Marital Conflict,Ineffective Parenting,and Children's and Adolescents' Maladjustment

Data from the 1988 National Survey on Families and Households were analyzed to examine the associations among marital conflict, ineffective parenting, and children's and adolescents' maladjustment. Parents' use of harsh discipline and low parental involvement helped explain the connection between marital conflict and children's maladjustment in children aged 2 through 11. Parent‐child conflict was measured only in families with a target teenager and also was a significant mediator. Although ineffective parenting explained part of the association between marital conflict and children's maladjustment, independent effects of marital conflict remained in families with target children aged 2 through 11 (but not for families with a teenager). With a few exceptions, this pattern of findings was consistent for mothers' and fathers' reports, for daughters and sons, for families with various ethnic backgrounds, and for families living in and out of poverty.     

Factors Associated with the Development of Nonmetropolitan Growth Nodes in Producer Services Industries, 1980–1990*

Abstract Over the 1980–1990 period, employment in producer services industries in the nonmetropolitan United States increased substantially. This growth resulted in the development of nonmetropolitan growth nodes in producer services industries. A growth node refers to a nonmetropolitan area that contains a greater than average concentration of employment in a particular industry sector relative to other nonmetropolitan areas. Moreover, this industry concentration not only increases over time, but also represents an important source of employment growth within the area. With nonmetropolitan counties as the spatial unit of analysis, 317 growth nodes in producer services industries are identified for the 1980–1990 period. Access to workers with clerical and administrative support skills, access to highly educated workers, higher earnings per employed worker, access to recreational amenities, and proximity to metropolitan areas were associated with the development of nonmetropolitan growth nodes in producer services industries during this period.     

On Masking and Revealing the Culture of the Cross-Culturalist

There is a gulf between the analytic and experiential aspects of cross-culturalists' functioning that is reflected in the split between explicit scientific rules for studying the culture of others, while following an informal oral tradition for considering our own cultural makeup. This article discusses both a possible strategy for correcting this situation and the barriers that are likely to prevent such a correction. Structured cultural self-study procedures are presented as a possible resource in the continuing development of graduate students and professionals, and these have already proven highly effective in teaching cross-cultural psychology to undergraduates. Fostering commitments to standardized self-study and to applications of experiential learning is currently not likely to flourish due to complex academic and epistemic traditions, discussed as six cultural self-masking factors. A specific self-study protocol is offered to provide a beginning point for generating improved reflexive methods and for individual trial use. Through disciplined reflexivity, benefits might emerge in the form of better bias control in research, enhanced external validity, and a new theory about the interplay of investigators' self-knowledge and the conduct of cross-cultural research.     

Hearts and Minds and Morality: Analyzing Moral Vocabularies in Qualitative Studies

A strategy of analyzing the moral vocabulary of a social movement or subculture is proposed by which ethnographies and other qualitative works may place the moral and ethical concepts used by respondents into a broader sociological context. Through examining the moral resources, the status hierarchy which the specific moral resources within a given moral vocabulary form, and the historical and cultural contexts within which these moral resources exist, it is argued that it becomes possible to analyze and anticipate the moral claims and form of discourse which will be produced by a specific movement and/or subculture. It is also argued that this method may be used to predict how the opposition to a movement and/or subculture is perceived through the formation of an antithetical moral vocabulary.     

Review Essay: What Is Left of the Left?

Sociological Forum -     

Struggling With Two Identities: The Case of Eileen

In this article, the authors present a case example of a Chinese American lesbian woman who seeks counseling for career decision making. The client's career issues stem from cultural issues that have created a dichotomy in her life. Using an ecological model, the authors dissect the case, propose interventions, and identify potential problems that may arise.     

The Boston Area Diary Study and the Moral Citizenship of Care

This paper describes the theoretical foundations, empirical findings, and practical and philosophical implications of the Boston Area Diary Study (BADS), a study of the caring behavior of 44 participants over one calendar year. In particular, the paper presents an identification theory of care and discusses how it shaped the conceptualization, collection, and analysis of the data in a year-long diary study of daily voluntary assistance. The findings from the BADS (1) theoretically confirm the identification theory of care; (2) methodologically capture how individuals perceive and carry out caring behavior as a unity; and (3rpar; empirically document the existence of a moral citizenship in America that is substantially more vigorous than is implied by the usual indicators of civic and political citizenship.     

Toward the development of an adolescent gambling problem severity scale

The development and initial psychometric properties of an adolescent gambling problem severity measure are described. The scale, based on a revision of the South Oaks Gambling Screen (Lesieur & Blume, 1987), was administered to 1,101 older (ages 15 to 18) Minnesota adolescents as part of a state-wide gambling survey. Study results indicated that the scale had moderate internal consistency reliability and was significantly related to alternate measures of problem severity for male subjects. Because the rate and severity of gambling among females was very low, the psychometric adequacy of the scale for females is not known at this time. The implications of study findings to the conceptual understanding of adolescent gambling problem severity as well as study limitations and future research needs, are discussed.Support for the study was provided by the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the Center for Addiction Studies, University of Minnesota, Duluth. The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance from Robert Blum, Linda Harris, Durand Jacobs, J. Laundergan, Alan Mathiason, Brenda Miller, James Schaefer, school officials from the participating high schools, and interviewers who assisted with the telephone survey.     

Jobs,Gender, and Foetal Protection Policies: From Muller v. Oregon to Johnson Controls

The issue of work place hazards that may threaten the health of an unborn child has long been problematic for women, business decision-makers, and lawmakers. The desire to protect the developing foetus must be balanced against a woman's legal right to get and keep the job of her choice. The issue has never been easy to resolve, as this historical analysis shows. An overview of the potential effects of work place hazards on reproductive health is presented. Relevant fair employment laws are summarized, and a brief history of court cases and employer practices is provided. It is argued that ultimately, foetal protection policies had little or nothing to do with protection of foetuses. They may have had more to do with protecting the employer from potential liability and with perceptions of women's status in the work place than with protecting the next generation. Finally, suggestions for future research are presented.