Population Policy in Early Victorian England

This paper argues that the generally-held belief that there was no population policy in Great Britain during its fertility transition is incorrect. There were, in fact, clear and implicit and explicit policies in place by the early 19th Century which aimed at reducing population growth. These were negative, involving elimination of family allowances (the famous Poor Laws), and also positive, through subsidised emigration and ``transportation' of felons to the colonies. Moreover, a changed ``ideation' on the part of the nation's political, intellectual and spiritual leaders, changed norms about marriage and child-bearing, raising sharply the perceived economic and psychic cost of children. Lacking acceptable means to control pregnancies, many working class women resorted to abortion, infanticide and child abandonment to reduce their family size. The policy's actual impact on overall fertility is uncertain but it did constitute a deliberate attempt by society to affect demographic behaviour and outcomes.     

Stress at work and psychological and immunological parameters in a group of Norwegian female bank employees

This study concerned the immunological correlates of stress and work. Self reported stress, emotional state, ego-strength, and defensiveness were examined in relation to measures of cellular immunity (T-cell response to Con A and number of T4 and T8 cells) and humoral immunity (concentrations of immunoglobulins and complement components in plasma) in a group of 96 Norwegian female bank employees. The analyses showed that workload, the stress factor with the highest group mean, was associated with number of T-cells, while strain due to body posture during work was related to concentrations of IgM and C3. Further, depression was significantly correlated with IgM concentration and T-cell number, and anxiety with C3 concentration. T-cell activity was the immunological parameter most consistently associated with psychological well-being, showing positive correlations with defensiveness and ego-strength and negative correlations with anxiety and depression. In conclusion, T-cell number and concentrations of IgM and C3 were sensitive to both work-related stress experience and emotional distress. Coping abilities, indicated by the MMPI Ego-strength scale and emotional distress, were reflected in T-cell activity; insufficient coping was associated with low T-cell activity.     

Factors Affecting Children’s Adjustment to the Death of a Parent: The Social Work Professional’s Viewpoint

This study investigated factors affecting the adjustment of parentally bereaved children by reviewing existing literature and comparing it to observations made by professional social workers. Interviewees had between 1 1/2 and 22 years of experience in counseling bereaved children. The specific factors examined were age and sex of the bereaved child, circumstances of the death, and adjustment of remaining caregiver. Participants (n = 5) responded to an interview instrument specifically designed for this study which contained seven in-depth, open-ended questions. Participants’ replies were mostly in accordance with the literature, but also generated some new perspectives that had not been previously considered for this study and had not appeared in the literature. This study has implications for practice with parentally bereaved children and their surviving caregivers.Rebecca M. Hope, LCSW, Outpatient Clinician, New River Valley Community Services, 700 University City Boulevard, Blacksburg, VA 24060.Diane M. Hodge, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Social Work, Radford University, P.O. Box 6958, Radford, VA 24141; e-mail: dmhodge@radford.eduAddress correspondence to Rebecca M. Hope, LCSW, Outpatient Clinician, New River Valley Community Services, 700 University City Boulevard, Blacksburg, VA 24060; e-mail: rmhope@verizon.net     

Mapping Gender and Migration in Sociological Scholarship: Is It Segregation or Integration?

A review of the sociological research about gender and migration shows the substantial ways in which gender fundamentally organizes the social relations and structures influencing the causes and consequences of migration. Yet, although a significant sociological research has emerged on gender and migration in the last three decades, studies are not evenly distributed across the discipline. In this article, we map the recent intellectual history of gender and migration in the field of sociology and then systematically assess the extent to which studies on engendering migration have appeared in four widely read journals of sociology (American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Demography, and Social Forces). We follow with a discussion of these studies, and in our conclusions, we consider how future gender and migration scholarship in sociology might evolve more equitably.     

Networks, Communication and the Irish Protestant Diaspora in Northern England, c.1860-1914

This study seeks to explore transnational communication among migrants of the Irish diaspora through an examination of the Orange Order's networks. It draws upon rare local and district records and press accounts to explain the migratory links and social worlds of Orange emigrants from Ulster. The substance of the study echoes the findings of Canadian historians who have much richer records than exist in the public domain in Britain. It demonstrates how Orangemen in Ireland came to recognise the diasporic dimension of their movement, and how members used the Order to negotiate some of the pathways of migration that were an important feature of their lives, and in the lives of the working class more generally. The essay generally seeks to demonstrate that the Orange Order acted as a network of friendship, camaraderie and support for emigrants and immigrants in the British World in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.     

Race and Population Change: A Longitudinal Look at Cleveland Neighborhoods

This paper investigates the relationship of racial composition to neighborhood population change from 1910 to 1990 in the Cleveland metropolitan area. To better understand the long-term dynamics of urban neighborhood change, we focus our analysis upon the longitudinal relationship of race, socioeconomic status, and life cycle stage to changes in neighborhood population densities. First, we find that the more established neighborhoods of the African-American community have experienced dramatic declines in population since 1950, a pattern that represents a clear change from the earlier part of the twentieth century. Second, population loss is experienced through a variety of mechanisms, including the demolition of dwellings, the increase in housing vacancy, and the decline of household size. Third, much of this population loss should be interpreted within the context of high economic distress, occurring most frequently in older African-American communities. Over time, economic distress appears to be more important than race in and of itself in leading to the loss of neighborhood populations.