Parental competence and parents with learning difficulties

Parental adequacy is widely seen as a function of individual parenting skills. This assumption renders parents with learning difficulties vulnerable to discriminatory treatment in child protection work. A presumption of incompetence leads practitioners to focus on the parents' deficits and intensifies concerns about the welfare of the children. Using case material from a recent study, the authors argue for a wider conception of good-enough parenting that takes into account the external pressures that impact on family functioning.     

Testosterone,marital quality,and role overload

In a sample of established working‐ and middle‐class families with school‐aged children (N= 307 wives and 307 husbands), neither husbands’ nor wives’ testosterone showed a direct connection with marital quality. In contrast, the association between husbands’ testosterone and positive and negative marital quality (as evaluated by both spouses) was conditional on husbands’ role overload. When perceptions of role overload were elevated, higher testosterone levels were associated with lower levels of marital quality. When perceptions of role overload were low, higher testosterone was linked to greater marital quality. The study supports the biosocial model such that, depending on perceptions of the social context, testosterone enables positive behavior in some instances and negative behavior in others.     

Object Function and Categorization in Infancy: Two Mechanisms of Facilitation

Does function facilitate categorization by focusing infants' attention generally on all commonalities among objects or specifically on functionally relevant properties? After familiarization to a novel category, 18‐month‐olds selected another category member from a pair of previously unseen test objects. In Experiments 1 and 2, infants chose globally similar over functionally similar and novel test objects. Functionally similar and novel test objects were chosen equally. These data suggest that function facilitates categorization through a general attention‐enhancing mechanism. However, when functions were more uniquely and transparently tied to object properties in Experiments 3 and 4, infants chose functionally similar over novel test objects. Globally and functionally similar test objects were chosen equally. Therefore, a specific attention‐enhancing mechanism also sometimes supports categorization.     

Early Family Transitions and Depressive Symptom Changes From Adolescence to Early Adulthood

Some research and theory suggest that early cohabitation, parenthood, and marriage have negative long‐term implications. Nevertheless, in the context of their resources and opportunities, early transitions may represent positive choices for some individuals. We studied the family and personal characteristics of young adults (N = 8,172) who did, versus those who did not, make early family transitions. We assessed changes in their depressive symptoms from adolescence to young adulthood. Individuals who made early family transitions were disadvantaged in many respects, but differed little from those who did not with respect to changes in depressive symptoms. That they stay “even” with those who do not make transitions suggests that some young adults make positive choices from among limited options.     

A NOTE ON ADJUSTMENT TO PRODUCTION UNCERTAINTY AND THE THEORY OF THE FIRM

This paper analyzes the impact of production uncertainty on the firm's optimal output decision. If uncertainty is introduced by an additive risk variable, then short-run optimal output is unchanged, but the owner-manager's expected utility can change causing long-run output effects. If uncertainty is introduced by a multiplicative random variable, then short-run output can change as well.     

Accentuate the Positive: A Personal Profile of a Parent with Learning Difficulties

This paper uses case material from a research study of parents with learning difficulties to show why parental competence can only be assessed in the context of people's lives and upbringing. Drawing on the ideas of futures planning, a distinction is made between a 'deficiency perspective' and a 'capacity perspective' on personal development. These two perspectives are applied to the analysis of the personal profile of a parent with learning difficulties. The results present a challenge to the presumption of incompetence that often informs the professional response to parenting by people with learning difficulties.     

Monte Carlo Approximation of Bootstrap Variances

It is widely believed that the number of resamples required for bootstrap variance estimation is relatively small An argument based on the unconditional coefficient of variation of the Monte Carlo approximation, suggests that as few as 25 resamples will give reasonable results. In this article we argue that the number of resamples should, in fact, be determined by the conditional coefficient of variation, involving only resampling variability. Our conditional analysis is founded on a belief that Monte Carlo error should not be allowed to determine the conclusions of a statistical analysis and indicates that approximately 800 resamples are required for this purpose. The argument can be generalized to the multivariate setting and a simple formula is given for determining a lower bound on the number of resamples required to approximate an m-dimensional bootstrap variance-covariance matrix.