Family Instability and Exposure to Violence in the Early Life Course

Family instability has been linked with a host of outcomes across the early life course. This study extends this literature by connecting instability with violence in the community by examining the associations among family structure, family structure change, and secondary exposure to violence during adolescence across diverse segments of the population. Using longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods study, we found that living with a single parent and experiencing family structure changes were associated with secondary exposure to violence. Multiple group models suggest that partner change translated into more exposure for boys than girls. Findings also suggest that family instability may lead to more secondary exposure to violence for African American youth.     

Ethical Issues that arise in Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is designed to give the debtor another chance after a financial failure, and it is often an option that is both more ethical and more efficient than liquidation. We address some basic issues, such as whether Chapter 11 bankruptcy itself is ethical and what elements help one to decide if a particular bankruptcy is ethical. There are many chances for unethical acts during bankruptcy, such as the ethics of a firm that files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yet has sufficient assets to meet its financial obligations, or the often exorbitant fees that bankruptcy professionals are allowed as well as the apparent partiality demonstrated in some bankruptcy courts.     

The Sexual Debut of Girls in Early Adolescence: The Intersection of Race,Pubertal Timing,and Friendship Group Characteristics

Scholars who have studied the effects of early pubertal timing on girls' sexual debut contend that this association may result from the company they keep. Although this basic biosocial model of adolescent behavior has been applied to various outcomes with diverse samples of adolescent girls, less work has contextualized this microlevel developmental phenomenon within the larger macrolevel structures of race and ethnicity. Using a sample of White, African American, and Latina girls (N=1,299) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study conducted within‐group multivariate analyses and found important differences in the linkages that make up this biosocial model by race and ethnicity, with the linkages strongest for Whites, followed by Latina, and African American girls. These differences in association may reflect differences in the social construction of girlhood across race and ethnicity.     

Sibling Family Practices: Guidelines for Healthy Boundaries

A questionnaire was given to 500 mental health and child welfare professionals asking for maximum acceptable ages for siblings to engage jointly in certain family practices related to hygiene, affection, and privacy. A large proportion of respondents felt it was never acceptable for siblings to take showers together (40%), kiss on the mouth (37%), or toilet together (32%). Some significant differences occurred based on the gender of the older sibling within sets of same gender or mixed gender pairs, with older brothers being acceptable up to lower ages than older sisters. The effects of child abuse, age, race, and the amount of education on the respondents' answers are investigated. The limitations of the age guidelines are discussed.     

How Does Juvenile Offending Relate to Mothers' Aspirations and Expectations for Their Sons?

Mothers of 317 first‐time juvenile offenders (M = 15.35 years old) were interviewed over 2.5 years about their expectations and aspirations for their sons' futures. Mothers' expectations were lower than their aspirations, reflecting a discrepancy between what mothers felt was important for their child's future and what they considered likely to happen. As their children continued to engage in delinquent acts, mothers' expectations for their sons' future success diminished. Youth age moderated the association between delinquency and maternal expectations, such that when perceived delinquency was high, expectations were lower for mothers of young sons compared to mothers of older sons. These findings carry implications for practice and intervention, as parent expectations and aspirations are both directly and indirectly associated with youth achievement.     

Mothers' Union Statuses and Their Involvement in Young Children's Schooling

U.S. schools often expect the educational involvement of parents, which may be facilitated when parents have partners, especially a partner also invested in the child. As such, parental involvement at school and at home could be a channel of the diverging destinies of U.S. children from different families. This study applied fixed effects modeling to the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study–Kindergarten Cohort to examine the link between mothers' union statuses and their involvement behaviors. Being partnered appeared to benefit mothers' school and home involvement when children were in the primary grades, with little evidence of an additional benefit from that partnership being marital. A biological tie between the male partner and the child only seemed to matter for mothers' school involvement. These patterns did not vary by family income, maternal depression, or maternal employment, but they were stronger when children were just beginning schooling.     

Variable Selection in Linear Mixed Models Using an Extended Class of Penalties

There is an emerging need to advance linear mixed model technology to include variable selection methods that can simultaneously choose and estimate important effects from a potentially large number of covariates. However, the complex nature of variable selection has made it difficult for it to be incorporated into mixed models. In this paper we extend the well known class of penalties and show that they can be integrated succinctly into a linear mixed model setting. Under mild conditions, the estimator obtained from this mixed model penalised likelihood is shown to be consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. A simulation study reveals that the extended family of penalties achieves varying degrees of estimator shrinkage depending on the value of one of its parameters. The simulation study also shows there is a link between the number of false positives detected and the number of true coefficients when using the same penalty. This new mixed model variable selection (MMVS) technology was applied to a complex wheat quality data set to determine significant quantitative trait loci (QTL).     

Transsexuality as Sinthome: Bracha L. Ettinger and the Other (Feminine) Sexual Difference

This article uses Bracha L. Ettinger’s theory of the matrixial borderspace in relation to Jacques Lacan’s analytic of sexuation to argue that transsexuality isn’t reducible to psychosis. Rather, transsexuality taps into an Other (feminine) sexual difference that is subjectifying and can be understood in relation to Ettinger’s conception of metramorphosis and the matrixial. Transsexuality involves the somatization of the Other sexual difference and the creative use of this difference as sinthome. The sinthome of transsexuality can enable the subject to negotiate the aporia of sexual difference. I establish parallels between the (neurotic) hysteric and the transsexual to argue that transsexuality can be a subset of neurosis. The transsexual transition (which often involves Sex Reassignment Surgery) can be understood as a metramorphical becoming, a borderlinking enabling separation and distance in proximity. It is not as Catherine Millot (1990) contends an attempt to abolish the “nature” of the Real but rather a means to achieve a sinthomatic reknotting of the 3 Registers such that one’s relation to a parental image and to an Other’s primordial traces can be reconfigured.     

From Culture to Connection: Internet Community Studies

Research into Internet communities and online behaviour constituted one of the earliest and most dynamic fields of interest in the new field of Internet studies. Studies focused a range of issues including understanding how social order was possible in mediated environments, the social and political dimensions of community, the impacts that online communities could have on their offline counterparts. At the same time, studies of Internet community provided Internet studies more generally with methodological innovations and new means of examining the new electronic worlds that had opened up. However, Internet community studies have been a victim of its own success to the extent that it has recently become fractured into a number of specialist arenas. As a consequence, the field has become both narrower and dominated by intractable problematics. However, recent research offers a new and revitalised agenda, focusing around the altering political status of community and new, and pressing questions have been opened up for the study of online community.     

Longitudinal Change in Adolescent Depression and Anxiety Symptoms from before to during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study aimed to examine changes in depression and anxiety symptoms from before to during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in a sample of 1,339 adolescents (9–18 years old, 59% female) from three countries. We also examined if age, race/ethnicity, disease burden, or strictness of government restrictions moderated change in symptoms. Data from 12 longitudinal studies (10 U.S., 1 Netherlands, 1 Peru) were combined. Linear mixed effect models showed that depression, but not anxiety, symptoms increased significantly (median increase = 28%). The most negative mental health impacts were reported by multiracial adolescents and those under ‘lockdown’ restrictions. Policy makers need to consider these impacts by investing in ways to support adolescents’ mental health during the pandemic.