The Relation between Mothers' Mirroring of Infants' Behavior and Maternal Mind‐Mindedness

Maternal mind‐mindedness, which is a measure of maternal mentalization involving mothers' speech, was examined as a predictor of mothers' mirroring of infant behavior during interaction. Five‐month‐old infants and their mothers engaged in a Still‐Face Task in which the mother's mirroring of the infant's behavior was assessed. After the task, the mother was shown a video of her infant in the task and asked to comment on what was happening for her infant; her comments were assessed for mind‐mindedness. Maternal mind‐mindedness when mothers were asked to reflect upon what was happening for their infants during the task predicted mothers' mirroring behaviors while engaged with their infants in the task. Maternal mirroring behavior may be a manifestation of maternal mentalization that is salient to infants.     

Emotion and Therapy: Connecting with Leslie Greenberg

At the invitation of the Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Leslie Greenberg gave seminars during 1997 on emotion in clinical practice and on current research endeavours. He is Professor, Department of Psychology, and Director of the Psychotherapy Research Centre, York University, Toronto, where he trained in psychology before going to the University of British Columbia for twelve years. His mentors were Laura Rice, one of Carl Rogers’ students, who introduced him to psychotherapy, and Pascual Leone, one of Piaget's students in developmental psychology. He learned to integrate a type of client-centered/ process-oriented approach with a Piagetian approach to psychotherapy research. He has had further training in Gestalt therapy and family therapy, and exposure to dynamic and cognitive therapy within the Society for Psychotherapy Research. Leslie Greenberg was a founding member of the Society for Exploration of Psychotherapy Integration (SEPI) and the Society for Constructivism in Psychotherapy. He is the co-author of Emotion in Psychotherapy (1987), Emotion, Psychotherapy and Change (1991), Emotionally Focused Therapy for Couples (1988), Facilitating Emotional Change (1993) and most recently, Working with Emotions in Psychotherapy (1997).     

One Size May Not Fit All: How Obesity Among Mexican-Origin Youth Varies by Generation,Gender, and Age

Immigrants’ health (dis)advantages are increasingly recognized as not being uniform, leading to calls for studies investigating whether immigrant health outcomes are dependent on factors that exacerbate health risks. We answer this call, considering an outcome with competing evidence about immigrants’ vulnerability versus risk: childhood obesity. More specifically, we investigate obesity among three generations of Mexican-origin youth relative to one another and to U.S.-born whites. We posit that risk is dependent on the intersection of generational status, gender, and age, which all influence exposure to U.S. society and weight concerns. Analyses of National Health and Nutrition Examination Studies (NHANES) data suggest that accounting for ethnicity and generation alone misses considerable gender and age heterogeneity in childhood obesity among Mexican-origin and white youth. For example, second-generation boys are vulnerable to obesity, but the odds of obesity for first-generation girls are low and on par with those of white girls. Findings also indicate that age moderates ethnic/generational differences in obesity among boys but not among girls. Overall, ethnic/generational patterns of childhood obesity do not conform to a “one size fits all” theory of immigrant health (dis)advantage, leading us to join calls for more research considering how immigrants’ characteristics and contexts differentially shape vulnerability to disease and death.     

Race and Reciprocity: Inter‐household Exchanges in a Multiracial Neighborhood

This study investigates the degree to which African‐American households are socially integrated into a multiracial, middle‐class suburban neighborhood near Dallas, Texas. Although U.S. neighborhoods are becoming increasingly heterogeneous in composition, little is known about black households' participation in social and informational networks within multiracial middle‐class neighborhoods. Drawing on theories of the gift and social capital, we view neighborhoods in terms of complex patterns of inter‐household exchanges of material and symbolic goods. We predict that black‐led households will exchange at a lower rate with their neighbors than will other households and test this prediction using survey data collected from 119 households and from follow‐up interviews with eight black heads of household. Our main finding from the survey is that black households exchanged at a significantly lower rate than did other households, ceteris paribus. The follow‐up interviews found little evidence of black racial homophily in neighboring or of racism within the neighborhood. However, the low rate of black inter‐household exchanges may be partly explained by black head of households' personal experiences of racism outside the neighborhood and by a racially constituted disposition against borrowing from neighbors. We discuss implications of our findings for research on racial integration and segregation.     

Black Identity: The O. J. Simpson Case

The purpose of this paper is to review the White and Black perspectives regarding the O. J. Simpson trial. The henneneutic-dialectic (HD) method of inquiry will be utilized in order to comprehend how Whites and Blacks reached their respective conclusions concerning O. J. Simpson’s guilt or innocence. This method of inquiry employs discourses, separately by Blacks and Whites, the interchange of the recorded discourses, and last, the coming together of both groups of participants for further discourse. Blacks, in contrast to Whites, experienced justice through a common sense of identity forged historically by a minority people rather than by the immediate circumstantial evidence gathered at the time of the trial.     

Pathways into Bankruptcy: Accumulating Disadvantage and the Consequences of Adverse Life Events

This study combines theories of accumulating disadvantage and economic insecurity using the event of bankruptcy to investigate how certain adverse life events jointly affect inequality. I analyze National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data from 1985 through 2008 to highlight the complexities of financial hardship in the path to bankruptcy. By applying hybrid mixed effects models to parse out within‐ and between‐person variation, I show that, in the case of bankruptcy, financial hardship unfolds over a specific series of events, which can lead to the accumulation of disadvantage connected to changes in employment, marital, and health statuses. I find that bankruptcy results from people's recent experiences of illness and marital dissolution, but not always directly from employment disruption. The effects of job loss on bankruptcy become more apparent as these events accumulate over time and limit wealth creation. The timing of events and their relationship with net worth also influence when a person will file for bankruptcy. As a whole, my findings demonstrate how adverse events and financial hardship lead to bankruptcy through multiple pathways.     

Examining Skin Color and Discrimination Among Ethnic Minority Adolescents

Discrimination based on skin color is illegal, yet preferential treatment based on skin color persists and there is less clarity on how one’s nativity and parents play a role between skin color and discrimination. This study examined the associations among skin color and subtle discrimination (i.e., microaggressions) among Latina/o (63.5%) and Asian American (36.5%) adolescents (N?=?244; M_age?=?17.12, SD?=?.73; 55% female). This study also examined whether nativity status, parent ethnic racial socialization, and parental acculturation (via parent language proficiency) moderated the association between skin color and microaggressions. Adolescents with darker skin color reported more microaggressions. In addition, the association between skin color and microaggressions was found among foreign-born adolescents, but not US-born adolescents. Neither parental acculturation or parent ethnic racial socialization moderated the association between skin color and microaggressions. These results suggest that, like race and ethnicity, skin color may be a marker for adolescents receiving subtle discrimination, particularly among foreign-born youth.