A three-year, three-pronged prevention program did little to keep Chicago middle schoolers from drinking or using drugs, despite its prior success in rural Minnesota, where the program reduced alcohol use 20 to 30 percent, UF and University of Minnesota researchers recently reported in the online edition of the journal Addiction.

“The intervention found to be effective in rural areas was not effective here, which really surprised us,” said Kelli A. Komro, a UF associate professor of epidemiology in the UF College of Medicine and the study’s lead author. “This is an important finding to realize this program was not enough. The bottom line is this: Low-income children in urban areas need more, long-term intensive efforts.”

Adolescents who drink by age 15 — about half of teens — are more likely to struggle in school, abuse alcohol later in life, smoke cigarettes and use other drugs than those who don’t. Even worse, exposure to alcohol at a young age may damage the developing brain, according to a 2007 U.S. Surgeon General report.

“Almost any problem kids might have, alcohol increases that risk,” Komro said.

By targeting middle-school-age children, the UF and University of Minnesota team hoped to reduce these risks. The researchers studied 5,812 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from mostly low-income communities in Chicago, randomly dividing the neighborhoods into two groups: those who would participate in the prevention program and those who would not.

The program, a tweaked version of what Komro and her colleagues developed for their Minnesota study, included three preventive approaches to relay the message that drinking is not acceptable in school, at home and in the community.

In participating schools, an alcohol prevention curriculum was used in the classroom. Students led these sessions because the prevention messages are more accepted when they come from peers rather than teachers, Komro said. The family component included homework assignments that parents and children could complete together, organized events for families, and educational postcards with helpful hints that were sent to parents. For the community aspect of the program, researchers hired organizers to work with community volunteers to change the risks and problems with teen drinking in their neighborhoods.

But at the end of the study, year-end surveys showed no difference in alcohol use among the teens who took part in the project and those who did not. At least 70 percent of the schools in the neighborhoods that did not use the program had some form of drug and alcohol prevention program in the schools. It’s unlikely these programs skewed the results of the study though, Komro said. UF’s prevention program was larger and more comprehensive than the other school-based programs and researchers would have detected a difference among the students had it worked.

One particular problem surfaced during the community component of the project. The organizers struggled to rally some community members around the cause, often having to explain why they should be concerned about adolescent alcohol use. That gave researchers some insight into why the program did not work there.

“People in these areas are concerned with housing, they’re concerned with gangs and other drug use,” Komro said. “There was a whole upfront effort where we had to educate people about how alcohol was related to those other issues, and that it was an important issue to think about with their young people.

“We know from other studies in low-income, urban neighborhoods, there is a higher concentration of alcohol outlets, compared to suburban or rural areas. There were a lot of alcohol ads around these schools and a greater density of pro-alcohol messages these children are exposed to. You mix that with the poverty level and it’s just a high-risk environment.”

Despite the overall results, there were positive findings that researchers hope to build on, Komro said. Of all the components, the family interventions had the most significant effects. And one aspect of the community project worked well: Half of the community teams went to stores that sold alcohol and asked merchants not to sell to underage kids. In those communities, the ability of young people to buy alcohol went down 64 percent.

“While the findings may not be what the investigators were hoping for, they reported them fully and openly, and this is good for the field,” said Brian Flay, a professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Oregon State University. “Science can advance properly only when both positive and negative findings are reported.”

Just the right amount of concern could solidify ties between parents and their adult children, but too much fretting may become a burden to the relationship, said Elizabeth Hay, a UF psychology professor, who led the research.

“If someone knows you worry about them, they may see it as an expression of love and caring, but at the same time they can feel irritated and annoyed by it,” said Hay, whose study is published in the December issue of the journal Personal Relationships.

To date, most of the studies on worry don’t consider worries experienced within the context of specific relationships and instead focus on pathological worries or anxiety disorders, she said.

Worrying appears to reflect people’s investment in the relationship, Hay said. Parents and their adult children felt more positively about their relationships when the other party worried about them and conveyed their concerns, she said.

At a certain point, however, expressing one’s unease to the other person exacted a cost, Hay said. The more parents and adult children worry about one another and discuss those worries, the more negatively the other party viewed the relationship, she said.

“In a sense it’s socially and emotionally supportive to worry and share your concerns, but you need to do it in a way that doesn’t make the other person feel that you perceive them to be incapable of managing their own affairs,” she said. “Perhaps they feel like you are undermining their autonomy, and maintaining autonomy is important in parent-adult child ties.”

In the study, 70 percent of the adult children said their parents’ health was their biggest worry, while parents expressed a wide range of worries relating to their adult children, according to an analysis she did for a second paper that has not been published yet.

“The interesting thing is that many of the children in our study were in their 20s and their parents were not of advanced age or experiencing any health problems,” Hay said.

The study’s participants were 213 adult children — 110 daughters and 103 sons — between the ages of 22 and 49 and each of their mothers and fathers, whose ages ranged from 40 to 84. They were interviewed by telephone in the Philadelphia area from fall 2002 through fall 2003.

“Very few adults or their parents said they didn’t worry about each other,” Hay said. “Almost everyone could identify a major worry that they could clearly explain, and they reported thinking about it somewhat to a lot of the time.”

Parents worry about their children largely as a continuation of patterns that developed early in the relationship, Hay believes. “When children are young and parents are responsible for so much of their life, they probably worry about a variety of things, which is not likely to just suddenly stop once their children become adults,” she said.

Indeed, while the focus of adult children’s worries overwhelmingly centers on their parents’ health, parents had many diverse worries, the study found. They talked about their children’s health, but they also mentioned finances, relationship issues and problems in balancing work and family, Hay said.

A small proportion of adults brought up more global concerns, such as today’s world being a dangerous place, Hay said. The majority of parents discussed anxieties that were specific to their own situation, though, such as their child having an unsafe job, she said.

The study found that daughters fretted slightly more about their mothers than fathers, while sons worried equally about both parents, Hay said. There were no differences in how much mothers and fathers worried about their daughters and sons, she said.

