High-Risk Sexual Behavior in Postmenopausal Women

Individuals who participate in sexual behavior indeed expose themselves to multiple risks, including social, emotional, and physical risks. Outcomes associated with risk behavior can have detrimental consequences on one’s interpersonal relationships, self-esteem, and overall health and well-being. This study examined how four factors (relational, decision-making, sexual variables, and safety) operate in a postmenopausal women’s decision to engage in risky sexual behavior. Data were collected online from 44 women, ranging in age from 34 to 68. Results indicate this model explains 62.6% of the variance in risky decision-making for postmenopausal women. Implications and directions for future research are addressed.     

Prisons as LULUs: Understanding the Parallels between Prison Proliferation and Environmental Injustices

Criminologists who examine prison siting and proliferation often take two approaches. On one hand, researchers explore citizens’ perceptions of prison siting in their community. Alternatively, they unpack consequences a prison brings to a region—often with attention toward whether they fuel economic growth. This discussion occasionally invokes the concept environmental sociologists commonly used to examine environmental injustices: LULUs (locally undesirable land uses). However, criminologists have not drawn on this concept to consider how environmental contamination and prison proliferation dovetail in the context of mass incarceration. Relatedly, environmental justice scholars have begun to suggest that prisons are rife with environmental justice issues that scholars in that subdiscipline should take seriously. Here, we draw these subfields into conversation with one another, as we see several important synergies. In particular, we heed Eason's (2017, Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and Prison Proliferation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press) call for a more robust theoretical framework interrogating the causes and consequences of the prison boom by making a case that environmental justice work on LULUs provides criminology an opportunity to understand prison proliferation more critically. In turn, we make the case that environmental justice scholars have inroads into the study of mass incarceration—especially as it relates to prison proliferation.     

Limiting relationships through sousveillance video based digital advocacy: multi-modal analysis of The Nervous CPS Worker

ABSTRACT

Digital media technology and Internet-based/social media sharing are shifting the contexts and processes of social work, including the relationships emerging in practice. The Nervous CPS Worker, a digital video shared via YouTube, provides a concrete practice-based example of the use of social media self-advocacy by professional foster parents. This case-study demonstrates the fragmented and shifting power-relations brought to bear within contemporary social work. Multi-modal analysis facilitates the development of a layered qualitative understanding of this video, shaped by the researcher’s inter-textual relationship with the material. Supplemental online texts are applied to the Nervous CPS Worker and relevant scholarship, including discipline specific knowledge, reveals the layered and convergent meaning making processes present in this video through the use of auditory communication, visual representations and genre. Analysis demonstrates how contemporary social work contexts, such as neoliberalism, and standardisation are implicated in practice and how identity and context compete for recognition and space within the home visit depicted in this video.     

Review of Attachment Theory: Familial Predictors,Continuity and Change,and Intrapersonal and Relational Outcomes

Initially, the major focus of attachment theory was the parent–child relationship, but Bowlby (1988 Bowlby, J. (1988). A secure base: Clinical applications of attachment theory. London: Routeledge. [Google Scholar]) also described the attachment system as active over the entire life course. Accordingly, a proliferation of research on attachment theory in the past two decades has addressed an array of familial predictors as well as intrapersonal and relational outcomes of attachment. The purpose of this review is to present: 1) measurement of attachment, 2) family violence, parental depression, and parental divorce as predictors of attachment, 3) (in)stability of attachment over time, 4) impact of attachment on emotion regulation and psychopathology, and 5) influence of attachment on romantic relationship. Special attention is paid to the role of attachment as a mediator between family of origin experiences and outcomes among youth and adults.     

Sex‐differentiated associations among negative parenting,emotion‐related brain function,and adolescent substance use and psychopathology symptoms

Parenting is a critical factor in adolescent social–emotional development, with maladaptive parenting leading to risk for the development of psychopathology. However, the emotion‐related brain mechanisms underlying the influence of parenting on psychopathology symptoms are unknown. The present study utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging and laboratory measures to examine sex‐differentiated associations among parenting, adolescent emotion‐related brain function, and substance use and psychopathology symptoms in 66 12–14‐year olds. Maternal parenting behaviors (warmth, negative parenting) were observed in a laboratory task. Adolescent brain responses to negative emotional stimuli were assessed in emotion processing regions of interest (left [L] and right [R] amygdala, anterior insula, and anterior cingulate cortex [ACC]). Adolescents reported on substance use and depressive, anxiety, and externalizing symptoms. Maternal negative parenting predicted adolescent brain activation differently by sex. For girls, negative parenting predicted heightened R ACC activation to negative emotional stimuli. For boys, negative parenting predicted blunted L and R anterior insula and L ACC activation. Furthermore, for girls, but not boys, heightened L anterior insula and heightened L and R ACC activation were associated with substance use and depressive symptoms, respectively. Findings suggest neural response to negative emotion as a possible sex‐specific pathway from negative parenting to psychopathology.     

Silencing to Give Voice: Backstage Preparations in the Undocumented Youth Movement in Los Angeles

Building upon intensive ethnographic research on the undocumented youth movement in Los Angeles, this paper investigates the backstage work done by the leaders and activists within a movement to create cohesive and disciplined frontstage performances. These backstage techniques and strategies are important to examine because frontstage unity is not natural or automatic. As most campaigns are made up of heterogeneous individuals, organizations and groups, frontstage coherence is something that needs to be worked upon. We show that this essential backstage work consists of 1) training activists to become disciplined frontstage performers; 2) converging the feelings of activists through emotionally intensive disciplinary techniques; and 3) managing differences and conflicts in the free spaces of the movement. This paper thus aims to encourage scholars to look under the hood of public protests and give greater weight to studying the backstage work needed to produce strong and powerful voices.     

Hashing it out: an examination of the interaction of image and headline frames of marijuana in a time of flux

The perception of marijuana in the contemporary move towards decriminalization and normalization in the United States and elsewhere will be affected by the manner in which the media visually and textually portray the drug. This study examines the visual and headline framing of marijuana prior to and following legalisation in Colorado, concentrating on issue framing and the valence or tone of visuals, words and their interaction. Results reveal different valences and issues amongst outlets and across time, and show complex and sometimes conflicting pairings of images and text. Neutral news outlets, while seemingly most neutral in image and in headline, were more slanted when pairing images with headlines, although they most frequently paired neutrally toned headlines with neutrally toned images. On the other hand, liberal and conservative news outlets most frequently showed neutrally valenced images with neutrally valenced headlines. While neutral news outlets may be lauded for presenting issues in a neutral tone, they are sending more mixed messages, visually, than the other outlets. Mostly framed as a political issue, marijuana was also heavily emphasised by its criminal and medical aspects. However, conservative news outlets presented its criminal aspect more than the other outlets.     

Maternal Neurobiological Processing of Negative Adolescent Stimuli: Relations With Positive Parenting and Relationship Quality

We examined associations between maternal affective neurobiology and positive parenting in a study of 20 mothers of adolescents. Mothers underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging during an emotion image task, rated parent‐adolescent relationship quality, and completed an adolescent interaction task in which positive parenting behaviors were observed. Maternal structure was associated with lower responsivity in emotional processing regions in the general negative image contrast and was related to greater dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation to negative adolescent images. Parent‐adolescent relationship quality was associated with lower precuneus activation to negative adolescent images. Findings are among the first to connect functional brain processing with observed parenting behaviors for parents of adolescent children, and underscore the relative importance of affective processing in parenting older children.