The Swedish Tant: A Marker of Female Aging

This article presents and analyzes findings from interviews with women aged 45–65; popular magazines targeting women in this age category, and popular books and blogs on a Swedish age-sensitive concept, tant. The term can be used in many different senses, ranging from polite to derogatory, connoting “aunt,” or “granny,” but also “little old lady” and “biddy”; the term tantig translating to “frumpish.” The article discusses different representations of tant, how she is used as a symbol of invisibility and no longer being seen as a sexual being, but outdated. The concept is used as a warning, indicating an unwanted way to grow old, when addressing middle-aged and older women. As of recently, tant has come to be celebrated by young women, praised for moral courage, for thrift and being represented as free from the male gaze, no longer aiming to please or fretting about appearances. The article sheds light on the different uses of the concept, where who is categorizing whom is of utmost importance. The tant is used as a symbol for doing age either by derogation or by celebration.     

Predictors of Stability and Change in Private Safety Nets of Unmarried Mothers

ABSTRACT

Although the importance of social supports for single mothers in times of crisis is widely recognized, little is known about the stability of such “private safety nets” over time, as children age and maternal and household characteristics change. This study uses multilevel models and four waves of data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study to describe trajectories of social support perceptions for 3,065 unmarried mothers. Results suggest that following a birth, most unmarried mothers perceived the availability of support, but these support perceptions disintegrated somewhat in subsequent years. Mothers who appeared to have the greatest need for support—those without stable employment or a stable partner—experienced more rapid deterioration of their perceived safety nets than did more advantaged mothers. Future research should examine network composition and conditions for support provision among the most vulnerable single mothers and should consider how safety-net stability influences maternal and child health and well-being.     

Information and advice on community RTD activities. Swedish‐Estonian IRC FEMIRC Co‐operation

The paper tries to shed light on the co‐operation between the Nordic countries and the Baltic accession states from a practitioner's perspective.     

Emigration,Dauerreflexion und Identität

Zusammenfassung Albert Salomon, ein 1891 in Berlin geborener deutsch-jüdischer Soziologe, der 1935 in die USA emigrieren musste, wo er bis zu seinem Tode 1966 in New York an der New School for Social Research forschte und lehrte, hat ein Werk hinterlassen, das heute nahezu vergessen ist und dessen Einheit selbst die Wenigen, die sich mit ihm befassten, nicht erkannt haben. Dieses Werk stellt einen systematischen, an ideengeschichtlicher Komplexit?t kaum wieder erreichten Beitrag zur Geschichte der Soziologie dar, der von gro?er Bedeutung für die aktuelle Identit?tsbildung des Faches im Rahmen der sich etablierenden Kulturwissenschaften ist. Für Anregungen und Kritik sei Peter L. Berger, M. Rainer Lepsius, Thomas Luckmann, Peter-Ulrich Merz-Benz, Guy Oakes, Hannah Salomon-Janovsky, Ilja Srubar, Dirk T?nzler, Arthur J. Vidich und Gilbert Weiss gedankt.     

When is a goal rational?

In decision theory goals are usually taken as given inputs to the analysis, and the focus is on finding the most efficient means to achieve the goals. But where goals are set with the purpose of achieving them, it is important to know what properties they should possess in order to be successful (or achievement-inducing). Four such properties (or rationality criteria) are discussed, namely that goals should be precise, evaluable, approachable and motivating. Precision and evaluability are epistemic properties that concern what the agent may know. Approachability is an ability-related property that concerns what the agent can do. Motivity is a volitional property that concerns what the agent wants to do. Goals may satisfy the rationality criteria to a greater or lesser extent. Some goals are achievement-inducing mainly because they guide action towards the end-state well, others mainly because they motivate the agent to act towards the realization of the end-state.     

Wie die Mutter, so die Tochter?

In analyses that deal with occupational mobility the question as to how the mother’s occupational status influences the process of occupational status attainment usually is passed over. Here we formulate hypotheses on over-time and life course dynamics of her influence: mothers’ (and fathers’) status transfer for cohorts of daughters born between 1927 and 1965 and additionally for labour market careers. Sons are excluded in the analytical model because the mother’s job appears not to be important for their job status locations. The hypotheses are tested in a cluster adjusted regression analysis. The German database contains 4043 job spells of 1760 women and the two pooled Dutch sets of data include 4513 job spells of 1623 female respondents. Our results show that in recent decennia the influence of the occupational status of both parents on their daughter’s job status has decreased in a similar fashion. We conclude that a continuing trend towards a decrease of social inequality in the process of occupational status attainment is applicable to the influence of the father and the mother. Over the course of the daughter’s career, however, her occupational status becomes increasingly related to that of her mother. This result indicates that the occupational role model of the mother seems to be important for understanding patterns of female occupational immobility.     

EXPLORING THE PARADOX

This paper explores work-to-family conflict among 77 managerial fathers in Sweden by focusing on flexible working arrangements. Sweden provides a unique setting for the study of fathers’ work-to-family conflict as it has a 30-year-old social policy tradition of promoting gender equality in the workplace and in the home. Our results show that managerial fathers experience high levels of work-to-family conflict, despite high access to flexible working arrangements. Using a border theory perspective, hierarchical regression analysis shows the importance of gender egalitarianism in the family (taking responsibility for children and being in a dual earner family), as well as flexible working arrangements (satisfaction with job flexibility and access to flexleave) in explaining work-to-family conflict for managerial fathers. Organizational time demands (time pressure at work and average work hours) and use of flextime were less important. Our results imply that gender egalitarian managerial fathers with access to flexleave have a win–win situation. They experience less work-to-family conflict and set a good example for their employees.     

Die „ganze Person“ im Coaching — Ambivalenzen und Optionen

As a specific type of counselling, which focuses on the individual and his/her personality within the professional context, coaching has to strike constantly a balance between looking at the ?whole person“ and looking at one facet of this person, i.e. his/her professional role. This leads to ambivalent attitudes towards coaching from the client’s point of view, which should be discussed and turned into beneficial factors during the coaching process. The following article illustrates the construct of the ?whole person“-approach in coaching and argues for an understanding of coaching based on comprehensive methodologies and concepts.     

Teaching history in a postwar social context—the case of the Croatian Danube region

This paper discusses the results of empirical research examining history teachers’ opinions on teaching recent history, and on the revocation of a moratorium on teaching former Yugoslavia’s recent history in Serbian minority schools in the Croatian Danube region. The research was conducted in 2003, involving a sample of 29 primary and secondary history teachers in both the majority and minority programmes in the two counties affected by the moratorium. The post‐war divide is evident from the differences in teachers’ opinions regarding the moratorium’s revocation and the presentation of minority history in history teaching. On a general level however, when the history of the Croats and Serbs was not discussed, most of the teachers advocated a liberal concept of history teaching.