Work—family issues of graduate students are nearly invisible, despite record numbers of men and women in graduate school during their peak childbearing years. Furthermore, very little is known about what, if any, services are available for graduate student parents. In this article we describe the theoretical and practical tensions between society's view of idealized mothering and academia's vision of graduate students as idealized workers. We then present results of a survey about parental supports for graduate students administered to graduate directors of sociology PhD programs. The results demonstrate that few official policies exist, most situations are accommodated individually, and graduate directors are often unaware of university services for graduate student parents. The article concludes with a detailed presentation of potential departmental and university initiatives designed to support graduate student parents. These initiatives can be readily incorporated by graduate departments and universities to help curb the leaking pipeline of women in academia.

A focus group study using four groups of food shoppers provides insights into consumers' knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors regarding organic foods. Two focus groups consisted of shoppers who regularly bought organic foods and two focus groups of shoppers who predominantly purchased conventional foods. Participants in one of the conventional groups were all Caucasian; in the other they were all African-American. While familiarity with organic foods was much lower in the African-American group, its members were more receptive and positive towards organic foods. Likewise, the African-American shoppers were more accepting of price premiums for organics foods. In comparing the two organic shopper groups with the two conventional shopper groups, it was found that the former were generally more knowledgeable about organic foods. They were also more likely to follow a special diet than conventional Caucasian shoppers. However, the behavior of organic shoppers varied widely. The research supports examining social justice and access as motivations for changing policies to support organic agriculture.

Despite the increasing popularity of multi-stakeholder cooperatives, social-economy researchers largely predict that these organizations will fail. Using a "cost of decision-making" approach, these researchers conclude that the governance structure of multi-stakeholder cooperatives makes this organizational model fundamentally untenable. In this paper, we review the empirical evidence available on multi-stakeholder cooperatives, which suggests that different groups of actors are able to govern themselves successfully. Consequently, we argue that the literature that has focused on the management of common pool resources by self-organized groups may be an appropriate body of literature in which to root a research program on these social-economy organizations. RÉSUMÉMalgré la popularité grandissante des coopératives à multiples intervenants, les chercheurs en économie sociale prédisent que ces organisations essuieront un échec. Grâce à une méthode des coûts pour la prise de décisions, ces chercheurs en viennent à la conclusion que la structure de gouvernance des coopératives à multiples intervenants, par sa nature, en fait un modèle organisationnel indéfendable. Dans cet article, nous examinons les éléments de preuve empiriques disponibles sur les coopératives à multiples intervenants, qui suggèrent que différents groups d'actants peuvent réussir à s'autogérer. Par conséquent, nous discutons du fait que la documentation qui porte sur la gestion des ressources communes par les groupes autogérés pourrait constituer un corpus approprié pour établir un programme de recherche sur ces organisations d'économie sociale.

No abstract

This research compares cooperative child day care centers to for-profit and independent nonprofit centers in terms of parental involvement in operations (such as fundraising and classroom participation), parental involvement in governance (specifically, serving on the board and attending the annual meeting), and quality of care. It also tests whether parent control of the board is associated with quality. Findings show that cooperative centers feature greater parental involvement in operational aspects, including fundraising and care of the center or grounds compared to for-profits and independent nonprofits. Cooperatives are also more likely to have parents on their boards and feature boards with parent majorities compared to independent nonprofits, although more than half of these nonprofit centers also have parentcontrolled boards. Results also show that while the cooperative form, tested as a distinct organizational type, is not a predictor of quality, parent control of the board is a positive predictor of this outcome.