Constructing the Transition to Parenthood*

How is the transition to parenthood constructed in a context in which fatherhood and motherhood are therapeutically defined? Relying on ethnographic observations of 66 expectant and new parent couples assigned to 13 different parent educator‐led groups, we show how, with the arrival of a baby, a sense of transition is crafted and often amplified. Our analysis suggests that just as the overall life course is constructed through language and meaningful gesture, so also the transition to parenthood is constructed through verbal and nonverbal signification. Using a vocabulary of contrast and change, parent edu‐cators and expectant and new parents create a collective feeling that they are witnessing a transformation of major proportions. By emphasizing the idea that things are no longer the same, parent educators also establish themselves as authorities whose job it is to steer fathers and mothers through unfamiliar terrain. For their part, expectant and new parents not only listen to but often also replicate the parent educators’ vocabularies and, in so doing, further magnify distinctions between before parenthood and after, and between one stage of parenthood and another. Childbirth stands uncomfortably at the junction of the two worlds of nature and culture. Like death and disease it is a biological event, but the defining feature of biological events in human life is their social character. Ann Oakley (1980:7)     

REFOCUSING FROM CHILD TO MARITAL PROBLEMS USING THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT GAME

Couples experiencing marital distress often request treatment for child behavior problems. These families have been found to respond poorly to behavioral parent-training programs and to reject offers of marital therapy. The Marriage Contract Game (MCG) structures and teaches problem-solving and communication skills; the game can be used to improve the skills of distressed couples and to refocus their attention away from their children and toward their own marriages. A multiple-baseline design was applied to four distressed couples who requested treatment for a target child. Results showed that game play improved couple's problem-solving and positive feeling statements in home discussions of problems, parents' ratings of target children's problems, and, in three cases, couples' perceptions of the difficulty of resolving their problems. Therapists untrained in behavioral methods were able to use the game with success and comfort. While four sessions of the MCG were not sufficient treatment for this population, intervention improved couples' skills and shifted their focus away from child problems and toward their own.     

THE McMASTER FAMILY ASSESSMENT DEVICE: RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY*

This paper reports a series of studies investigating the reliability and validity of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (FAD). The results indicated that the FAD has: (a) adequate test-retest reliability, (b) low correlations with social desirability, (c) moderate correlations with other self-report measures of family functioning, and (d) differentiates significantly between clinician-rated healthy and unhealthy families. Cut-off scores for identifying healthy and unhealthy families also were developed which have adequate sensitivity and specificity. Additionally, the relationships between the FAD, Family Unit Inventory, and FACES-II suggests that the cohension and adaptability scales from the FACES-II have a linear relationship with health/pathology.     

Infant Contingency/Extinction Performance After Observing Partial Reinforcement

Social information gathering by infants 6 and 12 months old was examined as a foundation for later social learning that may be uniquely human. Infant performance on a contingency/extinction task was studied following a caregiver demonstration of the contingency on varied reinforcement schedules. Infants who observed caregivers receive any reinforcing stimulation in pretraining decreased responding over their own acquisition period, possibly because they began to habituate to the reinforcer. In extinction, infants who observed caregivers receive partial reinforcement in pretraining were more persistent in responding than others. This suggested that direct experience with partial reinforcement is not needed for greater persistence in extinction. These studies revealed details of social learning in the 1st year.     

Generation of Knowledge for Reproductive Health Technologies: Constraints on Social and Behavioral Research

Advances in new reproductive health technologies have surfaced an array of social and behavioral issues regarding decision-making and use of these technologies, underscoring the need for research on such topics as reproductive health decision-making, sexual practices, and norms and values for childbearing and family formation. Using topical microbicides as an example of a new method to prevent Sexually Transmitted infections (STIs), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and/or pregnancy, we focus on gaps in information to inform reproductive health decision-making, noting in particular the discrepancies between data on clinical efficacy and typical use-effectiveness. Constraints on government and private sector support for research, particularly research on aspects of sexual behavior, contribute to problems with the availability of information for decision-making about use of reproductive health technologies .     

