Prenatal risk and physical aggression during the first years of life: The gender‐specific role of inhibitory control

Prenatal risk and a lack of inhibitory control have consistently been related to the development of physical aggression in older children. This study examined whether inhibitory control mediated the relation between prenatal risk and aggression in infants and toddlers. The role of gender in this mediation model was also examined. The sample consisted of 161 mother–child dyads (83 boys). A prenatal cumulative risk score was created from a number of well‐established risk factors including maternal psychopathology, substance use, and social and socioeconomic disadvantages. At 12 months, children performed an inhibitory control task. Physical aggression was assessed through maternal reports at 12 and 20 months of age. Results showed that higher prenatal risk was associated with more physical aggression. Inhibitory control mediated this association at both 12 and 20 months: higher prenatal risk was related to lower inhibitory control, which in turn led to higher aggression. At 20 months, gender moderated the mediation effect: the mediating role of inhibitory control was only found for girls. These results suggest that even before 2 years of age, inhibitory control is an important construct involved in the relation between prenatal risk and physical aggression.     

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Trina Boukin Nolen reviews Dancing with Digital Natives, Stephanie Rosenblatt reviews The Embedded Librarian and Sarah D. Tusa reviews Collection Development in the Digital Age.     

A Reluctance to be Defined 'Disabled'. How Can the Social Model of Disability Enhance Understanding of Anorexia?

Most people would not ordinarily regard anorexia as a disability, exposing the narrow social understanding of the latter term, although for certain bureaucratic purposes, like claiming Disability Living Allowance, anorexia is demarcated thus. The oppression faced by people labelled 'anorexic' mirrors that which theorists suggest disadvantages disabled people, a similarity examined below using the social model of disability as a tool of enquiry. In addition, the reasons against and for defining anorexia as a disability, and arguments for incorporating the experiences of people labelled 'anorexic' into the Disability Movement will be discussed. This paper is based on the comments of nine interviewees, medically or self-defined as 'anorexic', whose words clarify and make theoretical discussion more engaging. It is anticipated that exploring anorexia in a new light will improve understanding of the condition and will also be beneficial to Disability Studies.     

Welfare-domination under preference-replacement: A survey and open questions

The objective of this paper is to describe various applications of a requirement of solidarity pertaining to situations in which the preferences of some of the agents may change. It says that the welfares of all agents whose preferences are fixed should be affected in the same direction: they should all weakly gain, or they should all weakly lose. We show how this condition, which we name “welfare-domination under preference-replacement”, can help in evaluating allocation rules. We discuss it in several contexts: private good allocation in classical economies, public good decision, binary choice with quasi-linear preferences, economies with indivisible goods, economies with single-peaked preferences, both in the private good case and in the public good case, and economies with time. For some of these models the implications of the property are well understood. For others, we state a number of open problems. Received: 2 January 1997/Accepted: 26 February 1998     

Perceived Racial Discrimination and Self-Esteem in African American Youth: Racial Socialization as a Protective Factor

Racial socialization was examined as a protective factor that might buffer African American youth from the negative effects of perceived racial discrimination. Two types of racial socialization were examined: messages about race pride and preparation for bias. One hundred twenty-eight eighth-grade African American students participated in the study. As anticipated, both types of socialization moderated the relationship between discrimination and self-esteem. The negative relationship between perceived discrimination and self-esteem was mitigated for youth who reported more messages about race pride and a moderate amount of preparation for bias from their parents. In contrast, low race pride socialization and both high and low preparation for bias were associated with a negative relationship between perceived discrimination and self-esteem.     

The Politics of Reproductive Health in Peru: Gender and Social Policy in the Global South

This article analyzes the politics of reproductive health policy-makingin Peru in the context of healthcare reform initiatives undertakensince the early 1990s. In Latin America, women's body politicsare emerging within a complex architecture of institutionalizedsocial stratification and religious lobbies. The case of Peruis approached from a gendered, specifically South-World analysis,revealing the deep embedding of a vast constellation of reproductivehealthcare issues within the nascent social welfare policy-makingprocess. Through limited national public health insurance schemes,a new social policy model, based on a targeted poverty-reductionparadigm, is now partially addressing the reproductive healthneeds of the majority of Peruvian women. Policy implementation,however, is highly contested, fragile, and has been subjectto setbacks and deadly abuses. The article shows that, in addressingdeveloping countries such as Peru, the role of internationalactors and the impact of unconsolidated democratic institutionsare two key variables in the comparative analysis of socialpolicy regime formation.