Losing Selves: Dementia Care as Disruption and Transformation

Caregiving is a process of transformed identities and reconstructed relations. The disruption of Alzheimer's disease affects both the individual with dementia and the person providing care. One becomes enselfed in dementia, the other transformed into a caregiver. Using data from twenty qualitative interviews with family caregivers, this article traces the transformative process by which the previous relational selves of both participants become casualties of the disease. Findings suggest that the ill person in this dyad is silenced through dementia, leaving the caregiver narratives to become the morality tales of transformation from disorder to order, from havoc to meaningful interaction. By becoming caregivers, family members construct value in their struggles to negotiate the disorder of illness and recreate meaningful and affirming selves and relationships.     

CAPTAIN PLANET AND THE PLANETEERS:

The environmental crisis is presented as a contested cultural discourse with conflicting social and political narratives pervasively targeted at children. Textual analysis of an environmental cartoon, and interviews with the cartoon's producers and child viewers, are used to deconstruct popular themes being transmitted to children in the name of "saving the planet". The cartoon is critiqued as representing and promoting a liberal environmental paradox espousing: a simultaneous call for children to both conserve and consume; a diffusion of responsibility that supports the notion of environmental crisis as everybody's fault; simplistic, individualistic solutions to complex corporate and bureaucratic problems. Narratives of nature as a social actor are proposed as rhetorical and epistemological alternatives for the recreation of children's social, political, and environmental awareness.     

Understanding Midlife Career Renewal: Implications for Counseling

The thesis of this article is that sufficient and convincing research evidence has accumulated to indicate that a sixth stage of career development—career renewal—occurs for many people between the end of the establishment stage and the beginning of the maintenance stage. This article explains why a renewal stage was overlooked in the 1940s and 1950s, clarifies the meaning of renewal as it applies to career development, compares the transitions of men and women in their early 40s, and offers suggestions for the counseling of clients who are dealing with the task of career renewal.     

The impact of family structure transitions on youth achievement: Evidence from the children of the NlSY79

We investigated the sensitivity of measures of cognitive ability and socioemotional development to changes in parents' marital status using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979. We used several scores for each assessment, taken at different times relative to parents' marital transitions, which allowed us to trace the effects starting up to five years before a parent's change in marital status and continuing for up to six years afterward. It also allowed us to correct for the unobserved heterogeneity of the transition and nontransition samples by controlling for the child's fixed effect in estimating the time path of his or her response to the transition. We found that children from families with both biological parents scored significantly better on the BPI and the PIAT-math and PIAT-reading assessments than did children from nonintact families. However, much of the difference disappeared when we controlled for background variables. Furthermore, when we controlled for child fixed effects, we did not find significant longitudinal variation in these scores over long periods that encompass the marital transition. This finding suggests that most of the variation is due to cross-sectional differences and is not a result of marital transitions per se.     

The economics of child care and public policy

Child care denotes any arrangement used by a working parent for care of a child, including self-care. This article is concerned with the factors that influence the demand for market modes of child care by two parent families with working mothers. A unique aspect of the study is that it is able to assess the impact of a child care subsidy program. An implication of the analysis is that the demand for market care is price elastic and is therefore susceptible to considerable change through programs of increased subsidization.     

Clinical social work education in palliative and end-of-life care: relational approaches for advanced practitioners

This paper describes the first post-Master's program in the US in end-of-life care for social workers. Developed at the Smith College School for Social Work, this program used innovative relational methods in student recruitment, curricular design, supervision, and leadership development, based upon input from the faculty, students, and field supervisors. Collaborations emerged with funders, agencies, and programs nationally. The program was based on a pedagogical stance that clinical work with dying people requires the capacity to be fully present- in individual, group, and family work; in interdisciplinary meetings; and in advocating for quality and equity of care-while attending to diverse and at-risk populations. Students deepened their clinical skills and took leadership in the field of end-of-life care.