Diet and Exercise in Parenthood: A Social Control Perspective

Previous work on social control—the direct and indirect regulation of an individual's health behaviors by others—suggests that parent–child relationships promote healthy diet and exercise. Yet parenthood is associated with less healthy diet and exercise patterns. The authors investigated this paradox by examining social control processes in 40 in‐depth interviews with mothers and fathers. They found that parenthood involves social control processes that both promote and compromise healthy behavior, contributing to contradictory perceived effects of parenthood on health behavior. Moreover, the dynamics of social control appear to unfold in different ways for mothers and fathers and depend on the child's gender and life stage, suggesting that gender and age dyads are central to understanding the seemingly contradictory consequences of parenthood at the population level. These articulations of gendered social control processes provide new insight into the consequences of the gendered organization of parenthood for diet and exercise.     

Greedy Spouse,Needy Parent: The Marital Dynamics of Gay,Lesbian, and Heterosexual Intergenerational Caregivers

It is well established that married heterosexual women do more intergenerational caregiving for aging parents and parents‐in‐law than married heterosexual men do. However, gay men and lesbian women's recent access to marriage presents new questions about the gendered marital dynamics of intergenerational caregiving. We use dyadic data with gay, lesbian, and heterosexual spouses to examine the marital dynamics of intergenerational caregivers. Results show that gay and lesbian spouses provided intensive time and emotional support for an intergenerational caregiver. In contrast, heterosexual women described their intergenerational caregiving as rarely supported and at times even undermined by their spouse. Dyadic data on heterosexual men corroborate women's accounts; heterosexual men rarely reported providing intergenerational caregiving, and thus heterosexual women rarely described providing spousal support. These findings provide new insight into the intermingled roles of “greedy” marriages and “needy” parents, wherein marital negotiations around caregiving vary by gender for gay, lesbian, and heterosexual marital dyads.     

Intergenerational Coresidence and Mothers’ Body Weight at Midlife

Population Research and Policy Review - Midlife mothers report their children returning to the maternal home after departing (i.e., boomerang children) and remaining in the maternal home longer...     

Das Zürcher Ressourcen Modell und die Theorie der Persönlichkeits-System-Interaktionen in der Laufbahnberatung

Requirements to employees rise because of the changes in the working environment during the last decades. Thus, topics like flexibility, openness and adaptability are to be facilitated more and more in the career counseling. It isn’t sufficient to advise and to find a fitting profession. Often the work with the Personality Systems Interaction Theory und the Zurich Resource Model (ZRM) is than advisable. This article illustrates with a case study the work with self-monitoring competencies during a career counseling process.     

Gambling Harm and Crime Careers

Incarcerated populations across the world have been found to be consistently and significantly more vulnerable to problem gambling than general populations in the same countries. In an effort to gain a more specific understanding of this vulnerability the present study applied latent class analysis and criminal career theory to gambling data collected from a sample of English and Scottish, male and female prisoners (N = 1057). Theoretical links between gambling and crime were tested through three hypotheses: (1) that prisoners in the UK would have higher rates of problem gambling behaviour than the national population; (2) that if the link between gambling and crime is coincidental, gambling behaviour would be highly prevalent in an offending population, and (3) if connections between gambling behaviour and offending are co-symptomatic a mediating factor would show a strong association. The first of these was supported, the second was not supported and the third was partially supported. Latent class analysis found six gambling behaviour clusters measured by responses to the Problem Gambling Severity Index, primarily distinguished by loss chasing behaviour. Longitudinal offending data drawn from the Police National Computer database found four criminal career types, distinguished by frequency and persistence over time. A significant association was found between higher level loss chasing and high rate offending in criminal careers suggesting that impulse control may be a mediating factor for both gambling harm and criminal careers.     

The Mitigating Effects of Social and Financial Capital Resources on Hardships

Social and financial capital resources contribute significantly to socioeconomic outcomes. However, insufficient attention has been given to how these resources may mitigate potential socioeconomic setbacks and differ for gender and class groups. In our study, most of the interviewees with hardships had access to social and financial capital resources. The few with insufficient access were working class. Women accessed financial capital resources to overcome hardships more than men, whereas men were more likely to use social capital resources. Access to the resources helped ensure that almost all of the individuals in this study did not suffer the full consequences of their hardships. The hardship itself was of less importance than having access to social and financial capital resources.     

