Social Father Research Articles

The prevalence of cytomegalovirus antibody in women: An epidemiological study from South Wales

Hypotheses concerning possible modes of transmission of cytomegalovirus were tested by the use of questionnaires and sera obtained from a random sample of 894 women aged 18–69 years of age from a community in South Wales. In a multiple regression analysis married and single women were treated separately. Of a total of 11 independent variables considered, only four were significantly associated with seropositivity in the case of married women: age, number of siblings, husband's social class and father's unemployment. In the case of single women only age and father's social class remained statistically significant. The data is consistent with the hypothesis that the majority of antibody to cytomegalovirus in this community is acquired by means of close personal contact, probably by a salivary route. Further data based on longitudinal study of seropositives may be helpful in testing this hypothesis.

Self-Concepts of Korean High School Students as Related to Socio-Economic Status

To investigate the relationships of self-concept to socio-economic status, the Self-concept Questionnaire of 30 adjective items was administered to 349 Korean high school students. They were divided into two groups: 177 high and 172 low socio-economic groups, using school type as the primary index of social class and father's occupation as the secondary index. Socioeconomic status was not significantly related to self-concept in spite of the highly stratified nature of the Korean society. High-status students, however, generally showed more positive self-concepts. Apparent reason for the lack of relationship was discussed in terms of a social learning view.

Nineteenth Century Origins of the Social Studies Movement: Understanding the Continuity between Older and Contemporary Civic and U.S. History Textbooks

Abstract The current debate on social studies textbooks — as reflected in the writings of FitzGerald, Weisberger arid Roselle — center around the alleged dullness, vacuity and intellectual sterility of social studies texts. The debate is hardly new. However, when one compares U.S. history and civics texts of the last century with those written in the last twenty years, and attempts to relate both to the writings of social studies educators, the debate vanishes into irrelevance. It would appear that the social studies founding fathers modeled many of their major ideas after the assumptions of 19th century positivist social science. One can trace this relationship in the famous 1916 Social Studies Committee report. Writers of this report (1) related social studies to a conception of citizenship, (2) perceived the data of social science as shedding light on natural laws, (3) assumed that social scientist would select the “social problems” that students ought to study, (4) believed that use of social science ...

Social factors and height gain of primary schoolchildren in England and Scotland.

Associations between height and certain social factors are known to persist throughout the primary school years. To discover whether the height differences between social groups are increasing or diminishing during this time, heights of 7569 English and Scottish 5 to 10 year olds measured in 1972 and 1973 were examined, together with information about number of siblings, father's social class and father's employment status. With the exception of five year old children of unemployed fathers, any increases in height differentials were no more than would be expected from the dependence of height gain on initial height. No evidence was found of absolute decrease in height differences over one year, for any of the three social factors considered, but children from larger sibships grew more than expected given their starting heights. Thus associations between attained height and social factors in five to ten year old children arise almost entirely before the age of five and do not alter appreciably during the primary school years.

Desensitization of children to television violence.

Desensitization of children to television violence.

On Physical and Social Kinship

In a recent discussion of physical and social kinship, Barnes (1961: 297 and 1964) has suggested that the traditional anthropological distinction between the pater and the genitor of a child is inadequate for analytic purposes. The pater is the social father --or he who raises the child, whereas the notion genitor usually refers to the 'physical father' or 'he who begot the child'; similarly, the mater is the social mother, whereas the genitrex is the 'physical mother.' Barnes makes an additional distinction; namely, between the genetic father and the culturally defined genetic father-the genitor-and the genetic mother and the culturally defined genetic mother-the genitrex. There are, then, in each case, three terms: (a) the genetic mother, genitrex, and the mater, on the one hand, and (b) the genetic father, genitor, and the pater, on the other. This is an important distinction. In this note, I would like to discuss some of these conceptions in reference to (a) some ethnographic data on household organization and sexual behavior that I collected several years ago in the Caribbean, and (b) to some general properties of AmericanEnglish kinship terminology. These examples will, in turn, be related-on a relatively primitive level-to the more general problem of the significance of physical facts, of one sort or another, in social anthropology. Let us begin by considering some of the possible relations between the terms listed above. The relationship between the genetic (or physical) mother and the genitrex, Barnes (1961:298) points out, is usually one of identity: gestation is a biological fact that is difficult to conceal, although there are both literary and political examples of simulated maternity (Gellner 1963:242). In general, two categories, the genetic mother and the culturally defined genetic motherthe genitrex-are mutually inclusive; the social category is concordant with the 'physical reality' to which it refers. The relationship between the genitrex and the mater need not be one of identity; but the disparity between these terms is systematic and invariably known, or, at least, discoverable. The terms mater and genetrex may refer to mutually exclusive cate-

Legitimacy and Paternity Among the Hehe

Among the Hehe, a Bantu tribe numbering about 52,000 in the Tanganyika Territory in East Africa, clan membership and consequent social attributes are derived patrilineally. If the mother is unmarried, the physical father customarily becomes her husband and hte child's social father. If the mother is married and the paternity of the husband is questioned, the identity of the physical father is sought; and, if determined, the physical father must, after makin the necessary payments, assume the full functions of paternity; otherwise, if not identified, the husband acts as social father. The child thus does not lack a social father, and his status is not affected by the irregularity of his birth. There is, therefore, no illegitimacy among the Hehe. Cultural values condition this result: unchastity evokes little social disapproval, children are universally desired, and the child receives full status without any conflict of social forces.