MSW Students in Private Practice

The increasing number of MSW students engaged in private psychotherapy practice concurrent with their graduate studies has received little attention in literature on social work education. This article examines the educational, ethical, and legal dilemmas effected by this trend, and describes the policy developed at the University of Denver to address these problems. More broadly, it argues that schools of social work in general have a legitimate interest in adopting policies to prohibit or discourage MSW students from conducting private practice.     

Postdivorce Parenting: A Study of Recently Divorced Mothers and Fathers

ABSTRACT

Divorce is challenging for parents with children, commonly resulting in a series of individual and interpersonal adjustments. The time immediately following divorce can be particularly difficult. This study used a modified grounded theory approach to explore the experiences of 99 recently divorced mothers and fathers. Analysis of written narratives revealed 4 emergent groups of parents who described their postdivorce parenting experiences: good divorce, good enough, bad to better, and bad. Each group described their experiences across several areas including coparenting, father involvement, challenges of single parenting, personal turmoil, and their children’s adjustment. Implications for research and divorce education are discussed.     

Professional women “rebalancing” in retirement: Time,relationships, and body

ABSTRACT

This is an interview-based study focused on how professional baby boomer women negotiate and narrate postretirement lives. This group came of age in the 1960s and represents a socially privileged segment of the baby boomer generation, a cohort that created new gendered pathways in employment. Today, these retired professional women are attempting to make sense of their multilayered complex and changing realities. In their accounts, the most salient themes are shifting identity, embodiment, and relationships. By using what we call a relational lens, we will show how many aspects of postretirement life, for these professional women, are mediated by changing relationships—relationships to time, work identity, friends and family, and body. Through these individual and relational contexts we see how female professional baby boomer retirees grapple with liberation and loss, autonomy and control, ongoing gendered work, and rebalancing in a new chapter of life. Perhaps most importantly, we see how learning about self in this stage of life, and perhaps across the life course, takes place largely in the context of relationships.     

A Nation of Immigrants: Living Our Legacy

Immigration is a social issue of global importance. Understanding immigration patterns and trends requires paying attention to historical trends, demographic patterns, public policy developments, and cultural attitudes and beliefs. In this article I call for an intensified social psychological analysis of immigration, using Pettigrew's (1997) three-level framework as a means to define the approach. Selected research examples build the case for the critical role that social psychology can play in understanding the individual, group, and intergroup dynamics of immigration.     

Body Image and Cultural Background

First place winner of the 2004 Alpha Kappa Delta Graduate Student Paper Competition
Poor body image affects women of all races, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, and cultural backgrounds. Researchers have found that body image can influence a woman's self-confidence, her assertiveness, and her attitudes regarding eating and exercise habits. Much research has examined White women's body image perceptions, but less research has examined this issue among women of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The goal of this study is to examine and explore the factors that influence university women's perceptions of their bodies. Semistructured interviews were conducted in the spring of 2004 ( N =11). Results indicate that participants have struggled to achieve positive perceptions of their bodies as adults, tend to feel that women of all races and ethnicities are increasingly held to a similar standard of beauty (i.e., thin and White), and believe that images of the female body depicted in the media have significant effects on the way women perceive their own bodies.     

Effects of Commitment and Psychological Centrality on Fathering

Propositions from identity theory suggest that interactional and affective commitment to a role identity affects the psychological centrality of that role identity. In turn, the centrality of one's role identity translates into role performance ( Stryker & Serpe, 1994 ). This conceptual model was tested with a sample of 186 fathers in first marriages with at least one child 18 years or younger. The results showed that fathers who perceived their wives as evaluating them positively as fathers were more likely to report higher levels of involvement in child‐related activities and place greater importance on the father role identity. This prominence, in turn, was associated with higher levels of involvement.     

Mothers and Fathers in the Workplace: How Gender and Parental Status Influence Judgments of Job-Related Competence

We investigated the influence of gender and parental status on employment decisions. The shifting standards model predicts that parenthood polarizes judgments of women and men such that mothers are held to stricter employment standards than fathers. Social role theory predicts that parenting role, rather than gender, guides judgments of mothers and fathers. One hundred ninety-six undergraduates at two universities evaluated a job applicant; the applicant was either male or female and was either single or married with two children. Results showed that parents were judged less agentic and less committed to employment than non-parents. Parental status also interacted with gender, indicating that fathers were held to more lenient standards than mothers and childless men. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.     

Safer recruitment? Protecting children,improving practice in residential child care

In the wake of a number of high‐profile cases of the abuse of children and young people in residential child care, there have been repeated calls for the improvement of recruitment and selection of residential child care staff. This paper describes the findings from a survey, undertaken in 2005, of operational and human resource managers who have responsibility for the recruitment and selection of residential child care staff in the voluntary and statutory sectors in Scotland. This research was commissioned by the Scottish Executive to identify which elements of safer recruitment procedures had been implemented following the countrywide launch of a Toolkit for Safer Recruitment Practice in 2001. Research findings show that although local authorities were more likely than voluntary organisations to have gone some way toward implementing safer recruitment procedures, the recruitment process lacked rigour and commitment to safer procedures in some organisations. The article discusses the current barriers to the introduction of safer recruitment methods and proposes some possible solutions for the future. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.