Strategic Bargaining Over Child Support and Visitation

When parents divorce, child support and visitation must be determined. The 1988 Family Support Act requires all states to have child support guidelines for courts to use in determining child support obligations. However, many divorcing couples arrive at agreements without court intervention, or they simply fail to enforce the court decision ex post. Given that the guidelines provide a starting point for negotiations, couples may be able to find self-negotiated, Pareto-improving solutions. In this paper we model the bargaining process that divorcing couples engage in when coming to agreements on visitation and child support. The model suggests that individuals may arrive at agreements that are Pareto improvements for both parents but that the children's welfare may decline as a result of these self-negotiated settlements. Data from the Stanford Child Custody Study show that the changes made in child support and visitation agreements are consistent with our model in only 30 percent of the cases. Therefore, we consider alternative specifications of the model and show that both significant costs of enforcing the original agreement and alternative assumptions on parental preferences can explain these empirical results.     

巩固和发展和谐的社会主义民族关系——对散居少数民族权益保障问题的思考

随着社会和经济的发展，少数民族公民散居于各地的趋势日益明显，民族散居化的格局日益突出。进一步重视少数民族工作，注意保障散居少数民族权益，对更好的巩固和发展和谐的社会主义民族关系具有重要的现实意义。可以从观念上、立法上进一步完善散居少数民族权益保障法律制度。     

A case of suspected child abuse by an adolescent mother: The use of short-term psychotherapy

The incidence of pregnancy during adolescence has escalated dramatically in recent years, with an estimated half a million infants born to teenagers each year in the United States. A disproportionately high amount of child abuse and/or neglect is encountered among adolescent parents, underscoring the need for an effective intervention strategy. Short-term psychotherapy may be beneficial in these cases for forging a therapeutic alliance expeditiously and rigorously challenging the patient's resistance. The case described involves alleged abuse by a 16-year-old mother. An intervention was designed to clarify the allegations surrounding the abusive incident, help the mother confront episodes of loss in her own life and overcome feelings of hopelessness engendered by separation from her infant.     

Summary of the Workshop on Issues in Risk Assessment: Quantitative Methods for Developmental Toxicology

This report summarizes the proceedings of a conference on quantitative methods for assessing the risks of developmental toxicants. The conference was planned by a subcommittee of the National Research Council's Committee on Risk Assessment Methodology ⁴ in conjunction with staff from several federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, and Health and Welfare Canada. Issues discussed at the workshop included computerized techniques for hazard identification, use of human and animal data for defining risks in a clinical setting, relationships between end points in developmental toxicity testing, reference dose calculations for developmental toxicology, analysis of quantitative dose-response data, mechanisms of developmental toxicity, physiologically based pharmacokinetic models, and structure-activity relationships. Although a formal consensus was not sought, many participants favored the evolution of quantitative techniques for developmental toxicology risk assessment, including the replacement of lowest observed adverse effect levels (LOAELs) and no observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs) with the benchmark dose methodology.     

Who Gets What From Government? Distributional Consequences of Child‐Care Assistance Policies

Given the fragmented structure of child‐care assistance in the United States, it has been difficult to obtain accurate estimates of which families are assisted, through which mechanisms, and at what level. Making use of survey data from New York City, we analyze the distribution of several forms of public child‐care assistance. Results suggest that about 40% of all families with young children receive some form of child‐care assistance. Considering all forms of assistance, the distribution of child‐care help is targeted in both expected and some unexpected ways. Implications of these results are discussed in the context of U.S. child‐care policies governing access and benefit levels.     

教育行动研究与在职外语教师的专业发展

教育行动研究作为一种解决现实课堂教学问题的实践方法和特殊的教师教育方法正受到越来越多的国内外教育研究者的关注。它倡导教师即研究者通过对自己课堂中的教学现象进行考察和研究并从中获取知识,改进教学质量。教育行动研究与教师专业发展密切相关。教育行动研究可以改进教学质量,提高教学水平,帮助在职教师重建知识体系,促使教师向专家型教师转化,是在职外语教师专业发展的可行的、有效的途径。     

The Prevention of Social Aggression Among Girls

This study represents the first systematic attempt to examine a theory‐based program designed to reduce girls' social aggression and increase positive leadership among peers. Fifth‐grade girls from six public schools were randomly assigned within classrooms to the social aggression prevention program (SAPP) and the comparison reading clubs. A school‐based small group program, the SAPP was demonstrated to have a positive impact for all students in the domain of social problem solving. For students with high baseline social problems, teachers reported positive changes in SAPP participants' prosocial behavior. In addition, the content of the program was critical: reading club participants improved their reading achievement at greater rates than SAPP participants. Targeting female students in a program focused on resolving social conflicts from multiple perspectives may be an important addition to broader, multilevel initiatives to prevent aggression and promote leadership in schools.     

Severely Traumatized Siblings: A Treatment Strategy

Siblings who have suffered severe trauma and disrupted attachment relate to one another in ways that interfere with individual development, the chance to benefit from connections with adults, the establishment of healthy sibling relationships, and the working through of traumatic experiences. The authors use case examples to illustrate four distinct sibling patterns: absent, adult lockout, half and half, and trauma shield. The authors highlight the importance of recognizing these types and then varying the therapist's treatment stance to pursue five goals. These include suspending problematic sibling relationships to create room for bonding with caring adults, transferring attachment behaviors and impulses to a receptive adult, resuming healthy individual development, forming more adaptive sibling connections, and expressing shared traumatic content.     

“专才+通才”──大学英语教师最重要的素质

本文论述高等学校“大学英语”教师的素质问题,认为大学英语教师既要具备“专才”的一技之长,又要像“通才”那样博学多识。兼采两者之长,是他们得以完成最起码的教学任务的最重要的素质。又大学英语教师主要依靠自学提高则是达到“专才＋通才”最上乘境界那种博大精深的不二法门,至于自学提高的最关键的问题就是要善用工具书,而所谓“善用”也应包括具有“不尽信、不迷信”的思想准备在内。本文论据主要取自高校“大学英语”课程教学大纲中的教学要求和据此编写出来的教材。     

Homework and domestic work

This study assesses two competing theories about the extent to which homework—paid work in the home—helps integrate work and domestic roles for men and women. Contrasting male and female homeworkers with their counterparts working outside the home, it supports some aspects of both the resource and role overload theories, but predominantly the role overload perspective. Homeworkers, especially in the working class, experience less interference between job and family life, but perform more housework and child care. They have no more leisure time nor greater marital satisfaction than those working outside the home, but receive more family assistance with their paid jobs, suggesting that they combine tasks from their first and second shifts. Working at home does not break down gender roles in domestic life. Despite time saved from commuting, male homeworkers perform no more housework than comparable men working outside the home. Thus, the gender division of unpaid household labor is not simply a matter of resources or spatial logistics.An earlier version was presented at the meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society, Providence, Rhode Island, April 1991.