The College Health Advisor and the College Age Adoptee

Abstract

Eating disorders are among the most common psychopathologies on college campuses. Research on ethnic differences in eating disorder symptoms and prevalence has resulted in conflicting conclusions. Some studies find that particular ethnic groups have a higher prevalence of a symptom; others find that members of that ethnic group have a lower prevalence of the same symptom. The authors explored the role of body mass index (BMI), one potential confound. They used a reliable measure of eating disorder symptoms to assess differences between Hispanic, Asian, and non-Hispanic White college women from two separate samples. After controlling for BMI, ethnic differences in eating disorder symptoms of concern about weight and shape disappeared, but differences in restrained eating remained. Inconsistent findings in the ethnic-difference literature on eating disorders may result from systematic group differences in BMI. Implications for college health programs, counseling, and case finding are discussed.     

Postdivorce Parenting: A Study of Recently Divorced Mothers and Fathers

ABSTRACT

Divorce is challenging for parents with children, commonly resulting in a series of individual and interpersonal adjustments. The time immediately following divorce can be particularly difficult. This study used a modified grounded theory approach to explore the experiences of 99 recently divorced mothers and fathers. Analysis of written narratives revealed 4 emergent groups of parents who described their postdivorce parenting experiences: good divorce, good enough, bad to better, and bad. Each group described their experiences across several areas including coparenting, father involvement, challenges of single parenting, personal turmoil, and their children’s adjustment. Implications for research and divorce education are discussed.     

Im/possible lives: gender,class, self-fashioning,and affinal solidarity in modern South Asia

Drawing on ethnographic research and employing a micro-historical approach that recognizes not only the transnational but also the culturally specific manifestations of modernity, this article centers on the efforts of a young woman to negotiate shifting and conflicting discourses about what a good life might consist of for a highly educated and high caste Hindu woman living at the margins of a nonetheless globalized world. Newly imaginable worlds in contemporary Mithila, South Asia, structure feeling and action in particularly gendered and classed ways, even as the capacity of individuals to actualize those worlds and the ‘modern’ selves envisioned within them are constrained by both overt and subtle means. In the context of shifting cultural anchors, new practices of silence, literacy, and even behaviors interpreted as ‘mental illness’ may become tactics in an individual's negotiation of conflicting self-representations. The confluence of forces at play in contemporary Mithila, moreover, is creating new structures of feeling that may begin to reverse long-standing locally held assumptions about strong solidarities between natal families and daughters, on the one hand, and weak solidarities between affinal families and new daughters-in-law, on the other.     

Measuring the effectiveness of a multi-year multi-county marriage celebration: qualitative findings

In the early stages of the recent recession, men were disproportionately among the ranks of the unemployed. Current economic times provide a researchable moment, as more women are likely to be in positions of power vis-à-vis earnings. This article uses a unique nationally representative dataset of married individuals (n = 158) to examine expected level of support for relocation if the respondent's spouse were offered a hypothetical job opportunity. Although there do appear to be gender differences in the associations between background characteristics and expected level of support, we find no basis for our hypotheses about the nature of the relationships between race, class, and expected level of support. Black women have higher levels of expected support than do White women, whereas Black men have lower levels of expected support than do White men; there are no class differences in expected level of support. We interpret these findings in the context of the complicated performance of gender in challenging economic times.     

Assessing Community Needs of Sexual Minority Youths: Modeling Concept Mapping for Service Planning

Research devoted to interventions and other attempts to buffer the negative experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning (GLBTQ) youths is lacking. This study used Concept Mapping to explore the psychosocial support needs of diverse sexual minority youths served in a GLBTQ youth-focused center and brings youth voice to currently limited literature on GLBTQ service planning. Conceptual maps generated represent the types of supports youths believe are needed to meet their needs. Three primary areas for service planning—developing protective supports, mental health-related supports, and culturally relevant services—were identified from the 58 statements and 5 clusters generated.     

ALL OR NOTHING: VIDEO LOTTERY TERMINAL GAMBLING AND ECONOMIC RESTRUCTURING IN RURAL NEWFOUNDLAND

The sudden collapse of the cod fishery off Canada's east coast in the early 1990s directly affected the livelihoods of more than 30,000 fishers and fish-processing plant workers in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. In response to the crisis, the federal government closed the fishery and introduced a series of adjustment programs with the aim of reducing capacity in the industry and encouraging displaced people to seek employment elsewhere. This article examines how a small group of people living in a fishery-dependent region on the east coast of Newfoundland began using free-spending video lottery terminal gambling as a way to engage with these efforts to downsize and restructure their industry. Despite the personal and financial strains that regular gambling often created, the communal spending associated with it became a way in which some people sought to affirm local ties and critique neoliberal adjustment programs designed to encourage mobility, personal ambition, and sound financial management. The power of this critique was, however, contingent on the capacity of the core players to continue to define their behaviour as an exercise in solidarity. This idea was perpetually undermined by government programs and media stories, which presented heavy gambling as an individual weakness or addiction, and by the increasing social stratification that accompanied the restructuring of the fishing industry, making the disparities between gamblers much more difficult to hide.     

REVIEWS

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Justifying Justice: Therapeutic Law and the Victimization Defense Strategy

As cultural sociologists have long held, systems of collective meaning invariably take on concrete institutionalized form. In as much as a therapeutic code of moral understanding has become a dominant impulse in American culture, we would expect to find evidence of this cultural sensibility in society's major institutional structures, including the criminal justice system. In this article, we consider the impact of the therapeutic ethos on criminal adjudication through an examination of the `victimization defense strategy'—an increasingly popular legal argument that explains criminal action through a focus on past experiences of social victimization. We find that the emergence and application of this legal strategy relies heavily on the therapeutic ethos, a development that both reaffirms the validity of the therapeutic culture and potentially transforms the very essence of the adjudicative process.