The reduction of male abusiveness as a result of treatment: Reality or myth?

A 6-month outpatient treatment program for male abusers emphasized honesty, shame reduction, and group support for change. Ratings on the Abusive Behavior Inventory (ABI) obtained before and immediately after treatment demonstrated a significant decrease in physical and psychological abuse as rated by both the abusers and their female partners. This decrease in male abusiveness was maintained 6 months and two years after completion of treatment for those couples who cooperated in followup. No decrease in male abusiveness was observed during treatment, however, for those couples who did not cooperate in the followup. The authors suggest that the noncooperative female partners may have been afraid to rate their partners because of continued abuse. Therefore, the selective attrition of subjects who did not improve is a major problem in evaluating the apparent long-term success of treatment.     

Adolescent personality antecedents of completed family size: A longitudinal study

Comprehensive personality assessments, made independently for early and late adolescence, were employed to predict the subsequent family sizes of 52 women and 54 men with single continuous marriages throughout their parenting careers. (These participants have been studied longitudinally over a 40-year span in either the Oakland Growth Study or the Berkeley Guidance Study.) Final family size relates negligibly to earlier personality for men, but is substantially predictable highly significantpositive correlations demonstrated withintellectual competence of girls at both adolescent age levels and independently within the two cohorts studied. Alternative hypotheses to account for this unexpected result are presented, and further research is proposed to determine whether the relationship is cohort-specific (to women born in the 1920s) or, instead, likely to hold for current and future generations of women.This research was supported by Grant HD 09191-01 from the U.S. Public Health Service.The data employed are drawn from the longitudinal archives of the Oakland Growth Study and the Berkeley Guidance Study, both at the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley.Main research interest is the longitudinal study of personality development.