Worrying was also slightly greater in black families than in white ones, the results showed. Participants in the study included 141 white and 66 black families, with each family consisting of an adult child and two parents.

The study confirms that worrying is still very much a part of family relationships once children have grown and moved out, she said.

“I think the take-home message would be that to a certain degree it is normal to worry about your adult child or to worry about your parents, even if it is before they get very old and have health problems,” she said.

Hay did the research with Karen Fingerman, professor of developmental and family studies at Purdue University, and Eva Lefkowitz, professor of human development and family studies at The Pennsylvania State University.

According to an annual consumer survey conducted for the National Retail Federation, 56 percent of us expect to treat ourselves this season, taking advantage of holiday sales. Another 30 percent aren’t sure, and 13 percent say they can resist temptation.

On top of the $816 the average consumer expects to spend on the holidays this year, they’ll tack on another $106 treating themselves, the survey said. The trend has held steady. The same survey in 2002 showed 55 percent of respondents intended to spend on themselves.

“If you start buying for yourself while you’re buying for other people, especially, you really run the risk of overspending,” said Michael Gutter, an assistant professor in family financial management with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “You’re just going to likely spend more than you intended and you’re only going to end up being frustrated in the result.”

Gutter’s No. 1 rule for avoiding a financial holiday hangover: Before you ever step foot in a store, make a budget. Either jot down specific gift ideas for those on your list or the amount you can spend on each person.

“Making those lists in advance can help people really kind of set limits, set boundaries for themselves,” he said. “And if your name isn’t on the list of people that you’re buying for, then that can sometimes be helpful.”

Gail Cunningham, spokesman for the Silver Spring, Md.-based National Foundation for Credit Counseling, says not sticking to a budget is one of the biggest consumer mistakes.“People are well intentioned,” she said. “About half of the people that go out shopping make a budget, and half will exceed that dollar amount.”

Once you’re out shopping, instead of grabbing those half-price shoes that go perfectly with your new black skirt, pass the buck, Gutter says. Go home and drop a hint about the shoes to a relative or friend who may be looking for a good gift idea.

“If there’s a sweater you really like and you really wanted to get it for yourself, or a video game or whatever it is…there’s nothing wrong with letting people know,” he said. “In fact, I find that if you do that, people are grateful. Because no one knows what to get anyone, most of the time.”

If no one takes your well-placed hint, evaluate the gifts you do get. Often you can go back and buy those perfect shoes with a gift card or cash. Or you can take back a present you don’t like and exchange it for the shoes, he said.

Other rules on Gutter’s list to avoid a depressing January:

If you can do your holiday shopping with cash or a debit card, leave the interest-accruing credit cards safely at home.

“It’s the ultimate stopgap,” he said. “No matter how much you’re using the debit card, you’re going to think ‘whoa, whoa, whoa, did I go over my balance?’ With the credit cards, we may not think about it at all.”

But many consumers don’t have the bank balance available to pull off a cash-only Christmas, he said. And for them, here’s another rule:

Do not, under any circumstances, use credit cards to charge more than you can pay off by the end of February without ignoring other bills, he said.

“We hear that the average American has $9,000 in credit card debt, well, this is why,” he said. “We don’t ever let ourselves pay it off because we’re constantly giving ourselves permission to charge this or charge that. So I really do suggest that two-month limit.”

And Gutter urges everyone to think about what they’re spending on the holiday and why. There is enormous pressure to spend to make the holiday “perfect,” but you can ignore it.

“If you get someone a video game system, it’s not like you saved the world. It’s a nice gesture, but you might even feel better about yourself sometimes to give some of that money away,” he said. “I think people as they get older often see that.”

Parenthood has very different consequences for women compared with men, said Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, a UF sociologist whose study is published in the November issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. “Although fathers have become more involved in childcare and housework in recent decades, they provide fewer hours and generally less intensive care on average than mothers,” she said.

The study also found women to be less optimistic about the benefits and permanence of marriage. Women were more likely than men to disagree or give neutral responses to such statements as “it is better to marry than to remain single” and “marriage is for life.”

“The results suggest that women regard both childbearing and marriage as being less central and more optional in women’s lives,” Koropeckyj-Cox said. “Because opportunities for women have changed more rapidly than they have for men over the last 30 years, and with it women’s lives, their attitudes may have also changed in ways that reflect new options and challenges. Women may be asking more questions about whether everyone needs to follow the same path.”

The study of 11,043 adults 25 and older uses data from the 1980s and mid-1990s that were part of two large-scale surveys, the National Survey of Families and Households and the General Social Survey. It assessed attitudes about childlessness by asking such questions as whether “it is better to have a child than to remain childless” and whether “the main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.”

The study found that white women were most accepting of childlessness, followed by black women. Men, regardless of race, were least accepting. Among whites, women were twice as likely as men to have favorable impressions.

The gap in attitudes was particularly wide between college-educated men and women of childbearing age, Koropeckyj-Cox said. Men in this group were the least accepting of childlessness of any group in the study, she said.

“The costs that women experience related to childbearing are greater the higher their level of education in terms of potentially lost income, promotions and opportunities for career advancement,” she said. “For men, however, fatherhood generally brings enhanced status and emotional benefits, with few if any costs in the labor market.”

Positive attitudes toward childlessness also were greater among young and middle-aged adults. Within this age group, women were nearly 80 percent more likely than men to report favorable attitudes toward childlessness, the study found.

“Especially among those who go to college and then go on to professional or managerial positions, it remains difficult to balance childbearing with work,” she said. “This points to the importance of thinking about workplace policies and career timelines that might allow greater flexibility for both men and women to choose a lifestyle that may include children.”

Among religious groups, the study found that Baptists and Jews were least likely to support childlessness, while fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics were not significantly different from other Protestants or those reporting no religion.

“Interestingly, those who approved of living together outside of marriage were less likely to hold positive attitudes about childlessness,” Koropeckyj-Cox said. “We suspect this reflects the view that premarital cohabitation is increasingly accepted as a step toward marriage with children but not as an alternative to conventional marriage and childrearing.”

