Quality of Maternal Parenting among Intimate-Partner Violence Victims Involved with the Child Welfare System

Children are overrepresented in households with intimate-partner violence (IPV), and many suffer the double burden of being the subject of maltreatment and bearing the consequences of abuse to their mothers. Despite this situation, little information exists concerning parenting by women who have been abused by an intimate partner. We examine the relationship between women’s experiences with IPV and the quality of maternal parenting using data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. The sample consisted of 1,943 female caregivers of children younger than 10 years investigated for child maltreatment. Women who had experienced IPV in the past but were no longer victims of IPV had significantly better parenting scores than women who were currently experiencing IPV, when other risk factors were controlled. This study adds to the evidence that IPV does not necessarily impair maternal parenting. Women abused by an intimate partner deserve a thorough assessment of what services they need: parenting services should be offered as warranted on a case-by-case evaluation of the particular woman’s parenting skills.     

Political Reinforcement: How Rising Inequality Curbs Manifested Welfare Generosity

We propose a political reinforcement hypothesis, suggesting that rising inequality moves party politics on welfare state issues to the right, strengthening rather than modifying the impact of inequality. We model policy platforms by incorporating ideology and opportunism of party members and interests and sympathies of voters. If welfare spending is a normal good within income classes, a majority of voters moves rightward when inequality increases. As a response, the left, in particular, shift their welfare policy platform toward less generosity. We find support for our arguments using data on the welfare policy platforms of political parties in 22 OECD countries.     

Kalte Vertrautheiten – Private Kommunikation auf der Social Network Site Facebook

This paper argues that forms of private communication are not separable from the media they are communicated with. Methodologically this paper aims at comparing the literal culture of sentimentalism with the practices of private communication that is found today on the social network site (SNS) Facebook. This comparison shows that upon digital terms the historical coupling between the distinctions public/private and the metaphor of coolness/warmth intersect. The media therefore transforms a specific style of private communication. Within the literal culture of sentimentalism letters were written as emotional outpourings between fellow feeling friends. Within the empirical results of the DFG-project “Public and Privacy 2.0” rather cold intimacies of strange friends on SNS can be found. The networked digital friend has to perform his online intimacies while excluding unspecific other addresses within the network. Therefore practices of distance and irony, cool distinctions and the communication of indifference, as well as cryptic maneuvers of exclusion become functional. Privacy is not decomposed – as the sociological critique of SNS often states. Private communication is rather transformed by the technical and social affordances of network communication. Against the backdrop of the imperative of connection the users practice a cool conduct and a culture of distance on Facebook.     

Turmoil among depository institutions: Implications for the U.S. real estate market

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, turmoil unlike any since the Great Depression has caused such unprecedented failures among federally insured banks and savings and loans (S & Ls) that the insurance funds for these institutions were driven into insolvency. The traditional commitment of S & Ls and the expanding commitment of banks to housing finance make it important to examine the implications of these record failures for the availability of owner‐occupied housing loans. The substantial commitment of banks and the more recent commitment of S & Ls to commercial real estate also necessitate an examination of the implications of depository failures on the commercial real estate market. This paper therefore will examine selected data from the past decade and assess the implications of the recent turmoil within the federally insured depository industry for the financing of U.S. real estate.     

Ausgewählte Rechtsfragen zur Vertretungsbefugnis nächster Angehöriger nach dem SWRÄG 2006

Mit dem am 1. 7. 2007 in Kraft getretenen Sachwalterrechts-?nderungsgesetz (SWR?G) 2006 wurden die §§ 284b bis 284e in das ABGB eingefügt und damit die Vertretungsbefugnis n?chster Angeh?riger geschaffen. Der Beitrag er?rtert einige dogmatisch interessante, zugleich aber auch praxisrelevante Fragen, die dieses vollkommen neuartige Rechtsinstitut aufwirft.     

Serving the homeless: public administration as science,Process and Art

This paper highlights a three-year odyssey working with the City of Memphis and nonprofit agencies to assess the extent of homelessness and identify gaps in care. It is suggested that working with the homeless is a classic example of what is meant by the concept of public administration as a science, process, and art. Even the most sophisticated scientific understanding of homelessness is necessary but not sufficient; the ability to bring together a diverse and fragmented provider population also requires expert process skills and an understanding of the art of persuasion and high-trust leadership.