Contextual,cognitive, and adolescent factors associated with parenting in adolescence

In this study, we examined predictors of parenting during adolescence from three domains: the contextual (i.e., stress, support, marital satisfaction), social-cognitive (i.e., beliefs about adolescence), and child (difficulty). Fifty-three mothers and 38 fathers of 13–18 year olds were interviewed and rated on three dimensions of parenting—involvement, autonomy support, and structure. Parents completed questionnaires assessing predictor variables. Results indicated that, for mothers, higher numbers of recent stressful events were associated with less provision of structure and more control. For fathers, relations between views of adolescence and parenting were in evidence; while for both mothers and fathers strong relations between adolescent difficulty and parenting emerged. Relations between perceived difficulty of adolescent and parenting were more apparent in conducive than nonconducive contexts. The differential results for mothers and fathers are interpreted in terms of mothers' greater involvement and less role latitude than fathers. Parents' resources, experience, and expectations are considered in understanding why predictors might be associated with parenting variables.Received Ph.D. in clinical psychology from University of Rochester. Research interests include motivational development, parenting, self- and emotion-regulation. Also investigating factors affecting parenting, especially parent involvement.Received a Master's degree from New York University. Current interests involve interpersonal processes in depression.Received a Master's degree from Clark University. Research interests include the development of self-regulation with particular interest in the effects of power, authority, and responsibility on the socialization and disciplining of young children.Received Master's of Social Work degree from Columbia University. Current interests include factors that facilitate adolescents developing connections with the community.     

My Return to China

There is no doubt in my mind that I will return to China to live. This may evolve to being a 50/50 arrangement with my other home in Australia, but I will return! I am not a big believer in lists, as they seem to be the hackneyed territory of gurus and spotlight seekers, but here I am going to make an exception! These are the top 10 reasons that I will come     

A CELEBRATORY FEMINIST AESTHETICS IN POSTFEMINIST TIMES

In 2011, something surprising happened in terms of Australian feminist cultural memory: a celebratory feminism arrived in the shape of the hugely popular ABC television mini-series, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo. Eschewing dour social realism for a stylish and ludic narrative, Paper Giants uses the story of the women's magazine Cleo to tell the story of Australian women's liberation. This essay analyses the components of the mini-series' celebratory feminist aesthetics, examining the ways in which it mobilises feminist tropes to speak an intelligible feminist language in postfeminist times. Further, I detail how women's liberation becomes central to the national historical narrative underpinning the programme.     

Pathways to the Enabling State: Changing Modes of Social Provision in Western Australian Community Services

This investigation of reform of Western Australian community services problematises assumptions about the enabling state. The investigation is distinctive by virtue of its attention to the departure points as well as the destinations in pathways of policy change and its unpacking of three modes of public provision into their three constituent policy elements (funder-provider mix; the nature of agreements between policy actors; and the type of funding relationships). We find first that government had long adopted some aspects of the model of governance associated with the enabling state. Second, we find some path dependency in policy change towards marketisation. Third, we find highly nuanced policy outcomes combining government exploitation of its authority, market innovations and the maintenance of basic network features of the programs.     

The Declining Appeal of Diasporic Connections: African American Organising for South Africa,Haiti and Rwanda*

Throughout the 20th century, African Americans challenged US foreign policies towards Africa and the Caribbean. In the first half of the century diasporic connections, particularly shared oppression and ancestral ties, triggered responses. When the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), an informal organisation of African American congressional representatives, became the key architects of African American foreign policy in the early 1970s, civil rights tactics were wedded to diasporic appeals to motivate African Americans to help shift US foreign policy towards South Africa and Haiti. Diasporic ties, however, worked against a campaign on behalf of Rwanda. This article argues that black globality, a broader framework that encompasses diasporic connections as only one of many possible ties between African Americans and Africa and African diasporic communities, will better serve the CBC in its goal to move African Americans to act on foreign policy issues concerning Africa and African diasporic communities in the 21st century.     

New Dreams of China: The China Novels of Anne Duffield

This article examines the work of a forgotten novelist, Anne Duffield, whose early novels set in China merit re-examination. Utilizing but also subverting the romance novel formula and alert to the utopian appeal of entertainment, Duffield’s The Lacquer Couch and Lantern-Light create a dream of China that invites intercultural connection, friendship and understanding. As China in the 1920s was rocked by anti-foreigner violence, the vision of these two novels was an appealing and hopeful alternative to the resurgent fears of malevolent fiends reminiscent of an earlier ‘Yellow Peril’ discourse. In addition, Duffield’s China, though romanticized, is also a modern and cosmopolitan one—an important counter to a tendency to imagine China as antiquated and entombed in the past.     

Same law–same rights? Analyzing why Sweden's disability legislation failed to create equal rights in mental health

This article analyzed the apparent paradox of disability rights in Sweden. Despite strong welfare state traditions and stated Government ambitions to create generous statutory entitlements for all disabled people using a single, comprehensive Disability Act, psychiatric disabilities were principally excluded from the Disability Act's rights and provisions. The study focused on Sweden's Mental Health Reform and Disability Reform using governance perspectives that traced and analyzed the policy-processes of both reforms. Theoretically guided analytical frameworks were developed to help understand the divergent reform outcomes. The first focused on legislative arguments of regulatory specificity and legal enforcement mechanisms to consider whether the Disability Act was formulated in a manner that was easier to apply to certain disabilities. The second analyzed ideological arguments and the influence of Government political beliefs that signaled specific reform ‘visions’ to implementers and thereby influenced policy implementation. The main findings are that both perspectives matter as the dual influences of legislative and ideological differences tended to exclude mental health service users from the Act's generous disability rights. The overall conclusion was that while legislation was an important regulatory mechanism, the Government's underlying ideological reform vision was also an essential governance instrument that signaled Government intentions to implementing agencies and thus influenced the creation of enduring disability rights.