Changes in At-Risk American Men's Crime and Substance Use Trajectories Following Fatherhood

Fatherhood can be a turning point in development and in men's crime and substance use trajectories. At-risk boys (N = 206) were assessed annually from ages 12 to 31 years. Crime, arrest, and tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana use trajectories were examined. Marriage was associated with lower levels of crime and less frequent substance use. Following the birth of a first biological child, men's crime trajectories showed slope decreases, and tobacco and alcohol use trajectories showed level decreases. The older men were when they became fathers, the greater the level decreases were in crime and alcohol use and the less the slope decreases were in tobacco and marijuana use. Patterns are consistent with theories of social control and social timetables.     

CHAPTER 12: Services to Families During Three Stages of a Handicapped Person's Life

No abstract available for this article.     

Trust and Sexual Interaction: The Significance of the Internet on the Sex life and Sexual Risk Behaviors Of Gay and Bisexual Men in Spain

ABSTRACT

This study provides an understanding of the significance of the use of the Internet to find sexual partners, its impact on sexual life, and how it is linked to unprotected sex among gay and bisexual men. A grounded approach was used to analyze interviews with 31 men (aged 19 to 46 years) from Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao/San Sebastián, Spain. The results reveal that the Internet is impacting the form and style of life of many men, and particularly their experience of sexuality. Many men regard their sexual experiences with casual partners met through the Internet as unsatisfactory or frustrating. The men provided several reasons behind the search for sexual partners via the Internet: Some interviewees sought to channel needs other than the sexual (company, affection, stable partner). Trust and assumptions built into the virtual interaction become a key to understanding why some men have unprotected sex with partners met on the Internet.     

News and Views: Current Events and Commentary

No abstract available for this article.     

The Poverty of Services for Battered Lesbians

This paper addresses the poverty of services available to lesbian victims of partner abuse, despite the need for such services. Drawing on data from a survey of 1,505 help providers (to which 566 responded), the paper focuses on the services that the help providers themselves claim to offer. The data reveal a serious disparity in help providers' rhetoric and offical policies and the reality of the services available. The paper concludes with suggestions for improving services to battered lesbians.     

BOOK REVIEWS

No abstract available for this article.     

Changing Directions in HIV Prevention: The Move Toward a Psychosocial Model

ABSTRACT

Although some HIV prevention programs have been successful in helping gay and bisexual men change their sexual behaviors, rates of HIV infection continue to increase. In an attempt to address this problem, social workers need to move beyond traditional HIV prevention approaches to a psychosocial model of HIV prevention. Based on the work of previous researchers, this approach assumes that a combination of individual, psychological, and social factors contribute to risky sex in gay and bisexual men. Because social workers are trained to view problems from a psychosocial framework, they are already in a position to develop programs incorporating the psychosocial model. This article examines the psychosocial model of HIV prevention and the various psychosocial factors that may contribute to high-risk sexual behavior and concludes with examples of prevention research that have already incorporated the model.     

Non-Custodial African American Fatherhood:

The authors provide a conceptual foundation for the use of a research approach in exploring program and policy issues associated with empowering poor, young, non-custodial African American fathers. A post-positivist, ecological, Afrocentric, bicultural research perspective, using the case study method, is proposed as the most effective means of understanding this population and developing appropriate interventions.     

Alternative to incarceration for low‐income non‐custodial parents

Increasingly, low‐income non‐custodial parents in the USA, primarily fathers, are at risk of incarceration for failure to make child support payments, clogging the prison system, preventing already at‐risk fathers from holding a job and removing them from relationships with their children. This paper examines an innovative programme in one south‐eastern state that provides an alternative to incarceration for non‐compliant parents, also allowing fathers an opportunity to find gainful employment; to learn valuable life skills; and to establish healthier relationships with their children. Data analysis from 3 years of programme implementation suggests that low‐income non‐custodial fathers enrolled in the Alternative to Incarceration programme have a much greater chance to fulfil their obligations, both as wage earners and as parents, when they are in a programme that provides life skills, helps them find employment and provides other supports to help them improve their life situation rather than incarcerating them for non‐payment of child support. Furthermore, this programme represents a substantial cost savings to the state, as hundreds of fathers have remained outside of the prison system. To date, this alternative to incarceration is a promising solution to a previously intractable problem.     

LEGISLATING LOVE: The Effect of Child Support and Welfare Policies on Father–child Contact

Reducing non-marital childbearing and making nonresidential fathers take greater responsibility for their children were identified as goals of numerous policy changes since the 1980s. Child-support award rates for children born to unmarried parents have been quite low historically, leading lawmakers to focus on increasing both award and payment rates for this group. Nonmarital fathers are also much less likely to have contact with their children. Although evidence suggests that policy efforts increase child support awards and receipt, the link between child support policies, child support outcomes, and father-child contact has received less attention. This paper uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation on children born between 1985–1997 to investigate the relationship between child-support award and receipt and the amount of contact that fathers have with their non-residential children. Since it is likely that both of these behaviors are, in part, determined by unobservable characteristics of the father, we estimate an instrumental variables Tobit model. The model is identified by our assumption that child support policy variables can impact child support awards and payments, but father-child contact cannot be directly legislated. Our results suggest that there are unintended, but desirable effects of child support establishment and collection. Policies to collect child support not only increase financial resources to families, but through their impact on payments increase visitation and contact between these children and their fathers. The estimated impact of receiving child support on contact is more than 27 days per year.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Economic Association, Washington DC, January 2003 and the Annual Meetings of the Association of Public Policy and Management, November 2003. Support from NICHD Grant # HD30944 is gratefully acknowledged. We would like to thank Suzann Eshleman for excellent computer programming and James Scully for providing us with data on genetic testing laws.