The silent treatment: Parents’ narratives on sexuality education with their adolescent children

This paper is based on research undertaken in Ireland that sought to understand how parents communicate with their children about sexuality. Forty-three parents were interviewed and data were analysed using analytical induction. Data indicated that while parents tended to pride themselves on the culture of openness to sexuality that prevailed in their home, they often described situations where very little dialogue on the subject actually transpired. However, unlike previous research on the topic that identified parent-related factors (such as ignorance or embarrassment) as the main impediments to parent-young person communication about sex, participants in our study identified the central obstacle to be a reticence on the part of the young person to engage in such dialogue. Participants described various blocking techniques apparently used by the young people, including claims to have full prior knowledge on the issue, physically absenting themselves from the situation, becoming irritated or annoyed, or ridiculing parents' educational efforts. In our analysis, we consider our findings in light of the shifting power of children historically and the new cultural aspiration of maintaining harmonious and democratic relations with one's offspring.

Stratification and Monitoring of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Patients by Synovial Proteome Analysis

Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) comprises a poorly understood group of chronic, childhood onset, autoimmune diseases with variable clinical outcomes. We investigated whether profiling of the synovial fluid (SF) proteome by a fluorescent dye based, two-dimensional gel (DIGE) approach could distinguish patients in whom inflammation extends to affect a large number of joints, early in the disease process. SF samples from 22 JIA patients were analyzed: 10 with oligoarticular arthritis, 5 extended oligoarticular and 7 polyarticular disease. SF samples were labeled with Cy dyes and separated by two-dimensional electrophoresis. Multivariate analyses were used to isolate a panel of proteins which distinguish patient subgroups. Proteins were identified using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry with expression further verified by Western immunoblotting and immunohistochemistry. Hierarchical clustering based on the expression levels of a set of 40 proteins segregated the extended oligoarticular from the oligoarticular patients (p <0.05). Expression patterns of the isolated protein panel have also been observed over time, as disease spreads to multiple joints. The data indicates that synovial fluid proteome profiles could be used to stratify patients based on risk of disease extension. These protein profiles may also assist in monitoring therapeutic responses over time and help predict joint damage. © 2009 American Chemical Society.

Adolescent men's attitudes in relation to pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes: A systematic review of the literature from 1980-2009

This review article reveals a long-standing gender bias in academic and policy research on adolescent pregnancy, which has led to the neglect of adolescent men's perspectives. The review summarizes the available literature on adolescent men's attitudes in relation to pregnancy occurrence and pregnancy outcomes in the context of addressing three questions: (1) What are adolescent men's attitudes to an adolescent pregnancy? (2) What are adolescent men's attitudes in relation to pregnancy outcomes? (3) What explanations are offered for the identified attitudes to adolescent pregnancy and resolution? The review establishes a foundation for future quantitative and qualitative research on adolescent men's perspectives. It emphasizes that a greater understanding of adolescent men's perspectives could lead to a re-framing of adolescent pregnancy away from being seen solely as a woman's issue. Furthermore, it is argued that the inclusion of adolescent men would lead to more effective adolescent pregnancy prevention and counseling programmes.

Adolescent males experience of the counselling process

This study examines 11 adolescent males' self-reports of their experiences of 23 counselling sessions to identify what they found helpful and unhelpful during key moments in the therapeutic process. The findings suggest that the experiences of the adolescent males in this study are similar in many ways to the to the reported experiences of adults in counselling. In particular, the experience of emotional support and relief appears to be highly significant for adolescent males, who give significantly lesser importance to cognitive task factors.

Family support, social capital, resilience and adolescent coping

All too often young people are excluded in practice from the general policy and professional consensus that partnership and participation should underpin work with children, young people and their families. If working with troubled and troublesome young people is to be based on family support, it will require not only the clear statement of that policy but also demonstration that it can be applied in practice. Achieving that involves setting out a plausible theory of change that can be rigorously evaluated. This paper suggests a conceptual model that draws on social support theory to harness the ideas of social capital and resilience in a way that can link formal family support interventions to adolescent coping. Research with young people attending three community-based projects for marginalized youth is used to illustrate how validated tools can be used to measure and document the detail of support, resilience, social capital and coping in young people's lives. It is also suggested that there is sufficient fit between the findings emerging from the study and the model to justify the model being more rigorously tested.