Patrizia Albanese

Mothers of the nation : women, families, and nationalism in twentieth-century Europe

Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Nationalism: Definitions and Debate - A Brotherhood of Nationals? Part I The Interwar Period 2 Nationalism in the Interwar Period: Germany 3 Nationalism in the Interwar Period: Italy 4 Internationalist Beginnings in the Interwar Period: Revolutionary Russia 5 Multinational Beginnings in the Interwar Period: Kingdom of Yugoslavia Part II The Post-1989 Period 6 Nationalist Revival in Post-1989 Russia 7 Nationalist Revival in Post-Yugoslav Croatia 8 Post-Reunification Germany 9 Post-Second World War Italy Part III Policies and Outcomes Compared 10 Outcomes Compared 11 Policies Analysed and Compared 12 Conclusions References Index

Beyond description: Understanding gender differences in problem gambling

Background and aims Though women make up roughly one third of all problem gamblers, research has typically focused on male problem gamblers. Recent research has started to shift its attention toward the importance of gender. However, studies rarely attempt to understand gender differences in problem gambling or subject these differences to thorough multivariate analyses. To address some of the gaps in our knowledge of gender differences, we examine whether patterns of gambling behavior and psychological factors mediate the relationship between gender and problem gambling. Methods We use logistic multiple regression to analyze two large Canadian datasets - the 2005 Ontario Prevalence Survey and the 2007 Canadian Community Health Survey. Results Variables found to mediate the relationship between gender and problem gambling are the type(s) of game(s) played (in the 2005 Ontario Prevalence Survey) and the number of games played (in the 2007 Canadian Community Health Survey). Conclusions Men are more likely to be problem gamblers than women, and this gender difference is understandable in terms of differences in patterns of gambling behavior. We conclude that men experience problems because they play riskier games and women experience problems because they prefer chance-based games, which are associated with significantly higher odds of problem gambling. We specify the three main ways that womens reasons for gambling - to escape or for empowerment - translate into chance-based games.

Predictors of the integration of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in Canada: pre-migration adversity, mental health, personal attributes, and post-migration experience

Purpose – Refugees integrate less successfully than other immigrants. Pre-migration stress, mental disorder and lack of human capital are the most popular explanations, but these propositions have received little empirical testing. The current study of Sri Lankan Tamils in Toronto, Canada, examines the respective contributions of pre-migration adversity, human capital, mental health and social resources in predicting integration. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Participants are a probability sample of 1,603 Sri Lankan Tamils living in Toronto, Canada. The team, with a community advisory council, developed structured interviews containing information about pre- and post-migration stressors, coping strategies, and family, community, and institutional support. The questionnaire included the World Health Organization Composite International Diagnostic Interview module for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Interviews were translated, back-translated and administered b...

Professionalization as an advocacy strategy: a content analysis of Canadian child care social movement organizations’ 2008 discursive resources

Do early childhood education and care (ECEC) professionals make good advocates? Canadian advocates have fought for better child care policies since the mid-1940s. What has happened to this advocacy with the recent increased professionalization of the ECEC sector? How does increased professionalization limit, innovate or expand advocacy strategies? This content analysis of seven Canadian child care social movement organizations’ discursive resources in 2008 examines how different types of child care social movement organizations communicated their positions to their members and the public to manage a changing economic and political climate. Preliminary findings indicate that both ECEC workforce sector associations and grassroots organizations shared common advocacy messages, played down problems associated with a market approach to child care, and framed child care as a business case in their messaging. The authors suggest this reflects a nascent discursive move towards the professionalization of Canadian child care movement advocacy messages.

(Under)Valuing Care Work: The Case of Childcare Workers in Small-Town Quebec.

This paper challenges the assumptions that women ‘care’ as a matter of course, that care work is natural, inevitable, and easy—requiring little skill and as a result should not be highly valued or rewarded. It does so by assessing the impact of Quebec’s (Canada’s)

Parental Military Deployments and Adolescents’ Household Work

7/day childcare program on an economically disadvantaged community near the Quebec/Ontario border. This pilot study of mothers and childcare workers marks the first phase of research in the community. This paper looks at some of the care work involved in childcare settings in small‐town Quebec. At the same time, the paper aims to show the importance and impact of Quebec’s childcare initiative on an economically hard‐hit community. It shows that, despite mothers’ recognition of the importance of the program to themselves, their children and their community, there is still evidence of the undervaluing of the care work that childcare providers do.

