conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Colorado, Air, Force with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Pecking Order'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for this book? End with the sentence '"'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Pecking Order
  The next two siblings—who experienced the crunch in the middle, but who were not living at home when downward mobility struck— did not fare as well. Julie and Jennifer are both school teachers who have had trouble putting down roots. While they make a decent wage, they have quit or been laid off from their positions several times and are constantly on the move in order to find new work—from rural school district to rural school district across the Midwest. They have chosen to entwine their respective paths and thus always teach in the same district and live together as roommates. They will not "abandon" each other to live independently or take jobs far away from each other, so tension arises when one has a boyfriend and the other does not, or when one wants to leave a job due to a personality conflict while the other does not.
  The next two siblings are even worse off, having endured the crunch of the middle as well as witnessed their father's fall from grace firsthand. The two boys, Jason and Jack, both "pursued" fantasy careers that did not pan out. Jason wanted to fly planes for the Navy, but never qualified as a pilot (or made it through college, for that matter, which is a prerequisite for becoming an officer). As a result he spent three years in the service as an enlisted sailor—not a moment of which he regrets. However, while he got to see much of the world, he did not acquire skills that were easily translatable to civilian life. After his tour of duty, he pursued his dream of becoming a pilot in the private sector by spending every cent he earned (from odd jobs and day labor) on flight school. But it was too expensive for him to log enough hours to move up the certification ranks to fly commercially, and the family simply no longer had the resources to help him out. Further, no airline was willing to take Jason on and train him to fly. As a result, he lives with his brother Jack, smoking pot, working here and there, and flying small planes for fun.
  Always glamorous and popular in high school, Jack wanted to be a male model or actor. He had been featured throughout his adolescence in various local ad campaigns. But making it in small-town America is quite different from making it in the urban world of high fashion and show business. He did move to Los Angeles for a time and tried to make a go of it, but as is fairly typical, he found more work as a waiter than in his desired profession. After little more than a year, his money gone and his willpower wilted, Jack returned to Illinois to live with Jason (and share his bong, too). At least they are living on their own. Samantha has never even made it out of her parents' decaying home, is plagued by depression, and seems trapped with no hope of escape. (We will return to her case in more detail in the next chapter.)
  The five Johnston children were raised in a high-pressure environment with an emphasis on achievement. Despite—or perhaps because of—this environment, Kristen, the second-youngest child, seems to have been the sibling most picked on throughout their childhood: she was always quieter, more insecure, and did the worst academically, so she was always the most vulnerable to her father's and older brother's attacks. Having to cede the position of the "baby" of the family to her younger brother, Rob, who was born just sixteen months after she was, Kristen spent much of her childhood trying to find a role for herself. She tried to join her older siblings in nurturing baby Rob, but was taken to task any time she attempted to play this role. Whenever she tried to show him how to do anything—from going to the potty to riding a tricycle to reading—there were three older, more experienced siblings who were more than ready to jump in and tell her she was doing it "all wrong." Her oldest brother was the harshest critic (the next two are girls). Before long, her father added himself to the chorus of critics. Rather than admonishing his other children for teasing Kristen, he became the leader of the pack.
  When Kristen brought home her report card from school, her father always readied himself to read it by cupping his two hands over his head in a cone shape. "Just a minute," he would say, her grades sitting in his lap as he adjusted his hands. "Just trying to fix my dunce cap." She got B's and some C's—respectable in some quarters—in a household where A's were expected and achieved by the other kids. Did the grades cause the label or did the label cause the grades? It does not really matter, for once the dynamic was in motion, it spiraled out of control. Though the family acknowledged her as a talented artist, she also became the family dunce—a scapegoat. This perception of her became what sociologists call a "master status," a perceived characteristic that colors the way everything else about a person is viewed. It becomes the first thing that someone thinks of when that person comes to mind. Examples of master statuses include being completely bald (particularly for a woman) or having hair down past one's buttocks (especially for a man); being a Kennedy, HIV-positive, or disabled; or having won the Nobel Prize in literature. Most of us do not have a master status that marks us; but if we do, it means that all or many of our actions are interpreted through that label—whether or not it even holds water. Such was the case for Kristen: she was "the dunce."
