Explaining Asia's “Missing Women”: A New Look at the Data

The fact that millions of females are “missing” in East Asia and South Asia has been attributed to cultural factors that support strong son preference in these countries. A widely disseminated paper by Emily Oster argues that a large part of this phenomenon can be attributed to excessively masculine sex ratios at birth resulting from maternal infection with hepatitis B. If her thesis is true, current policies to address this problem would need to be reframed to include biological factors in addition to cultural factors. The data show, however, that whether or not females “go missing” is determined by the existing sex composition of the family into which they are conceived. Girls with no older sisters have similar chances of survival as boys. However, girls conceived in families that already have a daughter experience steeply higher probabilities of being aborted or of dying in early childhood. This indicates that cultural factors still provide the overwhelming explanation for the “missing” females.     

Educational attainment of children from single-parent families: Differences by exposure,gender, and race

This article examines the effect of living in a single-parent family on educational attainment by gender and race. According to household production theory, the reduction in parental resources for human capital investment in children living in a single-parent family should lower their educational attainment. Using matched mother-daughter and mother-son samples from the National Longitudinal Surveys, we constructed precise measures of the age and length of time a child lived in a single-parent family. Empirical findings show that the negative effect of living in a single-parent family (1) increases with the number of years spent in this type of family, (2) is greatest during the preschool years, and (3) is larger for boys than girls.     

The Decline of Son Preference in South Korea: The Roles of Development and Public Policy

For years, sex ratios at birth kept rising in South Korea despite rapid development. We show that this was not an anomaly: underlying son preference fell with development, but the effect of son preference on sex ratios at birth rose until the mid‐1990s as a result of improved sex‐selection technology. Now South Korea leads Asia with a declining sex ratio at birth. We explore how son preference was affected by development and by public policy. Decomposition analysis indicates that development reduced son preference primarily through triggering normative changes across society—rather than just in individuals whose socioeconomic circumstances had changed. The cultural underpinnings of son preference in preindustrial Korea were unraveled by industrialization and urbanization even as public policies sought to uphold the patriarchal family system. Our results suggest that child sex ratios in China and India may decline before those countries reach South Korean levels of development, since the governments of both countries vigorously promote normative change to reduce son preference.     

Maternal Emotion Socialization in Maltreating and Non-maltreating Families: Implications for Children's Emotion Regulation

This study investigated the socialization of children's emotion regulation in physically maltreating and non‐maltreating mother–child dyads (N = 80 dyads). Mother–child dyads participated in the parent–child emotion interaction task ( Shipman & Zeman, 1999 ) in which they talked about emotionally‐arousing situations. The PCEIT was coded for maternal validation and invalidation in response to children's emotion. Mothers were also interviewed about their approach to emotion socialization using the meta‐emotion interview‐parent version ( Katz & Gottman, 1999 ). The meta‐emotion interview‐parent version was coded for maternal emotion coaching. Mothers also completed measures that assessed their child abuse potential and abuse‐related behaviors as well as children's emotion regulation. Findings indicated that maltreated children demonstrated fewer adaptive emotion regulation skills and more emotion dysregulation than non‐maltreated children. In addition, maltreating mothers engaged in less validation and emotion coaching and more invalidation in response to children's emotion than non‐maltreating mothers. Finally, maternal emotion socialization behaviors mediated the relation between maltreatment status and children's adaptive emotion regulation skills.     

Science as Snake Oil: Rural Development,Discourse, and the Broken Promise of Tech Jobs in Vermont

This paper examines the public conversation surrounding two failed technology businesses in rural Vermont communities, documenting a particular techno-development discourse. Engaging with the literatures of rural development and science and technology studies (STS), the paper frames this discourse as a mechanism of power exercised by private capital. It analyzes how perspectives shared in news and social media functioned to attribute financial, technological, and moral authority to developers while dividing communities and scapegoating the state. Our work highlights the need for scholars to be conscious of techno-development discourses that prioritize capital interests over community interests. Rather than using hegemonic conceptualizations of technology, we advocate for development that advances more flexible, local understandings of technology. And rather than centering high-tech development as a vehicle for extending prosperity across space, we propose that greater attention be paid to extending high wages across industrial sectors.     

Working Relationally with Youth in Child Protection Institutions: A Milieu‐Therapy Perspective

Children and youth who have shown serious difficulties or if it is surmised that parents over time will not be able to care for the child or youth, could be placed in a child protection institution. The therapeutic work in such institutions is often described as milieu therapy. There has been little focus on the milieu therapist's relational work in child protection institutions. The research question for this study was: What factors are described by milieu therapists as significant for relational work with youth placed in institutions? To answer this question, we collected data from qualitative semi‐structured interviews with four milieu therapists working in child protection institutions. Interpretative phenomenological analysis helped us identify three overarching categories: (1) structural and personal factors as a basis for relational work; (2) various forms of communication in relational work; and (3) relational work with a starting point in everyday events.     

The compounding feminization of animal cruelty investigation work and its multispecies implications

All forms of human labour performed with and/or for animals are gendered, although not always tidily. Here we focus on animal cruelty investigation work, a particularly complicated gendered occupational case. Drawing on survey, interview and focus group data, we focus on a regionally based workforce's gendered specifics. In keeping with feminist political economy and labour process theory, we highlight both material and experiential dimensions, examining physical and psychological risks, and rewards. We argue that the gendered and multispecies entanglements of the work and the victims coalesce in the compounding feminization of cruelty investigation labour. We raise questions about the implications of the gendered and multispecies interconnections for the women and men involved, and for the animals dependent on their work.     

Theory‐of‐mind during childhood: Investigating syntactic and executive contributions

Both syntax and Executive Functions (EF) are involved in Theory‐of‐Mind (ToM) but their contributory roles have mainly been studied separately. Moreover, researchers have mostly administered False Belief (FB) tasks while they may not be representative of all ToM abilities. Studies of adults give valuable information regarding whether syntax and EF are useful for ToM reasoning (i.e., Reasoning account), however, only the study of children brings direct evidence in favor of ToM emergence (i.e., Emergence account). Also, because the ToM tasks used often entail verbal and executive demands, the links observed could mostly result from such confounds (i.e., Expression account). We evaluated ToM, syntactic and EF abilities in 126 children (3‐11 y.o.) using a set of ToM tasks with minimal verbal and executive demands. Our goals were to assess (1) the hierarchical contribution of syntax and EF to ToM, (2) whether results previously obtained for FB tasks are representative of ToM in general, (3) whether the ToM‐syntax and ToM‐EF links are constant (i.e., Reasoning account) or decrease during development (i.e., Emergence accounts). Results of stepwise regression analyses showed a predominant role of syntax over EF to predict ToM abilities. The comparison of results for ToM and FB tasks showed that FB is not always representative of ToM. Finally, there was no moderating effect of age on the syntax‐ToM or EF‐ToM relations, thus suggestive of the Reasoning account rather than the Emergence account.