Mad, Bad, or Reasonable? Newspaper Portrayals of the Battered Woman Who Kills

A heated debate about battered women who kill abusive male partners started in the 1970s. In this study, we tracked the public discourse on battered women who kill by coding 250 newspaper articles published between 1978 and 2002. Using four typifying models, we found that leading explanations for why battered women kill medicalized then criminalized their actions; they were mad then bad. We also found that reporters used quotes from claims makers supporting conventional or medical typifications of battered women to a much greater degree than statements from alternative, feminist sources. In conclusion, simplified, sensational and conventional understandings of crime causation drove the social construction of “the battered woman who kills”. She may be mad or bad, but rarely has she been portrayed as reasonable. Suggestions for promoting feminist narrative in the media are also provided.     

Parenting as A “package deal”: Relationships,fertility, and nonresident father involvement among unmarried parents

Fatherhood has traditionally been viewed as part of a “package deal” in which a father’s relationship with his child is contingent on his relationship with the mother. We evaluate the accuracy of this hypothesis in light of the high rates of multiple-partner fertility among unmarried parents using the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a recent longitudinal survey ofnonmarital births in large cities. We examine whether unmarried mothers’ and fathers’ subsequent relationship and parenting transitions are associated with declines in fathers ’ contact with their nonresident biological children. We find that father involvement drops sharply after relationships between unmarried parents end. Mothers’ transitions into new romantic partnerships and new parenting roles are associated with larger declines in involvement than fathers’ transitions. Declines in fathers’ involvement following a mother’s relationship or parenting transition are largest when children are young. We discuss the implications of our results for the well-being ofnonmarital children and the quality of nonmarital relationships faced with high levels of relationship instability and multiple-partner fertiliy.     

Partnership practice: Responding to the challenge,realising the potential

This article explores some of the key components of training for partnership practice in social work. It presents an analysis of the forces working for and against partnership, and offers some ways forward from rhetoric to reality. The focus on practitioners' knowledge and skill development is assisted by exercises at key points in the text. The implications of training for organisations are also considered. Finally, partnership principles are seen to influence the training itself.     

QUEER TREASONS: HOMOSEXUALITY AND IRISH NATIONAL IDENTITY

Queer Treasons suggests how and why homosexuality has been placed outside the limited discourse of what constitutes ‘Irishness.’ I argue that, since the early part of the twentieth century, homosexuality has been represented as ‘foreign’ to nationalisms in Ireland, particularly when the borders of the nation are perceived to be under threat. I further suggest that the threat of homosexuals, as represented in Irish political discourse, points more generally toward an instability in the discourses of nation itself.     

Flourishing,Substance Use,and Engagement in Students Entering College: A Preliminary Study

Abstract

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify the health topics students received information about, how students obtained health-related information, and perceived believability of those sources. Participants and Methods: Students (N = 1202) were surveyed using the National College Health Assessment (NCHA) of the American College Health Association. Results: Nearly half (46%) of the sample reported not receiving any information, whereas only 0.5% received information on all health topics. The Internet was the most common source of health-related information, but, conversely, was perceived as the least believable source. Health center medical staff and university health educators were perceived to be the most believable sources. Conclusions: Future practice at the university setting should focus on delivering health information through believable messengers utilizing the most commonly reported sources of information. This may have implications towards how students shape their health-related social cognitions and subsequent behaviors.     

Peer Group Acceptance and Academic Performance Among Adolescents Participating in a Dropout Prevention Program

This investigation examines the relationship between peer group acceptance and academic performance among adolescents participating in a dropout prevention program. Three variables assessing school-related attitudes and behavior are identified as potential links between peer group acceptance and academic performance and the results are examined in the context of the gender and racial/ethnic group identification of adolescent respondents. Peer group acceptance is found to have an indirect rather than a direct influence on academic achievement. The behavior variable, avoidance of problem behavior, provides the strongest path of connection between peer group acceptance and academic performance. Implications of the findings for social work practice in the school setting are discussed.     

Bayesian inference for pairwise interacting point processes

Pairwise interacting point processes are commonly used to model spatial point patterns. To perform inference, the established frequentist methods can produce good point estimates when the interaction in the data is moderate, but some methods may produce severely biased estimates when the interaction in strong. Furthermore, because the sampling distributions of the estimates are unclear, interval estimates are typically obtained by parametric bootstrap methods. In the current setting however, the behavior of such estimates is not well understood. In this article we propose Bayesian methods for obtaining inferences in pairwise interacting point processes. The requisite application of Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques is complicated by an intractable function of the parameters in the likelihood. The acceptance probability in a Metropolis-Hastings algorithm involves the ratio of two likelihoods evaluated at differing parameter values. The intractable functions do not cancel, and hence an intractable ratio r must be estimated within each iteration of a Metropolis-Hastings sampler. We propose the use of importance sampling techniques within MCMC to address this problem. While r may be estimated by other methods, these, in general, are not readily applied in a Bayesian setting. We demonstrate the validity of our importance sampling approach with a small simulation study. Finally, we analyze the Swedish pine sapling dataset (Strand 1972) and contrast the results with those in the literature.     

Gender Bias in the Allocation of Curative Health Care in Minia,Egypt

Research indicates that girls' disadvantage in 1–4 mortality is unusually high inEgypt, yet the relevance of intra-family differences in power for the distributionof health resources is debated. This analysis compares effects of the involvementof various family members on choice of provider, place of care, and total expendituresfor curative care among 129 girls and boys with diarrhea in Minia, Egypt. Girlshave lower odds than boys of visiting doctors versus lay providers and privateversus informal facilities, and the involvement of fathers in prior discussionsabout care may be important to reduce this disparity. Median expenditures forcurative care also are lower for girls than boys, particularly when fathers arenever involved in choice of care. Future research should examine the extent towhich these disparities in care reflect differences in the quality of care received.     

Toward a scheduling congruity theory of family resource management

This article presents the elements of a theory to explain the dynamic construction and execution of production processes. The theory takes into account both the cognitive underpinnings and observable streams of purposive action necessary for managerial behavior. It attempts to explain both the consciously planned and executed action of individuals and the more routine, repetitive activities which dominate most resource allocation behavior. Further, it provides a framework within which goal directed actions of individuals may be translated into goal directed actions of groups of individuals.The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.Rosemary J. Avery is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Consumer Economics and Housing at Cornell University, 103 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 1988. Her research areas include family management and time use, family decision making, and family formation via adoption.Kathryn Stafford is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Resource Management at The Ohio State University, Campbell Hall, Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210. Her research focuses upon management by families who generate income at home, and she has also done work in the areas of family time use and household production. She received her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1978.     

The complexity of roles in community action projects: The example of the evaluation of ‘alternatives’

Evaluation of community interventions is a special form of evaluation involving many roles that are key to accomplishing both the intervention and the accompanying research. The present paper describes the roles involved in the evaluation of a community intervention (‘Alternatives’) aimed at safer use of alcohol and depressant medications by seniors.The three core roles were the community developer who provided leadership in the implementation of the project, the researcher/evaluator, and the community committee that sanctioned and facilitated the project. Other roles on the project included: the project coordinator, the nurse-interviewers who collected the survey data for the evaluation, volunteers from seniors groups, local health service providers, the media, the funders, and others on the project team who provided specific technical expertise.The paper describes the competing interests among these roles as well as conflicts that arose and how these conflicts were handled. Although specific roles are described, the types of roles and the potential for competing interests and conflict are generally relevant to community level evaluations.