‘Do you want to do some arm wrestling?’: children's strategies when experiencing domestic violence and the meaning of age

The aim of this study is, by analysing children's and young people's discourses, to investigate their strategies in response to domestic violence episodes, in relation to their age. The empirical data come from individual interviews with children and young people (ages 8–20 years) who had experienced domestic violence and lived at refuges for abused women. The thematic analysis shows that the children describe a wide range of strategies before, during and after a violent episode, that all children act regardless of age and that strategies vary according not only to age but also to situation and context. The theoretical framework used is the sociology of childhood, and the analysis engages with theoretical concepts of age, agency and positioning.     

Levels of interventions for MFTs working with family businesses

Family businesses (FBs) are a significant population in the world and therefore part of most practicing marriage and family therapists (MFTs) clientele; however, little is mentioned about FBs in the training of MFTs. This article offers some guidance to practicing MFTs who service this population, as well as MFTs who wish to expand their practice into a focused consultation practices with FB systems. This article uses Doherty's Levels of Family Involvement Model as a road map for MFTs to organize the vast amount of literature on FB systems as well as the many ways in which MFTs might serve FBs. We also offer suggestions for the necessary skills, experiences, and levels of engagement required at each level of intervention provided by MFTs.     

Subjective well-being and reference-dependence: Insights from Mexico

Data from Mexico are used to examine whether two indicators of subjective well-being??income satisfaction and income adequacy??correlate not only with the respondent??s absolute level of income, but also with their assessment of how their income compares relative to the income of a reference group, the level of income they hoped to have achieved by that stage of their life, and the income they had three years earlier. Both subjective well-being indicators correlate positively with the ranking relative to all three reference points. Some of the findings differ across segments of the income distribution. Subjective well-being assessments of the poor are influenced more by the inability to achieve income aspirations, while differences with respect to others is a more prominent factor among non-poor respondents.     

Educated Caring: The Emergence of Professional Identity Among Nurses

This article examines the formation of occupational identity in a nursing program. The normative and ideological dimensions of this process are revealed in the program’s goals and the views of educators and students through qualitative data from observations and 30 in-depth interviews. Educators seek to socialize students toward professionalism to raise the occupation’s status by emphasizing the scientific and technical basis of nursing. Yet students uphold a gendered discourse by identifying a normative dimension of caring as central to their occupational identity. The dilemma between professionalism and caring is reconciled as students construct an occupational identity based on “educated caring,” where these two dimensions are equally valuable and significant.

And yet they Co-move! Public capital and productivity in OECD

In this paper, we add to the debate on the public capital–productivity link by applying very recent developments in the panel time series literature that take into account cross sectional correlation in non-stationary panels. In particular, we evaluate the productive effect of public capital by estimating various production functions on a panel of 21 OECD countries over the period 1975–2002. Our results suggest that public capital has a positive long run impact on output, with elasticities that range between 0.05 and 0.15, depending on model specification. These findings are robust to the existence of spillover effects from public capital investments in other countries and to the inclusion of other productivity determinants, like human capital, the stock of patents and R&D capital. Finally, we do not find any important effect of public capital on GDP in the short run: this suggests that public infrastructure investments might not be a powerful countercyclical policy instrument.     

Emerging coherence and relations to communication among executive function tasks in toddlers: Evidence from a Latin American sample

Recent work within early executive function (EF) seems to suggest that toddlers show distinct patterns of development, involving poorly correlated performance across EF tasks and significant improvements over relatively short periods of time. The present study sought to extend these findings by investigating evidence for these patterns in toddlers and the existence of more traditional patterns of EF (e.g., correlations between tasks, links to language) when using the same tasks in a novel Latin American sample. Eighty toddlers (18–24 months) and sixty young preschoolers (30–36) months completed a battery of EF tasks, early social communication, and receptive and expressive language measures. Results indicated that toddlers showed similar distinct patterns of development (i.e., few relations between tasks and links to responding to joint attention), but by early preschool a more cohesive EF and links to language were present. Further, work demonstrated significant age (older children outperformed younger children), gender (girls outperformed boys), and socioeconomic differences (satisfied basic needs outperformed unsatisfied basic needs, but only on the snack delay). This work provides evidence for patterns of emerging EF development within this novel cultural sample (and evidence for group differences) that may be supported by communicative and representational development.     

REGULATION AND CONTROL OF SUBJECTIVITY AND PRIVATE LIFE IN THE CONTEXT OF ARMED CONFLICT IN COLOMBIA1

A qualitative study was carried out in four municipalities in four different conflict zones in Colombia. Intrafamilial violence and gender violence are studied through the testimonies of the people interviewed. The impact was analysed in terms of the exercise of control over the civilian population by paramilitaries in relation to subjectivity, the family, social networks and the prevailing moral order. In effect, the strengthening of barriers between traditional gender identities has enabled a de-structuring of traditional masculinity through moral co-optation, the reinforcement of traditional feminine identity and the objectification of the sexuality of young women, at the same time as they are manipulated sexually and emotionally. In general, strong legitimation of the model of the armed fighter as a paradigm of masculinity is found in children. In addition, the de-structuring of the family and its manipulation as a means of influence over civil society is one of the strategies employed for the installation of a regime of terror that fractures social networks. It does this through the erosion of confidence and the legitimation and mystification of the power of an actor whose mediation in inter-family and micro-social conflicts has been legitimated, instrumentalizing and scaling up traditional violence, taking advantage of the power vacuum and moral weaknesses in local culture.     

Using the Therapist's Inner Conversation in Teamwork with Novice Therapists

Peter Rober's work (2005a) on the therapist’s inner conversation (TIC) has been a significant contribution to understanding the therapist's 'here and now' experience that focuses on the emergence of different voices responding to what is said in the therapy session. Frediani and Rober (2016) conducted an investigation into the experience and TIC of novice therapists concerning emotions aroused and how they deal with them during family therapy. Their research prompted us to ask how this methodology could work with recent graduates and those in the last year of their undergraduate training. This was addressed in the adolescent psychotherapy team that is part of the Equipo de Trabajo y Asesoría Sistémica (Systemic Counselling and Teamwork) (eQtasis) of the Psychology Department of the University of Chile. An important characteristic has been developing an ethics for clinical practice and generating a collaborative reflexive approach as a central aspect of the clinical training. The paper aims to promote the legitimacy of the experience of novice therapists who despite limited professional experience have many stories that connect with what is said in therapy.