Let Me Go: The Influences of Crawling Experience and Temperament on the Development of Anger Expression

Infants’ emerging ability to move independently by crawling is associated with changes in multiple domains, including an increase in expressions of anger in situations that block infants’ goals, but it is unknown whether increased anger is specifically because of experience with being able to move autonomously or simply related to age. To examine the influence of locomotion on developmental change in anger, infants’ (N = 20) anger expressions during an arm restraint procedure were observed longitudinally at a precrawling baseline assessment and 2 and 6 weeks after the onset of crawling. Infant age at each crawling stage was unrelated to the frequency of anger expressed in response to arm restraint. At 6 weeks postcrawling onset, infants whose mothers rated them as temperamentally higher in distress to limitations, compared with those rated lower, showed a greater increase in the frequency of anger expressed during the arm restraint relative to earlier assessments and took longer to reduce the frequency of anger expressed when no longer restrained. Findings suggest that experience with autonomous crawling has an effect on anger expression, independent of age, and that a temperamental tendency to become distressed by limitations may exacerbate the effect of crawling on anger expression.     

The Subjectivity of Fairness: Managerial Discretion and Work–Life Balance

We use organizational justice theory to examine how perceptions of fairness affect the decision‐making process of line managers. In‐depth interviews were conducted with 35 Irish managers to explore how managers make organizational allocation decisions in cases where it is impractical to offer work–life balance accommodations to all employees. The findings suggest that firstly, managers construct the ‘life’ aspect of work–life balance within a heteronormative framework, where the emphasis is on caregiving and most usually parenting. Secondly, managers actively use their decision‐making powers around both formal and informal work–life balance supports to minimize injustice within their departments. By bringing together ideas about organizational justice and managerial decision‐making, we indicate how managers determine fairness through a decision‐making process narrowed by embedded gender role beliefs. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.     

Defending White Scientific Masculinity

While many feminist and postcolonial scholars have analyzed the post-9/11 politic in the United States, few have focused on the anthrax “attacks” that followed the 11 September 2001 World Trade Center disaster. The FBI search for the perpetrator of the 2001 anthrax mailings was an important node in US national security discourse making – it culminated in the fingering of a white male government biodefense scientist and cast doubt on the role of scientific expertise in provisioning national security. This article argues that while “white scientific masculinity” was put into question, it was simultaneously shored up as a nationalist symbol of protection against bioterrorism. This article traces shifts across the three FBI-led profiles of the anthrax perpetrator, along with concomitant news media coverage: the white male “loner” nonscientist, the white male “loner” amateur scientist and finally the white male biodefense scientist. Using a cultural studies approach, this article details how at each successive investigatory stage profilers mobilized hegemonic discourses to re-instantiate the authoritative status of white scientific masculinity in US national security. This analysis offers an important dimension to feminist and postcolonial critiques of the symbolic and institutional investment in white masculinity during the War on Terror.     

Underestimating Protection and Overestimating Risk: Examining Descriptive Normative Perceptions and Their Association with Drinking and Sexual Behaviors

Individuals who engage in risky sexual behavior face the possibility of experiencing negative consequences. One tenet of social learning theory is that individuals engage in behaviors partly based on observations or perceptions of others’ engagement in those behaviors. The present study aimed to document these norms–behavior relationships for both risky and protective sexual behaviors, including alcohol-related sexual behavior. Gender was also examined as a possible moderator of the norms–behavior relationship. Undergraduate students (n = 759; 58.0% female) completed a Web-based survey, including various measures of drinking and sexual behavior. Results indicated that students underestimate sexual health-protective behaviors (e.g., condom use and birth control use) and overestimate the risky behaviors (e.g., frequency of drinking prior to sex, typical number of drinks prior to sex, and frequency of casual sex) of their same-sex peers. All norms were positively associated with behavior, with the exception of condom use. Furthermore, no gender differences were found when examining the relationship between normative perceptions and behavior. The present study adds to the existing literature on normative misperceptions as it indicates that college students overestimate risky sexual behavior while underestimating sexual health-protective behaviors. Implications for interventions using the social norm approach and future directions are discussed.     