The Impact of Shared Location on the Mental Health of Military and Civilian Adolescents in a Community Affected by Frequent Deployments: A Research Note

In “Parental Military Deployments and Adolescents’ Household Work,” Danielle Kwan-Lafond, Deborah Harrison, and Patrizia Albanese examine the impact that military deployment and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have on adolescent family members. They show how the gendered division of labour within families shapes these experiences such that the self-esteem of girls is adversely affected much more than that of boys.

Caring about care: Reasserting care as integral to early childhood education and care practice, politics and policies in Canada:

Preliminary results of our survey of 1066 adolescent members of a Canadian Forces (CF) community, comparing the mental health and well-being of CF and civilian youth in a secondary school adjacent to an army base, yielded surprising results. The data were collected in 2008 with an instrument that replicated parts of the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY). Our findings suggested that there are few statistically significant differences between CF and civilian youth on mental health and well-being measures. On the other hand, both the CF and civilian youth scored lower on crucial health and well-being measures than their peers in the national NLSCY sample. This research note attempts to explain these complementary findings, using data from follow-up semi-structured interviews we conducted in 2009/10 with 60 of the CF adolescents. It also considers the possibility of a ‘‘spillover effect’’ of military life stressors on civilian youth.

Introduction: Critical Feminist Sociologies of Families, Work, and Care

Care and education have deep historical divisions in the Canadian policy landscape: care is traditionally situated as a private, gendered, and a welfare problem, whereas education is seen as a universal public good. Since the early 2000s, the entrenched divide between private care and public education has been challenged by academic, applied and political settings mainly through human capital investment arguments. This perspective allocates scarce public funds to early childhood education and care through a lens narrowly focused on child development outcomes. From the investment perspective, care remains a prerequisite to education rather than a public good in its own right. This chapter seeks to disrupt this neoliberal, human capital discourse that has justified and continues to position care as subordinate to education. Drawing upon the feminist ethics of care scholarship of philosopher Virginia Held, political scientist Joan Tronto, and sociologist Marian Barnes, this chapter reconceptualizes the care in early childhood education and care rooted through four key ideas: (1) Care is a universal and fundamental aspect of all human life. In early childhood settings, young children’s dependency on care is negatively regarded as a limitation, deficit and a burden. In contrast, in educational settings, older children’s growing abilities to engage in self-care and self-regulate is viewed positively. We challenge this dependence/independence dichotomy. (2) Care is more than basic custodial activities. The premise that care is focused on activities concerned with the child’s body and emotions, while education involves activities concerned with the mind, permeates early childhood education and care policy. Drawing on Held’s definition of care as value and practice, we discuss why this mind-body dualism is false. (3) Care in early childhood settings can be evaluated as promoting well-being or, in contradiction to the meaning of care, as delivering poor services that result in harm to young children. We will explore the relevancy of Barnes’s contention that parallel to theorizing about good care in social policy, “we need to be able to recognize care and its absence” through the cultivation of “ethics sensibilities and skills applied in different practices in different contexts.” (4) Care must be central to early childhood education and care policy deliberation. Using Tronto’s concept of a “caring democracy,” we discuss how such deliberation can promote care and the caring responsibilities of educators in early childhood settings, thereby redressing long standing gendered injustices. We argue that these four ideas can be framed in advocacy messages, in ways that bridge the silos of care and education as separate domains and which open up the vision of an integrated early childhood education and care system. A feminist ethics of care perspective offers new possibilities for practitioners, advocates, researchers, and decision-makers to reposition and reclaim care as integral to the politics and policies of early childhood education and care.

Predictors of immigrant children’s mental health in Canada: selection, settlement contingencies, culture, or all of the above?

IN 2014, the United Nations twentieth anniversary of the International Year of the Family, there was a flourishing of conversations across the globe on family theories and policies, and challenges faced by families (e.g., the United Nations 2014). As we observed these developments on the international stage, we also reflected on the state of the sociology of the family in Canada as a field of research that seems to be waning in comparison to other areas of sociological research. We also noted how there is a strong history of feminist and critical approaches to critical sociologies of families, work, and care and how Canadian feminist sociologists have, for over three decades, reshaped the way we think, theorize, and intervene in policies and public debates about families, work, and care as well as gender, class, race, and sexualities. Keen to revive and expand upon these historical developments, we convened a keynote panel at the 2014 Canadian Sociological Association conference at Brock University that drew together an esteemed set of Canadian voices that have made foundational contributions to feminist and critical family sociologies, each of us have been deeply affected by the work of the scholars that we invited to participate in this panel: Ann Duffy (Professor of Sociology and Labour Studies, Brock University); Margrit Eichler (Professor Emerita of OISE/University of Toronto); Bonnie Fox (Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto); and Meg Luxton (Professor of Sociology and Women’s and