Grandparental childcare in Australia: gender differences in the correlates of providing regular grandparental care while parents work

Grandparents’ regular care for children while parents work has been mostly studied from the parental perspective. This paper focuses on the grandparents. Using the Australian Bureau of Statistics Time Use Survey 2006 (N = 7672) we investigate regular-caring grandparents’ demographic characteristics, which childcare activities they undertake, and how regular childcare provision relates to their time in other activities, subjective time pressure and satisfaction. Results indicate the correlates and nature of regular care differ by gender. Regular and non-regular-caring grandmothers’ relative time allocation to different childcare tasks barely differs, while regular-caring grandfathers’ care includes a much higher proportion of active care and travel than non-regular-caring grandfathers’. Regular care provision is associated with less leisure than non-regular-caring counterparts for both genders, but with only grandmothers’ housework, personal care and sleep time. Providing regular care doubles the likelihood of grandmothers reporting high subjective time pressure compared to non-regular-caring grandmothers; there is no association between regular care and time pressure for grandfathers. We conclude that in taking on regular care, grandparents echo the gender patterns found among parents, namely that it is women who are disproportionately impacted by meeting family care needs.     

HIV testing,perceptions of AIDS risk,and condom use motivation among US women

As STD infections including HIV increase in the United States, it has become increasingly important to policy makers to ascertain the extent to which knowledge and perceptions of AIDS risk affect an individual's probability of altering their sexual or contraceptive behavior to avoid infection. This paper examines the extent to which women's perceptions of their own and their partners' risk of HIV infection affects the probability of using a condom for protection against sexually transmitted diseases. This paper also examines the extent to which HIV testing may affect motivation for condom use. Crosstabulations reveal that prophylactic condom use is more prevalent among women who have been tested for HIV and increase as perceptions of their chance (and their partner's chance) of being positive increases. The multivariate results from this study indicate that having an HIV test significantly predicts the likelihood of using a condom for STD prevention for US women. Furthermore, women who perceive themselves to be at least somewhat likely to be HIV positive have a higher probability of using a condom to prevent sexually transmitted disease, and women who perceive their partners to be HIV positive are twice as likely as other women to use a condom for STD prevention. However, women who consider themselves likely to be HIV positive are no more likely to use a condom than those who consider themselves not at risk.     

Risk,interest groups and the definition of crisis: the case of volcanic ash

This paper considers a key aspect of the ‘risk society’ thesis: the belief that we should be able to manage risks and control the world around us. In particular it focuses on the interface between risk and risk events as socially constructed and the insights that ‘critical situations’ give us into ‘the routine and mundane’, the otherwise taken for granted assumptions underlying risk regulation. It does this with reference to the events precipitated by the April 2010 volcanic eruption in the Eyjafjallajökull area of Iceland. The resulting cloud of volcanic ash spread across Europe and much of Europe's airspace was closed to civil aviation for six days, with far reaching consequences including huge financial losses for airlines. The social processes of defining and reacting to risk and crisis both reveal and generate dilemmas and challenges in regulation. This paper examines the role of different interest groups in defining risk expectations and thereby redefining the ash crisis as a regulatory crisis.     

Elder abuse in Europe: an overview of recent developments

Elder abuse is a global phenomenon. Despite recognition and action several decades ago in a number of countries, in many others the phenomena of abuse and neglect have been much more recently identified as in need of attention. This brief will discuss the situation relating to responses to and interventions in elder abuse that have been evolving in a number of countries in the European region, which are at different stages of development. The examples provided will assist in meeting the worldwide challenge that elder abuse presents.     

Technology as a Weapon in Domestic Violence: Responding to Digital Coercive Control

ABSTRACT

Technology-facilitated domestic violence is an emerging issue for social workers and other service providers. The concept of Digital Coercive Control (DCC) is introduced to highlight the particular nature and impacts of technology-facilitated abuse in the context of domestic violence. While practitioners have become more adept at working with women experiencing DCC, there is still little known about its dynamics and whether this violence requires a change in current service responses. This article explores findings from survey research conducted with 546 Australian domestic violence practitioners about the ways perpetrators use technology as part of their abuse tactics. The findings demonstrate that DV practitioners believe perpetrator use of technology is extensive and has significant impacts on the safety of clients. A major dilemma faced by practitioners is how to promote and facilitate client safety from DCC while still enabling safe use of technology so clients can remain connected to family, friends, and community.

IMPLICATIONS

• The use of digital technology in domestic violence creates a significant practice issue for Australian domestic violence practitioners.

• The development of a practice framework for responding to digital coercive control may assist practitioners to highlight the risks posed by this abuse, while still enabling women and children the freedom to participate in the digital realm.

     

Does Multiracial Matter? A Study of Racial Disparities in Self-Rated Health

How do self-identified multiracial adults fit into documented patterns of racial health disparities? We assess whether the health status of adults who view themselves as multiracial is distinctive from that of adults who maintain a single-race identity, by using a seven-year (2001–2007) pooled sample of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). We explore racial differences in self-rated health between whites and several single and multiracial adults with binary logistic regression analyses and investigate whether placing these groups into a self-reported “best race” category alters patterns of health disparities. We propose four hypotheses that predict how the self-rated health status of specific multiracial groups compares with their respective component single-race counterparts, and we find substantial complexity in that no one explanatory model applies to all multiracial combinations. We also find that placing multiracial groups into a single “best race” category likely obscures the pattern of health disparities for selected groups because some multiracial adults (e.g., American Indians) tend to identify with single-race groups whose health experience they do not share.     

Gender, acculturation, and health among Mexican Americans

This study examines whether the relationship between acculturation and physical health varies by gender among Mexican Americans, and if the mechanisms that mediate the acculturation-health relationship operate differently by gender. Using the 1998-2007 National Health Interview Study, we construct a composite measure of acculturation and estimate regression models for the total number of health conditions, hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. Immigrants with the lowest levels of acculturation are the healthiest, but this association is stronger for men. Medical care plays a central role in accounting for gender and acculturation differences across health outcomes-increased access to and utilization of medical care is associated with worse health, which suggests that better health among recent arrivals (particularly men) partially results from their lack of knowledge about their own poor health.