Two Decades of Change: A Ranking of Key Issues Affecting Intergovernmental Relations

This article describes the results of a 1981 survey of 1,000randomly selected scholars of American government and politicswho were asked to rank the most significant intergovernmentalevents and trends of the past twenty years. Responses were receivedfrom almost 40 percent of these scholars; no significant returnbiases were detected. These scholars ranked civil rights andvoting rights acts as the most significant events of these decades.General Revenue Sharing and the reapportionment cases were rankedsecond and third in importance. The increased flow of federaldollars to states and local governments was ranked the mostimportant trend affecting intergovernmental relations, followedby the increased public disaffection with government and thegrowing dependence of local governments on state and federalaid. The Vietnam War and the inflationary spiral it initiatedwas ranked as the most significant social event affecting thecourse of intergovernmental relations, followed closely by theenergy crisis and the beginnings of the "Great Society." Thearticle also examines the effects of party identification, age,year of degree, government experience, region, and city sizeon scholarly attitudes toward these events and trends. Whilethe overall rankings were not dramatically altered, partisanship,region, and city size all were factors found to be noticeablyrelated to scholarly rankings of these important events andtrends.     

Verbal and Physical Abuse Toward Mothers: The Role of Family Configuration,Environment, and Coping Strategies

This paper focuses on parental maltreatment, a rarely documented phenomenon. We prospectively examine factors that can increase the risk of abusive behavior toward mothers. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between a stressful family situation, parental divorce, and verbal and physical aggression toward mothers. We use a large Canadian sample of adolescents who have been followed since kindergarten. At age 15, we assessed verbal and physical abuse toward mothers, as reported by both mothers and their adolescents. Multinomial logit modeling revealed that parental divorce was associated with a greater risk of physical aggression directed toward mothers by adolescents. Family environment and parental coping strategies partially mediated that relationship. Mothers who divorced, and remained divorced, were at greater risk of being assaulted by their adolescent children. A positive family environment, reflecting a better parent–child relationship, partially diminished this risk. However, support-seeking behavior on the part of mothers increased the risk of abuse, concurrent with tyrannical strategies often mobilized by abusive children.