Does Part-Time Mothering Help Get a Job? The Role of Shared Custody in Women’s Employment

Though child shared physical custody arrangements after divorce are much more frequent and parents who use it more diverse in many European countries, little is known about their economic consequences for parents. By relaxing family time constraints, does shared custody help divorced mothers return to or stay on work more easily? Since lone mothers are one of the least-employed groups, and they face high unemployment rates, the type of child custody arrangement adopted after divorce is of particular interest for their employability. This article analyses to what extent the type of child custody arrangement affects mothers’ labour market patterns after divorce.Using a large sample of divorcees from an exhaustive French administrative income tax database, and taking advantage of the huge territorial discrepancies observed in the proportion of shared custody, we correct for the possible endogeneity of shared custody. Results show that not repartnered mothers with shared custody arrangements are 24 percentage points more likely to work one year after divorce compared to those having sole custody, while no significant effect is found for repartnered mothers. Among lone mothers, we also highlight huge heterogeneous effects: larger positive effects are observed for previously inactive women, for those belonging to the lowest income quintiles before divorce, for those with a young child, and for those who have three or more children. Thus, shared physical custody arrangements may reduce work–family conflict by diminishing childcare expenses and enlarge the possibilities to find a suitable job because of more relaxed time constraints for lone mothers.     

Why ownership matters

The main argument of this article is that corporate planners have tended to concentrate on subjects such as control of business strategies, financial management and global economic assessment; they have paid too little attention to the ownership of corporate entities. Apart from the overwhelming economic and social arguments in favour of dispersed ownership, there is increasing evidence that companies which adopt a positive planning approach to the ownership of their business will derive wider benefits. Much more statistical and attitudinal evaluation is required; individual companies need to support the macro-work of academic research with detailed micro-studies at the company level. If these studies continue to support the basic argument, there are positive steps which each company will be able to take to support the cause of wider ownership.     

Attenuating Initial Beliefs: Increasing the Acceptance of Anthropogenic Climate Change Information by Reflecting on Values

Anthropogenic climate change information tends to be interpreted against the backdrop of initial environmental beliefs, which can lead to some people being resistant toward the information. In this article (N = 88), we examined whether self‐affirmation via reflection on personally important values could attenuate the impact of initial beliefs on the acceptance of anthropogenic climate change evidence. Our findings showed that initial beliefs about the human impact on ecological stability influenced the acceptance of information only among nonaffirmed participants. Self‐affirmed participants who were initially resistant toward the information showed stronger beliefs in the existence of climate change risks and greater acknowledgment that individual efficacy has a role to play in reducing climate change risks than did their nonaffirmed counterparts.     

Off‐Time Pubertal Timing Predicts Physiological Reactivity to Postpuberty Interpersonal Stress

We investigated associations between retrospectively assessed timing of pubertal development, interpersonal interactions, and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis reactivity to an interpersonal stress task in 110 young adult women. Participants provided salivary cortisol samples at points prior and subsequent to a video‐taped conflict discussion with their romantic partner. Participants also provided subjective global ratings of their discussion on dimensions of conflict and support. For earlier developing girls, higher levels of interpersonal conflict were associated with greater physiological stress in anticipation of the discussion task and less physiological recovery following the discussion. In contrast, for later developing girls, low levels of conflict were associated with greater anticipatory stress and less physiological recovery. These findings have implications for understanding the influence of off‐time pubertal development on the lifetime development of young women.     

Connecting the gendered door: women, violence and doorwork

This paper explores the emerging role of women who work as 'bouncers', or doorstaff, in the night-time economy and examines how the cultural capital of the female bouncer is connected to the methods utilized to control licensed premises. It is drawn from a study that combined ethnographic observations and interviews in five major UK cities which explored a diverse range of issues such as gendered bodies, femininities and violence; the changing needs of the night-time economy in the UK and the experiences of women engaged in 'non-traditional' occupations. In this paper, we draw on interview data with one particular category of female door staff; women who share similar histories of exposure to violence and violent cultures, and we examine how their experiential knowledge of violence equips them with the resources to 'work the doors'. Our attention focuses on this group of women, who we refer to as 'The Connected', and examine how they are 'doing gender' when they negotiate violence 'on the door'     

Bridging the gap between social work practice and community based welfare agencies

This article argues that social work in the UK needs to renegotiate its relationship with community welfare agencies. It begins by examining what we mean by local community and how welfare needs reflect complex non-linear dynamics unique to the local circumstances. It is argued that these are not always recognised in centralised policy agendas. The article broadly draws a parallel between policy issues for the European Community and for the national state. The drive for both is towards uniformity, which potentially fails to acknowledge the unique circumstances at both the national level between nations and the local level between communities.

The focus of the analysis is the lack of engagement with the subtleties of the local within the arena of social work education and practice. With the opportunity presented by the introduction of a new social work degree in the UK, the authors describe how a social work programme in Liverpool undertook a piece of research with the aim of creating an appropriate place for community welfare agencies in practice placements, the academic curriculum and, ultimately, with the next generation of social work practitioners. Eight welfare agencies within the proximity of Liverpool University, an area known as Toxteth, agreed to participate in the research to investigate what kind of placement module would enable local welfare agencies to engage meaningfully in the social work degree. Out of this process emerged a model for research based curriculum development involving local community agencies and academic institutions. More specifically for Liverpool, it placed the notion of social work's relationship with local community welfare at the heart of professional development for qualifying social workers, paving the way in this region of England for closer links between welfare agencies associated with civil society and professional social workers.