Integrating Family Resilience and Family Stress Theory

The construct, family resilience, has been defined and applied very differently by those who are primarily clinical practitioners and those who are primarily researchers in the family field. In thisarticle, the family resilience perspective is integrated with conceptual definitions from family stress theory using the Family Adjustment and Adaptation Response (FAAR) Model in an effort to clarify distinctions between family resiliency as capacity and family resilience as a process. The family resilience process is discussed in terms of (a) the meaning of significant risk exposure (vs. the normal challenges of family life) and (b) the importance of making conceptual and operational distinctions between family system outcomes and family protective processes. Recommendations for future family resilience research are discussed.     

Compelling Family Processes

This article introduces the idea of family process research and asserts that the study of family processes is an indispensable component of any effort to conceptualize and measure family life. Within this article the family process approach is defined through the use of several domains that categorize core constructs. Further, several key assumptions are identified that form the foundation this family process approach. A related objective of this article advances the notion that family process–oriented research has grown increasingly sophisticated over the years, often in ways that have helped to shape and define the discipline of family science. This article instructs readers about using a family process approach, especially within the context of employing a large national data set such as the NLSY97.     

Four Decades of Trends in Attitudes Toward Family Issues in the United States: The 1960s Through the 1990s

This article examines trends in family attitudes and values across the last 4 decades of the 20th century, with particular emphasis on the past 2 decades. The article focuses on attitudes toward a wide range of family issues, including the roles of men and women, marriage, divorce, childlessness, premarital sex, extramarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, and unmarried childbearing. More generally, the article considers trends in 3 broad contemporary values: freedom; equality; and commitment to family, marriage, and children. Five data sets are used for the article: Monitoring the Future, General Social Survey, International Social Science Project, Intergenerational Panel Study of Parents and Children, and the National Survey of Families and Households. These 5 data sets reveal substantial and persistent long‐term trends toward the endorsement of gender equality in families, which may have plateaued at very high levels in recent years. There have also been important and continuing long‐term trends toward individual autonomy and tolerance toward a diversity of personal and family behaviors as reflected in increased acceptance of divorce, premarital sex, unmarried cohabitation, remaining single, and choosing to be childless. At the same time, marriage and family life remain important in the cultural ethos, with large and relatively stable fractions of young people believing that marriage and family life are important and planning marriage and the bearing and rearing of children.     

Drawing Family Boundaries: Children's Perspectives on Family Relationships in Rural and Urban Ethiopia

This article explores how children conceptualise and practice family relationships in two social settings in Ethiopia. Based on ethnographic data, it discusses (i) how urban and rural children construct family; (ii) what family activities children do and which social positions they assume; and (iii) the convergence and divergence of meanings and practices of family relationships between urban and rural Ethiopia. The analysis demonstrates how ‘normative family’ and actual ‘family practices’ are shaped by socio‐cultural, material and spatial contexts. Insights drawn also reveal the complex ways in which access to material resources, geographical distance, rural‐urban locations and cultural traits such as patterns of marriage and child relocation practices shape family relationships.     

Work/Family Policy Stratification: The Examples of Family Support and Family Leave

In the past decade the United States Congress has debated and passed legislative policies concerned with women's work, both in the family and in the labor force. The Family Support Act of 1988 and the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 fall into this category of legislative policy. A comparative study of Congressional testimony in each case reveals that these two pieces of legislation are excellent examples of how federal policies—and the debates which fashion these policies—maintain and promote a system of policy stratification that perpetuates differences based on gender, race, class and marital and occupational status.     

Voluntary Childlessness in the 1980s

No abstract available for this article.     

A Process Model of Family Formation and Development

Theoretical models of family formation have assumed sexual coupling as the foundation of family life. This article proposes instead a model of family formation predicated on the processes of taking care of one another, eating together, and sharing life together. The interpersonal dynamics that distinguish a family from other close relationships are attachment, belonging, and entitlement. This process model of family formation does not presume marriage or any other form of sexual coupling to be a requirement for family formation. A case study illustrates, with implications for social work practice.     

Merging Family and Firm: An Integrated Systems Approach to Process and Change

The blurring of family and business in family businesses can create tremendous stress for all family members. Scholars have been unsuccessful in applying task-oriented, business-based models to a business in which the boundaries between task and family blur and overlap. This article integrates current research and theory related to family interaction, organizational dynamics, and family businesses to present a conceptual framework that details the complex inner workings of family businesses and helps guide those who study and work with them.     

The Family Strengths in Greece Then and Now

Abstract

Family has a long historical course in Greece. The turbulent periods of Hellenic history and the fluctuations of the political, social and economic life have influenced Hellenic family strengths. Nevertheless, there have been some basic elements on which the family has been based and acquired a continuous stability and homogeneity. These features are: religion, language, a rich cultural heritage, tradition and customs. Roles in the family are strongly influenced by the above, though they have been readjusted and redefined in contemporary society.     

