‘Who is in Your Family?’ Italian Children with Non‐heterosexual Parents Talk about Growing Up in a Non‐conventional Household

The paper presents findings from explorative research conducted in Italy with seven 9‐ to 12‐year‐old children with non‐heterosexual parents. The aim was to find out how children describe their family structure, how they talk about their family with peers, and how they experience peers' attitudes towards non‐heterosexual families. Findings show that children have a flexible and inclusive representation of family and they disclose selectively with their peers who don't always consider homosexuality normal and homoparental families ‘real families’. The paper concludes by suggesting that institutional recognition for same‐sex parenting would support children in the everyday work of negotiating diversity.     

“A problem of resources”: defining rural youth encounters in education, work & housing

Using empirical evidence from a study of rural youth living in a remote region in the West of Ireland, this paper applies a structurationist approach to focus on and explore how young people's scope for action and choice is shaped and mediated. In particular, it applies Giddens's concept of authoritative resources (‘organization of life chances’), social practices and relations to understand the encounters, events and experiences within education, work and housing. The paper concerns how the types of practices and relations encountered within these three arenas tend to problematise the choices and opportunities available for young people. In the late-modern age, these three spheres of life can generate considerable pressures, which, depending on circumstances, are differentially mediated by young people. In conclusion, it calls for policy to engage in more ‘enabling’ terms with rural youth experiencing the negative effects of rural economic restructuring.     

Findings on the impact of treatment for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia on family relationships

Paediatric acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) has provided a landmark in cancer therapy as the first disseminated and otherwise lethal malignancy to be curable in the majority of patients. Although the success rate is high, this benefit is achieved through a long, invasive and very arduous treatment process. The experience of undergoing such intensive treatments affects not only the child, but the entire family. To date, however, psychosocial research is only beginning to describe the depth and breadth of the impact on families of this experience. This paper presents findings from a recent qualitative study of families coping with the initial stage (induction remission) of treatment for childhood ALL. The findings indicate that the experience is so profoundly disturbing and disruptive that it challenges the families' sense of normalcy and stability. These findings provide evidence of significant hardship and stress, with the consequent indication of the need for social work support. Above all, such families need to hear the comforting message from social workers that what they are experiencing is normal under the circumstances. Along with practical assistance, they need reassurance about the intensity of feelings they will experience and an affirmation of the difficulty of the challenges they face.     

Health Outcomes in Individuals with Problem and Pathological Gambling: An Analysis of the 2014 North Carolina Behavioral Risk Factor Survey System (BRFSS)

Problem and pathological gambling refers to subclinical and clinical levels of maladaptive gambling, respectively, and is associated with specific sociodemographic characteristics as well as a number of poor health outcomes. We examined such demographic, physical health, mental health, and health-related behaviors in a sample of 7045 low-risk gamblers and 244 problem/pathological gamblers. Participants completed the 2014 North Carolina Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System telephone survey. Using the National Opinion Research Center’s Diagnostic Screen for Gambling Disorders-CLiP, participants were categorized as either “problem/pathological gamblers” or “low-risk gamblers.” Problem/pathological gamblers were younger, more likely to be male, of ethnic minority status, unmarried, and of lower education than low-risk gamblers. No physical health variables differentiated the groups but problem/pathological gamblers reported experiencing significantly more adverse childhood experiences and engaging in significantly more tobacco and alcohol use compared to low-risk gamblers. Moreover, gender moderated relationships between gambling group and several of the alcohol use variables such that male problem/pathological gamblers exhibited greater alcohol use behavior than male low-risk gamblers but no such relationship was present in females. Overall, this study expands the current knowledgebase on disordered gambling and highlights the need to assess disordered gambling in public health samples. Clinical implications are discussed.     

Community Practice Researchers as Reflective Learners

The article outlines a process for community practice researchas a reflective process. Through the interplay of key conceptsassociated with subjective research–personal engagement,experiential affinity and parallel struggles–and transcribedinterviews with community practitioners, the authors elaboratethe subjective community researcher posture. Subjectivity contributesto the researchers’ position as learners within the researchprocess. The research team plays a key role in reflecting onthe effects of the research on participants.     

Participation of non-dominant students in argumentation in the mathematics classroom

This article focuses on argumentation in mathematics classrooms in two different geographic contexts, the US and New Zealand. Drawing on data from a case with immigrant students (Pāsifika) in NZ and a case with Mexican American students in the US, we argue for the need to study the concept of argumentation through a cultural and language lens. Our analysis across the two cases points to common features that supported students’ engagement in argumentation. Building relationships and encouraging and supporting students to be themselves are seen as resources for argumentation. The similarities across two very different contexts are striking. As we think of how to develop environments that support non-dominant students’ participation in mathematical argumentation, we may want to learn from and build on students’ cultural ways of being.     

Parents on the job market: Resources and strategies that help sociologists attain tenure-track jobs

Do women and men who have children during gradute school have access to the same institutional resources as non-parents? In the face of two gredy institutions, the academy and parenthood (especially motherhood), do they employ the same sorts of strategies in their quest to attain tenure-track jobs, and are those strategies successful? In this study we use a longitudinal survey of sociology Ph.D.s to investigate the availability and use of three types of resources and strategies during graduate school, and find that they all have important effects on the chances of obtaining a tenure-track position at a research or doctoral university. We find that someinstitutional resources are not equallydistributed in graduate school, with mother's least likely to obtain them, but are significant for attainment of tenure-track positions.Resource-based strategies, including presenting papers and publishing articles while in graduate school, have a positive and significant effect on all groups' attainment of tenure-track positions.Family-based strategies such as child-spacing strategies are also significant; women who have children during graduate school have lower odds of immediately obtaining tenure-track jobs at research and doctoral universities, although access to resources and the ability to use these resources helps significantly.     

Profiles of the parents of adolescent CSA perpetrators attending a voluntary outpatient treatment programme in Ireland

A group of 22 parents of adolescent sexual offenders (PASO) was compared with a group of 19 normal controls (NC) and 10 clinical controls (CC) on demographic, developmental, personal adjustment and family environment variables. The assessment protocol included the General Health Questionnaire‐12, the Culture‐Free Self‐Esteem Inventory, the Child Behaviour Checklist, the Family Assessment Device, the Parent Satisfaction Scale and the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support. Compared with clinical and normal controls, more parents in the PASO group reported that they had been arrested or charged for a criminal offence; had personally experienced child abuse; and more of their adolescents had experienced child abuse, with emotional abuse being the most common form of abuse for both parents and adolescents. Compared with clinical and normal controls, more adolescents of parents in the PASO group had witnessed parental drug or alcohol abuse and had been placed in care outside their home. While parents in the PASO group did not differ from clinical or normal controls in terms of personal adjustment, their adolescents had significantly more internalizing behaviour problems than normal controls, whereas adolescents of parents in the clinical control group had significantly more externalizing behaviour problems than normal controls. Compared with normal controls, parents in both the PASO and clinical control groups reported more difficulties with general family functioning, roles, affective responsiveness, affective involvement and behaviour control and lower levels of parental satisfaction. However, the groups did not differ significantly in their levels of perceived social support. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.