Employment and Informal Network Support Among AFDC and Non-AFDC Single Mothers

This empirical study compares, through logistic regression analysis, the relationship between the use of informal resource supports and the labor force activity of single mothers who are AFDC recipients to those who are non-AFDC recipients. The survey data are based on interviews with 900 African-American, white, Puerto Rican and Mexican low-income single mothers in Chicago. The study found that women who had access to and used informal resource support had a significantly greater likelihood of being in the labor force than women without such supports. This relationship held true for women receiving AFDC and not receiving AFDC.     

The celebration of death in group process

This paper discusses the mobilization of group resources in facing death. It delineates the evolvement of group process when patients and therapist learned of the oldest member's terminal illness. It deals with the group's commitment to his request for help in dealing with his last life crisis by being actively with him through his hospitalization and last rites; the commitment to death with dignity; the group's responses to the therapist as role model in dealing with death and seeing a facet of her which had not been evident to them within the confines of the office, the working through of the patients' and therapist's feelings of loss of loved ones particularly the father; and the countertransference resistance which resulted and its effect on group process.     

Many a slip between cup and lip. Process evaluation of a program to promote and support evidence-based public health practice

The main aims of this study are to document whether an intervention for promoting evidence-based public health practice had been delivered as intended and to explore the reasons for its lack of impact. Process data from the implementation of the program and data from interviews with 40 public health physicians are analyzed. Although they expressed satisfaction with the service, the doctors experienced the program as rather irrelevant for their daily work. They did not perceive that they dealt with many issues relevant for the use of research information, and if they did, referring to research would not make any difference to the way others perceived their advice. There is a need to develop more overlying strategies for integrating evidence into decision making than addressing the individual level.     

Transmuted generalized exponential distribution: A generalization of the exponential distribution with applications to survival data

In this article, we investigate the potential usefulness of the three-parameter transmuted generalized exponential distribution for analyzing lifetime data. We compare it with various generalizations of the two-parameter exponential distribution using maximum likelihood estimation. Some mathematical properties of the new extended model including expressions for the quantile and moments are investigated. We propose a location-scale regression model, based on the log-transmuted generalized exponential distribution. Two applications with real data are given to illustrate the proposed family of lifetime distributions.     

Climate events and the role of adaptive capacity for (im-)mobility

Population and Environment - The study examines the relationship between sudden- and gradual-onset climate events and migration, hypothesizing that this relationship is mediated by the adaptive...     

Girl adoption in China—A less-known side of son preference

In 1987, 4 per cent of girls were adopted within China. Why? Unlike infanticide, abandonment rids parents of daughters while preserving the supply of potential brides. In fact, an erstwhile tradition common in Fujian and Jiangxi provinces had parents of sons adopting an infant girl to serve as a future daughter-in-law and household help. Analysing a nationally representative 1992 survey of children, we found that: (1) girl adoptions were concentrated in the above-mentioned provinces; (2) girls were predominantly adopted by families with sons; (3) adopted girls faced substantial disadvantage as measured by school attendance at ages 8–13. In the 1990s, as the sex ratio at birth climbed, were girls aborted rather than abandoned? Observing that in the 2000 census too many girls appear in families with older sons, we estimated that at least 1/25 girls were abandoned in the 1990s, a proportion that in Fujian and Jiangxi may have peaked at 1/10 in 1994.     

Dual-earner couples and the decision to work less: A conceptual model

This paper examines the factors that affect the decision made by dual-earner couples concerning the possibility of one (or both) partners working a reduced-hours schedule. We rely on a comprehensive review of the literature on part-time work among dual-earner couples and on the factors that affect the decisions couples make about their work hours as well as preliminary findings from our ongoing study to consider two key questions: (1) What factors do dual-earner couples take into account when they consider whether one or both might work a reduced-hours schedule? (2) If the couple decides that one partner will work a reduced-hours schedule, how do they decide which partner reduces the hours of employment? Most previous research has focused on the centrality of gender in the decisions that couples make concerning the hours that they work. However, our review of the literature and the preliminary findings of our current research suggest that there are other factors that affect (directly or indirectly) the couples' decisions related to part-time options. Based on this review we present a new decision-making model for two-earner couples that will have implications for future research and policy initiatives. This paper is particularly timely for several reasons: the number of dual-earner couples continues to increase; there is some indication that more employees would choose to reduce their work hours if that were a viable option; and recently, managers and professional workers have become more vocal about their interest in part-time career options.     

Military Invasion and Women's Political Representation

The bodies produced by the violent practice of suicide bombing are a source of horror and disgust. They are, in feminist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva's concept, abject: that which defies borders and is expelled to create the self. As ‘abject bodies’, suicide bombers' bodies frustrate attempts at calculation and rational control of security risks, and, in their mutilated flesh, expose as unstable the idea of the body as a whole with clearly defined boundaries between inside and outside. Female suicide bombers, whose bodies are already considered ‘abject’, produce a politics of the body that exceeds narratives of victimhood, and whose very monstrosity symbolically threatens the foundations of the nation-state. Attempts at constructing subjects out of the mutilated bodily remains of victims and perpetrators of suicide bombings are key practices in the production of the state and gendered subjects. The practice of suicide bombing and efforts to recover and resignify bodies reveals how power molds and constitutes the border of the body and state simultaneously. The explosive body of the suicide bomber thus has destabilizing effects beyond the motivations of its perpetrators and exposes the political work necessary to maintain the illusion of secure, bounded bodies and states.     

Manufacturing ghost fathers: the paradox of father presence and absence in child welfare

Fathers exist in the lives of women and children involved with child welfare authorities, and yet, they are rarely seen by child welfare. This invisibility exists whether or not fathers are deemed as risks or as assets to their families. Using an analysis of fundamental child welfare policies and practices and relevant literature, the paper examines how 'ghost' fathers are manufactured, and how this phenomenon affects families and professionals in child welfare. An analysis of gender, class, race and culture of child welfare discourses shows how these fathers are seen as deviant, dangerous, irresponsible and irrelevant, and even further, how absence in child welfare is inextricably linked to blaming mothers. In failing to work with fathers, child welfare ignores potential risks and assets for both mothers and children.