Woman-Thought, Social Capital, and the Generative State: Mary Austin and the Integrative Civic Ideal in Progressive Thought

This essay explicates Mary Austin's theory of citizenship and demonstrates her contribution to the larger literature on social democratic citizenship emerging in the early twentieth century. The primary text considered is her monograph, The Young Woman Citizen (1918) . In this piece, Austin reimagines the spatial and gender ordering of the polity to create an integrative and inclusive civic ideal. She employs the concepts of society and mind as a means of blurring the boundaries between the public and private and integrating the polity, while she turns to woman-thought, social capital, and the generative state to secure women's inclusion. Austin's work combines a unique form of the gender-difference argument for suffrage with progressive political philosophies in an effort to construct a model of the polity in which women share sovereignty with men, socially, culturally, and institutionally.     

Just Another Club? The Distinctiveness of the Relation Between Religious Service Attendance and Adolescent Psychosocial Adjustment

This study used hierarchical linear modeling to compare longitudinal patterns of adolescent religious service attendance and club attendance, and to contrast the longitudinal relations between adolescent adjustment and religious service versus club attendance. Participants included 1050 students (47% girls) encompassing a school district in Canada, who completed the survey first in grade nine and again in grades 11 and 12. Results demonstrated that patterns of religious service attendance over time were quite different from other clubs. Religious attendance was uniquely associated with several indicators of positive as well as negative adjustment. Club involvement, conversely, was only associated with positive adjustment––particularly for individuals who reported sustained involvement over time. Findings suggest that religious services may provide some unique experiences––both positive and negative––over and above what may be provided in other clubs, and that sustained, rather than sporadic participation in clubs, may be especially important for adolescent adjustment.

Same-sex attraction and successful adolescent development

This study investigated the relation of adolescent same-sex attraction to “successful development” (Baltes, P. B., Am. Psychol. 32:366–380, 1997). Based on a survey of high-school adolescents, four groups were defined according to the nature of self-reported sexual attraction: exclusively heterosexual (EHA; n=3594); mostly heterosexual (MHA; n=124); bisexual (BSA; n=122); and same-sex attraction (SSA, n=36). Groups were compared across multiple intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental domains based on mean group differences and prevalence of developmental assets. Although the EHA group reported the most positive status across domains, several similarities among the groups were noted. Groups did not differ significantly in friendship quality and perceptions of school climate in the mean group comparisons, as well as academic orientation and (low) peer victimization in the assets-based analyses. Implications for successful development among adolescents reporting same-sex attraction are discussed along with the integration of the study of non-heterosexual youth into mainstream adolescent research.

The Role of Spirituality Versus Religiosity in Adolescent Psychosocial Adjustment

This study investigated the interaction between religiosity (defined as church attendance) and spirituality (defined as personal beliefs in God or a higher power) on psychosocial adjustment. Four groups were created capturing 4 different religious/spiritual orientations. Differences were assessed between the groups on a wide range of psychosocial indicators. Participants included 6578 adolescents ages 13–18 encompassing a school district in Ontario, Canada. Results were striking with regards to the consistency with which religious youth reported more positive adjustment than did non-religious youth, regardless of level of spirituality. Spirituality may not be as salient an influence on behavior as religiosity. The secondary analyses indicated that the advantage for religiosity may not be entirely unique to church attendance, but rather a function of being part of any community. However, where religiosity may be uniquely associated with adjustment (over and above benefits associated with participation in any community) is in lower levels of risk behaviors.