Pregnancy care and birth outcomes for women with moderate to super-extreme obesity

PurposeTo describe the health service utilisation and birth outcomes of pregnant women with moderate to super-extreme obesity.BackgroundMaternal obesity is increasingly recognised as a key risk factor for adverse outcomes for both women and their babies. Little is known about the service utilisation and perinatal outcomes of women with obesity beyond a body mass index of 40.MethodWomen with a self-reported pre-pregnancy BMI of 40 or more, who had received care and birthed a baby at the study site between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2010. Clinical audit was used to identify the health service utilisation and birth outcomes of these women.Results153 women had a BMI of 40 or more. Women saw 6 different health professionals during pregnancy (1–16). Most of their visits were with a medical practitioner, often with limited experience, and almost all women only saw a midwife once at their booking visit (n = 150, 98.0%). While the majority of women experienced a normal pregnancy, free from any complications, almost half the women in this study experienced a caesarean section (n = 74, 48.4%).ConclusionClinical audit has been useful in providing additional information which suggests current maternity care provision is not meeting the needs of this group of women. The model of antenatal care provision may be a mediating factor in the birth outcomes experienced by obese women. The development of effective, targeted antenatal care, designed to meet the needs of these women is recommended.     

Expecting the Unexpected: Predicting Physiological and Psychological Wildfire Preparedness from Perceived Risk,Responsibility, and Obstacles

People who live in wildfire‐prone communities tend to form their own hazard‐related expectations, which may influence their willingness to prepare for a fire. Past research has already identified two important expectancy‐based factors associated with people's intentions to prepare for a natural hazard: Perceived risk (i.e., perceived threat likelihood and severity) and perceived protection responsibility. We expanded this research by differentiating the influence of these factors on different types of wildfire preparedness (e.g., preparations for evacuation vs. for defending the house) and measured actual rather than intended preparedness. In addition, we tested the relation between preparedness and two additional threat‐related expectations: the expectation that one can rely on an official warning and the expectation of encountering obstacles (e.g., the loss of utilities) during a fire. A survey completed by 1,003 residents of wildfire‐prone areas in Perth, Australia, revealed that perceived risk (especially risk severity) and perceived protection responsibility were both positively associated with all types of preparedness, but the latter did not significantly predict preparedness after controlling for other predictors and demographics. Also, the two new expectancy‐based factors were significantly associated with all types of preparedness, and remained significant predictors of some types of preparedness after controlling for other predictors and demographics: the expectation of being able to rely on an official fire warning and expecting to lose electricity both still predicted less preparedness around house resilience, and expecting to lose water still predicted increased planning preparedness. We discuss public policy implications that follow from this research.     

Making sense of social pretense: The effect of the dyad,sex, and language ability in a large observational study of children’s behaviors in a social pretend play context

Pretend play with peers is purportedly an important driver of social development in the preschool period; however, fundamental questions regarding the features of children's pretend play with a peer, and the effect of the dyad for pretend play, have been overlooked. The current study undertook detailed behavioral coding of social pretend play in 134 pairs of 5‐year‐old children (54% boys) in order to address three main aims: (a) describe the duration and proportion of children engaging in key social pretend play behaviors, namely calls for attention, negotiation (comprising role assignment and joint proposals) and enactment of pretend play, (b) examine the effect of the dyad in influencing the occurrence of different social pretend play behaviors, and (c) assess the independent and combined effect of individual child characteristics (i.e., language ability and sex) that may influence social pretend play behaviors beyond the influence of the dyad. Results demonstrated the overwhelming effect of the dyad in shaping children's social pretend play behaviors, with language ability and sex explaining relatively little of the total variability in play behaviors. Results are discussed considering the contribution that this type of study can make to theories of associations between children's social development and social pretend play.     

Young Chinese Children's Authority Concepts

Using multilevel analyses, we examined the influence of domain (moral, conventional, and personal) and the familiarity of different authority figures (mother, teacher, person in charge, and stranger) in public, school, or home settings in 123 four to seven-year-old Chinese children ( M   =  5.6 years) in Hong Kong. Children affirmed authority more for moral and conventional than personal events, based primarily on punishment avoidance and conventional justifications. Children judged that they should obey mothers more than all other authorities and the person-in charge in the associated setting and the teacher more than strangers. At school, teachers were seen as having more authority over moral and conventional events than mothers whereas at home, mothers had more authority than teachers over all issues. With age, children increasingly evaluated mothers' authority as generalizable across contexts for the moral event; reflecting the importance of familiarity, mothers were seen as having more authority to extend her regulation outside the home, including for personal events, than teachers' authority outside the school.     

Social status, values, and support for reform in education

Using a survey of Ohio and Indiana residents, we analyze the extent to which public support for school vouchers and school finance reform is structured by the same socioeconomic interests and values (equality, humanitarianism, individualism, and limited government) as is public support for contentious welfare policies. Disadvantaged individuals and individuals who live in disadvantaged communities are more likely to support vouchers but social status has a more ambiguous influence on support for finance reform. Values cannot explain the effect of social status on support for these education policies, but they exert independent effects. We speculate that disadvantaged individuals are more likely to see vouchers as in their interests than are advantaged individuals because voucher advocates have allied themselves with social movements and organizations representing clear constituencies (religious conservatives, low-income urban parents). On the other hand, we suggest that finance reform is more of an abstract issue because its advocates have mostly concentrated on intragovernmental litigation, and thus cleavages based on social status tend to be more obscured.     

Dettori Day

It was the day at the races the bookies want to forget. September 28th, 1996, was the one day that dreams came true for punters—they made a killing and, for once, went home richer than the bookmakers. It was the day that Frankie Dettori rode all seven winners at Ascot. Jenny Docherty describes the day's events.     

Women's Alternative Internet Radio and Feminist Interactive Communications

The nude male centrefold spread like a virus through the new women's magazines of the seventies. At the time, and since, the academic gaze has viewed the centrefold as little more than a joke, a failure for feminism and female sexuality. This article returns to the heyday of the centrefold and listens to the responses of ordinary women in reader letters published in the new Australian women's magazine Cleo from 1972 until 1985. It argues that far from being a failure, these representations of the nude male became a practice of popular feminism, one of the early representations of popular feminist desire in mainstream women's magazines.