The relative stability of cohabiting and marital unions for children

Children are increasingly born into cohabiting parent families, but we know little to date about the implications of this family pattern for children's lives. We examine whether children born into premarital cohabitation and first marriages experience similar rates of parental disruption, and whether marriage among cohabiting parents enhances union stability. These issues are important because past research has linked instability in family structure with lower levels of child well-being. Drawing on the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth, we find that white, black and Hispanic children born to cohabiting parents experience greater levels of instability than children born to married parents. Moreover, black and Hispanic children whose cohabiting parents marry do not experience the same levels of family stability as those born to married parents; among white children, however, the marriage of cohabiting parents raises levels of family stability to that experienced by children born in marriage. The findings from this paper contribute to the debate about the benefits of marriage for children.     

微博时代的群体动员机制及管理对策

微博成为重要的群体动员工具和平台之后,群体动员成本逐渐呈现出趋零化趋势,文章以“随手拍解救乞讨儿童”为案例,分析了微博群体动员的五个阶段,从动员主体、客体、动员方式和动员机制等几个方面重点分析了微博群体动员的特点和危害,在此基础上提出了应对微博时代群体动员的管理对策和建议。     

White historical activity theory: toward a critical understanding of white zones of proximal development

Best known for arguing that individual development is part of social and historical development Vygotsky’s entry into education may be captured by his concept of the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD). ZPD has not yet been synthesized with a critical study of whiteness. When ZPD is used to explain racial disparities in the service of inclusion, it is usually connected with the lives of people of color. This leaves out a critical understanding of racially dominant experiences, or whiteness. This article argues that a progressive union between Vygotsky and the field of race studies generally, Whiteness Studies specifically, benefits educators insofar as the concept of ZPD is applied to the particular ideological development of white identity. Likewise, Whiteness Studies gains an explanatory framework to account for the cognitive development of the dominant racial group, in short, a learning theory of whiteness. A Whiteness Studies intervention within Vygotskian theory pushes the limits of developmental theory when it analyzes the contours of a white ZPD. When racialized to consider whiteness, certain terms and concepts, such as Vygotsky’s genotypic and phenotypic analyses, take on a different significance, even different meanings. As a racially sensitive framework, particularly within a US-based understanding, Vygotskian theory is limited without critical attention to the development of white identity and whiteness as an ideology. By focusing on this nexus, Vygotskian theory fulfills part of its historical mission as a concrete study of cultural relations.     

Worry and rumination: Explanatory roles in the relation between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms among college students with pain

Objective: Pain affects a significant proportion of college students in the United States and has been linked to anxiety and depressive symptoms. Rumination and worry, two transdiagnostic factors linked to comorbidity, may explain the relationship between pain and mental health symptoms.

Current Study: The current study examined worry and rumination as explanatory factors in the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms in a sample of college students with pain (n?=?1,577; 79.9% female).

Results: Results indicated that both rumination and worry explained the relationship between pain and depressive and social anxiety symptoms, while rumination alone explained the relationship between pain and anxious arousal symptoms.

Conclusion: The current study provides novel empirical evidence that worry and rumination each help explain the relationship between pain and anxiety and depressive symptoms among college students with current pain, and college students in pain may benefit from targeted psychosocial strategies aimed at decreasing worry and ruminative responses.     

Gender and the Stability of Same-Sex and Different-Sex Relationships Among Young Adults

Most research on the stability of adult relationships has focused on coresidential (cohabiting or married) unions and estimates rates of dissolution for the period of coresidence. Studies examining how the stability of coresidential unions differs by sex composition have typically found that same-sex female couples have higher rates of dissolution than same-sex male couples and different-sex couples. We argue that the more elevated rates of dissolution for same-sex female couples are a by-product of the focus on coresidential unions. We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to compare rates of dissolution based on the total duration of romantic and sexual relationships for same-sex male couples, same-sex female couples, and different-sex couples. Results from hazard models that track the stability of young adult relationships from the time they are formed demonstrate that male couples have substantially higher dissolution rates than female couples and different-sex couples. Results based on models restricted to the period of coresidence corroborate the counterintuitive finding from earlier studies that female couples have the highest rates of dissolving coresidential unions. This study underlines the importance of comparisons between these couple types for a better understanding of the role that institutions and gender play in the stability of contemporary relationships.     

Parenting and Adolescents' Sexual Initiation

This study draws on social control and social learning theories to examine the role of dating‐specific attitudes and practices as predictors of adolescents' sexual initiation. We include attention to the adolescent's reaction to control attempts as a further means of assessing family dynamics (i.e., frequency of dating disagreements). The study uses longitudinal data from 697 adolescents who were not sexually active at the first interview as well as separate interviews with parents. In models that include all parenting variables, parental caring, parents' preferences that the child should delay sex, and the frequency of dating disagreements were significant predictors of initiation of teen sexual activity.     

Linking bird species traits to vegetation characteristics in a future urban development zone: implications for urban planning

Identifying the relationships between species traits and patch-scale vegetation characteristics in areas designated for urban development can improve our understanding of how animal communities may change with urbanization. We explored the implications of this premise to the urban planning process in a mixed-use landscape in Canberra (Australia), prior to its development into new suburbs. We used RLQ analysis to relate bird foraging, nesting and body size traits to patch-scale vegetation characteristics. Relationships between species traits and vegetation characteristics within the development zone suggest that species that forage and nest on the ground and in the understory strata, and smaller-bodied species will be most negatively affected by urbanization. Identifying the relationships between species traits and vegetation characteristics may be used by urban planners to (i) identify potentially critical habitat and species at risk from development, (ii) inform the choice of impact mitigation measures, and/or (iii) distinguish between high and low mitigation measures. Analyses conducted early in the planning process can then be used to allocate proposed land uses in an ecologically sensitive way, and to plan appropriate mitigation measures.