Income Allocation in Marital and Cohabiting Unions: The Case of Mainland Puerto Ricans

The rise of cohabitation and the growing share of births to cohabiting couples have led to speculation that the boundary between marriage and cohabitation is blurring. We examine this issue with an analysis of the financial arrangements of fathers of mainland Puerto Rican children. The analysis shows that married fathers are more likely than cohabiting fathers to pool their income, but this difference does not result from socioeconomic and demographic factors that foster uncertainty. The analysis also demonstrates that income allocation methods are generally stable over time after differences in union dissolution by allocation method are considered. The discussion emphasizes the need for research on the ways that financial ties reflect and reinforce the bonds between partners.     

Beyond Parental Status: Psychological Well‐Being in Middle and Old Age

Surveys show little evidence of psychosocial disadvantage among childless middle‐aged and older adults, but less is known about the diverse experiences that influence subjective well‐being among parents and childless adults. In this article, the author uses the National Survey of Families and Households to test a parental‐status typology on the basis of attitudes among childless adults and parent‐child relationship quality and the connection of these factors with loneliness and depression. Poorer parent‐child relationships are linked to worse outcomes for both mothers and fathers, net of other factors. For childless adults, negative attitudes about childlessness are associated with greater distress for women than for men.     

Mexican Seasonal Migration to Canada and Development: A Community-based Comparison

The article explores development and migration. Based on a comparison of investment‐related behaviour of participants of the Canadian Mexican Seasonal Workers Programme from eleven Mexican villages, the article explores the impact of the nature of the migrants' community of origin on development. Contrary to the findings reported by the “new economics of labour migration” theorists, it was found that migrants from the least endowed communities, not from the best endowed communities, are likely to invest in agricultural land. This pattern is related to variable prices of land and the composition of the participants of the Canadian guest worker programme, most of whom are poor. The article draws attention to the importance of considering composition of migrant workers in an analysis of the impact of migration on community development. Development is analysed in the article from both the “growth” and the “quality of living” perspectives and it is found that regardless of the perspective used, the nature of the community does not affect the impact of migration on development.     

CRITICAL EXPLORATIONS OF GENDER AND THE CARIBBEAN: TAKING IT INTO THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

ABSTRACT

In the years after the Greek Junta, activists who had been involved in anti-dictatorship movements abroad returned as the country’s new pool of left-leaning, well-educated political actors. Drawing on interviews with former activists and borrowing from recent developments in cultural sociology, I analyse these returns as political projects fraught with moral conundrums. I argue that the contemporary crisis structure accounts of returns by placing speakers within what Boltanski and Thévenot call a ‘situation subject to the imperative of justification’. I make two arguments regarding the critiques and valuations used in accounts: First, the idealized political subject put forward by former activists promotes withdrawal over participation and silence over speech. Second, failure is valorized as a principled mode of self-exoneration. This article further demonstrates the importance of theorizing return migration within an ethnographic treatment of the present.     

Racial and Ethnic Determinants of Interracial and Ethnic Trust

The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to discern which individual factors are associated with interracial/ethnic trust among a national probability sample of African Americans, Latinos, and non-Hispanic whites. Using national data from the 2000 Community Benchmark Survey, the multiple regression results indicate that, even after controlling for education and income, African Americans and Latinos reported significantly lower levels of interracial/ethnic trust than did non-Hispanic whites. Additionally, separate regression equations indicate that predictors associated with interracial/ethnic trust varied by racial and ethnic group. Implications and future research are discussed.     

Majority Rules? The Effects of School Ethnic Composition on Substance Use by Mexican Heritage Adolescents

This article examines key aspects of the school environment - its composition by ethnicity and acculturation - as important social contexts for understanding Mexican immigrant and Mexican American adolescents' drug use norms and behaviors. Results are presented based on surveys completed by Mexican-background students from 35 Phoenix. Arizona middle schools, whose enrollment ranged from a numerical minority to an overwhelming majority. Multivariate mixed models tested for the influence of school ethnic composition measures on substance use outcomes, while accounting for individual level predictors and for the nesting of data at the school level. The proportional representation of Latinos in the school was not a factor in an individual's drug use norms or drug use for the sample overall. Once students were broken down by acculturation status, however, ethnic composition had an effect. Less acculturated Mexican heritage students in schools with higher proportions of Latino students reported less substance use and less adherence to pro-drug norms. Further investigation using other measures of ethnic composition suggested that these effects were attributable to the larger presence of less acculturated Latinos in the school rather than more acculturated Latino students. These school-level effects support the individual-level results indicating that less acculturated Mexican American students face less daunting substance use risks. The results suggest that ethnic group size, but not necessarily numerical predominance, matters and that within-group differences influence the effect of a particular ethnic group's presence in the school. In other words, the majority does not always rule. These findings are interpreted using the concepts of segmented assimilation and school level social capital.     