Development of Vocal Protests From 3 to 18 Months

Infants often protest the activities of their caregivers, and this particular social interaction may provide an important window on early communication and its development. This study used naturalistic methods to investigate the development of vocal protests. Fifteen mother‐infant dyads at each of 5 ages, from 3 to 18 months, were observed at home. Maternal behaviors of caregiving and prohibiting were tallied from videotapes, as were infants' protests of these behaviors. Maternal caregiving decreased with age, but maternal prohibitions increased. There were no changes over age in the probability of protesting maternal caregiving behavior; however, 12‐month‐olds were more likely to protest prohibitions than 6‐ or 8‐month‐olds. Older infants were also more likely to use intense protests, such as screams, than younger infants. These age‐related changes were mirrored by the differences in prohibitions and protests observed between 8‐month‐olds who could crawl and those who could not. Findings from this study were related to previous research on infant crying as an important part of the prelinguistic communication system.     

What's wrong is right: A response to the state of the discipline

In the June issue ofSociological Forum, several authors addressed the question, What's Wrong with Sociology. Answers included increased fragmentation of the discipline, and the lack of an identifiable cumulative core of sociological knowledge. This paper examines many of the claims made by the contributors to the June 1994Sociological Forum, reframes their arguments, and by placing debates regarding the problems in sociology in a broader perspective, identifies many of the recent advances made by the discipline. Focusing on such notable contributions to the field as feminist and postmodern scholarship, we locate the positive side of multiple perspective research.Feminist Scholars in Sociology is a collective of researchers and teachers at the University of Colorado interested in exploring and sharing feminist theory and methodology.     

SCHOOLS OF ACTIVITY AND INNOVATION

Explanations of artistic innovation have generally focused on political or psychological factors influencing individual socialization. This article suggests an alternative approach focusing on the organizational processes in an art world, specifically the production of concert music. Concerts are produced through the collective activity of musical specialists. Compatible collaborators identify each other by constructing "schools of activity" that group conventional concert practices and practitioners. Different schools, however, do not simply represent alternative conventions, rather they represent degrees of convention that correspond to varying aesthetic interests in innovation and virtuosity. The first part of this article examines the organization of artistic activity and the formation of schools. The second part presents data from the concert world illustrating the organization of alternative types of artistic practice.     

Examining the link between program implementation and behavior outcomes in the lifestyle education for activity program (LEAP)

Lifestyle Education for Activity Program (LEAP) was a comprehensive, school-based intervention designed to promote physical activity in high school girls. The intervention focused on changes in instructional practices and the school environment to affect personal, social, and environmental factors related to physical activity. Multiple process evaluation tools and an organizational assessment tool were developed to monitor program implementation from a framework called the LEAP essential elements, which characterized complete and acceptable intervention delivery; secular trends were also monitored. Using process data, LEAP intervention schools were categorized into low- and high-implementing groups and compared with control schools on nine essential elements assessed at the organizational level. The Wilcoxon scores test revealed that low- and high-implementing intervention, and control schools differed significantly on two of nine administrator-reported organizational-level components: having a physical activity team and having a faculty-staff health promotion program. A mixed-model analysis of covariance indicated that, compared to control schools, a greater percentage of girls in high-implementing schools reported engaging in vigorous physical activity. Process evaluation can be used to understand the relationship between level of implementation and successful program outcome.     

The emotional toll of postfeminist fatherhood

Postfeminism shapes the political economy of the workforce and household, constituting a re-entrenchment of traditional heterosexual gender regimes and the pressure to transgress them. Focusing on the understudied area of postfeminist masculinity, we analyze the emotional toll some fathers experience as a result of the fraught expectations to be the breadwinner, nurturing parent, and enlightened feminist spouse who completes equal domestic duties. Using empirical data of parents’ participation in a family-based health intervention, we argue that the paradoxical expectation to enact traditional gender relations and to adopt gender egalitarianism is exhausting, upsetting, and confusing for fathers. By focusing on the affective dimensions of postfeminism, we demonstrate how working to achieve the impossible expectation of doing “it all,” a bind that women have been caught in for centuries, takes an emotional toll on fathers and couples, leading to discontent at work and home, and in regard to their self-concept, parental role, and spousal relationship. We close by offering counter examples of fathers and couples who have disengaged from postfeminist parenting relations and have reached a state of contentment. Contrary to the alignment of postfeminism with positive affect, the experience of resisting postfeminist resulted in feelings of joy, pride, and satisfaction.