Perceived Risk and Benefit of Nuclear Waste Repositories: Four Opinion Clusters

Local public resistance can block the site‐selection process, construction, and operation of nuclear waste repositories. Social science has established that the perception of risks and benefits, trust in authorities, and opinion on nuclear energy play important roles in acceptance. In particular, risk and benefit evaluations seem critical for opinion formation. However, risks and benefits have rarely been studied independently and, most often, the focus has been on the two most salient groups of proponents and opponents. The aim of this exploratory study is to examine the often‐neglected majority of people holding ambivalent or indifferent opinions. We used cluster analysis to examine the sample (N = 500, mailed survey in German‐speaking Switzerland) in terms of patterns of risk and benefit perception. We reveal four significantly different and plausible clusters: one cluster with high‐benefit ratings in favor of a repository and one cluster with high‐risk ratings opposing it; a third cluster shows ambivalence, with high ratings on both risk and benefit scales and moderate opposition, whereas a fourth cluster seems indifferent, rating risks and benefits only moderately compared to the ambivalent cluster. We conclude that a closer look at the often neglected but considerable number of people with ambivalent or indifferent opinions is necessary. Although the extreme factions of the public will most probably not change their opinion, we do not yet know how the opinion of the ambivalent and indifferent clusters might develop over time.     

Sources of differences between Chinese,Indian, and Caucasian scientists and engineers: Evaluations of managerial potential

This article proposes intrapersonal, interpersonal, and acculturation factors to help explain differences in evaluations of the managerial potential of Chinese, Indians, and U.S. Caucasians. Using data from 1658 scientists and engineers and their managers in 24 U.S. companies, we find that managers evaluate Indians (but not Chinese) to have less managerial potential and to be less effective at working with others than Caucasians. The absence of insecurity in Indians’ self-reported English fluency appears to be detrimental to the evaluation of their managerial potential. In contrast, Indians who report high managerial aspirations receive less harsh evaluations of their managerial potential. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and practice.     

Enriching our understanding of vulnerability through the experiences and perspectives of individuals living with mental illness

ABSTRACT

Vulnerability is a central concept in research ethics and typically serves to identify individuals or groups whose participation in research prompts specific concerns or warrants special consideration. While theoretical discussions on vulnerability have contributed valuable insights to discussions of mental health research and care, they have not been enriched thus far by stakeholder perspectives. This oversight has important consequences for the ways in which we frame vulnerability. It misses the far-reaching insights and experiential knowledge of mental health research participants whose experiences this ethics concept ultimately seeks to capture. In view of this gap, our study combines a pragmatist ethics framework and interpretive phenomenological analysis of qualitative interviews to explore user perspectives on the notion of vulnerability through the lived experiences of mental health research participants and patient-advocates. Importantly, these perspectives offer essential clues to address the difficulties of operationalizing concerns for vulnerability in concrete and practical ways. They help refine our understanding of this key ethics concept.     

THE SOCIAL CAPITAL RESOURCES OF GENDER AND CLASS GROUPS

ABSTRACT

Social capital resources affect careers. Yet, insufficient attention has been given to how access to social capital resources differs for social groups and, therefore, differentially affects careers. This study consists of in-depth interviews with 246 white interviewees from three parts of the U.S.: New Jersey, Tennessee, and Ohio. The interviews provide extensive details about how social capital resources affected the respondents' educational and employment endeavors. We found that men had greater access to social capital resources than women. Thus, career advantages accumulated for men, while career disadvantages accumulated for women. There were few class differences in access to social capital resources, but the middle/upper middle class had better career returns than the working class. Unlike many other studies of social capital resources and careers, our study examines the processes by which the resources were derived, how they were used, and how they affected careers. As such, we detail a primary mechanism of career disparities and, ultimately, socioeconomic inequalities.