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know three more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: So my parents had to come get me, and then I had to go to the police station and be interrogated by these officials—not just the police, but town "officials" too. They wouldn't let my parents go in while I was being interviewed. I say interviewed, but "demolished" was more like it: they told me that all my friends were having sex; that I really wanted it; that I had asked for it. They literally banned me from going back to the fairgrounds. I told them that I could bring them to the spot where it had happened. Those people were exhibitors, showing horses, and I could find them. But they wouldn't let me on the fairgrounds. Basically, in later life, I realized that it was all small-town politics, and this is a big fair for our town, and it brings in lots of money and the last thing they wanted was for this to get out. But when you're young and you've got these people telling you this stuff it gets to you eventually and I thought, "Well, God, maybe in some way I did ask for it. Oh gosh, I never should have smiled at the guy. I should have never agreed to go with him. I should have never..." 
  My sister was leaving for California at the time, and my parents instructed me, "Don't tell your sister. She won't go to California if you tell her. Please don't tell your sister." So I had to keep this secret. And I was so hurt by this, by the police department and everything else, that I totally retreated inside myself for a long time. I never spilled the beans to her until about two years ago when I casually said something about it, and she was like, "What?" And by then, to me it was just kind of common knowledge, and I've come to terms with it; it happened to me; it wasn't my fault. But she didn't know and had to deal with it at that point. 
  After that fateful day, I went from this naif loving butterflies to just this big whirling mess of stuff. And I think that's where drugs and alcohol came into play, because I just wanted to numb myself. Something had already been taken away from me, I had nothing else to lose. I just really started going in bad directions. And I guess my parents were just trying to wait until I got through it. But the truth was I wasn't getting through it. What I really wanted were parents who were forceful, who would step into my life and take control. But they wouldn't, until finally my dad laid down the law, as much as he is capable of doing.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last five paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Ben-Porath and Welch (1976), using the public use sample of the 1970 United States census, have shown that there is a slight trend effect in actual births. If the first three children are boys, then the probability of a boy on the fourth birth rises from.513 (the probability of a boy on the first birth) to.534. However, even this small change in the probability does not occur unless all the previous children are of the same sex. For example, if the family consists of three boys and one girl the likelihood of a boy on the fifth birth is only.515, which is essentially the same as the probability of a boy on the first birth. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that couples should assume that without sex selection the probability of a boy is always approximately equal to the probability of a girl.
  His father didn't respond from behind the curtain of his opened newspaper. "Dad, I learned this cool thing with sound waves! It's really neat. And my teacher said I'm really good at working with them!"
  Missy counseled both the girl and her mother. "I told them about what I had gone through and that she couldn't let that happen to her. 'Don't let this scar over. You've got to open it up and you've got to pour antibiotics in it. You have to take care of it, or else it will fester in there.'" Both the mother and daughter took Missy's advice and got the girl into counseling immediately. The mother worked through her own feelings in therapy as well, and she made an extra effort to make her daughter understand that she knew it was not her fault. Last year, Missy received a letter of thanks from the family—they had pressed charges, gone to court, and stuck it out through a trial. The resulting conviction was "better than all the therapy in the world" for the girl, who is now in college and thriving. The story makes one wonder what would have happened to Missy had she enjoyed the same kind of support that she, in turn, provided.
  However, these sibling comparisons may be putting the cart before the horse: alcoholic men may be getting drunk to ease the pain of socioeconomic failure. In order to address this possibility, Kenkel and Ribar also compared levels of drinking that are affected by outside circumstances, like the price of alcohol in a state. They found that drinkers still do worse than nondrinkers. Thus, this "natural experiment" suggests that there is indeed a negative effect of drinking on socioeconomic status, net of the effect of success on drinking behavior.
  So, for example, if you know one person with the last name Clark, with the first name David, put a "D" on the line to the left ofthat name. If you know three Clarks, then put each of their first initials, as in "D, K, M." One important point is that the three Clarks that you know must not be related to each other as far as you know; in other words, you know them independently. That is, if you are friends with David Clark, and through David met his eight children, please do not list them all, just "D" for David—your primary contact. But if you happen to know two or more unrelated Clarks, please enter all their initials.