Perceived parental authority: Reasonable and unreasonable

A questionnaire study of 844 teenagers from four midwestern high schools focused on phenomena associated with their perceptions of which parent was the real boss and of how reasonable this boss was in dealing with the adolescent. Father was perceived to be the family authority about three times more often than was mother, although sons tended to see father as boss more often than did daughters, who tended to see mother as boss more often than did sons. Paternal and maternal authorities did not differ in perceived reasonableness. When either mother or father was perceived as a reasonable authority, the teenagers saw mother as highly involved, objective, and as enjoying life. Perception of high reasonableness in paternal authority was associated with the perception of father as involved, objective, enjoying life, and as not rigorous in his expectations for the child's compliance and achievement.     

Parental criticism and the adolescent experience

In a questionnaire study of 883 high school students, subjects were asked the extent to which their parents criticized them for 18 criticizable behaviors or attitudes. Over 50% of the respondents reported being criticized for being disobedient, lazy, and messy—issues central to family life. Further analyses indicated a relationship between perceived criticism and self-image. The more criticism the teenager perceived for a specific behavior or attitude (e.g., being selfish), the more likely that teenager was to perceive himself/herself as being that way. The differential impact of criticism in the context of parental rejection was also explored.Received M.D. from Rush Medical College. Research interests are birth order and adolescence.Received Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Research interests are adolescence and psychotherapy.     

Domesticating ideology

He is editor-in-chief of Transaction/SOCIETY.His most recent book, The Decomposition of Sociology,will be issued by Oxford University Press in the fall of 1993. He received the National Jewish Book Award for Daydreams and Nightmares,his autobiographical memoir of growing up in Harlem.     

Stages in the Evolution of Holocaust Studies: From the Nuremberg Trials to the Present

Measuring genocide is an effort to treat the Holocaust within the framework of the history of ideas, specifically, how an event of enormous magnitude in terms of life and death issues as such embodied within a political system called National Socialism has an intellectual afterlife of some consequence. The article attempts to develop a four-stage post-Holocaust accounting of events that took place between 1933 and 1945. The first stage is biographical and autobiographical, followed by a second stage of ethnographies of survivors and victimizers. The third stage is dominated by historians and social scientific efforts to examine the “logic” of mass murder. The fourth and current stage is microanalysis, in which sharp and clear distinctions are made between differential treatment of victims in a variety of regions, states, nations, and even concentration camps. It should be understood that these four stages do not negate one another but co-exist in the lasting if uneasy effort to understand the Holocaust.     

Chance,choice, civility and Coleman

He is the author of several works that bear upon themes in Coleman’s book, including Professing Sociology(1968); Foundations of Political Sociology(1972); Winners and Losers(1984); and Persuasions and Prejudices(1989).