Linking maternal psychopathology to children's excessive crying and sleeping problems in a large representative German sample—The mediating role of social isolation and bonding difficulties

Attaining self-regulation is a major developmental task in infancy, in which many children show transient difficulties. Persistent, clinically relevant difficulties in self-regulation include excessive crying or sleeping disorders. Many families with affected children are burdened with multiple psychosocial risk. This suggests that regulatory problems are best conceptualized as the maladaptive interplay of overly burdened parents and a dysfunctional parent–child interaction. The current study examines whether social isolation and bonding difficulties function as mediating mechanisms linking maternal psychopathology to (1) children's excessive crying and (2) sleeping problems. The sample comprised N = 6598 mothers (M = 31.51 years) of children between zero to three years of age (M = 14.08 months, 50.1% girls). In addition to socio demographic data, the written questionnaire included information on maternal depression/anxiety, isolation, bonding, and children's regulatory problems. Hypotheses were tested with a mediation model controlling for psychosocial risk and child characteristics. As expected, maternal symptoms of depression/anxiety were linked to infants‘ excessive crying and sleeping problems. Social isolation and bonding difficulties mediated this association for excessive crying as well as for sleeping problems, but social isolation was a single mediator for sleeping problems only. The findings provide important insights in the mediating pathways linking maternal psychopathology to children's regulatory problems.     

Genetische Diskriminierung und soziale Ungleichheit. Hierarchiebildungen am Beispiel der Erkrankung Hereditäre Hämochromatose

This article discusses possible interconnections between the analysis of genetic discrimination and the analysis of social inequalities. Findings from a survey focussing on individuals affected by hemochromatosis are presented; the survey was carried out as part of Germany’s first systematic study of genetic discrimination. The experiences and apprehensions described are discussed with reference to Bourdieu’s forms of capital interlinking with structures of social inequality. In conclusion, the analysis shows that genetic discrimination and the workings of social/symbolic, economic and cultural capital are mutually constitutive for the corresponding hierarchy formation.     

Confidence Sets Based on Thresholding Estimators in High-Dimensional Gaussian Regression Models

We study confidence intervals based on hard-thresholding, soft-thresholding, and adaptive soft-thresholding in a linear regression model where the number of regressors k may depend on and diverge with sample size n. In addition to the case of known error variance, we define and study versions of the estimators when the error variance is unknown. In the known-variance case, we provide an exact analysis of the coverage properties of such intervals in finite samples. We show that these intervals are always larger than the standard interval based on the least-squares estimator. Asymptotically, the intervals based on the thresholding estimators are larger even by an order of magnitude when the estimators are tuned to perform consistent variable selection. For the unknown-variance case, we provide nontrivial lower bounds and a small numerical study for the coverage probabilities in finite samples. We also conduct an asymptotic analysis where the results from the known-variance case can be shown to carry over asymptotically if the number of degrees of freedom n ? k tends to infinity fast enough in relation to the thresholding parameter.     

Far Away So Close: Race,Whiteness, and German Identity

Race and nation have been difficult concepts in Germany since the Holocaust. Although race has seemingly disappeared from public discourse, the concept is very present in the narrative construction of white German national identities. In fact in Germany, race, and more specifically whiteness, disappears into a national naming. On the basis of a qualitative study on women activists, I examine to what extent the research participants struggle with the racialized discourse on German identity and what this struggle looks like. Using John Hartigan's (2000 Hartigan, John Jr. 2000. Object lessons in whiteness: Antiracism and the study of white folks. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 7(3): 373–406. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) approach to analyzing ethnographic accounts of whiteness, I show how a racialization of German identity plays out in complex and complicated ways. On the one hand, the narratives are complicit with a racialized Germanness, yet on the other hand, the idea of a unified, white, cultural community is being challenged. To move toward a postcolonial narrative of Germanness that includes Germany's history of colonialism as well as fascism, we need to move away from race, but we also need to move toward race. A starting point would be provided by focusing on racism, not as a fringe issue of German society but rather as an urgent matter that is located at the centre of German politics and is actively shaping its history.     

MASTERING THE ART OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Online communication has become a central part in the communication repertoires of political actors in Western mass democracies. In Switzerland, where broadband, internet use, and media literacy are amongst the highest in the world, all major political parties run their own website and are active on social media. This article seeks to show how Swiss political parties deal with social media, how they implement it and how they use social media. The study builds on empirical data from a structural analysis of party websites, the official Facebook sites, and Twitter feeds. These social media sites were analysed for their resonance, update frequency, and thematic clusters focusing on information, mobilization, and participation. A weekly assessment of the user numbers illustrates the development of user resonance throughout the 2011 election year. While political parties claim to appreciate the dialogue and mobilization potentials of social media, they mainly use social media as an additional channel to spread information and electoral propaganda. The overall resonance is still on a very low level. The data seem to sustain the normalization hypothesis, as larger parties with more resources and voters are better able to generate effective communication and to mobilize online than small and marginal parties.