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.     

Group therapists' countertransference reactions to multiple deaths from aids

Group therapists for those with HIV Related Diseases are becoming the “professional” survivors of this world-wide epidemic. From their experiences we may learn a great deal more about the effects of multiple deaths on mental health care professionals. As therapists they are constantly eliciting and listening to the fears, hopes, agonies and terrors of those with this disease. They become the bereaved. Witnesses to the deaths of many of their group members, they struggle with a wide range of emotional responses while at the same time assisting surviving group members in their struggle to live with these deaths. Mourning reactions and countertransference phenomena are in abundance as these therapists grapple with these group processes. This article identifies and examines these therapists' responses by focusing on clinical illustrations drawn from their bi-weekly supervision sessions.     

Developing Age-Friendly Cities: Case Studies From Brussels and Manchester and Implications for Policy and Practice

Developing environments responsive to the aspirations of older people has become a major concern for social and public policy. Policies and programs directed at achieving “age-friendly” communities are considered to require a wide range of interventions, including actions at the level of the social and physical environment. This article compares the age-friendly approaches of two European cities, Brussels and Manchester, with a particular focus on policies and initiatives that promote active aging in an urban context. The article examines, first, the demographic, social, and multicultural contexts of Brussels and Manchester; second, the way in which both cities became members of the World Health Organization Global Network of Age-Friendly Cities and Communities; third, similarities and differences in the age-friendly approaches and actions adopted by both cities; and fourth, opportunities and barriers to the implementation of age-friendly policies. The article concludes by discussing the key elements and resources needed to develop age-friendly cities.     

Infusing Career Development to Strengthen Middle School English Language Arts Curricula

An approach is presented for strengthening middle school standards‐based English language arts (ELA) classroom instruction by infusing theory‐ and research‐supported career development constructs and practices. Over an 8‐week period, 90 urban 7th graders participated in an integrated ELA–career development curriculum. Career agency emerged as an important construct for students. It was related to key markers of ELA achievement (i.e., standardized test scores, grades, and positive change in 6th‐ to 7th‐grade test scores) and elaborated on in nuanced ways by students in their written narratives. Four themes related to career agency were identified in student writings: time perspective, challenges of self‐direction, career development, and social and emotional development. Advantages for students and schools related to synergy, scale, and sustainability are discussed.     

Exploring the Emergence of Side Biases and Familiarity–Novelty Preferences from the Real‐Time Dynamics of Infant Looking

This study examined how look dynamics contribute to infants’ emerging novelty preferences. Time‐series analyses were used to study the temporal nature of looking displayed by 3‐ to 5‐month‐old infants during a serial paired‐comparison task. Evidence was found only for short‐term stability: Novelty preferences and side biases were not stable from one visit to the next, but looking was consistent from one moment to the next producing stability within trials and temporarily across trials leading to the formation of behavioral runs. Persistence in looking left or right across multiple trials did not change from one visit to the next, but persistence in looking at familiar stimuli declined with age. By Visit 3, familiarity runs occurred less often than did novelty runs. Frequent but highly variable runs, including surprisingly late familiarity preferences, suggest that overall side biases and novelty preferences found during visual preference tasks are emergent phenomena affected by moment‐to‐moment changes in looking.     

Why is the History of Heterosexuality Essential? Beliefs About the History of Sexuality and Their Relationship to Sexual Prejudice

Heterosexual people with more positive attitudes to lesbians and gay men generally believe that homosexuality is immutable, is not a discrete social category, and that homosexuality exists in all cultures and time periods. Equivalent beliefs about heterosexuality and beliefs about components of sexuality have been less often researched. 136 people with diverse sexualities described heterosexuality as more universal across history and culture than homosexuality (Study 1). 69 heterosexual-identified participants similarly believed that love, identity, behavior, and desire were more historically invariant aspects of heterosexuality than of homosexuality (Study 2). Less prejudiced participants thought all components of homosexuality—except for identity—were more historically invariant. Teasing apart beliefs about the history of components of heterosexuality and homosexuality suggests that there is no “essential” relationship between sexual prejudice and the tension between essentialist and constructivist views about the history of sexual identity.