The labor force implications of expanding the child care industry

This paper examines the labor force implications of increased social investment in the child care industry. We have two main conclusions to report. First, expanding the child care industry will remove a major barrier to employment for a sizable number of women. This includes women in middle and upper income families who desire to work for personal fulfillment and to improve their families' lifestyles. But even more so, it includes women in low-income and single-parent families who need to work to maintain a minimal and dignified standard of living and who might otherwise remain dependent on welfare benefits for their own and their families' subsistence. Second, expanding the child care industry will help employers cope with a range of personnel problems they will increasingly face as the U.S. undergoes a major transition in the 1990's from being a labor surplus economy to being a labor shortage economy.     

Table of Contents Volume 7 2003

Volume Contents

Table of Contents Volume 7 2003     

Treating intimate partner violence within intact couple relationships: outcomes of multi-couple versus individual couple therapy

An experimental design was used to determine outcomes of a domestic violence-focused treatment program for couples that choose to stay together after mild-to-moderate violence has occurred. Forty-two couples were randomly assigned to either individual couple or multi-couple group treatment. Nine couples served as the comparison group. Male violence recidivism rates 6 months after treatment were significantly lower for the multi-couple group (25%) than for the comparison group (66%). In contrast, men in the individual couple condition were not significantly less likely to recidivate (43%) than those in the comparison group. In addition, marital satisfaction increased significantly, and both marital aggression and acceptance of wife battering decreased significantly among individuals who participated in multi-couple group therapy, but not among those who participated in individual couple therapy or the comparison group.     

Do Foster Parents and Care Workers Recognize the Needs of Youth in Family Foster Care with a History of Sexual Abuse?

Children in family foster care have the right to participate in decisions regarding their life, however, adults often advocate on behalf of children. This Q methodological study explored whether shared perspectives among foster parents and care workers resemble shared perspectives of youth regarding the psychosocial needs experienced by youth with a history of sexual abuse. Participants sorted a set of statement cards according to what they thought was most important for youth. By-person factor analyses examined how the Q sorts of foster parents and care workers related to those of youth. The results showed that foster parents mostly recognized the group of youth who value an instrumental relationship with their carers, while care workers mostly recognized the group of youth who value support of both foster and birth parents with regard to their preparation for independent living. The two youth groups characterized by ambivalence and autonomy were barely recognized. Results are discussed in light of the expected roles of foster parents and care workers, and youth’s contact with birth parents. Lastly, this study highlights the importance of youth participation, because youth offer unique and varying perspectives about their needs.     

Mediating potency and fear: action movies’ affect

ABSTRACT

Action movies participate in the administration of fear [Virilio, P., 2012. The administration of fear. Translated by Ames Hodges. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e)], and the networked affects of contemporary warfare [Anderson, B., 2013. Targeting affective life from above: morale and airpower. In: P. Adey, M. Whitehead, and A.J. Williams, eds. From above: war, violence and verticality. London: Hurst & Company]. Through a sensory assault of intense bass soundtracks, kinetic camera movements, and intense CGI effects action movies work to produce what Steven Shaviro has termed ‘intensity effects’ [Shaviro, S., 2010. Post-cinematic affect. Winchester: Zero Books]. These intensity effects mediate between the age of terror's ecology of fear [Massumi, Brian, 2002. Parables for the virtual: movement, affect, sensation. Durham: Duke University Press] and our bodies. Rather than producing fear, action movies work to dispel fear by producing potency and bolstering resolve. We can thus understand action movies as participating in the biopolitical effects of contemporary warfare. Affect is globalized and intensified through action movies’ aesthetics, with the aim of producing a kind of drone subject. Robin James significantly posits a drone atmosphere where our perceptual limit reconfigures through ‘droning’ – the creation of an affective timbre [James, R., 2013. Drones, sound, and super-panoptic surveillance. Cyborgology]. As James argues, ‘[d]roning rivets you to material conditions, affects, and sensations that compel you to behave in specific ways, and not in others’ (n.p.). So while drones currently work overseas to target morale, action movies work on the home front to target our potency and resolve and so engender a mode of sensation that also functions as action. Affect works as a translator, where sensation is displaced into the feeling of having acted. In having acted, we are led to believe that we are safe from fear, which can be understood as a pharmakon. We are kept safe by action movies’ mediation of potency and fear.     

