Parental Divorce and Interpersonal Trust in Adult Offspring

It has been proposed that recent increases in parental divorce have inhibited the development of trust among offspring. This proposition is tested by examining whether parental divorce is associated with offspring trust in parents, intimate partners, and others. Data come from the Marital Instability Over the Life Course Study. Results reveal that although parental divorce is negatively associated with trust, these effects largely disappear once the quality of the past parent‐teen relationship is taken into account. The one exception is trust in fathers where children of divorce remain at higher risk of mistrust. Trust in parents, intimates, and others is strongly linked to positive parent‐teen relationships regardless of parental divorce. Contemporary relationship experiences also influence trusting intimates and others.     

Comprehensive neighbourhood mapping: developing a powerful tool for child protection

This paper proposes ‘comprehensive neighbourhood mapping’ as a schema for gathering and interpreting information within a given geographical area which is informed by imaginative thinking about the safety of children and young people from sexual crime. It would build upon current forms of profiling by local authorities, health authorities and central Government. CNM would actively involve local people, in partnership with agencies, in ‘mapping’ danger points and support points. Eight components are discussed, including environmental issues, locations of sex offenders, sites where teenagers meet and share information, supportive individuals and organizations. Some issues for pilot projects are discussed, including the need to set up planning and implementation groups and to integrate CNM into wider child protection and community safety strategies. CNM is grounded in an ecological perspective which sees partnership approaches as essential and believes an overarching view of neighbourhood needs, based on detailed local information and understanding of how different forms of harm interconnect, is crucial in developing child protection strategies. At times of acute official anxiety about community ‘lynch‐mob’ reactions to known paedophiles, CNM aims to build communities which instead are informed and thoughtful about child protection. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stigma, HIV/AIDS and prevention of mother-to-child transmission in Zambia

This report evaluates the extent of perceived and enacted HIV/AIDS-related stigma in a rural setting in Zambia. Stigmatisation is abundant, ranging from subtle actions to the most extreme degradation, rejection and abandonment. Women with HIV and pregnant women assumed to be HIV positive are repeatedly subjected to extensive forms of stigma, particularly once they become sick or if their child dies. Despite increasing access to prevention of mother to child transmission initiatives, including anti-retroviral drugs, the perceived disincentives of HIV testing, particularly for women, largely outweigh the potential gains from available treatments. HIV/AIDS related stigma drives the epidemic underground and is one of the main reasons that people do not wish to know their HIV status. Unless efforts to reduce stigma are, as one peer educator put it, “written in large letters in any HIV/AIDS campaign rather than small”, stigma will remain a major barrier to curbing the HIV/AIDS pandemic.     

‘Public toilets for a diverse neighborhood’: Spatial purification practices in community development discourse

This paper explores the dialectic of place and community identity in Mount Pleasant, a multi–ethnic and multi–class U.S. neighborhood where definitions of place are hotly contested among its residents. In a grant proposal for public toilets, Mount Pleasant writers use linguistic strategies such as presupposition, deixis, and contrast, coupled with discursive themes of filth and geography, to construct a core of the Mount Pleasant community. The writers place themselves and people who share their values in that core, and immigrants at the margins. These strategies serve as a discursive type of spatial purification practice (cf. Sibley 1988) through which the grantwriters set up a moral and spatial order where they and other core community members are deemed to use space ‘appropriately’, and thus inhabit positive moral positions, while immigrant community members’ imputed ‘inappropriate’ use of space is used to construct negative moral positions for them.     

Gender Differences in Union Formation in Mexico: Evidence From Marital Search Models

Although increasingly appreciated for their explanatory power in developed societies, marital search models have yet to be widely applied to developing nations. This article evaluates the applicability of marital search models to marriage timing in Mexico. The analysis compares separate models of union formation for men and women that include individual and marriage market predictors. Results show that union formation is closely linked to the uncertainties surrounding the transition to adulthood and the availability of marriageable partners. Improvements in women's economic position do not diminish the attractiveness of marriage, as female independence arguments would suggest. Instead, they are a central force behind the stability of marriage behavior in Mexico. A central transformation identified in the analysis is the reduction in sex differences in age at marriage as women expand their education and labor force participation.     

Child Characteristics,Parenting Stress,and Parental Involvement: Fathers Versus Mothers

This study examined variations in the relationships among child characteristics, parenting stress, and parental involvement. Participants were 100 two‐parent families with preschool‐aged children. Self‐report and interview data were collected to measure parental involvement, as well as perceptions of child temperament and parental stress. Analyses revealed significant, yet somewhat different, associations between child temperament and parental stress for mothers and fathers. More significant associations were found between perceptions of child temperament and involvement for fathers than for mothers. The associations between child temperament and parental stress and involvement differed on the basis of child and parent gender. Results are discussed in terms of future research on father involvement, as well as programs designed to encourage fathers to assume more active parental roles.     

Middle School Children's Perceptions on Welfare and Poverty: An Exploratory, Qualitative Study

This study was undertaken to determine how middle school children assess the effects of welfare reform on their daily lives. The study consisted of thirty interviews with children and their mothers recruited from a middle school in a large, metropolitan area. From the children's perspective, multiple jobs and evening/night hours interfered with the child-parent relationship. Other consequences included grades going down and not getting to school on time. All the children stated that mothers should work, but most children felt mothers should only work when their children are in school. Welfare and poverty were issues about which children were teased at school.     

Influences on registered nurses' decision‐making in cases of suspected child abuse

This paper reports on the factors influencing decision‐making for a group of 10 South Australian community nurses in cases of suspected child abuse. Each nurse participated in a structured interview. The data were organized into themes, using the computer program NUD*IST. Factors having an impact on the nurses' decisions to report included: the type of suspected abuse, making moral judgements and decision‐making, the consequences of reporting, and the impact versus the outcomes of reporting. Most significantly, the community nurses based many of their decisions on their estimation of the kind of intervention likely to be undertaken by children's protection services. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Open Road or Blind Alley? Welfare Reform, Mothers, and Children with Disabilities

Welfare reform was examined for 39 Michigan families whose children have significant health or intellectual and behavioral disabilities. As a group, these families received little specialized assistance or services to address their unique needs. Family-cited barriers to self-sufficiency included poorly trained welfare caseworkers, limited public transportation, and inadequate child care. Having an older child was the only discriminating variable between working and non-working mothers. However, working mothers only had temporary positions with no benefits and low pay. All families, whether employed or not, lived below the poverty line.     

试论佛山企业境外投资

企业境外投资应该成为佛山市发展外向型经济的战略任务之一。佛山市企业境外投资,具备着所有权、内部化和区位等方面的相对优势。境外投资是佛山市企业占领国外市场、扩大出口的有力手段;可享受国内外双重的优惠政策和待遇;是增加外汇收入、利用外资的新型方式。九十年代,佛山市企业应注重对东南亚国家的直接投资,对国外高科技,新产品、新服务部门和行业的直接投资。