Enrichment and Stress in Families Caring for a Child with a Serious Emotional Disorder

We examined enrichment and stress in 214 families who had children with severe emotional disorders. Caregivers' ratings of enrichment and stress were obtained through a newly developed instrument, the Effects of the Situation Questionnaire, which used parallel items covering 17 life areas. While ratings of stress were generally higher than enrichment, caregivers reported some enrichment in areas encompassing self concept and family relationships, Bivariate and multivariate analyses using various child, family, and service-system variables revealed that stress was notably associated with severity of the child's disorder, low empowerment, and a lack of coordination among service providers. Enrichment was unrelated to severity but associated with high empowerment and spiritual support. Our findings suggest that families' experiences of caregiving can have both positive and negative aspects and that a comprehensive approach to serving and studying families should take both into account.     

The New Old-Fashioned Girl: Effects of Gender and Social Desirability on Reported Gender-Role Ideology

In order to assess the effects of socialdesirability on (1) reported gender-role ideology and(2) the relative acceptance of rape myths, a shortsocial desirability (SD) scale was integrated into aquestionnaire containing items from both attitude sets.Participants were 160 university students. Less than 5%of the sample was of other than European ethnicity. Agender by SD interaction was predicted, wherein high SD would predict more feminist beliefs for men;the relationship was expected to be less strong forwomen. Although a significant gender by SD interactionwas found, the pattern of results was unexpected. SD did not predict attitudes for men, and womenwho were high in SD actually reported more traditionalgender-role attitudes and were more accepting of rapemyths than women lower in SD. Interpretations and implications of these unexpected findingsare discussed.