Coping strategies,stress and health of grandmothers caring for ascending and descending relatives / Afrontamiento,estrés y salud en abuelas cuidadoras de familiares ascendentes y descendentes

The progressive increase in life expectancy and the verticalization of the family mean that the provision of family care can be stressful and risky for the health of grandmothers who act as caregivers. One hundred and twenty grandmothers were interviewed in southwest Spain; they were daughters of a generation still characterized by high levels of dependence. A questionnaire with standardized psychological scales and items specifically designed for the study was used. Results showed that the burden of the instrumental and economic support had a detrimental effect on their health through stress, which in turn increased when they used coping strategies of denial and self-blame, and decreased with acceptance of reality and when they sought emotional support.     

At the Crossroads: Latina Identity and Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex has been heralded as a canonical text of feminist theory. The book focuses on providing an account of the lived experience of woman that generates a condition of otherness. However, I contend that it falls short of being able to account for the multidimensionality of identity insofar as Beauvoir's argument rests upon the comparison between racial and gendered oppression that is understood through the black–white binary. The result of this framework is the imperceptibility of identities at the crossroads between categories of race and gender. Hence, the goal of this article is to explore the margins of Beauvoir's work in order to decenter the “other” of The Second Sex and make known what is made imperceptible by its architecture, using Latina identity as an interventional guide. I conclude that given the prominence of The Second Sex in feminist theory, this shortcoming must be addressed if feminist theorists are to use it responsibly.     

Perceived threat to national values in evaluating stereotyped immigrants

The present research examined the psychological reasons behind Americans’ (un)willingness to accept immigrants. Participants read a scenario depicting immigrant groups allegedly expected to arrive in the United States and evaluated how much the immigrants would influence two types of American national values: civic values (e.g., political ideology) and ethnic values (e.g., shared culture and customs). Across three studies, competitive immigrant groups were stereotyped to be untrustworthy and perceived to threaten American civic values, but not ethnic values. Value threat then mediated the predicted competition–prejudice relationship in Study 3. Perceived vulnerability of in-group boundary might specify one motivated cause of derogating immigrants.