Nena F. Stracuzzi

Gender in the Prozac Nation Popular Discourse and Productive Femininity

Since Prozac emerged on the market at the end of 1987, there has been a dramatic increase in antidepressant use and in its discussion by popular media. Yet there has been little analysis of the gendered character of this phenomenon despite feminist traditions scrutinizing the medical control of women’s bodies. The authors begin to fill this gap through a detailed content analysis of the 83 major articles on Prozac and its “chemical cousins” appearing in large-circulation periodicals in Prozac’s first 12 years. They find that popular talk about Prozac and its competing brands is largely degendered, presented as manifestly gender neutral, yet replete with latent gendered messages. These are about women with neurochemical imbalances but also about the need to discipline elite female bodies, to enhance their productivity and flexibility. This new form of female “fitness” mirrors demands of the New Economy and indicates how psychiatric discourse contributes to the historically specific shaping of gendered bodies.

Proactive and Reactive Sibling Aggression and Adjustment in Adolescence

Existing research on aggression tends to narrowly focus on peers; less is known about sibling aggression, most likely due to its historical acceptance. Aggression is characterized by its forms (i.e., physical vs. social or relational aggression) and its functions (i.e., the motivations behind the aggressive act and categorized as proactive vs. reactive aggression). We use data from a two-wave study of middle (n = 197; Mage = 12.63 years at Wave 1) and older (n = 159; Mage = 16.50 years at Wave 1) adolescents to assess the extent to which proactive and reactive functions of sibling aggression make unique or conditional contributions to adolescent adjustment (i.e., depression, delinquency, and substance use). We find that proactive sibling aggression increases risk for problem substance use and delinquent behavior, reactive sibling aggression increases risk for depressed mood and delinquent behavior, and such results are observed even with statistical adjustments for sociodemographic and family variables, stressful life events, and prior adjustment. Few conditional effects of proactive or reactive sibling aggression by sex or grade are observed; yet, for all three outcomes, the harmful effects of reactive sibling aggression are strongest among adolescents who report low levels of proactive sibling aggression. The results speak to the importance of understanding the proactive and reactive functions of sibling aggressive behaviors for adolescent adjustment.

Perceived Local Job Prospects and School Connectedness in a Struggling Rural Economy: A Life-Course Perspective

Late in first decade of the 2000s, the closing of pulp and paper mills in the rural northeastern United States contributed to economic decline in the region and to rising concerns about population decline due to out-migration among local emerging adults in search of occupational or educational opportunities. In this context, and drawing on a life-course framework, the present study used four waves of panel data from the population of 7th- and 11th-grade public school students in a rural northeastern U.S. county to explore whether the county unemployment rate was related to perceived local job prospects; school connectedness was related to subsequent perceived job prospects; and the effects of county unemployment and school connectedness on perceived local job prospects varied by age cohort. Initially, changes in respondents’ perceptions about local job prospects paralleled shifts in local unemployment similarly for both cohorts; yet after the older cohort respondents had completed high school, their perceived local job prospects fell sharply, while perceptions among the younger cohort respondents, who were still in high school, remained stable. Among the older cohort respondents only, school connectedness was associated with subsequent positive perceptions about local job prospects net of relevant controls. Same-age cohort comparisons, evaluated when each cohort was in 12th-grade, showed no differences in the short-term effects of school connectedness on perceived local job prospects, despite variations in the age-linked timing of the most dramatic rise in unemployment during the study. The results highlight the lasting importance of school connectedness for teens raised in struggling rural economies.