Bust after boom: First marriage trends in Australia

Since the early 1970s Australia has experienced a pronounced trend to later and less universal marriage. This stands in sharp contrast to a marriage boom that began with the outbreak of World War II and lasted for three decades. The boom was the product of three sets of forces: those peculiar to wartime, those emerging in the early postwar period and creating a climate favorable to marriage, and those surfacing in the 1960s with the advent of oral contraception. Its reversal is attributed largely to less frequent resort to marriage when premaritally pregnant, the rise of cohabitation as a prelude or alternative to marriage, economic forces hindering family formation, and ideological change.     

Effects of the gay publishing boom on classes of titles retrieved under the subject headings "Homosexuality," "Gay Men," and "Gays" in the OCLC WorldCat database

What do searchers find when they look for literature on homosexuality? This question has profound implications for older as well as younger gays in their coming out, as well as in their subsequent identity development. Library records provide credible data to answer the question, since they represent relatively free sources of information, unlike data from bookstores, publishers, and some World Wide Web sites. The records of WorldCat, the world's largest union database of library records, comprise over 30 million records listed in the Online Computer Library Center. For the purposes of the study, 18,757 records listed under "Homosexuality," "Gay Men," and "Gays" were downloaded; records for "Lesbian" and "Lesbians" were not examined. Findings of the study suggest that while there has indeed been considerable growth in terms of the quantity of gay literature produced since 1969, such gains may be offset by the deteriorating quality of cataloging copy, which makes the experience of browsing records a discouraging and confusing one.     

Adoptive family life and adoption support: policy ambivalence and the development of effective services

Adoption policy and practice in England is being ‘modernized’ in order to increase the number of permanent placements for children in public care. Success depends on improving adoption services as well as reforming the adoption process itself. To this end the Adoption and Children Act 2002 places new duties on local authorities to ensure greater consistency and quality of service in adoption support as well as in care planning. Questions now arise locally about what priority and focus to give to adoption support. Yet service development is inhibited by the ambivalence of New Labour about exactly what it is that adoption support is supposed to be supporting and how. Funds are limited and service re‐organization is always difficult to achieve. However, mixed policy messages result largely from the ambiguous social role and expectations of adoptive family life and kinship. In law adoption replicates the autonomous normative birth family whilst in policy it provides reparative parenting for particularly vulnerable children. A lack of clarity about the claims for support of those affected by adoption results. This paper argues a fresh case for the distinctive claims of adoptive family life for support. It suggests how new thinking about adoptive family life and kinship might stimulate local service collaboration and effective adoption support.     

Punishing Juvenile Offenders as Adults: An Analysis of the Social and Political Determinants of Juvenile Prison Admissions across the United States

Abstract

Although the punishment of juvenile offenders has increasingly become an issue of major concern to the public, few studies test the government's coercive response to offending by this particular group. This article addresses the issue by examining the variation in the willingness of courts in the United States to adjudicate juvenile offenders in the adult criminal courts and sentence them to adult correctional facilities. I use pooled time-series negative binomial regression to analyze raw counts of juveniles admitted to adult prisons from 1983 to 2001. Results consistently show that states with larger minority populations admit more juvenile offenders to prisons but that states with very large African American populations send fewer of these offenders to prison. The findings also show that differences in the ideological climate of each state are a strong predictor of the variation in adult sanctions for minors. Additional evidence shows that states where judges must run in an election to gain their seats and states where judges have shorter terms proscribe more severe sanctions for juvenile offenders by sentencing more of them to adult prisons. Overall, the results suggest that race and politics play a very strong role in the sentencing of juvenile offenders to adult prisons.     

Charismatic,ideological, and pragmatic leaders: An examination of leader–leader interactions

Although a number of researchers have examined and demonstrated the unique relationships different types of leaders develop with their followers (Dansereau, F., Graen, G.B., & Haga, W.J. (1975). A vertical dyad linkage approach to leadership within formal organizations: A longitudinal investigation of the role making process. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 13, 46–78.; Dienesh & Liden, 1986; Mumford, 2006), relatively little is known regarding how outstanding leaders interact or work together (Hunter, Bedell-Avers, Mumford, 2009-this issue). Given the particular importance of such questions, especially when considering leaders who have the potential to influence national and worldwide developments, the intent of the present study was to examine the leader–leader exchange relationships of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders. Due to the difficulty associated with examining high-level leader–leader exchanges, a hybrid qualitative–quantitative approach was taken to assess the interactions of Frederick Douglas, W.E.B. Dubois, and Booker T. Washington – three high-level leaders who responded to the same crisis, in the same time period, in the same region of the world. The results provide preliminary evidence regarding the interactions of charismatic, ideological, and pragmatic leaders; in fact, they indicate that leaders interact in a manner consistent with their mental model.     

Racial Disparities in Access to Mortgage Credit: Does Governance Matter?*

Objectives. This article examines the effect of community organizing on the likelihood that minority borrowers pursue home mortgage credit from regulated lenders. Methods. Governance perspectives suggest that community organizations exert significant influence on policy outcomes. We use logistic regression with interaction terms to test the effect of community organizing on the lending outcomes of minority borrowers. We use a matched control sample of cities, drawing on 2004 loan data from two midwestern cities similar in racial and economic composition but with different histories of organizing around the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Results. We find differential effects based on an applicant's race or ethnicity. Overall, African‐American applicants are less likely to pursue mortgage credit for home ownership from regulated lenders than their white, non‐Hispanic counterparts. However, African Americans seeking mortgage credit in a city with a history of CRA organizing are more likely to apply to regulated lenders than their racial counterparts in a city without CRA organizing. However, while organizing reduces the disparities between white and African‐American applicants, a gap still remains. Conclusion. African‐American borrowers living in cities with a history of community organizing around CRA appear more likely to pursue mortgage credit from traditional, regulated lenders, suggesting that governance matters.