Thesis (Ph. D.)--Rijuksuniversiteit te Utrecht, 1982. / Summary in Dutch. Includes bibliographical references.

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Latino men, particularly those who have sex with other men, have been disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. Scholars have sought for nearly two decades to understand how various social and cultural factors in the Latino community exacerbate HIV risk among these men. Although following the advent of life-sustaining medications in 1996, HIV is often regarded as a manageable chronic illness, as opposed to a death sentence, scant attention has been devoted to how HIV-positive Latino men experience managing the illness. Among studies that have focused on HIV-positive persons' illness management, few Latino men have participated. Using the Appraisal framework from Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics, with Bucholtz and Hall's theory of social identity (2004, 2005), this discourse analysis sought to explore intersubjective relations as reported by five HIV-positive Latino men, three native-born and two immigrants, in semi-structured interviews that attempted to avoid preconceived expectations about salient structures. While structures such as homophobia, machismo, and stigma emerged in each interview, the native-born men's discourse differed from that of the immigrants in that the former did not address financial concerns with regard to HIV medications, whereas the latter represented their agency as having been constrained by low income requirements for obtaining assistance in accessing expensive HIV medications. This finding tentatively suggests that the issue could be more salient for immigrants than native-born Latinos and warrants additional, more focused research on the effects of the structures of benefit programs on HIV-positive Latino immigrants.

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This thesis examines the ways that African Americans in the mid-twentieth century thought about and practiced masculinity. Important contemporary events such as the struggle for civil rights and the Vietnam War influenced the ways that black Americans sought not only to construct masculine identities, but to use these identities to achieve a higher social purpose. The thesis argues that while mainstream American society had specific prescriptions for how men should behave, black Americans were able to select which of these prescriptions they valued and wanted to pursue while simultaneously rejecting those that they found untenable. Masculinity in the mid-century was not based on one thing, but rather was an amalgamation of different ideals that black men (and women) sought to utilize to achieve communal goals of equality, opportunity, and family.

Men are frequently left out of the picture in the study of family planning and sexual risk behavior. This approach means few programs and policies address men's family planning and sexual health issues. There is also a lack of understanding of the role fatherhood plays in men's development and in family planning and sexual health. For Mexican immigrant men, the picture is even worse given their disadvantaged position and the unique obstacles they face (e.g., language barriers, acculturation issues) that put them at risk for experiencing unintended pregnancies and contracting Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). Grounded in symbolic interactionism and life course theory, I explored how social roles (e.g., partner, father), individual factors (e.g., education, cultural values), and health systems influence the family planning and sexual risk-taking experiences of young Mexican immigrant men paying particular attention to differences and similarities between fathers and nonfathers. To answer the research questions, a qualitative study was conducted using secondary data from the Latino Health Project: Men Only. The sample was comprised of 21 fathers and 25 nonfathers ages 18 to 30 (N = 46), all of whom had lived in the United States for 10 years or fewer, thus being considered recent immigrants. Data for the project were collected using a semi-structured interview guide with open-ended questions followed by directive probes. The analysis process used grounded theory methodology techniques (LaRossa, 2005). Key findings suggest that both fatherhood status and partners play an important role in men's experience with sexual and reproductive health, with partners playing a more influential role. Fatherhood plays a more active role in men's ideas about family planning while partners seem to play an influential role in men's actual behaviors such as engaging in family planning services and using birth control other than condoms. The influence that fatherhood and partners have on men's experiences with family planning and sexual risk-taking was shaped by a unique combination of accurate information, different levels of knowledge, and misinformation. Access to services was shaped by health systems that prevented men from seeking services due to documentation issues and economic barriers. Cultural factors such as machismo, marianismo, and personalismo also influenced some attitudes and behaviors related to birth control use, vasectomies, risk-taking, and services utilization. Findings suggest these men are exposing themselves and their partners to unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. Beyond these being public health concerns, it is crucial that researchers, policy makers, and service providers remember that current sexual risk behaviors have a direct impact on the fertility and family formation patterns of the fastest growing population in the United States. / Graduation date: 2012 / Access restricted to the OSU Community at author's request from Jan. 9, 2012 - Jan. 9, 2013

This study was designed to explore the influences, experiences, and disparate life choices of eight African American males from the Jacksonville's Pre-trial Detention Center and the U.S. Navy. The focus of this project was on the choices made by the participants and possible reasons for those choices. Specifically, the research question for this study is "How do some African American males from Jacksonville's Pre-trial Detention Center and the Navy describe their life experiences and the influences of these experiences on their choices?'' The framework for this project was a cross-case and cross-site study. The sites were the Jacksonville Pre-trial Detention Center and the Navy. There were four participants from the Jacksonville Pre-trial Detention Center and four from the Navy. The research yielded some interesting results. All of the participants took full responsibility for their choices. At no time did any of these young men blame anyone but themselves for the bad decisions they made. Additionally, they did not verbalize that the race and gender of their teachers were factors in their educational experience. Finally, there was no specific point at which the participants had a choice that resulted in their diverging from productive citizenship. What emerged from the research were factors, which in their aggregate, resulted in the decisions of the participants. The factors were parental control and resiliency. The participants from the Pre-trial Detention Center lacked many resiliency factors, which those from the Navy enjoyed. Whereas the home life of the participants from the Navy had the element of parental control, the home life of those from the Pre-trial Detention Center did not.

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