Synchrony in the Triad: A Microlevel Process Model of Coparenting and Parent‐Child Interactions

Guided by a microanalytic approach to the study of relationships, we assessed parent, infant, and coparental behaviors during triadic interactions in 94 parents and their 5‐month‐old firstborn child. Relational behaviors in each family subsystem—mother‐infant, father‐infant, and coparenting—were microcoded. Marital satisfaction and infant temperament were self‐reported. No differences were found in the infants' behavior toward mother and father or in the time spent with each parent. Mothers' and fathers' relational behavior during parent‐infant episodes were generally comparable, yet mothers vocalized more and the latency to father's displaying positive affect was longer. Conditional probabilities indicated that under conditions of coparental mutuality, fathers showed more positive behaviors than mothers. Lag‐sequential analysis demonstrated that change in the infant's social focus between parents followed change in coparental behavior. Fathers' coparental mutuality was independently predicted by maternal behavior during mother‐child episodes, father marital satisfaction, and infant difficult temperament, whereas mothers' coparental mutuality was only linked with fathers' relational behavior. Results highlight the importance of including a microlevel perspective on the family system at the first stages of family development.     

College women’s value orientations toward family, career, and graduate school

This study was designed to examine how college women’s valuing of graduate education predicted their intentions to attend graduate school, using a new measure of the valuing of graduate school. A second purpose was to assess relations of college women’s perceptions of the relative importance of family and career to their valuing of graduate education. Two hundred and sixteen college women completed a newly developed survey that assessed these constructs. The items assessing task values were designed to assess components of task value defined by Eccles et al. (1983). Reliability and factor analyses demonstrated that the instrument adequately measured different components of task value. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated that components of task value predicted intentions to attend graduate school. The women were strongly career-oriented, and their orientations to career related positively to their valuing of graduate education.     

和平、发展、合作——儒家文明在世界文明对话中的地位和价值

在经济全球化、科技一体化、互联网普及化的情境下 ,世界的政治、经济、文明、宗教、制度等仍然持续多元化、多极化的趋势。是全球化的多元化 ,或多元化的全球化。人作为“会自我创造的和合存在” ,是创造世界文明的原动力和原载体。儒家文明孕育了中华民族精神的成长 ,担当着建构民族主体精神的重任 ,绵延着民族生命的智慧。儒家文明一言以蔽之 ,是以治平为本 ,以仁为核 ,以和为贵。从文明冲突到文明对话 ,是价值观念、思维方式、观照视角的转换。文明对话可依照和合学的“融突论” ,而不是二元对立的非此即彼论 ,它以承认、接纳“他者”的存在为前提。儒家文明在化解世界文明冲突中 ,以其“己所不欲 ,勿施于人”的和生、和处、和立、和达、和爱原理 ,发挥着重要的、独特的、整体的作用     

Parents Living with HIV in China: Family Functioning and Quality of Life

In China, HIV shifts the lifestyle of not only parents living with HIV/AIDS, but also their children, partners, and extended families. We examined factors related to the quality of life of parents living with HIV and the relation between family functioning and individual quality of life. Interviews were conducted with a total of 116 parents living with HIV/AIDS. Analyses of variance, Pearson correlations, and multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the relation between family functioning and quality of life. We found a significant association between family functioning and individual quality of life for parents living with HIV. In particular, family sociability had a strong relationship with the quality of life of parents living with HIV. Parents living with HIV from families where both parents are HIV-positive reported a lower level of family sociability than those from families with only one HIV-positive parent. HIV disclosure, family sociability, and number of children per family were found to be significant predictors of overall quality of life for the population. Study findings underscore the importance of developing interventions that improve family functioning for people living with HIV/AIDS in China.     

Girls’ Disruptive Behavior and its Relationship to Family Functioning: A Review

Although a number of reviews of gender differences in disruptive behavior and parental socialization exist, we extend this literature by addressing the question of differential development among girls and by placing both disruptive behavior and parenting behavior in a developmental framework. Clarifying the heterogeneity of development in girls is important for developing and optimizing gender-specific prevention and treatment programs. In the current review, we describe the unique aspects of the development of disruptive behavior in girls and explore how the gender-specific development of disruptive behavior can be explained by family linked risk and protective processes. Based on this review, we formulate a gender-specific reciprocal model of the influence of social factors on the development of disruptive behavior in girls in order to steer further research and better inform prevention and treatment programs.     

Information-Seeking Practices during the Sexual Development of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Individuals: The Influence and Effects of Coming Out in a Mediated Environment

Constructing a sexual identity is one of the major developmental tasks of adolescence. Applying the Media Practice Model, this study retrospectively examines how self-identifying lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals used media during the commencement of the coming-out process and the effects of media use during this pivotal time of development. Results indicate that the Internet plays a critical role in the development of LGB sexual identities. Heavy users of media during the coming-out process are significantly less likely to communicate openly with their families later in life. However, individuals’ reports of loneliness and self-esteem are not affected. Conclusions suggest that mediated forms of communication can be beneficial for sexual exploration among LGB individuals.     

