Conflict is an inherent part of human relationships and is ubiquitous within families. These disputes are not in themselves harmful to children. Rather, it is the strategies used to resolve conflict that have a bearing on children’s health and development, notably whether family members employ aggressive or violent tactics. The study examines evidence from a sample of 161 children, selected to be representative of children living in Dublin, Ireland. It explores children’s responses to different methods of conflict resolution in two family relationships and seeks to expand the understanding of how social problems, such as child maltreatment and domestic violence, occur within normative family processes. The study shows that the use of psychological and minor physical aggression to resolve conflict in the parental relationship and the parent-child relationship is typical. It occurs in 90 per cent of families over a twelve-month period. Severe physical force or violence between family members is less common. The study finds that while there is considerable variation in children’s responses to conflict resolution strategies, children who experience aggression in both the inter-parental and parent-child relationship are at elevated risk for behavioural and emotional problems. The frequency and severity of the aggression explains some of the variance in child well-being but not all. The study lends support to Bronfrenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory by demonstrating empirically how the individual, family, neighbourhood, and potentially societal, contexts moderate the transmission of poor conflict resolution strategies to children's health and development. The findings suggest that while the child's age and gender play a small role, family and neighbourhood contexts are strongly implicated in outcomes for children exposed to risky conflict resolution tactics in the home. In particular, parental mental health problems, low socio-economic status and poor peer relationships increase children’s vulnerability to the effects of aggressive conflict tactics. The relevance of the evidence for policy and practice are drawn out. A distinction can be drawn between responses to pathological behaviour by parents and normative, yet harmful, conflict resolution strategies. Public health approaches to promote reasoning within families as well as prevention and early intervention strategies that support all families, not just economically disadvantaged parents known to child protection and domestic violence agencies, are required. In addition, greater sensitivity to children's gender and stage of development and more attention to policies that reduce stress on families and violence within communities are advocated.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

This study investigates a single retrospective case of psychoanalytic infant observation. Two principal aims emerged from the evolving investigation. The first concerned the methodology involved in examining observational data using psychoanalytic methods, the second being the exploration of what can be learned from the systematic study of a single recorded case of infant observation using Grounded Theory. The focus for the study concerned the infant’s first year and considered the structuring of the infant’s psychic life, which takes place in the initial relationship(s). From the phenomenological description of behaviours in the observed context, combined with the emotional field described in the observation reports,emotional meaning was inferred. The systematic use of line-by-line coding, abductive reasoning and the formation of categories led to discussion of the following detail:The first month of life; Exploration of the period when mother was traumatically absent, followed by her return; Selected observations that reveal parent/infant recovery. Several conclusions are reached regarding the observed infant. The first concerns the identification of synchronous rhythms or patterns in the mother/infant relationship where they were found to form a backdrop to aesthetic reciprocity. Rupture in aesthetic attunement was instrumental in activating a cascade of early proto-defensive organisation into later development. This took the form of oral preoccupation; namely regurgitation, rumination and choking. Whilst this defensive organisation may be specific to the observed infant, the study draws attention to developmental processes that may be relevant to infants in general. There is evidence to support how babies are more integrated than first thought by Bick (1968) and are ‘open’ to triangular relating in the first weeks. Proto-defensive structures may be evidenced from the start of post-natal life. This study makes a contribution to the body of knowledge concerning rumination in infancy.

This thesis comprehends four essays investigating strategies to fight against poverty. The first essay explores a series of police operations to pacify the slums of Rio de Janeiro to understand the impacts of intrauterine exposure to violence on birth outcomes. One argues that pregnancies starting before, but ending around the pacification dates are ‘quasirandomly’ exposed to exogenous shocks of violence during pregnancy. The results show that each month pregnant women are exposed to pacification increases birth weights by 4 grams and reduces the probability of low birth weight (< 2500 grams) by 1.2 percent compared to pregnancies ending just before pacifications. A second essay uses Brazilian legislative change making it mandatory for private hospitals to publicly disclose information about physicians’ performance. The results show a reduction in scheduled C-sections by 4.8 percent; which two-thirds originating from physicians anticipating to information disclosure. The third essay proposes an empirical strategy to estimate bullying effects on labour and schooling outcomes when "true" bullying is observed inaccurately. The estimates show that high-school bullying decreases University attendance by 3.4 percent and increases the probability of being not in education, employed or in training after high-school by 2.8 percent. Estimations neglecting misreport implicates in impacts two-thirds smaller. And finally, the fourth essay shows that poor households increase their participation in social groups after receiving Bolsa Família. The strategy explores households registered in Cadastro Único, and performs a propensity score difference-in-difference framework to minimize selection bias. Becoming a recipient of Bolsa Família increases .09 standard deviations the number of social affiliation and increase from 6.1 to 8.9 percent the probability of engaging in social groups. Altogether, this thesis implicates that investing in early stages of life harvest significant benefits to disadvantaged children, it also shows that victims of bullying need sustained support after high school, and that conditional cash transfers foster social engagement.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

Photocopy of typescript. / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries

There has a great deal of research regarding the positive social (prosocial) behaviors of young children. Children have been observed performing a number of different prosocial behaviors, including helping, showing, sharing, and responding to the distress of another. However, most of the previous research was conducted in laboratory settings. In order to describe the first manifestations of prosocial behaviors more accurately, research needs to be conducted in a natural setting. The purpose of the current study was to observe the origins of the prosocial behaviors of young children in a child development center. To accomplish this goal, a research team was assembled and pilot observations were made. Group meetings served as a forum for developing a coding system. The study included four observation periods over a six month span during which children's naturally occurring social interactions were videotaped. Thirty-seven children between the ages of 9 months and 3.5 years who attended a corporate affiliated child development center participated in the study. The first observation period included 37 children who were videotaped for an average of eighty-four minutes each. The three remaining observation periods included 21 children who were videotaped an average of ninety minutes each. Approximately 150 total hours of videotape were collected. In addition to developing a coding system, a reliability study was conducted. This study included 42 three-minute segments which were representative of the videotape that was collected. Also, all the behaviors under observation were included among these segments. The three newest members of the research team then coded the segments. Inter-observer agreement was assessed by computing percentage agreement and also by calculating Cohen's kappas. Repeated measures analysis of variance were performed to determine if there were differences between observers, across the age range of the children, or across the group activity that the children were involved in while being observed. Although there were no significant differences between kappa values, there were differences between the percentage agreements. The implications of these differences to the coding system is discussed and predictions pertaining to the frequency of pro social behavior are elaborated.

In response to the increased emphasis in early intervention on assessing family functioning, there has been substantial effort over the past 15 years to develop instruments that can measure important aspects of family functioning with families of children with disabilities. While the multitude of recently developed family measures has given researchers and clinicians a variety of instruments from which to choose, research on the quality of the data derived from these instruments has lagged behind. Considering the importance of family functioning in current early intervention programs and the potential impact on the type of intervention delivered, further investigation of the psychometric properties of widely used measures of family functioning seems essential. The specific purpose of this research was to conduct a full psychometric assessment of five of the most widely used measures of family functioning for families with children with disabilities. The conclusions that can be drawn from this research are as follows: Each of these measures was strengthened by new scoring strategies, showed high reliability, demonstrated strong construct and current validity, and, individually, did not relate strongly to child development. However, when taken as a whole, these measures were very useful for family assessment in early intervention research and early intervention service provision.