Separation Crises in Over-Attached Families

Families are described as “over-attached” whose members respond anxiously to the otherwise normal unfolding of separation-individuation processes and in the absence of past traumatic separations. It is observed that “anxious attachment” occurs with over-availability just as with under-availability of attachment figures and that attachment is an intra-familial process as well as a dyadic one. A reformulation of Bowlby's attachment theory is required in order to encompass this systemic perspective, and to allow also for the integration of intrapsychic and extrapsychic process. Bowlby's control systems model need not stand in opposition to either systemic or psychoanalytic thinking.     

A Longitudinal Study of Audiovisual Speech Perception by Children with Hearing Loss Who have Cochlear Implants

The present study investigated the development of audiovisual speech perception skills in children who are prelingually deaf and received cochlear implants. We analyzed results from the Pediatric Speech Intelligibility (Jerger, Lewis, Hawkins, & Jerger, 1980) test of audiovisual spoken word and sentence recognition skills obtained from a large group of young children with cochlear implants enrolled in a longitudinal study, from pre-implantation to 3 years post-implantation. The results revealed better performance under the audiovisual presentation condition compared with auditory-alone and visual-alone conditions. Performance in all three conditions improved over time following implantation. The results also revealed differential effects of early sensory and linguistic experience. Children from oral communication (OC) education backgrounds performed better overall than children from total communication (TC backgrounds. Finally, children in the early-implanted group performed better than children in the late-implanted group in the auditory-alone presentation condition after 2 years of cochlear implant use, whereas children in the late-implanted group performed better than children in the early-implanted group in the visual-alone condition. The results of the present study suggest that measures of audiovisual speech perception may provide new methods to assess hearing, speech, and language development in young children with cochlear implants.     

Transfers in Kind: Why They Can Be Efficient and Nonpaternalistic – Comment

Bruce and Waldman make an important contribution regarding the Samaritan dilemma: the expectations of inheritance motivates the younger generation at the margin in the direction of welfare reducing behavior. However, these authors misinterpret the standard analysis on this matter as prediction instead of explanation; confuse governmental subsidies with private charitable giving, and uncritically examine Headstart and statist job training programs.     

THE CONSEQUENCES OF CARING:

Sociologists of emotion have examined the ways that workers are required to manage their emotions on the job, while studies of family emotion work reveal the effort involved in providing emotional support at home. Analyzing data collected from married or cohabiting women hospital workers, we examine the relations between women's job and family emotion work and the effects of both on women's job-related well-being. Consistent with "scarcity" views of women's emotional energy, we find that performance of family emotion work has negative consequences for women's job-related well-being. Consistent with "expansion" perspectives, however, women who perform some emotional labor on the job are more likely than other women to perform family emotion work. Our findings support a view that incorporates elements of both scarcity and expansion perspectives. We conclude that the job-related well-being of women hospital workers is less influenced by performance of emotional labor at work than it is by women's and their partners' involvement in family emotion work.     

The Social Influence of Two Computer-Assisted Career Guidance Systems: DISCOVER and SIGI

Perceptions of expertness, attractiveness, and trustworthiness of computer-assisted guidance systems, as measured by an adapted version of the Counselor Rating Form (CRF), were compared for 107 college students in two treatment conditions (DISCOVER and SIGI) and a computer imaging control condition. Findings showed that students in the DISCOVER and SIGI conditions had more positive perceptions of the attractiveness of systems than those in the computer imaging group. In a review of related studies using the CRF in actual counseling, students seemed to attribute comparable levels of expertness to the computer, but not so with attractiveness or trustworthiness. Implications of these findings for the optimal use of CACG systems and for research are discussed.     

Fishing for success without rocking the boat: Value conflict and work control in a maritime context

This paper deals with the role of work control in managing tensions between communitarian social organization and individualistic values. It uses data from a peripheral maritime community, where communitarian control is emphasized above all else; yet work there is organized as petty entrepreneurship, with expressed values on individualism and the Protestant Ethic. The dominant community institution controlling work (the Methodist Church), the structure of the work place and social organization of labor, and the face-to-face transactions concerning work and rewards that have allowed these conflicting ideologies to coexist on a day-to-day basis are examined. For example, entrepreneurial success is controlled by informal communal and church pressures, which encourage watermen to produce at the same levels. Consumption is controlled by community norms and gossip so that people have basically the same possessions. These practices, along with work information control mechanisms, curtail tendencies to convert individual work outcomes into community status. They permit a sense of individual freedom and success in the work place yet at the same time control it so that equality and communitarianism predominate.The author wishes to thank Steven Cole, Rose Laub Coser, Bill Gromfein, Lyle Hallowell, Robert W. Hodge, John McCarthy, Charles Perrow, Pat Roos, Ed Royce, Gerald Suttles, Eugene Weinstein, Glenn Yago, Stony Brook Research Seminar, and editors and reviewers ofQualitative Sociology for comments on earlier drafts of this paper.     

Child welfare reform in the United States: findings from a local agency survey

Efforts to improve the public welfare and child welfare system sparked an unprecedented amount of federal legislation in the 1990s, including the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA), the Multiethnic Placement Act of 1994 and Interethnic Adoption Provisions of 1996 (MEPA-IEP), and welfare reform. Such reforms allow an unprecedented degree of flexibility, but little is known about their implementation. Researchers administered the Local Agency Survey to the first national probability sample of public child welfare agencies from 1999 to 2000. Findings indicate that ASFA has had the most effect on child welfare service delivery. Welfare reform has had less effect, and MEPA-IEP seems to have had little effect at all.     

Alcohol policies on college campuses

State and local alcohol policies can minimize opportunities for people to use alcohol, thereby reducing consumption and alcohol-related problems. Little is known, however, about the prevalence of campus policies aimed at reducing college students' alcohol use and related problems. The authors surveyed school administrators in Minnesota and Wisconsin to assess the frequency of alcohol policies and whether institutional characteristics were likely to predict campus policies. They also compared administrators' responses to policies posted on college Web sites. Most schools prohibited beer kegs and provided alcohol-free housing for students. A minority of schools prohibited all alcohol use on campus or at Greek organizations or banned advertisements in school newspapers for alcohol or off-campus bars. The prevalence of policies varied with school characteristics, and agreement was poor between Web-site policy information and that provided by administrators. Further research on the prevalence of college alcohol policies might be useful for assessing trends and future prevention needs on campuses.     

The Ethics of the Child Custody Process: Are the American Law Institute’s Guidelines the Answer?

Our principal ethical concern is that children have greatly differing opportunities to have their developmental needs addressed in the custody process. We illustrate this variation with example cases in five different adult contexts: custodial parent, relocates; natural father disputes an adoption; gay parents break up; “psychological parents” come forward to claim custody or visitation; and the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 is invoked and may disrupt a placement. We acknowledge and then evaluate in relation to our cases, the recent guidelines for custody issued by the American Law Institute (Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution: Analysis and Recommendations, 2002). Our recommendations for an ethical process include making the child a legal player.Eleanor Willemsen, Rebecca Andrews and Bethany Karlin are affiliated with Department of Psychology, Santa Clara University. Rebecca Andrews is now at Syracuse University Law School.Address correspondence to Eleanor Willemsen, Department of Psychology, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053; e-mail: ewillemsen @scu.edu. This research was supported by a grant from the Bannan Center for Jesuit Education of Santa Clara University. We wish to acknowledge Bree Nakashima for her assistance with our legal research.