Exploring the Role of Being Out on a Queer Person's Self-Compassion

Recent changes in societal attitudes toward lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities have resulted in more people openly identifying with sexual minority status. Due to research on the effects of denying one's sexual orientation and the negative effects of this, many have advocated for more openness in queer sexual orientation. Compassion means connecting to the suffering of others not by avoiding their pain but instead by identifying it so that the feeling of kindness may emerge. Self-compassion, therefore, involves being touched by and open to one's own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate one's suffering and to heal oneself with kindness. The purpose of the research is to understand the impact that being out has on a queer person's self-compassion. The Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) is a 26-item, 5-point Likert measure, where a higher score equated to higher self-compassion and looked at how a person showed loving kindness to one's self through the six dimensions of self-compassion. The six dimensions of self-compassion are mindfulness, over-identification, self-kindness, self-judgment, common humanity, and isolation. Results showed that those who are totally out have a higher sense of self-compassion. Implications for practitioners working with the queer population are also discussed.     

Using photography to understand change and continuity in the history of residential care for older people

The Last Refuge by Peter Townsend is a seminal study of residential care for older people. The fieldwork was carried out in the late 1950s and the data are now deposited in the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive at the University of Essex. We have undertaken research, funded by the ESRC, which has revisited Townsend's work and some of the homes he studied in order to conduct an overtime comparison. In this paper we focus on Townsend's use of photography and our subsequent use of photography in our revisiting study. We argue that although Townsend did not analyse his photographs, they were significant data for use in his arguments critiquing residential care. They were, however, the product of a different socio‐historical context to our own and as such posed considerable practical and ethical challenges for us when attempting to use this aspect of his methodology for an overtime comparison. We argue that despite the resulting constraints, photography was an important part of our methodology, enabling comparisons and illuminating historical patterns in residential care for older people.     

Rethinking the Canon: Reflections on a Text That Ought to be Essential Reading

Abstract

The 2006 war in Lebanon that erupted between Hezbollah and Israel marked the largest evacuation of Americans abroad since World War II. This article captures the experiences of Lebanese-American women and investigates how gender identity was expressed during these evacuations. Presented from the point of view of a participant-observer and personal interviews, findings show that gender became a master identity that influenced these women's choices regarding how to escape the country and return to the United States. Some embraced dependency upon masculinist exercises of power while others claimed agency as they determined their own fate and carried out their own evacuation without waiting to be rescued by the state or male kin members. The evacuation stories in this article confirm and illuminate the complexity of ethnic citizenship and gendered agency.     

Parental leave regulations, mothers’ labor force attachment and fathers’ childcare involvement: evidence from a natural experiment

In 2007, Germany implemented a generous parental leave regulation in order to make parenthood more attractive and more compatible with a working career, especially for mothers. We evaluate the reform using a natural experiment that compares outcomes of parents with children born shortly after and before the coming into effect of the law, and find a significant decrease in mothers’ employment probability during the 12 months after giving birth, and an increase in mothers’ employment probability after the transfer expires. The implementation of two daddy months is currently not reflected in significant changes in fathers’ time devoted to childcare.     

Marriage form and fertility in rural China: an investigation in three counties

Using data from two surveys in three counties where the prevalence of uxorilocal marriage differs greatly, this paper analyzes impact of marriage form, individual, family, and social factors on fertility and its regional differences. The results show that, under the Chinese patrilineal joint family system, uxorilocal marriage does not universally increase fertility, which is likely to be determined by other factors. It is further found that fertility differs greatly in the three regions, and is significantly lower in regions where uxorilocal marriage is common than in regions where virilocal marriage is dominant. Women’s marriage cohort, age at first marriage, and number of sisters all have significant effects on fertility. These findings address the process and consequences of change in rural family and marriage customs during the current demographic and social transition.     

20世纪中国"失踪女性"数量的估计

20世纪80年代以来,中国持续升高的人口出生性别比和历史上长期存在的女孩死亡水平偏高导致失踪女性现象严重,使人口性别结构失衡.文章使用全国5次人口普查数据,在对普查数据修正的基础上,分时期估计了1900～2000年中国失踪女性的数量和比例,研究各时期失踪女性的特征和主要原因,并讨论了估计结果与其他学者研究结果的不同之处及其原因.     

On the Diaconis-Gangolli Markov chain for sampling contingency tables with cell-bounded entries

The problems of uniformly sampling and approximately counting contingency tables have been widely studied, but efficient solutions are only known in special cases. One appealing approach is the Diaconis and Gangolli Markov chain which updates the entries of a random 2×2 submatrix. This chain is known to be rapidly mixing for cell-bounded tables only when the cell bounds are all 1 and the row and column sums are regular. We demonstrate that the chain can require exponential time to mix in the cell-bounded case, even if we restrict to instances for which the state space is connected. Moreover, we show the chain can be slowly mixing even if we restrict to natural classes of problem instances, including regular instances with cell bounds of either 0 or 1 everywhere, and dense instances where at least a linear number of cells in each row or column have non-zero cell-bounds.     

Money in Search Equilibrium,in Competitive Equilibrium,and in Competitive Search Equilibrium

We compare three market structures for monetary economies: bargaining (search equilibrium); price taking (competitive equilibrium); and price posting (competitive search equilibrium). We also extend work on the microfoundations of money by allowing a general matching technology and entry. We study how equilibrium and the effects of policy depend on market structure. Under bargaining, trade and entry are both inefficient, and inflation implies first‐order welfare losses. Under price taking, the Friedman rule solves the first inefficiency but not the second, and inflation may actually improve welfare. Under posting, the Friedman rule yields the first best, and inflation implies second‐order welfare losses.     

A marketing plan: like it or not, you already have one

A physician executive dives into the world of marketing and discovers that just coming up with a marketing plan for a group practice can be very pricey.