Law, Blood, and Custody: Sexual Minority Mothers and Heteronormativity.

This article analyzes how couples made up of two mothers redefine their roles when they break up as well as how legal professionals frame the custodial arrangements of these former same-sex couples. To do so, we focus on the case of Quebec, Canada, where parentage equality between mothers was attained as early as in 2002. We rely on individual semi-structured interviews with mothers' (N = 17) and legal professionals' accounts (N = 23) as well as on court records regarding physical custody arrangements. We find that the legal recognition of both mothers favors coparenting practices, and especially joint physical custody. However, the heteronormative frame of custody arrangements lingers. Sexual minority mothers struggle with the valorization of birth motherhood and with the standard of gendered parental complementarity. Indeed, professionals can still fall back on heteronormative norms, notably by assigning to non-birth mothers a "paternal" role. In the end, the inexperience of many professionals on LGBTQ+ issues, the embeddedness of heteronormativity in day-to-day relations, as well as the permanence of heteronormative legal categories and professional practices are all factors that set these families apart.

Ageism toward older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: Intergenerational conflict and support.

A cross-national representative survey in Canada and the U.S. examined ageism toward older individuals during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, including ageist consumption stereotypes and perceptions of older people's competence and warmth. We also investigated predictors of ageism, including economic and health threat, social dominance orientation, individualism and collectivism, social distancing beliefs, and demographics. In both countries, younger adults were more likely to hold ageist consumption stereotypes, demonstrating intergenerational conflict about the resources being used by older people. Similarly, young adults provided older people with the lowest competence and warmth scores, though adults of all ages rated older individuals as more warm than competent. Particularly among younger individuals, beliefs about group-based dominance hierarchies, the importance of competition, and the costs of social distancing predicted greater endorsement, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted lower endorsement of ageist consumption stereotypes. Support for group-based inequality predicted lower perceived competence and warmth of older individuals, whereas beliefs about interdependence and the importance of sacrificing for the collective good predicted higher perceived competence and warmth of older individuals. Implications for policies and practices to reduce intergenerational conflict and ageist perceptions of older individuals are discussed.

Polygenic risk scores of several subtypes of epilepsies in a founder population.

OBJECTIVE: Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) are used to quantify the cumulative effects of a number of genetic variants, which may individually have a very small effect on susceptibility to a disease; we used PRSs to better understand the genetic contribution to common epilepsy and its subtypes. METHODS: We first replicated previous single associations using 373 unrelated patients. We then calculated PRSs in the same French Canadian patients with epilepsy divided into 7 epilepsy subtypes and population-based controls. We fitted a logistic mixed model to calculate the variance explained by the PRS using pseudo-R2 statistics. RESULTS: We show that the PRS explains more of the variance in idiopathic generalized epilepsy than in patients with nonacquired focal epilepsy. We also demonstrate that the variance explained is different within each epilepsy subtype. CONCLUSIONS: Globally, we support the notion that PRSs provide a reliable measure to rightfully estimate the contribution of genetic factors to the pathophysiologic mechanism of epilepsies, but further studies are needed on PRSs before they can be used clinically.

[Association between aspiration pneumonia and malnutrition in patients from active geriatric units]. / Etude de l'association entre la pneumonie d'aspiration et la dénutrition chez des patients d'unités gériatriques actives.

PURPOSE: To study the association between malnutrition and aspiration pneumonia (AP) in patients from active geriatric units and describe patients who developed AP. METHODS: Cases of AP were identified from archived medical charts of two active geriatric units between 2001 and 2007 (n=2238). The prevalence of neurologic disorders, dysphagia and malnutrition was assessed in patients who developed AP and those who did not. RESULTS: Cumulative incidence of AP was low in both units investigated (1.1%). Aspiration pneumonia was highly associated with neurologic disorders (stroke and Parkinson's disease) and dysphagia (p<0.01), and tended to be more prevalent in those who were malnourished (p<0.10). In AP cases, about 80% of patients were malnourished as assessed by the dietitians, a result supported by a high prevalence of nutritional risk indicators. CONCLUSIONS: Results support the hypothesis that malnutrition could have contributed to AP in these two active geriatric units. Prevention and treatment of malnutrition, especially in dysphagic patients, could reduce risk of AP in hospitalized elderly.