Activities, engagement, and emotion in after-school programs (and elsewhere)

Experiences that are deeply engaging and enjoyable, engender full concentration, and present a balance between challenge and skill promote children's development. This chapter describes a study that sought to identify the kinds of settings and activities that foster engagement and, by extension, positive youth development. The after-school experiences of 191 ethnically diverse youth living in three states, some of whom participated in after-school programs and some of whom did not, were studied. Youth were equipped with logbooks and watches that were programmed to signal at random times. When signaled, youth recorded their location, social partners, activity, and feelings. The study found pervasive differences in the experiences at programs and elsewhere. Youth spent more time in academic and arts enrichment, organized sports and physical activities, community service, and homework at programs versus elsewhere, and they spent less time eating and watching TV at programs. They also reported higher levels of motivation, engagement, and positive affect at programs. At the same time, there were few differences in activities, emotions, effort, or motivation of program participants and nonparticipants when both groups were elsewhere. The similarities in these experiences while elsewhere suggest that the program context, not differences in youth characteristics or interests, was responsible for the feelings of engagement that were reported at programs.     

Disclosure of Child Sexual Abuse: Issues from A Child-Oriented Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to highlight issues that future researchers must deal with to better understand child sexual abuse from the perspective of children. Research specifically directed at children's perceptions of the abuse is limited. Instead, most of the current literature in the area is based on clinical studies of abused children and on retrospective reports of adults who were abused as children. It is argued that the effects of the abuse may well depend on their perceptions of the abuse at or about the time it occurs as well as their perceptions of the interventions following disclosure of the abuse. Some of the difficulties that face children following disclosure are outlined, with particular reference to the problems that result from the failure of the judicial system to accommodate the special needs and vulnerabilities of children.     

Social security reform in Latin America: policy challenges

Over the last decade Latin American countries have served as the world's laboratory for pension systems based on individual retirement savings accounts. Some countries have adopted defined-contribution individual accounts as a replacement for state-run pension systems; other countries have embraced mixed systems of have made individual accounts optional and supplementary. This article outlines some of the most significant elements of recent Latin American pension reforms and examines some of the most serious policy challenges faced by governments implementing the new systems of individual accounts, including the need to reduce administrative costs, limit evasion, incorporate new categories of workers into the system, and improve competition in the pension fund industry. The authors conclude that there is no single Latin America model, and that reform itself has been and will continue to be an incremental process.     

School readiness of low-income children at risk for school failure

The goal of this research project was to gain information about the readiness skills of kindergarten children in 11 inner city schools with the highest poverty rates in the Salt Lake City School District. Kindergarten teachers and principals in these schools were interviewed regarding their perceptions of the readiness skills needed for these children to be successful in their schools. A summary of the readiness skills of the kindergarten children was derived from a state mandated Pre-Kindergarten Assessment. Most principals stressed children's social and emotional development as a priority in school readiness. The majority of teachers emphasized literacy as a prerequisite for school success. Yet, the Pre-Kindergarten Assessment revealed that one fourth of the children could not identify the front of a book and two thirds of the children did not know where to start or which direction to go when reading. Half of the parents of these children reported that they rarely read to their children and that they had only visited a library once or not at all. The gap between the readiness skills educators think these children need and the skills children enter school with presents a serious problem for educators and policy makers. Multiple intervention strategies are recommended including providing education and home activities to enhance children's readiness skills, coordinating access to early childhood programs, and educating parents on available community resources.     

Taxes,risky investments,and the simultaneous choice of organizational form and financing

By taking explicit account of liability limitations, we analyse the influence of taxes on the simultaneous choice of organizational form and financing. In a two-state model for a single reporting period investors striving for maximisation of expected utility choose the organizational form (with or without liability limitation) in which they implement a given risky real investment and decide how they finance it (equity or debt). We demonstrate that liability limitations result in tax-relevant differences between organizational forms. Thus, for example, the tax bases differ in relation to the chosen liability-contingent debt capital compensations as well as to tax loss offset rules. Therefore, even in the event of identical tax rates, taxes can influence the decision regarding the organizational form.     

If Momma Ain't Happy: Explaining Declines in Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers

This study tests competing explanations for the link between the transition to motherhood and declines in wives' marital satisfaction. Using data from the first and second waves of the National Survey of Families and Households (N = 569), we found that new mothers' marital satisfaction declines could be attributed to reductions in wives' quality time spent with their husbands and to increases in perceptions of unfairness in housework. Family role traditionalization in the wake of the birth of a child did not directly explain marital satisfaction declines but was linked to perceptions of marital unfairness. Attendance at religious worship services did not moderate the association between the transition to motherhood and marital satisfaction changes.     

Zelda Foster and her contributions to social work in end-of-life care

This article is both a memoir of one social worker's professional collaboration with Zelda Foster and a tribute to Zelda's legacy in the form of an educational resource on end-of-life care. It reviews achievements of Zelda Foster in social work practice and teaching related to death and dying. Resources presented in this article were supported by the Soros Foundation's Project on Death in America, a funded grant project to which Zelda contributed. The end-of-life care education, training and informational tools discussed in this article are examples of ongoing efforts in the social work profession to improve the lives of the dying and bereaved.