The use of therapeutic interventions to reduce crowding-related arousal: A preliminary investigation

Studies of mass transportation crowding have universally shown that such crowding is arousing and often anxiety producing. Attempts to intervene to reduce arousal and anxiety have met with mixed results. In this study four therapeutically based interventions were used to reduce the arousal evoked by a laboratory analogue of mass transportation crowding. Subjects in the intervention conditions showed significantly fewer increases in pulse rate during crowding. Two of the intervention conditions showed significant decreases in skin conductance level when compared to subjects in an uninstructed crowded condition. An intervention which increased feelings of control over the environment resulted in a more positive view of the environment but did not decrease physiological arousal any more than interventions which did not increase perceived control.The research reported in this paper was sponsored by grants from Rutgers University Research Council to Yakov M. Epstein and Robert A. Karlin.     

Three years later: the adaptation process of 1980 (Mariel) Cuban and Haitian refugees in South Florida

In recent years, southern Florida has experienced rapid new inflows of immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean. Since the arrival in 1980 of Mariel (Cuban) and Haitian immigrants to this area, a great deal of speculation has emerged as to the adaptation of these two groups to south Florida and the impact which their presence has wielded on the social and economic arenas of that region. In this paper, we present selected background characteristics of representative samples of both groups and discuss our empirical findings with regard to the labor market experiences, social networks, and educational experiences of the immigrants included in our sample. While the two groups minimally differ from earlier cohorts of their compatriots entering south Florida, their experiences since arriving in Florida have been quite different. Both the Cuban and Haitian immigrants arriving in 1980 demonstrate higher levels of unemployment than their counterparts who arrived earlier; however, the existence of the Cuban economic enclave in Miami did facilitate the entry of a greater number of Cubans than Haitians into the formal labor market. Initial evidence indicates that significant numbers of individuals from both groups participate in the informal labor market, often receiving less than the minimum wage.This study was conducted with the support of the Sociology Program, National Science Foundation (Grant #SES-8215567).     

How I demystified academe and got a Ph.D.

Graduate education is more than simply taking courses, taking comprehensive exams, and writing theses and dissertations. It is also a process of personal intellectual growth that results in a redefinition of identity. This transformation of self is tantamount to a demystification process such that students must debunk the “Ph.D. mystique” to identify with sociologists and become members of the sociological community. Faculty can aid this process by sharing their own transformative experiences, but the structured inequality of the faculty-student relationship is a harrier against such personal disclosures. Yet transcending those structural barriers may be necessary to enhance the quality of graduate education in sociology. She is specializing in political economy and is writing a dissertation on economic change and work-time reduction.     

Paying dues to the union: A study of blue-collar workers in a right-to-work environment

Of the 39 states that permit some form of public sector collective bargaining, union security agreements are prohibited in 19. Employees may join and pay dues to the union representing them in these states but they are not required to do so. This study of 372 state government workers compares union dues-payers and non-dues-payers on a variety of personal, positional, economic, and noneconomic variables. Workers who were exposed to more physical danger and less noise were more likely to be dues-payers; higher seniority workers and skilled craftworkers were more likely to pay dues. Results suggest that union voting and union dues-paying have different antecedents. They also raise questions about the generalizability of previous dues-paying research to blue-collar settings. Holding a union card in a right-to-work environment seems to have little to do with the traditional collective pursuit of economic power.     

The use of constructive-developmental theory to advance the understanding of leadership

Constructive-developmental theory is a stage theory of adult development that focuses on the growth and elaboration of a person's ways of understanding the self and the world. In this article we review how the constructive-developmental frameworks of Kegan [Kegan, R. (1982). The evolving self: Problem and process in human development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press], Torbert [Torbert, W. R. (1987). Managing the corporate dream: Restructuring for long-term success. Homewood, IL: Dow Jones-Irwin.], and Kohlberg [Kohlberg, L. (1969). Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. In D. Goslin (Ed.), Handbook of socialization: Theory and research. New York: Rand McNally] have been applied in the theoretical and empirical literature on leadership and management. Although the literature has produced a number of propositions, the notion that a leader's order of development should impact his or her leadership effectiveness or managerial performance has generated the most research. We found mixed support for this proposition as well as a number of limitations in the research in general. To have a greater impact on the leadership field, constructive-developmental theory needs to generate more robust research, to link more clearly with on-going streams of leadership research, and to explore the contribution of aspects of the theory beyond individual order of development.