Does mother’s employment conflict with child development? Multilevel analysis of British mothers born in 1958

Does maternal employment, while children are very young, affect their development? We link cognitive and behavioral scores of school-aged children to mothers’ employment during preschool years using virtually unique data for two generations in the 1958 British birth cohort. Our multivariate, multilevel model controls for mothers’ own cognitive and behavioral scores in childhood. Results are mixed and minor, confirming other British studies at mid-childhood. Reading is, significantly, slightly poorer where less educated mothers work in the child’s first year of life. We found few other interactions with employment but did detect intergenerational transmission of behavioral and cognitive characteristics.     

A Translation and Validation Study of the Life Orientation Test Revised in the Greek Speaking Population of Nurses among Three Hospitals in Athens and Ioannina

The life orientation test-revised (LOT-R) (Scheier et al. in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67:1063–1078, 1994) is a brief measure for assessing dispositional optimism. The aim of this study was to develop a Greek language version of the LOT-R and to assess the instrument’s psychometric properties. The LOT-R was translated and culturally adopted in Greek language, and the final version was administered, along with a questionnaire consisting socioeconomic characteristics and a single item measuring optimism, to 276 Greek speaking, hospital nurses (222 female, 54 male), aged 22–65 years (mean 37.8, SD 8.3). Results showed that the LOT-R has good internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .71 and item total correlation coefficients from .27 to .73, a unitary structure, and stability over a 3-months period (r = .66). Moreover, the Greek version of the scale exhibited good convergent validity with single-item optimism scale (r = .73). Principal components analysis revealed a two-factor structure representing the constructs of optimism and pessimism. The Greek life orientation test revised appears to be a valid tool in assessing dispositional optimism in Greek speaking people and is expected to facilitate the examination of optimism in Greek speaking populations.     

Fathers and absent fathers: Sociodemographic similarities in britain and the united states

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey and the National Survey of Families and Households in the United States, we present a sociodemographic profile of fathers and compare the determinants of absent fatherhood in each country. Although fatherhood has a younger profile in the United States, especially for blacks, predictors of fathers’ residency with their children are remarkably similar in the two countries. In both countries, the strongest predictor of a father’s absence is the parents’ relationship to each other at the time of the child’s birth. Policy implications of this finding are discussed.     

A comparison of widowhood and well-being among older Greek and British-Australian migrant women

The impact of widowhood on well-being has been well-documented, but to date has not focused extensively on the experience of older migrants who have aged in a foreign land. This study aimed to examine the well-being of older migrant widows from two groups in South Australia: British-born (n = 61) and Greek-born (n = 60) Australian migrants, who had been widowed, on average, 13 years. All participants completed a self-report questionnaire in their preferred language. Three indicators of current well-being (self-rated health, depression and loneliness) as well as variables expected to differ cross-culturally, and potentially influence well-being (mourning rituals; continuing bonds to one's spouse; religiosity; social support) were measured. Greek-born widows displayed higher levels of mourning rituals, continuing bonds and religiosity than the British. Both groups perceived similarly high levels of familial social support. Greek widows also reported worse self-rated health, and increased symptoms of depression and loneliness compared to the British. This paper suggests that the detrimental impact of widowhood on well-being may be greater for non-English speaking migrants who are ageing outside of their country of origin, and who, despite residing in an English-speaking host country for several decades, have retained the linguistic, cultural and religious practices and traditions of their home country.     

Global Catholicism and the Politics of Civil Society

A transformation of the politics of Catholicism worldwide has taken place. The final recognition of the modern principle of religious freedom at Vatican II, together with the assumption by the church of the modern doctrine of human rights, has altered the traditional dynamic of church state relations and the role of the church both nationally and transnationally.
National churches no longer aspire to become state compulsory institutions. It is this voluntary "disestablishment" that has permitted the church to play a key role in recent transitions to democracy throughout the Catholic world. Simultaneously, the papacy has assumed the vacant role of spokesperson for humanity, for the sacred dignity of the human person, for world peace, and for a more fair division of labor and power in the world system.
As the Catholic Church abandons the private sphere assigned to religion and enters the undifferentiated public sphere of civil society to take part in ongoing processes of normative contestation, a tension between catholic universality and Roman Catholic particularity becomes evident.     

A Bayesian semi-parametric approach to the ordinal calibration problem

ABSTRACT

We introduce a semi-parametric Bayesian approach based on skewed Dirichlet processes priors for location parameters in the ordinal calibration problem. This approach allows the modeling of asymmetrical error distributions. Conditional posterior distributions are implemented, thus allowing the use of Markov chains Monte Carlo to generate the posterior distributions. The methodology is applied to both simulated and real data.