Playing politics with policy: A conversation with Steven J. Pfohl

In this conversation, Stephen J. Pfohl and Maureen E. Kelleher discuss Pfohl’s experience as the chair of the Massachusetts Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee. During Pfohl’s tenure, the committee looked at the highly visible and politicized problem of violent teenagers. Pfohl reflects on the experience of chairing a committee made up of diverse representatives, leading them through a policy study process, and delivering a report with policy recommendations to the governor. He also shares insights into the political aspects of policy making. She has consulted with state agencies on various children’s policy issues, and her most recent work on institutional abuse appears inChild Welfare.     

Religious Identity and Psychological Well-Being Among Newly Orthodox Jewish Women

This article explores the phenomenon of returning to Orthodoxy among Jewish women who have immigrated to Israel. The focus of the article is the effect of this return on their self-identity as they assume a new social position. The sample consists of 72 respondents to an exhaustive questionnaire. The results reported here suggest the difficulty of maintaining prior relationships, resulting in the marginalization of some of these women. This increase in marginality may lead to heightened states of anxiety.     

Family environment in Hispanic college females with a history of childhood sexual abuse

This study sought to examine the family environments of a sample of Hispanic women who reported childhood sexual abuse. Eighteen women, taken from a larger college sample, were individually interviewed and administered the Family Environment Scale (FES; Moos & Moos, 1994). Cultural values and the relationship of family characteristics to the individual's experience of sexual abuse were explored. The abused women obtained significantly higher scores on the Achievement-Orientation subscale of the FES than the normative group. Qualitative data revealed some patterns in these families regarding sexual discussions and poor conflict resolution skills. Implications for treatment of Hispanic victims are discussed.     

Children's Experience of Sport: What Do We Really Know?

Internationally, children's participation in leisure activities, including sport, is considered to be of such importance that it is enshrined as a human right. However, there is a growing awareness that children's experience of sport is not always benign; abuse and harm frequently occur within a broad range of organised sport contexts. This systematic literature review examines the international research evidence from both peer reviewed and grey literature on the abuse and harm of children that can occur in sport. Four areas of focus were apparent in this literature: first, types of abuse encountered by children in sport and the harm caused to them; second, persons responsible for the abuse and harm; third, circumstances under which children may be most vulnerable; and fourth, the role that culture plays in facilitating abuse in sport. The paper concludes identifying the need for further research in this domain.     

The Division of Labor in Lesbian,Gay, and Heterosexual New Adoptive Parents

Little research has investigated the division of child care and housework in adoptive or lesbian/gay parent families, yet these contexts “control for” family characteristics such as biological relatedness and parental gender differences known to be linked to family work. This study examined predictors (measured preadoption) of the division of child care and housework (measured postadoption) in lesbian (n = 55), gay (n = 40), and heterosexual (n = 65) newly adoptive couples. Same‐sex couples shared child care and housework more equally than heterosexual couples. For the full sample, inequities in work hours between partners were associated with greater discrepancies in partners' contributions to child care and masculine tasks; inequities in income between partners were related to greater discrepancies in contributions to feminine tasks. Participants who contributed more to child care tended to contribute more to feminine tasks. These findings extend knowledge of how labor arrangements are enacted in diverse groups.     

Change in depression of spousal caregivers of dementia patients following patient's death

Caring for an elderly spouse with dementia places a heavy burden on spousal caregivers and often results in chronic depression. Little has been written about change in depression caregivers experience from before to after the death of the spouse with dementia. This longitudinal study examines change in depression of spousal caregivers that occurs following death of the dementia patient. Two theoretical models, the Relief and Stress Models, are discussed in terms of caregiver depression after the death of the dementia-patient care-recipient spouse. These two theoretical models were tested using longitudinal data from the National Institute on Aging sponsored Health and Retirement Study. Both male and female spousal caregivers report an increase in depression after the death of the dementia-patient care-recipient spouse. As time passed following the spouse's death, the conjugally bereaved husbands showed a decrease in depression while the conjugally bereaved wives continued to report increased depression.