SHORT REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Kamran Asdar Ali, Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel (EDS.), Census and Identity: The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses Peter Lloyd‐Sherlock (ED.), Healthcare Reform and Poverty in Latin America Ishwar Modi (ED.), Ageing and Human Development: Global Perspectives United Nations Development Programme, Regional Bureau for Arab States, Arab Human Development Report 2002: Creating Opportunities for Future Generations United Nations Population Division, World Population Ageing 1950–2050 Jacques Vallin, France Meslé, and Tapani Valkonen (EDS.), Trends in Mortality and Differential Mortality Myron Weiner and Michael S. Teitelbaum, Political Demography, Demographic Engineering Zhang Weiguo, Economic Reforms and Fertility Behavior: A Study of a North Chinese Village     

Paternal child care and children's development

This paper uses the NLSY-Child data to assess the effects on cognitive and social-emotional development of father care as a child care arrangement among children in two-parent families with working mothers. Our results show that father care for infants is no better or worse than other types of arrangements. However, toddlers in non-paternal modes of child care (e.g., relatives, family day care or center care) have slightly better cognitive outcomes than those whose fathers provided care. Although our analyses do not provide a definitive explanation for this finding, there is a substantial influx of fathers in our data who provide child care in years 2 and 3 and these fathers appear compositionally different from fathers who provided care during a child's infancy. In particular, there is some indication that these fathers who are newly providing care during a child's toddler years may be temporary care providers due to changing economic circumstances. The research was supported by NICHD grant #HD30944. Responsible editor: Deborah Cobb-Clark.     

The nature of labour pain: An updated review of the literature

Background

The pain experience associated with labour is complex. Literature indicates psychosocial and environmental determinants of labour pain, and yet methods to support women usually target physiological attributes via pharmacological interventions.

Simplifying Second‐order Belief Attribution: What Facilitates Children’s Performance on Measures of Conceptual Understanding?

This study investigated how 4‐ to 7‐year‐old children’s second‐order belief attribution might be facilitated by either reducing information processing or varying the sequence of task questions. In Experiment 1, compared with Perner and Wimmer’s (1985 ) original second‐order false‐belief task, a new task with reduced information‐processing demands promoted better second‐order reasoning. In Experiment 2, half the stories included a second‐order ignorance question before a second‐order belief question. The ignorance question promoted second‐order belief understanding, superseding the improvement induced by lowered processing demands. Together, the findings suggest that second‐order belief performance can be facilitated if children focus on the concept of ignorance during the sequence of questioning.     

Competing Processes of Sibling Influence: Observational Learning and Sibling Deidentification

Although commonly cited as explanations for patterns of sibling similarity and difference, observational learning and sibling deidentification processes have rarely been examined directly. Using a person‐oriented approach, we identified patterns in adolescents' perceptions of sibling influences and connected these patterns to sibling similarities and differences and sibling relationship qualities. Participants included two adolescent‐age siblings (firstborn age M = 16.39, second‐born age M = 13.78) from 171 maritally intact families. Two‐stage cluster analyses revealed three sibling influence profiles: modeling, deidentification, and non‐reference. Analyses revealed differences in the correlations between firstborn and second‐born siblings' personal qualities across the three groups and differences in the sibling relationship qualities of younger siblings who reported modeling vs. those who reported deidentifying from their older siblings. Discussion focuses on refining the study of sibling influence processes.     

Children as guinea pigs: historical perspective

Experimentation involving children is not a new phenomenon. Children have been used as research subjects in a diverse set of experiments, including the trials of new vaccines and sera, in efforts to understand normal pediatric anatomy and physiology and in the development of new drugs and procedures. Concern about child participants in research is also not a new development. For more than a century, critics of medical research have called attention to the fact that children and other vulnerable populations--pregnant women, prisoners, the mentally ill--have too often served as the unwitting and unwilling subjects of medical experiments. This paper looks at several early cases in which children participated, including the first trial of cowpox vaccine, the first human trial of rabies vaccine, and the first treatment of Listerian wound antisepsis. The history of concern for children, especially institutionalized children, in medical research is considered along with the development of regulations or guidelines, including the Declaration of Helsinki (1964).     

The Implementation of Medical Audit

As part of the 1989 NHS Review, the government made participation in audit compulsory for the medical profession. Prior to this time, medical audit had been fragmented, implemented by “top-down”initiatives promoted by professional bodies as well as by localized “bottom-up”exercises undertaken by committed individuals. The paper uses evidence gained from four case studies of the implementation of medical audit in acute hospitals post 1989, to argue that during the early stages of policy implementation individualistic tendencies have, to some extent inadvertently, been given their head. This has not resulted in stronger external management of medical activities, as the government appeared initially to intend, but rather in locally determined medical audit activity, focused on technical process and medical management. However examining medical audit in the wider context of the total package of NHS reforms and of concurrent changes in medical management, suggests that medical interests, and the individualism that is characteristic of medical organization, will become diluted and less segregated in the future.     

Factors that contribute to high turnover among residential child care staff

In this paper we draw on our own empirical research and that of others to consider the factors that contribute to high staff turnover in residential child care. First, we focus on the problem of retaining staff in children’s services. Second, we turn our attention to the factors that contribute to staff turnover in residential care: namely, perceptions of the service; of children and young people; and of human resource issues. Third, we attempt to draw out the implications of high turnover for policy and practice. The negative image of residential care has persisted in the wake of a plethora of abuse scandals. The increasing emotional and behavioural problems presented by the children cared for, and the violence and verbal abuse directed at staff are key retention issues. Moreover, poor conditions of employment contribute to staff perceptions of the work as a short‐term career choice only. The potential means of resolving these problems are explored, and the future research agenda highlighted.