Deciding to give to charity: a focus group study in the context of the household economy

Research on charitable giving has tended to examine either the individual characteristics of donors, or those of households. However, both approaches overlook the interactive processes that take place within households which may influence charitable donation in a variety of ways. For example, the system of financial organisation adopted by a couple can set limits on the degree of individual financial autonomy, and this in turn can influence the financial decision‐making of each partner. This paper presents the results of a study that examined charitable decision‐making within the context of household financial behaviour. It investigated whether such decisions tend to be individual or joint, and the extent to which they are regarded as an integral part of household financial management. Six focus groups were carried out with people who were currently married or living with a partner. The results suggest that charitable giving is dealt with in accordance with the style of money management of the household, although it occupies a more marginal position than other items of expenditure. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effects of interaction pattern on family harmony and well-being: Test of interpersonal theory, Relational-Models theory, and Confucian ethics

Two studies, involving 242 and 245 families, respectively, were conducted to explore the effects of family interaction on family harmony and well-being. Hypotheses were drawn from interpersonal theory, Relational-Models theory, and Confucian ethics. Each of the four members in a family, including father, mother, son, and daughter, completed a questionnaire designed to assess their behaviors toward each of the other three members. Six categories of interpersonal behavior were measured, including love, directing, domineering, hostility, submission, and respect. Both studies found that family affective interaction pattern following the Communal Sharing model contributed to family harmony and well-being. For each family relationship, the existence of particular forms of status differential (Authority Ranking) was beneficial, and several factors, such as role expectation and complementarity, moderated the effects of the status differential of a particular relationship. In general, positive effects were associated with interaction patterns which were consistent with Confucian ethics.     

Widows, women, and the bioethics of care.

Widows, women, and the bioethics of care must be understood within an authentic Christian ontology of gender. Men are men and women are women, and their being is ontologically marked in difference. There is an ontology of gender with important implications for the role of women in the family and the Church. The Christian Church has traditionally recognized a role for widows, deaconesses, and female monastics, which is not that of the liturgical priesthood, but one with a special relationship to care and therefore with particular implications for health care and a Christian bioethics of care in the twenty-first century. In the shadow of early male mortality, women as wives should turn to support their husbands and as widows to support those in need. Widows, in becoming authentic Christian monastics, can bring into the world an icon of rightly ordered women providing rightly ordered Christian care for those in need. They can enter the moral vacuum created by misunderstandings of the place of women and the service vacuum created by a disappearance of religious nuns in Western health care facilities with a presence that is at one with the Church of the Fathers.     

Los Degradados: Out,down, dead: Transmitted and inflicted trauma as encountered in the analysis of a 6‐year‐old girl1

The author presents the analysis of a precocious traumatized little girl, which reveals the ways in which historical trauma is transmitted and intrafamilial trauma is both disguised and represented. The play as it evolves is seen to simultaneously communicate what the child struggles with and to resolutely try to hide what has actually happened. Analyst and child together participate in play which utilizes displacement, enactment and interactive enactment, the latter play mode being the very hallmark of profound traumatic experience. Carlotta, the child, helps the analyst to follow her quest for meaning making even as the interaction between them adheres to and departs from the deepening pentimenti of traumatic experience, which needs to be unraveled and reconstructed in order that her own developmental progression can be rejoined. The analysis facilitates Carlotta's capacity to play in a more unfettered fashion and to assist her family's recovery as well.     

Contextual Influences on Marriage

Abstract— Current proposals to promote and strengthen marriage among low-income populations focus on values and behavioral skills as primary targets of intervention. Marital research that examines contextual influences on marriage calls these emphases into question. Ethnographic and survey research reveal no evidence that populations experiencing higher rates of divorce value healthy marriages any less than other populations do. Longitudinal and observational research reveals two mechanisms through which the environment of a marriage may enhance or constrain effective relationship maintenance. First, some environments contain fewer sources of support and pose more severe challenges than others, presenting marriages in those environments with greater burdens than marriages in more supportive environments are faced with. Second, when demands external to the marriage are relatively high, even couples with adequate coping skills may have difficulty exercising those skills effectively. Together, such findings suggest that successful policies and interventions to strengthen marriages need to acknowledge the environments within which marriages take place.     

Reducing Consumers’ Perceived Risk through Banking Service Quality Cues in Taiwan

This study not only elucidates how service quality cues and perceived risk are related, but also explores the internal composition of this relationship. Financial and psychological risks found to be affected mainly by reliability and empathy of service quality, whereas functional and social risks are influenced by tangibles cues of service quality. Finally, exactly how demographic variables affect the relationship between service quality and perceived risk is considered, and the family life cycle notably modulates this relationship. People in various stages may perceive different levels of service quality, according to their age, which is a variable in the family life cycle.     

What aamft approved supervisors get paid

A national survey of American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy Approved Supervisors found statistically significant bivariate relationships between their annual income in 1999 and their gender, professional identity, supervision setting, and geographic locale. Race, community size, and years of clinical experience were not significantly related to income statistically. Moreover, only gender was statistically significant upon a sequential logistic regression of these variables relative to an income of greater or less than $50,000 a year.     

The Shattered Microcosm: Imperatives for Improved Family Therapy in Africa in the 21st Century

This paper provides an in-depth socio-political analysis of the basis for the limits of family therapy in Africa in the last 40 years. The goal is to make more visible the economic, social, political, and cultural factors that have combined to complicate and frustrate our macro-environments of practice. The conclusion is that family therapy in Africa cannot achieve any meaningful progress in the present millenium unless the structures of underdevelopment under which we live and work are dismantled and in their place the important preconditions for successful practice of modern family therapy are entrenched. The list of imperatives to be addressed is offered to suggest the direction along which we must move if we are to effect this adaptation.     

Contribution Patterns in Major U.S. Marital and Family Therapy Journals: 1992 Through 2002

The institutional sources of articles published between 1992 and 2002 in five major family therapy journals—the American Journal of Family Therapy, Contemporary Family Therapy, Family Process, Journal of Family Psychology, and the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy were reviewed. Noteworthy similarities and differences as compared to earlier reviews were found. While no single institution dominated in numbers of publications, six of the top 10 institutions found between 1980 and 1995 were also found to be within the top 10 most productive institutions between 1992 and 2002. Patterns and changes in contributions from international sources, as well as from institutions with a COAMFTE-accredited program are discussed. Contributions from private practitioners and clinicians are also addressed.     

Parental Morality and Family Processes as Predictors of Adolescent Morality

This study investigated the extent to which parents' moral thought and family processes are involved in the socialization of adolescent moral thought. Olson et al's (1992) Circumplex Model and White's (2000) Family Socialization Model provided the conceptual framework for predicting that families high in cohesion, adaptability and communication would facilitate the transmission of moral values between parents and adolescents more effectively than families low in these family processes. Results involving 218 adolescent-parent dyads revealed that perceived family cohesion and communication moderated the father-adolescent moral thought relationship; that several facets of both parents' morality significantly predicted adolescents' morality; and that all three family processes significantly predicted certain aspects of adolescent morality. Therefore the extent to which parents' socialize adolescent moral values will vary according to each parent's moral view, the strength of family processes and the content of moral thought being transmitted.