Father Absence and Accelerated Reproductive Development in Non-Hispanic White Women in the United States

Girls who experience father absence in childhood also experience accelerated reproductive development in comparison with peers with present fathers. One hypothesis advanced to explain this empirical pattern is genetic confounding, wherein gene-environment correlation (rGE) causes a spurious relationship between father absence and reproductive timing. We test this hypothesis by constructing polygenic scores for age at menarche and first birth using recently available genome-wide association study results and molecular genetic data on a sample of non-Hispanic white females from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We find that young women’s accelerated menarche polygenic scores are unrelated to their exposure to father absence. In contrast, polygenic scores for earlier age at first birth tend to be higher in young women raised in homes with absent fathers. Nevertheless, father absence and the polygenic scores independently and additively predict reproductive timing. We find no evidence in support of the rGE hypothesis for accelerated menarche and only limited evidence in support of the rGE hypothesis for earlier age at first birth.     

Longitudinal evaluation of a training program to promote routine antenatal enquiry for domestic violence by midwives

Background

Routine enquiry about domestic violence during pregnancy is accepted best practice. Training is essential to improve knowledge and practice. Few studies have undertaken a comprehensive evaluation of training impact over time.

Backup Parents,Playmates, Friends: Grandparents' Time With Grandchildren

Grandparents play varied roles in their grandchildren's lives. Prior work has focused mostly on historical trends in and implications of grandparent coresidence and has not considered more broadly how grandparents and grandchildren interact. Using time‐use diary data for 6,762 person‐years from the 1997 to 2007 waves of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics Child Development Survey, the authors examine patterns in the amount and activity composition of time American children spent with their grandparents, differentiated by family structure, adult employment, and child's age. Results showed that although only about 7% of children lived with their grandparents, many more children spent time with their grandparents: about 50% of young children, 35% of elementary‐age children, and 20% of teens spent at least some time with their grandparents in a typical week. This suggests that grandparents play a variety of roles in their grandchildren's lives, depending on the amount and kinds of support needed.     

Precarity,gender and care in the neoliberal academy

This article examines the rise in precarious academic employment in Ireland as an outcome of the higher education restructuring following OECD (Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development), government initiatives and post‐crisis austerity. Presenting the narratives of academic women at different career stages, we claim that a focus on care sheds new light on the debate on precarity. A more complete understanding of precarity should take account not only of the contractual security but also affective relational security in the lives of employees. The intersectionality of paid work and care work lives was a dominant theme in our interviews among academic women. In a globalized academic market, premised on the care‐free masculinized ideals of competitive performance, 24/7 work and geographical mobility, women who opt out of these norms, suffer labour‐led contractual precarity and are over‐represented in part‐time and fixed‐term positions. Women who comply with these organizational commands need to peripheralize their relational lives and experience care‐led affective precarity.     

Are Religious People Nice People? Religiosity,Race, Interview Dynamics,and Perceived Cooperativeness

Prior research has shown consistently that religiosity, as indexed by self-reported frequency of prayer, is associated positively with "niceness," measured by interviewers'ratings of respondents'cooperativeness. We used data pooled from the 1983, 1988, and 1993 General Social Surveys to further examine the association between religiosity and niceness, and to raise questions about the adequacy of this currently preferred operationalization of niceness. We used three different measures of religiosity and directly examined racial differences in perceived cooperativeness. Our results indicate that each self-reported indicator of religiosity was associated positively with perceived cooperativeness (in separate models), while race was associated negatively. We found no evidence of mediating or moderating relationships. Overall, our results provide additional evidence that persons who are more religious are perceived by others to be more cooperative and that this effect operates net of more readily observable characteristics that might influence interview dynamics and interviewers'evaluations of respondents'cooperativeness. However, our results also suggest that new, more specific measures of niceness are needed to improve our ability to fully measure this sociologically important concept and to refine our understanding of the relationship between religiosity and niceness.     

Making it in America: High school completion by immigrant and native youth

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), we find that first-generation youth of Hispanic, Asian, and African heritage obtain more education than their parents, but the second generation and third or higher generations lose ground. Differences in dropout rates by race-ethnicity and immigrant generation are driven by differences in human, cultural, and social capital. Low levels of family human capital, school social capital, and community social capital place the children of immigrants at risk of dropping out. However, cultural capital and immigrant optimism buffer first-generation Hispanic youth and the children of Asian immigrants from the risk of dropping out of high school. While human and social capital resources improve with immigrant generation, cultural capital diminishes.     

