A Global Overview of Male Escort Websites

This article details a preliminary dataset of global male escort sites to give insight into the scale of the online market. We conducted a content analysis of 499 Web sites and also measured traffic to these sites. Our analysis examined the structural characteristics of escort services, geographical and regulatory contexts, and resilience of such services. Results suggest that most sites are independent and not affiliated to escort agencies, and the majority cater to male escorts soliciting male clients, with a number of sites for female clientele and couples. These Web sites are dispersed globally, with Asian, European, and South American countries the major hubs in the market and a small number of large multinational sites based in the United States and Europe figuring as a major presence in markets. Although still subject to high levels of regulation in many parts of the world, the data suggest that male escorting is becoming more visible in diverse cultural contexts as measured by the number of Web sites appearing in public spaces.     

The challenges presented by parental mental illness and the potential of a whole‐family intervention to improve outcomes for families

Parental mental illness (PMI) can negatively affect the lives of all family members, and there is acknowledged need to work with family and social contexts to promote recovery. However, programmes undertaking such work remain rare and knowledge concerning mechanisms through which PMI impacts families and through which recovery might be achieved is underdeveloped. This paper outlines a new family intervention programme and presents evidence from focus groups with 16 professionals into their experiences of work with families with PMI. Evidence suggests that interactional effects of PMI, family communication and family relationships are key to understanding its impacts, but professionals are liable to struggle to engage with these due to concerns over stigma, lack of skills and low confidence. Positive impacts on practice were achieved through raising awareness of the whole‐family context in relation to PMI, building confidence to raise and engage with PMI and the provision of structured tools for use with families. Positive impacts on the lives of family members were then achieved by professionals in relation to symptoms for the ill parent, the burden on children and overall family well‐being, strongly mediated through improved family communication, understanding and relationships. Implications for policy and practice are considered.     

Common genetic effects on risk-taking preferences and choices

Although prior research has shown that risk-taking preferences and choices are correlated across many domains, there is a dearth of research investigating whether these correlations are primarily the result of genetic or environmental factors. We examine the extent to which common genetic factors account for the association between general risk-taking preferences and domain-specific risk-taking preferences, and between general risk-taking preferences and risk taking choices in financial investments, stock market participation and business formation. Using data from 1898 monozygotic (MZ) and 1344 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins, we find that general risk-taking shares a common genetic component with domain-specific risk-taking preferences and risk-taking choices.

     

Reinvigorating Research on Gender in the Workplace Using a Positive Work and Organizations Perspective*

Gender inequality is a widespread organizational challenge, however, research on gender in the workplace suffers from stagnation in mainstream management research. A positive work and organizations perspective has the capacity to augment problem‐focused gender research with new approaches to boosting gender equity. Yet, contributions that utilize such a perspective are sparsely spread across nearly two decades’ time and dozens of journals with differing disciplinary foci. This paper aims to reinvigorate gender research in management research by consolidating insights that have emerged through the application of a positive perspective. Therefore, we systematically review articles published in 21 management and psychological journals between 2001 and 2016. Four main themes emerged as drivers of gender research from a positive perspective: performance, social integration, well‐being, and justice/moral matters. The contributions within these themes highlight pathways to organizational flourishing through positive diversity and inclusion behaviors and practices. Thus, this paper provides a conceptual map for navigating and planning further research.     

Class dismissed? Student opposition in Ontario

Dans cette communication sur les origines de classe et diverses formes de résistance chez les élèves des écoles secondaires en Ontario, l'auteur met en doute la tendance chez de nombreux chercheurs à généraliser certaines méthodes qui les font conclure que l'origine de classe est un des principaux facteurs déterminants de la participation aux sous-cultures 'anti-école'. Alors que ces chercheurs donnent à entendre que les taux de participation sont proportionnels aux différences entre classes sur le plan de la réussite scolaire, l'auteur applique diverses mesures de la résistance à un important échantillon d'éleves sans trouver de rapport de proportionnalité entre les résultats scolaires et la resistance selon la classe sociale. La presentation des données s'accompagne d'une analyse des facteurs structured et culturels qui pourraient contribuer à obscurcir les liens entre les origines de classe et la résistance chez les éliéves ontariens.     

