The Sandwich Generation: Dealing with Aging Parents

This article discusses a workshop designed to provide middle-aged adults with information and opportunities to process their attitudes, emotions, and the realities of exchanging roles with aging parents.     

Challenges and Promises of Training Women as Family Systems Therapists

The structural/strategic family therapy model has drawn increasing numbers of women practitioners attracted not only by its effectiveness but by the opportunity to function in an active, orchestrative, flexible role. Traditional sex-role training, family and supervisor expectations, and patriarchal institutional structures pose particular challenges to the female family therapist and trainee. This paper explores several critical problem areas for women learning to function in this role, including the expression of authority, countertransference, sexual politics of supervision, and boundary issues. Particular content areas of focus for didactic training and common sex-role difficulties in the supervision process are delineated. The discussion underscores the need for assessment and intervention skills not only in small family systems but in larger institutional structures as well in order to enhance the professional development and effectiveness of women in the family therapy field at all levels.     

Racism as a Disease: Etiology and Treatment Implications

The authors discuss racism from a disease perspective. An underlying schema of irrelevance is posited as a cognitive structure that is acquired in childhood to cope with the inconsistent data of racial oppression in an ideologically egalitarian society. As this schema comes into conflict with the increasing diversity of American life, the individual frequently manifests disease symptoms that are treatable with a variety of techniques. The utility of group treatment designed for Caucasians in the early stages of treatment is specifically addressed. Los autores discuten el racismo desde la perspectiva de la enfermedad. Proponen una esquema fundamental de irrelevancia como una estructura cognitiva que se adquire en la niñez para enfrentarse con los datos inconsistentes de opresión racial en una sociedad ideologicamente igualitaria. Según este esquema se va poniendo en conflicto con la diversidad creciente de la vida americana, el individuo frecuentamente manifiesta síntomas de enfermedad que se pueden tratar con diversas técnicas. Se discute la utilidad del tratamiento de grupos diseñado para caucásicos en las primeras etapas del tratamiento.     

Adult attachment and emotional control

The connection between attachment style and affect regulation, proposed by attachment theorists, was explored in the context of long-term dating relationships. Seventy-two couples completed questionnaire measures of attachment (using a four-group forced-choice item, together with scales tapping Comfort with closeness, and Anxiety over relationships) and emotional control (in which subjects rated own and partner's control of anger, sadness, and anxiety, and the extent to which partners wanted them to control these emotions). Couples in which both partners endorsed insecure attachment styles (using the forced-choice measure) reported greater emotional control than did couples with two secure partners. Data from the attachment scales also supported the link between insecure attachment and emotional control: Comfort with closeness was negatively related both to one's own emotional control and to perceptions that partners wanted subjects to control their sadness; Anxiety over relationships was associated with perceptions that partners controlled sadness and wanted subjects to control their anger and sadness. The link between insecure attachment and the control of negative emotion remained significant when the frequency of experiencing such emotion was controlled. The association between attachment dimensions and other responses to negative emotions was also explored, and was consistent with attachment theory.     

Attachment and spousal caregiving

A community sample of 362 married couples participated in a study of attachment and spousal caregiving, which combined qualitative and quantitative components. The qualitative component focused on actual experiences of caregiving, assessed by participants' semi‐structured accounts of a situation involving their role as caregiver for their spouse. Attachment styles and their underlying dimensions (comfort with closeness, anxiety over relationships) were related to the type of support provided, the coping strategies used in the situation, caregivers' feelings about the quality of their care, perceived effects on the couple bond, and the emotional tone of the accounts. The quantitative component tested a theoretical model of factors predicting willingness to provide care for the spouse if he or she should become dependent in later life. Measures of attachment and caregiving styles, attachment to spouse, and anticipated burden provided reliable prediction of willingness to care. The results support the conceptualization of attachment and caregiving as interrelated features of marital bonds, and they have important implications for patterns of family caregiving.     

Attachment style and coping resources as predictors of coping strategies in the transition to parenthood

The relations among adult attachment style, coping resources, appraised strain, and coping strategies were examined in a prospective study of married couples having their first child (N= 92). Attachment and coping resources were measured during the second trimester of pregnancy, and parenting strain and coping strategies were assessed when the babies were about 6 weeks old. Results supported a theoretical model proposing that attachment is predictive of coping resources and appraised strain, and that attachment, resources, and strain are predictive of coping strategies. Results also highlighted the complexity of associations among attachment, stress, and coping: Gender differences in mean scores and predictive associations were obtained, and some interactions were found between resources and strain in predicting coping strategies. The findings support the utility of integrating theories of attachment and coping in explaining couples’adjustment to important developmental transitions.     

Social Support and the Job Satisfaction of Female Clerical Workers

The beneficial effects on job satisfaction of social support at work and home were established in this study of 85 randomly selected female clerical workers. Partners were found to be effective buffers of adverse work conditions as well.     

Parental attachment and conflict behavior: Implications for offspring's attachment,loneliness, and relationship satisfaction

This study assessed the implications of parental attachment security and parental conflict behavior for offspring's relational adjustment (attachment security, loneliness, and relationship satisfaction). Further, reports of parental conflict behavior were obtained from both parents and offspring, addressing questions regarding agreement between reporters and the origin and extent of discrepant perceptions. Results revealed consistent patterns of conflict behavior and moderate agreement between reporters. However, offspring reported parental conflict behavior more negatively than parents, especially when offspring or parents were anxious about relationships. Parental attachment security had direct associations with offspring's relationship anxiety, whereas associations between parental attachment and offspring's loneliness and discomfort with closeness were mediated by parental conflict behavior. Parental conflict behavior was also associated with offspring's relationship satisfaction. The results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of relationship difficulties.