The influence of family process and structure on delinquency in adolescence—An examination of theory and research

This article describes three different realms of theories examining the relationship of the family to youth delinquency. The first approach focuses on the psychological processes and interactions between children and their parents. The second considers the role of family structure. The final approach considers economic factors that relate to family functioning and delinquency. Research in each theoretical area uniformly showed that attachment between parents and their adolescents makes a difference in the adolescent’s participation in delinquency.     

Why Do African Households Give Hospitality to Relatives?

This empirical article describes a widespread African phenomenon—hospitality given to relatives—and explains why African households often provide long-term hospitality. A budget and consumption survey carried out in Gabon in 1994 is used to compare the characteristics of households that provide hospitality and the characteristics of guests and the members of nuclear households. A two-step procedure is proposed to determine whether hospitality decisions are made mainly by heads of household or by the extended family. The data suggest that hospitality decisions are made partly by the extended family.     

Family Experiences of Competition and Adolescent Performance

The authors examined how mothers' and fathers' feelings of competition at home and work affect their relationships with their daughters and sons using time‐diary data from a national sample of 220 families. Multivariate analyses revealed 3 relationships between parents' feelings of competitiveness at work and home and feelings of competition experienced by their children at school and home: (a) parents' and adolescents' competitiveness varied across home, work, and school—with mothers and fathers reporting similar levels of competition at work but daughters feeling more competitive at school than sons; (b) parents' competition at work was associated with similar activities; however, daughters' and sons' competition at school varied by activities; and (c) mothers' competition was associated with strategies for college enrollment and varied by gender, most notably with respect to daughters' academic progress. The results suggest how parents' competitive disposition may motivate their children's academic performance, especially between working mothers and their daughters.     

Assessing Family Outcomes: Psychometric Evaluation of the Beach Center Family Quality of Life Scale

There is currently a lack of reliable scales with which to assess the construct of family quality of life, particularly for families who have children with disabilities. The current work presents 2 studies, including a total of 488 families with children with disabilities, which were conducted to complete the development of a scale to assess family quality of life. The measure was refined through confirmatory factor analyses into 25 items that assess 5 domains of Family Quality of Life: Family Interaction, Parenting, Emotional Well‐Being, Physical/Material Well‐Being, and Disability‐Related Support. Each subscale was found to be unidimensional and internally consistent. An initial examination of test‐retest reliability and convergent validity is also presented. Implications for future research, scale use, and policy are discussed.     

Collecting family network data

Contemporary family contexts are characterized by a complex web of relationships, which goes beyond the household boundaries. Indeed, individuals develop meaningful relationships with non-residential family members, close friends, neighbors, colleagues, etc. Unfortunately, most surveys dealing with family ties focus on households and study a few dyads, mainly couple and parent–child relationships. This contribution addresses the use of social network methods for the understanding of the social matrix of family interdependencies in which individuals are embedded. Social network methods broaden the definition of family by starting with the individuals’ own definition of their meaningful family context. They also allow the mapping of family networks based on the interdependencies existing among all family members. This contribution describes the use of social network methods in relation to three main settings: individuals in national representative surveys, individuals facing a family recomposition after divorce, and individuals in psychotherapy. In the light of the pluralization of life trajectories and the individualization of personal relationships, the proposed approach may significantly contribute to the understanding of the relationships that matter for individuals in contemporary societies, and of the creation of family-based social capital.     

The Changing Demography of America's Families

We use data from a variety of sources to describe recent dramatic changes in the composition, economic stability, and diversity of American families. The declining prevalence of early marriage, increasing level of marital dissolution, and growing tendency to never marry, especially among some racial and ethnic groups, reflect changes in the relative economic prospects of men and women and support the conclusion that marriage is becoming less valued as a source of economic stability. These developments also imply that relatively more children are born outside of marriage, spend at least part of their childhood in a single‐parent household, and endure multiple changes in family composition. Paralleling these trends have been sharp changes in the economic stability of families, characterized most notably by a growing importance of women's income and increasing economic inequality among American families.     

Families Who Kill

No abstract available for this article.     

Family Time Activities and Adolescents' Emotional Well‐being

The literature is divided on the issue of what matters for adolescents' well‐being, with one approach focusing on quality and the other on routine family time. Using the experience sampling method, a unique form of time diary, and survey data drawn from the 500 Family Study (N = 237 adolescents with 8,122 observations), this study examined the association between family time and adolescents' emotional well‐being as a function of the type of activities family members engaged in during their time together. Hierarchical linear model analyses revealed that eating meals together was beneficial to adolescents' emotional well‐being, especially when fathers were present. Family leisure was also beneficial to teens' well‐being. By contrast, productive family time (e.g., homework) was associated with lower emotional well‐being, as was maintenance family time (e.g., household chores), but only when adolescents engaged in it with both parents.