Receptiveness to childlessness has increased since the 1970s, with Americans waiting longer to become parents, Koropeckyj-Cox said. The average age of first-time mothers is now over 25, and more than a quarter of adults remain childless into their 30s, she said.

Kathleen Gerson, a sociology professor at New York University and author of the book “Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career and Motherhood,” said Koropeckyj-Cox’s “important findings make it clear that changes in women’s lives are here to stay. While it may seem surprising that women view childlessness more favorably than men, her study should prompt us to jettison our lingering stereotypes and focus instead on helping contemporary women — and men — blend work with parenting.”

Although slight, the premium increase reduced the amount of time the poorest SCHIP-covered families stayed in the program by 61 percent, UF researchers report in the online edition of the journal Health Services Research. The fluctuation in cost also seemed to have a lasting effect on poorer families, who remained more likely to drop out of the program even after the premium was restored to its original level.

“One of the things we found, in the time frame we looked at, is that it’s difficult to undo the effects of a premium increase,” said Jill Boylston Herndon, a UF health economist and the lead author of the research. “So it is very important to weigh the different options for making program modifications against the potential impact on enrollment.”

SCHIP is often the only insurance option for children whose families do not qualify for Medicaid and cannot afford private coverage. The program made headlines last week when President Bush vetoed a bill to reauthorize and expand the program. Some lawmakers are trying to overturn the veto. Even if the veto is not overturned, legislators and the president could still approve a reworked version of the bill. Depending on how much money is earmarked for the program, some states may raise premiums or co-payments to compensate for budget deficits, Herndon said.

“What often happens when states face shortfalls is they look at ways to reduce program costs, and one strategy may be to increase family cost-sharing,” said Herndon, a research associate professor with the Institute of Child Health Policy and the department of epidemiology and health policy research in UF’s College of Medicine. “What this (research) demonstrates is if family cost-sharing were increased, then we face children falling off the rolls and being at greater risk for being uninsured.”

U.S. lawmakers enacted the program in 1997 as a way to reduce the number of uninsured children. For several years the number of children lacking health insurance dropped, but shifted course in 2005 and has been increasing since then, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 2005, 11 percent of children, about 8 million, lacked coverage. Last year, 12 percent of children, or about 9 million, were uninsured.

To study how slight changes in cost would affect the program in Florida, UF researchers examined enrollment data from more than 150,000 children who were insured through the program in 2003 when the subsidized monthly premium was raised from $15 to $20 per family. Herndon collaborated with UF researchers W. Bruce Vogel, Dr. Richard Bucciarelli and Elizabeth Shenkman on the study.

The researchers divided the children into two groups based on income. Families in the lower-income group, whose household incomes ranged from $18,000 to $27,000 for a family of four, were most affected by the change. Prior to the increase, children in these families were enrolled in the program for an average of 53 months. The premium hike reduced that by 61 percent to about 21 months immediately after the change. Families with slightly higher incomes, between $27,000 and $37,000 for a family of four, were affected, too. The average enrollment length among these families dropped 55 percent, from 61 months to 27 months.

After three months, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services determined the $20 monthly premium was too high for families in the lower-income bracket, so it was reduced back to $15. But families continued to drop out of the program faster than they did before the $5 increase, even months after the premium was lowered to its original price, the researchers noted. The higher-income group paid $20 per month for the premium throughout the 12 months researchers studied after the increase. Average enrollment lengths also did not return to pre-increase levels among this group.

“What was striking is how rapid the changes in enrollment were in response to changes in policy,” said E. Richard Brown, the director of the University of California-Los Angeles Center for Health Policy Research. “It shows we need to be very careful with these policies. We need to be thinking about the families and children affected.

“If we increase the cost and kids are dropped, we’re really missing the important goal of why we developed SCHIP in the first place, which is to ensure children have health coverage and access to care.”

According to the UF study, families whose children had chronic health problems were less likely to drop out of the program than families with healthy children. Still, researchers noticed a significant decrease in enrollment lengths among children with health problems, too.

“The idea of health-care coverage is to also protect you against unexpected problems, so if healthy children are not covered and health problems do arise, they’re going to have a lot of difficulty,” Herndon said.

Research from other institutions has shown that many children who drop SCHIP often remain uninsured, Herndon added.

“They may stay uninsured for significant periods of time, which means they’re going to have reduced access to care,” she said. “They’re more likely to not get care, have delays in care and have unmet health-care needs.”

UF researchers, who analyzed the dieting and smoking practices of 8,000 adolescents, did not find the same link in boys, who were also less likely than girls to diet, according to findings to be released Friday in the American Journal of Health Promotion.

“Dieting was a significant predictor of initiation of regular smoking among females,” said Mildred Maldonado-Molina, a UF assistant professor of epidemiology and health policy research and lead author of the study. “We were expecting that this relationship was going to be stronger among females. That has been well-documented, especially because (nicotine) can suppress your appetite.

“In boys we found something we don’t understand yet,” she said. “We found that those who were inactive dieters, those who first started dieting and then stopped, were more likely to engage in smoking behaviors.”

The researchers derived their findings from the answers of 7,795 adolescents who were surveyed during the first two waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, completed in 1994 and 1996. The teens were in seventh, eighth and ninth grade when surveyed.

UF researchers included the answers of adolescents who said they were trying to lose weight and divided the group into four units: non-dieters, new dieters, former dieters and consistent dieters, who said they were dieting both times they were surveyed. They excluded teens who were already smokers and those who admitted to taking diet pills, vomiting and using other unhealthy weight-loss tactics.

“That group (of teens who were beginning to diet) was the one we were most interested in, seeing how the start of one behavior related to initiation of smoking,” Maldonado-Molina said.

Researchers also found that girls who consistently dieted were more likely to smoke.

Still, the number of children smoking in the United States has dropped in the 10 years since the first two waves of the survey were completed. In 1995, about 35 percent of high school students smoked regularly, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Now about 23 percent of high-school age children reportedly smoke and 8 percent of middle school students do. The percentage of girls who smoke is slightly higher in both age groups, according to a 2006 CDC report on tobacco use among youth.

