Sexual Attraction, Sexual Identity, and Psychosocial Wellbeing in a National Sample of Young Women During Emerging Adulthood

Identity-based conceptualizations of sexual orientation may not account adequately for variation in young women’s sexuality. Sexual minorities fare worse in psychosocial markers of wellbeing (i.e., depressive symptoms, anxiety, self esteem, social support) than heterosexual youth; however, it remains unclear whether these health disparities exclusively affect individuals who adopt a sexual minority identity or if they also may be present among heterosexually-identified youth who report same-sex attractions. We examined the relationship between sexual attraction, sexual identity, and psychosocial wellbeing in the female only subsample (weighted, n = 391) of a national sample of emerging adults (age 18–24). Women in this study rated on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (extremely) their degree of sexual attraction to males and females, respectively. From these scores, women were divided into 4 groups (low female/low male attraction, low female/high male attraction, high female/low male attraction, or high female/high male attraction). We explored the relationship between experiences of attraction, reported sexual identity, and psychosocial outcomes using ordinary least squares regression. The results indicated sexual attraction to be predictive of women’s psychosocial wellbeing as much as or more than sexual identity measures. We discuss these findings in terms of the diversity found in young women’s sexuality, and how sexual minority status may be experienced by this group.     

International aid,trade and investment and access and allocation

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The access to goods and their allocation (who gets what, when, where and how) is one of the analytical problems of the 2009...     

Parental Authoritativeness,Social Support and Help-seeking for Mental Health Problems in Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescents experience high rates of mental health problems but are reluctant to seek professional help. Parents play an integral role in the help seeking process...     

Gendertyping sports: social representations of masculine,feminine, and neither-gendered sports among US university students

Sport is shifting from being hegemonically masculine but it is unclear how sports are viewed as gender segregated or gender integrated. Previous quantitative studies of gendertyping sports have reported mixed findings. Gendertyping constructs social representations that shape institutional and individual sport activities. This study examined how particular sports are represented as masculine, feminine and/or neither-gendered in one sample of 310 students at a US university. Qualitative open-ended recall questions asked students to name three masculine, feminine and neither masculine nor feminine sports. Results revealed that most students were aware of and used hegemonic gendertyped terms to describe sports. Recall questions elicited 2515 namings of 80 different sports that were arrayed as a spectrum of social representations of gendertyped sports ranging from masculine to neither-gendered to feminine. Some representations were hegemonic segregated masculine sports, many were integrated neither-gendered sports, and fewer were segregated feminine sports. Gendertyped social representations of sports offer cultural toolkits for calibrating the practices of doing and redoing gender in sport.     

The PDS in the new German party system

The success of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) cannot be explained solely with a rising tide of GDR nostalgia and/or with the efficiency of PDS members as service providers and advocates at the grass‐roots level. We stress the importance of the PDS as the main political representative of a specific socio‐economic and cultural milie in the former GDR. Furthermore, the article traces the evolution of the PDS from a populist voice of protest of the losers of unification to the beginnings of a new political party. As such it defines its identity more as a radical left‐wing party with strong social libertarian characteristics than a traditional socialist party. The party programme and the electorate of the PDS display remarkable similarities to the fundamentalist wing of the West German Greens in the 1980s, although differences as to the origins of the left‐libertarian ideas remain important. While the PDS seems to have strengthened the significance of the new politics agenda in post‐unification Germany, it is still too early to conclude whether this agenda is firmly rooted in the party or whether it is simply a vehicle to electoral success.     

Models of school-age child care: A review of current research on implications for women and their children

This article discusses various models of children's out-of-school care arrangements, mainly in the United States of America. Forms of care include programs or centers, family day care homes, and self-care. The implications of each of these different systems of care and outcomes for both children and their parents are reviewed through the lens of existing research. While there is no consensus in the research literature, so-called “latch-key” children appear to experience more negative effects than supervised peers, although these negative effects may be mitigated by variables, such as the amount of time spent alone and the parent-child relationship. A small group of studies finds positive outcomes for children who participate in recreational after-school programs, although age-inappropriate care arrangements and age of participating child may be associated with negative outcomes. No research has been conducted across program types. Many mothers of school-age children without regular after-school care or alternative care on school holidays, appear to accomodate their career and work choices to their children's schedules, possibly in order to avoid the “latch-key” alternative.