Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Resident Mothers and the Moral Dilemmas they Face During Custody Disputes

Recent scholarship has critiqued the tendency for separated mothers in custody disputes to be defined as hostile and alienating. Through the presentation of three case studies, drawn from an interview-based study with 21 women, we show how such pejorative constructions only arise when the conflicting gendered moral accountabilities of contemporary motherhood are overlooked. We found that mothers tend to believe that contact with non-resident fathers is generally in a child’s best interests. However, as a result of balancing complex moral obligations for the care of their children, they may raise questions about particular kinds of arrangements for contact with particular fathers. We argue, therefore, that family law practice will lead to better outcomes for children when professionals listen to the history of, and reasons for, mothers’ positions. To enable family law professionals to undertake this task, we offer an alternative interpretive framework for making sense of women’s stories. Should family law professionals make use of this framework, it is likely that they will understand that the positions mothers adopt are often the outcome of the difficult moral dilemmas they encounter in caring for their children, and that the reductive rubric of the ‘hostile mother’ needs to be treated with scepticism.     

The UN decade for women and Japan: Tools for change

Rapid industrial growth in post-World War II Japan has contributed to radical external changes in the lives of Japanese women. Among them, the increase in the average woman's lifespan and the decrease in family size have given women a number of years when they are relatively free of childcare and therefore available to enter the job market. Nevertheless, traditional values help to maintain rigid sex-role stereotyping and are woven together with the aims of the capitalist, corporate society to form a complex socio-economic fabric in which women are kept in a subordinate position economically, socially and psychologically. It is against this background that the International Women's Year and the UN Decade for Women have been introduced to Japan and have had the positive effect of providing both validity to the efforts of individuals and organizations struggling for sexual equality, and tools with which to apply leverage in the struggle to change discriminatory social institutions. In this brief paper, a number of issues that are being confronted by women in Japan today will be discussed within the context of the general socio-economic trends with the aim of clarifying gains in the struggle to ensure equality for women as well as some of the challenges which lie ahead.Note: As this paper was written in the summer of 1984, the political situation has changed somewhat since then.     

Conditions for unity and action: A collective vision

This paper is a collaborative effort that describes a theoretical framework for understanding the diversity of women's experiences by focusing on the lives of the four authors. The model developed looks at individual women within the social contexts of academia and community. Factors put forth that influence women's lives are: the history of each woman, the principles she lives by, the issues she recognizes as important, and the action strategies she develops to survive in an oppressive society. As a collaborative project, this paper also reflects a bond of friendship among the writers that has deepened through their collaboration.     

The value of physical change in adolescence: Consequences for the parent-adolescent exchange relationship

This research examines the effects of specific physical changes associated with puberty on peer and parent relationships of early and middle adolescent white boys. The data used are from a longitudinal study of Milwaukee school children conducted by Simmons and Blyth (1979). On the basis of past research, most of the physical changes that occur during puberty were expected to increase peer status. According to Richer's (1968) exchange model, these positive effects in the domain of peer relations should, in turn, reduce the resource dependency of the adolescent on his parents. As a result, greater independence from parents should ensue and the likelihood of conflict should increase. As expected, significant positive relationships were found for the effects of various physical changes on most peer status variables and independence from parents. However, no significant relationships were found for the effects of physical changes on parent-adolescent relationship quality or conflict with parents. Also contrary to expectations, controlling for changes in peer status did not alter the positive effects of physical change on independence from parents. Finally, tests for interactions showed that the parent-adolescent relationship was negatively affected when parents did not grant greater independence to the physically changing adolescent. In conclusion, it is suggested that while resource dependencies may indeed change during puberty, parents alter their expectations for their children and grant greater independence based on the adolescent's physical appearance alone.An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, New Orleans, 1989. It is based on the author's doctoral dissertation, submitted to the University of Minnesota.The author has a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Minnesota. He is currently analyzing data from the recently completed National Survey of Families and Households on dating and remarriage in later life. He is also continuing his analysis on the data set used here to explore changes in the factor structure of orientations to parents and peers as a result of pubertal and other early adolescent transitions.     

Son of joe: Continuity and change among white working class adolescents

The present article focuses upon the much-neglected topic of white working class youth — the children of another other America. Based upon the available literature as well as upon a recent program of ethnographic research, the institutional settings — community, family, school — within which working class youth grow up are examined with particular emphasis on their climate and values. Attention is paid to the heterogeneity contained within this segment of the population pointing to four distinct types: collegians, greasers, hippies, and those encapsulated in family life. The article points to factors that promote a potential increase in residential social class homogeneity that, in turn, promotes class values, social and personal expectations, and modal relationships that increasingly diverge from the norms of an urban-industrial middle class society and that in considerable measure either contribute to a growing conservative alienation from the larger society or make adjustments to that society more problematic for its youth. The emergent picture of white working youth in part resembles that of youth in general, but in a more significant measure is much different from that found in either higher or lower social strata.This research was supported by USPHS-NIH Contract 70-511 and USPHS-NICHD Grant No. 04156.Received Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Research interests include post childhood socialization, social change and deviance, and urban social studies.Received Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago. Main research interest is social change and deviance.Candidate for Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University. Main research interests are social stratification, youth, and social change in an industrial society.     

Parliamentary enclosure,common rights and social change: Evidence from the parts of Lindsey in Lincolnshire

Parliamentary enclosure is considered between the mid‐eighteenth and the mid‐nineteenth centuries. Three motives for enclosure are identified: to change the structure of rural society, to secure profit, and to promote social stability. Enclosure laid the basis for the final destruction of the English peasantry. Those who gained were, essentially, large landlords and large capitalist tenants. Those who lost were all other members of rural society who relied on their rights of commons: and especially independent owners of small acreages, cottagers with no holdings in the common fields and squatters on the commons. The article seeks to establish (1) the importance and value of commons and rights of common and (2) what happened at enclosure when rights of common were abolished; with evidence almost entirely from the Parts of Lindsey in North Lincolnshire. From c.1790 onwards (until well after 1870, in fact) there was a prolonged attack on all aspects of rural popular culture and parliamentary enclosure was one important element in that attack.     

Survival in the ‘master's house’: The role of graduate teaching assistants in effecting curriculum change

Since graduate teaching assistants administer most core courses at U.S. universities (and hence reach the majority of the undergraduate population), their potential for effecting political change is immense. This potential has too often been ignored. This paper suggests ways teaching assistants can organize and work towards bringing feminist perspectives into core courses in a way that complements the efforts of Women's Studies and that circumvents the current problem of decreased funding for the administration of new programs.