Marking a Weberian Moment: Our Discipline Looks Ahead

That the discipline of International Relations is again in disarray was the prevailing theme of a seminar titled Visions of International Relations , held at the University of South Carolina in autumn 1998. This essay is at once a reflection on the discussions that took place at the seminar and a representation of views that I offered as a participant. It comments on the epistemological issues in contention in the "third great debate" in International Relations, and it raises questions about the place and legitimacy of humanistic approaches to the study of relations among states and peoples. By my reckoning, International Relations is a full-fledged, full-blown, autonomous, legitimate and accomplished academic discipline, and ought not to be thought of as a subfield of political science or of any other of the socialsciences.     

DOES MANDATORY DIVORCE EDUCATION FOR PARENTS WORK?

In a court-mandated, child-focused class for divorcing parents, parental mastery of skills taught were evaluated both immediately after the class and 6 months later. Parents perceived the classes to be realistic and useful. Skills were effectively learned and were maintained over the evaluation period. Parents reported that they were successful in dramatically lowering exposure of their children to parental conflict. Relative to a comparison group of parents divorcing the year before the classes were initiated, parents completing the class were better able to work through how they would handle difficult child-related situations with their ex-spouses and were willing to let their children spend more time with the other parent. Few gender differences were observed—mothers perceived the class as more realistic; fathers showed greater improvement on some skills. Similarly, interest level in further training was not predictive of class benefits, suggesting that enthusiasm for parenting training is probably not essential.