Deconstructing Gender Differences in Experienced Well-Being Among Older Adults in the Developing World: The Roles of Time Use and Activity-Specific Affective Experiences

Social Indicators Research - Due to declining fertility rates and increasing longevity, the world is growing older. Improving the quality of life of older adults, and not merely preventing deaths,...     

"Who believes most in me and in my recovery": the importance of families for persons with serious mental illness living in structured community housing

In this article, the authors report on qualitative findings on the role of family in supporting recovery for mental health consumers living in structured, community housing in a large Canadian city. Despite living separately from families and relying heavily on formal services, residents identified their families more often than mental health professionals, friends, and residential caregivers as those who most believe in them and their recovery. Families supported recovery by providing affection and belonging, offering emotional and instrumental support, and by staying actively involved with residents. Families are a vital, untapped resource for social workers in promoting independent living.     

Intercultural policies and the contradictory views of teachers: the Roma in Catalonian schools

In this article, we examine the contradictions and lack of consistency between various levels of discourse relating to Roma educational policies. Policy-makers have claimed that political interventions would positively impact the progress of Roma. However, the results have been mixed. We argue here that teachers need to re-evaluate their roles as politically aware and culturally informed agents in order to guarantee social justice to a historically disadvantaged ethnic minority. Based on ethnographical fieldwork carried out over a two-year period with Spanish Roma children, both in schools and in their families, this study shows how intercultural policies have failed to impact the educational realities of Roma children.     

Health Costs of Wealth Gains: Labor Migration and Perceptions of HIV/AIDS Risks in Mozambique

The study employs survey data from rural Mozambique to examine how men's labor migration affects their non-migrating wives' perceptions of HIV/AIDS risks. Using a conceptual framework centered on tradeoffs between economic security and health risks that men's migration entails for their left-behind wives, it compares women married to migrants and those married to non-migrants while also distinguishing between economically successful and unsuccessful migration. The analysis finds that the economic success of men's migration, rather than migration itself, significantly predicts women's worries about getting infected by their husbands or their own extramarital partners, and their husbands' stance on condom use. These findings are situated within a broader context of socio-economic, gender, and marital dynamics and vulnerabilities produced or amplified by male labor migration in sub-Saharan and similar developing settings.     

Children's appraisals as mediators of the relationship between domestic violence and child adjustment

This study examines the relationships among variables that were likely to mediate the effects of exposure to domestic violence on children's internalizing problems (i.e., children's appraisals of domestic violence and their perceptions of family relationships). The study was conducted with 79 children exposed to domestic violence, including 41 boys and 38 girls, aged between 9 and 12 years old. Indicators used for children's appraisals of violence were attribution of blame and perceived threat. Children's perceptions of family relationships were based on their levels of parentification and the degree of their loyalty conflicts. A path analysis was used to verify the predictive model's pathways and to test the multiple mediator effects. Findings confirm the contribution of mediating variables and also reflect the association between self-blame and children's parentification. The results stress the relevance of evaluating the combined role of different potential mediators to provide a better understanding of the impact of domestic violence on children.