Year-old Daughter Research Articles

Comment: Causal Inference in the Medical Area

It is an honor to be a discussant to the Morris Hansen Lecture, and a pleasure to be discussing Don Rubin's talk. Dr. Rubin has clarified over the years many of the deep issues relating to causal inference. Let me start with a story. About 20 years ago when I was teaching at UCLA, I was eating breakfast one morning at my kitchen table, and my two-and-a-half year-old daughter was in the next room, lying on her back and kicking the wall with her feet. I told her to stop, which she did for a few seconds, and then be gan again. I told her to stop again, and that I really meant it. The kicking stopped for a longer period this time, maybe 30 seconds, and then started up again. Just then the Whittier-Narrows earthquake hit, 5.9 on the Richter scale. Our 50-year-old house started shaking like crazy. As I was running into the next room to get my daughter, I ran into her running into the kitchen screaming sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do it! Which brings me to my first point: causal inference can be tricky. Causal inference can be tricky not just for small chil dren, but for epidemiologists and biostatisticians, too. As an example, consider hormone-replacement therapy for postmenopausal women. Dozens of observational studies (including case-control studies and cohort stud ies) had suggested a 40-50% reduction in coronary heart disease (Stampfer and Colditz, 1991). However, the recently reported results of the Women's Health Initiative trial demonstrated that the treatment had an elevated incidence of coronary heart disease (Manson et al., 2003). Now the statisticians who worked on these epidemiologic studies thought they were mak ing a valid causal inference. In fact, many women took estrogen replacement therapy partly because they be lieved that it would offer cardiovascular benefits. How

Butterflies in possibility land: An example of the miracle question when counselling briefly

This report features the use of a solution-focused intervention (miracle question, see de Shazer, 1988), to try to define workable goals within, time limited, one to one therapy with a depressed single mother. The work was conducted as part of a multidisciplinary team approach to advise and manage the referral, which in this case had originally been for the woman’s eleven year-old daughter.

The Legacy of William Shellabear

William Shellabear (1862-1948) was one of the pioneer Kealy. The Kealy family had close ties withBrethren, Baptist, and Methodist missionaries to British Malaya, yet he is Wesleyan churches and introduced Shellabear to St. Matthew's betterknownamongMalayMuslims thanamongChristians. His Anglican Church, then served by a former Church Missionary editions of classical Malay literature are still in print, and his Society missionary to India. Shellabear quickly found himself studies of the Malay language and orthography are still in use by exposed to a Christian society in which evangelistic and mission­ linguists. His Christian works in Malay did not find a place in a ary commitments were more important than maintaining sectar­ church, which came to be dominated by ethnic Chinese and ian differences. After a three-month period spent working in Indians who spoke English or their own vernacular languages. isolation on the Isle of Wight, during which he reflected on his Nonetheless, Shellabear left a Christian legacy in Malaya. spiritual state, and with the urging of Fanny Kealy, the sixteen­ From 1891 to 1948 he introduced and guided changes in attitudes year-old daughter of John Kealy, Shellabear made a definite toward Malays and Islam, which made it possible for Methodist commitment to Christ. A short time later he beganto court Fanny missionaries to relate positively to Malays while maintaining the and under her influence gave up smoking and drinking. By the integrity of their evangelistic outreach. These changes involved time he received orders to ship out to Singapore in 1886, he and first a reevaluation of Malay culture, and then of Malay religion Fanny were engaged to be married, and he had become an and spirituality. In an era in which Christian-Muslim relations enthusiastic witness to Christianity among the other soldiers. and Malay religious aspirations were dominant themes of an all­ In Singapore Shellabear began to learn the Malay language too-strident Christian discussion, the legacy of a missionary who in order to lead a group of Malay soldiers, and it became his most could retain both his integrity as an evangelist and the respect of important pastime. Dissatisfied with the missionary commit­ those whom he sought to convert is worthy of study. ment of the Anglican church in Singapore, he became part of the

In Search of Lost Intimacy: Mothers and Daughters in Women's Theatre

As women writers attempt to explore their difference and define their specificity, they have come to realize the importance of renewing the primal bond between mother and daughter.' Centuries of patriarchal domination have erected barriers between women, walls of jealousy, misunderstanding, scorn, and silence which must be broken down if women are to liberate themselves, reclaim their matrilineal heritage, and create their own culture. Since the 1970s, women playwrights and theatre groups have often focussed on the difficult mother-daughter relationship in their efforts to dramatize the social and psychological situation of women, their sexuality, interrelationships, and language. By examining a group of mother-daughter plays, we will see how women theatre professionals have used the stage to spotlight this key issue in the feminist critique of patriarchy and to create distinctive forms of feminist dramatic discourse. Mother-daughter plays vary considerably, reflecting their authors' personal experience, culture, sexual orientation, and commitment to feminism. Some playwright-daughters use the stage to rebel against mothers and declare their independence. Whether they portray mothers as devouring monsters or self-sacrificing martyrs, rebellious daughters rarely have much sympathy for their mothers as fellow victims of patriarchy. For others, dramatizing mother-daughter conflicts leads to understanding, acceptance, and reconciliation. Through the act of writing, they communicate the love they feel but could not express to their mothers. For playwrights with daughters of their own, the motherdaughter play is a vehicle for coming to terms with the mixed emotions which accompany the transition from daughterhood to motherhood. For those writers committed to celebrating matrilineage, the motherdaughter play leads to mutual liberation and the renewal of bonds based on equality. While this paper will focus primarily on French women's theatre, let us briefly note the importance of mother-daughter themes for women dramatists in America. In the United States, Ursule Molinaro's one-act play Breakfast Past Noon (1968) angrily presents the mother as an interfering, hypercritical harpy who refuses to treat her forty-three year-old daughter as an adult. To emphasize the lack of true communication, Molinaro uses the unusual technique of indirect discourse in the past tense. Mother and daughter do not speak to each other, they repeat their dialogue of mutual recriminations, criticisms, and sarcasms to the audience. The indirect dialogue escalates in anger and ends in violence as the daughter shoves a lit cigarette in the mouth of her mother who defends herself by choking the daughter. The black humour of Breakfast Past Noon places it at the opposite end of the scale from Honor Moore's poetic drama, Mourning