Marital Therapy, Retreats, and Books: The Who, What, When, and Why of Relationship Help-Seeking

When doubts creep in and marriages begin to falter, where do couples turn for assistance? In a longitudinal study of 213 couples over the first 5 years of marriage, results indicated relationship help‐seeking was relatively common, with 36% of couples seeking some form of outside help during this period. Individual and relationship difficulties predicted increased use of relationship books and marital therapy in the following year; therefore, these behaviors appear to be important outlets for relationship assistance. In contrast, attending marriage retreats/workshops was related only to demographic variables. Results of the present study suggest that the most common types of relationship help‐seeking by community couples are understudied and likely underutilized in the dissemination of empirically based marital interventions.     

Abstract Rule Learning for Visual Sequences in 8‐ and 11‐Month‐Olds

The experiments reported here investigated the development of a fundamental component of cognition: to recognize and generalize abstract relations. Infants were presented with simple rule‐governed patterned sequences of visual shapes (ABB, AAB, and ABA) that could be discriminated from differences in the position of the repeated element (late, early, or nonadjacent, respectively). Eight‐month‐olds were found to distinguish patterns on the basis of the repetition, but appeared insensitive to its position in the sequence; 11‐month‐olds distinguished patterns over the position of the repetition, but appeared insensitive to the nonadjacent repetition. These results suggest that abstract pattern detection may develop incrementally in a process of constructing complex relations from more primitive components.     

Appalachia and the Construction of Whiteness in the United States

The field of critical whiteness studies has made significant progress in the deconstruction of ideologies of white supremacy. In part, this has been accomplished by analyzing whiteness as a racial identity. Another step in this deconstruction has been a focus on groups of marginalized whites, 'white trash' or 'hillbillies'. Since the mid-19th Century, Appalachia has been considered the paradigmatic place for these marginalized whites in the United States. Hillbillies are simultaneously stigmatized and idealized in the national culture. Accounting for both the negative and positive representations makes visible how marginalized white identity is a space where white hegemony is both challenged and reaffirmed.     

Conditional Fatherhood: Identity Theory and Parental Investment Theory as Alternative Sources of Explanation of Fathering

Two alternative theoretical models of parenting, identity theory and parental investment theory, are investigated as sources of explanation of men's fathering attitudes and behaviors. Four dimensions of fathering are explored: responsivity, harshness, behavioral engagement, and affective involvement. Concepts from identity theory operationalized as predictors include father role salience, role satisfaction, and reflected appraisals. From parental investment theory, concepts included investment maximization, contingent commitment, and paternity certitude. Using telephone survey data drawn from a community‐based probability sample of 208 fathers, each of the four individual indicators of fathering and a composite fathering measure were regressed against the theoretical predictors in hierarchical regression analyses. Both theoretical models were significant, with identity theory predictors accounting for a greater proportion of variance than the parental investment theory predictors. This study underlines the importance of social psychological variables to understanding variations in men's commitments to children.     

Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work

This article reviews more than 200 scholarly articles and books on household labor published between 1989 and 1999. As a maturing area of study, this body of research has been concerned with understanding and documenting how housework is embedded in complex and shifting social processes relating to the well‐being of families, the construction of gender, and the reproduction of society. Major theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to the study of household labor are summarized, and suggestions for further research are offered. In summary, women have reduced and men have increased slightly their hourly contributions to housework. Although men's relative contributions have increased, women still do at least twice as much routine housework as men. Consistent predictors of sharing include both women's and men's employment, earnings, gender ideology, and life‐course issues. More balanced divisions of housework are associated with women perceiving fairness, experiencing less depression, and enjoying higher marital satisfaction.