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Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to synthesize findings on the effects of existing paid parental leave programs on infant mortality rates (IMR) in the USA as an attempt to aid in efforts for the development of a national paid parental leave policy.


Design/methodology/approach
Three articles were reviewed to analyze findings on the effects of existing parental leave programs on IMR in the USA.


Findings
The results from the three studies analyzed indicate that unpaid parental leave and parental leave with partial wage replacement can reduce IMR in households with college educated, working mothers.


Research limitations/implications
This review is limited due to only having three studies available to synthesize that pertained to the USA. Implications for future research are to examine the effects of fully paid parental leave programs offered by individual organizations on IMR in the USA.


Social implications
Providing a needs-based income replacement policy to mothers who wish to take parental leave after the birth of a child may be the best policy to decrease IMR for infants from all socioeconomic backgrounds.


Originality/value
The findings in this review will aid in the ongoing efforts to develop a national paid parental leave policy in the USA.

On February 8, 1971, Michel Foucault announced the formation of Le Groupe d&rsquo ; information sur les prisons (the Prisons Information Group [GIP]), a group of activist intellectuals who worked to amplify the voices of those with firsthand knowledge of the prison&mdash ; reflected in their motto, &ldquo ; Speech to the detainees!&rdquo ; In highlighting and circulating subjugated knowledges from within prisons, the GIP not only pursued political and material interventions, but also called for epistemological and methodological shift within intellectual labor about prisons. This essay turns to the work of the GIP, and philosophical reflection on that work, as a resource for contemporary theological methodology. Counter to the optimistic and positive trend in theological turn to practices, this essay draws on Foucault&rsquo ; s work with and reflection on the GIP to argue for a negative theology of practice, which centers on practice (those concrete narratives found in any lived theological context) while, at the same time, sustaining its place in the critical moment of self-reflection ; this means theology exposes itself to the risk of reimagining, in the double-movement of self-critique and other-reponse, what theology is. In order to harness and tap into its own moral, abolitionist imagination, this essay argues that theology must risk (paradoxically) and pursue (ideally) its own abolition&mdash ; it must consider practices outside of its own theological and ecclesial frameworks as potential sources, and it must attend closely, critically, and continually to the ways that Christian practices, and accounts of them, perpetuate and produce harm.

AbstractRefugee and asylum-seeking mothers perform the duties of carework during and after the complex circumstances associated with irregular journeys and settlement in host countries. Utilizing motherhood as a central frame, the article links policies of border securitization with the tangible gendered consequences they produce in the daily carework of mothers. Past literature has explored gendered implications of border crossings and settlement, but rarely have authors examined these themes in tandem and never in the context of mothers and their carework. Based on narrative interviews with refugee and asylum-seeking mothers, I analyse how mothers' everyday lives and, more specifically, their performance of carework are disrupted during migration, by boat journeys and detention, and after migration, by limited governmental assistance and restricted family reunification in host countries.

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