As the population in the United States and around the globe ages, families are faced with decisions about caregiving for elderly parents. Research suggests that daughters often take on these stressful caregiving responsibilities, with varying levels of help from siblings. In this article, we examine these sibling relationships within the caregiving context, considering the ways in which siblings negotiate the division of tasks for elderly parents and make sense of siblings who provide little help in caregiving activities. Our content analysis of interviews with 25 family caregivers indicated that there was little negotiation of caregiving tasks. Furthermore, family caregivers make sense of sibling participation in caregiving in three ways. First, some caregivers account for caregiving as an individual activity for which they are especially suited. Second, some caregivers see caregiving as stemming from values about family life, but excuse nonparticipant siblings by defining them as outside family boundaries. Finally, caregivers with strong family values who could not make sense of siblings through an exclusionary frame engaged in verbal backtracking during the telling of their stories as a way of making sense of personal caregiving responsibilities.

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This study addresses three questions related to the evaluative criteria used by men and women to make judgments about Web pages. What are the major criteria used by students to evaluate Web sites? What are the different kinds of Web sites used by students? Is there a difference in Web site preference and use based on gender? Using a survey design with college students, we show that students tend to use Web sites that are clearly understandable, do not contain too many “bells and whistles,” and are relevant to their special interests and needs. Furthermore, significant gender differences emerge with respect to evaluative criteria and use patterns, with men liking some of the “bells and whistles” and women using academic Web sites more.

This analysis of the 2004 presidential election concession-victory ritual shows that generic norms had the greatest influence on the speeches, but presidential candidates John Kerry and George W. Bush occasionally violated generic expectations due to the context of their speeches and their personal inclinations. In particular, Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards disrupted the dynamics of the closing ritual of the election with a speech strikingly incongruent with Kerry's concession speech. This study concludes that a full understanding of the quadrennial concession-victory ritual requires attention to context and speakers as well as to genre. Because of the reciprocal nature of the ritual of acknowledging defeat and declaring victory, scholars also need to examine statements by the losing and winning vice presidential candidates.

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