Theorising fatherhood,welfare and the decline of patriarchy in Japan

This paper investigates social policies concerning men's transitions to fatherhood and the changing role of fathers in Japan. A review of fathering research reveals a predominantly agency-level emphasis on role-strain between work and paternal identities with a specific discourse of weakened Japanese fatherhood. Previous research suggested Japanese gender equality and work-life balance initiatives stalled due to an absence of women's influence within Japan's corporate culture. This study offers a historical perspective to show modern family policies were essentially rooted in gender-equality campaigns led by women's organisations dating back to post-WWII era. The findings situate Japanese social policy and epistemology in the international vanguard of a ‘Nordic turn’ towards structural-level research and improved social citizenship rights to support men's transitions to fatherhood.     

Can willingness to pay capture the value of altruism? An exploration of Sen’s notion of commitment

Amartya Sen’s distinction between sympathy and commitment is used to examine the assertion that willingness to pay (WTP) can capture the value of altruism in health care. Willingness to pay values for a vaccination program stated to benefit only one’s self in the first instance and only other people in the second instance were elicited from a small convenience sample. Qualitative methods were then used to explore the meaning of the responses. Commitment was found to be a motivating factor and drove a wedge between willingness to pay and valuation of the program. The consequences of this for health economic research are discussed.     

Negative Dependence in Sampling

Abstract. The strong Rayleigh property is a new and robust negative dependence property that implies negative association; in fact it implies conditional negative association closed under external fields (CNA+). Suppose that and are two families of 0‐1 random variables that satisfy the strong Rayleigh property and let . We show that {Z_i} conditioned on is also strongly Rayleigh; this turns out to be an easy consequence of the results on preservation of stability of polynomials of Borcea & Brändén (Invent. Math., 177, 2009, 521–569). This entails that a number of important π ps sampling algorithms, including Sampford sampling and Pareto sampling, are CNA+. As a consequence, statistics based on such samples automatically satisfy a version of the Central Limit Theorem for triangular arrays.     

The role of family therapists in veterinary medicine: opportunities for clinical services, education, and research

Marriage and family therapists (MFTs) are applying their specific skill set in a variety of arenas. A new area for collaboration is veterinary medicine. The veterinary medical profession is emphasizing the importance of non-biomedical skills such as communication skills, acknowledging that human clientele are likely to view their pets as family members, and discussing veterinarian personal well-being. Each of these trends has clear application for intervention by MFTs. A discussion of how MFTs may be uniquely positioned to assist veterinary medicine is presented. An example of collaboration between MFT and veterinary medicine at Kansas State University is highlighted. Recommendations are made for development of effective educational relationships and possible private sector collaborations.