Doubling up when times are tough: A study of obligations to share a home in response to economic hardship

This study uses a factorial vignette design embedded in an Internet survey to investigate attitudes toward an adult child and parent living together in response to economic hardship. Over half of Americans said the desirability of intergenerational co-residence depends on particularistic aspects of the family, notably the quality of family relationships. Support for co-residence is greatest when the adult child is single rather than partnered. Support is weaker if the adult child is cohabiting rather than married to the partner, although groups with greater exposure to cohabitation make less of a distinction between cohabitation and marriage. Presence of a grandchild does not affect views about co-residence. There is more support for sharing a home when a mother needs a place to live than when the adult child does. Responses to open-ended questions show that individuals invoke both universalistic family obligations and particularistic qualities of family relationships to explain their attitudes.     

Human Rights Matter

This article serves as a response to all those who commented on my original essay “Human Rights: What the United States Might Learn from the Rest of the World and, Yes, from American Sociology.”     

What do we call post-apartheid?

In this paper, the author examines the different uses and meanings of the usual expression “post-apartheid.” It has been used extensively in the social sciences, political discourse and the media since the mid-1980s. But what does it refer to, and has it always meant the same thing over the last 20 years? To answer that question, the author reviews the different ways she has used the notion in her research into workers’ forms of thinking and political subjectivities in South Africa since 1996. She distinguishes between its use as a chronological marker, an academic concept open to various problematics and epistemological decisions and a notion used by interviewees under various acceptations. She concentrates more specifically on the sequential implications of the adverb “post” in her work and argues that there have been political sequences in what she (with others) has named “post-apartheid.” She concludes that she intends to stop using this term in order to concentrate on identifying the current political sequence in South Africa.     

International Adoption: Counseling and the Adoption Triad

Despite a 60-plus–year history of international adoption (IA) placements, the body of research exploring counseling and psychological interventions for those affected by IA is still in its infancy. This critical review of the state of the literature addresses research, theory, and practice relevant to the international adoption triad (adoptive parents, birth parents, and adoptees). We highlight the lack of empirical attention to the clinical needs of birth parents, the tendency to overlook the clinical needs of adoptive parents both pre- and post-adoption, early childhood vulnerability in international adoptees, and adolescent identity challenges and the attendant clinical issues.