Transport Policy Scenarios for the EU: 2020 Images of the Future

It is essential to take a longer term view if sustainable mobility is to become a reality. This paper takes a perspective to 2020 and constructs Images of the future which conform to the principles of sustainable mobility. Set at the EU level, clear environmental, regional development and efficiency targets are set, within which strategies are developed, based on different combinations of technological innovation and the decoupling of economic growth from transport growth. The external political situation is taken as given with either a move towards greater co-operation (and extension) or towards greater fragmentation (and regionalisaization) in Europe. The three Images of the future (2020) demonstrate that challenging targets for sustainable mobility can be achieved through a range of different policy actions within the transport sector and more widely. Immediate action is required and even more difficult choices will have to be made in the EU 15, if large-scale extension of the EU takes place. Improvements in vehicle technology alone will not achieve the targets. More fundamental changes have to take place in the way in which people make travel choices and in the means by which freight is transported. All of these measures must involve less travel, more efficient and cleaner travel modes.     

From management to leadership: a shift towards understanding the organizational complexity of multidisciplinary collaboration

Multidisciplinary collaboration is central to modern social welfare organizations, yet knowledge about the organizational context of collaboration is scarce. The study objective was to establish multidisciplinary collaboration by designing an organizational field study. The aim of this article is to explore managerial roles and perspectives during an organizational process of developing multidisciplinary collaboration. Eighteen management meetings, held during a two-year period, are analysed. The analysis reveals that the management gradually grasps the complexity of multidisciplinary collaboration; negotiations on the concept are ongoing while their point of view changes from distant to involved. The management takes leadership towards multidisciplinary collaboration through a series of legitimacy-related negotiations, illustrating the organizational and managerial contexts of multidisciplinary collaboration as well as introducing it as a new type of managerial task.     

Alternative Markov Properties for Chain Graphs

Graphical Markov models use graphs to represent possible dependences among statistical variables. Lauritzen, Wermuth, and Frydenberg (LWF) introduced a Markov property for chain graphs (CG): graphs that can be used to represent both structural and associative dependences simultaneously and that include both undirected graphs (UG) and acyclic directed graphs (ADG) as special cases. Here an alternative Markov property (AMP) for CGs is introduced and shown to be the Markov property satisfied by a block-recursive linear system with multivariate normal errors. This model can be decomposed into a collection of conditional normal models, each of which combines the features of multivariate linear regression models and covariance selection models, facilitating the estimation of its parameters. In the general case, necessary and sufficient conditions are given for the equivalence of the LWF and AMP Markov properties of a CG, for the AMP Markov equivalence of two CGs, for the AMP Markov equivalence of a CG to some ADG or decomposable UG, and for other equivalences. For CGs, in some ways the AMP property is a more direct extension of the ADG Markov property than is the LWF property.     

On the Markov Equivalence of Chain Graphs, Undirected Graphs, and Acyclic Digraphs

Graphical Markov models use undirected graphs (UDGs), acyclic directed graphs (ADGs), or (mixed) chain graphs to represent possible dependencies among random variables in a multivariate distribution. Whereas a UDG is uniquely determined by its associated Markov model, this is not true for ADGs or for general chain graphs (which include both UDGs and ADGs as special cases). This paper addresses three questions regarding the equivalence of graphical Markov models: when is a given chain graph Markov equivalent (1) to some UDG? (2) to some (at least one) ADG? (3) to some decomposable UDG? The answers are obtained by means of an extension of Frydenberg’s (1990) elegant graph-theoretic characterization of the Markov equivalence of chain graphs.     

The "Europeanization" of Spanish Social Policy

The principal features of Spanish social policy are examined since the transition to democracy in the mid-1970s. The period has been dominated by the four governments of the Socialists under Felipe Gonzalez. It will be argued that in terms of the reform of welfare goals and institutional arrangements, as well as welfare inputs and outputs, a significant degree of “Europeanization” has been achieved. This is especially true of the later period of Gonzalez's premiership in which this process, initiated during the Transition, was accelerated.