Somebody’s Children

Several months ago I was asked by a neighbour-friend, ‘Mrs James’, to help her get her eleven year-old son, ‘Stephen’ and eight year-old daughter, ‘Katherine’, back to school. Mrs James was in hospital in Sydney at the time, recovering from a serious operation, while Mr James, an invalid pensioner, was trying to look after the two remaining children at home. (An older son is with foster parents).Stephen had missed more than 100 days of school in 1988 and had not returned to school in 1989. Katherine had a somewhat better attendance record but had stopped going to school when her mother went off to Sydney. Stephen’s and Katherine’s absences had been drawn to the attention of the home-school liaison officers.

PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

I am the parent of an 11½-year-old daughter with sickle cell disease. I am aware of the need for a comprehensive newborn screening program for sickle cell disease and other hemoglobinopathies. However, all such programs must be instituted with a follow-up component, and parents should be made aware that such screenings are being done. My daughter was born during the summer of 1975 in New York City. New York City began screening for sickle cell and similar hemoglobinopathies in May 1975, but had no comprehensive follow-up program until 1978. My daughter was not screened nor was I aware of the screening program. I learned of my daughter's condition during a routine well-child clinic visit when she was 6 months of age. I am afraid to think of her outcome had I not been taking her for preventive health care, because before the age of 1 year she experienced one of the most life-threatening crises of a child with sickle cell disease—splenic sequestration. I am pleased to announce that in New York City today, parents are notified in a timely manner of their infant's newborn screening results with information regarding follow-up and counseling services. Two of my immediate family members gave birth to infants with sickle cell trait. They were informed of their infants' results within 2 weeks after their babies' births, and were given concrete information and recommendations for follow-up genetic services. I know a comprehensive newborn screening program will prevent mortality in infants found to have sickle cell disease and related hemoglobinopathies.

Science exhibits for the young

Young children often have a difficult time with museum exhibits, especially in the areas of science and technology-most exhibits simply are not developed to their scale, comprehension, and interest level. There is little opportunity for learning by playing, and the concepts sometimes are complex; as a result, museum-going can become an unpleasant and/or unproductive experience for pre-school and primary-school children. Recognizing these inherent problems, an increasing number of American natural history, science and technology, and children’s museums have introduced special participatory exhibits for young boys and girls that deal with natural phenomena, scientific principles, and technological applications. These exhibits seek to stimulate the curiosity of the young, and to make it easy and interesting to touch, interact with, enjoy, and learn from the objects and other exhibit units. The concept of playful learning is not new. Many participatory science and children’s museums have followed this precept for years, but it has been only in the last decade or so that the focus has been on special exhibits for the young. Among the early museums with ‘hands-on’ science exhibits in the 1930s were the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, the Milwaukee Public Museum, the Franklin Institute Science Museum, Philadelphia, and the Cleveland Health Museum, but they did not have special early childhood exhibits. One of the first special science exhibits for the young was developed at the Schenectady Museum in upstate New York in 1960. It was an exhibition of cross-sections of common-place things and other objects, and Museum Director Donald S. Smith got the idea from his %year-old daughter who always was asking ‘how and why’ questions. Called ‘Halls of Adventure’, the exhibit consisted largely of cross-sections of items such as a baseball, parking meter, toaster, traffic light, clock, coconut, stalk of corn, and fire extinguisher. Among the other materials in the exhibit were a chick embryo, a plastic model of a human body, and various stuffed animals. Smith sought to show children ‘the inside of a wide variety of things they see from outside’. The objects had to be things with which children were familiar, things which were interesting inside, and which were readily available at little or no cost. Two other developments during this period merit mention-a science gallery at the Morristown (New Jersey) Junior Museum, and the Junior League House of Science in Binghamton, New York. The Morristown Museum, which opened in 1957, worked with local industries in installing a small science gallery with working models of an electromagnet, telephone, solar battery, and rocket engine. In 1961, the Binghamton Museum sought to ‘challenge, inform, and inspire’ children in the sciences with participatory exhibits on astronomy, weather, early flight, and space exploration, under