Adolescent Female Offenders’ Subjective Experiences of How Peers Influence Norm-Breaking Behavior

Delinquent peers have a strong influence on adolescent delinquent behavior. However, few studies have investigated adolescents’, and in particular young females’, own perspectives of the role of peers on their delinquent behavior. The purpose of the present study was to explore how young female offenders described their delinquent behavior and more specifically the role they assign to peer relations in committing or avoiding delinquent acts. Nine female adolescents, sentenced to youth service, were interviewed, and the data was analyzed using the Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR) method. The results showed that committing crimes and taking drugs with peers were portrayed as a way for the female delinquents to socialize. Delinquent and pro-social activities with peers appear to serve similar developmental functions in the sense that it is described to fulfill the same developmental needs. The young offenders also described collectively created pressures and norms in the peer group as the main contributing factor to their norm-breaking behavior, where they described being both recipients and producers of influence in the group. Another important finding was that the female offenders showed an awareness of the importance of pro-social peers and the need to eliminate delinquent friends from their peer network in order to help them refrain from deviant behavior. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.     

Intimate Partner Violence,Minority Stress,and Sexual Risk-Taking Among U.S. Men Who Have Sex With Men

This article examines the prevalence of intimate partner violence (IPV) among a national sample of Internet-recruited U.S. men who have sex with men (MSM) (n = 1,575), and associations between reporting of IPV, minority stress, and sexual risk-taking. Five outcomes are examined: experiences of physical and sexual violence, perpetration of physical and sexual violence, and unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) at last sexual encounter. MSM who reported experiencing more homophobic discrimination and internalized homophobia were more likely to report experiences of IPV. The results point to the need for prevention messages to address the external and internal stressors that influence both violence and sexual risk among MSM.     

The Environmental Risks of Incomplete Globalisation

As the liberal optimism of the long 1990s has faded into a world of growing inequality and resurging nationalism, there is less certainty about the prospects of economic convergence and global integration. Beyond the formidable human cost of maintaining a divided world, the possibility of incomplete globalisation also gives rise to a number of environmental risks. While environmental political theory generally sees strength in localism, history rather shows that a robust world trade system is crucial to offset local resource scarcities and that cosmopolitan norms of solidarity are essential for helping communities to rebuild after environmental catastrophe. In relation to climate change, statist thinking has led to a focus on non-scalable technologies and a silent acceptance of chronic poverty abroad as a way of avoiding a climate emergency. Contrary to such views, this paper argues that accelerating the transition to a fully integrated high-energy planet may more effectively mitigate Anthropocene risks.     

International adoption and the formation of new family attachments

Clinical studies of children in international adoption reveal unique patterns of psychological adjustment to permanent family care. Pre‐adoption history often includes early object loss, medical and nutritional deprivation, multiple care‐giving disruptions, and the lack of primary care‐giving relationships. These factors and the age at the time of adoption are risks to positive emotional and cognitive development. Adoptive parents may be unprepared for the resulting developmental problems. Most significantly, parents and children are often at different points in readiness to establish an attachment relationship. The parents are eager to claim their child, but the child is unready to respond because of emotional fragility and lack of previous attachment experiences. Two clinical vignettes illustrate the importance of a developmental and medical framework in assessing the unique needs of these survivor children, as well as the necessity of an empathic therapeutic holding environment that can sustain the emerging family attachments under stress. The psychological impact of cross‐cultural adoption and traumatic early beginnings reverberates across time but with empathic parental care and treatment recovery can be significant.     

The Eating Disorders NOS Diagnostic Profile Among College Women

Abstract

The authors examined a proposed profile of eating-related behaviors, associated features, developmental issues, and help-seeking behavior among college women, using an eating disorder response program. The most common symptom scenario was a pattern of regular binge eating, together with daily exercise and occasional purging. The most common associated features were distressing or dysfunctional overconcern about body image and self-esteem, usually with day-to-day stress and intermittent depression. The women who fit this pattern also presented developmental issues of perfectionism, conflictual relationships with parents, and struggles for independence; and they tended to be ambivalent about seeking services. Implications for practice, including the need to develop a framework for eating disorder responses on campus that includes preventive programs and developmental interventions to target emerging and moderate concerns are discussed; limitations and the preliminary nature of the findings are explicated.     

Infant Sex Moderates the Effects of Maternal Pre‐ and Postnatal Stress on Executive Functioning at 8 Months of Age

Previous studies report that early life stress, including maternal pre‐ and postnatal stress, has adverse effects on cognitive development and that these associations might be sex‐specific. However, no studies exist on early life stress and infant executive functioning (EF). The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between maternal pre‐ and postnatal stress and infant EF, and whether these associations are moderated by infant sex. Maternal prenatal depressive, general anxiety, and pregnancy‐specific anxiety symptoms were measured three times, and postnatal depressive and general anxiety symptoms were measured 6 months postpartum. Infant EF was assessed with a modified A‐not‐B task 8 months postpartum (N = 214). Maternal postnatal general anxiety predicted poorer EF in girls in comparison with boys. Moreover, there was a trend toward an interaction between prenatal anxiety and infant sex such that prenatal anxiety predicted infant EF differently in girls and in boys. No association was found between depressive symptoms or pregnancy‐specific anxiety symptoms and infant EF. These findings suggest that maternal anxiety may have sex‐specific effects on early EF and that pre‐ and postnatal stress may differently affect infant EF/cognitive development. The implications of these findings and important future directions are discussed.