He Said,She Said: Gender Differences in Mother – Adolescent Conversations about Sexuality

This study examined gender differences in self‐reported and observed conversations about sexual issues. Fifty mother –adolescent dyads reported on their conversations about sexual issues and participated in videotaped conversations about dating and sexuality in a laboratory setting. Gender differences (more mother – daughter than mother –son) were found in the extent of sexual communication based on adolescents’ reports, but no gender differences were found based on mothers’ reports, or on observations of conversations. Aspects of laboratory interactions, however, did distinguish mother– daughter and mother – son dyads, and related to self‐report measures. Girls’ reported sexuality communication frequency related to behavior in the laboratory setting. During mother – son conversations, one person usually took on the role of questioner, whereas the other did not. In contrast, there was evidence for mutuality of positive emotions for mother – daughter dyads, but not for mother – son dyads.     

Maternal input and infants’ response to infant‐directed speech

Caregivers typically use an exaggerated speech register known as infant‐directed speech (IDS) in communication with infants. Infants prefer IDS over adult‐directed speech (ADS) and IDS is functionally relevant in infant‐directed communication. We examined interactions among maternal IDS quality, infants’ preference for IDS over ADS, and the functional relevance of IDS at 6 and 13 months. While 6‐month‐olds showed a preference for IDS over ADS, 13‐month‐olds did not. Differences in gaze following behavior triggered by speech register (IDS vs. ADS) were found in both age groups. The degree of infants’ preference for IDS (relative to ADS) was linked to the quality of maternal IDS infants were exposed to. No such relationship was found between gaze following behavior and maternal IDS quality and infants’ IDS preference. The results speak to a dynamic interaction between infants’ preference for different kinds of social signals and the social cues available to them.     

A Comparative Exposure Assessment of Campylobacter in Ontario,Canada

To inform source attribution efforts, a comparative exposure assessment was developed to estimate the relative exposure to Campylobacter, the leading bacterial gastrointestinal disease in Canada, for 13 different transmission routes within Ontario, Canada, during the summer. Exposure was quantified with stochastic models at the population level, which incorporated measures of frequency, quantity ingested, prevalence, and concentration, using data from FoodNet Canada surveillance, the peer‐reviewed and gray literature, other Ontario data, and data that were specifically collected for this study. Models were run with @Risk software using Monte Carlo simulations. The mean number of cells of Campylobacter ingested per Ontarian per day during the summer, ranked from highest to lowest is as follows: household pets, chicken, living on a farm, raw milk, visiting a farm, recreational water, beef, drinking water, pork, vegetables, seafood, petting zoos, and fruits. The study results identify knowledge gaps for some transmission routes, and indicate that some transmission routes for Campylobacter are underestimated in the current literature, such as household pets and raw milk. Many data gaps were identified for future data collection consideration, especially for the concentration of Campylobacter in all transmission routes.     

Perceptions of “Impingement” and Marital Satisfaction Among Wives of Retired Husbands

ABSTRACT

Initial pilot interviews with women whose husbands were in the first year of retirement revealed that problems of “impingement”—perceptions of husbands as intruders into their worlds-as-lived—were cited, in response to open-ended items, as the most difficult aspect of husbands' retirement. An impingement index, consisting of items constructed from those responses, was administered to the original panel of 83 women whose husbands were now in the fourth year of retirement, and to a new panel of 61 women whose husbands had been retired for one year. Paired T-tests revealed one significant difference in perceptions of impingement between the two groups of wives, and not in the expected direction. Indeed, wives in year 4 were more often bothered by some impingement conditions than wives in year 1, and these were significantly related to self-assessments of marital satisfaction. Results have implications for “adjustment” to life transitions, including situations that may inhibit initiation of adaptive responses, degree of investment in social roles, and issues of expectation.