Recent trends in marital disruption

The post-1980 decline in the crude divorce rate must be interpreted in the context of the long-term trend and in terms of what we know about composition effects on crude measures-particularly given shifts in age at marriage and the age composition effects of the baby boom. Data from the June 1985 Current Population Survey permit more detailed, exposure-specific measurements as well as the use of separation as the event terminating marriage. Estimates from these data suggest a decline followed by a recovery. Taking into account well-known levels of underreporting, we find that recent rates imply that about two-thirds of all first marriages are likely to end in separation or divorce. We examine the persistence of major differences in marital stability and evaluate the comparative stability of first and second marriages.     

Conversation with Herbert S. Strean

Dr. Herbert Strean has been a most influential practitioner and educator in the advancement of clinical social work. Not only has he made an outstanding contribution to our professional literature, but has also been a major critic of our profession's movement away from its therapeutic obligation to clients. Since its inception, he has been on the editorial board of this journal and a regular contributor. After a distinguished career as a professor at Rutgers University Graduate School of Social Work he has retired to direct the New York Center for Psychoanalytic Training. We are fortunate to have the first interview with him after his retirement from Rutgers.     

A Comparison of Seven Family Therapy Approaches

Dimensions which should be part of a family theory are developed by drawing from ‘Integrative Family Therapy’, a theory incorporating the concepts, hypotheses, and techniques of American family therapists. The family theories of seven family therapists (Minuchin, Haley, Zuk, Friedman, Speck, Boszormenyi-Nagy, Rubinstein) are described and compared with one another. Their limitations are shown and thereby the characteristics of approaches of family therapy are indicated. Their contribution to a more encompassing ‘Integrative Family Theory’ is shown.     

Occupational pursuits of free women in early America: An examination of eighteenth-century newspapers

The revival of social and family history during the past two decades has resulted in major revisions of conventional explanations of the processes of social change. Scholarship concerning the status, roles, and contributions of early American women has been especially important in this respect. This paper is based on original findings from a systematic survey of the occupational pursuits of early American women (N=2,572) and a stratified sample (N=1,949), both derived from eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements. Our findings focus on the distribution of occupations available to women, important trends during the period, and factors contributing to changes in the occupational structure of early America.     

On the Simultaneous Estimation of Scale Parameters

This note is an extension of Das Gupta's results (1986) on the estimation of multiparameter gamma distribution. Consider p (p ? 2) independent positive random variables with possibly different scale-parameter densities. For the estimation of the powers of the scale parameters it is shown that the “best multiple estimator” is inadmissible with respect to a large class of weighted quadratic loss functions.     

Anomie and Strain: Context and Consequences of Merton's Two Theories

Robert Merton presented two, not always clearly differentiated theories in his seminal explorations on the social-structure-and-anomie paradigm: a strain theory and an anomie theory. A one-sided focus on Merton's strain theory in the secondary literature has unnecessarily restricted the power and effectiveness of Merton's anomie theory. For although structural strain is one way to explain why deviance occurs in the context of anomie, it is not the only way. We contend that scholars who are critical of strain theory should not automatically discard Merton's anomie theory, because the perspective of anomie is compatible with several other theories of crime and delinquency. Offering examples of previous integration efforts, we maintain that Merton's theoretical model can benefit from the input of other theories of crime and deviance as much as these other theoretical perspectives can fine-tune their models and explanations.