“In the last decade there has been a decrease in smoking among adolescents, in part because of all the campaigns and policies against smoking,” Maldonado-Molina said. “On the other hand, the practices of dieting are going up in both females and males. We don’t know if we did this study right now if that relationship between smoking and dieting is going to be stronger (among females) or different among males.”

Smoking to suppress the appetite may be one reason why some dieting teens pick up the habit, Maldonado-Molina said. But nicotine’s ability to suppress the appetite may not be the only reason teenagers are more likely to smoke after they start dieting, said S. Bryn Austin, an assistant professor of pediatrics in the division of adolescent medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School.

“It’s also possible that dieting itself is making people more vulnerable to smoking,” Austin said, noting that animal studies have shown a link between food deprivation using substances such as tobacco. “If (animals) are extremely food-deprived, they will use more drugs.”

Despite the link, Maldonado-Molina said parents shouldn’t go on red alert if their child starts a diet. Some dieting practices, such as eating balanced meals, can be a part of a healthy lifestyle, she said.

“This doesn’t mean if your child starts dieting they are going to start smoking,” she said. “I think (parents should) be vigilant and talk about it. It’s looking for those changes in behavior.”

Parent distress, peer bullying and childhood depression can propel a cycle that makes it more difficult for children to adopt healthier lifestyles, UF researchers report in the current issue of the journal Obesity.

Understanding more about factors that affect an overweight child’s well-being could help health-care professionals better treat these kids, said David Janicke, a UF assistant professor of clinical and health psychology in the College of Public Health and Health Professions and the lead author of the study.

Tending to the needs of distressed parents could be one of the best ways to help children, Janicke said. Having supportive parents is vital for children to be able to make the lifestyle changes needed to lose weight. Often, children only have access to food at home, so what a parent puts on the table usually determines what the child eats, Janicke said. Also, the behaviors a parent models affect the lifestyle choices a child makes, too.

When parents are struggling, they may have less energy and not be able to provide the emotional support an overweight child needs or help organize play dates and exercise activities, Janicke said.

“Looking at how parents are doing themselves, how they are doing socially and emotionally and how they are coping with the stresses in their lives, is really important too,” Janicke said. “It’s important for them to take time out to take care of themselves.”

More than 33 percent of children and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Prior studies conducted elsewhere have shown that overweight children have a poorer quality of life than normal-weight peers. UF’s study is one of the first to examine how factors such as parent distress, depression and bullying affect a child’s well-being, giving researchers a better understanding of how to help overweight children.

UF researchers surveyed 96 overweight or obese children and their parents, comparing how bullying, depression and parents’ well-being related to each child’s quality of life. The researchers looked at a combination of factors, namely health, emotional well-being, academic performance and social status.

Children whose parents were struggling or who reported more problems with peers tended to have a lower overall score for quality of life. Both bullying and parent distress were linked to more depressive symptoms in children, and these symptoms seemed to be related to poorer quality of life.

“One of the pathways to poor quality of life seems to be childhood depression,” Janicke said. “If a parent is distressed, that seems to impact a child’s symptoms of depression, which then impacts quality of life. It’s the same with peer victimization. It impacts depression, which then impacts quality of life. And it seems to affect not just the emotional aspect of quality of life, but also their health status.”

Talking about quality of life and problems such as bullying also helps clinicians encourage children to confront their weight problem, said Meg Zeller, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Cincinnati and a psychologist with the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Often, fears of developing type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease don’t motivate children, but factors such as bullying do, she said.

“It gives a kid language to be able to talk about what it would mean to them to be able to make lifestyle changes,” she said, adding that Janicke’s research helps advance researchers’ understanding of factors that affect a child’s quality of life.

Addressing emotional and psychological issues is a key part of helping kids manage their weight, Janicke said. Aside from helping kids open up about making healthier lifestyle choices, psychologists also can help children deal with depression and teach coping strategies for peer bullying.

“Sometimes it’s hard to change peer interactions, but just giving the child an ear can be very powerful,” Janicke said. “Helping parents take care of themselves and be effective listeners is a starting point.”

A common illness called Norovirus infection can cause vomiting, abdominal cramps and diarrhea. And for children suffering from such an infection that last symptom can render swim diapers ineffective, said Fred Southwick, a professor and chief of the infectious disease division at UF’s College of Medicine.

Noroviruses are shed in bodily fluids, and if released into a pool could be transmitted to other children if they ingest water or even touch their mouths with wet hands, he said. Swim diapers are designed to hold solid waste but may not stop diarrhea from leaking out.

“I would not count on the supposedly watertight diapers because I don’t think they’re really that effective,” Southwick said.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials say no swim diapers are leakproof and that no manufacturer claims its products prevent diarrhea leakage. CDC devoted a page to the topic: http://www.cdc.gov/healthyswimming/swim_diapers.htm.

Children with diarrhea shouldn’t be allowed in pools, regardless of their swimwear, Southwick said.

Noroviruses, previously known as Norwalk-like viruses, cause gastroenteritis, inflammation of the stomach and large intestine. Symptoms often begin suddenly and can last 24 to 60 hours.

CDC estimates that Norovirus infections cause 23 million gastroenteritis cases in the United States each year. A 1999 French study showed that 14 percent of children under 3 hospitalized for gastroenteritis had Norovirus infections.

Though the illness can strike people of any age, young children are especially vulnerable to dehydration caused by diarrhea and vomiting, Southwick said. Sports drinks with sodium and potassium may help replace fluids lost in mild cases. But if a child can’t keep the beverage down, intravenous fluid replacement may be necessary.

Noroviruses are a particular concern in pools because they often are resistant to chlorine concentrations found in swimming pools, he said.

Many parents fill wading pools with a garden hose, using tap water that contains less chlorine than is used to maintain larger pools, said food safety expert Keith Schneider, an associate professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

“I do not think tap water has enough residual chlorine levels to maintain a high enough chlorine level to be efficacious against most pathogens in that type of environment,” Schneider said.

