Attitudes of mental health professionals about changing ages of legal majority

Questionnaires were sent to mental health professionals surveying their attitudes toward legal age limits which govern the rights of the young to make decisions for themselves. Inquiries were also made about respondents' opinions of the impact that increasing those rights might have on their professional interactions with young people. Responses were received from 69 predominantly young professionals and reflected a fairly libertarian outlook toward the rights of minors. Discussion emphasized the value of consulting with mental health professionals who work with children when shaping and interpreting new standards of autonomous decision making.     

Communicating philanthropy: The media and the voluntary sector in Britain

Whether in looking for resources or doing their work, voluntary and charitable organisations have always needed to publicise their existence. However, major changes in the role and funding of the sector in Britain have meant that the issue of publicity has gained particular salience. This article discusses these changes and provides preliminary findings from a large-scale investigation into media and public attitudes towards voluntary and charitable activity. It explores how voluntary activity is reported by mainstream news media, and how these presentations are framed by media professinal's perceptions of, and value judgements about, different types of voluntary action. This article is based on research funded by the ESRC (Grant Reference R000 23 3193) and the Home Office. The analysis draws on collaborative work with Peter Golding and Alan Radley. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the inaugural conference for the International Society for Third Sector Research, in Pécs, Hungary, July 1994.     

Women and Weight: A Treatment Programme for Both Normal and Overweight Women Preoccupied by Eating and Related Issues

In this paper a guide to group therapy for women with chronic concerns about overweight, body image and eating behaviour is described. The first level of therapy constitutes a ten-week course designed to help women break obsessional preoccupation with eating, weight and body image. A dilemma is posed so that women see themselves struggling paradoxically for social conformity for thinness on the one hand and to provide nurture and food on the other. The contributions of social environment, early learning and family tradition, present family structure and inappropriate treatment modalities are examined. The second level of treatment is designed for severely obese women who have succeeded in breaking the obsessional concern with eating behaviour. This level focuses on family of origin restraints as well as on current family and particularly marital restraints to weight loss. The preliminary outcome studies have been encouraging but long-term results are not yet available.     

Cultural Underpinnings of Special Education: Implications for Professional Interactions with Culturally Diverse Families

This article identifies certain cultural assumptions that underlie special education policy and practice in the United States, and argues that unawareness of cultural relativity contributes to considerable cross-cultural dissonance in working with families from diverse backgrounds. With regard to policy, the article argues that, despite an ideal of parental participation, the medical note on which the law is based frequently results in misunderstanding between professionals and parents who do not share the same value system. Three aspects of such misunderstandings are explored: The way disability is defined, the power accorded to professional expertise, and the commitment to the decontextualized language of objective science. With regard to practice, the article further identifies four areas of parent-professional dissonance: Beliefs about parenting styles, education goals, family and community concerns, and the pragmatics of communication. Explicit awareness of cultural relativity is recommended as an essential step towards reciprocal relationships with families from diverse backgrounds.     

Media labeling versus the US disability community identity: a study of shifting cultural language

This study examines disability terminology to explore how the news media frame cultural representations of the disability community. More specifically, the paper examines the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on journalist's language choices about disability topics. A content analysis of news stories using disability terms in The Washington Post and The New York Times during the past decade was conducted. The paper illustrates that disability community identity continues to be formed, transformed and maintained through news media presentations of disability terminology. The paper argues that the US Disability Rights Movement had some success during the 1990s in putting forth language that advances its aims, though the study also suggests that some journalists continue to use terms that perpetuate limiting, narrow stereotypes about people with disabilities.     

HIV Risk and the Freedom to Act Without Thinking: Alcohol Use and Sexual Behavior Among Adolescents on Probation

Through in-depth phenomenological interviews, 18 adolescents currently on probation describe how they make decisions about using alcohol and engaging in sexual behaviors. Two main threads emerge: they value spontaneity in sex and believe that they act spontaneously in regard to both sex and alcohol. At the same time, they describe being highly influenced by parents and peers. The researchers discuss the potential implications of these and other findings for HIV prevention and intervention.     

Social Order through a Prism: Color as Collective Representation

Although color has rarely been examined as a sociological topic, the meaning of color is linked to numerous social domains and serves as a collective representation. Color contributes to social meanings in institutional orders, stratification systems, and identity. While color has some meaning separate from its linkage to particular objects, in most cases colors are situated. We perceive not color, but colored objects. Any given color has multiple meanings that are understood in context. Through our examination of a range of domains in which color has social significance, we suggest that the examination of this field has considerable promise. We conclude by linking the analysis of color to the model of cultural formation suggested by Schudson (1989), focusing on retrievability, rhetorical force, resonance, institutional retention, and resolution.     

‘Kids who Smoke Think that They Can Be Adults as Well’: Children's Smoking and Transitions to Adulthood

This article aims to explore the ways in which preadolescents associate smoking with transitions to adulthood, in the context of sociological theories of childhood, using data from the Liverpool Longitudinal Study of Smoking. The research found that at age 9 many of the cohort argued that smoking was more acceptable for adults because they had bigger bodies than children. Some children also suggested that smoking was appropriate for adults because adults were competent to make important decisions and to balance risks. By age 11, when several of the cohort had actually tried smoking, children's views about the risks smoking posed to their bodies had altered, and many children were aware of smoking‐related disease among adults. The cohort also suggested that some children might take up smoking to demonstrate that they are ‘grown up’ too. In the UK, legal restrictions on the age of tobacco purchase are reinforced by social norms that construct smoking as an activity that is only suitable for adults. The goal of legal restrictions that ban the sale of cigarettes to children is to protect their health. The unintended outcome, however, is that for many young people smoking is a way of demonstrating maturity and adult status.