Dorinda N. Noble

Premature Death: Dilemmas of Infant Mortality

Infant death has extreme emotional and symbolic effects on parents and health care professionals who face the moral and ethical aspects of life and death decisions, complicated by government ideology. Social workers can help with understanding the resulting dilemmas and suggest possible interventions.

Values: Passing on the Torch without Burning the Runner

Viewing social work values and ethics as a torch held high to unify the profession increases the importance of transmitting them to students. One of the major organizing factors of social work education should be the teaching of values and ethics, and this effort should be intensified in field placement programs.

Nurse‐neonate relationships: The creation of symbolic interaction within a neonatal intensive care unit

After a brief introduction to the broad field of perinatology, a description of one neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is provided, focusing upon the microecology of the work setting, the language of NICU nursing and the “special nature” of the role of the NICU nurse within a new medical environment. The idea is advanced, based upon preliminary research data, that nurses within the environment so described construct symbolic selves for their tiny, premature, and sometimes critically ill patients and then interact with them on the basis of that construction. Through anthropomorphism and projection, the nurses engage in active attribution of symbolic characteristics to their charges. This unique type of symbolic interaction can impact the well‐being and recovery potential of the patients.

Assisting Families through Genetic Counseling

Social workers helping families deal with the complicated, highly emotional process of genetic counseling must have well-developed professional skills. Although the process of coping with genetic disease is stressful for both families and workers, it can be a process that leads from grief to growth.

Child Snatching Motivations, Mechanisms, and Melodrama

This article, based primarily upon interview data, explores child snatching and some of the attendant motivations and mechanisms surrounding such events. Findings include the fact that motivations for snatching, while always multifaceted, can be roughly categorized as child-focused (stemming from concern for the child) or as self-focused (originating in the snatchers desire to satisfy personal needs). Suggested also are six dimensions of child snatching that are thought to be common factors associated in some manner with each child snatching event. These dimensions are (1) motivations, ranging from self-centered to child-centered; (2) planning, ranging from professional to amateurish; (3) hostility, from mild to violent; (4) trauma, from serious to devastating; (5) familial involvement, from supportive to antagonistic; and (6) agency involvement, from minimal to extreme, by both public and private groups. These six factors are seen as affecting child snatching at all stages of the process. Suggestions for future research are offered.

Custody Contest: How to Divide and Reassemble a Child

Too many children are being used as pawns in custody disputes. Workers can help families defuse the battle atmosphere if they understand the background and intricacies of custody laws and engage in action to ensure fair play for the child.

The Painful Phenomenon of Child Snatching

Helping professionals will deal increasingly with the theft of children by parents. This article examines the motivations and emotions involved in the issue and explores legislative attempts at control. Attention is given to the difficulties in retrieving lost children.