This paper analyses barriers to consistent condom use in the context of transactional sex among female sex workers in mainland China. It reveals how differences in socioeconomic profile and organisational hierarchies amongst different groups of sex workers create different barriers to condom use. Data was collected by means of field observation of entertainment venues and in‐depth interviews. Findings suggest that, compared with other sex workers, street‐walkers are less likely to use condoms with their clients, hold highly disadvantaged socioeconomic profiles and work in isolation. Major barriers to condom use link to economic deprivation and threats of violence from clients. For the women working in entertainment venues, drunkenness of clients, pricing mechanisms and familiarity with clients pose barriers to condom use. Yet within all these constraints women are not powerless and instead find ways to exercise agency and gain personal protection and economic advantage. In the newly emerging China, both structural hierarchies of work and individual agency inform condom use by female sex workers. Future HIV intervention programmes need to take these factors into account in order to meet the needs of different groups of women sex workers.

Women's sense of competence and satisfaction in the maternal role are essential for positive parenting practices and child development. Measures of maternal role competence and satisfaction are limited in the Chinese population. To translate the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale into Chinese (C-PSOC) and to examine the psychometric properties of the C-PSOC. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a convenience sample of 170 mothers recruited from a postnatal unit. Participants completed the C-PSOC, Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. A randomly selected subsample of 57 mothers participated in the 4-week retest. The C-PSOC demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .85) and test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = .87). Factor analysis supported the two-factor structure reflecting the efficacy and satisfaction dimensions of the original instrument. The scale discriminated between primiparas and multiparas (t = 2.2, p < .05). Significant correlations with Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale (r = .60, p < .01) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (r = -.48, p < .01) demonstrated good construct validity. The C-PSOC has satisfactory psychometric properties. It has the potential to be used as a clinical and research instrument for measuring maternal role competence and satisfaction in the Chinese population.

The author draws on the personal and public dilemmas that result when Chinese families care for children with disabilities. She employed an ethnographic approach to interview 15 Hong Kong Chinese families caring for children aged 5 to 16 with disabilities. Twelve of these families included sons with disabilities. The following themes emerged: disruptions to natural order, public opinions on what constitutes personhood and ordered bodies, and the establishment of moral reputations linked to shame and blame and the gendered division of parenting. The author highlights the centrality of parenthood in Chinese society as the acceptance of responsibility and its cyclic enactment, and emphasizes how the care of children with handicaps strains and violates the Chinese culturally expected order of parental obligations.

An ethnographic approach was used to explore the cultural practices of Hong Kong Chinese women during the postpartum period. Seven multiparous women were interviewed and asked to reflect on their self‐care practices within the family home during the month after the birth of their first child. Content analysis was applied to the interviews and major categories identified: good food and bad blood, poisonous sex, dirt and prohibitions, rest and appeasing the placenta god, and competing loyalties. The indication is that these Chinese mothers had attempted to follow their personally constructed interpretations of traditional customary practices, being influenced by close family members, neighbors, and historical precedent. These women further outlined a number of personal variations to traditional practices in the face of increasingly Western influences. We provide insights into the complexity of issues modern Hong Kong Chinese women face in the first postpartum month and on a more global level highlight the importance of culturally sensitive and congruent nursing practice.