Resources: spiritual development-youth development

An annotated bibliography of this developmental intersection.     

A stalled revolution? Gender role attitudes in Australia, 1986–2005

This paper examines trends over time in attitudes to gender equality in Australia. We use data from repeated cross-sectional surveys in Australia to investigate trends in beliefs about men’s and women’s work and family roles between 1986 and 2005. We find that men are consistently more conservative than women, that younger cohorts tend to be less conservative than older cohorts, but those born between 1960 and 1980 are more egalitarian on some issues than those born after 1980. There is also evidence that the overall trend toward more egalitarian gender attitudes is most marked in Australia up until the mid-1990s with the trend flattening and in some cases, even reversing after this period. The paper concludes that there is currently a period of relative stability in gender attitudes in Australia, but with some tendency toward more conservative views.     

Safe Spaces: Gay‐Straight Alliances in High Schools

In activists’ circles as in sociology, the concept “safe space” has been applied to all sorts of programs, organizations, and practices. Few studies have specified clearly what safe spaces are and how they support the people who occupy them. We examine one social location typically understood to be a safe space: gay‐straight alliance groups in high schools. Using qualitative interviews with young adults in the United States and Canada who have participated in gay‐straight alliances, we unpack this complex concept to consider some of the dimensions along which safe spaces might vary. Based on interviews with participants, we derive three interrelated dimensions of safe space: social context, membership, and activity.     

Family structure and the transition to early parenthood

With the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce in the last quarter of the twentieth century, an increasing proportion of children have been exposed to a variety of new family forms. Little research has focused on the consequences of childhood family structure for men’s transition to fatherhood or on the family processes that account for the effects of family structure on the likelihood that young women and men become first-time unmarried parents, what we now call “fragile families.” The data come from the linked Children and Young Adult samples of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), which provide information on the children of the women of the NLSY79 from birth until they enter young adulthood. Females growing up with a single parent and males experiencing an unstable family transition to parenthood early, particularly to nonresidential fatherhood for males. For males, the effects are strongly mediated by parenting processes and adolescent behaviors and are shaped by economic circumstances. Having experienced multiple transitions as a child is associated with a reduced likelihood that males father their first child within marriage and an increased likelihood that they become fathers within cohabitation, demonstrating how changes in family structure alter family structure patterns over time and generations.     

Psychiatrist–consumer relationships in US public mental health care: consumers’ views of a disability system

The US public mental health system is a disability system. By this is meant that public programs for people with mental illness serve consumers who are seriously and chronically ill, functionally disabled and eligible for benefits by virtue of their disability. This study explores, through focus groups and qualitative data analysis, the perceptions of these consumers of their relationships with public sector psychiatrists. Thematic analysis finds relationships of three types – compliance, collaboration and contention – and constituent sub‐themes that specify these further. Issues of poverty and powerlessness arise in every category, but especially in contentious relationships. Although the converse is widely believed to be true, this paper argues that the economic and political empowerment of people with psychiatric disabilities is vital to the success of their clinical care     

Adolescent Adjustment and Patterns of Parents' Behaviors in Early and Middle Adolescence

In this study, we identified unique clusters of parenting behaviors based on parents' school involvement, community involvement, rule‐setting, and cognitive stimulation with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics—Child Development Supplement. In early (n=668) and middle adolescence (n=634), parents who provided high cognitive stimulation (i.e., cognitive enrichment parents) or engaged in all parenting behaviors (i.e., engaged parents) had the highest family income, parent education, and percentage of European Americans. Adolescents of cognitive enrichment or engaged parents often evidenced the highest academic and social adjustment. Adolescents whose parents set a large number of rules (i.e., “Rule setters”) or were also heavily involved in the community (i.e., the “Managers” cluster) had the lowest adjustment.     

Financial Sophistication and Housing Leverage Among Older Households

Increasing mortgage debt among older households has been cited as evidence of financial distress caused by low financial knowledge, poor lending practices, and an increased appetite for debt. This paper investigates whether housing leverage among older households is related to financial sophistication, tax effects, and a desire to increase portfolio allocation to risky assets. Results indicate a time trend in low housing leverage, but no trend in high housing leverage. While housing leverage increases with liquidity constraints, it also increases with financial sophistication, and tax and portfolio incentives are strongly related to high housing leverage. The incentive to borrow against home value created by the deductibility of mortgage interest appears to encourage greater housing leverage and vulnerability to housing price shocks.