Birth Territory: a theory for midwifery practice

The theory of Birth Territory describes, explains and predicts the relationships between the environment of the individual birth room, issues of power and control, and the way the woman experiences labour physiologically and emotionally. The theory was synthesised inductively from empirical data generated by the authors in their roles as midwives and researchers. It takes a critical post-structural feminist perspective and expands on some of the ideas of Michel Foucault. Theory synthesis was also informed by current research about the embodied self and the authors' scholarship in the fields of midwifery, human biology, sociology and psychology. In order to demonstrate the significance of the theory, it is applied to two clinical stories that both occur in hospital but are otherwise different. This analysis supports the central proposition that when midwives use 'midwifery guardianship' to create and maintain the ideal Birth Territory then the woman is most likely to give birth naturally, be satisfied with the experience and adapt with ease in the post-birth period. These benefits together with the reduction in medical interventions also benefit the baby. In addition, a positive Birth Territory is posited to have a broader impact on the woman's partner, family and society in general.     

Improving ascertainment of risk factors for HIV infection: results of a group-randomized evaluation

To allow appropriate allocation of prevention and care funding, HIV/AIDS surveillance data must include risk factor information, currently available for less than 70% of cases reported in the United States. The authors evaluated an intervention consisting of provider training and materials to improve risk factor reporting. Facilities were matched prior to randomization to intervention or control, and generalized linear mixed models were used to test for an intervention effect. Twenty-one percent of cases from intervention facilities and 33.4% from control facilities (p = .09) were reported without any risk factor information. The pre-post difference (20.7% for intervention and 36.0% for control) was not significant among HIV cases (p = .11) nor among AIDS cases (p = .12; 21.3% for intervention and 31.1% for control). The methods the authors' evaluated may need to be combined with other approaches and/or alternative classification schemes to significantly reduce the percentage of cases reported to surveillance without risk factor information.     

No Place Like Home: A Qualitative Investigation of Social Support and Its Effects on Recidivism

This study explores the relationship between social support and recidivism. Although the support system for the ex-felon has many beneficial aspects, it can do very little to counter the institutional barriers and deficiencies that exist with the present penal system. Recommendations are offered to enhance the transition from prison to public life.     

Nasality of Infant Vocalizations Determines Gender Bias in Adult Favorability Ratings

Adults rate vocalizing 3-month-old boys as more socially favorable (pleasant, friendly, fun, likeable, cuddly, cute) than girls when they are producing syllabic sounds. Is the preference due to gender bias or to actual sex differences in the acoustical quality of early vocalizations? In Experiment 1, 59 adults rated videotaped segments of 4 vocalizing boys and 4 vocalizing girls who were dressed identically in white gowns, and labelled with a name representing their sex or a name of the opposite sex. Two infants of each sex produced syllabic sounds, and 2 produced vocalic sounds. Adults rated boys producing syllabic sounds more favorably even when the boys were labelled with the names of girls. Therefore, the preference was not due to gender bias. In Experiment 2, 3 groups of adults (N = 50, 49, and 50, respectively) each viewed and rated 1 of 3 different sets of videotaped infants. The videotapes contained segments of 8 infants (4 boys, 4 girls, 2 of each producing syllabic sounds, and 2 producing vocalic sounds); infants appeared dressed in identical white gowns and were identified only by number, not by name or sex. In addition to the social favorability ratings, adults guessed the sex of the infant. Adults rated syllabic boys more favorably even though gender was disguised, and even though their guesses of gender were no better than chance. In Experiment 3, the vocalizations of the infants who were heard in the 3 videotapes were subjected to spectrographic acoustic analysis. The acoustic quality of boys' syllabic sounds differed from that of girls' only on the feature of nasality. As expected, syllabic, as compared with vocalic, sounds of both boys and girls were similarly longer in duration and differed in frequency characteristics, but these differences were related only to sound category and not to sex. The variance in adult social favorability ratings due to sex of infant was explained by the less nasal acoustic quality of the boys' voices. These results have implications for early socialization, because we know that mothers respond more to less nasal vocalizations. These results parallel the less nasal quality of men's voices as compared with women's voices, and suggest continuities from early vocalizations to speech.