Adding chlorine to a wading pool isn’t a good idea, either, because in such a small body of water it would be difficult to maintain the correct level of the chemical.

“I think one of the best preventative measures is to not let the pathogens in the pool in the first place,” Schneider said. “One sick kid can make a lot of sick kids.”

At least one swim diaper manufacturer agrees. Patti Gilmer, president and founder of Future Products Corporation in Alto, Ga., which markets the Swim-sters® brand, said swim diapers can’t take the place of careful supervision.

Young children should be given frequent bathroom breaks, and any child who appears to have defecated while in the pool should be removed immediately, Gilmer said. Recently toilet-trained tots may be at risk for accidents because the fun of playing distracts them.

Gilmer said her company includes information about safety precautions and proper use of swim diapers on its packaging and company Web site.

“You don’t want a parent to think ‘I can put my child in the water and they’re safe because every child’s got a swim diaper on,’” she said. “You’d have to put kids in a bubble in order to completely protect the water.”

Still, it’s better to use a swim diaper than nothing at all, Gilmer said. University of Georgia researchers tested the company’s swim diapers and found they significantly reduced the amount of fecal bacteria entering pool water, even with diarrhea.

The study confirms that men are more preoccupied with sex than women are, but both genders get in touch with their inner feelings when they bond in an intimate relationship.

“Men experience a lot of pressure in our society to have sex with a number of different partners, the opposite of what women experience as kind of the gatekeepers of sexuality,” said Paul Perrin, a UF graduate student in psychology and one of the study’s researchers. “Once they enter a relationship, however, the pressure on men to have sex is not as strong and the pressure on women to not have sex goes away.”

Expected gender roles give way to partners’ romantic feelings for each other, which turn out to be a lot stronger than society’s roles for them, he said.

“People in romantic relationships give more importance to their own feelings and their partners’ than they do to social expectations about sexual behavior,” he said.

The study, titled ‘My Place or Yours?’ published in the April edition of the journal Sex Roles, found that men are much more likely than women to find sex personally and physically pleasurable, while women are more inclined to think sex violates social taboos. Too often, these sexually restrictive gender roles become self-fulfilling prophecies, he said.

But the study also found that men and women can change when it comes to conforming to prescribed gender roles. Although men showed significantly greater interest in sex as measured by three of the four categories, when sex was examined in an intimate relationship, men and women were more alike than different, he said.

“One example might be the typical stereotype of a guy in a fraternity who is pressured by his fraternity brothers to sleep with a lot of different women and move on,” Perrin said. “If he were in a romantic relationship, he wouldn’t feel as much pressure to have sex with multiple partners. Whereas a woman feels freer to engage in sex within a relationship than outside of one because she runs less risk of being called derogatory names and being viewed negatively by a larger society.”

The study involved 219 women and 161 men in an introductory psychology course at UF. They answered 160 questions about sexual behavior and attitudes relating to four different areas: whether they considered sex to be personally and physically pleasurable, a benefit in creating positive feelings about oneself, a violation of social injunctions and personally costly in terms of having negative emotional, psychological or physical consequences.

The biggest gender difference was that men were much more likely to find sex personally and physically pleasurable, the study found. “Though not as frequently talked about, gender roles also restrict men to a narrow range of acceptable sexual behavior in the sense that others deem him immature and unmasculine if he doesn’t have frequent sex,” Perrin said. “Witness the popular 2005 film comedy ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’ ”

Men also were more likely to consider sex to be personally costly, perhaps because they engage in more risky sexual behavior, Perrin said. The more partners and the more sex one has, the more likely one is to see the consequences of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases, he said.

“Men in our sample appear to walk a fine line between wanting the risky sex that society says they should have and paying the price for having had it,” he said.

Not surprisingly, women were more likely to believe that being sexually active had negative social ramifications, Perrin said. “Women endorsed at higher rates waiting longer to have sex and not engaging in premarital sex, consistent with the notion of women as sexual gatekeepers,” he said. “Perhaps women are more interested than men are in waiting for the right person and the right moment to have sex.”

But attitudes both for men and women changed when attention shifted to how they felt once they were in a relationship. “Because gender roles have existed for hundreds and hundreds of years, we kind of take them for granted and assume this is the way society is and the way men and women should act,” he said. “The biggest implication of this study is that we aren’t slave to the gender roles that society imposes on us but have a lot more freedom, especially sexually.”

Jim O’Neil, a University of Connecticut professor of family studies and educational psychology, praised the study. “How refreshing to review important empirical research that dispels myths, common stereotypes and casual impressions about men’s and women’s sexual values and relations,” he said.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Believing in yourself may be good for the soul, but it can also be good for the bank account, according to a new University of Florida study that finds self-confidence can translate into earning hundreds of thousands of dollars more over a lifetime.

People with high opinions of themselves as teenagers and young adults drew bigger salaries in middle age than their less confident counterparts, and the gap was widest for those from privileged backgrounds, said Timothy Judge, a UF management professor who did the study with graduate student Charlice Hurst.

“There are certainly significant advantages for children growing up with parents who are well-educated and work in professional occupations, but these advantages are especially profound when children are self-confident,” said Judge, whose study will be published later this year in the Journal of Applied Psychology. “Positive self-concept seems to act like an accelerant – the fuel to the fire – that leads the advantaged in our society to do better.”

The findings seem to bear this out. For people who lacked self-confidence, whether they grew up poor made little difference in how much they earned as adults, roughly $7,000 per year. However, for the confident, growing up in more affluent circumstances made a huge difference – roughly $28,000.

Similarly, parents’ occupation made no difference in the earnings for those low in self-confidence. But for the self-assured, it made a much bigger difference, with those whose parents were professionals earning much more than self-confident people whose parents were laborers, and for that matter, more than those who lacked self-confidence.

“If your parents are doctors or lawyers, a positive self-concept matters a whole lot more than if your parents are roofers or employees in a fast-food restaurant,” Judge said.

