Implementation of the Family Violence Option 20 Years Later: A Review of State Welfare Rules for Domestic Violence Survivors

The Family Violence Option (FVO) was included in the 1996 welfare reform legislation to ensure that domestic violence survivors are not subject to unfair penalties resulting from compliance with the new requirements. This study presents a comprehensive review of the states’ different approaches to address domestic violence. Our findings identified variation in implementation and practice, from the decision to adopt the FVO to the process of granting waivers. Although not contradictory to the federal legislation, the variation is indicative of the limited research on best practices and lack of national discussions on how state FVO processes relate to one another.     

Balancing the Scales: Negotiating Father's Parental Leave Use

Studying couples who shared parental leave presents the opportunity to explore decision‐making processes that may challenge conventional care arrangement typical of early parenthood. Interviews with 33 Canadian heterosexual couples indicate gendered sticking points in the division of official leave time. Whether fathers took leave because of their personal desires or material circumstances, this study finds that men and women did not enter negotiations on a level playing field. Strong cultural support for mothers'–but not fathers'–time with baby tipped the scales toward maternal care giving, even when couples wanted to share parental leave. Nevertheless, financial considerations such as a man's topped‐up pay or woman's career could lessen the weight of mothers’ moral entitlement to the leave time by presenting couples with an alternative logic on which to base their decision making.     

Career transition in the Chinese context: a case study

This study explores career transition in the transitioning Chinese context. Given the transitioning nature in the overall Chinese society and the affected individuals involved in equally massive career transitions, this study investigates the career transition phenomenon through the lens of an MBA case in China. We examine career transition types and associated constraints and challenges. Two distinctive types of career transitions emerged as context specific career transitions that have not been documented in the literature. As the study only presented the tip of the iceberg of the large-scale career transition taking place in China, we further discuss the implications and future research directions on the career transition phenomenon.     

Economic Distress and Intimate Violence: Testing Family Stress and Resources Theories

Hypotheses shaped by family stress and resource theories about the impact of household economic indicators on the risk of violence against women in intimate relationships are tested with a data set built from the initial two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) and the 1990 U.S. Census. Measures of employment status, job conditions, and economic well‐being for male and female partners are examined with logistic regression analyses as predictors of the odds of male‐to‐female intimate violence. Results underline the importance that partners attach to each other's work performance and their feelings of financial well‐being in assessing whether job holding and household income serve to elevate or reduce the risk of intimate partner violence toward women.     

Infants' Manual Exploration of Pictorial Objects Varying in Realism

In previous research, we established that 9‐month‐old infants manually investigate pictured objects by hitting, rubbing, and grasping as if to pluck them off the page. This behavior suggests that infants do not understand the 2‐dimensional nature of pictures. Although they can perceive depth cues and distinguish pictures from objects, they do not appreciate the significance of these cues; that is, they do not realize how depicted objects differ from real ones. We report 2 studies that support the idea that infants' manual response to pictures is driven by the resemblance of depicted objects to the real objects they represent. In Study 1, we report that infants' manual investigation of pictures is directly related to how realistic they are: The more depicted objects look like real objects, the more manual investigation they evoke. In Study 2, we show that 9‐month‐old infants' manual behaviors are concentrated on depicted objects even when there are areas of greater perceptual contrast on the page. The results are discussed with respect to the early development of pictorial competence.     

When Getting Something Good is Bad: Even Three‐year‐olds React to Inequality

Fairness is central to morality. Previous research has shown that children begin to understand fairness between the ages of four and six, depending on the context and method used. Within distributive contexts, there is little clear evidence that children have a concept of fairness before the age of five. This research, however, has mostly examined children's explicit verbal responses to questions about unequal distributions—a method that often underestimates children's knowledge. In the current study, we instead examined emotional and behavioral signs that children notice and dislike inequality. We distributed an unequal number of rewards (stickers) among pairs of children (the ages of three to five years) and probed their responses to the inequality. Both implicit and explicit measures revealed that children as young as three years old notice and react negatively to an unfair distribution, particularly when they receive less than their partner. The few age trends that were found involved verbal (explicit) responses, providing evidence that although children do not explicitly talk about fairness until the age of five or six, this talk is an effort to explain emotional reactions that emerged earlier in development.     

A comparison of bayes and maximum likelihood estimation of the intraclass correlation coefficient

Two methods of estimating the intraclass correlation coefficient (p) for the one-way random effects model were compared in several simulation experiments using balanced and unbalanced designs. Estimates based on a Bayes approach and a maximum likelihood approach were compared on the basis of their biases (differences between estimates and true values of p) and mean square errors (mean square errors of estimates of p) in each of the simulation experiments. The Bayes approach used the median of a conditional posterior density as its estimator.     

Using innovation to address HIV, AIDS, and environment links: intervention case studies from Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Malawi

This article presents three cross-cutting intervention case studies that address HIV, AIDS, and natural resources management in an integrated manner through innovative programming in Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Malawi. In Zimbabwe, a religious-based non-governmental group and two community organizations work together to build skills of HIV- and AIDS-vulnerable children in rural areas to meet dietary and income needs, while using natural resources sustainably. In Uganda, various government agencies and NGO actors work together to improve the food security of HIV-affected households at the national, district, sub-district, and village levels. Finally, in Malawi, a conservation organization incorporates HIV and AIDS awareness and programming into its operations and projects. Each case study presents pioneering approaches to simultaneously addressing the pressures on conservation initiatives, food security/agricultural production, income generation/livelihoods, and social and health care systems. They also provide lessons for expanding interventions and partnerships.