Attentive Surveillance: A Preliminary Study of Prioritizing Mothering Standards in the Face of Intimate Partner Violence

A retrospective qualitative constant comparative analysis of the stories of English speaking women (N==22) who mothered children age 6 or under, while experiencing abuse at the hands of a male partner, was conducted. The emergent theory of Attentive Surveillance (AS), a vital, proactive, complex process of monitoring and prioritizing, was identified. Two non-linear and interrelated stages emerged. One, Understanding Circumstances (UC) is a gradual increase of awareness that the family environment and a woman’s ability to achieve her mothering standards are affected by her partner’s behavior. The second stage, Prioritizing Standards (PS), is a deliberate or a subconscious balancing act of assessing needs, adapting, and ranking mothering standards while still mothering as close to the original standards as possible. Recommendations for professionals, based on AS, in supporting mothers existing capacities to foster mother-child relationships and healthy child outcomes in the context of intimate partner violence are provided.     

The Impacts of Paid Family Leave Benefits: Regression Kink Evidence from California Administrative Data

We use 10 years of California administrative data with a regression kink design to estimate the causal impacts of benefits in the first state-level paid family leave program for women with earnings near the maximum benefit threshold. We find no evidence that a higher weekly benefit amount (WBA) increases leave duration or leads to adverse future labor market outcomes for this group. In contrast, we document that a rise in the WBA leads to an increased likelihood of returning to the pre-leave firm (conditional on any employment) and of making a subsequent paid family leave claim.     

Social Exclusion: The Interplay of Group Goals and Individual Characteristics

Past research has shown that adolescents justify social exclusion based on concerns for group functioning, and yet, to date, no study has evaluated whether group functioning justifications shift or remain stable across different exclusion contexts. In this study, we systematically manipulated exclusion context (i.e., competitive or noncompetitive soccer groups) and individual characteristics of the target of exclusion to test the nature of the interaction between these factors during exclusion judgments. Adolescents’ (N = 201; 61 % Female) exclusion judgments differed across contexts only when an individual’s ability was under consideration. Intergroup (i.e., gender, nationality) and interpersonal (i.e., aggression, shyness) characteristics overwhelmed contextual considerations. Results indicate the complexity of factors weighed by adolescents when making exclusion judgments, and suggest the need for extension of the present findings to understand more fully the interaction between the context of exclusion and individual characteristics in exclusion judgments.     

Implementing the Mental Health Act 2007 in British general practice: Lessons from Ireland

Changes in mental health legislation (e.g. Mental Health Act 2007 in England and Wales, Mental Health Act 2001 in Ireland) have generally improved adherence to international human rights standards, but also present challenges to primary care providers. When mental health legislation was substantially reformed in Ireland, 62.9% of general practitioners (GPs) felt the new legislation was not user-friendly. Majorities of GPs who felt the legislation affected their practice reported increased workloads (85%) and various other difficulties (53%). GPs who had received training about the legislation were more likely to find it user-friendly (43% versus 30.9%), and informal training (e.g. from colleagues) was just as likely as formal training to be associated with a GP finding it user-friendly. With similar changes to mental health legislation being introduced in England and Wales, it is significant that informal training is just as good as formal training in helping GPs work with new mental health legislation.     

Managerial Networking in Nonprofit Organizations: The Impact of Networking on Organizational and Advocacy Effectiveness

Public management scholars are interested in the ways that public managers can improve the performance of their organizations and, by extension, public service outcomes. However, public sector outcomes are increasingly being produced by nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have encountered increased pressures to improve effectiveness in recent years, both from their funding entities and from the public. A growing body of public management research has shown that managerial networking can pay dividends for organizational effectiveness, yet no studies to date have considered the effects of managerial networking on nonprofit effectiveness. This is the first study to apply the basic elements of Meier and O'Toole's model to the nonprofit sector. Using survey data from a random sample of 314 nonprofit human service organizations in 16 U.S. states, the authors explore the frequency of various networking relationships on organizational and advocacy effectiveness. The findings reveal that political networking increases advocacy effectiveness and community networking increases organizational effectiveness.     

Texts, contexts, concepts and ideologies: some recent work in the study of political ideas

Books reviewed in this article:
McClelland, J. S. A History of Political Thought: A Thematic Introduction
Morrow, J. History of Political Thought
Schwarzmantel, J. The Age of Ideologies: Political Ideologies from the American Revolution to Post Modern Times
Skinner, Q. Liberty Before Liberalism
Tannenbaum, D. G. and Schultz, D. Inventors of Ideas An Introduction to Western Political Philosophy