Reconstructing Hymens or Constructing Sexual Inequality? Service Provision to Islamic Young Women Coping with the Demand to be a Virgin

In Islamic culture, there is an imperative demand that women should be virgins on their wedding night. Service providers in The Netherlands are increasingly confronted by Islamic young women who find themselves in serious difficulties because they are no longer virgins, and are about to enter a forced or arranged marriage. These young women report a diversity of problems such as loneliness, social isolation, depression, despair, suicidal feelings, identity problems and serious conflicts with parents. In this article we focus attention on the circumstances that can result in these types of difficulties, and also critically consider the kinds of help that young Islamic women are given. Attention is paid to the question of whether existing forms of service provision, especially surgical reconstruction of the hymen, take sexual and other inequalities into account.     

Marriage, Parenting, and the Emergence of Early Self-Regulation in the Family System

The early years of toddlerhood mark the emergence of self-regulation and the child's ability to comply with parental requests. The current study examined young children's compliance and noncompliance in a family context by observing mothers, fathers, and two children in a family clean-up paradigm. Marital conflict and mutual responsiveness in the parent-child relationship were used as predictors of children's early self-regulation in an effort to explore risk and protective factors within the family. Several interactions between mother and father behavior as well as between marital conflict and parenting revealed how father-infant attachment moderates the effects of mother-infant attachment on children's compliance and how a close father-child relationship can protect children from the risks associated with high levels of marital conflict. Results indicate that future research on children's early self-regulation needs to be more systemic and move beyond the traditional mother-child dyadic context.     

Marital satisfaction in covenant versus standard marriages: Is there a difference?

After the rapid increase of the American divorce rate in the late 20th century, one of the most conspicuous efforts of the marriage movement in the 1990s that was used to increase marital stability was the legislation of the covenant marriage license, a more restricted marriage license issued in three different states of the U.S. To investigate the marital life of newlywed covenant versus standard couples, a large-scale 5-year couple study was conducted between 1998 and 2003 in Louisiana. The present study uses this large-sample, multiple-wave, multiple-group dyadic dataset to examine differences in co-development and divorce rates in 297 covenant and 380 standard mixed-sex couples using a multiple group growth curve modeling and survival analysis. We examined differences in marital trajectories between covenant and standard couples as well as between husbands and wives in each marital group. The results show (1) that the couples in both groups experienced, on average, declines in marital satisfaction, and such a decline was slower in covenant husbands than their wives as well as those in standard marriages, and (2) that co-development in marital satisfaction was more prominent in standard marriages than in covenant marriages, meaning standard couple's marital satisfaction declined at a more similar rate than that of covenant couples. We provide possible explanations and discuss practical implications.     

Effects of a high salt diet on blood pressure responses to acoustic stimuli in borderline hypertensive rats (BHR)

The borderline hypertensive rat (BHR) responds to environmental and dietary stressors with elevated blood pressure. The first two months of a high salt diet appear to be the time of greatest sensitivity to salt effects on the blood pressure of BHR. The current study was conducted to examine whether exposure to salt diets varying in duration for up to two months differentially affects baseline blood pressures (systolic, SBP, and diastolic, DBP) and blood pressure responses to novel acoustic stimuli in BHR and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats. Male BHR and WKY were fed a control (1%) salt diet or a high (8%) salt diet for 1, 1.5, 2.5, or 8.5 weeks. SBP and DBP responses to an acoustic stimulus (85 dB, 3 kHz) were measured upon completion of the diets at 12 weeks of age. Ten acoustic trials (one stimulus/minute) were presented and blood pressure responses were recorded in 2-second blocks spanning the 10 seconds prior to and following stimulus presentation. BHR had higher resting SBP and DBP than WKY, and 8.5 weeks of 8 percent salt increased SBP markedly in BHR. SBP and DBP labilities in the initial trial were greater in BHR than WKY with high salt diet durations of 2.5 and 8.5 weeks producing greater lability in later trials. Few differences were noted in pressor responses, but BHR had more dramatic depressor responses than WKY in early trials, and BHR pressures had a more dramatic return to baseline. It appears that genetic history and salt diet can affect blood pressure lability and recovery in response to novel stimuli in genetically susceptible animals.     

The Early Marital Roots of Conjugal Distress and Divorce

This article summarizes research that challenges conventional wisdom about the early roots of marital distress and divorce. We abstract results from a 13-year study that focused on the extent to which long-term marital satisfaction and stability could be forecast from newlywed and early marital data. We explore the usefulness of three models emergent distress, enduring dynamics, and disillusionment designed to explain why some marriages thrive and others fail. The dominant paradigm, the emergent-distress model, sees newlyweds as homogeneously blissful and posits that distress develops as disagreements and negativity escalate, ultimately leading some couples to divorce. The results we summarize run counter to this model and suggest instead that (a) newlyweds differ considerably in the intensity of both their romance and the negativity of their behavior toward one another and, for those who remain married, these early dynamics persist over time; and (b) for couples who divorce, romance seems to deteriorate differently depending on how long the marriage lasts. Soon after their wedding, "early exiters" seem to lose hope of improving an unpromising relationship; "delayed-action divorcers" begin marriage on a particularly high note, yet quickly show signs of disillusionment. These delayed-action divorcers reluctantly give up on the marriage long after the romance has faded.