The Shag‐Band Menace: Tracing the Spread of a Contemporary Legend

The internet enables analysts to better track rumors and contemporary legends through time and space. Comments about sex bracelets reveal waves of concentrated attention; the spread of particular variants display a similar pattern. The diffusion of such stories reflects constructions of childhood and adolescent sexuality as social problems.     

Maternal Sensitivity and Child Responsiveness: Associations with Social Context,Maternal Characteristics,and Child Characteristics in a Multivariate Analysis

This study examined unique associations of multiple distal context variables (family socioeconomic status [SES], maternal employment, and paternal parenting) and proximal maternal (personality, intelligence, and knowledge; behavior, self‐perceptions, and attributions) and child (age, gender, representation, language, and sociability) characteristics with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness in 254 European American mothers and their firstborn 20‐month‐olds. Specific unique relations emerged in hierarchical regression analyses. Mothers who worked fewer hours per week and reported less dissonance in their husbands' didactic parenting, whose children spoke using more vocabulary, and who reported less limit setting in their parenting and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes were observed to be more sensitive in their interactions with their children. Children in higher SES families, whose mothers worked fewer hours and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes, and who themselves used more vocabulary were observed to be more responsive in their interactions with their mothers. Although potential associations are many, when considered together, unique associations with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness are few, and some are shared whereas others are unique.     

White-Knuckle Research: Emotional Dynamics in Fieldwork with Racist Activists

Current understandings of emotions as relational expressions rather than individual states have made it possible to reconsider the role of emotion in the research process. This article proposes two ways that qualitative research on social movements can benefit from greater attention to the emotional dynamics of fieldwork. First, by examining the strategic use of various emotions by informants as well as by researchers, scholars are in a better position to explore how informants and researchers jointly shape knowledge and interpretation in qualitative research. Second, exploration of emotional dynamics in interviewing relationships can be used as data to deepen understanding of both the interpretative process and of the emotional content of social movements. I examine these issues in the context of a life history project with activists in contemporary U.S. racist movements.     

Constructive and Destructive Marital Conflict,Parenting, and Children's School and Social Adjustment

This study addresses the links between destructive and constructive marital conflict and mothers' and fathers' parenting to understand associations with children's social and school adjustment. Multi‐method, longitudinal assessments of 235 mothers, fathers, and children (129 girls) were collected across kindergarten, first, and second grades (ages 5–7 at time 1; ages 7–9 at time 3). Whereas constructive marital conflict was related to both mothers' and fathers' warm parenting, destructive marital conflict was only linked to fathers' use of inconsistent discipline. In turn, both mothers' and fathers' use of psychological control was related to children's school adjustment, and mothers' warmth was related to children's social adjustment. Reciprocal links between constructs were also explored, supporting associations between destructive marital conflict and mothers' and fathers' inconsistent discipline. The merit of examining marital conflict and parenting as multidimensional constructs is discussed in relation to understanding the processes and pathways within families that affect children's functioning.     

Information sharing between the child welfare and behavioral health systems: Perspectives from four stakeholder groups

This qualitative study articulates the challenges, best practices, and facilitators to information sharing when addressing the behavioral health needs of children in out-of-home care. 13 interviews and nine focus groups were conducted to illuminate the perspectives of foster parents, mental health clinicians, provider agency social workers, and city-employed child welfare professionals. In total, 65 individuals participated in this qualitative study and data were analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach. Results indicate that challenges and best practices in cross-system information sharing articulated across the four stakeholder groups are attributed to variation in information accessibility, clarity in roles and protocols, ability in obtaining signatures for consent/release forms, and attitudinal differences towards collaboration. Implications to improve policy and practice are discussed.