DIVERSITY IN CHILD CARE ASSISTANCE NEEDS: EMPLOYEE PROBLEMS, PREFERENCES, AND WORK-RELATED OUTCOMES

This research examines employee background variables moderating problems with child care arrangements and variance in work-related attitudes and behaviors. Gender, household employment configuration, dependents' care profile, managerial status, and use of familial care arrangements help explain variance in child care problems, attitudes toward managing work and child care responsibilities, and the absence behavior of working parents in a public utility. The relationship between employee backgrounds and preferences for child care assistance is also examined. The study demonstrates that employees' child care needs are diverse, multi-faceted, and changing. It is suggested that organizations consider developing several packages of child care assistance policies that can be responsive to changes in the mix of employees' assistance needs and their work forces' demographics over time.     

Gender and Psychological Distress

Gender is a multidimensional construct that encompasses the many ways society is differentiated on the basis of sex. To understand the role of gender in psychological problems of the sexes, counselors need to be aware of gender-socialized individual characteristics, which may affect what psychological problems people develop, associated symptoms, and how people respond to the problems. It is also important to recognize how the broader sociocultural context presents men and women with different expectations, opportunities, and rewards.     

Visual processing speed in old age

Mental speed is a common concept in theories of cognitive aging, but it is difficult to get measures of the speed of a particular psychological process that are not confounded by the speed of other processes. We used Bundesen’s (1990) Theory of Visual Attention (TVA) to obtain specific estimates of processing speed in the visual system controlled for the influence of response latency and individual variations of the perception threshold. A total of 33 non‐demented old people (69–87 years) were tested for the ability to recognize briefly presented letters. Performance was analyzed by the TVA model. Visual processing speed decreased approximately linearly with age and was on average halved from 70 to 85 years. Less dramatic aging effects were found for the perception threshold and the visual apprehension span. In the visual domain, cognitive aging seems to be most clearly related to reductions in processing speed.     

Burnout and Commitment: A Theoretical Alternative

Discussions of burnout generally offer little explicit theoretical foundation, but most seem to assume an energy scarcity model. An alternative model based on the assumption that energy is highly expendable is offered here.     

DISCIPLINING THE FAMILY: THE CASE OF GENDER IDENTITY DISORDER

Philosophical Studies -