In their own words: The life experiences of Mexican-American and white pregnant adolescents and adolescent mothers

The results of an ethnographic study of 32 Mexican-American and 17 White adolescents are presented. Fifty percent or more of the respondents in both groups experienced parental loss during their childhood years. Little information was provided by parents to the adolescents regarding menses and physical maturation. While parent-adolescent conflict arose in both samples, the conflict for the Mexican-American adolescents centered around choice of girlfriends and boyfriends while multiple sources of conflict existed between the White respondents and their parents. White respondents were more sexually active than the Mexican-American respondents, but the latter reported more stable relationships with the father of the baby. The experiences of the adolescents are both summarized and presented in their own words.     

Coming Out Disabled: A Transsexual Woman Considers Queer Contributions to Living with Disability

The author provides an autobiographical illustration of the similarities in coming out lesbian, transsexual, bisexual, or gay and taking visible steps to address a previously invisible disability. The essay begins with a comparison of personal experiences of transsexuality and invisible disability, and addresses the advantages of applying the coming out model to the author's disability. The author concludes that coming out is a process model that disabled individuals can use to aid a transition to caring for a new or worsening personal disability.     

Pathways Into Homelessness Among LGBTQ2S Adults

ABSTRACT

This article examines entries into homelessness among adults who identify as LGBTQ2S (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, two-spirit). Twenty LGBTQ2S adults who were currently or formerly homeless participated in one qualitative interview. The interview protocol included questions on the participants’ history of homelessness, causes of homelessness, and relationship of their gender and/or sexual identity to their homelessness. Data were analyzed using an iterative coding process. Results demonstrated that the participants listed both structural (i.e., discrimination) and intrapersonal (i.e., substance use) variables related to their homelessness. In particular, substance abuse was a common antecedent of their homelessness, and some participants linked their homeless experiences to discrimination and victimization based on their sexual and/or gender identity. The results are discussed in terms of interventions to prevent homelessness among LGBTQ2S adults and support their exits out of homelessness.     

Community Empowerment and Democracy in Zimbabwe: A Case Study from Binga District

The development of an “informed and alert electorate” is essential for the establishment of democratic governance in Africa and for the continent's future economic growth. This need is particularly evident in Zimbabwe, which is currently in the midst of an acute political and economic crisis. This paper tells the story of a small community‐based organization in a remote part of Zimbabwe, which helped to raise political awareness and consciousness among a dis‐advantaged rural population. Because of the threat that it posed to the Mugabe government, the organization was forced to close in October 2002. However, its experience has important lessons for the future development of Zimbabwe—and of Africa as a whole.     

Supply Chain Contract Design: Impact of Bounded Rationality and Individual Heterogeneity

In this article, we model various forms of non‐optimizing behavior in a newsvendor setting, including biases such as recency, reinforcement, demand chasing, and anchoring, as well as unsystematic decision errors. We assume that a newsvendor may evaluate decisions by examining both past outcomes and future expected payoffs. Our model is motivated by laboratory observations under several types of supply chain contracts. Ordering decisions are found to follow multi‐modal distributions that are dependent on contract structures and incentives. We differ from previous research by using statistics to determine which behavioral factors are applicable to each decision maker. A great deal of heterogeneity was discovered, indicating the importance of calibrating a contract to the individual. Our analysis also shows that the profit performance and the effectiveness of co‐ordinating contracts can be affected by non‐optimizing behaviors significantly. We conclude that, in addition to the aggregate order quantities, the decision distributions should be considered in designing contracts.     

The notion of character friendship and the cultivation of virtue

Most theories about virtue cultivation fall under the general umbrella of the role model approach, according to which virtue is acquired by emulating role models, and where those role models are usually conceived of as superior in some relevant respect to the learners. I argue that although we need role models to cultivate virtue, we also need good and close relationships with people who are not our superiors. The overemphasis on role models is misguided and misleading, and a good antidote draws on the Aristotelian concept of character friendship. Character friendship (a) constitutes a unique form of experience in which we share a substantial way of seeing with a close other; (b) facilitates a unique form of knowledge, the knowledge of a particular person (my‐self and the other's self); (c) develops other emotions important for virtue cultivation besides admiration, such as love, shame, trust, and hope; and (d) is a praxis in which cooperative interactions and discussions function as a bridge between habituation of virtue at home and the public life. Character friendship provides necessary elements for human cultivation of virtue that the sole experience of having a role model does not.     

Associations between ongoing COVID-19 lockdown and the financial and mental health experiences of Australian families

In 2020, Australia's successful COVID-19 public health restrictions comprised a national “initial lockdown” (March–May) and “ongoing lockdown” (July–November) for metropolitan Victorian residents only. We evaluated associations between ongoing lockdown and family finances and mental health. In the June and September 2020 Royal Children's Hospital National Child Health Polls, caregivers of children in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW) reported the following: job/income loss; material deprivation (inability to pay for essential items); income poverty; mental health (Kessler-6); perceived impact on caregiver/child mental health; and caregiver/child coping. Data from caregivers (N = 1207/902) in June/September were analysed using difference-in-difference modelling (NSW provided the comparator). During Victoria's ongoing lockdown, job/income loss increased by 11% (95%CI: 3%–18%); Kessler-6 poor mental health by 6% (95%CI: −0.3%–12%) and perceived negative mental health impacts by 14% for caregivers (95%CI: 6%–23%) and 12% for children (95%CI: 4%–20%). Female (vs. male) caregivers, metropolitan (vs. regional/rural) families, and families with elementary school-aged children (vs. pre-/high-school) were the most affected. The ongoing lockdown was associated with negative experiences of mental health, employment and income, but not deprivation or poverty, likely because of government income supplements introduced early in the pandemic. Future lockdowns require planned responses to outbreaks and evidence-informed financial and mental health supports.     

The relational costs of crossing class lines

How do low socioeconomic status students navigate cross-class interactions in extremely unequal contexts? Previous research has described the high costs of college integration for underprivileged students, which in turn, negatively impact academic performance and general wellbeing. These studies tend to concentrate on cultural capital costs, such as catching up with assumed middle-class or elite capital and dealing with two worlds. Less has been said about social capital costs, the costs of making friends, especially more privileged friends. Through 61 in-depth interviews with various types of students as part of a broader ethnographic fieldwork, this article analyses the experiences of low-income scholarship holders in an elite institution in a very unequal society, Colombia. Rather than isolating themselves or resorting to safe homophilic relations, they faced their new elite environment engaging with the hidden relational cost of making friends with more affluent students. In so doing, they had to overcome fears and experiences of discrimination and micro-aggressions, as well as cultural and economic capital barriers, and employed either camouflaging or disclosure strategies, sometimes becoming culturally and socially omnivorous. Symbolic belonging to the institution and the acquisition of middle-class cultural capital were among the benefits that made overcoming the costs worthy. Our results shed light on what institutions can do to reduce the costs for underprivileged students and, theoretically, unveil an important mechanism and barrier for social mobility: building cross-class ties.