For people who had a father who was an economist and mother who was a chemist, for example, those who were self-assured made $96,220 a year as opposed to $50,968 a year for those lacking in self-assurance, Judge said. For those whose father was a roofer and mother was a waitress, high levels of self-confidence meant earning $58,117 a year compared with $51,359 for those with low self-confidence, he said.

The study used data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a nationally representative sample of 12,686 men and women who were between 14 and 22 years old when first interviewed in 1979. They were 37 to 45 in 2002, when the income findings were collected. Participants were interviewed annually until 1994 and then every two years after that, he said.

The study, which controlled for race and gender, evaluated mid-life income by examining parents’ education and occupational prestige, as well as participants’ educational levels, grade point averages, SAT scores and child poverty levels. For every category, the study found that having high self-esteem made a difference.

Self-confidence was measured by answers to such questions as “What happens to me is of my own doing,” “I feel I have a number of good qualities” and “When I make plans, I am almost certain to make them work.”

Judge believes the effects of self-esteem and socio-economic background on income are particularly timely with today’s growing income disparity between the “haves” and “have nots.”

“As our economy becomes more high tech and places a higher premium on knowledge work, it gives tremendous opportunity to people who have advantages based on their upbringing,” he said. “But people who don’t have advantages are much more limited in what they can make of themselves, probably because they have so little to capitalize on.”

Although there are “rags to riches” stories, these are overshadowed by the large number of people who end up having to struggle to make a living, he said.

At the same time, the study shows that early advantages by themselves are not enough to ensure the best shot at material well-being later in life, Judge said. “In light of popular beliefs that kids from middle- and upper-class families have it made, it is surprising to see what little positive impact socioeconomic status has in the absence of self-esteem,” he said.

Motivation may be one reason for self-esteem’s importance, Judge said. “Research has shown that positive people who believe in themselves have more ambitious goals, so that even when they encounter adversity, they’re not as likely to internalize it,” he said.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For one day each year, motherhood brings flowers, cards and Sunday brunches, but a new University of Florida study asks, how important is it for women’s happiness in midlife whether and when they had children?

“Contrary to warnings we hear about being lonely if you don’t have children, our study finds that childless women and mothers generally report similar levels of psychological well-being in their 50s,” said Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, lead author and a UF sociology professor.

Whether a woman has children seems less critical than other important factors that shape her life, including education, work and earnings, and relationships with family and friends, Koropeckyj-Cox said. “Whether you are socially integrated or have concerns about paying the bills — those things play a more direct role in shaping psychological well-being among women in midlife,” she said.

Being in good health and having a husband or partner gave the biggest boost to older women’s psychological well-being, said Koropeckyj-Cox, whose study of nearly 6,000 women between the ages of 51 and 61 is scheduled to be published in the June 7 issue of the International Journal of Aging and Human Development.

The study used data from two major national surveys: the Health and Retirement Study, conducted in 1992, which includes women born between 1931 and 1941, and the National Survey of Families and Households, which provides a comparable sample from 1987-88.

“The most vulnerable group in terms of being least happy, loneliest and most depressed are the mothers who were single, divorced or widowed in middle age,” she said.

For mothers, psychological well-being also was heavily influenced by when they had their children. Women who gave birth early, before age 19, reported being least happy, more depressed and lonelier than mothers who had their children later, Koropeckyj-Cox said. Slightly more than one-third — 35 percent — of “early mothers” reported ever feeling lonely, for
example, compared with about a quarter — 25 percent to 27 percent — of mothers who had their children in their 20s or later, she said.

For early mothers, unhappiness is related to poorer economic circumstances and the likelihood of being unmarried in midlife. “Early childbearing often means interrupting or dropping out of school, creating economic stress that can last throughout adulthood,” Koropeckyj-Cox said.

Women who became mothers at age 25 or older were happier and less lonely or depressed than either the early or “on-time” mothers, defined for these women who were born in the late 1920s and the 1930s as between 19 and 24, when about half of American women had their first child, she said.

“Those women who delay childbearing and possibly marriage as well are able to spend their early adult years focusing on education and career, which helps them economically and gives them more opportunities later in their 30s and 40s and beyond,” she said.

Besides being better educated and having higher incomes, older mothers may find it rewarding to have children young enough to be at home as they enter their 50s, she said.

Family satisfaction was lower among those who had been single mothers, and more than half of early mothers had been without a partner at some time when their children were under 18, compared with a quarter to a third of women who gave birth on-time or late.
That so few differences in psychological well-being were found between childless women and mothers was significant considering it was this generation that mothered the baby boomers, Koropeckyj-Cox said. “If anyone was going to show disadvantages in being childless, it would be these women,” she said. “They came of age during the 1950s, when motherhood was regarded as the focal point that defined women’s lives.”
Fewer than 10 percent of women of this generation remained childless, compared with nearly a quarter of those who came of age earlier during the Depression, Koropeckyj-Cox said. Today, 16 percent to 19 percent of women in their 40s have not had children, she said.

Koropeckyj-Cox worked on the study with Amy Pienta, a University of Michigan sociologist, and Tyson Brown, a sociology doctoral student at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Until now, many suspected older friends were the source of the booze the middle-school set imbibes. Although some young teens do discover beer or whiskey with friends or at parties, most kids get their first drink from mom and dad at home, the study states. The findings appear in the current online issue of the journal Preventive Medicine.

Researchers surveyed 4,000 12- to 14-year-olds in Chicago between 2002 and 2005. About 17 percent of 12-year-olds said they had consumed a full alcoholic drink within the past year — and 33 percent of them reported their parents gave them their last drink. That didn’t include teens who just had sips of alcohol or the 4 percent of children who took it from home without their parents’ knowledge, said Kelli Komro, a UF associate professor of epidemiology and health policy research and the paper’s senior author.

“This study clearly shows it’s very important to educate parents about the consequences of the early onset of drinking, to try to prevent them from being a source of alcohol for their children,” Komro said. “There’s a whole long list of alcohol-related problems that are related to young people drinking.”

