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Background: Older adults in residential settings frequently suffer from functional decline, mental illness, and social isolation, which make them more vulnerable to spiritual distress. However, empirical evidence of the interrelationships between physiopsychosocial variables and spiritual well-being are still lacking, limiting the application of the biopsychosocial-spiritual model in institutional healthcare practice., Aims: To explain the mechanisms by which these variables are linked, this cross-sectional study tested a causal model of predictors of spiritual well-being among 377 institutionalized older adults with disability using a structural equation modeling approach., Methods: The primary variables in the hypothesized model were measured using the Barthel Index for functional ability, the Geriatric Depression Scale-short form for depression, the Personal Resources Questionnaire 85-Part 2 for perceived social support, and the Spiritual Well-Being Scale for spiritual well-being., Results: The model fit indices suggest that the hypothesized model had a reasonably adequate model fit (χ 2 = 12.18, df = 6, p = .07, goodness-of-fitness index [GFI] = 0.99, adjusted GIF index [AGFI] = 0.93, nonnormed fit index [NFI] = 0.99, comparative fit index [CFI] = 0.99). In this study, perceived social support and depression directly affected spiritual well-being, and functional ability indirectly affected spiritual well-being via perceived social support or depression. In addition, functional ability influenced perceived social support directly, which in turn influenced depression and ultimately influenced spiritual well-being., Discussion: This study results confirm the effect of physiopsychosocial factors on institutionalized older adults' spiritual well-being. However, the presence and level of functional disability do not necessarily influence spiritual well-being in late life unless it is disruptive to social relationships and is thus bound to lead to low perceived social support and the onset of depression., Linking Evidence to Action: The findings address the fact that the practice of spirituality is multidimensional and multileveled. Psychosocial interventions for institutionalized elders with disabilities should focus on increasing nurse-patient interaction and providing access to meaningful social activities to improve mental health and spiritual well-being., (© 2017 Sigma Theta Tau International.)

"The article compares publicly discussed norms concerning the proper age at marriage for men and women in nineteenth-century Netherlands, and the actual trends present in the empirical evidence about marriage age. Medical professionals (the hygienists) expressed the belief that marriage at too young an age was damaging both to public hygiene and the family's health; other commentators stressed the connection between young marriages and poverty. Yet such norms were put forward vaguely, allowing other influences on marriage age to come into play. Consequently, data on marital behavior suggest considerable diversity in the population, with age at marriage varying strongly by class, sex, and region. Generally, age at marriage did not begin to fall until the period 1860-1870, and even after that decade class differences remained strong.", (excerpt)

"This article considers ethnographic data collected among divorcing men and women in Britain and adopts a Maussian view of exchange in order to understand the cultural dimensions of divorce in more depth. I argue that divorcing men and women express discontinuities and continuities in their relationships by means of particular kinds of exchanges. What is of particular interest is the way that former husbands and wives place discrepant and conflicting constructions on the transfer of money and material goods between them and between themselves and their children. The article illustrates these points by examining the conflicts between fathers, mothers and their children over the emotional and economic significance of particular transactions.", (excerpt)

"This paper first distinguishes structured and unstructured approaches to valuing life. The unstructured approach bases its valuations on people's raw preferences, whereas the structured approach imposes a theoretical framework about the structure of value. The paper recommends the structured approach. This opens the way to considering the value of adding people to the population. The paper examines a common intuition that adding people is not in itself valuable, and explains the difficulties this intuition encounters.", (excerpt)

"This paper considers the effect of altruism on the relationship between the size of households and the migration decision. It is shown that when the parent has higher altruism toward her children, (i) the household is more likely to migrate, and (ii) the marginal gain from migration increases as the size of the household increases.", (excerpt)

This paper offers a feminist critique of the relationships between gender and development by exploring the intersections between three sets of debates: firstly, the relations between interventions for women and for children through the anomalous position accorded to 'the girl child' in aid and development policies; secondly, the relations between psychological and economic models of development; and thirdly, the gendered and geographical allocation of attributes and opportunities. Drawing on analyses of the 'psychological complex' the author suggests that the cultural resources that inform developmental psychological models are highly cultural and class-specific (white, middle class, of the northern hemisphere), giving rise to a globalization of development that is reinscribed within international aid and development policies. In homogenizing difference to its norms, this globalization paradoxically reproduces the north-south opposition as an expression of cultural and political imperialism. While northern children 'develop', dominant discourses of children of the South are preoccupied with 'survival'. By such means the cultural hegemony of a unitary psychology remains intact. This paper discusses the 'abnormal distribution' of development to draw attention to the ways cultural and gender inequalities flow from the norms and generalized descriptions central to the current practice of developmental psychology and to urge that this is an important site of intervention for feminists addressing gender and development issues.

This article "is devoted to the international migration issue in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (Czechoslovakia). Besides the contemporary trends, the international migration situation is briefly traced back to the communist era. The probable future scenario of international migration development--based especially on migration patterns that Western Europe has experienced--is also sketched, whilst mainly economic, social, political, demographic, psychological and geographical aspects are mentioned." Some consideration is also given to other countries in Eastern Europe. The different types of migration are analyzed, including illegal migration, labor migration, and refugees and asylum seekers., (excerpt)

"This study, conducted from the point of view of the children, compares cohorts from the time of New France [Quebec] with those of Canada today, showing that single parenthood is not a new phenomenon. The types of single parenthood, however, are quite different. The colonial model of the traditional family has given way to a variety of family situations. As well, while death was the only cause of single parenthood during the colonial era, separations today are essentially based on some sort of decision. The psychological repercussions of losing a parent are thus completely different." (SUMMARY IN ENG AND SPA), (excerpt)

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the implementation of China's one-child policy in terms of embeddedness in the Confucian tradition of morality in government. To do this, the authors describe the modern Chinese efforts to control its population. They describe briefly how the one-child policy evolved from earlier family planning policies and how it has been implemented in ways consistent with Confucian views. Finally, the authors describe key aspects of the implementation of this policy within four Chinese provinces from the perspective of the families who participated in a survey of schoolchildren in 1990.

"This review outlines the biological basics of menopause and then places menopause within the context of a dynamic lifespan. The basic tenets of the lifespan approach maintain that, for each individual, aging and development are lifelong processes from birth to death; biological, psychological, and sociocultural trajectories interweave across the life course; the entire lifespan serves as a frame of reference for understanding particular events or transitions; and the life course can be affected by environmental change.... This review also points to the gap between population-level studies of menopause and studies carried out at the biochemical, cellular, or organ systems level. Filling this gap...offers the most interesting directions for future anthropological research.", (excerpt)