Sons and Mothers: New Insight into the End of Active Motherhood in the ‘Age of Austerity’

True independence is difficult for young adults to achieve by leaving home due to economic austerity and contemporary expectation. Such extended dependence has, however, been little studied. Midlife mothers were interviewed to explore their experience of having their adult sons live at home. The interviews were analysed using Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin in Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Sage, Newbury Park, CA, 1990). The essence of the mothers’ (n = 5) experience was captured in the core category, Coming to Terms and Entering a New Phase. This category integrates the three-stage model of process that occurred as mothers accepted that their maternal role was changing and they needed to prepare for the next stage of their lives. The three stages were represented by the subcategories, Shifting Role, Anticipating Loss and Letting Go. The women believed that their sons would not be able to leave home until they could purchase a property, a distant prospect for many. The findings extend the work of previous lifespan models, including that of Apter (Secret paths: women in the new midlife. W. W. Norton, New York, 1995) but with greater depth and clarity, in a vital and changed contemporary context that is likely to be relevant for a large population of women.     

Effects of Inter-Parental Conflict on Children’s Social Well-Being and the Mediation Role of Parenting Behavior

Applied Research in Quality of Life - Inter-parental conflicts can have devastating effects on children’s well-being and social behavior. This study explores the association between an...     

New Religious Movement Membership and the Importance of Stable ‘Others’ for the Making of Selves

Challenging the view that people join New Religious Movements because they have fallen victim to powerful brainwashing techniques, the analysis of in-depth life history interviews of 23 former members from 11 different Australian ‘cults’ suggests that membership was personally negotiated and motivated by a desire for stronger social connections, albeit for different reasons. While for some participants, a desire for social connectedness was related to a strong need for guidance and direction from ‘stable’ others, for others it reflected a desire for self-change or self-enhancement. To make sense of the participant narratives, symbolic interactionist understandings of the self are applied.     

When Romantic Partners’ Goals Conflict: Effects on Relationship Quality and Subjective Well-Being

Most studies have explored goal pursuit from an intraindividual perspective; however, it is becoming increasingly clear that people’s relationships influence many aspects of goal pursuit (Fitzsimons and Finkel in Curr Direct Psychol Sci 19(2):101–105, 2010). The current study examined the influence of goal conflict between romantic partners on relationship quality and the subjective well-being of the partners. In a sample of 105 dating couples (N = 210) both partners provided ratings of their subjective well-being, relationship quality, and the degree of conflict they experience when trying to pursue their goals. Structural equation modeling was used to conduct dyadic analyses on the variables. Results showed that both partners’ reports of higher goal conflict were directly associated with lower relationship quality and lower subjective well-being. Lower relationship quality was, in turn, also associated with lower subjective well-being. Furthermore, one partner’s report of goal conflict was indirectly related to the other partner’s subjective well-being through relationship quality. These findings indicate that relational influences on goal pursuit have implications not only for goal pursuit but also for well-being and relationship quality.     

Positive Experiences at Work and Daily Recovery: Effects on Couple’s Well-Being

The present diary study investigates, at the within-person level, how job satisfaction mediates the relationship between self-rated job performance and recovery experiences (i.e., psychological detachment from work and relaxation) during off-job time. Furthermore, we explore the effects of these two recovery experiences on couple´s well-being. Data were collected from 145 dual-earner couples (N = 290 participants; N = 1450 occasions) with a daily diary design (five consecutive working days). Multilevel analyses showed that daily job performance positively predicted psychological detachment and relaxation, and that daily job satisfaction partially mediated this relationship. In addition, we found that psychological detachment and relaxation have positive effects on own and partner´s indicators of well-being (i.e., relationship satisfaction and positive emotions). The benefits of recovery go beyond the individual and affect their partner´s level of well-being.     

Knowledge of Objective ‘Oughts’: Monotonicity and the New Miners Puzzle

In the classic Miners case, an agent subjectively ought to do what they know is objectively wrong. This case shows that the subjective and objective ‘oughts’ are somewhat independent. But there remains a powerful intuition that the guidance of objective ‘oughts’ is more authoritative—so long as we know what they tell us. We argue that this intuition must be given up in light of a monotonicity principle, which undercuts the rationale for saying that objective ‘oughts’ are an authoritative guide for agents and advisors.     

Social Rights and Migrant Realities: Migration Policy Reform and Migrants’ Access to Health Care in Costa Rica,Argentina, and Chile

Immigration poses a significant challenge to states’ existing social protection systems, especially in developing countries that are already struggling to provide social services for their citizens. In particular, immigration produces a tension between citizenship rights—those extended only to citizens, and social rights—rights extended by the state to others within their national territory. Immigration raises questions not only about the rights and access of migrants to health and other social services but also the level and quality of provisions to citizens. We draw on literatures on welfare regimes in Latin America, welfare magnets, and the legitimacy of social rights to examine the nexus of migration and health care policy in Costa Rica, Argentina, and Chile—three countries that have recently pursued immigration reform. We argue that variation in the extension of immigrants’ social rights to health is explained by the interaction of existing migration and social policies, the nature of the health care system in each country, and, in some cases, international and regional norms.     

‘New Age’ revisited: By way of entry into restorative justice

The present article pursues striking similarities between the discourse of philosophies and practices often categorised as ‘New Age’, and that of restorative justice. By bringing observations from data material produced in seemingly very different fields of research to a close encounter, a common discourse of transformation is tentatively explored, adding to contemporary works that warn against assuming ‘New Age’ as a sui generis movement or milieu. The article is an exercise in tracing connections across different fields of study, lending support to the claim that such tracing may contribute to the opening out of our topic in ways that have implications for what we can understand as constituting a social environment, for what we can understand as constituting context, for what we can understand as constituting ‘New Age’.     

