Family Structure Transitions and Maternal Parenting Stress

Data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,176) are used to examine family structure transitions and maternal parenting stress. Using multilevel modeling, we found that mothers who exit coresidential relationships with biological fathers or enter coresidential relationships with nonbiological fathers reported higher levels of parenting stress than mothers in stable coresidential relationships. Mothers who enter coresidential relationships with biological fathers reported lower levels of parenting stress than mothers who remain single. Mothers' resources, especially their relationships with biological fathers, accounted for most of the associations between transitions and parenting stress, with posttransition resources being more important than pretransition resources. Mothers with high levels of education were less affected by transitions than mothers with less education.     

Discussion of Paper by Warman and Rousseau

The story of trauma, in contemporary culture, has shifted, from one of painful, formative experience, to one of injustice and the imperative to rectify an untoward event. Journalists, politicians, and memoirists have become adept at making a narrative of trauma, at finding the story that focuses away from the experience of the wounds to the injustice of having been wounded. As a result, people tend to seek stories of suffering that have a beginning, middle, and, most important, an end, rather than stories of suffering that are not dramatic, that are not moral, but that have a lasting impact. People coming for therapy or analysis, too, look for the dramatic explanation for their suffering, to be the hero in their own narrative. And those of us who treat the sufferers too often protect ourselves from the universality of pain by looking for the trauma story. In recent therapeutic culture, the trauma story has been of a formulaic kind, which is in keeping with our culturally preferred relationship to trauma.

In this article, I draw from two treatments to illustrate the power of our cultural trauma narrative and my own implication in it.     

Unlocking Diane Arbus

In these five short reviews, the photographic work of Diane Arbus is illuminated from different personal and professional perspectives, ranging from interpreting her photographs as a sort of theft—taking something away from the individuals she photographed—to an intense desire to partake in a world of human beings living on the edge of society. The question occupying all reviewers is how Arbus's personality and style allowed her to enter into the worlds of demimondes, nudist camps, and dominatrixes without necessarily exploiting the privileged position she earned to occupy vis-á-vis her subjects.     

Power in Dayton: A Replication of the Bonjean Technique in a Medium Size City

Abstract

In recent years, the relationship between personal bankruptcy and stigma has generated much discussion and speculation. However, virtually no research has examined the experiences of bankrupt debtors themselves. In this paper, we provide an analysis of bankruptcy stigma based on thirty-seven in-depth interviews with 19 married couples who filed for personal bankruptcy in 1999. The data demonstrate that stigma is a pervasive feature of contemporary personal bankruptcy and that bankrupt debtors rely upon a wide range of stigma management techniques employed by other stigmatized groups. We conclude by considering the implications of our findings for continued research on personal bankruptcy in the U.S. and for understanding, more broadly, the strategies and struggles for social agency among stressed and marginalized populations.     

Closing the Need-Service Gap: Gender Differences in Matching Services to Client Needs in Comprehensive Substance Abuse Treatment

Despite the broad recognition in social work that services are more effective when they are tailored to individual client needs, we have only limited evidence of the impact that services matched to client needs have on treatment outcomes. This study examines gender differences in the impact of matched services, access services, and outcome-targeted services on substance abuse treatment outcomes by using data collected from 1992 through 1997 for the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study, a prospective, cohort study of substance abuse treatment programs and clients. The analytic sample consists of 3,027 clients (1,105 women and 1,922 men) who reported needed services from 59 treatment facilities. Findings from the study indicate that overall programs have only limited success in targeting services to client needs, but when they do, receipt of substance abuse counseling and matched services predicts both remaining in treatment and reduced posttreatment substance use for both women and men, but especially for women.     

On selecting populations better than a control: weibull populations case

Consider k( k ≥ 1) independent Weibull populations and a control population which is also Weibull. The problem of identifying which of these k populations are better than the control using shape parameter as a criterion is considered. We allow the possibility of making at most m(0 ≤ m < k) incorrect identifications of better populations. This allowance results in significant savings in sample size. Procedures based on simple linear unbiased estimators of the reciprocal of the shape parameters of these populations are proposed. These procedures can be used for both complete and Type II-censored samples. A related problem of confidence intervals for the ratio of ordered shape parameters is also considered. Monte Carlo simulations as well as both chi-square and normal approximations to the solutions are obtained.     

Metropolitan deconcentration: Subareal inmigration and central city to ring moiillty patterns among southern SMSAs

The analysis of in-migration streams and subareal residential mobility patterns for moves made between 1965 and 1970in SMSAs in the East South Central and South Atlantic census divisions indicates that, despite their historical contexts, these metropolitan areas now show spatial differentiation patterns similar to those of the great cities of the Northeast. The white population has increased in ring areas primarily because of in-migration rates; the black population in the central cities has increased primarily because of in-migration rates to those subareas. Little variation in these patterns across SMSA size categories was apparent.     

Power,poets and the people: Mozambican voices interpreting history

This article analyses the relationship between the state and the nascent African trade unions in South Africa between 1918 and 1948. It shows how the government's attempts to deal with African workers separately from white workers became increasingly difficult during this period. Pressures from African unions themselves, from liberal groups and from the increasingly important role played by Africans in the economy, forced the state to seek a coherent way of handling African trade unions. The paper shows how the state was divided over this issue, with Native Affairs and Labour Department officials conflicting with each other and with government ministers. Although the cabinet held ultimate power within the state, civil servants played a significant role in shaping government policy and determining how it was implemented. The paper concludes that, although circumstances have changed greatly since 1948, the pre‐apartheid era has important lessons for state/organised labour relations in the post‐apartheid South Africa which is currently taking shape.     

In Search of Her Own Language Eva Hesse Show San Francisco Museum of Modern ARt

This article discusses the work of Eva Hesse, a young German minimalist artist who died in 1970 at the age of 34. Hesse left behind a complex assembly of art works known for their fragile and disintegrating beauty. Hesse's work resists to be understood in relationship to other works of art; instead her sculptures and paintings are viewed as attempts to find her own language through which she creates a pathway to her inner turmoil. Her work is understood not as a representation of her inner world but as a language through which she gains access to a previously foreclosed, somber world. Struggling at the edge of inside–outside and chaos–order, Hesse succeeds at drawing the spectator into questioning the most fundamental, pregiven realities of life.     

Gender differences in client–provider relationship as active ingredient in substance abuse treatment

The client–provider relationship is increasingly evaluated as an active ingredient in the delivery of substance abuse treatment services. This study examines gender differences in client–provider relationship as an important treatment ingredient affecting retention in treatment and reduced post-treatment substance use. The study uses data collected for the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES), a prospective, cohort study of U.S. substance abuse treatment programs and their clients. Data on individual characteristics were collected at the pre-treatment interview; on client–provider relationship and services received at treatment exit; and on post-treatment drug use at 12 months post-treatment. The analytic sample consists of 3027 clients from 59 service delivery units (1922 men and 1105 women). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to assess the structural relations and causal connections between relationship and service variables and treatment outcome variables. Results indicate that a positive client–provider relationship is related directly to longer duration and reduced post-treatment drug use for the total sample and for men analyzed separately. For women, a positive client–provider relationship was related directly to treatment duration and only indirectly to reduced post-treatment drug use. The findings point to the significance of including client–provider relationship in service delivery models – both as a therapeutic element as well as an element facilitative of matching services to specific client needs.