Women’s attitudes towards the medicalization of childbirth and their associations with planned and actual modes of birth

Problem

Rates of medical interventions in childbirth have greatly increased in the Western world.

Exorcising the Ghosts In the Marital System

A heuristic model is presented for the diagnosis and treatment of families in stress. A systems approach and psychoanalytic concepts are integrated to understand and modify dysfunctional behavior transmitted across generations .     

Social Work Practice With LGBT Seniors

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center began providing services to LGBT seniors in 2008. Since then, the Center’s seniors program has grown to over 3,300 clients. It provides a variety of enrichment and support services with the overarching goal of empowering seniors to successfully age in place. This article outlines the service delivery program of the Center’s Seniors Services Department and describes its successes and challenges in meeting the needs of diverse LGBT seniors. It offers future directions for social work practice, policy, and research with LGBT older adults.     

The Boundaries of Europe: Deconstructing Three Regional Narratives

The shifting boundaries of Europe as lines of enclosure and mobility restriction in the ‘longue duree’are analysed here at the European/supranational level through the deconstruction of three regional narratives on “Europe” and its reborderings in different millennia. These narratives have had a lasting significance in identity construction and spatialities around the Mediterranean and are evidence of the historically specific and constructed nature of the boundaries of Europe, as well as the power relations involved in changing spatialities. Europe is a cultural construct that emerged around the Mediterranean in a captivating Greek myth, much earlier than the period of written history. The notion of Europe then ‘shifted’ to the northwest as a colonial cultural–religious construct of ‘Christendom’ during the Middle Ages, before nation-states emerged. Much later, European integration—in the context of globalization after the end of bipolarity—not only did not melt borders, but in fact created some new and often bizarre hierarchies supported by a bureaucratic narrative and an institutional discourse for unification after two devastating world wars. Unpacking these narratives is important in understanding sociopolitical constructions of ‘Europe’ and its boundaries, their hardening or relaxation, and criticizing essentialism, as well as commenting upon the ambivalent placing in the European Union of certain candidate and neighboring nations.     

The Design of Conditional Cash Transfers: Experiences from Argentina's Universal Child Allowance

Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have spread rapidly in developing countries in the past decade. While there is extensive literature assessing their impacts health, education and other outcomes, little attention has been paid to beneficiaries' subjective experiences of CCT design. This article addresses this issue by exploring how beneficiaries of Argentina's flagship CCT, the Universal Child Allowance, perceive the programme's unique design features. We find male and female beneficiaries tend to support targeted transfers to female carers, and that confusion about payment schedules has important implications for beneficiary engagement. Analysis of these findings offers useful insights into how CCT programme design may affect outcomes.     

Specifying Long-Term Care Provider Responsiveness to LGBT Older Adults

In-depth interviews and focus groups with lesbian, gay, and transgender older adults addressed the question “What does it mean for long-term care providers to be responsive to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) older adults?” Sixteen domains of long-term care provider responsiveness to LGBT older adults were identified, including awareness of centrality of partners, knowledge of importance of preferred gender expression, openness to welcoming LGBT older adults, and ability to create LGBT-safe environments. Future research should include LGBT elders who belong to ethnic minority groups, bisexual elders, and LGBT older adults who do not identify with LGBT labels.     

Role-Playing in the Context of Learning Theory in Casework Teaching

Abstract

This paper explores the growing tendency toward formality and legalism in social work field education. The findings of a national study of “field training agreements” is presented. It is the contention of the authors, that the more explicit the Curriculum Policy Statement and the Accreditation Standards become, in relation to the field component of the curriculum—the closer and more complex becomes the relationship between educational institutions and the practice community. This complexity, as well as the evolving legal climate—with concerns over liability—naturally leads to greater formality. Such formality has the potential for strengthening the university/field agency relationship or destroying it.     

Reducing turnover intent: supervisor and co-worker incivility and socialization-related learning

Emerging leaders are involved in a continual learning process that includes professional and personal identities that intersect and diverge. The identities are coupled with multiple roles and expectations that are embedded within work and non-work identities. This paper examines the impact of leadership development programmes on emerging leaders including the expectations and job demands that are integral to leadership work. More specifically, the paper examines the discourse between work and non-work identities and the strategies of leaders and organizations to strengthen or modify those identities. Monthly Activity Reports prepared by leadership participants were examined and used to support the findings. Additionally, environmental factors that shape the leaders' thoughts and behaviours were examined as the leaders struggled to maintain their core beliefs and work practices in a quest to become leaders or loyalists.     

新农村教育战略理论与战略选择思考

一、教育战略理论研究述评有关教育与社会发展关系问题的研究,国内外非常热烈,这方面的文献颇多,研究的热点集中在反映教育所产生的人力资本效果的研究方面。舒尔茨被认为是现代人力资本理论的奠基人,他对农村经济问题也有大量研究,他认为农村“人力资本是体现于人身体上的知识     

Towards understanding the Nordic paradox: A review of qualitative interview studies on intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) in Sweden

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is a major public health problem in countries around the world, including the Nordic region. Contrary to what would be expected, as the Nordic countries are rated among the most gender equal in the world, survey data suggests that the lifetime prevalence rates of IPVAW in Sweden and neighboring Nordic countries are among the highest in the EU. This phenomenon, which has been termed the Nordic paradox, requires elucidation. The aim of this review is to explore what previous qualitative studies, based on interviews with or field observations of victims, perpetrators, or professionals working in the area, primarily in Sweden, have to teach us about the nature of this paradox. Three interrelated themes are discussed. The first is how gender equality is perceived and addressed as linked, or not, to IPVAW in Swedish research and practice. The second is how violence tends to be othered, for example, through assumptions that violence is perpetrated by foreign rather than Swedish men. The third is how causal mechanisms of IPVAW have been described, typically with reference to norms and dynamics of masculinity, femininity, and heterosexual interaction.