Parent-adolescent congruence for adolescent substance use

Parental reports of adolescent substance use were compared to the adolescents' self-reports using identical scales. Congruence was defined as exact agreement on whether adolescents were current users, ex-users, or never-users. Both parents were found to be less accurate in predicting their adolescents' alcohol use compared to cigarette or marijuana use. Single mothers were significantly less likely to be congruent than were mothers from two-parent households. Mother and father congruence on all substances was unrelated to the adolescent's sex, race, or after school employment. For both parents, congruence for adolescent marijuana use was significantly related to the age and GPA of the adolescent. Congruence may also reflect important properties of family functioning, as significant relations were found between both adolescent and parent ratings of family cohesion and parent-adolescent congruence on perceptions of marijuana use.This research was supported by Grant DA03706 from the National Institute of Drug Abuse (Hyman Hops, Principal Investigator).Jennifer Langhinrichsen is a doctoral candidate in psychology interested in adolescent and family interactions. The other authors are psychologists or data analysts working on family influences on substance use and mental health.     

Migration,Reconfigurations of Family Relations and Social (In)Security: an introduction

This introduction reviews the contributions this collection of articles makes to understanding migration, social reproduction and social protection. Migration necessarily involves reconfigurations of family relations and these entail changes in the patterning of social (in)security. Our expansive interpretation of the concepts of social reproduction and social protection situate the reorganisation of gendered family lives as integral to the migration–development nexus. Life-course thinking informs analysis of how migrants ‘do family’ and what this means for gender, identity and (in)security. The collection explores how ‘care deficits’ are managed, both discursively through the negotiation of gendered ideologies about gender identity and the family, and through the everyday practice of social reproduction. The resulting reorganisation of social security involves taking on new risks and vulnerabilities for migrants and their families. For both internal and international migrants the challenges involved in securing social reproduction are powerfully shaped by welfare and migratory regimes and raise important questions about the relationship between social protection and broader social policy and citizenship issues.     

Migration and Social Reproduction at Critical Junctures in Family Life Course

This review paper focuses on low-income migrants in (or from) developing countries and their social reproduction, and asks what this means for their social protection. We focus on the recognition that migration involves (re)negotiations of social reproduction by migrants and their families. These renegotiations are heavily inflected with gendered power relations in ways that are specific to individual and family life course. As such, migration involves taking on new risks and dynamic vulnerabilities in sustaining everyday and intergenerational social reproduction. These are sharpened by the increasing feminisation of migration flows and obstructed by wider changes in social provisioning and exclusionary citizenship regimes. The resulting social protection challenges unfold over lifetimes, and are especially marked at critical periods of transition. Life-course thinking has the potential to theoretically integrate emerging insights from rich empirical studies; doing this supports the rationale for revaluing the importance of social reproduction within debates about migration and social protection.     

The Changing Relationships of Co-wives Over Time in Rural Southern Uganda

Co-wives are often portrayed both as being rivals for their husband's affections and resources as well as collaborators in managing the family. I explore a further dimension: historical time. The life trajectories of individual women in rural Uganda show how co-wife relationships are established, change, endure or end. In addition to ageing, which plays a part in women's changing conjugal arrangements, political upheavals and HIV and AIDS have also had a profound impact on their lives, affecting not only their relationship and attitude towards their husbands but also towards their children, as well as each other.     

Building skills in qualitative research to inform pro-poor policy: experience from a Bangladeshi NGO

This paper describes the research methodology followed in the ‘Livelihoods of the Extreme Poor Project’, a collaborative research project in Bangladesh between PROSHIKA (a large national NGO) and DFID (the UK government department for international development). The dual purpose of this project was to learn about poor people's livelihoods and train the PROSHIKA research team in the use of qualitative research methods. The research findings were to be fed directly into policy formulation and the planning of new development interventions for the poorest people in Bangladesh. The paper provides an assessment of what the approach used achieved both in terms of building staff capacity and in policy influence, concluding that it has been largely successful in achieving its purpose.     

Prostitution policy and the women's movement

Feminists have consistently viewed prostitution as a social problem and opposed state regulated or legalized prostitution. However, feminists in different eras have taken conflicting policy stands on the problem. Progressive era feminists and their organizations supported severe state suppression of prostitution. In contrast, contemporary feminist groups join prostitutes in support of decriminalization. Through historical analysis that compares feminist thought and organization of the two eras, this paper offers an explanation of this contradiction in policy positions based on shifts in feminist thought about the role of the state, particularly criminal sanctions, in addressing prostitution, and changes in the organizing strategies of feminists. The paper also offers important insights to contemporary feminists contemplating policy stands which rely on legal sanctions as a strategy and facilitate alliances with moral crusaders to redress social problems.