The Time Squeeze: Parental Statuses and Feelings About Time With Children

Policy makers, parents, and the public are concerned with perceived declines in parents’ time with children. Data from two national surveys (N = 1,159 and N = 821) used in this study show that nearly half of parents report feeling too little time with children. Work hours are strongly related to these feelings, even controlling for time spent with children, and explain why fathers more than mothers feel time strain. For fathers, those whose youngest child is an adolescent feel more strain than similarly situated mothers. Controlling for work hours, single parents are not more likely than married parents to feel that they spend insufficient time with children.     

Barriers to Integration in the Mississippi Delta: Could Charter Schools Be the New Vehicle for Desegregation?

This study explored the barriers to educational integration in the rural Mississippi Delta region. In Delta County , ¹ students have generally been divided between a black public school and an all white private academy. An earlier study ( Eckes, 2005 ) revealed that white parents in Delta County chose not to send their students to the traditional public school because they perceived greater discipline problems, less challenging academics, and fewer extracurricular opportunities ("the barriers"). The black parents, however, were choosing not to send their children to the private academy because it did not, in fact, offer greater educational opportunity. Black parents contended that the three articulated barriers were actually euphemisms for racism. In this current case study, the researcher sought to learn whether a new high-performing charter school, where the three barriers were not present, would encourage racial integration in Delta County. Specifically, the new public charter school offered parents a third option in addition to the private academy and public school. Through interviews and observations, the current case study explored whether the barriers articulated by white parents in the earlier study were simply rhetoric. The current study found that white parents were still not choosing the charter school, even though no barriers were present.     

Ticking Boxes and Changing the Social World: Data Collection and the New UK General Practice Contract

The new General Medical Services contract was introduced into general practice in the UK in 2004, and it links pay to performance far more than in the past. As a result, accurate data collection about patients and the care that they receive is now not only important for good patient care but also to prove that targets are being met. The use of electronic records and information technology has thus become much more sophisticated. This article reports the results from an ethnographic study of the early stages of the new contract in two general practices. As expected, electronic data collection had increased in importance in both practices, with consequences both for clinician–patient interactions and for the structures and processes in the practices, as uniform data collection instruments are put in place that privilege ‘hard’ biomedical data that can be easily coded above ‘softer’, more patient-centred information. Roles and responsibilities had been changed to reflect the needs of the new systems, and new software applications allowed increased surveillance of both doctors’ and nurses’ performance; both of these had an impact on patterns of authority in our study practices. Furthermore, the structural changes that were found acted to embed the new ways of working, ensuring their reproduction in the future. In spite of these effects, we found little opposition to or critical reflection on the changes, and the doctors in our study continued to view their improved computer systems as neutral recording devices. The implication of these findings is discussed.     

Gender differences in expected compensation for earnings uncertainty and skewness in business and education

Using data measuring the labor market expectations of college seniors and juniors, who major in business and education, this paper examines gender differences in expected compensation for earnings uncertainty and skewness. Ordinary least squares regressions indicate gender differences in uncertainty and skewness in business. Estimates of expected beginning salaries indicate higher uncertainty and skewness coefficients for women compared to men. This could reflect a greater degree of risk aversion by women in business or their plans to engage in part-time work shortly after graduation. Later salary estimates indicate lower uncertainty and skewness coefficients for women. Student error in estimating these salaries may be the cause of these results. They may also reflect the plans of women in business to devote more time to the labor market later in their careers.     

Challenging the Rhetoric of Choice in Maternal Labour‐Force Participation: Preferred Versus Contracted Work Hours

The notion of choice in maternal labour‐force participation (LFP) is a contentious one, with assertions that LFP is a direct result of either personal inclinations, such as employment commitment or external factors, such as historically available opportunities. This article suggests an alternative framework for understanding and testing choice in LFP using preferred versus contracted work hours. It explores these constructs quantitatively in a group of working mothers (N = 275) with dependent children and investigates qualitatively the underlying reasons for discrepant preferred versus contracted work hours in a sub‐sample of these women with under‐school‐aged children (N = 20). The results show that nearly two‐thirds of women working full time would prefer to work part time and the major reasons for not acting on their preferences is because of the nature of the job and the lack of career opportunities available for part‐time employees.     

Direct Inference, Probability, and a Conceptual Gulf in Risk Communication

Differences in the conceptual frameworks of scientists and nonscientists may create barriers to risk communication. This article examines two such conceptual problems. First, the logic of "direct inference" from group statistics to probabilities about specific individuals suggests that individuals might be acting rationally in refusing to apply to themselves the conclusions of regulatory risk assessments. Second, while regulators and risk assessment scientists often use an "objectivist" or "relative frequency" interpretation of probability statements, members of the public are more likely to adopt a "subjectivist" or "degree of confidence" interpretation when estimating their personal risks, and either misunderstand or significantly discount the relevance of risk assessment conclusions. If these analyses of inference and probability are correct, there may be a conceptual gulf at the center of risk communication that cannot be bridged by additional data about the magnitude of group risk. Suggestions are made for empirical studies that might help regulators deal with this conceptual gulf.     

The impact of gender on gambling attitudes and behavior

Researchers have often attributed the consistent relation of gender and gambling behavior to gender role socialization. If they are correct, gender should affect different sets of gambling attitudes in a manner consistent with at least three aspects of gender role socialization: a double standard of morality, a guardian of the hearth role for women, and a dualism of orientations. A survey measuring gambling attitudes and behavior was sent to a sample of residents in North Dakota after legalization of several games of chance (e.g., blackjack). Gender affects behavior but only some of the specified attitudes. These mixed results may reflect changes in gender role socialization and the increasing legalization of gambling.