8: Competency,Relevance, and Empowerment

Children's programs should be restructured so as to provide social systems that vigorously support child and youth care rather than hinder it. Specifically, programs should be reoriented so as to promote normal growth and development, i.e., competency, particularly interpersonal competencies. Programs should be made more relevant to community, rather than institutional, living. Democratizing programs by empowering children and those who care for them will make the programs more effective and appropriate for raising and treating children and youth. Restructuring as a strategy for change is also examined.     

Presubmission Inquiries: Problematic,Counterproductive, and Unnecessary

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

Dis-Assembly Lines: gestures,situations, and surveillances

In “Americanism and Fordism,” Antonio Gramsci offers a brief meditation on the gestural performances of assembly-line workers who, rather than become subordinate to the disciplinary flow of the machine, cultivate perfectly timed gestures that allow workers to hide in plain sight: or, in other words, to inhabit the scene of management otherwise. Rather than extend Gramsci's investment in virtuosic, masterful performances of gesture, this article considers the potentiality of gesture through Lucille Ball's and Tehching Hsieh's performances of bad timing. As different as these performances are in terms of genre and historical situation, each uses gesture as a technique to performatively divide the labor process, producing fleeting temporalities of waste within rhythms marshaled toward production and accumulation. While it tracks the effects of these itinerant gestures, this article reconsiders the oppositions between productive and reproductive work, rationality and emotionality, and work and home that sustain Gramsci's theory, as well as how the collapse of such oppositions introduces alternative historical and artistic trajectories into theories of precariousness.     

Gay,Lesbian, and Bisexual Youths: Separation-Individuation,Parental Attitudes,Identity Consolidation,and Well-Being

The study examines separation-individuation during adolescence and young adulthood for gay, lesbian, and bisexual youths, and evaluates the consequences of parent-youth relationships for well-being and sexual orientation identity development. Seventy-two youths completed interview and questionnaire measures of relatedness, autonomy, and conflictual independence in relation to mothers and fathers, along with self-reports of parent attitudes, identity consolidation, and well-being. When youths perceived that their parents had relatively accepting attitudes regarding sexual orientation they demonstrated closer relatedness and greater conflictual independence with parents, but not greater autonomy. Both accepting parental attitudes and greater separation-individuation predicted more positive well-being for the youths, though only parental attitudes predicted greater consolidation of sexual orientation identity. Although mothers were generally closer and more supportive than fathers, relationships with both parents were important, independent predictors of personal adjustment. The discussion proposes mutual influences among separation-individuation, perceived acceptance by parents, identity consolidation and well-being.