Men In Adulthood Research Articles

Women Receive More Positive Reactions to Childhood Sexual Abuse Disclosure and Negative Reactions are Associated With Mental Health Symptoms in Adulthood for Men and Women.

Although disclosure of sexual abuse has become more socially acceptable for both men and women in recent years, there is much yet to be understood about differences in the disclosure process and associated pathology between men and women. The current study aimed to (a) investigate differences in aspects of the childhood sexual abuse (CSA) disclosure process between adult men and women and (b) explore how timing of disclosure, perceived parental style, and negative social reactions to disclosure relate to various mental health symptoms. Using a cross-sectional, quasi-experimental design, adult men and women in the United States recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 299) completed self-report surveys. Women reported disclosing to a significantly greater number of people than men, and were more likely to disclose to parents, while men were more likely to tell friends. Results revealed that women reported receiving significantly more positive responses and emotionally supportive responses to their CSA disclosures than men. Negative reactions to disclosure were positively associated with internalizing symptoms and externalizing symptoms, while both negative reactions to disclosure and perceived parental dysfunction were positively associated with substance use symptoms. Results signify a need for resources to aid individuals in supporting survivors of CSA, as reactions have the potential to impact recovery trajectory and for clinicians to consider how disclosure experiences impact survivor cognitions and symptom exacerbation.

The price of poverty: The association between childhood poverty and adult income and education in Sweden, 1947–2015

AbstractChildhood poverty increases the likelihood of being poor as an adult. We know relatively little about this persistence of poverty in the past and whether it changed as modern welfare societies developed. This study both analyses determinants of childhood poverty and assesses the association between childhood poverty and economic outcomes in adulthood for men and women who grew up in southern Sweden, and who were followed to adulthood regardless of where in Sweden they resided. Poverty is measured in relative terms. Being raised by a single mother, foreign origin, and being raised in a context where the household head was not employed were important risk factors for childhood poverty. Growing up in relative poverty was in turn associated with low income and education in adulthood. Both the persistence and intensity of childhood poverty mattered, and so did the age during which poverty was experienced. Patterns were similar for men and women, and there was no consistent change over time as the Swedish welfare state expanded.

The Impact of Parental Death in Childhood on Sons\u2019 and Daughters\u2019 Status Attainment in Young Adulthood in the Netherlands, 1850\u20131952

Previous research on the impact of parental loss on labor market outcomes in adulthood has often suffered from low sample sizes. To generate further insights into the long-term consequences of parental death, I use the Historical Sample of the Netherlands (HSN). The HSN contains occupational information on life courses of a sample of more than 8,000 males and almost 7,000 females born between 1850 and 1922, a period of important labor market transformations. Roughly 20 % of the sample population experienced parental death before age 16. Linear regression models show that maternal loss is significantly associated with lower occupational position in adulthood for both men and women, which points to the crucial importance of maternal care in childhood for socioeconomic outcomes in later life. This interpretation is supported by the finding that a stepmother’s entry into the family is positively related with sons’ occupational position later in life. In contrast to expectations, the loss of economic resources related to the father’s death is generally not associated with lower status attainment in adulthood for men or for women. The results indicate, however, that the negative consequences of paternal death on men’s socioeconomic outcomes decreased over time, illustrating the complex interaction between individual life courses and surrounding labor market transformations.

Extending the ACEs Framework: Examining the Relations Between Childhood Abuse and Later Victimization and Perpetration With College Men.

Research has revealed that forms of violence are interconnected, but less work focuses on the interconnection of victimization and perpetration, particularly with men. Subsequently, our understanding of the complexities of violence exposure in men's lives and related policies and treatments remains limited. The present study utilizes a sample of at-risk for violence involvement, college men, to examine the relationships between childhood victimization, adulthood victimization, and adulthood perpetration. Participants are 423 college men receiving course credit who completed a battery of standardized questionnaires via an anonymous web survey. Logistic regression is used. Results indicate that 27% of the men report polyperpetration (two or more types of perpetration), 43.5% report polyvictimization (two or more types of victimization), and 60% report experiencing both forms of victimization and perpetration in the past year. Childhood physical abuse has predictive power for perpetration (psychological aggression and polyperpetration) and victimization (sexual violence, psychological aggression, and polyvictimization) for the men in the past year. Childhood sexual abuse has strong predictive power for perpetration (physical violence, sexual violence, and polyperpetration) and victimization (physical violence and sexual violence) with the men in the past year. Finally, emotional abuse has predictive power for victimization (physical violence and psychological aggression), but not perpetration, for the men in the past year. Developmental psychopathology and the adverse childhood experiences frameworks are used to posit potential pathways explaining the relation between childhood abuse and the overlap between victimization and perpetration in adulthood for men. Implications of this study include the use of trauma-informed models of care with men and expanding the scope of study to examine experiences of both victimization and perpetration, and various types of violence, among men.

Transition to adulthood for men and women with cerebral palsy

Transition to adulthood for men and women with cerebral palsy

Remembered Parental Rejection and Social Anxiety: The Mediating Role of Partner Acceptance-Rejection

The present study investigated: (a) the mediating effect of perceived intimate partner rejection in the relationship between remembered parental rejection and social anxiety, and (b) the moderating effect of gender in the relationship between remembered paternal and maternal rejection and social anxiety. The sample was consisted of 365 Greek university students (266 female; 99 male; 18–48 years) and data collection was made with self-report questionnaires measuring demographic characteristics, remembered paternal and maternal rejection, perceived intimate partner rejection, and social anxiety. The indirect (mediation) and conditional (moderating) effects were examined using the PROCESS program. Results showed that perceived intimate partner rejection mediated partly the relationship between both remembered paternal and maternal rejection and social anxiety. It was also found that remembered paternal and maternal rejection in childhood have a greater impact on the levels of social anxiety in adulthood for men than for women. Implications for future research and effective therapeutic interventions for socially anxious individuals are discussed.

Gender differences in childhood food preference: evaluation using a subjective picture choice method.

A preference for calorie-dense food in men seems to be closely linked with a considerably higher incidence of obesity in adulthood for men than women, but it is not clear in which life stage the gender differences in food preference begin to appear. In order to clarify this, a picture choice method has been developed that is designed to evaluate food preferences or interests in children based on their subjective choices. In total, 486 children aged 6-12 years were enrolled. To evaluate food interest, children were instructed to choose any 10 from 36 pictures in the panel showing 10 different foods and 26 other things. The number of foods chosen was set as the food interest score. For food preference, they were also instructed to choose any 10 from 36 pictures in the other panel depicting 36 different foods. For the 10 foods chosen, Japanese food score, energy density, fat energy content, and saturated fatty acid score were calculated. These indices were compared for sex, age group and body mass index. Indices reflecting food interest or fat preference were significantly higher in boys than girls both in the 7-9- and 10-12-year-old age groups. Positive correlations were found between food interest score and energy density, fat energy content, and saturated fatty acid score. Using the picture choice method, definite gender differences in food preference were identified in early elementary school children. This information could be useful for dietary therapy in childhood obesity.

Parental separation and adult psychological distress: evidence for the 'reduced effect' hypothesis?

Parental separation has been linked to increased likelihood of reporting psychological distress in adulthood, but relatively little is known about how this association may have changed over time. One hypothesis is that as the experience of separation has become more common, the association with psychological distress will reduce (the ‘reduced effect’ hypothesis). Previous evidence using the British birth cohorts does not support this hypothesis, but past studies have several limitations which we aim to address. In this study we measure parental separation from birth, account for missing data and statistically test cohort differences using data from two British birth cohorts – the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS) and 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS). Despite these methodological improvements, we find little evidence to support the ‘reduced effect’ hypothesis: parental separation was associated with a similarly increased likelihood of reporting psychological distress in adulthood for men and women in both cohorts.

Socioeconomic Circumstances in Childhood and Blood Pressure in Adulthood: The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns Study

Prospective evidence suggests an inverse association between socioeconomic circumstances in childhood and adolescence and blood pressure (BP) in adulthood, but uncertainty remains about whether this association is confounded by risk factors acting in utero, early infancy, and adulthood. The authors investigated this question in a population-based cohort of 2270 Finnish children and adolescents aged 3 to 18 years at study entry. Information about early socioeconomic circumstances, birth weight, and breast-feeding were requested from participants or their mothers in 1980 and 1983. Adulthood socioeconomic position, lifestyle factors, and systolic BP were measured at ages 24 to 39 years in 2001. There was a graded association between lower parental socioeconomic position in childhood and adolescence and higher systolic BP in adulthood for men and women in different birth cohorts and across different socioeconomic indicators. This association was independent of adulthood socioeconomic position. Adjustment for risk factors, including birth weight, breast-feeding, adult body mass index, smoking, and alcohol consumption, had little effect on the association between parental socioeconomic position and systolic BP. Early socioeconomic disadvantage seems to carry a long-lasting harmful effect on BP that is not counteracted by risk profiles in later life.

Soft Patriarchs; New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, by W. Bradford Wilcox

Soft Patriarchs; New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands. W. Bradford Wilcox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2004. 337 pp. ISBN 0-2268-9709-5. $20.00 (paper); 0-2268-9708-7. $62.00 (hardback). A couple of years ago, two books appeared that made the case that marriage was good for men. Nock (1998) and Palkovitz (2002) argued that marriage provides entry into adulthood for men via engagement in networks of association, greater commitment to wage earning, and often, it turns out, religious participation. Brad Wilcox's Soft Patriarchs; New Men, picks up on this story by assessing the ways in which religion, specifically conservative Christianity, is also good for men, and by extension, he intimates, their wives and children as well. At the center of the book are two questions: Has weakened the ability of religious communities to influence family? Is religion increasingly marginal in shaping family culture and practice? In seeking to answer these, Wilcox locates the sources of parenting strategies in religious institutional and subcultural strength and in the varying social locations of Protestants vis-a-vis modernity. The book begins with a reading of trends in the production and content of conservative and mainline Protestant culture-assessing the ways in which popular family advice literature, sermons, and relevant denominational statements variously situate these communities vis-a-vis modernity. He makes that case that mainline Protestants are positioned both theologically and socioeconomically in ways that would lead us to expect them to adopt an accommodationist stance on issues around marriage, divorce, gender identity, and the division of family labor. Conservative Protestants, he argues, are likely to resist modern family diversity, openness to multiple sexualities, and to be much more traditional and conservative when it comes to ideas about gender and family. The findings in this section bear out these hypotheses. The remainder of the book goes on to compare attitudes and behavior reported by conservative Protestant, mainline Protestant, and unaffiliated men (a discussion of Roman Catholics appears in an appendix), based on a range of publically available national survey data (including the General Social Survey; National Survey of Families and Households 1 and 2, and the Survey of Adults and Youth). He finds that although mainline rhetoric emphasizes tolerance and diversity, most mainline church-going men are conventional, middle-income husbands who are involved fathers and increasingly likely to help out at home. More surprisingly, he finds that conservative Protestants, particularly those who are actively involved in their churches, are even more likely to be involved expressive fathers and emotionally connected husbands. Not so surprisingly, these men also are more likely to be authoritative in their parenting style, hold more hierarchical ideas about gender, and help out less with housework. Overall, the book makes several substantial contributions to the literature on family, religion, and manhood. First, in answer to its central question, it appears that modernity has not weakened the relevance of religion to family culture and practice. Second, Wilcox's analysis illustrates the importance of attending to both the rhetoric of cultural producers and ordinary believers in assessing the effects of religion on family life. Across his analysis, he finds that mainliners are more traditional than what the inclusivist rhetoric of denominational leaders suggests, and conservative Protestants are generally less conservative than what cultural producers, such as Dobson, or Moral Majority, would suggest. …

Socialization and Work in Japan: The Meaning of Adulthood of Men and Women in a Business Context

Abstract The Japanese term, shakaijin, refers to becoming a social adult, and locates the transition to adulthood in leaving school/university and entering an employment relation. In this paper we explore the role of company socialization in producing social adults. Company socialization is explored through a case study of a securities company, and an additional study of a large bank. New employee training programs are a central socializing event, and bridge the transition from school/university‐to‐work. In this study, events prior to and subsequent to new employee training arc also shown to play key roles in company socialization. Recruitment practices socialize as well as screen job applicants. Regular personal assessments continue socialization throughout the working life cycle. Based on the analyses of socialization in recruitment, training and assessment, two aspects of company socialization in Japan are emphasized. First, company socialization involves gender socialization. Male employees are the main subjects of company socialization, and their induction to social adulthood seeks to generate commitment and social integration to company life. Social adulthood of female employees is defined in connection with future familial roles rather than commitment to work. Second, the meaning of social adulthood for men is fused with acceptance of management goals. Company socialization attempts to align individual attitudes and behaviors with company goals.

Test of Family of Origin Structural Models of Male Verbal and Physical Aggression

Using a convenience sample of 152 married or cohabiting couples, this study tested different theoretical models of male aggression toward a female intimate that addressed the relation between physical and verbal aggression variables and family of origin violence, psychological symptoms, and marital satisfaction. Results of covariance structural analysis procedures provided general support for the proposed models. Results indicated that physical violence witnessed in one's family of origin was predictive of greater psychological distress in adulthood for men and women. Husbands' reports of psychological symptomatology were an important path to their own display of physical and verbal aggression; this relation was not true for women's symptomatology reports and their partners' aggression displays. Marital satisfaction was found to have a significant negative relation with both wives' reports of their husbands' verbal aggression toward them and husbands' reports of verbal aggression toward their wives. The findings for the physical aggression model closely paralleled those found for the verbal models.

Childhood and Adulthood Influences on the Adjustment of Young Adults with and Without Parents with Drinking Problems

Results are reported of an interview study of 216 young adults (16-35 years) of whom two-thirds had been brought up by at least one parent with a drinking problem. The paper focuses upon the possible determinants of two dimensions of adulthood adjustment: positive mental health versus demoralisation, and conformity versus deviance. Results are analysed separately for men and women using simple correlations, path analyses, and analyses of sub-groups with and without cohabiting partners and paid employment. The results support the expectation that proximal influences in the form of marital satisfaction, satisfaction with social life, and satisfaction with work or alternative activity (men only) are important for adulthood mental health. Childhood influences in the form of freedom from childhood emotional problems and harmony in the family of origin were related to positive mental health for women, and freedom from childhood conduct problems was related to conformity in adulthood for men. There was no suppor...