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We descriptively examined measures of family structure, socioeconomic disadvantage, and exposure to crime, violence, and substance use in young adulthood and childhood for those who experienced maternal incarceration as children.

We used data from waves I and IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We compared these individuals to two groups: those who did not experience maternal incarceration and those who experienced paternal incarceration. We generated weighted means and conducted F-tests using bivariate regressions to determine where these groups significantly differed.

We found that individuals whose mothers were incarcerated during their childhoods experienced greater hardships in both childhood and young adulthood than those whose mothers were not incarcerated. Individuals who experienced maternal incarceration reported similar levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and exposure to crime and violence as those who experienced paternal incarceration. One notable exception was family structure, where maternal incarceration was associated with significantly fewer respondents reporting living with their mother or either biological parent.

With the exception of family structure, the childhood and transition to adulthood were comparable for individuals experiencing any form of parental incarceration. These children were significantly more disadvantaged and exposed to more risk factors than those whose parents were never incarcerated. Additional support and resources are necessary for families who have incarcerated parents, with special outreach made to families without a biological mother in the household.

There has been no overarching, descriptive study comparing child and young adult outcomes of those with an incarcerated mother using a nationally representative, longitudinal dataset in the United States.

This chapter contributes to the discourse of difference by problematizing the sameness/difference trope through the lens of the exceptional. It explores the nature of being exceptional with an expectation that its nature is contingent and variable. At the heart of understanding what constitutes exceptional is its implicit comparison with the average. While exceptional is defined to include both individuals who achieve in extraordinary ways and individuals with a physical or mental impairment, the two definitions are consonant in that both describe individuals who deviate from expected norms. Relying on the insights from pragmatism, this chapter considers community habits exceptional individuals must confront in forming their choices. In this way, it further adheres to the lessons from pragmatism for norm change. The strategies individuals use to alter the effects of being perceived as exceptional contribute to the overall discourse in equality and equal protection and potentially constitute the individual action that formulates change. It examines some approaches to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) derived from civil rights and from economic perspectives and the relevant matrix of choices available to the exceptional to understand the potential for productive change. With this foreground, it examines the choice of exceptional individuals to cover or convey matters of their identity. This chapter pays particular attention to these choices in seeking accommodations under the ADA. Ultimately, this study strives to participate in the conversation seeking to maximize human potential.

This chapter estimates the negative effect of smoking on earnings in the context of a developing country. Using data from the 2005 Albania Living Standards Measurement Survey, models are estimated by parametric and semi-parametric methods to account for the effect of observable and unobservable characteristics that could affect individual smoking decisions and earnings. Information on the smoking behaviour of parents is used to address the endogeneity of the smoking decision. The results show that, after controlling for observed individual characteristics and parental education and taking into account unobserved heterogeneity in personal characteristics, smoking is found to have a substantial negative impact on earnings. The main results are robust to a range of alternative specifications. On average, smokers’ earnings are 19–23 percent lower than the earnings of similar non-smokers.

I argue that while group and organizational identity research is gaining in popularity, there has not been sufficient attention paid to explicating what identity refers to at the level of the collective. The goal of this chapter is to ‘disentangle’ various issues associated with the concept of collective identity. To meet this goal, I pose questions that scholars should consider when engaging in identity-related research. I begin by asking, “Is it identity?” Here, I address the characteristics that are central to identity, and that differentiate it from similar constructs (e.g. culture). I then ask, “Is it collective identity?” Here, I address issues of levels of analysis, identity locus and origin, as well as how identity comes to be shared in the collective via socialization and media. I conclude by discussing how identity research can be enhanced by more carefully considering these fundamental questions, and suggest some terms that scholars can employ to make their identity-related assumptions and arguments clearer and more precise.

Technology has made it possible to have groups whose members are not co-located, but which may still capture the benefits of traditional co-located interaction. Identification helps determine whether groups gain the benefits of co-located interaction, and how technology is used to mediate group interaction can influence identification processes. Unfortunately, in heterogeneous groups, communication technology that facilitates group identification also makes competing “fault line” identities more salient. Fortunately, channel expansion theory suggests that with effective management, groups can avoid this dilemma of media selection by learning to use lean media to communicate rich messages.When the day arrived for the three of us were to send a draft of this chapter to Terri, Greg decided that it would be funny to e-mail her a terribly underdeveloped outline, instead of the completed draft that we had finished the day earlier. Terri, seeing the outline for the joke it was, called Greg and said that it might be fun to send a message that made Mike think she had sent the terribly underdeveloped outline to the other chapter authors. Mike received the message the next day and asked Greg why he had sent an outline instead of the chapter draft to Terri. Greg mentioned his and Terri's pranks and also mentioned that Terri had copied the message to Mark—the other author on the chapter, but someone Mike had never (and at the time of this writing, still has not) met. Mike, not wanting to be left out of a good joke (but also slightly uncomfortable to pull a prank on a “stranger”), sent a follow-up message to Terri and “cc'd” Mark. The message said that Mike was so embarrassed by the outline and so frustrated with Greg, that he was going to drop his name from the paper, and was not going to present the paper at the authors' conference in New York. Mark joked back that he would be glad to present, but the title of the paper would now be “Virtual Collaboration: The Butthead Factor.”