Helping parents to manage infant crying and sleeping: a review of the evidence and its implications for services

Infant crying and night waking are common concerns for parents, costly problems for health services and may trigger infant abuse or lead to serious child disturbances. Parents are given contradictory advice on how to manage infant crying and sleeping, indicating the need for evidence‐based guidance. This review of recent research draws distinctions between infant crying and sleeping problems, between the problem identified by parents and the infant behaviour underlying the problem, between different types of crying behaviour and their causes, and between the types of cases which present at different ages. It proposes that the two main approaches to parenting advocated by baby‐care experts, ‘infant‐demand’ and ‘structured’ parenting, have different benefits, and costs. Comparative studies have found that infant‐demand parenting is associated with low amounts of fussing and crying in the first three months of age, but with night waking which continues beyond three months. Randomised controlled trials have provided evidence that structured parenting leads to more overall fussing and crying during the first three months, but reduced night waking and crying after that. The findings are translated into recommendations for preventing and treating infant crying and sleeping problems, for policy debate, and for further research. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The problem of social generations: a critique of the new emerging orthodoxy in youth studies

Over the previous seven years the application of a social generation paradigm or ‘theory’ has gained increasing currency as a method in analysing young people's relationship with the life course. Whilst not a new concept or approach its resurgence and reconfiguration to ‘new’ times has seen some writers positioning it as a ‘new orthodoxy’ or ‘consensus’ within youth studies. In this it is seen as providing a conceptual framework that better helps us understand the complexity of circumstances and conditions that shape youth identities in late modern society. In this paper we examine and explore the underlying assumptions and claims that are made by those advocating the social generational paradigm, raising questions and seeking further clarification on a number of key themes. We accept youth studies needs to move beyond ‘old models’ that define and understand social context as a simply a tension between ‘structure or/and agency’ or as a ‘flavour’ to social action. To conclude therefore we propose the need to have an approach that is ecological and both accepts ‘social change’ and ‘continuity’ as critical parts of the life course, one that recognises the nature and influence of power and social reproduction, especially for different social classes, in shaping the experience of being young.     

‘We Can All Just Get on a Bus and Go’: Rethinking Independent Mobility in the Context of the Universal Provision of Free Bus Travel to Young Londoners

This paper uses qualitative data from interviews with 118 young Londoners (age 12–18) to examine how the universal provision of free bus travel has affected young people’s independent mobility. Drawing on Sen’s capabilities approach, we argue that free bus travel enhanced young Londoners’ capabilities to shape their daily mobility, both directly by increasing financial access and indirectly by facilitating the acquisition of the necessary skills, travelling companions and confidence. These capabilities in turn extended both opportunity freedoms (e.g. facilitating non-‘necessary’ recreational and social trips) and process freedoms (e.g. feeling more independent by decreasing reliance on parents). Moreover, the universal nature of the entitlement rendered buses a socially inclusive way for groups to travel and spend time together, thereby enhancing group-level capabilities. We believe this attention to individual and group capabilities for self-determination provides the basis for a broader and more child-centred view of independent mobility than the typical research focus upon travelling without an adult and acquiring parental permissions.     

Spatial Governance and Working Class Public Spheres: The Case of a Chartist Demonstration at Hyde Park

The concepts of the public sphere and public space have gained increasing purchase within social history. This paper contributes to this literature by theoretically developing a critical approach to both concepts. By drawing upon the insights of the Bakhtin circle, as well as Marxism and Poststructuralism, the paper suggests that public spheres under capitalism are structured through the basic contradiction between capital and labour. Each public sphere may then be seen as a refracted dialogic and spatial form of this basic contradiction, and is then best viewed as a contradictory spatial entity that obtains its unique identity through different "accents" and "word signs". The capitalist state must aim to regulate, through governance and law, dialogue within a public sphere. By focusing on the Chartist demonstration at Hyde Park, London in 1855, I show how these theories can be employed to explore how a radical social movement appropriated space by developing a working class public sphere.     

Compulsive buying: Does it matter how it’s measured?

The primary purpose of the present study is to compare and contrast the validity and reliability of the Faber and O’Guinn [Faber, R. J., & O’Guinn, T. C. (1992). A clinical screener for compulsive buying. Journal of Consumer Research, 19, 459–469] and Edwards [Edwards, E. A. (1993). Development of a new scale for measuring compulsive buying behavior. Financial Counseling and Planning, 4, 67–84] compulsive buying scales within a nomological network. Although both psychometric scales were designed to measure compulsive buying, the two instruments appear to be distinct in how they conceptualize the compulsive buying phenomenon. The seven-item compulsive buying scale developed by Faber and O’Guinn (1992) is the most commonly used scale for measuring compulsive buying. The Edwards scale in contrast is not as well-known. Empirical results of the present study suggest that the two compulsive buying scales may be capturing either separate constructs, or different dimensions of the same compulsive buying construct. Edwards (1993) compulsive buying scale, for instance, is correlated with materialism but not with attitudes toward money while the Faber and O’Guinn scale is not correlated with materialism but is correlated with attitudes toward money. The present study’s results suggest, among other things, that it does in fact appear to matter how compulsive buying is measured.     

Social workers, parents and stigma

This paper draws on an empirical study of stigma and child welfare services in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Spain. It focuses exclusively on the findings relating to the United Kingdom and shows how stigma continues to be a part of the experience of using and delivering child welfare services, despite the positive determination of policies that this should not be so. More optimistically, however, it is also evident that the experience of stigma and exclusion can be reduced, and the paper concludes by outlining the implications for policy and practice together with those factors which would appear to be most significant in combating stigma.     

A GUIDE TO THE PITFALLS OF IDENTIFYING PRICE DISCRIMINATION

This paper demonstrates that plausible cost-based explanations exist for what are commonly perceived to be cases of price discrimination. We explain such commonly discussed problems as the price spreads of retail gasoline products, the "high" price of dinners at restaurants, the "high" price of popcorn at movie theaters, and the fact that airline ticket prices vary with how long the ticket is purchased before the flight's departure. Our explanations benefit from not relying on consumer ignorance or implicit collusion among numerous sellers.     

Urbanization,migration, and development

This paper looks at the effect of the new international division of labor on urbanization in developing countries. Previous histories, particularly of insertion into the world economy, affect responses to the new order. Also, previous phases in the organization of the world economy, particularly those associated with import-substitution industrialization, have shaped the urban systems and urban social organization of developing countries in particular ways. By comparing the tendencies of the import-substituting period with those of the new international division of labor, contrasts are brought out in the patterns of migration, the shape of the urban system, labor markets, and in urban social organization. The overall change is likely to be an increasing divergence, both within developing countries and between them, in their urban organization.