PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

This article reviews policy issues involved in maternity leave or parental leave. Findings from the Wisconsin Maternity Leave and Health Project, a longitudinal interview study of 570 women and 550 of their husbands/partners, are discussed, focusing especially on the issues of maternity leave and women's mental health, and fathers' patterns of taking parental leave. I stress the importance of empirical research if feminist psychologists are to have an impact on public policy.     

THE VIEW FROM DOWN HERE

In this article, graduate students and one faculty member respond to the innovative methods presented in this issue. We identify three theoretical and methodological tensions that shape our interest in and willingness to work with these methods. The first questions whether the strengths of doing qualitative research outweigh the limitations. The second involves feminist research ideals and how attainable they are. The third explores epistemological tensions between qualitative and quantitative research. Although intrigued by the data these methods generated and by their underlying epistemology, we question the status of certain qualitative research in psychology. We contend that the criteria by which qualitative research is evaluated must be made more explicitly before quantitatively trained researchers will incorporate these methods into their own work.