The Power of Perceived Experience: Events That Shape Work as a Calling

Meaning plays an important role in many people's lives and work. A significant source of meaning derives from a greater sense of fulfilling one's calling, or purpose in work. This study examined the specific life experiences that shape people's perceptions of their calling and the characteristics of those experiences that make them so powerful. Fifty‐eight people who self‐identified as leaders responded to a questionnaire about the relevant experiences that shaped their perceptions of their work as a calling. Participants' responses were content‐analyzed to generate a taxonomy of themes in 4 overarching categories: (a) content of the event, (b) context of the event, (c) confirmation of one's call, and (d) the continuing effect that the event has had on the individual's life. By increasing knowledge about events that affect perceptions about one's calling, counselors may be more equipped to shed light on the potential, unexamined trajectories of a client's work and life.     

Non word Repetition and Reading Skills in Children Who Are Deaf and Have Cochlear Implants

Reading skills in hearing children are closely related to their phonological processing skills, often measured using a nonword repetition task in which a child relies on abstract phonological representations in order to decompose, encode, rehearse in working memory and reproduce novel phonological patterns. In the present study of children who are deaf and have cochlear implants, we found that nonword repetition performance was significantly related to nonword reading, single word reading and sentence comprehension. Communication mode and nonverbal IQ were also found to be correlated with nonword repetition and reading skills. A measure of the children's lexical diversity, derived from an oral language sample, was found to be a mediating factor in the relationship between nonword repetition and reading skills. Taken together, the present findings suggest that the construction of robust phonological representations and phonological processing skills may be important contributors to the development of reading in children who are deaf and use cochlear implants.     

Access to Childcare in Europe: Parents' Logistical Challenges in Cross‐national Perspective

A burgeoning comparative literature has identified the centrality of childcare policy and provision in promoting parental, and specifically maternal, participation in paid employment across countries. This literature has focused on the importance of macro‐level institutional arrangements, with a special emphasis on variation in availability of, and access to, formal early childhood education and care services. However, there has been limited comparative exploration of what this means in practice at the micro‐level: the everyday challenges parents face when attempting to navigate the childcare system and the labour market simultaneously. Taking inspiration from human geography literature on the concept of ‘space–time fixity’, we present cross‐national findings on the logistical challenges of arranging childcare. Evidence is drawn from interviews with parent‐ and childcare‐related organizations in six European countries: Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK. Our research provides a richer understanding of childcare availability than would a sole focus on formal childcare services, by elucidating the difficulties parents face in organizing access to these services, which can be a challenge to some extent even in contexts where childcare services are comprehensive and affordable.     

Perceived norms and alcohol consumption: differences between college students from rural and urban high schools

OBJECTIVE: The authors examined perceived norms and drinking among college students who attended high schools in rural and urban communities. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS: Undergraduates (99 men and 85 women) who attended high schools in communities with populations ranging from less than 100 to more than 400,000 completed surveys assessing perceived norms and alcohol consumption. RESULTS: Analyses revealed that students from smaller towns and in smaller high school graduating classes reported heavier drinking and that perceived norms were positively associated with drinking. Perceived norms were unrelated to population variables, and the relationship between perceived norms and drinking did not vary as a function of population variables. Results suggest that differences in drinking as a function of coming from more rural areas contribute to drinking behavior in college independently of perceived norms. CONCLUSIONS: College students may adjust to campus drinking norms relatively quickly, and longitudinal research would be useful in understanding this transition.     

Your Eyes Say “No,” But Your Heart Says “Yes”: Behavioral and Psychophysiological Indices in Infant Quantitative Processing

Behavioral indices (e.g., infant looking) are predominantly used in studies of infant cognition, but psychophysiological measures have been increasingly integrated into common infant paradigms. The current study reports a result in which behavioral measures and physiological measures were both incorporated in a task designed to study infant number discrimination. Seven‐month‐old infants were habituated to several sets of stimuli varying in object type, but of a constant numerical value (either two or three items). Although looking time to each of the test trials revealed no differences, differences in heart rate defined measures of attention revealed infants’ ability to discriminate number. These findings imply that the inclusion of indices other than behavioral measures should become commonplace in studies of infant cognition.     

How Does Juvenile Offending Relate to Mothers' Aspirations and Expectations for Their Sons?

Mothers of 317 first‐time juvenile offenders (M = 15.35 years old) were interviewed over 2.5 years about their expectations and aspirations for their sons' futures. Mothers' expectations were lower than their aspirations, reflecting a discrepancy between what mothers felt was important for their child's future and what they considered likely to happen. As their children continued to engage in delinquent acts, mothers' expectations for their sons' future success diminished. Youth age moderated the association between delinquency and maternal expectations, such that when perceived delinquency was high, expectations were lower for mothers of young sons compared to mothers of older sons. These findings carry implications for practice and intervention, as parent expectations and aspirations are both directly and indirectly associated with youth achievement.     

Platform vulnerabilities: harassment and misogynoir in the digital attack on Leslie Jones

ABSTRACT

In the summer of 2016, racist, misogynistic harassers attacked comedienne Leslie Jones on Twitter and on her personal website, which they hacked and flooded with sexist and racist imagery stolen largely from her personal accounts. Through a multiplatform discourse analysis of the Leslie Jones attack, this paper examines the connections between platform vulnerabilities and the vulnerabilities of women of color, as well as the links between the rise of the alt-right and an increase in explicitly racist, misogynistic behaviors. Three key themes emerged from the analysis: messages of support and affirmation; the need for intervention; and the connection between this incident, systemic racism and sexism, and the rise of the alt-right. These themes serve as a bridge between the vulnerabilities of platforms and of women of color in those digital spaces and beyond. The supportive awareness campaigns and calls to action that issue publics launched online attempted to discursively ‘patch’ two perceived vulnerabilities – of Twitter as a platform and of Jones herself. However, in response to these ‘patches,’ members of the alt-right condemned Twitter and mainstream media for marginalizing their conservative voices, using this discourse to bolster their performance of victimization and oppression. Overall, this case study provides insight into the dynamics at work in the rise of the alt-right and online harassment, with particular attention to the significance of digital media, celebrity, and popular feminism in the ongoing political shifts in the United States.     

The fiscal and human costs of immigrant detention and deportation in the United States

An extensive body of literature has analyzed the individual impacts and collateral consequences of mass incarceration. However, few studies explore the consequences of a parallel and overlapping system: mass immigration detention and deportation. The last 30 years witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of noncitizens detained in and deported from the United States. Individuals detained under immigration laws are held pending adjudication, often mandatorily, and without many basic constitutional protections. Immigrant detention and deportation impose severe burdens on immigrants and their households and levy significant costs to society—financially, as well as in terms of social capital and community well‐being. Chiefly due to the difficulty in accessing noncitizens in the process of detention and deportation, this system has largely escaped sociological inquiry. This article provides a background for understanding the growth and consequences of detention and deportation in the United States. It reviews the literature on these immigration law enforcement programs and suggests topical and methodological directions for future research.