The Psychological Well-Being of Women in Their Middle Years

In summary, educated, married women in their fifties generally appear to be happy regardless of their employment status, age, so-cioeconomic status, educational level, husband's attitude, life stressors, and menopausal symptoms. The empty nest transition does not seem to be anything near a universal problem for well-educated middle-aged women. It may, however, act as a "trigger event" for women with other significant problems, just as illness or retirement might trigger distress in some women. The empty nest transition does appear to be very important to women, but it seems that coping ability may be predictive of who will successfully deal with the adjustment. One implication of this finding for psychologists dealing with women in this stage is to teach general coping skills and apply them to specific problem areas relevant to this life stage such as empty nest, career decisions, retirement planning, health care, religion, recreation, and financial security.     

Three approaches to the study of infant temperament

In temperament research, the sensitive quantification of individual differences is critical, and biases affecting temperament measures differ somewhat from those affecting normative studies of development. In this paper, we attempt to specify major biases and strengths of the three methods most widely used in the assessment of infant temperament: parent report, home observation, and laboratory observation. We also describe an ongoing research program in order to illustrate how potential biases may be negotiated. We conclude that choice of temperament measure or measures depends upon (a) the purpose of the assessment, (b) knowledge of empirical relations among methods, and (c) evaluations of the seriousness of potential measurement biases.