Themes and Trends of Journal of Family and Economic Issues: A Review of Twenty Years (1988–2007)

This review article examines the progress and impact of the Journal of Family and Economic Issues (JFEI) between 1988–2007. Over the past 20 years, JFEI has become a major journal publishing articles on the relationship between families and economic systems. JFEI contributed to both the economic and family studies disciplines by publishing articles that explore the interface of these two disciplines. Between 1988 and 2007, JFEI published articles on a variety of themes not often found in other economic or family studies journals such as family resource management, consumer attitudes and behaviors, and economic issues and family relationships. Other unique characteristics of JFEI include many collaborative multidisciplinary studies and many studies analyzing international or cross-cultural samples.     

Linking Financial Strain to Marital Instability: Examining the Roles of Emotional Distress and Marital Interaction

Using a sample consisting of 4,997 married couples from the National Survey of Families and Households, individual emotional distress, the occurrence of couple disagreements, couple fighting, and couple quality time together mediated the relationship between financial strain and personal assessments of marital instability. The overall results suggest that financial strain influences both positive and negative forms of couple interaction which are stronger mediators than personal emotional distress of the relationship between financial strain and marital instability. The results further suggest that there were no gender differences among these linkages.     

Collective Memory and Nonpublic Opinion: A Historical Note on a Methodological Controversy About a Political Problem

This article describes a little‐known moment in the history of social research, the so‐called Group Experiment (Gruppenexperiment) conducted in Germany in 1950–51 by members of the reconstituted Frankfurt school. That research, I argue, provides a missing link in the history of the ideas of deliberative democracy and public discourse, areas of political theory in which the substantive legacies of pragmatism and interactionism are particularly significant. Most important, however, the Gruppenexperiment provides a model for rethinking certain methodological and conceptual problems plaguing contemporary research on collective memory, namely, the tendency to reify it.     

He Said What? Guided Cognitive Reframing About the Co‐Resident Father/Stepfather–Adolescent Relationship

We studied young adolescents' seeking out support to understand conflict with their co‐resident fathers/stepfathers, and the cognitive and affective implications of such support‐seeking, phenomena we call guided cognitive reframing. Our sample included 392 adolescents (M_age = 12.5, 52.3% female) who were either of Mexican or European ancestry and lived with their biological mothers and either a stepfather or a biological father. More frequent reframing was associated with more adaptive cognitive explanations for father/stepfather behavior. Cognitions explained the link between seeking out and feelings about the father/stepfather and self. Feelings about the self were more strongly linked to depressive symptoms than cognitions. We discuss the implications for future research on social support, coping, guided cognitive reframing, and father–child relationships.     

Will nuclear power pay for itself?

Will nuclear power ever generate enough revenue to cover its costs? Historical data covering capital, fuel, operations, maintenance, decommissioning, and waste disposal costs, and generation and revenue figures during the period 1953 through 1991 were analyzed and compared. The analysis shows that nuclear power is currently nowhere near meeting its costs. Scenarios projecting future costs and revenues were developed. Analysis of these projections suggests that even under the most optimistic conditions (where costs are cut considerably and revenues climb substantially), the current generation of the nuclear option over its lifetime may be best be economically marginal.