Victim of and witness to violence: an interactional perspective on mothers' perceptions of children exposed to intimate partner violence

This article reports a study of how mothers perceive the effects of intimate partner violence (IPV) during pregnancy and children's exposure to IPV: (a) Do interactional aspects of IPV have a negative impact on the fetus during pregnancy or on the newborn baby? and (b) Is there a relationship between interactional aspects of IPV and (a) children's risk of being exposed to IPV and (b) the age of the child when at risk for exposure to IPV? A representative sample of 137 IPV help-seeking mothers in Norway was interviewed. Severity of physical IPV and injury from sexual IPV increased the risk of consequences to the fetus. Frequency of physical and psychological IPV increased the likelihood of children's exposure. Duration of the partnership increased the risk of children's exposure to physical and sexual IPV. Finally, there was a negative linear association between children's age when exposed for the first time and frequency of physical and psychological IPV.     

The impact of organizational culture on men's use of parental leave in Sweden

This article examines the impact of organizational culture on men's usage of parental leave in Sweden, a society that promotes men's sharing of childcare. Results from a mail survey of 317 fathers in six companies suggest that men's use of parental leave is significantly affected by organizational culture, including the company's commitment to caring values, the company's level of 'father friendliness', the company's support for women's equal employment opportunity, fathers' perceptions of support from top managers, and fathers' perceptions of work group norms that reward task performance vs. long hours at work. These effects were independent of the influence of individual- and family-level attributes previously acknowledged to affect men's participation in early childcare. While findings support the social constructionist perspective on gender arrangements, men's advocacy of shared parenting and perception of partners' advocacy of shared leave remained strong independent correlates of leavetaking. Fathers can become agents of change within organizations, as they become more supportive of equal parenthood and as they gain rights to longer periods of parental leave that do not need to be negotiated with mothers. Éste articulo evalúa el impacto de la cultura de organizaciones sobre el uso de la baja por paternidad en Suecia, una sociedad que promueve la involucracion de los hombres en el cuidado de niños. Los resultados de una encuesta por correo de 317 padres de familia en seis empresas sugieren que el uso de la baja por paternidad está afectado por la cultura de la organización, incluido la obligación de la empresa en cuanto a valores humanitarios, el nivel de apoyo a los padres (father friendliness), el apoyo por la igualdad de oportunidades por el empleo de mujeres, las percepciones por parte de los padres del nivel de apoyo desde la gerencia alta, y las percepciones por padres de normas de labores de equipo que recompensan el rendimiento de tareas vs. horas largas de trabajo. Estos efectos eran independientes de la influencia de atributos de individuos y familias que anteriormente han sido reconocido por influir la participación de los hombres en el cuidado de niños pequeños. Mientras los resultados apoyan la perspectiva del construccionismo social, el apoyo de los hombres a la participación conjunta en el cuidado de los niños, y sus percepciones de la medida del apoyo por parte de sus parejas acerca del compartir la baja por paternidad/maternidad quedaron en correlación fuerte con la medida de la baja por paternidad. Los padres pueden hacerse agentes de cambio dentro de las organizaciones, mientras apoyan cada vez más la paternidad/maternidad igual y mientras ganan derechos de periodos de permiso mas largos que no tienen que negociarse con las madres.     

Infant Emotionality: Observational Methods and the Validity of Maternal Reports

This study was designed to improve the observational measurement of emotionality, and to test factors that influence the validity of maternal reports. More than 150 infants were visited at home with their mothers, two thirds of whom were depressed. These visits yielded 4 different observational measures of positive and negative emotionality at both 6 and 9 months. These were standard assessments (based on LabTab), naturalistic interactions, atypical reactions to the standard assessments, and the still‐face procedure. Atypical reactions were consistently related to traditional measures of emotionality. Responses to the still‐face procedure also generally cohered with the other measures. Aggregation improved agreement between mothers and observers. Depressed mothers' reports of negative emotionality were less accurate at 6 months than those of nondepressed mothers. Parenting experience appeared to be associated with greater maternal accuracy. Taken together the findings provide some support for both sides of the controversy surrounding the validity of maternal reports.     

Children's Influence on Internet Access at Home: Adoption and use in the family context

In this study, an integrated quantitative and qualitative research design was employed. From over 900 telephone interviews a typology of family types based on possession of media appliances was constructed, then divided into 'traditional' (low media density), 'intermediate' (average media density) and 'multimedia' (high media density) families. This typology was then used as a basis for selecting thirty-eight families for in-depth interviews. Of these, thirty-one contained children and it is these that form the basis for this article. The results of the family interviews indicate that children are a very important factor in the acquisition and use of the Internet. It was apparent from our interviews that Internet access and use become major issues in family discussions and conflicts - both between parents and children and between siblings.     

Expatriation: Entsendung ohne Wiederkehr?