Alcohol is the most abused drug in the United States, and drinking at a young age heightens the risk of being involved in car crashes, sexual assault and violence, UF researchers say. According to a 2007 U.S. Surgeon General report, adolescents who drink by the time they are 15 — about half of all teens — are more likely to have trouble in school, suffer from alcohol dependence later in life and smoke cigarettes and use other drugs than those who don’t. Even worse, exposure to alcohol at a young age may damage the developing brain, the report states.

In most states, parents can legally provide alcohol to their children inside the home. Some parents may do this because of cultural or religious events, but Komro said she thinks parents should be cautious about the message this sends to teens.

Although parents are the primary source of alcohol for 12-year-olds, other adults over 21 are more likely to be a 14-year-old’s main supplier. By the time adolescents reach 14, 33 percent reported having a drink within the past year, and the largest percentage of these teens said they got their last drink from another adult over 21.

Although prevention programs have significantly curbed smoking and drug use in adolescents, alcohol use among adolescents has dipped only slightly, Komro said.

“It’s one of the toughest behaviors to change in our culture because it’s so culturally accepted among adults,” Komro said. “For prevention researchers such as myself, it’s one of our challenges to try to get those rates reduced.”

Education programs need to be designed to target both younger children and their parents, said Rhonda Jones-Webb, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota who was not involved with the study.

“The perception has been that kids get alcohol from other kids or older adults,” said Jones-Webb, also co-chairwoman of the health disparities work group at the university. “Perhaps some parents aren’t even aware of the problem.”

Jones-Webb said she thinks the study will help researchers find ways to tackle teen drinking in part because of the children researchers studied. As part of a broader prevention research initiative called Project Northland Chicago, the researchers surveyed children from 63 schools who were from multiple ethnic backgrounds, primarily black and Hispanic, and from mostly low-income households. Other studies have focused mainly on one ethnic group, but for prevention efforts to work they have to be applicable to multiple races, Jones-Webb said.

Although law enforcement officials can target stores and other commercial sources of alcohol to help prevent teens from getting alcohol there, rooting out the social sources of teen drinking is a little trickier, Komro said. Aside from designing educational programs, policy and additional enforcement efforts may help, too, she said.

“For parents, of course, the important message is for them to understand that it’s risky to provide alcohol for their children,” Komro said. “It increases the risk of (teen drinking), which in turn increases a young person’s risk for alcohol-related problems all the way into adulthood.”

Indiana was rated the best state in providing information about sex offenders on the Internet while Hawaii, Nebraska and South Dakota were rated the least forthcoming by the Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project in UF’s College of Journalism and Communications. Florida was rated 35th.

“Parents can look at the project’s Web site and say ‘this is a state that provides more information than anyone else’ or ‘these states don’t provide information,” said Bill Chamberlin, director of the Citizen Access Project and Joseph Brechner Eminent Scholar of Freedom of Information. “We tracked distribution of sex offender information because it was the subject of a recent Supreme Court opinion and we knew it was a topic a lot of citizens are interested in.”

The UF project is the first to systematically rate state laws on the accessibility to information about sex offenders, Chamberlin said.

States were ranked on a scale of one to seven, with one being “completely closed” and seven being “completely open.” Indiana rated a five, “somewhat open.” While no state received a rating of one, the three lowest – Hawaii, Nebraska and South Dakota — scored a two and were described as “mostly closed.” Florida, where there has been several highly publicized cases involving sex offenders in recent years, rated a “four,” which is “neither more open nor more closed.”

Indiana, the state rated most open, requires sex offender information to be posted on-line with stringent language, such as “must” or “shall” instead of “may,” said Courtney Barclay, a UF doctoral student in media law who helped prepare the Web site.

Whether the data about sex offenders “had to be posted,” or was simply allowed to be posted, was one of the four subcategories making up the overall rating. States also were rated on the kind of personal information available about an offender, such as a physical description, current address and occupation; administration and procedures, which among other things specifies which government agency is responsible for developing and maintaining the Web site; and sex offender classification, the types of offenders who have their information placed online.

North Carolina, Colorado and Arizona ranked most open for the mandate to distribute sex offender information. They received a five for “somewhat open.” Indiana, Wisconsin and New Jersey placed highest in maximizing the personal information available and received a six for “mostly open.” Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky had the best scores – six and “mostly open” – for providing information about sex offenders. In the administration and procedures category, all of the states received either a four for “neither more open nor more closed,” or three for “somewhat closed.”

“All our project does is rate laws according to whether they are more open or closed,” Chamberlin said. “We don’t pretend to make a value judgment on the best or worst laws because this is a very complicated subject.

“More information about sex offenders may not be necessarily better, depending on each individual’s values,” he said. “On the one hand it certainly is a compelling argument that parents need to know when repeat sex offenders are living nearby so they can take adequate precautions, but in some states a person can be classified as a sex offender for having had a consensual intimate relationship with someone under age 30 years ago.

“Society also has a real interest in rehabilitation of sex offenders and we don’t want to drive people who make one mistake many years ago into a position where they have no way to live a new life because they can’t get beyond their past,” he said.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that photos of convicted sex offenders could be posted online, refuting claims that such publicity was unconstitutional because it constituted a second punishment and was a form of double jeopardy.

A federal law passed in August goes beyond what many states have required to be posted on the Internet. States have three years to conform to the federal law. In the meantime, substantial differences exist in various state requirements, which are spelled out on the project’s Web site, Chamberlin said.

The Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project is funded by a grant from Marion Brechner, an Orlando broadcast executive and philanthropist. More information and individual state rankings can be found at www.citizenaccess.org.

As coveted as these new video game systems and other models are, some parents may want to think twice before buying them for their children and teens, a University of Florida child psychologist says.

With more educational games hitting store shelves and one system, the Nintendo Wii, actually requiring players to peel themselves off the couch to use it, video game makers seem to be addressing concerns about how playing affects children. But too much gaming still puts children more at-risk for behavioral and health problems, which is why parents should consider how they will control children’s playing before they buy a system, said Eric Storch, a UF assistant professor of pediatrics and psychiatry.

“If you’re concerned it is going to be difficult to control how much your child is playing, then one recommendation would be not to tempt them,” Storch said. “Don’t purchase one of these systems.”

