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This dissertation investigates the transition to college. It examines why and how middle class families choose college and factors that shape the decisions of mothers, fathers and their departing children. In addition, it explores the changes that parents experience as longstanding identities shift when children leave home, a process I have labeled role transformation from primary to secondary parenthood. Finally, it considers consequences for the parents' relationship to one another, and gender-based outcomes for parents as they themselves are launched into the next phase of their lives. The research is based upon interviews I conducted with parents and children in twenty middle class families. During stage one, I interviewed mothers, fathers and children individually the summer following the child's high school graduation. During stage two, a year later, I again interviewed mothers and fathers individually. All interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. This dissertation is an account of class, gender, generation and transformation. I argue that it is not only middle class children whose class position is preserved through the attainment of higher education, but parents as well. In addition, I contend that when parents and children conflict as to the selection of a college, deferring to children frequently carries economic implications for parents, and that emerging patterns suggest a redefining of norms governing appropriate middle class parent and child behaviors. Further I submit that as they launch children to adulthood, mothers and fathers undergo the transformation from primary to secondary parenthood through an observable sequence of stages through which they pass. Finally, I show that despite cultural norms which assume mothers will be distressed as children leave home, it is fathers who are more likely to experience this passage negatively.

This study uses a targeted sample of 138 couples in Western Massachusetts to examine the impact of child care choices on social networks across the transition to parenthood and return to work. Dual-earner couples were interviewed separately during the third trimester of their first pregnancy and again near the child's first birthday. This study seeks to determine whether reliance on child care providers with different relationships to the couple influenced new mothers' and fathers' ability to maintain a diverse set of relationships with others. More specifically, it is hypothesized that as one draws on resources from a wider network to provide child care (expanding from the couple only to her kin, his kin, some combination of both sets of kin, and finally outward to non-kin providers), that one will have the ability to maintain a wider circle of contacts following the transition to parenthood and return to employment. This research has uncovered significant differences in new parents' social networks. As predicted by previous research, women's networks were more strongly influenced by the transition than men's, and gender differences in network composition, especially the percentage who are coworkers, intensified. A prenatal gender difference in network size dissipated by the baby's first birthday, with men's network size decreasing more than women's to lead to similar size postnatally. Regression results suggest that gendered patterns are influenced by choice of child care provider. Men's networks appear most restricted by a couple-only child care strategy, as men who used any other child care option reported ties with significantly more coworkers than men providing care while their partners worked. Women appear to have the least restrictions, and the most signs of diversity, when they chose a provider unrelated to either parent. At the second interview, women reporting use of a non-kin provider had significantly lower frequency of contact with others than those using their own kin, fewer partner's kin than those using their partner's kin for child care, and a higher percentage of coworkers than those using no child care.

Survivors of child sexual abuse are often plagued by a miriad of residual effects which have the potential to limit their functioning and interfere with their interpersonal relationships. Twenty-three successful survivors were interviewed to determine what problems they attributed to the abuse and the process they had gone through to reach some degree of wholeness. Eight therapists of survivors were interviewed to determine how they treat past victims of sexual abuse. The content of these interviews was used to generate a book directed to the layperson who might be a survivor of sexual abuse, friend/family member of such a survivor or a therapist interested in treating these individuals. Major themes addressed are: a definition of sexual abuse, a discussion of who abuses children, outline of the residual effects experienced by survivors from both a male and female perspective, a discussion of therapies and other aids for breaking the cycle of continued victimization, suggestions of what survivors might experience while going through therapy, a consideration of the complications of sharing the facts of the abuse with the survivor's children, an exploration of the difficulties in learning to trust again and a discussion of what is meant by a "true" survivor. The book is interwoven with first person accounts of survivor's experiences with both incest and extra-familial abuse. Sexual abuse is seen in the context of other assaults on childhood such as alcoholism and physical abuse.

Conflict between American-born Chinese and their immigrant parents bears a unique configuration in terms of the interaction between the bicultural Chinese Americans and their immigrant parents. This study examined the communication patterns and conflicts in seven Chinese American families by eliciting accounts from the younger generation in an interview. The results suggest that there are incommensurate cultural logics between the parents and the children, whose socialization is embedded in disparate cultural traditions. However, the Chinese American informants did not perceive their conflicts with their parents as incommensurate. Rather, they treated conflicts as though they were incompatible or incomparable. The study also challenges the common advice to compromise given to Chinese Americans who find themselves struggling between Chinese and North American cultures within which they are simultaneously enmeshed. It is concluded that suggestions such as achieving the balance between two cultural traditions or compromising are imaginary in light of the concrete actions performed by these bicultural individuals. The notion of compromise for these Chinese Americans can be understood as reconstitution of one cultural tradition, or transformation of the extant cultural practices.

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