The family culture of negotiation—a result of changing parent‐child relationships

Case studies of parent‐child relations in three different European regions—West Germany, East Germany and the Netherlands—offer material for the comparative analysis of the ongoing intra‐familial process of modernization and civilization in post‐war West European societies. The data are drawn from extended narrative interviews with twelve‐year‐olds and from parallel but separate semi‐structured ‘mirrored’ interviews with the same children and their parents. The results of the analysis show that family relations in general, and parent‐child relations in particular, are increasingly marked by a familial ‘culture of negotiation’. This suggests that the balance of intergenerational power relations is currently in the process of change. To a greater or lesser extent, contemporary family relations are characterized by situationally grounded processes of negotiation between parents and children.     

The family structures are changing—but what about the idea of the family?

In contemporary societies, stepfamilies usually emerge following divorce and remarriage. This family form has become more prevalent in Finland during the 1980s. The present article focuses on the public discourse surrounding the stepfamily as this is reflected in family and women's magazines. This discourse reveals the still prevailing strong cultural norms regarding family life: living in a family is defined as the normal way of living, with bonds of belonging together and biological ties defined as primary. The stepfamily is expected to fulfil these expectations. The ideology governing the stepfamily is therefore very similar to that of the traditional nuclear family unit.     

The right to be different: Multiculturalism and the racialization of scandinavian welfare politics; The case of Denmark

‘Multiculturalism’ as an influential ideology for structuring ethnic relations has become exposed to increasing critique also in the Scandinavian context. The paper discusses a racialized political debate, legislation, and institutional practices, taking Denmark as the prime example. An increasingly ‘dual welfare’ is becoming legitimized through a hegemonic culturalized language, consistently interpreting ‘the right to be different’ as ‘being different’, and ‘being different’ as being ‘non‐integrated’. In a society where public debate on ethnic and racial discrimination is less than rudimentary, tolerant claims of multiculturalist relativism are effectively turned upside down in the service of neo‐racism, the preachings of which are imperceptibly becoming adopted as the conventional wisdom. This calls for a discussion on ‘politics of recognition’ which brings the debate on the universalism and particularity out of the abstract, while focusing on the vicissitudes of contemporary democracy in a changing welfare state.     

Events that Trigger Poverty Entries and Exits*

Objective. This article examines how events—such as changes in household composition, employment status, disability status, and economic conditions—affect poverty entries and exits. We also examine whether the role these events play in poverty transitions differs in the pre‐ and post‐welfare‐reform periods. Methods. The analysis uses discrete‐time multivariate hazard models along with monthly, longitudinal data from the 1988, 1990, and 1996 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Results. Analyses show that many events are related to the likelihood of entering and exiting poverty. Of the trigger events examined, individuals living in households that experience a loss or gain of employment are the most likely to enter and exit poverty. We also find that changes in employment are more important in the 1996 to 1999 time period—after welfare reform—than in the 1988 to 1992 time period—prior to welfare reform. Finally, changes in household composition, disability status, and educational attainment are found to play a role in throwing people into poverty and helping them exit from poverty in both time periods. Conclusions. There is no single path into or out of poverty, suggesting that multiple policies can be considered to help alleviate poverty.     

Infants' Ability to Distinguish Between Intentional and Accidental Actions and Its Relation to Internal State Language

The experiment reported here investigated infants' concept of intention, as well as the relation among intention understanding, general productive vocabulary, and internal state language production during the 2nd year. Results from an imitation task indicated that 18‐month‐olds are better able to differentiate between intentional and accidental actions than 14‐month‐olds. Although there was no relation between infants' performance on the intention task and their general productive vocabulary, internal state language production at 30 months was predicted by infants' ability to differentiate between intentional and accidental actions about a year earlier. These findings shed light on the developmental progression of infants' concept of intention, as well as on the continuity between infants' understanding of intentional action and their ability to use internal state words.     

Conventional Wisdom on Risk Communication and Evidence from a Field Experiment

A recent comprehensive review of the literature identified a number of facts and principles governing risk communication. This paper evaluates several of these propositions using recent evidence from a field experiment in communicating the risks from radon in homes. At this point in the research, data relates primarily to the response of risk perceptions to different information treatments and different personal characteristics. The effect of various causal factors is sensitive to the particular test of risk perception applied. No information treatment was clearly superior for all tasks. An important implication of these findings is that risk communicators must determine what specific task or tasks the information program should enable people to do.     

GENDER AND PROSOCIAL VALUES DURING ADOLESCENCE: A Research Note

To date, relatively little is known about the prosocial values of adolescents. Research has shown that females attach more importance to certain prosocial values than males do in late adolescence but has not considered whether this gender difference is evident across stages of adolescence and whether it varies by race. We examine values that focus on doing things for others, using data from a nationwide survey of 12- to 17-year-olds. We find that girls place more importance on these prosocial values than boys at younger ages. However, we also find important patterns in this gender difference across racial groups as well as across age. White boys appear to attach less importance to prosocial values than other race and gender groups. Furthermore, the gender gap in prosocial values is larger at older ages, with older adolescent boys placing less importance on prosocial values than younger ones.