Mixed Messages: Parental Responsibilities, Public Opinion and the Reforms of Family Law

This article explores some issues arising when updating familylaw to keep pace with changes in family practices and values,in particular with changing patterns of parenting. It considersthe extension of parental rights and responsibilities beyondthe conventional boundaries of family law – to unmarriedfathers, step-parents and grandparents – with referenceto four different roles of family law. These roles are: protectingchildren, resolving disputes, regulating family life and promotingfamily norms. The article takes as an example of legal reformthe recently enacted Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006, which extendsparental rights and responsibilities to unmarried fathers whojointly register the child’s birth; but not to step-parentsor grandparents. The mixed messages that this reform conveysare considered in relation to the latest evidence of publicopinion in Scotland about parental obligations and the extentto which they align with public opinion on these issues.     

Violence in relationships: A seventh grade inventory of knowledge and attitudes

The purpose of this research was to contribute to existing efforts of battered women's advocates, schools, and researchers by developing a valid and reliable inventory to evaluate educational interventions regarding violence in relationships. Content validity was established by national experts (N=32)solicited to complete an inventory rating scale and comment on the statements' ability to elicit early adolescents' knowledge and attitudes about violence in relation-ships. The revised inventory was tested with seventh grade health education students (N=99).The test-retest reliability criterion was .50. Spearman's rho correlations were .566 for the knowledge section and .669 for the attitude section. Knowledge and attitude sections were measured for internal con- sistency with Cronbach's alpha, with respective values of .3178 and .7207. Item analyses with Wilcoxon Rank Sum tests identified 11 knowledge statements and one attitude statement as significantly discriminating at both test and retest. Gender differences were noted and additional findings were reported. Recommendations for the further establishment of a valid and reliable inventory were made.     

Discovering Collaborative Advantage: The Contributions of Goal Categories and Visual Strategy Mapping

Collaboration can make sense when there is some sort of “collaborative advantage” to be gained, meaning organizations can achieve something together that they cannot easily achieve by themselves. However, the literature is essentially silent on how to identify collaborative advantage. This article addresses this shortcoming in the theory of collaborative advantage for public purposes by proposing a set of goal categories that may be used to help articulate collaborative advantage and introducing the use of visual strategy mapping as part of a facilitated group process to figure out what the collaborative advantage might be. Collaborative advantage, as it is normally understood, consists of shared core goals. Collaborative advantage for public purposes should take into account public values beyond shared core goals.     

Slavery food,soul food,salvation food: veganism and identity in the African Hebrew Israelite Community

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the transformation of meaning of food items central to African American fare from symbols of slavery to means of salvation as the African Hebrew Israelite Community (AHIC) live out their Biblically inspired lifestyle and perfect the vegan diet at its core. Although originating in Chicago in the late 1960s, for over 40 years the institutional and residential base of this transnational millenarian community has been in the Israeli desert town of Dimona. Based on long-term ethnographic acquaintance with their foodways in Israel and in the US, our analysis follows the AHIC’s eclectic incorporation of circulating religious, political, and scientific theories into their Bible-based cosmological-nutritional tenets of regenerative health and spiritual salvation. We argue that their ‘Edenic Diet’ reacts to the traumatic history of African Americans as slaves and as a discriminated against minority in the US, by serving as a means in their struggle for place and acceptance in modern Israel and an active component in their social and spiritual plans for the future.     

Place of registration and place of residence: the non-linear detrimental impact of transportation cost on electoral participation

The French case offers a very valuable opportunity for testing the impact of transportation costs on the individual decision of turnout, because in France, voters can be registered in a municipality other than their residential municipality. Voters with a non-residential registration have to travel great distances in order to cast their ballots compared to voters with a residential registration. Our empirical analysis, based on a unique dataset extracted from the French Census database, uses a selection model to estimate the probability of voting of an individual voter with a non-residential electoral registration and assesses the impact of the distance to the voting municipality on this probability. The analysis shows that distance and in fine the cost of voting have a highly significant impact on electoral turnout: at the median distance (22 km), a 1% increase in distance induces a reduction of 0.01% in turnout in the first round of the 2012 French presidential election and 0.007% in the second round. Moreover, the impact of distance is non-linear: an increase in distance for voters with a short distance to travel is more detrimental to turnout than the same increase for voters who travel great distances. The results are robust to several checks, ranging from analyzing other elections to changes in the estimation method. This analysis provides new insights in the issue of voting cost and its impact on electoral turnout.     

Other-Sex Friendships as a Mediator Between Parental Monitoring and Substance Use in Girls and Boys

Previous research examining relationships between parental monitoring, friendship networks, and substance use did not take into account the gender of both the adolescent and the friends. The goal of this study was to test a mediation model in which having other-sex friends during mid-adolescence mediates the relationships between parental monitoring in early adolescence and substance use during late adolescence. We hypothesized that mediation would be observed for girls but not for boys. A sample of 333 adolescents (60?% girls) was surveyed yearly from ages 12 to 19. The findings provided support for an indirect relationship (mediation via other-sex friendships) between early adolescent parental monitoring and late adolescent alcohol use among girls only. That is, for girls, higher levels of parental monitoring lead to fewer other-sex friendships, which then lead to lower levels of subsequent alcohol use. For drug use, the findings provided support for a direct relationship between early adolescent parental monitoring and late adolescent drug use for both boys and girls. Thus, parents seem to have a protective effect on their daughters’ later use of alcohol by limiting inclusion of male friends in their networks.