Debating Same-Sex Marriage: Lessons from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Loving</Emphasis>, <Emphasis Type="Italic">Roe</Emphasis>, and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Reynolds</Emphasis>

The United States Supreme Court, in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage (SSM). With Republicans now controlling the Congress and presidency, and with value-traditionalists and ‘strict’ constitutionalists influencing the party’s legislative agenda and judicial nominees, Obergefell’s future and the contours of SSM rights are uncertain. Proponents assume the decision will delegitimate opponents, just as Loving v. Virginia (1967) accelerated the delegitimation of racial segregationists. SSM opponents counter with the Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and argue that, like Roe, Obergefell undermines the democratic process, which is better suited to resolve a highly-charged moral dispute. Like Roe, Obergefell will not resolve the debate but, instead, trigger a durable opposition. We add a third possible path, drawing on the evolving public discourse on polygamy since the Supreme Court upheld prohibitions in Reynolds v. United States (1878). The politics of polygamy shows that, if SSM opponents are delegitimated, they may reemerge as legitimate participants in the public sphere. These paths offer insights into uncertainties, contingencies, and predictions regarding the durability of SSM resistance and other oppositional movements. They also lead to revisionist interpretations of the effect on public discourse flowing from these three seminal court decisions. The politics of interracial marriage (after Loving) shunned the losing political faction from the public forum, while those of abortion (after Roe), and, recently, polygamy, illustrate a more vibrant, pluralist model of deliberation. Whether SSM opponents will mimic a Roe model, or follow the trajectory of Loving or Reynolds, is now the question.     

The Effects of Tulsa's Pre‐K Program on Middle School Student Performance

As states have upgraded their commitment to pre‐K education over the past two decades, questions have arisen. Critics argue that program effects are likely to fade out or disappear over time, while supporters contend that program effects are likely to persist under certain conditions. Using data from Tulsa Public Schools, three neighboring school districts, and the state of Oklahoma, and propensity score weighting, we estimate the effects of Tulsa's universal, school‐based pre‐K program on multiple measures of academic progress for middle school students. We find enduring effects on math achievement test scores, enrollment in honors courses, and grade retention for students as a whole, and similar effects for certain subgroups. We conclude that some positive effects of a high‐quality pre‐K program are discernible as late as middle school.     

Innovation and standardization as drivers of companies’ success in public procurement: an empirical analysis

The Journal of Technology Transfer - There is a significant potential to improve the benefits from public procurement through a better understanding of drivers in company success at the...     

A Longitudinal Investigation of Cognitive Self-schemas across Adolescent Development

Research in developmental psychology highlights youth’s self-schemas as one possible pathway to improve adolescents’ functioning and promote positive developmental outcomes. Despite this, the trajectory of positive and negative self-schemas is relatively understudied. This study addresses this limitation by empirically examining the trajectory of self-schemas in a community sample of 623 youth (M?=?13.04 years; 54% female; 49% African American, 4% Biracial, 47% European American) who were followed over a seven-year period. Caregivers completed measures of parenting practices, maternal rumination and negative inferential style, and adolescents completed a computerized behavioral task assessing self-schemas (i.e., mental frameworks that guide attention, interpretation, and memory of one’s experiences). Multilevel growth curve modeling results demonstrated a quadratic slope for negative self-schemas and no mean-level change for positive self-schemas. These trajectories did not vary by gender or racial group. However, parenting factors differentially influenced the trajectories. Specifically, higher levels of parental involvement at baseline, or an active interest and engagement in a child’s experiences and activities, related to lower levels of negative self-schemas during adolescence. Additionally, higher levels of parental rumination and parental negative control at baseline related to lower levels of youth positive self-schemas at baseline. These findings contribute to models of youth cognitive development.

     

Context Matters: Links Between Neighborhood Discrimination, Neighborhood Cohesion and African American Adolescents’ Adjustment

Racial discrimination has serious negative consequences for the adjustment of African American adolescents. Taking an ecological approach, this study examined the linkages between perceived racial discrimination within and outside of the neighborhood and urban adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and tested whether neighborhood cohesion operated as a protective factor. Data came from 461 African American adolescents (mean age = 15.24 years, SD = 1.56; 50 % female) participating in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Multilevel models revealed that perceived discrimination within youth’s neighborhoods was positively related to externalizing, and discrimination both within and outside of youth’s neighborhoods predicted greater internalizing problems. Neighborhood cohesion moderated the association between within-neighborhood discrimination and externalizing. Specifically, high neighborhood cohesion attenuated the association between within-neighborhood discrimination and externalizing. The discussion centers on the implications of proximal stressors and neighborhood cohesion for African American adolescents’ adjustment.     

Book reviews

Understanding Gender in the Social Sciences and Women's Research Karin Widerberg and Arnhild Taksdal, eds, F?rståeker av kj?nn —i samfumsvitenskapenes fag og kvimeforskning (Understanding Gender in the Social Sciences and Women's Research). Oslo: Ad Notam Gyldendal, 1992.

A feminist literary study in romanticism Eva Borgström: "Om jag får be om öbst”: Kring kvinnliga författares kvimobilder i svensk romantik. ("If I may ask for ölost”: On the Images of Women Portrayed by Women Writers of the Swedish Romantic Age). 272 pp. Summary in English. Göteborg: Anamma förlag, 1991.     

Dress and Distinction in Nursing, 1860–1939: ‘A corporate (as well as corporeal) armour of probity and purity’ 1

This article considers the uniform and uniform rules which formed an important part of the ‘reformed nurse’ in the latter years of the nineteenth century and remained central to the concept of the nurse in the twentieth. It will be shown that the rules and regulations of nurses’ garb continued long after the rules for women’s dress in general had relaxed. These dress codes were used by the reformers of nursing to provide a ‘space’ between the ‘new or reformed nurse’ and her morally suspect predecessor, the Sairey Gamp figure in Charles Dickens’s Martin Chuzzlewit. The nurses’ garb was created to provide a common identity for the profession at a time of rapid social change. But within this context it also represented its distinctiveness; uniform was a metaphor for the class divisions and symbolic fractures within the profession.     

‘Modernist Madonnas’: Dorothy Todd,Madge Garland and Virginia Woolf

During the 1920s Vogue magazine in the UK was transformed from a society paper into a magazine of high modernism and the avant‐garde. The editor was Dorothy Todd. Todd was assisted by her protégée and lover, the Australian‐born Madge Garland. During this period Garland and Todd developed friendships with Virginia Woolf, other members of Bloomsbury, writers such as Rebecca West and artists such as Marie Laurencin. Madge Garland also developed friendships with artists, couturiers and intellectuals in both Paris and London. Dorothy Todd was sacked from Vogue in 1926 because of what was perceived by Conde Nast as its rather too bohemian direction. Todd’s career never recovered from this blow. Garland, however, went on to become a leading fashion journalist, businesswoman and textile expert. In 1947 she was appointed to the Royal College of Art, London, as the first Professor of Fashion Design. In the last stage of her career Garland wrote a number of books about art, fashion history and gardening. This article considers the lives and achievements of Dorothy Todd and Marjorie Garland, and their involvement with Virginia Woolf as her fashion advisors, editors and acquaintances. The article also examines the way in which Vogue celebrated the work of non‐Bloomsbury members and explores Marjorie Garland’s major contribution to fashion journalism, history and teaching in the UK.