“I would do it again”: Past and present experiences of older lesbians

ABSTRACT

Few studies have asked older lesbians to reflect on the primary experiences of their life. The following provides the responses of a nationally representative sample of 221 lesbians over the age of 55 to an open-ended question on anything they wanted to share. Through triangulated data analysis, resulting themes include the importance of the Women’s Movement, coming out, as well as the role of discrimination. Underlying each of these were the importance of social connection and for some the increasing experience of disconnection. Implications for gerontology practice, policy, and future research are included.     

Public Participation: Moving Beyond the Four Walls of Therapy

Family therapists have an ethical responsibility for public participation, to work toward creating a better society. Serving the public interest and developing laws to promote the profession and the public good can be achieved through policy advocacy and political participation. Political and policy work are important but overlooked aspects of family therapy, which is significant given the consequences differing policies have for clients and the profession. This paper reports on results from a random, national survey of licensed family therapists’ (N = 174) advocacy actions. Findings indicate family therapists have overarching policy concerns yet lack proactive legislative and activist engagement. The exploration of therapists’ actions and beliefs presented in this paper, serves as a springboard for therapists’ movement into the public arena. Video abstract accessible by clicking here .     

Difficult Conversations in a School of Social Work: Exploring Student and Faculty Perceptions

Difficult conversations about isms, power, privilege, and oppression are an essential part of social work education, and they present unique challenges for students and faculty. The current study examined students’ and faculty’s perceptions of the safety of the classroom and the competence of the faculty in facilitating difficult conversations at a graduate school of social work in New York City. Student and faculty versions of a survey were distributed to both groups. Results indicated students rated the experience of having difficult conversations at the school significantly more negatively than the faculty did. The majority of respondents expressed the need for courses and training to be more fluent in having difficult conversations. Future directions are discussed based on the findings.     

Masculinity,Money, and the Postponement of Parenthood in Nigeria

In southeastern Nigeria, several interconnected processes of social change are combining to delay parenthood. Most of the demographic and social sciences literature examining the postponement of parenthood has paid primary attention to women. To address this gap, this article foregrounds the changing social landscape of masculinity as a significant context within which to situate these demographic changes. At the core of Nigerian men's perceptions, decisions, and behaviors with regard to delaying fatherhood is a fundamental contradiction, one that seems to be common in many settings—at least many African settings—of contemporary demographic transition. The contradiction is that while the postponement of parenthood is associated historically with positive social and economic indicators, when Nigerian men articulate their rationales for delaying fatherhood (and marriage) they commonly describe feelings of uncertainty connected to a sense of struggle and deprivation. This article connects men's anxieties about—and delays embarking on—marriage and parenthood to their experiences of economic uncertainty, and specifically to the perceived need for money as the foundation for successful reproduction.     

Public Service Quality Improvements: A Case for Exemption from IRB Review of Public Administration Research

Should the exemption from Institutional Review Board (IRB) evaluations currently in place for quality improvements research be extended to public administration research that addresses questions of improving the quality of public service delivery? As a means to both reduce the level of disdain held by a group of social science researchers for IRBs and to reduce the cost of review for minimal risk studies, I argue here that much of the current public administration research should also be exempted from normal processes of review by IRBs on the basis of their similarity to Quality Improvements (QI) research, a category of studies already granted exemption. This argument dovetails provisions currently in place for studies of public service and public benefit, but reframes these exemptions in the language of “quality improvements,” which may be a more comfortable language for IRBs concerned to demonstrate compliance for review of all fields. To expedite this argument into the practices of IRBs, I included a checklist that researchers could use to self-identify their studies as QI, not research as such.     

Happiness Vs Contentment? A Case for a Sociology of the Good Life

Despite the enormous growth in happiness research in recent decades, there remains a lack of consistency in the use of the terms happiness, satisfaction, contentment and well‐being. In this article I argue for a sociologically grounded distinction between happiness and contentment that defines the former as positive affect and the latter as positive reflection. Contentment is therefore understood as a fulfilling relationship with the self and society (to borrow from G.H. Mead's terminology) and happiness involves pleasurable experiences. There is a history of similar distinctions in philosophy and psychoanalysis, but much of the contemporary discourse fails to distinguish between individual and collective definitions of happiness. This article will argue that happiness and contentment ought not to be treated as competing approaches to the good life, but as complimentary forms of emotional experience. Further, I argue that the current interest in happiness can be linked to larger culture shifts involving neoliberalism and individualism.     

Establishing auditory-tactile-visual equivalence classes in children with autism and developmental delays

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - The current study sought to evaluate the efficacy of a stimulus equivalence training procedure in establishing auditory–tactile–visual stimulus classes...     

The Role of Openness to Experience and Sexual Identity Formation in LGB Individuals: Implications for Mental Health

Openness to experience has been shown to have a positive impact on mental health in the general population, but there is a dearth of information both about why this is the case and on LGB populations in this area. The present article explores the relationship between openness to experience, LGB identity development, and mental health. The results revealed a full mediation model, where the positive impact of openness to experience on mental health is fully mediated by positive LGB identity development. Limitations and implications are discussed.     

Quality of Family Life and Mortality in Seventeenth Century Dublin

Inquiry into the quality of family life in seventeenth century Dublin is an attempt to understand conditions in the second largest city in the British Isles; further, the era was one of convulsions in the body politic, social, and religious. The Scottish James I and VI (1556 1625) determined that the Irish province closest to Scotland, Ulster, would be settled = `planted” by Presbyterians. The process was undertaken at the expense of Ulster’s tradition bound, gaelic population. Decades later, that policy of deliberate alienation led to the uprising in 1641 led by Sir Phelim O’ Neill. A decade of violence was summated in an outbreak of bubonic plague from baleful Nature, and by the violent, swift campaign of Oliver Cromwell in 1649. Thirty years later, the Glorious Revolution of 1688, confirmed by the defeat of James II at the Boyne, consolidated power in Ireland in the hands of the Protestant ascendancy. Quality of life in the several decades of turmoil was destroyed for many, but Dublin was spared the physical destruction experienced at Drogheda to the north; Dublin’s deliverance was the work of Colonel Michael Jones and his victory at nearby Rathmines. Subsequently, Dublin’s households flourished in the several parishes; in some piped water was available, but mortality was always high.