Advances in Latino Family Research: Cultural Adaptations of Evidence-Based Interventions

The stark contrast between frequent calls for research and practice that are applicable across a broad spectrum of cultural and ethnically diverse groups and the dearth of empirical knowledge about Latino families provided the impetus for this special issue on advances in Latino family research. A focus on empirically based practice frames the issue, focusing specifically on how concepts (expressed emotion, parenting style) can be used within interventions, how Latino parents perceive efforts to deliver evidence-based interventions, and how pilot projects that delivered culturally adapted interventions in three separate cities impacted family functioning. In all, the introduction highlights the complexities for researchers in meeting the needs of the field to ensure that effective interventions are applicable across cultural groups. Meeting the challenges is important to address the need of the growing Latino population. Advances in intervention research with ethnic minorities also stand to contribute to the advancement of intervention research broadly. This special issue provides examples of efforts that are underway to better understand what treatments work for Latino families, provided by whom, for what specific problems, and in which specific circumstances, paving the way to begin attempting to answer a challenge posed more than 40 years ago by Gordon Paul.     

Utilizing Family Strengths and Resilience: Integrative Family and Systems Treatment with Children and Adolescents with Severe Emotional and Behavioral Problems

Community mental health agencies are consistently challenged to provide realistic and effective home-based family-centered treatment that meets local needs and can realistically fit within available budget and resource capabilities. Integrated Family and Systems Treatment (I-FAST) is developed based on existing evidence-based approaches for working with at-risk children, adolescents, and families and a strengths perspective. I-FAST identified 3 evidence-based, core treatment components and integrated them into a coherent treatment protocol; this is done in a way that builds on and is integrated with mental health agencies' existing expertise in home-based treatment. This is an intervention development study in which we conducted an initial feasibility trial of I-FAST for treating families with children at risk of out-of-home placement. The outcomes of the study provide initial empirical evidence that supports the effectiveness of I-FAST. Findings indicate that there were significant improvements in child behavior, significant increases in parental competency, and significant increases in the level of cohesion and adaptability in these families. All observed changes were significant from pre- to posttreatment with the families able to maintain these positive changes at 6-month follow-up. A more rigorous and robust research design, however, will be needed to establish definitive evidence of the effectiveness of I-FAST.     

Multidimensional Family Therapy HIV/STD Risk-Reduction Intervention: An Integrative Family-Based Model for Drug-Involved Juvenile Offenders

Drug and juvenile justice involved youths show remarkably high rates of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted disease (STD) risk behaviors. However, existing interventions aimed at reducing adolescent HIV risk behavior have rarely targeted these vulnerable young adolescents, and many approaches focus on individual-level change without attention to family or contextual influences. We describe a new, family-based HIV/STD prevention model that embeds HIV/STD focused multifamily groups within an adolescent drug abuse and delinquency evidence-based treatment, Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT). The approach has been evaluated in a multisite randomized clinical trial with juvenile justice involved youths in the National Institute on Drug Abuse Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies ( http://www.cjdats.org ). Preliminary baseline to 6-month outcomes are promising. We describe research on family risk and protective factors for adolescent problem behaviors, and offer a rationale for family-based approaches to reduce HIV/STD risk in this population. We describe the development and implementation of the Multidimensional Family Therapy HIV/STD risk-reduction intervention (MDFT-HIV/STD) in terms of using multifamily groups and their integration in standard MDFT and also offers a clinical vignette. The potential significance of this empirically based intervention development work is high; MDFT-HIV/STD is the first model to address largely unmet HIV/STD prevention and sexual health needs of substance abusing juvenile offenders within the context of a family-oriented evidence-based intervention.     

Goal agreement and relationship quality among college students and their parents

Two hundred eight parent–college student dyads (total N = 416) participated in the current study, which examined the link between goal agreement and perceived conflict within their relationships. Undergraduate participants (91 male, 117 female) completed a demographic form, a 65 items goal measure, and a measure of parental conflict. Parents (98 fathers, 110 mothers) were asked to rate the importance of the same 65 goals for their emerging adult children. College students tended to place more importance on independence, affect control, health, social relationships, and financial concern goals than their parents did, whereas parents placed more importance on moral and religious goals than their emerging adult children did. However, relative goal agreement between parents and college students was found to be moderately high. Those parent–college student dyads who experienced less conflict tended to have higher goal agreement, whereas those dyads with a higher level of conflict had lower goal agreement. These findings provide further evidence for the link between interpersonal relationships and the personality construct of goals.