A THEORETICAL INVESTIGATION OF PUBLIC ATTITUDES TOWARD SEX EDUCATION

Rates of teen pregnancy in the United States are significantly higher than those in most other industrialized nations. This is troubling in light of the consequences to teen mothers, their children, and society. Some suggest that teen pregnancies can be decreased by providing sex education in the public school system, while others believe that sex education is inappropriate for public school. Little research exists, however, on predictors of attitudes toward sex education, and most existing research is dated and lacks a theoretical framework. Guided by the seminal work of Ira L. Reiss, we examine the impact of labor shortages, religiosity, militarism, gender egalitarianism, regulation of sexuality, and a naturalistic view of sexuality on attitudes toward sex education. Results suggest that Hispanics, those with high levels of religiosity, and those who supported regulation of sexuality were significantly less likely to support sex education in public schools. Implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.     

Research and Identity: Role-efficacy,Benchmarking, and the Identity Construction Process

Abstract

In the spring of 2016, university students with little to no research experience volunteered to assist with surveying for a larger project on college success. Volunteers discussed their field experiences through written statements and semistructured interviews. Eighty log sheets and 14 in-depth interviews serve as the qualitative data for this study. We followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006) Thematic Analysis approach and reviewed the log sheets for key themes. Based on the initial analysis, semistructured standpoint interviews with student volunteers explored the development of a nascent research-based identity. Findings suggest that students’ research-based identity construction was a process that moved from low role-efficacy to emerging role-efficacy through the use of benchmarking and justification strategies that helped overcome negative emotions surrounding an initial sense of low role-efficacy with survey research tasks. We discuss how identity construction unfolded over time and suggest implications for this research.     

Aboriginal Women's Perceptions and Experiences of a Family Violence Transitional Accommodation Service

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative study of Aboriginal women's perceptions and experiences of a transitional housing program in South Australia that was established to assist long-term homelessness and family violence. The aim of the study was to explore the experiences and service outcomes for Aboriginal women and their children and to identify both facilitators and barriers to the effective operation of the program. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 13 Aboriginal women and thematic analysis was used to report their collective stories. The women's stories showed individualised, flexible, and open-ended support as well as practical outcomes of stable, safe housing for themselves and their children were particularly valued. The women reported that these features of the program augmented feelings of strengthened confidence and self-efficacy. The authors argue the domestic and family violence sector has the opportunity to learn from the perceptions and experiences of Aboriginal women, particularly allowing time and commitment to working long-term with families.     

Predictors of positive development in first-year college students

ABSTRACT

Objective: Emerging adulthood is an important phase in the transition to adulthood. Emerging adults experience minimal social control and incomplete development of executive functioning leaving this age-group at risk for misusing this newfound independence. Hence, it is important to understand pathways to support positive development (PD) outcomes. In this study, we examined the relationship between participation in civically engaged learning and PD among first-year college students. Participants: First-year college students (N = 225) were surveyed during the 2012–2013 academic year. Methods: Students were surveyed on measures of PD and engaged learning prior to the beginning (initial survey) and at the end of the first year (final survey) of their undergraduate education. Stepwise linear regression was used to examine the influence of engaged learning on PD outcomes. Results: Engaged learning during the academic year predicted flourishing and students' civic frequency. Also, faith-affiliation and parents' civic frequency contributed to students' civic frequency. Conclusions: Our interpretation of the findings suggests that engaged learning and family role modeling may promote PD among first-year undergraduate students.     

WOUND,SURFACE, SKIN

The essay draws on four recent artworks which have been highly controversial or visible in South Africa since 2010, in order to explore concepts of wounding and political autopsy on the one hand, and of skin surface on the other. The discussion aims to elaborate on and render increasingly complex both the wounds that won't heal, and which erupt into public life through responses to artworks, and the healing over of a wound along a skin surface which artists are exploring in its multiple senses of a cover, a form of cladding, and as a membrane of feeling. Each of the artworks imply a complex relationship between the domains of public and private, and invoke the intimate, or sites of vulnerability, including the dead body, as a means of reimagining the social. They draw on histories of violence to re-compose the aesthetic project: histories of violence, that is, are resisted, forced open, surrendered to, and generative of unforeseen subjectivities.     

