Treatment of the adolescent sexual offender

This article is intended to provide a broad overview of the treatment issues and processes for adolescent sexual offenders. Through the authors' experience treating hundreds of juvenile sex offenders in a state correctional institution, five major treatment tasks are identified: 1. breaking through the offender's denial; 2. addressing offenders' own history of victimization and its impact on their present lifestyle; 3. confronting dysfunctional attitudes and values that support sexual victimization; 4. teaching social skills and 5 changing deviant arousal patterns.Mr. Kahn is Program Director, Echo Glen Children's Center and Affiliate Instructor, University of Washington, School of Social Work. Ms. Lafond is a Juvenile Rehabilitation Administrator at Echo Glen Children's Center.     

The effect of collective bargaining on production technique: A theoretical analysis

A general equilibrium approach is used to model the union effect on capitalintensity of the union and nonunion sectors. Unlike earlier general equilibrium approaches, union power is assumed to be affected by the production technique chosen. The labor relations literature argues that union power is enhanced by a high capital to labor ratio. This assumption is built into a simple two sector (union and nonunion), general equilibrium model. It is found that failing to account for the effects of capital intensity on union power results in an understatement of unions’ ability to redistribute income from capital to labor. The author thanks Jan Brueckner and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions.     

Pluralistic ignorance and hooking up

Hooking up--when two people agree to engage in sexual behavior for which there is no future commitment--has become popular on college campuses. In this study we examined the extent to which pluralistic ignorance affects hooking up. One hundred thirty-six female and 128 male college students answered questions regarding their own comfort and their perceived peers comfort in engaging in a variety of sexual behaviors while hooking up. We hypothesized and found that both women and men rated their peers as being more comfortable engaging in these behaviors than they rated themselves. Men expressed more comfort than did women in engaging in these behaviors, and both sexes overestimated the other gender s comfort with hooking up behaviors. Pluralistic ignorance appears to apply to hooking up on college campuses, and we explore some potential consequences of pluralistic ignorance in this context.     

Child and Family Policies in the United States at the Opening of the Twenty-first Century

A repeated theme, characterizing US social policies toward children and their families, is that the US has no explicit family policy, nor does it have a coherent package of social policies that are targeted on children and their families. Nonetheless, there is general agreement that the US does have policies that have consequences for children and their families, and that many of these might constitute 'implicit' family policies. However, these policies tend to be limited in scale, coverage, and generosity and are usually categorical and narrowly focused. They lack the comprehensiveness and universality of policies in other advanced industrialized countries. Furthermore, the US has consistently invested a significantly smaller share of GDP in children and their families than almost all the other such countries. One consequence is that the situation of children in the US seems to be much worse than that of children in other advanced industrialized countries. In more recent years, however, there have been some efforts at improving child and family policies and the story now is a mixed one—but there remain major deficits in our policies and programs. Fortunately, children's issues are emerging on the national policy agenda. In this article, we describe current US child and family policies, touch on earlier history for context, and discuss the issues facing the US as we enter the twenty-first century. Ultimately, we need to confront the question of what can be done now to advance the children's cause on the national agenda.     

Early childhood education and care use: Differences by race/ethnicity and age

This article describes factors that predict the use of early childhood education and care among Latino families, as compared to non-Latino black and non-Latino white families in the United States in two age groups (0–2 and 3–5 years old). Using National Household Education Survey data, this study presents a framework and examines the association of numerous child and family characteristics with the number of hours children spend in care, the number of care arrangements, and the type of care used. Multinomial logit results show that once preexisting differences between Latino and black families and between Latino and white families are equalized, differences in the type of care are often eliminated. Findings suggest that the observed enrollment patterns of Latino children are due in part to their over-representation in families that are poorer, have lower levels of maternal education, and have lower levels of maternal employment.     

Labor market institutions and demographic employment patterns

We study collective bargaining’s effect on relative employment for youth, women, and older individuals. Our model of collective wage setting predicts that unionization reduces employment more for groups with relatively elastic labor supply: youth, older individuals, and women. We test this implication using data from 17 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries over the 1960–1996 period. We find that time-varying indicators of unionization decrease the employment–population ratio of young and older individuals relative to the prime-aged, and of prime-aged women relative to prime-aged men, and unionization raises the unemployment rate of prime-aged women and, possibly, young men compared to prime-aged men.

