RUNAWAYS: JURISDICTION, DYNAMICS, AND TREATMENT

New research indicates more clearly than ever that running away from home is indeed a family affair. Understood as such, the implications for society's jurisdictional response and for effective treatment planning are deep and far-reaching. The "status offender" legal jurisdiction over runaways needs to be changed and new alternatives for dealing with runaways and their families developed. The planning and implementation of these alternatives need to be informed with the perspectives of a family therapeutic approach sensitive to the intergenerational forces of loyalty, legacy, and trust operating within families.     

The right paperwork for the right audiences

Physician executives need to exercise considerable discretion, care, and judgment when they write about their professional accomplishments in the form of a résumé or curriculum vitae (CV). This paperwork is intensely personal. It must be a true reflection of you, your achievements and goals. Others read it to learn more about you. Those you fail to convince, you're likely to lose--along with your chance to meet and charm them in a personal interview. A physician executive's thoughtfully prepared résumé and CV can result in him or her being offered terrific opportunities for career growth. The paperwork is a self-constructed gateway through which you can properly approach hiring organizations--and how it reads is totally under your control. Some suggestions to consider in developing your résumé or CV are: be succinct; don't overstate; use both documents; do your homework; and be ready for the next steps.     

Recent Trends in the Timing of First Births in the United States

We use vital registration data published since 1979 to update trends in the timing of first births. Two important trends are documented. First, the likelihood that childless women over age 30 will have a first birth has increased since the 1970s. This change shows that women born in the 1950s are "catching up" on fertility postponed at younger ages. Second, racial differences in the timing of first births are very large. For those born in the 1950s, nonwhites have first births much earlier, and far fewer nonwhite than white women will remain permanently childless. In the second part of the paper, we use these data for recent years to assess earlier projections of childlessness based on cohort and period approaches. We also assess the accuracy of stated intentions to have no children.     

Public perceptions of the ideal number of children for contemporary families

Demographic and family dynamics have been influenced by the recent downturn in average family size. This research examines perceptions of the ideal size for contemporary families and beliefs regarding factors which have contributed to families' decisions to have fewer children. Findings reveal that the two child family is the overwhelming standard chosen by respondents, and that this preference holds for virtually all demographic categories. Three of five reasons offered for smaller families today (expense of children, wives working and better birth control) were viewed as important by over 85% of those sampled.A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Southern Demographic Group, Austin, Texas, October, 1985. Support for computer analyses was provided by the Office of Computer and Information Services, University of Maryland Baltimore County.     

Household structure and the tempo of family formation in comparative perspective

Summary Previous research on the relationship between extended family residence and fertility has produced conflicting findings. In the present paper, we avoid a major shortcoming of past work by focusing on residence and fertility at a given stage of the life-cycle, i.e. the stage following first marriage. Results show that residence with husband's parents reduces age at marriage. Residence with wife's parents shows no such consistent effect. No evidence was found to support the claim that extended family residence consistently affects the length of the interval between marriage and the first birth. These findings are consistent across four cultural/ethnic groups.     

A note on the time spent on the journey to work

The notions that most people travel to the center of the city to work and that the farther out they live the longer it takes are only appropriate for middle-sized cities. In larger urban areas, many people work outside the center, and it is the speed of travel which most affects the time that it takes to get to work. As a result, those who live in the central cities of the twelve largest metropolitan areas spend the longest time getting to work and back, because the closer one is to the center and the larger the urban area, the slower the travel speeds.     

Brave New Worlds: Philosophy,Politics, and Science in Human Biotechnology

Advances in biotechnology have important applications to the core demographic concerns of human reproduction and longevity, raising a number of difficult ethical issues. In the debate over those issues, however, the voices of demographers and other social scientists are nearly silent. In the United States the dominant bioethical arguments currently heard come from a conservative political and ideological position, represented, for example, by the President's Council on Bioethics and in particular by its chairman, Leon Kass. A critical discussion of Kass's writings identifies the philosophical roots of that position and highlights its logic and limits. Kass's specific arguments on cloning can be challenged by applying them to an earlier and revolutionary technology, birth control; his views on death and dying would argue for curtailing investment in life‐extending technology. Conservatism of this kind ignores social science perspectives and forecloses opportunities for social change.