Exploring Organizational Form in the Affordable Rental Housing Sector

The nature and benefits of different kinds of affordable rental housing providers, and particularly for-profit housing developers, have been contested by practitioners and scholars. We contribute to this debate by exploring whether the missions, the resources harnessed to build housing, the human resources, and the involvement of residents in decision-making differ based on organizational form. Using case study design, we examine two third sector organizations (a zero equity cooperative and a community-based non-profit) and a for-profit located in Canada. The two third sector organizations had less knowledge of housing construction and harnessed in-kind contributions compared to the for-profit. These organizations, and again in contrast with the for-profit, also pursued social missions, including supporting other organizations and sharing their experiences related to housing construction. The zero equity cooperative featured greater resident involvement in the development and the management of the housing compared to both the community-based non-profit and the for-profit.     

Supporting older youth: what's policy got to do with it?

The nonschool hours are an underused tool in supporting older youth in their transition to adulthood. Given competing demands on many teens' time and a host of other developmental realities, effective strategies for engaging high schoolers look much different from those of their younger counterparts, and those differences have programmatic and policy implications. Effective youth policies reflect an overarching vision that is about changing lives--a vision that addresses a range of risk and protective factors, simultaneously supports discrete programs and builds coherent pathways to success, and recognizes that children and youth grow up in families and communities. This chapter highlights policy innovations related to teens' involvement in out-of-school-time activities and then looks at three principles that can help ensure that youth policy supports the full range of older youth's unique developmental, social, and economic needs.     

An Economic Analysis of the Gap Between Desired and Actual Fertility: The Case of Spain

Family size is the outcome of sequential decisions influenced both by preferences and by ongoing changes in the environment where a family lives. During the last two decades, the gap between the number of children women prefer and their actual fertility has widened in Spain. The paper uses the 1985 and 1999 Spanish Fertility Surveys to study whether the tightening of the labor market and worsening of economic conditions in Spain during the last 20 years are important determinants of this change. I find that women facing high unemployment rates in their mid-twenties tend to restrict their fertility below their ideal level. Among women in the labor force, the stability of a public sector job lessens the difficulties of balancing employment and family and of achieving preferred fertility. Temporary contracts work in the opposite direction. Findings are robust to the inclusion of controls for within-couple discrepancies in either preferences or religious affiliation.

Measuring Hope in the Philippines: Validating the Short Version of the Locus-of-Hope Scale in Filipino

A short version of the locus-of-hope Scale was developed and translated into the Filipino language for the purpose of assessing hope in Filipinos who have lower levels of education and who may not have adequate levels of proficiency in English. The 20-item scale had four locus-of-hope subscales (internal, external-family, external-peers, and external-spiritual) each with four items (another four were filler items); all items described thoughts associated with some capacity and strategy to attain important goals in life. A sample (N = 362) of adults from communities in Metro Manila were asked to answer the scale, as well as measures of optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated an adequate fit between the hypothesized four-factor structure and the data, but the internal locus-of-hope scale was found to have low internal consistency. Regression analysis showed positive associations between the internal and external-family locus-of-hope subscales and the three measures of wellbeing. But external-peers locus-of-hope was negatively associated with optimism and self-esteem, and external-spiritual locus-of-hope was positively related with optimism.     

Visual Attention Patterns Differ in Gynephilic and Androphilic Men and Women Depending on Age and Gender of Targets

Visual attention patterns measured with eye-tracking techniques provide indirect clues about sexual response. This study aimed to test the category specificity of sexual responses to stimuli varying in gender and age by evaluating both early and late attention of gynephilic and androphilic men and women. We simultaneously presented sexually preferred and nonpreferred stimuli and measured time to first fixation and total duration of fixation on four areas of interest: entire body, then face, chest, and pelvis. Androphilic women’s early attention patterns were nonspecific, whereas gynephilic women and both groups of men showed a category-specific pattern for the entire body. In contrast, all groups showed gender-specific patterns of late attention for all areas of interest. We also found support for age specificity of early and late visual attention in all four groups, with greater attention to adult than child stimuli. This study supports the usefulness of a competing stimulus eye-tracking paradigm as a method to examine gender specificity in gynephilic women and androphilic and gynephilic men, and as a measure of age specificity in gynephilic and androphilic men and women.     

The Incarcerated Parent: Examining Mother-Child Conflict at the Margins through a Bio-Ecological Lens

ABSTRACT

This study examined conflict, parenting communication style, and attitudes regarding the parent-child relationship for a marginalized special population: incarcerated mothers and their children. Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological perspective served as a guiding framework, based on its ability to consider family interactions across ecological contexts, both proximal and distal to the developing child’s home setting. Fifty incarcerated mothers in the central U.S. provided in-depth interviews and individual self-report surveys. Findings indicate that incarcerated mothers most frequently used an authoritative parenting communication style in conflict situations that ended positively, and authoritarian style in conflict that ended negatively. Authoritative parenting was associated with incarcerated mothers’ reports of greater satisfaction with parenting. Study findings suggest that parenting communication style can help support efforts to reduce recidivism. Contextualizing these findings within Bronfenbrenner’s model, the present study affirms the role of proximal as well as distal factors governing relational communication between incarcerated mothers and their children.     

Emotions and the Self: Depression and Identity Change

Emotions hold a central place in sociological understandings of the self, both as a facet of identity management and as an outcome of self‐processes. We extend identity theory and research on emotions by suggesting that emotion may be another source of identity change and examine this using a longitudinal sample of newly married couples, focusing on person identities and depression. We find that individuals' identities change to become consistent with others' views. We also find that the more depressive symptoms that individuals experience, the more negative their identities. The identity meanings that change, however, are different for men and women.     

Catching Babies in Prohibition States: Midwives' Accounts for an Illegal Profession

Practicing midwifery is illegal in four states and the District of Columbia. However, midwives still practice as they and much of the public do not see their behavior as criminal. Based on in‐depth interviews with twenty‐six midwives, our findings demonstrate that midwives employed both public and professional accounts. They collectively justified midwifery in prohibition states by condemning their condemners, appealing to higher loyalties, denying injury, and justifying by comparison. We also found a new account, denial of illegality. This research uniquely applies the concept of collective accounts to an illegal but socially acceptable career.