‘Quite the opposite of a feminist’: Phyllis McGinley,Betty Friedan and discourses of gender in mid-century American culture

This article examines the relationship between feminist and anti-feminist discourses in the period between World War II and the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963). It takes as its primary focus the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘housewife poet’ and self-proclaimed anti-feminist, Phyllis McGinley. McGinley was a successful poet who has disappeared from the record since the publication in 1964 of Sixpence in her Shoe—her best-selling retort to The Feminine Mystique. Her example is important because it gives voice to the much-maligned suburban housewife and offers a spirited alternative to Friedan's reading of white, middle-class domesticity as always and inevitably oppressive. The article offers a close reading of McGinley's work and situates it in relation to its historical and cultural contexts (specifically the highly charged domain of suburban domesticity) and to its wider readership. It compares her anti-feminism with that of other anti-feminist writers of the period, thereby illuminating the tensions and contradictions in contemporary debates.     

Is Mindful Parenting Associated with Adolescents’ Well-being in Early and Middle/Late Adolescence? The Mediating Role of Adolescents’ Attachment Representations,Self-Compassion and Mindfulness

There is some evidence that mindful parenting, a parenting approach that involves the practice of bringing mindful awareness to the parent-child relationship, is associated with several positive psychosocial outcomes in adolescents. However, only a few studies have investigated the mechanisms that may underlie that association. This study explores whether the link between mindful parenting and adolescents’ well-being is mediated by adolescents’ attachment representations, self-compassion and mindfulness skills. The sample comprised 563 parent-child dyads (95.6% mothers). Adolescents (61.5% girls) had a mean age of 14.26 years (SD?=?1.66, range?=?12–20). Parents completed a measure of mindful parenting, and adolescents completed measures of attachment representations, self-compassion, mindfulness, and well-being. Mindful parenting was indirectly associated with adolescents’ self-compassion and mindfulness through a more secure perception of the relationship with the parents, and was indirectly associated with adolescents’ well-being through perceived attachment security, self-compassion and mindfulness. The path model was invariant across stages of adolescence but some relations in the model varied across gender. Self-compassion and mindfulness seem to develop within a parent-child relationship characterized by affection, self-regulation, and mindful awareness. These two resources, along with mindful parenting and positive representations of the parent-child relationship, are associated with adolescents’ well-being.     

What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

Understanding Entrepreneurial Intent in Late Adolescence: The Role of Intentional Self-Regulation and Innovation

Entrepreneurship represents a form of adaptive developmental regulation through which both entrepreneurs and their ecologies benefit. We describe entrepreneurship from the perspective of relational developmental systems theory, and examine the joint role of personal attributes, contextual attributes, and characteristics of person-context relationships in predicting entrepreneurial intent in a sample 3,461 college students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States (60 % female; 61 % European American). Specifically, we tested whether personal characteristics (i.e., gender, intentional self-regulation skills, innovation orientation) and contextual factors (i.e., entrepreneurial parents) predicted college students’ intentions to pursue an entrepreneurial career. Our findings suggest that self-regulation, innovation orientation, and having entrepreneurial role models (i.e., parents) predict entrepreneurial intent. Limitations and future directions for the study of youth entrepreneurship are discussed.     

Active and Engaged Citizenship: Multi-group and Longitudinal Factorial Analysis of an Integrated Construct of Civic Engagement

Civic participation does not necessarily equate to civic engagement. However, to date, integrated measures of civic engagement that go beyond civic behaviors have not been developed. In this article, we propose an integrated construct of civic engagement, active and engaged citizenship (AEC), that includes behavioral, cognitive, and socioemotional constructs. Using data from 909 adolescents (62.4% girls) who took part in the Grades 8–10 assessments of the longitudinal 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), we assessed the structure and measurement invariance of AEC. AEC was proposed as a second-order latent construct that encompasses four first-order latent factors: Civic Duty, Civic Skills, Neighborhood Social Connection, and Civic Participation. Measurement invariance was tested over time (from Grade 8 to Grade 10) and between boys and girls. The results supported strong invariance of AEC over time and between sexes. Implications of AEC for future research and practice are discussed.     

Vertical transfers and the appropriation of resources by the bureaucracy: the case of Brazilian state governments

The purpose of this study is to explore whether the transfers received by state governments in Brazil are being appropriated by the bureaucracy as wages. The wage differential between the public and private sectors was used as a measure of this appropriation, following the technique for wage decomposition proposed by Oaxaca. Our results show that transfers stimulate appropriation by the bureaucracy, but that private groups existing within the states contend for these resources. The results also indicate that the resources appropriated are distributed uniformly between the various groups composing the bureaucracy.     

LGB and Questioning Students in Schools: The Moderating Effects of Homophobic Bullying and School Climate on Negative Outcomes

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual students (LGB) and those questioning their sexual orientation are often at great risk for negative outcomes like depression, suicidality, drug use, and school difficulties (Elliot and Kilpatrick, How to Stop Bullying, A KIDSCAPE Guide to Training, 1994; Mufoz-Plaza et al., High Sch J 85:52–63, 2002; Treadway and Yoakam, J School Health 62(7):352–357, 1992). This study examined how school contextual factors such as homophobic victimization and school climate influence negative outcomes in LGB and questioning middle school students. Participants were 7,376 7th and 8th grade students from a large Midwestern county (50.7% Female, 72.7% White, 7.7% Biracial, 6.9% Black, 5.2% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic, and 2.2% reported “other”). LGB and sexually questioning youth were more likely to report high levels of bullying, homophobic victimization, and various negative outcomes than heterosexual youth. Students who were questioning their sexual orientation reported the most bullying, the most homophobic victimization, the most drug use, the most feelings of depression and suicidality, and more truancy than either heterosexual or LGB students. A positive school climate and a lack of homophobic victimization moderated the differences among sexual orientation status and outcomes. Results indicate that schools have the ability to lessen negative outcomes for LGB and sexually questioning students through creating positive climates and reducing homophobic teasing.     

Nonkilling 101 — Is a nonkilling society possible?

ABSTRACT

Following the definition presented by Paige, nonkilling refers to the absence of killing, threats to kill, and conditions conducive to killing in human society. How can education contribute to bringing about such societies? As the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) called upon the global community to ‘significantly reduce all forms of violence and related death rates everywhere’ by 2030, a growing need exists to understand the educational measures and transformations relevant to building societies where human killing is greatly reduced and eventually absent. Just as scholars, practitioners and policy-makers in other areas have had to rethink their impact in contributing to this global goal, in 2015 the “Vasa Statement on Education for Killing-Free Societies” was adopted, proposing concrete recommendations. The articles put together in this special issue of the Journal of Peace Education provide grounds to sustain the crucial role of education in curving the global epidemic of lethal violence.     

How Conditioning on Posttreatment Variables Can Ruin Your Experiment and What to Do about It

In principle, experiments offer a straightforward method for social scientists to accurately estimate causal effects. However, scholars often unwittingly distort treatment effect estimates by conditioning on variables that could be affected by their experimental manipulation. Typical examples include controlling for posttreatment variables in statistical models, eliminating observations based on posttreatment criteria, or subsetting the data based on posttreatment variables. Though these modeling choices are intended to address common problems encountered when conducting experiments, they can bias estimates of causal effects. Moreover, problems associated with conditioning on posttreatment variables remain largely unrecognized in the field, which we show frequently publishes experimental studies using these practices in our discipline's most prestigious journals. We demonstrate the severity of experimental posttreatment bias analytically and document the magnitude of the potential distortions it induces using visualizations and reanalyses of real‐world data. We conclude by providing applied researchers with recommendations for best practice.