Mainstream American Values Research Articles

Parents' adaptation from conflict: Bicultural socialization beliefs and acculturative family conflict in Chinese American families.

Many Chinese American parents desire for their children to take on both Chinese heritage and mainstream American values and behaviors, referred to as their bicultural socialization beliefs. Parents' development of such beliefs appears linked with parent-adolescent conflict concerning cultural values, yet the direction and temporal ordering of this relation is unclear. The present study aimed to resolve discrepancies in the literature through examining the bidirectional relations between Chinese American parents' bicultural socialization beliefs and the acculturative family conflict they experience with their children. Relations were examined across two developmental periods of the children: adolescence and emerging adulthood. Data came from a longitudinal study of 444 Chinese American families from the west coast of the United States. Mothers and fathers reported on their own bicultural socialization beliefs for their children. Mothers, fathers, and adolescents/emerging adults each reported on levels of acculturative family conflict within mother-adolescent and father-adolescent dyads. Higher levels of family conflict in adolescence consistently predicted greater increases in parents' desires for their children to be bicultural in emerging adulthood. Results have implications for interventions with Chinese American families and demonstrate Chinese American parents as capable of adapting and growing from challenging, culturally based interactions with their children. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Paintgrinder: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Karl Marx on a Horizon of Thought

This article undertakes a radical rereading of capitalist ideas in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). In both popular and academic appraisals, Emerson is an exponent of mainstream American values, moral and economic. We challenge such appraisals through a novel analysis of Emerson's brief contact with the work of Karl Marx and proceed to illustrate the subtlety of Emerson's engagement with the structure of capitalist labor. Using explanatory metaphors based on painterly labor, Emerson demonstrates how labor structures that are assumed to be products of capitalism were also discernable in cultural settings in the mid-nineteenth century, and that neglected lines of affinity exist between cultural and capitalist production. The result is a speculative new purview for the analysis of the social forms of the capitalist era, which indicates the shortcomings of what Michel Foucault termed a Marxian "horizon of thought" that governs the critical outlook of the humanities.

Disentangling acculturation and enculturation intergenerational gaps: Examining mother-youth value discrepancies andmental health among Mexican-descent college students.

To test the acculturation gap hypothesis by examining mother-youth value discrepancies (both acculturative and enculturative) and their association with mother-youth acculturative conflict and youth mental health outcomes. Participants were 273 Mexican descent college students attending a large, public, Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) in West Texas (72% women). The participants' ages ranged 18-25 years (M = 19.33 years; SD = 1.54 years). Three models assessed the relationship between mother-youth value discrepancies and mental health outcomes (suicidal ideation, non-suicidal self-injury, and depressive symptoms) as mediated by mother-youth acculturative conflict. Consistently, Mexican heritage cultural values were related to mental health outcomes while American cultural values were not. The study found that increased mother-youth discrepancies on Mexican cultural values were associated with increased negative mental health outcomes. Our findings suggest that adopting or learning new mainstream American values does not substitute for the Mexican cultural values that protect against negative outcomes.

Family contextual influences on bicultural competence development among U.S. Mexican-origin youths.

This study investigated how parents' value-based enculturation and acculturation processes (i.e., Mexican American and mainstream American values trajectories across their youths' development from late childhood to middle adolescence) related to their youths' behavioral, affective, and cognitive components of bicultural competence in late adolescence. Our sample included 749 U.S. Mexican-origin youths (30% Mexico-born; 49% female), and their parents, followed for 7 years (Mage = 10.44 to 17.38 years). Linear latent growth analyses revealed that both parental enculturation and acculturation processes have important implications for U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents' bicultural competence. This work highlights parental promoting and inhibiting influences on the development of bicultural competence, a normative developmental competency among ethnic-racial minority and immigrant adolescents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Parenting Factors Predicting Substance Use and Aggression among Latino/a Adolescents: The Moderating Role of Cultural Values

This study seeks to examine the moderating effects of cultural values (Latino values and mainstream American values) on the relations among parenting factors, substance use, and aggression among Latino adolescents using a longitudinal design. Data were collected from 213 Latino 10th graders between October 2011 and May 2012 and were analyzed using path analyses. Latino values at Time 1 negatively predicted substance use norms at Time 2, while mainstream American values at Time 1 positively predicted substance use amount at Time 2, after controlling for substance use at Time 1. Latino values moderated the relations between parental monitoring and substance use. Parental monitoring predicted more substance use among adolescents who reported lower Latino values, but not for adolescents who reported higher Latino values. Mainstream American values moderated the relations between parent-child conflict and substance use. Parent–adolescent conflict predicted more substance use among adolescents who reported higher mainstream American values, but not for adolescents who reported lower mainstream American values. The effects of parental monitoring and parent-child conflict on adolescent substance use are contingent on cultural values. Mainstream American values may enhance the risk of parent-adolescent conflict, whereas Latino values may enhance the protection of parental monitoring in relation to substance use.

Latent profiles of American and ethnic–racial identity in Latinx mothers and adolescents: Links to behavioral practices and cultural values.

Few studies have examined national identity processes in Latinx immigrant mothers and their children. This study uses a person-centered approach to examine how profiles of American and ethnic–racial identity are related to American and Latinx cultural values, group orientation, and socialization practices in a sample of 172 Latinx mother–youth dyads in an emerging immigrant community. Latent profile analyses produced a 4-profile solution for mothers (high-bicultural-, moderate-bicultural-, enculturated-, and assimilated-identity mothers) and a two-profile solution for youth (high- and low-bicultural identity) with respect to ethnic–racial and American identity. Mothers low in White cultural orientation and mainstream American values were more likely to be in the enculturated-identity profile, whereas mothers low in Latinx group orientation were more likely to be in the assimilated-identity profile. Likelihood of youth profile membership did not differ based on our covariates. Testing mean-level profile differences, high-bicultural mothers delivered the most frequent familism socialization messages and delivered more cultural socialization messages than assimilated and enculturated mothers. High-bicultural-identity youth reported receiving more familism socialization messages, but fewer promotion-of-mistrust messages than low-bicultural youth. Our results support past work finding relations between identifications, values, and behavioral practices for both host (Latinx) and receiving (American) cultures. Our study also highlights the fact that 3 of our 4 profiles of Latinx immigrant mothers (high-bicultural, moderate-bicultural, and assimilated mothers), an understudied population when it comes to national identity, are heavily incorporating a sense of being American into their identities.

Reclaiming American Indian Women Leadership: Indigenous Pathway to Leadership

There was no identified leadership model for American Indian women leaders. Through an exhaustive review of leadership styles it was identified that the Centered Leadership approach lends itself to the culture of American Indian Women. The components of the Centered Leadership approach include: utilizing personal strengths, managing energy, positive framing, relationship building, and collaborating with others to take advantage of opportunities. Based on the review of the literature and native women’s leadership styles, the concepts of the Centered Leadership Model were utilized to develop “Native Women Leadership: Indigenous Pathway”. Prior to European contact, native women held positions of leadership, shared in decision making and owned property. Today Native women leaders and managers are reclaiming their decision making authority to improve the lives of their nations. The Native Women Indigenous Pathway has not come without barriers and discrimination. The Centered Leadership approach assists in the examination of the American Indian woman’s pathway to decision making. Native women find themselves living in two worlds and must navigate expectations and responsibilities by switching between mainstream American and tribal values. How a native woman decides to negotiate these two worldviews is part of what creates her individual identity and her leadership style. A Native American Leadership Indigenous Pathway model is proposed.

Cultural values and other perceived benefits of organized activities: A qualitative analysis of Mexican-origin parents’ perspectives in Arizona

ABSTRACTThe limited understanding on why Latino parents endorse organized activities is problematic given that these beliefs can help elucidate why they overcome barriers to support their children’s participation. In this study, we analyzed interviews from a diverse group of 34 Mexican-origin parents who resided in Arizona. Results of the study indicate that although organized activities were perceived as contexts that can help youth gain skills reflecting mainstream American values (e.g., school engagement, interpersonal skills), parents also thought that activities promoted positive behaviors associated with their ethnic culture based on traditional values related to respeto, familism, and religiosity. The implications of this study suggest that understanding Mexican-origin parents’ perspectives can help organized activity leaders design programs that fully address the benefits that families seek from organized activities.

Media, Racial Identity, and Mainstream American Values

A survey of 499 Black, Asian, and White American college students assessed their endorsement of “mainstream” American values, uncovering a 6-factor values structure, with some notable significant differences between the races. As expected, White respondents' own personal value orientations most closely matched their assessments of mainstream American values, and stronger racial identity (from a social identity perspective) corresponded to an even closer match. A variety of media consumption measures correlated with personal/mainstream American values congruence, with greater media exposure predicting greater endorsement of mainstream values, but most relationships were eclipsed when controlling for demographics, race, and racial identity. Predictors that maintained under controls included music TV and sports programming exposure, pointing to the potential importance of such particular media forms in the process of value-based cultural assimilation and reinforcement.

Dime Novel Bill

Dime Novel Bill William M. Clements (bio) The Hero of a Hundred Fights: Collected Stories from the Dime Novel King, from Buffalo Bill to Wild Bill Hickok. Ned Buntline. Edited and introduced by Clay Reynolds. Union Square Press. http://www.sterlingpublishing.com. 438 pages; cloth, $24.95. In the first chapter of Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men; or, The Wildest and Truest Tale I've Ever Told, the white-haired father of the title character perishes as he leads family devotions at his Kansas farmstead from a pistol shot fired by Jake M'Kandlas [sic]. Before the three-page opening chapter of this dime novel concludes, not only is Mr. Cody dead, but M'Kandlas and his band of thirty ruffians have made their escape and the victim's son has vowed vengeance. For the remainder of the novel, whose every chapter is as action-filled as the first, Buffalo Bill pursues his father's killer accompanied by his sidekick, Wild Bill Hitchcock [sic], and others who share his sense of justice. Their quest takes them not only into Indian country, where they confront savage Sioux, but also into southern Missouri, where during the novel's time setting at the onset of the Civil War, they must deal with the Confederate sympathizers, including Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch [sic again], among whom M'Kandlas has sought refuge. This novel, the first in which Edward Z. C. Judson (writing as Ned Buntline) features a hero based on the real-life frontier figure William F. Cody, whom Judson had apparently met during a stopover at North Platte, Nebraska, on an overland railroad journey in 1869, is one of four dime novels with Western settings that Clay Reynolds has made available in The Hero of a Hundred Fights: Collected Stories from the Dime Novel King, from Buffalo Bill to Wild Bill Hickok. The others are equally action-driven. Hazel-Eye, the Girl Trapper, A Tale of Strange Young Life also begins with the murder of the protagonist's father and hinges on the mistaken identities common in nineteenth-century fiction before justice appropriately conquers. The Miner Detective; or, The Ghost of the Gulch introduces a forerunner of Sherlock Holmes who manipulates superstitious dread of the uncanny to exact revenge upon a notorious murderer. Wild Bill's Last Trail treats the last days of James Butler Hickok, who bears little resemblance to Buffalo Bill's boon companion in the earlier narrative, in a darkly fatalistic manner. These novels were published between 1869 and 1880, three in serialized format before appearing as complete books. Once he has introduced them both in a lively written general prefatory essay and in briefer headnotes for each, editor Reynolds allows the novels to speak for themselves. That prefatory essay provides an excellent introduction to the life and art of "Ned Buntline," much of which remains speculative, and to the genre of the dime novel, which flourished in the US during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Author Judson was an important figure in the period's popular literature, and Reynolds brings him to life in a succinct overview which gives the reader plenty of tantalizing details about a man who would be of interest even if he had not written a word. More importantly, Reynolds provides us with what we need to appreciate the Buntline oeuvre. The novels are formulaic, heavy on action (much of which is improbable), short on characterization, reliant on stereotypes, reflective of the temper of their era, and immensely entertaining. The reader who puts aside expectations of what a novel should be can spend a few pleasant hours with noble and ignoble figures who engage in outrageous adventures in a western landscape often based as much on speculation as on reality. But the reader can derive more than a few hours entertainment in reading through these exciting stories. Like popular culture in general, they mirror their cultural milieu. One gets a good idea of mainstream American values (at least as they were perceived by Judson, who was writing for the masses) in the nineteenth century. Moreover, these novels—along with more highly regarded nineteenth-century sources such as the Leatherstocking tales of...

The relation between ethnic group attachment and prosocial tendencies: The mediating role of cultural values

Studies suggest that Mexican–American youths who feel attached to their ethnic group engage in more prosocial behaviors. However, the psychological mechanisms that account for this association are not clear. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theories, we examined whether the association between ethnic group attachment and tendencies to engage in six distinct types of prosocial behaviors was mediated by familism and Mainstream American values among Mexican American youths. Ethnic group attachment, familism, Mainstream American values, and prosocial tendencies were assessed among 207 Mexican–American early adolescents using an interview format. Latent variable path models showed that ethnic group attachment was associated with greater tendencies to engage in compliant, emotional, dire, and anonymous helping, and that each of these associations was at least partially mediated by greater familism values. Mainstream American values were related to greater tendencies to engage in public prosocial behavior and less altruistic behavior, but did not mediate the associations between ethnic group attachment and prosocial tendencies. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are addressed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

<i>Wholly Communion</i>, Literary Nationalism, and the Sorrows of the Counterculture

those americans here writing about it's time to back, after our heroes were always gangster outlaw why surprised you act like it now, a place simplest man was always most complex you gave me usual things, comics, music, royal blue drape suits & what they ever me but unreadable books? Tom Raworth, I Mean These opening lines from I Mean by British poet Tom Raworth, published in 1967 in Raworth's fi rst full- length collection, The Relation Ship (Goliard Press),1 stand as a kind of meta phor for a larger problem facing British avantgarde poetry in 1960s. Put simply, I Mean addresses an infl uence on British letters that was to weigh heavily on poets challenging restrained formalism and hostility to modernist project characteristic of British Movement poets.2 How were many Beat and Black Mountain- enamored versifi ers of Albion to be innovative on their own terms? The avant- garde, as Raworth seems to have it, is predicated on aura of outlaw, gangster. Such fi gures are suggestively American, particularly when read within context of poem's opening lines. American signs pointing way forward for a developing British poetics include an idealized simplicity, comics, and music.3 Raworth's poem works in part to ask whether En glish will be able to give back. What would that something sound like? What would it look like? Would it be somehow distinctly En glish? Would it be as good as Americans? Is Raworth ventriloquizing and mocking anxiety felt by British fellow poets enamored of experimental American verse, or is he being sincere? If Raworth is ventriloquizing, why might that be case? To write all those americans here writing about america is to address highly problematic way American avant- garde poetry and poetics were unselfconsciously nationalized in 1950s and 1960s through a variety of strategies. Many British poets, for example, got their fi rst taste of American alternative poetry from Donald Allen's pop u lar 1960 anthology The New American Poetry. Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, and related fi gures were ensconced in a book whose title gladly relied on identifi cation with United States as an attractive selling point, and whose cover featured red and white stripes allusive of American fl ag. The Beat poets in par tic u lar saw no contradiction in positioning themselves as antiestablishment fi gures while maintaining a marked patriotism that distinguished them from their more internationalist peers. Ginsberg, for example, appeared any number of times throughout 1960s in an Uncle Sam hat. This challenged mainstream American values by virtue of hat's placement on head of a polysexual bearded Jewish poet, as it simultaneously marked a sincere love of country that Ginsberg, following Whitman, expressed throughout his work. We can refer to his 1956 poem A Supermarket in California, which invoked and implicitly called for a recuperation of an idealized lost America,4 and move right through his poetry of 1980s and 1990s to get a sense of poet's lifelong commitment to United States as a promised land that had to be redeemed. Kerouac certainly never shied away from expressing his loyalty to States even as he, like Ginsberg, railed against limitations it placed on his desires. His On Road refers repeatedly to an America that symbolized- like no other place- freedom he so craved. Despite its problems, America was the mighty land.5 As Manuel Louis Martinez suggests, it may be that [Kerouac] is neither voice of dissension as his most ardent readers claim, nor violently reactionary racist he came to resemble in his fi nal years. It may turn out that what Beats most clearly signifi ed was tendency of American dissent to subvert its own countercultural instinct for middle road, for stability, for comfort of status quo that promises a protective space for individual. …

‘I am somebody’: barrio Pentecostalism and gendered acculturation among Chicano ex-gang members

Segmented assimilation theorists posit that second-generation immigrants today are at risk of downward acculturation and socio-economic mobility, and that dense co-ethnic communities provide the greatest resistance. Drawing upon data from ethnographic interviews and non-participant observation at a Pentecostal church, this paper will suggest that American-origin religious institutions may provide shelter against downward mobility through ‘religious optimism’. Using a race-gender framework to explain exit from gang lifestyle and acculturation into a group promoting mainstream American values, this paper will suggest that religious optimism may sometimes be infused with traditions from the black Protestant church, as well as inner-city stylistic expressions. Therefore, the first suggestion in this paper is that the segmented assimilation paradigm should not dichotomize the values of immigrant groups against those of native-born blacks and Latinos. The second suggestion in this paper is that segmented assimilation theorists should take into consideration that trajectories may shift in adulthood.

Carving Navajo National Boundaries: Patriotism, Tradition, and the Diné Marriage Act of 2005

Carving Navajo National Boundaries:Patriotism, Tradition, and the Diné Marriage Act of 2005 Jennifer Denetdale (bio) Like many other Americans, I became aware of the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 via the national news, which broadcast the scenes of airplanes diving into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Many Americans took these events as a signal that they were no longer safe and they thus supported President Bush and his administration's preparations to begin invasions in the Middle East, first Afghanistan and then Iraq. Like other Americans, many Navajos have embraced their American citizenship, and this has been manifested in myriad ways, including military enlistments and cultural events meant to inspire loyalty to the United States. Indeed, to express antiwar sentiments is almost impossible in Navajo country given the heightened displays of U.S. patriotism. After September 11, Diné and American nationalism merged in ways that have conflated American and Navajo values so that Navajos' historical experiences of injustice and oppression under American colonialism are erased. This conflation of values can be examined by considering how Diné patriotism is linked to traditional concepts of the warrior and how Navajo leaders have passed legislation such as the Diné Marriage Act of 2005, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman. While the law claims to draw upon tradition, it actually serves to affirm Western gender ideals and American values as normative for Navajos. The conflation of Navajo traditional values with mainstream American values gives credence to the multicultural narrative that America has created about itself and renders invisible the links between the past and the present, wherein Native peoples still live with the consequences of dispossession and disenfranchisement. Critically examining the connections constructed between the traditional roles of Navajo warriors and present-day Navajo soldiering for the United States, as well as the connections made between family values and recent legislation like the Diné Marriage Act, are critical to our decolonization as Native peoples. [End Page 289] In the months following the September 11 attacks, Navajo Nation leaders issued a proclamation expressing solidarity with the United States; October 15, 2001, was named "Navajo Nation Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Terrorist Attacks on America." Recalling Navajo people's historic involvement in American wars, President Kelsey Begay's proclamation expressed appreciation for first responders, and support for President Bush, the U.S. Armed Forces, and all American citizens making contributions and donations to aid survivors of the attacks. Numerous scholars have written about Native peoples' long history of U.S. military service, stretching from the American Revolutionary War, to the First World War, to the present war in Iraq. Perhaps not surprisingly, many studies of Native peoples' involvement in American wars have been filtered through a multicultural framework that insists upon seeing Native soldiering as evidence of successful integration into the American landscape. While Native patriotism has mostly been understood as part of the American assimilation process, Native scholars such as Lisa Poupart, seeking to understand the roots of Native peoples' ongoing marginalization in the United States, explain why Native peoples have often failed to recognize the contradictions of a supposedly successful integration into American society. Poupart declares, "Through formal Western education, conversion to Christianity, and assimilation into Euro-American culture and the capitalist economy, tribal people learned to speak the language and to interpret and reproduce the meanings of our oppressions." 1 Although Poupart does not note Native peoples' patriotism to the United States as another facet of assimilation to American values, it can be said that boarding schools strongly encouraged Native children to embrace loyalty to the United States through American-centric curriculums, observances of American national holidays, and cultural events that highlighted Americanism. Indian military enlistments formed in the American imagination both colorful images of "real Americans" fighting against European tyranny and discourse about Indians' predisposition for war and combat. Alongside the fascination with images of the Native warrior unleashing his wartime prowess on behalf of the American nation, observers, including Indian Service officials, argued that military service moved Native Americans toward integration into American society by directing them away from tribal relations and toward white civilization. According to historian Lawrence...

Poisoning Their Coffee: Louis Armstrong and Civil Rights

This essay argues that the life and music of Louis Armstrong challenged mainstream American values and attacked racial hierarchy. In his lifestyle Armstrong pursued a carnivalesque celebration of b...

