INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND: Does Gender Make a Difference?

This article compares in regression models the effects of occupational status of both fathers and mothers simultaneously upon the attainment of men and women in the Irish Republic. The sample matches male respondents from the 1973/1974 Irish Mobility Study with the labour active female sibling next closest in age. Since the analysis compares working siblings and each 'matched pair' shares the same family origin characteristics, the problems attendant upon using a sample originally of men only are partially avoided. The results advance beyond previous research since, rather than separate models by gender, models include parents and children of both genders, allowing direct rather than indirect evaluation of gender-based determinants of occupational attainment. Both fathers and mothers significantly affect children's attainment, in ways that vary by the child's gender. The results highlight the salience of mothers' attainment for their children and question the 'mainstream' model of equivalent mechanisms of occupational attainment for both genders. Models of social mobility that consider men and women as special instances of a general perspective provide the most fruitful approach for further development.     

The Impact of Taking Parental Leave on Fathers’ Participation In Childcare And Relationships With Children: Lessons from Sweden

In Sweden, government-mandated paid parental leave has been available to both mothers and fathers since 1974. By 2006, each parent had two non-transferable leave months and nine additional months to share. From the beginning, parental leave was presented as a policy designed to promote gender equality, with women and men having equal opportunities and responsibilities to contribute economically to the family and care for children. Sweden thus provides a unique setting to explore whether social policy can be an important instrument for changing the gender contract. Analysing survey data from 356 fathers working in large private companies, we found that the amount of parental leave days taken had positive effects on several aspects of fathers’ participation in childcare and on their satisfaction with contact with children, controlling for other factors contributing to fathers’ participation in childcare. Our findings suggest that the full potential of Sweden's parental leave policy for degendering the division of labour for childcare will not likely be met until fathers are strongly encouraged by social policy to take a more equal portion of parental leave.     

Consistent maximum likelihood estimation of a unimodal density using shape restrictions

It is well known that the unimodal maximum likelihood estimator of a density is consistent everywhere but at the mode. The authors review various ways to solve this problem and propose a new estimator that is concave over an interval containing the mode; this interval may be chosen by the user or through an algorithm. The authors show how to implement their solution and compare it to other approaches through simulations. They show that the new estimator is consistent everywhere and determine its rate of convergence in the Hellinger metric.     

The Effect of Learning Experiences and Context on Infant Imitation and Generalization

Over the first years of life, infants gradually develop the ability to retrieve their memories across cue and contextual changes. Whereas maturational factors drive some of these developments in memory ability, experiences occurring within the learning event may also impact infants' ability to retrieve memories in new situations. In 2 experiments we examined whether it was possible to facilitate 12‐month‐old infants' generalization of learning in the deferred imitation paradigm by varying experiences before or during the demonstration session, or during the retention interval. In Experiment 1, altering the length, timing, or variability of training had no impact on generalization; infants showed a low, but consistent level of memory retrieval. In Experiment 2, infants who experienced a unique context for encoding and retrieval exhibited generalization; infants who experienced the context prior to the demonstration session, or during the retention interval, did not. Specificity is a robust feature of infant memory and is not substantially altered by encoding experiences in an observational learning paradigm. Previous history with a learning environment can, however, impact the flexibility of memory retrieval.     

The Development of Affect Specificity in Infants' Use of Emotion Cues

This study examined the emergence of affect specificity in infancy. In this study, infants received verbal and facial signals of 2 different, negatively valenced emotions (fear and sadness) as well as neutral affect via a television monitor to determine if they could make qualitative distinctions among emotions of the same valence. Twenty 12‐ to 14‐month‐olds and 20 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds were examined. Results suggested that younger infants showed no evidence of referential specificity, as they responded similarly to both the target and distracter toys, and showed no evidence of affect specificity, showing no difference in play between affect conditions. Older infants, in contrast, showed evidence both of referential and affect specificity. With respect to affect specificity, 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds touched the target toy less in the fear condition than in the sad condition and showed a larger proportion of negative facial expressions in the sad condition versus the fear condition. These findings suggest a developmental emergence after 15 months of age for affect specificity in relating emotional messages to objects.     

The Classed Body in the Sociological Imagination

Class theorists of embodiment in Sociology point to and illuminate both an over‐ and an under‐exposed body and experience that ultimately mark the bodies of the poor as ideologically, discursively and materially abject. In this essay, I map out theories of the bodies of the poor, including those of Marx, Engels, Elias, Bourdieu, Foucault, Donzelot and Adair. I suggest that an understanding of the ways in which the bodies of the poor are positioned as abject can facilitate a flexible and reflexive heuristic through which we can negotiate epistemic shifts between material and discursive categories, as well as providing us with a template through which we can come to understand even the most profoundly abject bodies, those of poor women in a welfare state, as potential sites of embodied agency and resistance, all central to the ethical and holistic study of sociology.     

The Impact of Maternal Characteristics and Sensitivity on the Concordance Between Maternal Reports and Laboratory Observations of Infant Negative Emotionality

The moderating role of maternal characteristics and maternal sensitivity on the concordance between maternal reports and laboratory observations of negative emotionality was examined. Participants were 90 primiparous mothers and their infants. Mothers completed questionnaires about remembered care from their own parents and their depressive symptoms prenatally, infant temperament (distress to novelty and distress to limitations), and depressive symptoms postnatally. Mothers and infants participated in a laboratory assessment of infant temperament (distress to novelty and limitations) and maternal sensitivity at 6 months postpartum. Several factors that moderate the degree of concordance between maternal reports and behavioral observations were identified, as predicted. Novelty concordance was higher when mothers reported having their emotional needs met in childhood and low prenatal depressive symptoms. Limitations concordance was higher when mothers were less sensitive during the observational tasks. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed.