Sexual standards and activity: Adolescents' perceptions

This paper reports on findings from in-depth interviews with a small sample of white and black teenage mothers from diverse socio-economic backgrounds about their sexual standards and their feelings about their sexual initiation and subsequent sexual activity. The comparisons across race and across class suggest that there are significant differences across classes among black teens in standards about and personal evaluation of their sexual activity while no class difference among white teens are evident.This research was partially supported by a National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, Department of Health and Human Services, grant no. 1-F31-MH09368-O1A1 from July 1986 to July 1987.     

Positively Impacting Maternal Stress and Parental Adjustment through Community-Based Relationship Education (RE)

Relationship education (RE) is a brief, strength-based psychoeducational intervention for couples that demonstrates strong outcomes to decrease individual and couple stress. The current study examined changes in relationship and family adjustment for expectant mothers following RE intervention. Participants included 91 pregnant women (64.8% racial or ethnic minorities) who participated in a community-based RE program. In examination of pre and post-intervention relationship assessment scale and parental stress and coping inventory results, RE intervention contributed to increased relationship satisfaction, and reduced parental distress, as well as to improved social support and family-based support scores among participants. In addition, relationship stress is a major contributor to stress during pregnancy that adds vulnerability for the health of low-income and ethnic minority expectant mothers and their children. Findings indicate the effectiveness of RE to significantly reduce stress for expectant mothers. Therefore, the use of RE as a low-cost and accessible intervention to combat stress provides positive implications for this vulnerable population.     

The declining place of music education in schools in England

This article addresses the provision of music education in schools in England, arguing that access to music education is the right of every child and therefore that a high‐quality and sustained curriculum offer must be provided in all state‐funded schools. Music education in England is widely recognised as being marginalised in state schools, despite it being a statutory requirement as part of the National Curriculum. This policy review examines several threats to music education, such as accountability measures, funding cuts, curriculum narrowing and erosion of the teaching workforce, identifying some of the key evidence in each case.     

Sorting or Shaping? The Gendered Economic Outcomes of Immigration Policy in Canada

Using a growth model analysis of Canada's Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC), we establish a significant relationship between application status — i.e., the distinction in immigration policy between primary and secondary migrants — and individual wages. This relationship is associated with an earnings disadvantage for secondary migrants, who are disproportionately female. The disadvantage persists over time, even when individual human capital and personal characteristics, household context, and pre‐existing differences in the relative employability of spouses are taken into account. We outline some possible explanations for this effect, as well as implications for immigration policy makers.     

Running in Circles: My Best Friend’s Wedding After 19 Years

ABSTRACT

This essay revisits My Best Friend’s Wedding (Hogan, 1997) 19 years later. It compares its way of combining laughter and tears with 2 genres of literature: Marivaux’s (1964) 18th-century comic theatre and the 19th-century novel of adultery, with its overtones of classical tragedy. In each, an outsider observes, envies, and seeks to destroy a “happy couple”: the 2 genres end, respectively, in a wedding or in death. How do 3 women view this film, and its ending, in 2016?     

Using the Theory of Planned Behavior to predict HPV vaccination intentions of college men

Objective: The purpose of this study was to test Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) constructs in predicting human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination behavioral intentions of vaccine-eligible college men. Participants: Participants were unvaccinated college men aged 18–26 years attending a large public university in the southeastern United States during Spring 2015. Methods: A nonexperimental, cross-sectional study design was employed. Instrumentation comprised a qualitative elicitation study, expert panel review, pilot test, test-retest, and internal consistency, construct validity, and predictive validity assessments using data collected from an online self-report questionnaire. Results: The sample consisted of 256 college men, and the final structural model exhibited acceptable fit of the data. Attitude toward the behavior (β = .169) and subjective norm (β = 0.667) were significant predictors of behavioral intention, accounting for 58% of its variance. Conclusions: Practitioners may utilize this instrument for the development and evaluation of TPB-based interventions to increase HPV vaccination intentions of undergraduate college men.