What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era

What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era. By Stephanie J. Shaw. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Pp. xvi, 347. Foreword, preface, acknowledgment, introduction, conclusion, sources, appendices, notes, index. $47.50, cloth; $16.95, paper.) Stephanie Shaw's What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era makes a significant contribution to the study of African American and women's history. Focusing her research on approximately eighty black women who pursued careers in teaching, nursing, social work, and other professions, Shaw shows how African American communities empowered their daughters (and themselves) through child-rearing and educational practices designed to develop socially responsible individualism (p. 3). Women like Mary Church Terrell, Janie Porter Barrett, Angelina Grimke, Layle Lane, and Septima Poinsette Clark were encouraged to strive for individual achievement not just for its own sake, but so that they might reach positions of wealth or influence that would enable them to help others. Because assistance in gaining access to education and other advantages was often provided by outside their immediate families, black professional women were imbued with a sense of their duties to [their] race (p. 69). They knew they were expected to use the knowledge and skills they acquired to become community leaders and work to improve the lives of others who had not been so fortunate. As Clara Jones's grandfather told her before she left for college, You're going to get your education, and its [sic] not yours; you're doing it for your people (p. 38). Shaw's sample group encompasses three generations of women born between the 1850s and 1930s. The first two generations, she suggests, viewed their role within the traditional framework of the Progressive Era: shaping working-class and poor into more acceptable members of society by encouraging them to adopt mainstream American values such as hard work, thrift, and sobriety. At the same time they often provided useful resources for black communities and helped establish institutions like schools, hospitals, and libraries where none had existed before. In the third generation Shaw perceives a shift toward a more militant attitude and a reconceptualization of the problems facing African Americans. In the 1930s and 1940s black professional women turned their attention away from the race to uplifting white society. …

Generational Differences in Attitudes and Socioeconomic Status among Hispanics in Houston

The complex variety of experiences that characterize the current wave of immigration have prompted revisions in the classic model of straight‐line assimilation; the most important alternative theory is based on the concept of “segmented” assimilation. This paper assesses the validity of these two perspectives with data on three generations of Hispanic immigrants in Houston. Contrary to the standard assimilation model, third‐generation Hispanics are not staying in school longer, nor are they earning higher wages than members of the second generation. But contrary to the segmented‐assimilation model, third‐generation Hispanics also give no evidence at all of having assimilated into an “adversarial” culture that rejects mainstream American values and is presumably responsible for restricting their upward mobility. The data reaffirm the pivotal role of education in determining occupational mobility, and they point to the importance of identifying the external societal factors that account for the stalled progress in educational achievement among third‐generation Hispanic Americans.

Sled Dog Racing: The Celebration of Co-operation in a Competitive Sport

To prepare for distance sled dog racing, a highly competitive sport, mushers embody mainstream American values of individualism and competition. Yet the race as ritually constructed subordinates that competitiveness to a celebration of co-operation. Using Turner's idea of communitas, the A. examines how the sled dog community is constituted. She argues that the race is constructed as a liminal experience; outside roles and statuses are leveled and an alternative moral order emerges. This dynamic is explored further in tensions existing between traditional mushers and those who reflect the competitive values of American society, and in comparison with rodeos, where co-operation in competition also exists. (Sled dog racing, communitas, values, sports, co-operation).

The South as an American Problem.

How do southerners feel about the ways in which the rest of the country regards them? In this volume, twelve observers of the modern South discuss its persistent image as a people and place at odds with mainstream American ideals and values. Ranging from the South's climate to its religious fundamentalism to its great outpouring of fiction and autobiography, the contributors show how and why our perceptions of the region have been continually refashioned by national/southern tensions, trends, and events. At the same time, they show that although the nation has sought, time and again, to change the region, America also has used the South to expose and modify some of its own darker impulses. As editors Larry J. Griffin and Don H. Doyle point out, no single approach could clarify the complexities underlying this persistent notion of a Problem South. Representing a diversity of backgrounds and interests, the writings in this volume are the products of strong and independent minds that cut across disciplines, disagree among themselves, blend contemporary and historical insights, and confront conventional wisdom and expedient generalities. Filled with fresh insights into the dynamics of the region's long-troubled relationship with the rest of the nation, this volume allows us all to view the current state and future course of the South, as well as its link to the broader culture and polity, in a new light.

Fertility management in Taiwanese and African-American women.

This article describes the fertility management experiences of two groups of women that are of cultures close to but different from dominant, mainstream American culture. A discussion of fertility management necessarily must occur within the context of such issues as the values and norms regarding sexual behavior, choice of partners, and childbearing patterns, and the support and resources offered by the social environment.