The paper follows the process of expatriation from the application until the return from a foreign assignment. Phases of expatriation are shown and interpreted. The investment into intercultural trainings will be related to their benefit. Finally some hypotheses will summarize at the end the mingle of intercultural paradoxes, organizational dilemmas and emotional roller-coaster.Considering group dynamic aspects, sending employees abroad shows some interesting aspects: the interplay of disintegration, integration, reintegration, the loss of affiliation and membership as well as gaining new belongings, and finally and always, the loss of one sole cultural identity. Furthermore group dynamic experiences enable people to cope with emotional and structural uncertainties, staying socially agile in the intercultural situation, where the context of communication and cooperation has yet to be created and developed by the people involved.     

Diagnosis of cardiovascular disease in women

Cardiovascular disease (CVD, comprising coronary heart disease and stroke) is the leading cause of death in both sexes in developed countries. Although women are nine times more likely to die from CVD than they are from breast cancer, there is a general public belief that the most common cause of death is cancer. The symptoms of acute myocardial infarction and acute coronary syndromes differ between the sexes. Women are less likely to experience chest pain and may have non-specific symptoms. Normal or non-obstructive coronary disease, as detected by angiography, is more common in women. Scintigraphy improves the detection of coronary disease in women. There is an urgent need to increase awareness of both coronary heart disease in women and the limitations of commonly used diagnostic tools.     

Children's Intent Participation in a Pediatric Community of Practice

This study analyzes informal learning, drawing on video recordings of staff-child interaction in a pediatric unit. It is shown that even very young patients engage in intent community participation, carefully noting fine variations in examination and treatment practices. They orient to everyday routines in successively more complex ways, gradually acquiring novel repertoires of practices; advancing from nonverbal uptake to an active use of medical terminology, and to actively assisting staff members. Ultimately, the children themselves assume almost full responsibility for routine procedures. The unit had adopted partnership-oriented routines, and the doctors and nurses spent much time in securing the children's consent and participation in their own treatment. In contrast to much earlier work in pediatric settings which has shown children to be marginal participants; even the youngest patients were engaged, and they successively acquired a set of novel practices related to treatment procedures. Together with doctors and nurses, the children could be seen to form a community of practice. But community is not something fixed; instead it is seen as an emergent phenomenon, dependent on staff members' and children's mutual alignments and collaborative action. Learning is thus analyzed as a social and relational phenomenon.     

Underwriting slavery: insurance and slavery in the Dutch Republic (1718–1778)

This article shows that slavery was more connected to Dutch society and economy than has been previously assumed. It does so by investigating the people involved in Dutch slavery insurance in the period 1718–1734, when the Dutch slave trade was monopolized by the state-chartered West India Company (WIC) and the period 1763–1778, when the private slave trade reached its peak and slavery insurance was more common. This article analyzes a variety of primary sources that have not been studied in this light before. The analysis shows that a large and varied group was involved and that slavery insurance was not a regional institution that only affected the Dutch colonies.     

The Discursive Construction of Women Politicians in the European Press

The appointment of the first majority female government in Spain generated a significant amount of coverage in newspapers across Europe, synthesising the multi-faceted debate about the relationship between gender and political leadership. Through the combination of qualitative thematic and quantitative content analysis, this article examines the construction of women politicians across different European nations. By analysing the coverage of the issue in the main newspapers of four European countries (France, Italy, Spain and the UK) in the two weeks after the new Spanish cabinet was appointed, this article explores the values and ideal roles the media assign to female politicians. The article is based on the premise that mediated representations of female politicians can tell us important things about the relations between gender, power and politics. Such representations embody a set of assumptions about how successful women should look, behave and speak, and thus implicitly express judgments on models of femininity. Ultimately, such representations construct heroines and villains that inform our conceptions of women's political participation, thereby encouraging some forms of gendered political discourse and discouraging others. Our research found that while certain discourses celebrate women ministers for their (symbolic) emancipatory value, others judge them by their physical appearance or their performance as wives, mothers, and mothers-to-be.     

Comfortable and leisurely: Old women on style and dress

Abstract

This article uses wardrobe interviews with women in the ages of 62–94 to explore transitions and continuities during the life course. During interviews the women have defined their style preferences. One categorization favored by several of them was comfortable. Different meanings were attached to this concept. Practical and convenient outfits were described as increasingly important when aging. Garments that did not expose the body—and its changes with aging—were preferred. The informants talked about the importance of feeling at ease, appropriately dressed for the occasion and situation. They were concerned with feeling nice in their outfits but also stressed becoming more laid-back and prioritizing convenience in their later years. All of these examples had to do with comfort and being comfortable. Uncomfortable clothes were too tight, deemed wrong for the occasion, and unwanted sources of self-consciousness and visibility. Transitions in their style of dress had been gradual, slowly adapting to changes in everyday life as well as in their bodies.