Rubin's Theory Research Articles

Transnational Adoption and Life-Writing: Oppressed Voices in Jane Jeong Trenka's The Language of Blood

Abstract Jane Jeong Trenka's adoption memoir received harsh criticism for its negative stance against transnational adoption. Within a small yet growing group of life-writing works on transnational adoption, I see Trenka as an important voice in challenging the dominant cultural imaginary of the altruistic adoption process. This article analyzes how Trenka's stylistic choices, such as a musical and a stand-up comedy routine, capture many Korean adoptees' life experiences. Adoptees like Trenka use life-writing to express a doubled self and to give a platform to those who are rarely heard, like their biological mothers. Through a reconceptualization of Gayle Rubin's theory of patriarchal exchange, among other methodologies, my discussion of The Language of Blood from a feminist perspective brings together literary analysis, sociological approaches, and theories of ethnicity and gender. It reveals how adoption memoirs challenge fixed identities based on stereotypes to present suppressed, female perspectives on adoption and immigration processes that oppose patriarchal hierarchies. This work contributes to our understanding of what autobiography represents for female transnational adoptees and gives further insight into the identity-formation of transracially adopted children.

Using Ecological Models in Research on Health Disparities

Ecological models of human interaction can be used to study complex community problems that affect health disparities. These models allow researchers to study the components of a problem and understand how the problem can be ameliorated with nursing interventions. This article describes four research studies in which ecological models were used to either understand a phenomenon or design and test an intervention. The methods used were ethnography, descriptive/correlational, and quasi-experimental. All subjects were low-income women and children, largely of Hispanic ethnicity, residing in South Texas. The ecological models were derived from Bronfenbrenner's ecology of human development theory, epidemiology, Rubin's theory of developmental tasks of pregnancy, and Barnard's model of mother-child interaction. Heuristic models that represent reality allow researchers to divide a complex problem, such as health disparities, into manageable components. The influence of families, neighborhoods, and communities can be considered without losing sight of individuals.

Towards a Pre-History of the Knowledge Economy: The Case of Pascal

According to anthropologist Gayle Rubin's theory of sex/gender systems, women in Western societies have traditionally served as the vehicles through which power is tranferred from one male to another. These conventions, she claims, have a social, not a biological foundation, and depend-however arbitrarily-on signs of sexual difference. Two late nineteenth-century novels, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's L'Eve future and Jules Verne's Le Château des Carpates, deal with the self-aware female performer who threatened to demystify the belief in the natural origins of gendered roles and the imbalance of power. Theses novels reflect the resulting practice of fetishizing the female body in order to render visible sexual and ostensibly social difference, a practice necessitating the stripping or scripting of her voice by means of the new communication technologies: the phonograph, the moving-picture camera, the telephone and radio.

Perceived Relationship With the Father of the Baby and Maternal Attachment in Adolescents

To examine the perceived relationship with the father of the baby and maternal attachment in pregnant adolescents. Exploratory, longitudinal, using a convenience sample. Four antepartum clinics for low-income women. Seventy-nine adolescents, ages 12-19 years, < 20 weeks gestation; follow-up assessments at 20-29 weeks (n = 64), 30-40 weeks (n = 54), and within 1 week after birth (n = 47). Chi-square analysis showed no differences in demographic characteristics or major variables of those who completed the study and those who dropped out (p > or = .89). An investigator-developed Father of the Baby Scale, Cranley's Maternal-Fetal Attachment Scale, and Avant's Maternal Attachment Assessment Strategy. A close and satisfying relationship with the father of the baby was positively correlated with some aspects of maternal-fetal attachment (r = .24 to .33, p < .05) and maternal-infant attachment (r = .38, p < .05). The findings of this study lend tentative support to Rubin's theory of maternal identity formation. A close and satisfying relationship with the father of the baby has a positive influence on maternal attachment behaviors. Additional research related to the adolescent's relationship with the father of the baby is needed. Fathers of the babies of adolescent mothers should be included, where appropriate, in ongoing care of the mother and infant.

Is Rubin's "taking-in" and "taking-hold" a useful paradigm?

Rubin's "taking-in" and "taking-hold" model has been a dominant paradigm for postpartum nursing. To determine whether "taking-in" and "taking-hold" apply to contemporary hospitalized postpartum women, I conducted a repeated measures survey of 95 women with uncomplicated postpartum courses after vaginal births during their hospital stay. "Taking-in" and "taking-hold" were measured with the Martell Postpartum Questionnaire-Revised (MPQ-R), a paper-and-pencil instrument. An expert panel established the content validity of the MPQ-R in this study. Cronbach's alpha for the two subscales ranged from .40 to .60, a result of skewed distribution of items or lack of variability in scores. The participants were neither "taking-in" nor "taking-hold." The distribution of the participants' responses was similar to each others' and indicated that their postpartum experiences included some aspects of both "taking-in" and "taking-hold." Despite the limitations of the MPQ-R and the research methods, the findings suggest that Rubin's theory has limited usefulness for postpartum nursing of contemporary women.

Coarsening at Random in General Sample Spaces and Random Censoring in Continuous Time

Heitjan and Rubin proposed a concept, "coarsening at random," generalizing Rubin's theory of missing at random. Their analysis was done in discrete sample spaces. We propose a generalization to general sample spaces. Among Heitjan and Rubin's applications was right-censoring in survival analysis. We discuss the application of the generalized theory to various censoring patterns in continuous time and connect to the modern theory of random censoring.