Youth and violence: Phenomena and international data

The topic of youth, violence, and disintegration needs addressing because young women and men are the world's greatest capital. They have the energy, talent, and creativity for building a future. But this group also suffers grave vulnerabilities. The time of adolescence includes important and difficult periods of life (for example, becoming more independent from the family, finding an adequate position in society, and starting a family of one's own). All of these points are strongly correlated with social integration, employment, and a place in the labor market--important factors in this context.This article gives an overview of the international development and the actual situation of socially harmful behavior among youths--both fatal violence (homicide) and nonfatal violence (such as bullying, fighting, and carrying weapons). The author shows that different kinds of youth violence represent social problems in every society. The data show that youths are not only perpetrators but also the group with the highest risk of becoming victims of violence. Furthermore, the data from around the world show that their vulnerability is not limited to this sphere. It arises also from their social conditions, especially their high risk of being disintegrated from the labor market. The parallels in the data underline the significance of a functioning institutional structure without positing a deterministic relationship between the risk of economic disintegration and violent behavior.     

‘Being able to bear a child’: Insights from Zimbabwean women in Melbourne

Problem

In non-Western societies, childlessness carries numerous social consequences and has a significant impact on the gender identity and well-being of the women.

Factors affecting early family formation: A path model

The age at which women initiate family formation has important social and economic implications. To explore factors that determine age at initiation of childbearing, a non-recursive path model was estimated using data for young women in the National Longitudinal Survey. Results suggest that the young woman's family of orientation has important effects on the age at which she begins family building, but that the process is not simple or direct. Age at first marriage, educational attainment, and age at family formation are strongly interdependent; however, the process seems to vary by race.Kristin A. Moore and Sandra L. Hofferth are affiliated with the Urban Institute, 2100 M. Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. Requests for reprints should be directed to Kristin Moore.     

Rural poverty and ecological problems: Results of a new type of baseline study

This baseline study used data from a informant survey of 76 rural communities in Central Tunisia to construct, first, measures of rural poverty and ecological deterioration and, second, indices of the major institutional complexes in the region. Using factor analysis, the study identified five institutional dimensions: services, religious institutions, mechanized agriculture, irrigated agriculture and sedentary herding. These dimensions were then used as independent variables in a regression analysis of the two social indicators with the results that sedentary herding and religious institutions (negative) predict ecological problems, and the same two dimensions, with the addition of services (negative) predict poor housing. Compared to household survey baselines, this one is less expensive, simpler to analyze and provides an analytic picture of the institutional structure, in relation to key indicators, of a region.     

Being Yoruba in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro

Through the experiences of two West Africans shipped to Bahia as slaves, probably in the 1840s, then sold south to Rio de Janeiro where they met, became lovers, bought their freedom, married, and divorced, I comment on an ongoing debate over the refashioning or transfer of African ethnic identities in American slave societies. The sources in this Brazilian case suggest that previous identities were not suddenly erased, but rather, new layers of understanding and ways of responding were added. Whatever the dynamic of cultural formation, it was memory that crucially bridged the distance between the past they carried with them and the present into which they were thrust; and so it becomes illuminating to reconstruct the plausibly remembered African pasts on which this couple drew to make sense of an unfamiliar Brazilian present.     

Infants’ Visual Attention to Baby DVDs as a Function of Program Pacing

This study examined the effects of program pacing, defined as the rate of scene and character change per minute, on infants’ visual attention to video presentations. Seventy‐two infants (twenty‐four 6‐month‐olds, twenty‐four 9‐month‐olds, twenty‐four 12‐month‐olds) were exposed to one of two sets of high‐ and low‐paced commercial infant DVDs. Each DVD was approximately 5‐min long, and the order the DVDs were viewed was counterbalanced for pace. Attention was higher during rapidly than slowly paced DVDs, particularly for the 6‐ and 9‐month‐old infants. These results support previous research documenting that attention is initially controlled by exogenous qualities (e.g., rapid pace), but with development and experience becomes more influenced by endogenous factors.     

Brief report: the relationship between multiple forms of oppression and subjective health among Black lesbian and bisexual women

This study was designed to explore the relationships between multiple forms of oppression and subjective physical health among a community sample of 85 Black lesbian and bisexual women. Self-report surveys assessing health behaviors, physical and mental health status, and experiences with discrimination were administered during a weekend retreat of a community-based organization serving this population. Structural equation modeling showed there were significant, but different, relationships between subjective health and two types of oppression, heterosexism and weight-based discrimination. Further research on the independent and intersectional effects of multiple forms of oppression on health is needed.