Cumulative Family Risk Predicts Increases in Adjustment Difficulties across Early Adolescence

Family is an important socialization context for youth as they move through early adolescence. A significant feature of this complex socialization context is the accumulation of potential family risk factors that may compromise youth adjustment. This study examined cumulative family risk and adolescents’ adjustment difficulties in 416 two-parent families using four waves of annual longitudinal data (51 % female youth). Risk factors in four family domains were examined: socioeconomic, parents’ psychological realm, marital, and parenting. Cumulative family risk experienced while in 6th grade was associated concurrently with daughters’ higher internalizing problems and with increased internalizing problems during early adolescence. Cumulative family risk was associated concurrently with sons’ higher externalizing problems and with daughters’ increased externalizing problems over time. Cumulative family risk was associated concurrently with lower grades and with declining grades over time for both daughters and sons. The number of risk domains also was associated with youths’ adjustment difficulties during early adolescence, providing evidence that risk in two-parent families involves more than ineffective parenting. These findings suggest a critical need to provide strong support for families in reducing a variety of stressors across multiple family domains as their children traverse early adolescence.     

The Will to Change: Lessons from Canada's Successful Decarceration of Youth

In 1997, Canada's youth custodial facilities held 3825 sentenced youths. Eighteen years later, this number was 527—an 86 percent reduction. Overall youth imprisonment (sentenced + pretrial detention) decreased by approximately 73 percent. This paper uses Canada's successful decarceration of youths to understand what might be learned about decarceration more broadly. By examining the reforms that transpired in Canada's treatment of young offenders since the 1960s and the political/cultural shifts that occurred since the 1990s, we demonstrate that the decline resulted from changes occurring in various parts of the system. Finally, we contrast this decarceration with more than 60 years of relative stability of Canadian adult imprisonment rates as well as Canada's failure to substantially decrease youth pretrial detention in order to identify those factors seemingly necessary to reduce imprisonment more generally.     

Countering Punitiveness: Understanding Stability in Canada's Imprisonment Rate

Canada's imprisonment rate has not changed appreciably since 1960. This stability contrasts with the increased imprisonment rates experienced by Canada's most obvious comparators—the United States and England and Wales. We examine this divergence and propose several interrelated explanations for Canada's anomalous pattern. While Canada is shown not to be immune to pressure for harsher practices and policies, it has been able to counter or balance these trends with other more moderating forces. In particular, we suggest that Canadians have largely been able to escape several of the wider forces or "risk factors" at the root of higher incarceration in other countries. Further, we suggest that certain protective factors of a historical, cultural, and structural nature can also be identified that have limited the extent to which Canada has adopted the same punitive policies documented in the United States and England and Wales.     

Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk Among Men Who Have Sex with Men: Initial Test of a Conceptual Model

Childhood sexual abuse has been associated with HIV transmission risk behavior in men who have sex with men. This study examined an adapted model that was originally developed to explain the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and HIV risk behavior among women in a sample of men who have sex with men. Men attending a large gay pride event (n=647) completed anonymous surveys that assessed demographic characteristics, childhood sexual abuse, symptoms of dissociation, trauma-related anxiety, borderline personality characteristics, hopelessness, substance use, and sexual risk behavior. A latent variable partial least squares analysis was conducted to test the interrelationships between childhood sexual abuse, exchanging sex for money or drugs, emotional disturbances, drug use, substance use in the context of sexual behavior, and sexual risk behavior. The model fit the data well and accounted for 10% of the total variance in sexual risk behavior. History of childhood sexual abuse predicted exchanging sex for money or drugs and this relationship was partly accounted for by active drug use. Substance use proximal to sexual behavior also emerged as a key factor in predicting sexual risk behavior. Findings from this study, therefore, indicate a direct association between history of child sexual abuse and high risk for HIV infection related to engaging in sex trade.     

Harvard on China II: Logic,evidence, and ideology

Abstract

The December 1972 issue of this Bulletin contained two contributions to an ongoing debate on imperialism in Chinese history from Andrew Nathan and Joseph Esherick. This review article has the more restricted, if not more modest, aim of examining two of the most significant works cited by Nathan and Esherick, both of which have been published in the Harvard University Press's East Asian Series. The two books provide a reinforcing and complementary picture of the effects of foreign economic penetration on, respectively, the peasantry and the indigenous industrial and handicraft production of China over roughly the same time period. I will restrict myself to a critique of the internal consistency and the standards of logic and evidence in the two volumes.     

Review: Lucian Pye,The Spirit of Chinese Politics

Abstract

The most appropriate review of Professor Pye's “psychocultural” study of Chinese politics would be an analysis of his personal motives for writing it. This might be approached via his childhood experiences as a missionary's son in China, or, alternatively, through his connections with the CIA in adult life. However, since this review argues that such an analysis (i.e., the method of his book) is unfair and irrelevant because it is an attempt to discredit ideas without examining the truth they may contain, I will try to set an example by confronting instead the ideas he presents and the assumptions which underlie them.