Video games can be a good outlet for children who like them, but they shouldn’t consume their lives, Storch added. Setting limits on playing time may help prevent casual gaming from spiraling into hours spent in front of a television screen with a controller.

Children and teens who play excessively often do so at the expense of homework, and playing solo can isolate children from their peers, potentially causing problems for them later in life, Storch said.

“Social interactions teach you how to deal with other people as well as what’s appropriate and what’s not,” he said. “You learn how to handle situations. Social interaction is also one way of coping with stress and receiving emotional support.”

Serious gamers who spend hours sitting in front of a TV also risk becoming obese and developing associated health problems, such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes, Storch said. The American Academy of Pediatrics advises parents to limit children’s total TV, video game and computer time to two hours each day.

Unlike typical gaming systems, the new Nintendo Wii uses a wandlike controller that requires players to physically perform the action they want to see on-screen. The system gets users off the couch, but it’s still not like playing soccer or jogging, Storch said.

On the other hand, research has shown that Dance Dance Revolution, a game that requires players to dance on a mat to mimic moves they see on their TV, elicits the same level of motion in children as other forms of exercise. But the game is a solo activity, Storch said. Dancing with friends or playing sports would get kids moving and give them a chance to spend time with peers, he said.

Although gamers lose time to participate in sports and other physical activities, video games aren’t the sole reason many aren’t more active, said Elizabeth Vandewater, an assistant professor of human development and family sciences and director of the Center for Research on Interactive Technology, Television and Children at the University of Texas. If the video games weren’t there, many children would simply find something else to do inside, in part because crime and traffic increasingly hamper their ability to play outside, she said.

“Children in America are definitely less active,” Vandewater said. “The question is whether (TV, computers and video games) are to blame.”

Most parents know to watch out for violent and graphic video games, but even educational games may not be as beneficial as they seem in commercials. Many games that claim to be educational aren’t evaluated to find out if children are actually learning from them, Vandewater said.

“Parents need to know they are being marketed to,” she said.

Each family is different, so deciding whether to game is best left up to parents, Storch said. The key: Parents who do allow video games should establish limits and rules and stick with them. Those concerned about their children abiding by the limits can remove controllers or install a new swipe-card system that only allows them to play for a programmed amount of time, automatically shutting off the system when it lapses. Another good strategy — have children do homework and play outside first, Storch said.

“There are certainly some positives to (video game playing),” Storch said. “For many kids it’s really enjoyable. But moderation is the key.”

So says a University of Florida population geographer who recently completed the first estimate of the Hasidic population based on the U.S. Census.

Geography professor Joshua Comenetz estimated today’s Hasidic population at about 180,000, just 3 percent of the approximately 6 million Jews in the U.S., in a recent paper published in the journal Contemporary Jewry. However, Comenetz calculated that the Hasidic population doubles every 20 years because Hasidic Jews tend to have many children. That’s occurring even as demographic studies show that the non-Orthodox Jewish population is flat or falling. If current trends continue, Hasidic and other growing ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups will constitute a majority of U.S. Jews in the second half of this century – a potentially profound cultural and political change.

“In demographic terms, Hasidic Jews are more similar to some highly religious Christian groups than liberal Jews,” Comenetz said. “They may also sympathize more with the Republicans than the Democrats on values questions. So, one outcome may be a change in the way Jews vote.”

This bodes a turn toward conservatism among American Jews, most of whom traditionally support the Democratic Party, Comenetz added. For example, most ultra-Orthodox Jews send their children to religious schools, which makes they more sympathetic to faith-based initiatives of the sort identified with the Republican Party.

Hasidic, which means “pious” in Hebrew, refers to a Jewish movement that believes in a strict interpretation of the laws and ethics of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. Hasidic Jews frown on contraception, abortion and divorce, although they do not absolutely ban them. Hasidic Jews also tend to have large, traditional families, with most Hasidic women working in the home, although Hasidic women are not forbidden from entering the workplace.

Comenetz is not the first to try to estimate the national Hasidic population, which is centered in the New York area. But his estimate is the only one based on U.S. Census data, and the most recent data at that — the 2000 U.S. Census. The Census might seem an unlikely source of information for such research because it does not ask questions about people’s religious affiliation. In effect since the first Census in 1790, that policy is rooted in the constitutional separation of church and state.

What made Comenetz’s research possible was a question the Census does ask: “What language do you speak at home?” Hasidic Jews are rare among immigrant groups in that they continue to speak the native tongue of their Eastern European forebears today, many generations after their ancestors first came to America. That language is Yiddish.

Comenetz’s effort was more complicated than simply summing all Census-counted Yiddish speakers, however. That’s because not all Hasidic Jews speak Yiddish. And many elderly non-Hasidic Jews who immigrated to America from Eastern Europe through the post-World War II era also speak Yiddish. This population complicated the picture enough for Comenetz to find a way to isolate them from Hasidic Jews.

He did that by using other Census questions about age to narrow his focus to Yiddish-speaking children, counting about 40,000 between ages 5 and 17, most in metropolitan New York. Other information about Hasidic family structure allowed Comenetz to extrapolate the 40,000 children to 140,000 total Hasidic Jews.

That was in 2000, and Comenetz estimates the number has grown to 180,000 in 2006. There are about the same number of ultra-Orthodox Jews who are not Hasidic. Unlike many Christian groups, such as Mormons, most Jews including the ultra-Orthodox do not seek converts, so the growth of their population is almost entirely due to births. It is not at all unusual for ultra-Orthodox families to have four, six or more children, Comenetz said.

In New York, the effects of the growth of the Hasidic population are already apparent, with Hasidic people leaving their traditional neighborhoods in Brooklyn to set up communities in rural suburbs. Hasidic Jews believe in living close together, within walking distance of a synagogue, so these settlements tend consist of closely spaced apartments or rowhouses – a far cry from the big-house, big-lawn American suburban archetype. As the population grows, New York can expect to see more such unique settlements, Comenetz said. “They do the opposite of suburban sprawl,” he said.