Parental and family predictors of behavior problems in inner-city black children

Studied contributions of maternal psychological distress, family stress load, maternal and family risk factors, and family coping strategies in predicting behavior problems in 441 inner-city black primary-grade children. Results indicated maternal psychological distress and high family stress load were associated with high child behavior problems. Family coping strategies offered no protection against risk, while coping with life difficulties by reframing them was detrimental to child behavioral adjustment. Active help-seeking strategies (i.e., family mobilization, acquiring social supports) served to moderate the effects of maternal psychological distress and family risk attributes for boys, but exacerbated the effects of dysfunctional maternal social and psychiatric histories for girls. Implications for understanding vulnerability and resilience in inner-city black children and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Wellness,Prevention, Development: The Cornerstone of the Profession

The American Counseling Association's (ACA), formerly the American Association for Counseling and Development (AACD), unique contribution to a wellness philosophy lies in the profession's concern for development over the life span. In this article, ACA's commitment to and proactive stance toward wellness are described, the relationship between wellness, developmental approaches, and prevention is addressed, and the debate surrounding prevention as a non-third-party-reimbursable mental health service is discussed.     

Parental Alcoholism and Coping: A Comparison of Female Children of Alcoholics With Female Children of Nonalcoholics

The authors assessed potential differences between children of alcoholics and children of nonalcoholics in depression and choice of coping strategies. Although significant group differences were detected for level of depression, mean depression scores for both groups fell within the no depression range on the Beck Depression Inventory. No significant differences in coping strategies were detected.     

The Rule of Opposites: A Paradigm for Counseling Native Americans

The Rule of Opposites offers a cultural lesson in perspective that is useful for counselors working with Native American clients. The Rule of Opposites, based on the concept of the Circle of Life, is presented as a worldview that allows individuals to move beyond their current frame of reference toward an understanding of universal truths and underlying meanings. Use of the Rule's 7 lessons helps both the counselor and the client to recognize and resolve conflict, to ask more effective questions, to seek harmony and balance in life for greater purpose and direction, and to explore personal decision making and choices.     

Eliminating the battering of women by men: Some considerations for behavior analysis

Based on review of representative literature, history and current research indicate that battering by male partners is a major health problem for women. Use of physical aggression and verbal coercion can be described by three-term contingencies involving escape, avoidance, punishment, and positive reinforcement. These contingencies occur within societal practices, rules, and models that involve oppression of women and insubstantial consequences for men who batter. The difficulties in directly observing a couple's interactions and their aggression have been a methodological barrier to the involvement of behavior analysts in treatment of and research on domestic violence. Recommendations are made for behavior analysts to contribute to reducing battering through development and analysis of program components and application of contingency management and behavioral training technology.     

The principle of reversibility: Some problems of interpretation

Summary and conclusion In summary, the question of how to construe the procedure called reversibility cannot be given an absolute answer. No one moral interpretation of the principle is universally applicable, that is, applicable to all moral issues. The decision concerning which to apply cannot be made a priori, but only in context - that is, only when we are faced with a particular moral problem. Moreover, there appears to be no rule which would enable us to choose which version is correct in a particular case. It is a matter of judgment.That the various versions represent a moral progression from lower to higher constructions is debatable. We have seen that the altruism of reversibility₃ - the ethic of care - may recommend itself in some personal relations to the point of making either version of reversibility₄ irrelevant. Similarly, it is not clear that reversibility₃ is always higher than reversibility₂. For example, parents in trying to decide what is morally best for a young child should often - in the spirit of the second construction - substitute the judgment of their mature selves for the judgment of the immature self of the child. Moreover, this substitution may not be justifiable in terms of either utility or autonomy.If I seem to have ignored reversibility₁ in this discussion that is because I consider it outside morality: it is, if anything, a principle of self-interested calculation. If Baier is correct in holding that we teach children to think morally when we get them to take the standpoint of others, that requires, I believe, getting them beyond the stage of crude reciprocity. If Piaget and Kohlberg are correct in their developmental claims, we cannot immediately teach children reversibility₄ but must help them progress through the other two versions. There is some basis for thinking that children can transcend egoism and sympathize with others much earlier than Kohlberg allows - an important consideration in the development of a system of moral education. That point has been pursued by Michael Pritchard in his critique of Kohlberg. My point is a different one: even granting Kohlberg's theory of development (which asserts, for example, that a particular cognitive ability is required to think like a Kantian), it does not follow that the moral thinking which accompanies the highest cognitive stage is morally superior to the moral thinking which accompanies the lesser cognitive stages. That it is cognitively easier to master reversibility₃ than reversibility₄ does not settle the question of which is morally superior.Rather than arguing about which moral version of reversibility is morally best- a pointless debate if the desirability of a version is understood as contingent upon appropriateness with respect to context - we should instead celebrate the richness of the concept of reversibility. In teaching students the moral point of view by getting them to put themselves in another's place, we would not be asking them to master a rigid formula, but rather to be sensitive to the decisional context and to make a thoughtful judgment about which version of reversibility is most appropriate to that context. We would not be teaching them either moral relativism or moral absolutism, but the complexity of trying to make a moral decision by applying an ancient and philosophically rich ethical principle.

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