The Relationship Between Cognitive Ability and Experiences of Vaginal,Oral, and Anal Sex in the United States

Few studies have investigated the sexual development of populations with low cognitive abilities in the United States. This article examines the relationship between cognitive ability and various sexual experiences from adolescence (ages 12 to 18) to early adulthood (ages 28 to 34). Data were from 13,845 respondents interviewed at Waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a probability sample of adolescents in the United States followed from adolescence to adulthood. Adjusted logistic regression models were used to study relationships between cognitive ability, approximated by the Add Health Picture Vocabulary Test (AHPVT), and experiences of vaginal, oral, and anal sex. After controlling for biological sex, age, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES), individuals in the lowest cognitive ability group had significantly lower odds of experiencing each type of sex than those in the average ability group. Although individuals in the highest cognitive ability group had significantly lower odds of experiencing vaginal intercourse than those in the average ability group, this association did not remain significant when analyses were stratified by biological sex. These differences in experiences have implications for future health and warrant further study to understand policy implications for sexual health services and education.     

The Motherhood Penalty at Midlife: Long‐Term Effects of Children on Women's Careers

The authors build on prior research on the motherhood wage penalty to examine whether the career penalties faced by mothers change over the life course. They broaden the focus beyond wages to also consider labor force participation and occupational status and use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women to model the changing impact of motherhood as women age from their 20s to their 50s (n = 4,730). They found that motherhood is “costly” to women's careers, but the effects on all 3 labor force outcomes attenuate at older ages. Children reduce women's labor force participation, but this effect is strongest when women are younger and is eliminated by the 40s and 50s. Mothers also seem able to regain ground in terms of occupational status. The wage penalty for having children varies by parity, persisting across the life course only for women who have 3 or more children.     

The Mother–Infant Feeding Relationship Across the First Year and the Development of Feeding Difficulties in Low‐Risk Premature Infants

Although feeding problems are common during infancy and are typically accompanied by relational difficulties, little research observed the mother–infant feeding relationship across the first year as an antecedent to the development of feeding difficulties. We followed 76 low‐risk premature infants and their mothers from the transition to oral feeding in the neonatal period to the end of the first year. Prior to hospital discharge, microlevel patterns of maternal touch and gaze were coded during feeding and nonfeeding interactions, global patterns of maternal adaptation were assessed, and infants' neurobehavioral status was tested. Psychomotor development was evaluated at 4 months. At 1 year, feeding difficulties were determined on the basis of maternal interview and direct observations of feeding interactions. Mothers of infants who exhibited feeding difficulties at 1 year showed less affectionate touch and gaze during nonfeeding interactions and more gaze aversion and lower adaptability during feeding interactions already in the neonatal period. Infants with feeding difficulties demonstrated poorer psychomotor performance at 4 months. Feeding interactions of infants with feeding difficulties at 1 year were characterized by higher maternal intrusiveness, lower infant involvement, and greater infant withdrawal. Less maternal affectionate touch and lower maternal adaptation in the neonatal period, poor infant psychomotor skills, and higher maternal intrusiveness and lower infant involvement at 1 year predicted feeding difficulties. The findings underscore the role of the relational components across the first year in the development of feeding difficulties.     

Red light,green light: Color priming in financial decisions

Colors are widely present in the financial decision making arena: at firms’ and data providers’ websites; television reports; newspaper publications; advertizements; security market displays, with colors such as red and green prominently employed. Our experimental analysis involves a between subject design exposing subjects to financial substance on colored backgrounds and exploring the effect on their investment decisions. We focus on financial decisions under uncertainty about probability, examining subjects’ investment valuations and the probabilities they assign to the possible outcomes.This study explores the role of color exposure as a priming factor in financial decision making. Priming is a process of activating particular connections or associations in memory prior to carrying out an action or task. The associations occur when a certain stimulus or event increases the availability of specific information categories and, as a result, affect decision making.The results indicate that red color priming emphasizes value losses of the underlying asset. To wit, subjects who were exposed to red (R) assigned higher valuations and probabilities to events involving the loss domain, than to events involving the gain domain, relatively to the valuations assigned by subjects who were exposed to green (G). The aggregated evaluation given by the R subjects when the investment payback was subject to negative (positive) underlying asset returns was higher (lower) than that of the G subjects by roughly 15% (19%) of the invested amount.