Sober adolescence–Predictor of psychosocial maladjustment in young adulthood?

We have explored how age at first intoxication with alcohol relates to mental health, social integration and adjustment to the adult role. The data stem from a longitudinal representative study of 2000 Norwegians. The sample was assessed at ages 19–22, 21–24 and 25–28. Among females, only early intoxication was related to young adult symptoms of poor mental health. A U-shaped association between intoxication debut and psychological problems was revealed among males, implying that both early and late beginners had more such problems than those who had followed the mainstream. These associations persisted without change over time. However, males who remained abstainers in adulthood were psychologically healthy, but they showed indications of a delayed entry into the adult role. Male late beginners were also somewhat reluctant to adopt adult role-behaviors. Thus, getting drunk for the first time in mid-adolescence seems to be an ingredient in the normal developmental process in young males.     

Who's Got the Power? Gender Differences in Partners’ Perceptions of Influence During Marital Problem-Solving Discussions

Previous research on marital communication indicates that women have more influence in marital problem solving because they raise the issues and shape the discussion. Other studies suggest that men have the power in marital problem solving. This study re-examines power and influence from the partners’ point of view. Twenty-seven couples — 18 with a first child under 2, and 9 undecided about having children — were videotaped while working on a self-selected problem concerning their division of family labor. Data sources included: (a) transcribed audiotaped accounts given by each partner while viewing a videotape of their problem-solving discussion; (b) self-report questionnaires; and (c) ratings by a research team of the concordance between spouses’ accounts. Husbands and wives were perceived as having a primary influence on different aspects of the discussion. Women tended to raise the issues and draw men out in the early phase of the discussion, while men controlled the content and emotional depth of the later discussion phases, and largely determined the outcome. The women's accounts emphasized that their influence in the early phase was often illusory: their behavior was shaped primarily by the effort to choose strategies that would avoid upsetting their husbands. In terms of overall satisfaction with marriage, wives had greater tolerance than their husbands for conflict in the area of division of domestic labor, but less tolerance for their husbands’ domination of the discussion process. Women's marital satisfaction was higher when there was concordance between spouses in their accounts of their problem-solving discussion. This research highlights the importance of eliciting spouses’ own perceptions and definitions in understanding the impact of gender-linked power differences in marital communication.     

HOLDING ONE ANOTHER (WELL, WRONGLY, CLUMSILY) IN A TIME OF DEMENTIA

Abstract: This essay takes a close look at a species of care that is particularly needed by people with progressive dementias but that has not been much discussed in the bioethics literature: the activity of holding the person in her or his identity. It presses the claim that close family members have a special responsibility to hold on to the demented person's identity for her or him, and offers some criteria for doing this morally well or badly. Finally, it considers how even those with dementia can hold others in their identities, and suggests that this kind of holding too can have great moral worth.     

Cutting Motherhood in Two: Some Suspicions Concerning Surrogacy

Surrogate motherhood—at least if carefully structured to protect the interests of the women involved—seems defensible along standard liberal lines which place great stress on free agreements as moral bedrocks. But feminist theories have tended to be suspicious about the importance assigned to this notion by mainstream ethics, and in this paper, we develop implications of those suspicions for surrogacy. We argue that the practice is inconsistent with duties parents owe to children and that it compromises the freedom of surrogates to perform their share of those duties. Standard liberal perspectives tend to be insensitive to such considerations; we propose a view which takes more seriously the moral importance of the causal relationship between parents and children, and which therefore illuminates rather than obscures the stake that women and children have in surrogacy.