factors that are associated with the likelihood of a worker choosing homebased employment. Using a sample of 6,744 employed men and women from the 1984 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a logit estimation procedure is employed. Factors which decrease the likelihood of being a homebased worker include minority status, higher levels of total family labor income, a high school education or less, and longer working hours. Older workers, workers without children, workers with young children under age six, the self-employed, and farmers are all more likely to be involved in homebased employment.Ramona K.Z. Heck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer Economics and Housing, 133 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853. Her current research interests include: household asset and debt formation, working families and employers' benefits, and homebased employment. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1978.The analyses in this paper are related to work in progress under the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167 entitled, At-Home-Income-Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the stations of Hawaii, Iowa, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.