Labour,Legality and shifts in the Public/Private divide

This article discusses the changing role that work performed in private homes has played, and continues to play, in migration law in the Netherlands and at the EU level. It explores to what degree work performed in the home is defined as (exploitative) contractual labour or as inherent to family life, and what this means for claims to residence rights as a precursor to citizenship. It does this by reviewing case law of the European Court of Justice (CJEU) and of the European Court of Human Rights (EctHR) against the background of the Dutch case. It reveals tension between how citizenship is constructed and reproduced at the national level and how it is constructed and reproduced at the EU level. Following Adam McKeown, this article concludes that different perspectives on (reproductive) labour as a qualification for citizenship may reflect different perspectives on (reproductive) labour and the quality of citizenship.

Policy Implications

• Third Country Nationals must be allowed to reside in the EU with their EU children, to ensure the latter's effective enjoyment of fundamental rights.
• Policies to combat trafficking of domestic workers must respect family life.
• Family migration policies must allow individual family members enough scope to resist exploitation within families.
• Policies concerning labour protection, social protection and migration should no longer take the breadwinner‐citizen as point of departure, but the current reality of flexible labour relations in which the distinctions between home and work, and between employment and self‐employment, are no longer sharply defined.

     

Sex,lies, and videos in rural china: A qualitative study of women's sexual debut and risky sexual behavior

We studied the sexual behaviors of young, unmarried women living in rural China with a special focus on sexual debut, sexual risk‐taking behaviors, and reproductive health consequences. The analysis was based on 40 in‐depth interviews with young women who had undergone induced abortion, as well as information from focus group discussions. Study participants identified pornographic videos, parents’ tacit approval, and even encouragement as factors instigating their sexual debut. Reasons for unprotected intercourse included spontaneous sexual activity, misconceptions about fertility and the effective use of contraceptives, and the lack of negotiation skills. The results indicate the importance of making reproductive health education more accessible to rural populations in China, a group usually considered to be more traditional and less likely to engage in premarital sex.     

Virginity Lost,Satisfaction Gained? Physiological and Psychological Sexual Satisfaction at Heterosexual Debut

Despite the literature's focus on (hetero)sexual initiation, little is known about the degree to which young people are satisfied by their first vaginal intercourse experience, let alone the factors that predict satisfaction. This study analyzed data from a cross-sectional survey of 1,986 non-Hispanic White and Black 18- to 25-year-old respondents from four university campuses. Respondents were asked to rate the degree to which their first vaginal intercourse was physiologically and psychologically satisfying. Both Black and White women were significantly less likely than Black and White men to experience considerable or extreme satisfaction at first vaginal intercourse, particularly physiological satisfaction. Among all four gender–race groups, being in a committed relationship with one's sexual partner greatly increased psychological satisfaction, particularly among women. Experiencing less guilt at first sexual intercourse was also strongly associated with psychological satisfaction for women. Developing sexual relationships with partners they care for and trust will foster satisfaction among young people at first vaginal intercourse. These findings highlight strong gender asymmetry in affective sexual experience.     

The sexually experienced woman: Multiple sex partners and sexual satisfaction

It has been suggested that women who have had more than one sex partner differ from those who have had only one, both in their background and in their current functioning (in the forms of attitudes, partner interaction, sexual satisfaction, desired changes in their sex life, and other behaviors). To explore these issues, we distributed a questionnaire to a sample of 868 nurses located in 15 states. For most variables, there were no significant differences among those with only one lifetime partner, those with few (2–5) partners, and those with many (6 or more) partners. Those with more partners did report having intercourse earlier, reaching orgasm earlier, and pretending to reach orgasm more often. Those with many partners indicated their partners more often delayed orgasm until after their own first orgasm. They also expressed more concern about a lack of interest in and a lack of adequate foreplay by their partners. Those women with a few partners expressed the least psychological sexual satisfaction (79%).     

Independence for those without freedom: slavery and manumission in Mérida,Venezuela, 1810–1854

This article examines slavery and manumission in the state of Mérida in western Venezuela from the wars of independence (1810–1821) until abolition in 1854. It argues that slavery was preserved during the insurgency and reinstituted after independence through the continuation of Iberian slave law and the implementation of republican manumission legislation, which served to prolong slavery rather than hasten its demise. Slaves also used the corporate legal rights of colonial law to seek manumission and protection from abuse after 1821. Iberian legislation, though, was reinterpreted within the ideological and institutional framework of the liberal nation-state. Thus, competing legal frameworks and political interests, the growing influence of liberal doctrine and the selective and often arbitrary application of property, slave and manumission laws constituted important aspects of struggles over slavery and manumission in the early republican era.