e women in culture, such as BuddhismÆs view of women as morally inferior to men or the Shinto notion that ôshedding bloodö during childhood was akin to ôpollutingö (Picone, 1998, p. 169). Notions of ômizugo,ö or spirits have left Japanese women with guilt and resistance to notions of motherhood and infanticide in Japanese culture but many still suffer from the impact of such oppression.
Lynn Morgan (1998) provides an account of the differences in attitudes toward abortion and the fetus as a human entity in Ecuadorian and American culture and society. The author maintains that ôculture provides historically created systems of meaning in terms of which we give form, order, point, and direction to out livesö (Morgan, 1998, p. 179). However, when one culture that is powerful and uses its ideology to view another culture as inferior or in need of moral guidance, like the U.S. views Ecuador, notions of things like the fetus are often distorted for the weaker culture causing conflict, ambiguity and crises of identity.
All four of these articles are connected in subtle if not overt ways. Hernandez and Myers (1993) and Skolnick (1991) both demonstrate changing notions of American children. Hernandez and Myers (1993) suggest that radical transformations to the economy and society have ôàtransformed childhood and the resources available to children, during the past 150 years.ö More children are being raised in families whose constellations are far from what was considered the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Nevertheless, despite a number of social institutions being created to help children deal with the problematic and challenging nature of adolescence, the authors contend that many childrenÆs needs still go unmet, especially those from lower socioeconomic classes or minority children. Declines in real income, less time spent on childrearing due to working single-parent households, and other factors have doomed man...