Development and identity issues in adolescent homosexuality

This paper argues that homosexual emergence in adolescence must be viewed from a developmentally non-pejorative perspective. In attempting to respond to the special stresses in adolescents who are developing gay or lesbian identities, helping professionals need to develop a familiarity with the unique developmental tasks of gay and lesbian youth, as well as the sexual identity formation literature generally. A review of developmental issues for gay and lesbian youth leads to some thoughts regarding the development of services.To the doctor, you were sick; to the lawyer, you were a criminal; to the minister, you were wicked.This paper is one of several reviews and research reports produced is part of the Sexual Orientation and Youth Project, a project examining the issues regarding service delivery to gay youth. The views expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Community and Social Services.     

“Falling into a Place”: Reading for Renewal as Queer Pedagogy

This essay explores reading for renewal as queer pedagogy. Within the context of lesbian and gay literature courses, professors can teach students and themselves how to pull stories—beautiful, celebratory stories—out of the bits and pieces of stones of self-hatred and of suffering. If readers of gay and lesbian texts are to resist homophobic discourse, then they must not only train themselves to recognize signs of queerness within even the most oppressive of narratives, but also seek out those texts whose discussions of narrative theory and identity politics promote queer visibility. Reading for renewal—that is, locating a place of transformative possibility either within the text or within the experience of reading the text within the classroom—is, the author argues, integral to practicing a queer pedagogy.     

The Emergence of a Social Problem: Single‐Parent Families in U.S. Popular Magazines and Social Science Journals, 1900–1998*

Abundant research investigates the content of public discourse about social problems. Far less is known about the quantity of social problems discourse. This article employs original data to address this gap by examining the emergence of single‐parent families as a social problem within U.S. popular magazines and social science journals. I trace the growth of discourse about single‐parent families in magazines indexed by the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (N= 3050) and social science journals indexed by JSTOR (N= 1376) between 1900 and 1998 and explore factors associated with this growth. The results indicate that contemporary issues functioned as rival social problems and depressed single‐parent family discourse within magazines but not within journals. Increases in the prevalence of single‐parent families were associated with increases in related discourse in both arenas, but discourse increased earlier in journals. Growing popular concern about single‐parent family formation in the 1960s was associated with a reduction in the quantity of single‐parent family discourse within journals but not within magazines.     

Education for isolated children: Challenging gendered and structural assumptions

This paper examines the provision of distance education to young people studying from their isolated properties in remote areas of Australia. While Australia's innovative approach to remote education is well established, this paper challenges the gender and structural assumptions underpinning this approach. A sustained period of rural restructuring and a long period of drought have changed the social relations of agriculture in a number of significant ways that ultimately undermine distance education as it is currently constructed. The assumption that mothers are available to provide home tutoring is no longer valid given the pressures on them to work on properties due to staff cutbacks and off properties to earn additional income. Further, the trend for farm family properties to be amalgamated into larger holdings and for these holdings to be run by farm workers also undermines the assumption that parents are willing, able and resourced to home tutor their children for long periods. This paper raises significant questions about the adequacy of current distance education provisions in remote areas.     

Gifts and Gifting

The terms gift and gifting are rarely formally defined, but are associated with something given without receiving payment, often in the expectation of reciprocation and of changing the relationship with the recipient. Extensive prior work across a number of disciplines tends to focus on gifting as a process and shows a broad conceptualization of the gift construct to include actions as diverse as charitable giving, tipping, self‐gifting and volunteering, where relationship development and reciprocation are largely irrelevant. As a way to develop the area, two proposals are made: first, that gifting research should recognize two different types of gift, transactional and relational; and second, that the exchange paradigm and its underpinning social exchange theory should become central in developing understanding of relational gifting. The authors argue that empirical researchers may usefully revisit the relational paradigm, but by adopting a more quantitative, modelling approach, and the paper illustrates how this might be achieved.     

ADOLESCENTS' INCONSISTENCY IN SELF-REPORTED SMOKING: A COMPARISON OF REPORTS IN SCHOOL AND IN HOUSEHOLD SETTINGS

Extent and sources of inconsistency in self-reported cigarette smoking between self-administered school surveys and household interviews was examined in two longitudinal multiethnic adolescent samples, the urban Transition to Nicotine Dependence in Adolescence (TND) (N = 832) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) (N = 4,414). Inconsistency was defined as a positive report of smoking in school followed by a negative report in the household. Smoking questions were ascertained with paper-and-pencil instruments (PAPI-SAQ) in school in both studies, and computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) in TND but audio computer-assisted self-interviewing (ACASI) in Add Health in the household. In TND, 23.5 percent of youths who reported smoking lifetime and 20.4 percent of those who reported smoking the last 12 months in the school survey reported in the household never having smoked; in Add Health, the latter was 8.6 percent. Logistic regressions identified five common correlates of inconsistency across the two studies: younger age, ethnic minority status, lesser involvement in deviant activities, having nonsmoking parents and friends. In TND, interviewing of youth and parent by the same interviewer increased inconsistent reporting. Matching the definition of inconsistent reporting and the age, gender and race/ethnic distributions of TND on an urban Add Health subsample reduced the predicted rate of inconsistency in TND. The estimated bias attributable to CAPI compared with ACASI methodology did not reach significance in the aggregated matched samples suggesting that irrespective of administration mode, household interviews decrease reporting of smoking, especially among younger, minority and more conventional youths embedded in a social network of nonsmokers.     

A Regional Multiplier Approach to Estimating the Impact of Cash Transfers on the Market: The Case of Cash Transfers in Rural Malawi

This article analyses the impact on the local economy of an emergency cash–transfer programme in rural Malawi. The results are of interest, given the growing use of cash transfers as development aid as well as the increasing popularity of such transfers as a form of social protection across sub–Saharan Africa. It uses a form of social accounting matrix to show that there are widespread benefits for the regional economy as a whole (with multiplier estimates of 2.02 to 2.45), especially during the most ‘lean’ periods of the year, and for small farmers and small businesses in particular, as this is where poorer households' purchases are focused; education and health also benefit.     

Aging and identity politics

In this essay, I reflect on multiple identities—woman, lesbian, old—as they interconnect at different life stages. I raise an issue of identity politics (Is “old” as fundamental an identity as “woman”?) and suggest that critical gerontology offers a lens through which to interpret my personal journey from a core feminist identity to a questioning and ambivalent identity as an old woman.