The Impact of Taking Parental Leave on Fathers’ Participation In Childcare And Relationships With Children: Lessons from Sweden

In Sweden, government-mandated paid parental leave has been available to both mothers and fathers since 1974. By 2006, each parent had two non-transferable leave months and nine additional months to share. From the beginning, parental leave was presented as a policy designed to promote gender equality, with women and men having equal opportunities and responsibilities to contribute economically to the family and care for children. Sweden thus provides a unique setting to explore whether social policy can be an important instrument for changing the gender contract. Analysing survey data from 356 fathers working in large private companies, we found that the amount of parental leave days taken had positive effects on several aspects of fathers’ participation in childcare and on their satisfaction with contact with children, controlling for other factors contributing to fathers’ participation in childcare. Our findings suggest that the full potential of Sweden's parental leave policy for degendering the division of labour for childcare will not likely be met until fathers are strongly encouraged by social policy to take a more equal portion of parental leave.     

异域之眼看杜诗——李植《杜诗批解》评语析论

李植的<杜诗批解>是朝鲜文人批解、注释杜诗的第一部个人著述,被誉为朝鲜人研读杜诗的入门要籍.李植批解杜诗时注重考辨异文、分析诗作结构、阐明诗作句法,担负着教导后学的任务.其以异域之人研读杜诗,确与中华之人有着不同的视野与角度.     

民族自治地方农村养老问题与对策初探——以黔东南州锦屏县为例

民族自治地方农村养老工作与构建社会主义和谐社会、社会主义新农村建设、“三农”问题等紧密相关，养老工作能否解决好直接影响到农村的社会稳定、社会的和谐发展和“三农”问题的解决。民族自治地方农村经济相对落后、经济发展不平衡、人口分布不均衡、农村老年人口日益增多、农民工大量外出等现实，给传统养老方式带来了历史性的冲击。这要求建立具有时代特色和地方特色的养老方式。本文在进行充分的实地调查、分析黔东南苗族侗族自治州锦屏县农村现行的养老方式现状、养老方式存在问题的基础上，结合当地实际情况和借鉴其他地方的成功养老方式，提出具体可行的对策。     

Consistent maximum likelihood estimation of a unimodal density using shape restrictions

It is well known that the unimodal maximum likelihood estimator of a density is consistent everywhere but at the mode. The authors review various ways to solve this problem and propose a new estimator that is concave over an interval containing the mode; this interval may be chosen by the user or through an algorithm. The authors show how to implement their solution and compare it to other approaches through simulations. They show that the new estimator is consistent everywhere and determine its rate of convergence in the Hellinger metric.     

The Development of Affect Specificity in Infants' Use of Emotion Cues

This study examined the emergence of affect specificity in infancy. In this study, infants received verbal and facial signals of 2 different, negatively valenced emotions (fear and sadness) as well as neutral affect via a television monitor to determine if they could make qualitative distinctions among emotions of the same valence. Twenty 12‐ to 14‐month‐olds and 20 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds were examined. Results suggested that younger infants showed no evidence of referential specificity, as they responded similarly to both the target and distracter toys, and showed no evidence of affect specificity, showing no difference in play between affect conditions. Older infants, in contrast, showed evidence both of referential and affect specificity. With respect to affect specificity, 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds touched the target toy less in the fear condition than in the sad condition and showed a larger proportion of negative facial expressions in the sad condition versus the fear condition. These findings suggest a developmental emergence after 15 months of age for affect specificity in relating emotional messages to objects.     

The Classed Body in the Sociological Imagination

Class theorists of embodiment in Sociology point to and illuminate both an over‐ and an under‐exposed body and experience that ultimately mark the bodies of the poor as ideologically, discursively and materially abject. In this essay, I map out theories of the bodies of the poor, including those of Marx, Engels, Elias, Bourdieu, Foucault, Donzelot and Adair. I suggest that an understanding of the ways in which the bodies of the poor are positioned as abject can facilitate a flexible and reflexive heuristic through which we can negotiate epistemic shifts between material and discursive categories, as well as providing us with a template through which we can come to understand even the most profoundly abject bodies, those of poor women in a welfare state, as potential sites of embodied agency and resistance, all central to the ethical and holistic study of sociology.     

The Impact of Maternal Characteristics and Sensitivity on the Concordance Between Maternal Reports and Laboratory Observations of Infant Negative Emotionality

The moderating role of maternal characteristics and maternal sensitivity on the concordance between maternal reports and laboratory observations of negative emotionality was examined. Participants were 90 primiparous mothers and their infants. Mothers completed questionnaires about remembered care from their own parents and their depressive symptoms prenatally, infant temperament (distress to novelty and distress to limitations), and depressive symptoms postnatally. Mothers and infants participated in a laboratory assessment of infant temperament (distress to novelty and limitations) and maternal sensitivity at 6 months postpartum. Several factors that moderate the degree of concordance between maternal reports and behavioral observations were identified, as predicted. Novelty concordance was higher when mothers reported having their emotional needs met in childhood and low prenatal depressive symptoms. Limitations concordance was higher when mothers were less sensitive during the observational tasks. Methodological and theoretical implications are discussed.