Longitudinal investigation of the relationship among maternal victimization, depressive symptoms, social support, and children's behavior and development

This article is a longitudinal investigation of the relationships between maternal victimization, maternal functioning, and children's behavior and development. Participants include 203 mother-child dyads from a low-income population recruited from pediatric primary care clinics. Data are collected when children are 4 and 8 years of age. Child outcomes are evaluated using maternal, teacher, and child self-report and objective measures of cognitive and academic functioning. Maternal victimization history is associated with maternal depressive symptoms, low levels of maternal social support, child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, and low levels of child socialization. Child behavior problems identified at age 4 are enduring and persist to age 8. The effects of maternal victimization history on both internalizing behavior problems and socialization are mediated by maternal depressive symptoms. The effects of maternal depressive symptoms on externalizing behavior problems, socialization, and anger are mediated by maternal social support. Clinical implications of findings are discussed.     

Comparing Wife Abuse Perceptions Between Chinese Police Officers and Social Workers

Seventy-one Chinese social workers and 74 Chinese police officers residing in Hong Kong were surveyed on their gender-role attitudes, endorsement of wife abuse myths, and definitions of wife abuse. Results showed that compared to social workers, police officers held more conservative gender-role attitudes, endorsed more myths about wife abuse, and adopted more restrictive definitions of physical and psychological wife abuse. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that definitions of wife abuse were related to different predictors for these two groups of professionals. Among social workers, egalitarian gender-role attitudes were a significant predictor of broad definitions of physical wife abuse, but no significant predictor was found for psychological wife abuse. Among police officers, significant predictors of definitions of physical wife abuse included marital status, educational attainment, and endorsement of wife abuse myths; gender-role attitudes were the only significant predictor of definitions of psychological wife abuse.     

Separation-Individuation and Psychological Adjustment in Late Adolescence

This study examined associations between several late adolescent separation-individuation issues (as assessed with the Separation-Individuation Test of Adolescence, SITA) and psychological adjustment (as assessed with the basic scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, MMPI and MMPI-2). Participants were 428 undergraduate college students (265 completed the MMPI and 163 completed the MMPI-2). For each SITA scale, participants were classified as high scorers or low scorers if they scored in the upper or lower thirds of the scale distributions, respectively. Findings revealed both quantitative and qualitative differences across the separation-individuation dimensions with respect to associations with the MMPI/MMPI-2. Overall, the separation anxiety, engulfment anxiety, and dependency denial scales were more highly associated with maladjustment than were the other SITA scales. The adjustment outcomes of various approaches to managing closeness and distance in interpersonal relationships during late adolescence are discussed.     

Gender issues in the interface of family experience and adolescents' friendship and dating identity

This study focuses on the role of family experience in adolescents' conception of the self in the context of friendship and dating relationships. Three issues are addressed: the extent of sex differences in adolescents' friendship and dating identity, how links between family experience and friendship and dating identity might differ for males and females, and whether mothers and fathers play distinctive roles in such development. A sample of Caucasian two-parent families, each including an adolescent who was a high school senior, was observed in a family interaction task designed to elicit the expression and coordination of a variety of points of view. Each adolescent was also given an interview assessing exploration and commitment in friendship and dating identity. Only one sex difference was found in identity, with females more committed in their conceptions of dating relationships than males. The key finding of the study concerns the distinctive patterns of family interaction associated with friendship and dating identity. For females, separateness in family interaction was related to their friendship identity exploration, whereas for males, the links between family interaction and exploration all involved connectedness. The different contingencies may reflect the interplay between different societal patterns of support and restriction of males' and females' exploration.This work was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD-92819 and HD-17983) and the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health and from the University Research Institute and the Institute of Human Development and Family Studies of the University of Texas at Austin.Received her Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include the role of family and peer relationships in the development of individual and relational competence, and the interface of family, peer, and school contexts in the development of children and adolescents.Received his Ph.D. in child psychology from the University of Minnesota. Research interests include the role of the family in adolescent personality development and identity formation, career development, and adoptive family relationships.     

Interpreting reproductive rights: institutional responses to the agenda in the 1990s

This article reviews the way in which three very different international organisations concerned with reproductive health policy responded to the reproductive rights agenda during the 1990s. The intention is not to evaluate these responses but to describe how these organisations saw their roles with respect to establishing and promoting reproductive rights in developing countries. We seek to explore their different strategies of defining and interpreting rights, to examine the imperatives behind these strategies and to consider how these variously fed into the practical actions and agendas with which these organisations were engaged. The organisations included were the Women's Global Network for Reproductive Rights, the International Federation of Family Planning Associations and the UK's Department for International Development. Their diverse understandings about implementing reproductive rights contribute to a plural political environment in which these rights and their interpretation are debated. For all the three, their particular conception of reproductive rights is an important organising principle through which their efforts around reproductive health are given wider meaning. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Informant Discrepancies in Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms in an At-Risk Sample: The Role of Parenting and School Engagement

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - A number of studies have used variable-centered approaches to examine informant discrepancies on children’s behavior problems; however, few such studies...     

School Governance in Wales

Abstract

This article focuses on the involvement of governors in the governance of schools in Wales. Set within the context of the devolved education system, school governance has gone from being on the margins of interest to centre stage. This reflects a new focus on pupil performance and outcomes and the need for pupils in Wales to be successful internationally. As new regulations come into place in Wales which demand more from governors in relation to promoting school performance and educational achievement, there is a requirement for governors to undertake particular training. Governors will have to decide whether to federate governor arrangements or not in relation to their leadership of schools. Two key themes emerge in this article. First, there is greater control and direction from the centre over governors in how they undertake their governance roles. Second, there is an expectation that governors will collaborate with each other in the governance of schools. Both of these aspects are different from existing governance arrangements and the extent to which pupil outcomes improve will be fundamental to the success of the new regulations.