CHANGING FAMILIES/CHANGING COMMUNITIES

Scholars writing about community in recent years have been more likely to lament its passing than celebrate its exemplars. What's missing in this recent revival of interest in community is a systematic link with work–family issues and, in particular, an explicit recognition that women's and men's work–family lives have changed dramatically in the post-World War II era. We investigate the consequences of structural shifts in our family and work lives for a sample of elite, managerial women in dual-earner marriages, a population for whom work and family concerns are both immediate and salient. Understanding changing definitions of, and trends in, family and work can provide a useful lens through which we can profitably address recent debates about the decline or resurgence of community and civic society. Our findings suggest that, although conceived differently than in previous decades, family remains central to our respondents’ sense of community and structures their civic engagement. In contrast with previous generations of women, however, work is also important, for defining women's sense of self and community and for offering an alternative venue for community service.     

IMMIGRANTS AND ETHNICS:

Immigration is both an historical and contemporary phenomenon in the United States. As a result, various ancestral generations coexist. For example, third generation Polish American ethnics share social space with recent Polish immigrants in Chicago. While common ancestry leads immigrants and ethnics to think they ought to work together, dissimilarities between the groups lead to conflict. Two sources of conflict are identified. First, disparate cultural identities emerge because immigrant culture is embedded in the homeland, while ethnic culture is constructed over generations in the context of the host country. Second, immigrants and ethincs have different needs: the newcomers need to learn the culture of the host society, the established ethnics need to maintain an attachment to the culture of the home country. The findings suggest that ancestry does not always function as a basis for solidarity between immigrant and ethnic populations.     

Perceiving Age Discrimination in Response to Intergenerational Inequity

Young ( N = 57), middle-aged ( N = 57), and older adults ( N = 47) were presented with an editorial that argued in favor of their age group's economic interests (e.g., their privilege was fair; their disadvantage was unfair) or against their age group's economic interests (e.g., their privilege was unfair; their disadvantage was fair). Participants completed measures of perceived age discrimination, attributions for outcomes, and support for age-based spending. Unfavorable intergenerational comparisons elicited higher perceived age discrimination in middle-aged adults, and more support among all age groups for funding to middle-aged adults compared to favorable comparisons. Young and older adults reported more age discrimination than middle-aged adults regardless of comparison type. Age group status consequences for responses to the intergenerational conflict debate are discussed.     

A theory of age exclusion through closure: ‘Chronological age’ to ‘clinical need’

In an approach, I term ‘age exclusion through closure,’ I describe the exclusion of older people, from the workforce, and from hospital-based continuing care in Britain. Nineteenth century socioeconomic changes—the introduction of workplace technology, social surveys, the New Poor Law, and workhouse isolation, culminated in workforce exclusion on the grounds of chronological age. In the 20th century, the Poor Law ‘therapy’/‘succour’ divide, was recast in the Welfare State ‘health’/‘social care’ divide. Socioeconomic changes—the rising cost of health care, demographic change, the development of geriatric medicine, and economic restructuring, have served to allocatively ration ‘continuing care’ at this interface through the criteria of ‘clinical need.’ To conclude, age has become forged to clinical need, to become a formidable force of exclusion and exploitation perpetuating Poor Law closure between those ‘able’ and ‘unable’ to work, and creating a consequent ‘process of subordination’ within Welfare State capitalism.     

Training teachers to safeguard children: developing a consistent approach

Earlier work on the preparation of student teachers to deal with child protection concerns had indicated that initial teacher training (ITT) providers were often struggling to determine what to include on the subject and who should provide the input, as well as coping with the difficulty of trying to fit it into an overfull curriculum. In an attempt to support this work, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) developed a course for this group of students. Although an evaluation indicated the need for the materials to be redrafted, the views of both those involved in the exercise and a subsequent survey of ITT providers not only contributed to the redraft but also to the debate around the most effective approach to training professionals to protect children and young people. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Empowering Patients Through Access to Information

The United States federal government is in the midst of an e- government revolution characterized by a shift from paper-based citizen-government interactions to electronic-based interactions. Driven by the demands of citizens and supported by the President and Congress, federal departments are redesigning the look and feel of their Internet presences, moving away from traditional bureaucracy- centred presentation of information to more usable citizen-centred presentations. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the USA's principal federal agency tasked with protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services, has undertaken a massive reorganization of its e-health enterprise. The most publicly visible component of this reorganization is the hhs.gov portal website. This desperately needed portal - usability testing indicated that more than 60 per cent of visitors to the Department's original website failed to find the information they sought - provides easy access to the wealth of HHS information and links its diverse operating agencies. The new HHS portal simplifies citizen access to the Department by: decompartmentalizing information by removing content from bureaucratic silos² and rearranging it in a natural navigation scheme; tuning content and navigation features to ensure that all users have access to information tailored for them; presenting content in appropriate and citizen-preferred formats; and complying with federal accessibility regulations for blind and vision-impaired users. This paper presents a series of lessons learned during the development of the HHS portal, and results of usability testing to determine what common design features present accessibility problems particular to the blind and vision-impaired communities. These discussions of practical avenues to improving the accessibility and usability of e-health websites through appropriate and effective information designs are followed by our thoughts on the future of Internet architectures and the limitations of 'layering' technologies when striving for universal accessibility.     

PARENTS,PEERS, PERCEIVED PRESSURE,AND ADOLESCENT SELF-CONCEPT: IS A DAUGHTER A DAUGHTER ALL OF HER LIFE?

Data collected in 1981 from 316 high-SES junior and senior high students suggest support for traditional perspectives regarding sex-differentiated self-esteem. While a significant proportion of the variance in self-esteem level is predicted by perceived approval and support from family for both girls and boys in junior high school, high school females and males drawn from the same community differ substantially. Cues of family approval continue to predict a large proportion of the variance in high school girls' self-concept, but are no longer significant for high school boys. Acceptance by friends is an important element for males at all school levels, and accounts for a small but significant proportion of the variance in high school but not junior high school girls' self-esteem scores. Daughters may not "be daughters' all of their lives, but our data suggest that young females still going to school and living at home are much more dependent on family approval and support than are young males in the same situation.     

Applying Social Cognitive Career Theory to Training Career Counselors

This article applies the social cognitive career theory formulated by Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994) to training career counselors. Specifically, the authors propose extending the theory to understand and influence trainees' interest, engagement, and performance in career counseling. An initial offering of an advanced career counseling seminar is described as an example of an intervention designed to increase interest and involvement in career counseling and to improve performance among career counselors. Suggestions are made for future research and for training students to be interested, involved, and skilled in providing career counseling.