Understanding the Adoptive Family within the Context of Christian Hospitality

Abstract : Adoptive families can take many forms, yet there are similarities across adoptive family types that can be studied. Relevant research regarding the adoptive kinship network, openness and contact in adoption, family communication about adoption, adoption‐related curiosity and information‐seeking, and adoptive identity is reviewed. Christian hospitality is provided as a context within which adoptive families are formed and understood.     

Parents as Social Skills Trainers and Evaluators of Children

This study evaluated the effects of a 4-week group parent training program on parents' conceptual knowledge regarding social skills and perceptions of their children's social competence and psychosocial adjustment. It also examined the concordance prior to parent training between the parent measures and independent sociometric measures of children's acceptance by peers. Participants were 79 normal children enrolled in second grade and 45 parents. A group pretest-posttest design compared experimental and wait-list control parent groups before and after parent training for the experimental group. Parent training produced a significant effect in parents' conceptual knowledge and perceptions of children's social skills over time, and follow-up assessment 6 weeks later suggested maintenance of training effects. Psychosocial adjustment levels were within the normal range before and after treatment. Correlational analyses between parent measures and peer acceptance ratings indicated significant positive relationships between parents' and peers' perceptions on most measures. The findings support the potential value of parents as trainers and evaluators in programs to enhance children's social skills.     

Temporal delays can facilitate causal attribution: Towards a general timeframe bias in causal induction

Does reasoning occur on the Wason selection task, or are card selections determined purely on the basis of heuristic processes? To answer this question two relevance-based theories of reasoning are compared: (1) the theory of Evans (1984, 1989; Evans &; Over, 1996), which takes the heuristic viewpoint, and (2) the theory of Sperber, Cara, and Girotto (1995), which takes the reasoning viewpoint. In three experiments, the effect of removing matching cards from the selection task array is examined. It is argued that the Sperber et al. theory makes clearer predictions about the results of these manipulations, which are confirmed, and that the Evans theory can only accommodate them if it allows the operation of reasoning processes. The results are also discussed in relation to Roth's (1979) account of the selection task, mental models theory, and information gain theory.     

The impact of religious conflict within orthodox Jewish families in Israel

While prior research suggests that religion influences relationships positively, it may also be a source of conflict. This may be particularly relevant in religion-centric cultures and in families with individuating adolescent children. The current research analysed data from 789 orthodox Jewish couples residing throughout Israel and we hypothesised that religious conflict is related to lower family functioning and higher parenting stress, and that it is more frequent among couples with insecure attachment. Results of a structural equation model indicated that religious conflict was significantly associated with outcome variables within various religious subgroups, and that attachment insecurity was related to higher levels of conflict and was fully or partially mediated by religious conflict. This suggests that within the orthodox community, religious conflict is an important correlate, and perhaps cause, of family dysfunction. Future research exploring causality, cross-cultural relevance, comparability to other forms of conflict, and effective treatment appears warranted.     

Differences in Nonshared Individual,School, and Family Variables Between Delinquent and Nondelinquent Hmong Adolescents

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether there were differences between Hmong immigrant siblings on multiple nonshared individual, school, and family variables. Participants were 58 sibling pairs (29 delinquent pairs and 29 nondelinquent pairs), who ranged in age from 13 to 21 years. There were 11 pairs of boys, 3 pairs of girls, and 15 pairs of opposite-sex siblings. Results of a multivariate analysis of variance indicated that delinquent and nondelinquent sibling groups were significantly different in participation in organized activities, antisocial attitudes, delinquent behaviors, school truancy, school performance, and parents' labeling. The findings have implications for future research on sibling delinquency in Hmong immigrant families and for program development and delivery.     

Paternal and Maternal Influences on Family Functioning Among Hong Kong Chinese Families

The linkages between dyadic relationships in the family and family functioning were examined in 378 Chinese families on two occasions. The following dyadic relationships were investigated: (a) parent-child relationship qualities reported by adolescent children (questionnaire and interview measures of parenting style, parent-adolescent conflict, parent-adolescent communication, and parent-adolescent relationship) and by their parents (questionnaire measures of parent-child relationship quality and demand); and (b) marital quality reported by the parents via questionnaire measures. Results showed that parents' and children's views of family functioning were longitudinally related to dyadic relationships in the family. Relative to mother-adolescent relationship and mothers' report of marital quality, father-adolescent relationship and fathers' report of marital quality were generally found to have a stronger association with perception of family functioning and its change over time.     

Parents' Differential Treatment of Adolescent Siblings in African American Families

Research on European and European American families suggests that parents' differential treatment of siblings has negative implications for youths' adjustment, but few studies have explored these dynamics in minority samples. This study examined parents' differential acceptance and conflict in a sample of mothers, fathers, and two adolescent siblings in 179 African American families who were interviewed on three annual occasions. In an effort to replicate findings from European and European American samples, we assessed the longitudinal associations between differential treatment and adolescent adjustment and tested three sibling characteristics (birth order, gender, and dyad gender composition) as potential moderators of these linkages. To illuminate the sociocultural context of differential treatment and its implications, we also explored parents' cultural socialization practices and experiences of financial stress as potential moderators of these links. Multilevel models revealed that, controlling for average parent–child relationship qualities, decreases in parental acceptance and increases in parent–youth conflict over time—relative to the sibling—were associated with increases in youths' risky behavior and depressive symptoms. Links between differential treatment and adjustment were not evident, however, when mothers engaged in high levels of cultural socialization and in families under high financial stress. The discussion highlights the significance of sociocultural factors in family dynamics.     

The Role of Paternal Age in the Prediction of Offspring Intelligence

Recent evidence suggests that paternal age at birth influences myriad developmental outcomes among children, but few studies have examined the possibility for father's age to influence children's intellectual development among a sample of high-risk families. The authors use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to examine the association between paternal age at birth among 480 male and 449 female children's verbal IQ scores, as assessed with a version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at 9 years old. The nonlinear association between paternal age and children's verbal intelligence was also examined. Paternal age at birth appears to have a marginally significant nonlinear relationship with male children's verbal IQ scores, despite controlling for a number of possible confounders associated with both young and advanced paternal age.     

Making Daddies into Fathers: Community-based Fatherhood Programs and the Construction of Masculinities for Low-income African American Men

In this analysis, we explore how low-income African American fathers build understandings of successful manhood in the context of community-based responsible fatherhood programs. Drawing on life history interviews with 75 men in Illinois and Indiana, we explore men’s attempts to fulfill normative expectations of fatherhood while living in communities with limited resources. We examine the efforts of community-based fatherhood programs to shape alternative African American masculinities through facilitation of personal turning points and “breaks with the past,” use of social support and institutional interventions, and the reframing of provision as a priority of successful fatherhood. We refer to Connell’s hegemonic masculinity framework (Connell in Masculinities, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1995) and discuss how both men and programs borrow from hegemonic and street masculinities to develop alternative approaches to paternal involvement for marginalized men.     

Hyperplane arrangements in preference modeling

A standard representation of a family B of partial orders on a given finite set X is as a set of vertices of a cube. The metric and order structures on B inherited from the cube are often used in applications. In this paper, following Stanley [(1996). Hyperplane arrangements, interval orders, and trees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 93, 2620-2625], we represent relations in B by regions and cells of a hyperplane arrangement arising from numerical representations of the partial orders in B. To illustrate this approach, we establish wellgradedness of some families of generalized semiorders. Although the families of linear and weak orders are not well graded, our approach allows the recasting of such concepts as well graded families of sets.