Examining the Impact of Changes in Maternal Employment on High School Completion Among Low-Income Youth

The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and decisions about its re-authorization have resurrected interest in the impact of maternal employment on child outcomes in poor families. The emerging evidence suggests that employment stability among former welfare recipients is a key factor in making successful transitions from welfare to work. This investigation explores how changes in maternal employment in poor families relate to high school completion among at risk youths. Our findings show that a substantial number of mothers experience unstable employment patterns. This instability is positively correlated with dropout among adolescents. The paper concludes with policy implications for the next phase of welfare reform.     

Women are Victims,Men Make Choices: The Invisibility of Men and Boys in the Global Sex Trade

The invisibility of men and boys in scholarly discussions of the global sex trade was analyzed through a sample of 166 recent articles published in social science journals. Most failed to acknowledge the existence of male sex workers at all. When male sex workers were discussed, they were assigned considerably more agency than female sex workers, the chief danger ascribed to them was HIV rather than violence, and the question of their sexual orientation was always addressed, whereas female sex workers were always assumed heterosexual. The results are discussed in the context of world system theory, Orientalism, and heteronormativity.     

PAUSES: EXPLORATIONS IN SOCIAL RHYTHM

Despite the ubiquity of pauses in the personal and social fabric of everyday life, sociological analysis of this phenomenon has been limited in both scope and concern. In this article it is argued that pausing should not be relegated to the status of a residual category nor should pauses merely be conceptualized as breaks in action or periods of inactivity. Rather, it is suggested that pauses are an essential element of the social rhythm that demonstrates degrees of personal and community well-being and vitality. As well, pausing may be an important, perhaps even necessary, part of the process of commitment and self-esteem. A typology of pauses is offered and the implications of pausing in establishing the rhythm of human behavior are discussed.     

ANALYSIS OF DOUBLY CENSORED DATA AND THE HIV INCUBATION PERIOD DISTRIBUTION IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

The paper analyses the distribution of times from HIV seroconversion to the first AIDS defining illness for a subcohort of the Western Australian HIV Cohort Study for whom the seroconversion date is known to fall within a calendar time window. The analysis is based on a generalised gamma model for the incubation times and a piecewise constant distribution for the conditional times of seroconversion given the seroconversion windows. This allows flexible hazard shapes and also allows comparison of goodness of fit of the gamma and Weibull distributions which are often used for modelling incubation times. Computational issues are discussed. In these data, neither age at seroconversion, nor calendar time of seroconversion, nor the identification of a seroconversion illness appears to afFect incubation distributions. The Weibull distribution appears to provide a reasonable fit. The distribution of times from seroconversion to an HIV-related death is also briefly considered.     

The Stress Role: A Conceptual Development

The concept of the stress role (a temporary role assumed by actors experiencing unusual or critical stress) is developed in this paper. It is hypothesized that the stress role is a patterned, regularly occurring set of rights, obligations, and expectations which accords special latitude to stressed actors, specifies appropriate behavior toward the stressed, and releases the actors from culpability for atypical role performances during the stressful period. The stress role and similar disabling, adjective-type roles are proposed as examples of "role riders." This paper identifies the stress role norms and outlines the process by which one acquires, occupies, and relinquishes the role. The legitimacy of assuming the stress role is addressed and the timetables, or containment norms, of the stress role are developed. Finally, the functions of the stress role for the actor and for society are discussed. The propositions and concepts introduced here are based on data from in-depth interviews with a random sample of reentry university women, as well as from the growing body of stress and social-support research.     

Dependent masking and system life data analysis: Bayesian inference for two-component systems

Data from field operations of a system is often used to estimate the reliability of components. Under ideal circumstances, this system field data contains the time to failure along with information on the exact component responsible for the system failure. However, in many cases, the exact component causing the failure of the system cannot be identified, and is considered to be masked. Previously developed models for estimation of component reliability from masked system life data have been based upon the assumption that masking occurs independently of the true cause of system failure. In this paper we develop a Bayesian methodology for estimating component reliabilities from masked system life data when the probability of masking is dependent upon the true cause of system failure. The Bayesian approach is illustrated for the case of a two-component system of exponentially distributed components.