Spouses in mixed-orientation marriage: a 20-year review of empirical studies

Empirical studies on mixed-orientation marriage in social science journals from 1988 to 2008 were reviewed. Fifteen articles published in eight peer-reviewed journals were identified and discussed in terms of sampling, design, measures, rigor, theoretical framework, and literature review. An overview of each study is provided along with a summary of critical findings. Implications and recommendations for future research and education are offered.     

Lone Parents and Informal Childcare: A Tax Credit Childcare Subsidy?

The Labour government aims to increase the lone parent employment rate to 70 per cent by 2010. To achieve this aim, it has introduced a state subsidy for childcare in the form of the childcare element of the Working Tax Credit. So far this has been limited to formal childcare despite evidence that lone parents are more likely to use informal childcare. This article investigates the potential of a state subsidy to be extended to support informal childcare. Utilizing evidence from a study of 78 qualitative in‐depth interviews with lone parents, it explores preferences for informal care and the way that informal care is negotiated. On the one hand, we found that some lone parents held deeply embedded preferences for informal childcare based on trust, commitment, shared understandings and children's happiness. Thus it can be concluded that it is important for the government to support informal as well as formal care. On the other, we found that the way lone parents actually negotiated informal childcare involved complex notions of obligation, duty and reciprocity, suggesting that a subsidy could potentially intrude upon complex private family relationships. However, the evidence suggests that care was negotiated differently depending on whether it was provided by a grandparent or other family and friends, with lone parents tending to favour paying for childcare provided by other family and friends than grandparents. This has implications for a state subsidy, which needs further investigation.     

‘You are not born being racist,are you?’ Discussing racism with primary aged-children

Ethnic-racial socialisation is broadly described as processes by which both minority and majority children and young people learn about and negotiate racial, ethnic and cultural diversity. This article extends the existing ethnic-racial socialisation literature in three significant ways: (1) it explores ways children make sense of their experiences of racial and ethnic diversity and racism; (2) it considers ways children identify racism and make distinctions between racism and racialisation; and (3) it examines teacher and parent ethnic-racial socialisation messages about race, ethnicity and racism with children. This research is based on classroom observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with teachers, parents and students aged 8–12?years attending four Australian metropolitan primary schools. The findings reveal that both teachers and parents tended to discuss racism reactively rather than proactively. The extent to which racism was discussed in classroom settings depended on: teachers’ personal and professional capability; awareness of racism and its perceived relevance based on student and community experiences; and whether they felt supported in the broader school and community context. For parents, key drivers for talking about racism were their children’s experiences and racial issues reported in the media. For both parents and teachers, a key issue in these discussions was determining whether something constituted either racism or racialisation. Strategies on how ethnic-racial socialisation within the school system can be improved are discussed.     

Producing youth ‘Out of sync:’ the intersectional social relations of educational inequality

This article investigates intersecting institutional and policy relations that influence divergent developmental trajectories among young people. Beginning with young people’s experiential knowledge of key institutional contexts shaping their lives, the article illuminates socially organized disjunctures whereby young people come to see themselves as developmentally out of sync with institutional expectations for youth development, which organize everyday life in public schools. This institutional ethnography explicates the intersecting social relations that shape how young people grow up, the choices that are available to them, their participation in public sector institutions and ultimately, the race and class-based patterns of inequality perpetuated by public schools and other public sector institutions.     

Leveraging Research on Informal Learning to Inform Policy on Promoting Early STEM

In recent decades, educators and policymakers in the United States have increased their focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities both in school and in informal learning environments outside of school. Informal STEM learning can take place in varied settings and involves a variety of STEM domains (e.g., engaging in engineering practices in a construction exhibit at a museum; talking about math during book reading at home). Here we provide a selective review of the literature on informal STEM learning to illustrate how these educational experiences are crucial for efforts to increase early STEM learning even before children reach school age. Leveraging cognitive and learning science research to inform policy, we make three recommendations to advance the impact of informal STEM learning: 1) integrate cognitive and learning science–based learning practices into informal learning contexts, 2) increase accessibility and diversity of informal STEM experiences, and 3) create explicit connections and coherence between formal and informal STEM learning opportunities in early childhood education.     

Outness and relationship satisfaction in same-gender couples

Self-disclosure of sexual orientation, or outness, is a fundamental feature of gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) experience, yet little is known about how outness impacts same-gender relationship satisfaction. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with 15 same-gender couples, the complexities of navigating a stigmatized identity in a homonegative society emerged, including (a) characteristics of outness, (b) the influence of coupling on an individual's outness, and (c) the impact of outness on same-gender relationship satisfaction. Findings suggest that for GLB persons, outness is a developmental skill, an expression of identity and values, as well as a resilience strategy for managing discrimination and gay-related stress that influences, though does not singularly determine, relationship satisfaction. Implications for clinical practice and future research suggestions are presented.     

“First Train Out”: Marriage and Cohabitation in the Context of Poverty,Deprivation, and Trauma

There has been a steep rise in the proportion of children born to and living with unmarried parents. Unmarried parents are increasingly likely to cohabitate, especially low-income couples, placing their children at elevated psychosocial risk. This life history study of poor, White single mothers suggests that the current focus on differences between married and cohabiting poor women may overstate underlying similarities in factors associated with their partner formation and dissolution and that poor women's decisions about marriage and cohabitation must be understood in a developmental context that reflects the stacking, over time, of multiple forms of vulnerability to unstable partnerships, single motherhood, and continuing poverty into adulthood.     

Formal Serials Education: A Problem We Can't Solve or a Solution We Can Live With?

Abstract

Serialists have long believed their field is underrepresented in the library and information science (LIS) curriculum. A recent review of Web sites of ALA-accredited LIS programs shows no significant change in the percentage of formal serials courses in those programs. The problem of adequate formal serials education is examined in the broader context of LIS education as a whole. Increasing traditional, formal serials education is an impractical goal. Instead, we should develop continuing education opportunities, and work to dispel some of the mystique of serials.