Feinstaubbelastung: Ein Beispiel der deutschen Krankheit

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Modern fathers' dilemma of work-family reconciliation: Findings from the German Youth Institute Survey AID:A II

Objective: This study investigated how work and family demands and resources relate to fathers’ perceived work-family conflicts. Background: Increasing expectations for family involvement and the lingering centrality of employment in the male life course pose challenges for fathers to combine different life domains. However, most studies on work-family interface continue to focus on mothers and examine work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflicts separately. Method: First, we used cluster analysis to identify a typology of four groups, each with different manifestations of work-to-family and family-to-work conflict. We then analyzed the relationship between fathers’ group membership in this typology and a number of relevant work and family demands and resources using multinomial logistic regression on a sample of 5,226 German nuclear families with at least one child under 18. Results: Our findings revealed that the greatest proportion of fathers (38.2%) reported being primarily pressured from work (=work-to-family conflict predominates), 19.8% primarily from the family (=family-to-work conflict predominates), but another 13.4% reported feeling conflicted in both directions; only 28.6% of fathers reported being more or less free of conflicts. Results of multinominal logistic regression suggested that long work hours, intrusive work demands, and long commute associated with fathers’ work-to-family conflict or dual conflicts. The higher the fathers’ weekday time investment in childcare and the better the perceived couple and family relationship, the lower the likelihood of fathers’ experience of work-to-family and dual conflict, although the likelihood of family-to-work conflict is unaffected. In addition, a higher family income and having a non-working partner negatively associated with fathers’ perceived work-family conflicts. Conclusion: These findings have strong implications for family-supportive practices and policies that are yet to focus on fathers in their difficult position between work and family obligations

Oekologische Effektivitaet und oekonomische Effizienz von umweltbezogenen Selbstverpflichtungen

The following paper discusses environmental agreements as a variant of cooperative or negotiated approaches. Environmental agreements are increasingly discussed as a new policy instrument to deal with environmental problems in a flexible manner at low cost. Environmental agreements are negotiated commitments from firms or industrial associations with the government to improve their environmental performance. Agents of the industry impute environmental agreements as an instrument of environmental policy a high level of environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency. Polluting industries make use of an environmental agreement in order to prevent government intervention by other instruments. Thereby they suppose to have a greater degree of freedom to act. That is the reason why environmental agreements are discussed as an alternative to other instruments of environmental policy. The result of this paper is that environmental agreements offer no advantages in comparison to other instruments of environmental policy: The problem of free-riding and the mostly unregulated abatement effort among the firms lead to low environmental effectiveness and economic inefficiency. Combining an environmental agreement with a tradable permit system or a tax in a ‘policy mix’ can limit free-riding and inefficiency. It may lead to increasing administrative costs, lost flexibility and no time saving in implementation.emission standards, emission taxes, incentives to innovate

"Doing Care" im Alltag Vollzeit erwerbstätiger Mütter und Väter: aktuelle Befunde aus AID:A

"Auch wenn Väter sich zunehmend in den Familienalltag einbringen wollen, zeigen vorliegende Studien übereinstimmend, dass Mütter nach wie vor deutlich mehr Care-Arbeit übernehmen. Häufig ist dies die Folge einer stark ungleichen Aufteilung von bezahlter und unbezahlter Arbeit zwischen den Geschlechtern. Der vorliegende Artikel geht auf der Grundlage einer aktuellen Studie der Frage nach, was passiert, wenn beide Eltern Vollzeit arbeiten und über ein ähnliches Zeitbudget für Kinderbetreuung und Hausarbeit verfügen. Die Befunde zeigen, dass im Vergleich zu Erwerbskonstellationen, bei denen die Mütter nicht oder Teilzeit erwerbstätig sind, bei den 'Vollzeit/Vollzeit'-Paaren ein beachtlicher Anteil der Sorgearbeit gleichermaßen von Müttern und Vätern geleistet wird. Beide Elternteile fühlen sich stark belastet durch die hohen Anforderungen. Vor allem bei den alltäglichen Routinetätigkeiten der Care-Arbeit und haushaltsbezogenen Fürsorgearbeiten bestehen weiterhin Geschlechterunterschiede." (Autorenreferat)"Despite the fact that fathers want to be more involved in the day-to-day routines of family life, recent findings suggest that mothers still provide more care work. Often this is the result of men and women assuming very unequal shares of paid and unpaid work. Based on recent survey data the present article examines how full-time working parents organize care, considering the fact that both could dedicate similar amounts of time to child care and housework. Our findings suggest that in contrast to families in which mothers work part-time or not at all, dual-earner couples share a remarkable proportion of care work equally. Both parents feel heavily burdened by the high demands placed on them. The choice of tasks is still highly gendered, however, particularly with regard to the day-to-day routines in care and housework." (author's abstract

