Reflections of an outgoing ASA office holder

This is a brief report by an ASA Council member of efforts to get the council to accept new policies regarding social responsibility towards the most oppressed people in our society. She was elected ASA vice president for 1989–90, and is serving a three-year term on ASA Council.     

The Central Role of Familial Ethnic Socialization in Latino Adolescents’ Cultural Orientation

The current study utilized an ecological framework to examine the longitudinal interrelations among Latino adolescents’ (N = 323) cultural orientation (i.e., ethnic identity and enculturation), familial ethnic socialization experiences, and generational status. Findings indicated that ethnic identity and enculturation were both predicted by adolescents’ generational status, although some of these relations were indirect via the relation between generational status and familial ethnic socialization. Findings underscore the importance of examining the dimensions of cultural orientation independent of one another and considering the central role of familial socialization practices in these processes. Moreover, the current work provides direction for further theoretical work to advance our understanding of the unique aspects of cultural orientation.     

Exploring the Dynamics of Middle-Aged and Older Adult Residents' Perceptions of Neighborhood Safety

This study examined what variables best predict concerns about neighborhood safety among middle-aged and older adults. Eighty-five participants were selected from a Midwestern urban area. Participants completed a 22-item questionnaire that assessed their perceptions of neighborhood safety and vigilance. These items were clustered as: (a) community care and vigilance, (b) safety concerns, (c) physical incivilities, and (d) social incivilities. Police crime data were also used in the analyses. Our findings suggest that aspects of the broken window theory, collective efficacy, and place attachments play a role in affecting residents' perceptions of neighborhood safety.     

Perceived Admiration and Transition to Parenthood for Black and White Married Couples

Perceived admiration was examined in this study as a mediator of marital quality and transition to parenthood among Black American and White American couples. Positive and negative dimensions of marital quality were assessed for husbands (n = 148) and wives (n = 155) during their 1st and 3rd years of marriage in a large-scale survey. Findings revealed that transitioning Black American husbands reported lower marital tension than transitioning White American husbands. Perceived admiration mediated the link between transition to parenthood and marital well-being for wives, and between transition to parenthood and marital tension for husbands. Results suggest that perceived admiration plays a critical role in understanding the transition to parenthood, regardless of race. Insights are offered for practitioners who provide relationship or parental counseling and education to couples during the transition to parenthood.     

Divorced Yet Still Together: Ongoing Personal Relationship and Coparenting Among Divorced Parents

This study examined the ongoing personal and emotional involvement between former spouses and its association with perceptions of the quality of the coparenting relationship. Dyadic analysis of 54 formerly married couples revealed that both men and women rate their coparenting relationship as better when they also report ongoing personal and emotional involvement with their former spouse. Furthermore, when men reported ongoing involvement, their former wives reported better coparenting. The opposite effect was not found. This pattern held for both Black Americans and White Americans. Clinical implications of the findings of this study are also discussed.     

The two-sample -test with a known ratio of variances

We consider the two-sample t-test where error variances are unknown but with known relationships between them. This situation arises, for example, when two measuring instruments average different number of replicates to report the response. In particular we compare our procedure with the usual Satterthwaite approximation in the two sample t-test with variances unequal. Our procedure uses the knowledge of a known ratio of variances while the Satterthwaite approximation assumes only that the two variances are unequal. Simulations show that our procedure has both better size and better power than the Satterthwaite approximation. Finally, we consider an extension of our results to the General Linear Model.     

Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.     

Reflections on Strangeness in Context: The Case of Russian–Jewish Immigrants in the Kibbutz

This article elucidates and elaborates upon the contextualized meaning of strangeness and the experience of being a stranger. Our empirical study of strangeness embarks simultaneously from the three leading theories of the stranger—as cultural reader (Schuetz 1944), as demarcator of social boundaries (Simmel 1950), and as trespasser of social categories (Bauman 1990, 1991)—and at the same time criticizes these theories for artificially divesting strangeness of social context. Our thesis about strangeness-in-context is grounded in in-depth interviews we conducted with Jewish–Russian immigrants (twenty-one university students) who have lived in kibbutzim. Our assumption is that the kibbutz as a communal home is a suitable case study to illuminate the manyfold dimensions of strangeness, as it intensifies the tension between insiders and outsiders. In explicating the immigrant's sense of strangeness we claim the local context of the kibbutz interacts with the Israeli national definition of the immigrant as a homecomer.