矛盾的魅力--茅盾的小说世界及其审美心理特征

茅盾是一个伟大的存在,也是一个充满矛盾的人,从文本切入人本会发现矛盾正是茅盾的魅力所在.他的小说世界里存在着一系列与其审美心理特征密切相关的矛盾在整体风格中呈现男性特征与女性化倾向的对立与和谐;在题材选择上存在社会矛盾与两性冲突的对比与互补;在塑造女性形象时隐含着性别视角的转换与错位;在创作与构思过程中时时可见情绪化与理性化的纠结与挣扎.这些矛盾是解读茅盾文本的钥匙,也是走近茅盾的新的视角.     

Mass-market magazine portrayals of working mothers and related issues, 1987 and 1997

In this research project a historian seeks to test whether a dichotomy in the historical analysis of working mothers also exists in recent mass-media portrayals of contemporary wage-earning mothers. The hypothesis is that only white, middle- and upper-class women who work outside the home are considered working mothers, with the emphasis placed on their role as mothers. When poor, minority, working women with children are discussed, they are considered primarily in their capacity as workers. Following from this dichotomy is a split in the assessment of day care for the children of working mothers. For the children of high socioeconomic status women, no day care facility can satisfactorily replace maternal care; for the children of low socioeconomic status women, any type of non-maternal care that enables a mother to keep functioning as a worker is considered superior to maternal care. This study is important because it clarifies some critical scholarly and popular assumptions about the importance of work, the nature of motherhood, and the needs of different classes of children. These assumptions in turn structure scholarly analysis, permeate public discourse, and ultimately shape work and child care policies that profoundly affect all of America's families. This work is intended as a brief analysis that can serve to highlight unconscious attitudes and to suggest how future studies and discussions might be restructured to avoid perpetuating a false separation of different classes of working mothers and their children.     

At the threshold of retirement: From all-absorbing relations to self-actualization

To investigate the complexities of the retirement process, the present article draws on a case study of Eva, a Swedish woman who “awakened” from all-absorbing relations. It considers the ways in which retirement can enable liberation from patriarchal kinship structures and embodied values of respectability. The aim is to illuminate how deep, embodied values can become conscious and explicit during precarious life situations and transitional phases. The relation between the Swedish welfare state, an I-we balance, and gender equity values are illuminated. These analytical dimensions support the analysis by providing insights into the ways in which individuals embody and use cultural and social structures when they aim to manage unpredictability and to create change toward self-actualization.     

Abusive Supervision and Well-Being of Filipino Migrant Workers in Macau: Consequences for Self-Esteem and Heritage Culture Detachment

Abusive supervision in the workplace has been shown to have important direct consequence in work and work relationship, and also indirect consequences to workers’ well-being and relationships outside work. Consequences of abusive supervision have not been studied among migrant workers whose status in the host country of work is dependent on maintaining the work contract. This study investigates abusive supervision in 247 Filipino migrant workers in Macau, who hold temporary work contracts and work visas to engage in various low-skilled work (e.g., domestic helper, security guard, etc.). The study tests a model representing the indirect consequences of abusive supervision on the self-esteem and acculturation orientation of migrant workers, in particular, on the tendency to reject their heritage culture in their attempt to acculturate in the host country. Mediation analysis indicated that abusive supervisory perceptions led to lower self-esteem (b = ?.19), which in turn relates to tendency to reject their heritage culture as part of acculturation (b = ?.45) [indirect effect = .08, 90 % CI .04, .15]. The rejection of heritage culture is interpreted as a coping response to the negative indirect consequences of abusive supervision perceptions that may be partly attributed to being a migrant Filipino worker. The results are discussed in terms of how the acculturation of migrant workers reflects aspects of their well-being that may be adversely affected by vocational-related stress in the host country.     

Childcare costs and the demand for children—evidence from a nationwide reform

Exploiting the exogenous variation in user fees caused by a Swedish childcare reform, we are able to identify the causal effect of childcare costs on fertility in a context in which childcare enrollment is almost universal, user fees are low, and labor force participation of mothers is very high. Anticipation of a reduction in childcare costs increased the number of first and higher-order births, but only seemed to affect the timing of second births. For families with many children we also find a marginally significant negative income effect on fertility.     

Participation in different types of volunteering at young, middle and older adulthood

Around 35?% of Australian adults volunteer. It has been found that participation in volunteering varies with life course stage: people tend to participate less in early adulthood, which has been referred to as a ??demographically dense?? period, and more in middle adulthood, which has been characterized as a more stable period of life. This paper extends this research to investigate the types of organizations for which people volunteer at different life course stages. This paper uses data from the Negotiating the Life Course project (2003 and 2006) to examine participation in volunteering for different types of organizations. The focus is on the type of organizations for which people volunteer and how that differs in young, middle and older adulthood. There are three dominant types of organizations that people volunteer for: welfare and community, sport and recreation, and education and training, and volunteering with each of these groups varies with a person??s life course stage. Younger adults tend to be more likely to volunteer for religious groups. People in middle adulthood, and particularly those with school-aged children, tend to volunteer in sport and recreation groups and education and training organizations, and volunteering with welfare, community and health organizations is dominant in older adulthood.