Family and child characteristics linking neighborhood context and child externalizing behavior

Neighborhood conditions are related to children's externalizing behavior, although few processes that help explain this association have been identified. With data from 189 primarily low‐income Anglo and Mexican American families, we tested a stress process model that included 3 potential mediators of this relationship. The results showed that child stressful life events, association with deviant peers, and parent‐child conflict mediated the relationship between neighborhood context and child externalizing behavior when household income and maternal depression were controlled. The model explained more than 25% of the variance in externalizing behavior. Furthermore, differences in results for families with a U.S.‐born versus Mexico‐born mother showed that neighborhood influences on families and children may be quite complex.     

Hard-to-reach or out-of-reach? Reasons why women refuse to take part in early interventions

The aim of this study was to explore the reasons why vulnerable women refuse to take part in early interventions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 women who refused to take part in an evaluation of an intensive home visiting programme. A number of themes were identified including perceptions about vulnerability, misperceptions about the service, misgivings about the service, and lack of trust. It is concluded that women who refuse to take part in early interventions are a diverse group, and that service providers need to take this diversity into account, if they are to improve uptake of services by vulnerable women. Service providers may also need to consider new ways of providing services.     

Demands on Finite Cognitive Capacity Cause Infants' Perseverative Errors

This research unites traditionally disparate developmental domains—cognition and locomotion—to examine the classic cognitive issue of the development of inhibition in infancy. In 2 locomotor A‐not‐B tasks, 13‐month‐old walking infants inhibited a prepotent response under low task demands (walking on flat ground), but perseverated under increased task demands (descending a staircase). Despite elimination of factors previously associated with infant perseveration, infants still perseverated in the difficult stairs condition. Increasing cognitive load by manipulating task difficulty affected infants' ability to inhibit repeated responses that were no longer appropriate. Evidence supports a cognitive capacity account of infant perseveration, in which infants' performance depends on allocation of cognitive and attentional resources.     

Verbal Behavior and Initial Exposure to Delayed Reinforcement

The Analysis of Verbal Behavior - Ten subjects responded under a tandem fixed-ratio 1 not-responding-greater-than-t schedule of point delivery during one 75-min session in which the delay was...     

Development,the state,and transnational political connections: state and subject formations in Latin America

Focusing on the processes of making and sustaining transnational political ties between actors, international actors and states, this paper reviews recent work from a number of disciplines on globalization and politics, and outlines an agenda for future research. Rather than seeing transnational political linkages merely as forerunners to the loss of local sovereignty, the paper argues for a wider conceptualization of transnational connections, embedded within processes of state formation in Latin America. Using a variety of examples, it is argued that transnational networks are associated with a wide range of meanings and a variety of responses by diverse actors. Drawing on recent work in political science, post‐structuralism and anthropology, it is suggested that geographical concepts ‐ related to scale, process and networks ‐ offer a means through which to analyze and ‘map out’ these transnational political processes.     

Marital Conflict and Children’s Adjustment: Evaluation of the Parenting Process Model

This investigation tested whether parenting mediates longitudinal associations between marital conflict and children’s adjustment. Data were drawn from a three‐wave study of 283 families with children aged 8 – 16 years at Wave 1. Relations among marital conflict, parenting (behavioral control, psychological autonomy, and warmth), and children’s adjustment (externalizing and internalizing) were examined. Structural equation models indicated multiple dimensions of parenting mediated relations between marital conflict and children’s adjustment. When including controls for earlier adjustment, behavioral control continued to mediate relations between marital conflict and change in children’s internalizing symptoms over time. These results advance parenting process models for relations between marital conflict and child adjustment and provide impetus for study of other pathways, including direct and child effects.     

Multi-level governance of an intractable policy problem: migrants with irregular status in Europe

ABSTRACT

This article explores the responses of European local authorities to the public service needs of residents with irregular immigration status and the tensions with national governments to which this can give rise. Drawing on a study of responses by national and local tiers, including a mapping of national legal frameworks on entitlements to health care and education, it identifies factors that lead to divergence between local and national policy framing and responses. Finding that socio-economic and individual consequences of exclusion dominate in shaping local framing of policy responses in contrast to national government priorities, it explores the implications for modes of multi-level governance (MLG) on this issue. It expands on the concept in the literature of ‘decoupling’, contrasting relationships of overt conflict with low-visibility strategies of conflict avoidance; demonstrating the differing forms this ‘shadow politics’ of migrants’ rights and shadow provision of services can take, including arms-length provision through NGOs. Thus the dynamic of MLG is itself one part of explaining the nature of local responses to the challenges that migrants with irregular status can pose.     

Rearranging the Puzzle: Working Systemically with Stepfamilies when Parents Re‐partner

This paper develops a systemically informed tool‐kit of therapeutic ideas for working with stepfamilies. First, systemic thinking is applied to the stepfamily context, and compared to traditional stepfamily lenses. Second, an integrative frame is used to incorporate a range of systemic therapeutic practices, to match four specific stepfamily issues. These practices are demonstrated through a fictional clinical vignette weaved throughout the paper. Finally, the challenge of being flexible in integrating theory is discussed.