Positive Marital Quality,Acculturative Stress,and Child Outcomes Among Mexican Americans

Previous research suggests that the quality of parents' relationships can influence their children's adjustment, but most studies have focused on the negative effects of marital conflict for children in White middle‐class families. The current study focuses on the potential benefits of positive marital quality for children in working‐class first generation Mexican American families using observational and self‐report data. This study examined the links between positive marital quality and child internalizing and externalizing behaviors 1 year later when the child was in sixth grade (N = 134 families). Positive marital quality was negatively correlated with child internalizing behaviors. Parent acculturative stress was found to mediate the relationship between positive marital quality and child internalizing behaviors in sixth grade.     

Clients' relational conceptions of conjoint couple and family therapy quality: a grounded formal theory

Based upon a qualitative metasynthesis of 49 articles centered on clients' experiences of their conjoint couple and family therapy, the investigators constructed a grounded formal theory of Clients' Relational Conceptions of Conjoint Couple and Family Therapy Quality. The theory suggests from pretherapy conceptions to posttherapy reflections, clients' perceptions of conjoint couple and family therapy quality appear to consist of clients' constructed meanings regarding a series of interrelated relationships between clients and their therapists and therapy environments, between clients and themselves, between clients and other family members, and between process and outcome both inside and outside therapy. Within and across these relationships, clients appear to focus on expectations, connections, balance, and change when evaluating the quality of their clinical experiences. Based upon this theory, the investigators recommend that researchers continue to explore this clinical phenomenon and that therapists regularly seek clients' conceptions of quality in therapy.     

Called to Medicine: Physicians’ Experiences of Career Calling

Using consensual qualitative research methodology, the authors explored physicians’ (N = 17) career calling experiences through semistructured interviews. Eight domains emerged: definition of calling, development of calling, calling's fit with career, maintenance of calling, emotional well‐being, relationships, recreation, and future. Within these domains, 17 general and 40 typical categories emerged. Results suggest physicians’ callings were influenced by others, met with both support and barriers, and chosen because of fit with interests, prosocial motivation, or religious/spiritual influences. Calling positively and negatively influenced emotional well‐being, relationships, and recreation and was expected to continue after retirement. Counselors are encouraged to use a narrative lens to conceptualize clients’ calling development, use job crafting techniques to support calling maintenance, and prepare clients for postretirement career calling development. Future research might examine when and why a medical calling's strength may change over time.     

The Salience of a Career Calling Among College Students: Exploring Group Differences and Links to Religiousness,Life Meaning,and Life Satisfaction

The authors examined the degree to which 1st‐year college students endorse a career calling and how levels of calling differ across demographic variables and religiousness, life meaning, and life satisfaction. Forty‐four percent of students believed that having a career calling was mostly or totally true of them, and 28% responded to searching for a calling in the same fashion. Students seeking advanced professional degrees were more likely to feel a career calling, and the presence of a calling was found to weakly correlate with religiousness and life satisfaction and moderately correlate with life meaning. Practice implications are suggested.     

Satisfaction and commitment in homosexual and heterosexual relationships

Rusbult's (1980, 1983) investment model was utilized to explore the determinants of satisfaction with and commitment to maintain romantic relationships among male and female homosexuals and male and female heterosexuals. The study employed a questionnaire designed to obtain both specific and global measures of rewards, costs, alternatives, and investments, and to obtain global measures of satisfaction and commitment. Women, both lesbians and heterosexuals, reported that they had invested more in their relationships and were more committed to maintaining their relationships than did men. Heterosexuals, male and female, reported greater costs and marginally greater investments in their relationships. In general, the investment model effectively predicted satisfaction and commitment for the sample as a whole and for all four groups of respondents. Greater satisfaction with relationships was associated with higher levels of rewards and lower levels of costs. Greater commitment was associated with greater satisfaction, greater investments, and poorer quality alternatives. Relationship costs were more strongly related to satisfaction and commitment for females than for males. Differences in the average level and the importance of a wide variety of specific predictors were also examined. In general, gender appeared to be a more important predictor of the behaviors explored in this study than was sexual preference.     

Childbearing and Women's Survival: New Evidence from Rural Bangladesh

Effects of childbearing on women's mortality and the implications of family planning programs in reducing these effects are examined in a 20‐year prospective study of more than 2,000 women in Matlab, Bangladesh. Maternal mortality is defined as a death occurring in the six weeks after childbirth. But childbearing may affect women's survival beyond this brief period. Additional hypotheses considered relate to 1) cumulative exposure to childbearing, whether measured by parity or pace of childbearing, 2) age at first birth, and 3) effects beyond the reproductive ages. The results offer no support to cumulative exposure hypotheses, showing no link between parity or pace of childbearing and mortality risk. Instead, we identify an extended period of heightened mortality risk associated with each birth—the year of the birth and the two subsequent years. Family planning programs, by reducing the number of children and therefore a woman's exposure to extended maternal mortality risk, potentially increase survival. Research is needed to identify and address the specific causes of extended maternal mortality risk so that appropriate ameliorative programs may be developed.     

Two sides of the same coin: revising analyses of lesbian sexuality and family formation through the study of Black women

The present work analyzes results from a three-year, mixed-methods sociological study of Black lesbian-headed families. It identifies four points of departure Black women make from what the existing literature has assumed about lesbian families and lesbian practice. It links these ideologies and behaviors to the experiences of African-American women growing up in Black heterosexual families and communities, particularly the mother-centered quality of many Black households and the history of female labor force participation and economic contributions to the household.     

Family Cohesion in the Lives of Mexican American and European American Parents

This study investigated similarities and differences in relations between stress and parenting behaviors for 509 Mexican American and European American fathers and mothers in Southern California. Our model posited that family cohesion mediates the relation between stressors and parenting behavior, and we found that family cohesion strongly mediated most of the relations between stress and parenting behaviors. Important ethnic and gender differences were evident. In contrast with other groups, Mexican American fathers reported higher levels of family cohesion when faced with economic pressures. Implications for future research on stress and parenting are discussed.     

Social Identity and its Influence on Women's Roles in East-Central Europe

An apparent drop in women's presence in the political sphere has spawned debates in the feminist literature over the need and cultural appropriateness of women's political office-holding in East-Central Europe. The author discusses the nature of political participation in light of women's self-definition, social identity, and loci of commitments in these transforming states. Taking their own value orientations and the societal processes they experience as a baseline from which to appraise political and social change, women in East-Central Europe feel disillusioned with the transition to a market economy and the ideological framework out of which it functions. They have, after all, disproportionately borne the ill-effects of the new ideology of efficiency and productivity in the workforce and they perceive the political arena as a narrowly defined arena of partisan rancoring that does not address their needs. Pointing to Dahl's work on moral civic virtue, the author argues that the orientation and values of women in East-Central Europe – i.e. a commitment to justice and preference for localized, pragmatic (not ideological) and particularistic action – are especially conducive to developing the moral civic infrastructure so badly needed in these transitioning countries. The author discusses the merits and drawbacks of three possible scenarios for action for the women of this region: maintaining the status quo; using women's traditional and preferred forms of action to effect change 'from the bottom'; and taking frontal action at the national level against inequities and discriminatory policies.