Family Climate in Pandemic Times: Adolescents and Mothers

In this article, we examine changes in family climate during the first Covid‐19‐related lockdown in Germany. We compare the perspectives of mothers and adolescents to explore whether the factors of perceived changes in family climate are systematically and significantly different between these groups. We measure family climate as positive emotional climate, a sub‐dimension of the family environment scale, to capture a feeling of cohesion and emotional openness within the family. Based on family system theory and the family stress model, we expect an overall deterioration in family climate due to increased environmental adaptation in the pandemic. Furthermore, we expect family climate to deteriorate less when families have economic and social resources available. On the other hand, we assume that being employed and/or primarily responsible for family care relates to a stronger decline in the family climate. We employ longitudinal survey data (AID:A) from around 300 German families with children aged nine to 17 and apply individual fixed effects models to investigate changes in family climate from 2019 to 2020. Almost half of our respondents report a decrease in family climate. For mothers, the share of unpaid care work at home is the only significant predictor: Mothers doing more than 80% of the chores and childcare feel a greater decrease in family climate. For adolescents, however, being at risk of poverty and having less frequent family activities are important predictors of stronger decreases in family climate. In summary, our results illustrate the relevance of distinguishing between the perspective of children and parents in family studies

Doing Family under Difficult Conditions

In the Corona pandemic families were suffering a lot from restrictions. Schools and other institutional childcare were closed and many parents had to work from home. This was particularly challenging for single parents reconciling work and family life and we will focus on this group. In our qualitative longitudinal research project “Mothers and Fathers in the Corona Pandemic” we conducted three waves of interviews with 11–20 (partly single) fathers and mothers. Our leading question was “How did single parents manage the challenges of the pandemic?” Our analysis focuses on the role of ex-partners and further supporting networks. We see how the quality of these supporting structures can influence stress for single parents. We also analyse how stereotypes of fatherhood and motherhood influence the stress single parents faced and show that especially traditional concepts of motherhood could lead to a breakdown of their own health and emotional system

Geregelter Meßplatz für Sensoren zur invasiven Blutdruckmessung

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.Der im vorliegenden Artikel vorgestellte neuartige Simulator ist ein kompletter Meßplatz für die Prüfung der gesamten Blutdruckmeßkette entsprechend den AAMI-Spezifikationen für alle gängigen medizinischen Drucksensoren. Mit Hilfe einer mikrocontrollergesteuerten Einheit werden gespeicherte technische Solldruckkurven einstellbarer Amplitude und Frequenz sowie physiologische Druckverläufe erzeugt und die Erfassung der Meßdaten vorgenommen. Über eine serielle Schnittstelle können darüber hinaus beliebige Solldruckkurven von und Meßdaten zu einem Personalcomputer übertragen und dort ausgewertet werden. Für möglichst realitätsnahe Messungen wurden zusätzlich ein Spülsystem sowie eine Flußsimulation implementiert

Väter im Familienalltag - Determinanten einer aktiven Vaterschaft

"Von den 'neuen' oder auch 'aktiven Vätern' wird heute viel gesprochen, wenngleich oft unklar bleibt, was diese kennzeichnet und von welchen Determinanten die Ausübung einer solchen aktiven Vaterschaft abhängt. Mit dem DJI-Survey AID:A II liegen nun aktuelle Daten vor, anhand derer für den vorliegenden Beitrag Alltagsaktivitäten von Vätern für und mit ihren Kindern in den Blick genommen und daraus ein Index 'aktiver Vaterschaft' erstellt werden konnten. Anschließend konnten so die wichtigsten Determinanten einer aktiven Vaterschaft untersucht werden. Wie die Befunde zeigen, spielt dabei die Erwerbstätigkeit beider Partner eine bedeutende Rolle: Je mehr Überstunden die Väter über ihre normale Vollzeitwoche hinaus leisten müssen, desto geringer sind die Chancen, sich aktiv in Betreuung und Erziehung der Kinder einbringen zu können. Ein höherer Erwerbsumfang der Mütter sowie ein größerer Anteil am erwirtschafteten Haushaltseinkommen hingegen fördern eine 'aktive Vaterschaft'. Deutlich wird darüber hinaus die große Bedeutung der Partnerschaftsqualität sowie der Genderkonzepte beider Partner." (Autorenreferat)"'New' or 'active' fatherhood is increasingly discussed in the family research literature, yet it is unclear what these terms entail, and which factors associate with the practice of such 'active fatherhood'. With the 'AID:A II' survey (Growing Up in Germany: Everyday Life, Wave 2) the present paper uses the most up-to-date data that chart fathers' everyday activities for and with their children. A composite indicator for 'active fatherhood' was built and the key determinants of father involvement were then explored. The results suggest that the employment of both parents play an important role: The more hours the father has to work beyond full-time working hours, the less likely the father is to be actively involved in childcare. Longer maternal working hours and greater proportional contribution of the mother to the family income, instead, make an active fatherhood more likely. In addition, the satisfaction with couple relationship as well as the gender concept of both parents are significant predictors of father involvement." (author's abstract

USDA Beef Carcass Grades: Purpose and Application.

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