Why ‘non-mental’ won’t work: on Hempel’s dilemma and the characterization of the ‘physical’

Recent discussions of physicalism have focused on the question how the physical ought to be characterized. Many have argued that any characterization of the physical should include the stipulation that the physical is non-mental, and others have claimed that a systematic substitution of ‘non-mental’ for ‘physical’ is all that is needed for philosophical purposes. I argue here that both claims are incorrect: substituting ‘non-mental’ for ‘physical’ in the causal argument for physicalism does not deliver the physicalist conclusion, and the specification that the physical is non-mental is irrelevant to the task of formulating physicalism as a substantive, controversial thesis.

Work Engagement of Dual-Working Couples: Dissimilarity and Its Relation to Both Partners’ Well-Being

Work engagement is a positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterized by vigor, dedication, and absorption. Work engaged individuals not only function better at work, but also transfer these benefits to home - research has shown that work engagement crosses over between marital partners. In previous studies on crossover, this phenomenon was evidenced only by significant correlation between self-reports of partners’ work engagement, while measures of dissimilarity between partners were completely ignored. However, work engagement dissimilarity - with one partner being highly enthusiastic and immersed in his/her work and the other one lowly - could be related to some aspects of both partners’ well-being and might improve its prediction. Hence, the goal of this study was to examine work engagement dissimilarity within dual-earning couples. In addition to self-report measures, we collected partners’ ratings of work engagement and its subdimensions as well. The data collected on 178 dual-working Croatian couples showed significant correlation of overall work engagement, vigor, dedication and absorption between various pairs of self- and other-ratings measures (partners’ self-ratings; self-ratings and partner’s ratings; and partner’s self-ratings and his/her ratings of work engagement of the partner). Moreover, difference in self-ratings and ratings of partner’s work engagement showed negative correlation with life satisfaction of both partners, suggesting that work engagement dissimilarity has a potential to be related to some aspects of partners’ well-being.     

AIDS and ‘dirt’: Reflections on the ethics of ritual cleanliness

AIDS and the responses and attitudes it evokes surpass the analytic abilities of standard bioethics. These responses and attitudes are explored in terms of literary and anthropological categories, such as dirt, disorder, pollution and ritual cleanliness. Implications for medical education are suggested.     

Is Moving Gendered? The Effects of Residential Mobility on the Psychological Well-Being of Men and Women

To reexamine the negative psychological effects of residential mobility, secondary analyses were conducted using a representative sample. Mobility had significant effects on depression, after controlling for social class, marital status, gender, and employment. In separate analyses by gender, the mobility effect was significant for women only. The “exposure” hypothesis, that women experience more stress, was partially supported: housework, children, and career sacrifices predicted depression, but did not account for the mobility effect. The “vulnerability” hypothesis, that women respond differently to stressors, was partly supported: weak social ties affected women more than men, but did not account for mobility effects. It appears that moving may contribute to gender differences in depression.     

Freud and narcissism: Developing links for inclusion of the ‘object’

Abstract

The problematic of narcissism in the way Freud visualized forces us to acknowledge the dualism of drives inside the subject; the object relations theory then builds up on the inherent need and the structuring potential of the object. The paper traces the growth of this concept in Freud's thinking in a bid to show how the object's otherness is not fully metabolized within the Freudian corpus. On the other hand, recent criticisms of object relations theory point to the perfunctory role ascribed to Freud's most radical discovery of the dualism of drives. Winnicott, Laplanche and Green have all developed theories that have provided pertinent rejoinders to the problematic of narcissism and object relations. The paper discusses how deconstructing and “going back over Freud” helps us to redefine object relations and give the drive functioning due importance. Hence the main thesis of the paper – that of narcissism – reveals the decentered subject's tussle with itself and with the alienness emanating from the object's otherness. If used creatively, ideas such as “otherness”, “objectalizing function” and Green's conceptualization of the clinical significance of negative and positive narcissism then seek to enrich the theorization on narcissism.     

Commentary on ‘mentoring and the impact of the research climate’

Conclusions First of all, I would like to commend Roberts and colleagues for taking on a difficult but very important topic. It would be valuable if someone could follow up with a broader sample of universities and laboratories — paying careful attention to possible sampling and non-sampling errors. In general, I recommend that mentors explicitly both learn and teach ethical theory and practice within the context of their scientist development programs. Finally, while it is important to emphasize sound and ethical research standards and processes in mentoring programs, this should not be at the expense of an appropriate emphasis on skills essential to professional competitiveness, such as responsible, effective publication, grant winning, and demonstrably strong performance on the grants won. Dr. Gardenier is a survey statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The views presented are his personal opinions only.     

Getting Ahead: Educational and Occupational Trajectories of the ‘New’ Second-Generation in Switzerland

This paper examines the educational and occupational trajectories among second-generation immigrants of Turkish and Western-Balkan origin in Switzerland. Using a representative sample of 1107 respondents in two Swiss urban areas, the findings reveal that descendants of immigrants have reduced chances to follow a constant successful path from education to occupation, which is mainly determined by parental socioeconomic status. However, young adults of Turkish and Western Balkan origin are significantly more often upward mobile than the majority group, a pattern that is robust against a range of controls. We find parental monitoring and family cohesion to be positively related with upward mobility. Moreover, second-generation immigrants are more likely to be upwardly mobile than starting high in the education system but subsequently moving downwards—a profile that is more frequent among Swiss origin youth. Our multivariate results indicate that a lack of intense parent–child communication and perceived discrimination in school are affecting this downward process.