Feeding the Hand that Bit You: Lesbian Daughters at Mid-Life Negotiating Parental Caretaking

SUMMARY

Like other women in our culture, lesbians find parental caretaking is a gendered expectation that often falls to them. This article explores how we negotiate competing demands and integrate our parents' needs into our lives. The daughter/parent relationship may have been strained by parental homophobia, exclusion of our partner, “splitting” between our lesbian and birth family lives, and physical distance. We may recall feelings of metaphorical and physical caretaking not offered to us when we came out, when lack of parental support may have brought financial abandonment and emotional upset. Inversion of the relationship into the child as parental caretaker, fraught with mixed emotions, can bring resolution of long-held resentments and pain.     

The personal archive as historical record1

This paper is based on the project ‘Becoming citizens: Family life and the politics of disability’, a chronicle of the lives of 13 families in the Seattle area who raised children with developmental disabilities in the period 1940–1980. The project was a commission from the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs in Seattle. The programme inserted an artist into a community to realize a collaborative project. The principle product is a book to be published by the University of Washington Press in the spring of 2005. This article will briefly outline the project, present its integration of images and interviews as a method of presentation and further discuss the ways the informal environment of the family home is both a rich source of ‘vernacular’ history, as well as a resource for constructing ‘official’ histories.     

Dating Relationships in Older Adulthood: A National Portrait

Dating in later life is likely common, especially as the proportion of older adults who are single continues to rise. Yet there are no recent national estimates of either the prevalence or factors associated with dating during older adulthood. Using data from the 2005–2006 National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, a nationally representative sample of 3,005 individuals ages 57–85, the authors constructed a national portrait of older adult daters. Roughly 14% of singles were in a dating relationship. Dating was more common among men than women and declined with age. Compared to non‐daters, daters were more socially advantaged. Daters were more likely to be college educated and had more assets, were in better health, and reported more social connectedness. This study underscores the importance of new research on partnering in later life, particularly with the aging of the U.S. population and the swelling ranks of older singles.     

Perceptions of Sources of Sex Education and Targets of Sex Communication: Sociodemographic and Cohort Effects

As part of a larger survey study on young adult sexuality conducted over a 17-year period at a Midwest U.S. university, more than 6,000 college students completed questions on the sources of their sex education and the degree to which they have communicated about sex with various types of individuals. Participants reported receiving more sex education from peers and media than from parents (and mothers more than fathers). Respondents also reported communicating more about sex with peers than with parents or any other categories of individuals. Differences were found in the degree of sex education from various sources and in communication with various targets based on gender, ethnic background, and social class. Furthermore, changes were found over the 17-year period. More recent cohorts of students perceived that they received more sex education from media, peers, and professionals, and communicated more about sex with professionals, relative to earlier cohorts.     

Sex Differences in Post-Coital Behaviors in Long- and Short-Term Mating: An Evolutionary Perspective

Few empirical studies have been devoted to exploring behaviors occurring immediately following sexual intercourse. Therefore, this study conducts an exploratory investigation of various post-coital behaviors that the authors propose may reflect the divergent adaptive reproductive strategies of each sex as understood from an evolutionary perspective. An online questionnaire was administered to 170 individuals examining sex differences in post-coital compared to pre-coital activities related to pair-bonding with long-term mates, as well as a variety of common post-coital activities comparing short- and long-term mating contexts. It was found that females were more likely than males to initiate and place greater importance on several behaviors related to intimacy and bonding following sex with long-term partners. Males were more likely to initiate kissing before sex, and females after sex. Intimate talk and kissing were rated by both sexes as more important before intercourse with a long-term partner, whereas cuddling and professing one's love was rated more important after sex. In a second set of more specific post-coital behaviors, females were more likely to engage in post-coital behaviors related to bonding with both short- and long-term partners, whereas males were more likely to engage in ones that were extrinsically rewarding or increased the likelihood of further coital acts.     

“At a moment,you could collapse”: Raising children with autism in the West Bank

The current qualitative study examined knowledge, attitudes, burdens and coping strategies related to caring for a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the West Bank. Based on a sample of 24 Palestinian parents, the study found that parents struggled with financial stressors, child behavioral and medical challenges, and depression. Few parents were aware of ASDs prior to their children's diagnoses. Furthermore, discrimination and stigma from extended family members and the larger community intensified parents' feelings of shame and experiences of social isolation. While some parents coped by withdrawing from the community or denying the diagnosis, others aimed to increase social interactions and access information. Religious coping was found to be partly adaptive for some of the participants. The study underscored the vital need to increase community awareness of ASDs and increase social support for parents in the West Bank.     

“Would You Do That in Your Home?” Making Nursing Homes Home-like in Culture Change Implementation

Qualitative interviews with nursing home administrators reveal innovative and cost-conscious ways to physically modify facilities that help institute culture change practices. Telephone interviews were conducted following a national survey of nursing home nursing directors and administrators. In this cross-sectional snapshot of administrator experiences, motivations for making facilities more home-like and less institutional and creative responses to challenges are described. State and corporate support and regulator encouragement are noted that help their reform efforts. Administrators note that small steps to create a more home-like environment can result in a positive impact that minimizes disruption to existing care processes. They describe how they respond to challenges, such as the physical plant and high costs, and note how comparative shopping, cost-conscious physical improvements, and continuous involvement of staff and residents contribute to successful efforts. Their examples illustrate novel ways to humanize long-term care facilities that other nursing homes can emulate.     

Latin American Households in Comparative Perspective

Comparative family sociology has had little to say about the Latin American family or household despite it links to a European colonial culture mixed with a distinct set of indigenous and historical circumstances. In this paper tentative judgements are put forward about the similarities and differences between the Western and Latin American household by examining four of its dimensions: the household's relative complexity, the separate residence of conjugal units, the incidence of households headed by women, and the incidence of household members being unrelated to the head. Data come from the World Fertility Survey household files gathered during the middle 1970s in six countries: Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Colombia and Peru. We find that household complexity in the six countries is intermediate between that of the West and East. Many of the households are extended laterally instead of vertically, because conjugal couples tend to reside in separate households, but often live with unmarried relatives as well. In addition, a high level of marital instability results in a significant proportion of households headed by women, many of them containing members of the extended family. Finally, whereas the circulation of young unmarried people of both sexes was common in rural areas in the West, being an unrelated individual in another's household is most common in urban areas among females between 15 and 19 years old.