This study used secondary data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the relationship between adolescent delinquency and family processes (i.e., relationship to residential parents and autonomy), among single-mother and singleather families. The findings indicate that adolescents in single-mother families reported a higher quality relationship to residential parents than those living with singleathers. Additionally, the relationship to residential parents variable was modestly predictive of adolescent delinquency. However, the results indicate there is no statistically significant difference between rates of adolescent delinquency among single-mother and singleather families. Research and practical implications of this study are discussed.

This case study elicits the process of coming out of a 6 member family-of-choice of an adult gay man in rural New Hampshire. 27.5 hours of face-to-face interviews were conducted with the family individually and collectively. Reflexivity, as a technique, was used extensively. Four themes were identified: Embracing gay identity, integrating as a family, building social networks, and social awakening. This study addresses the complexities of how multiple individuals negotiate rules and accommodate diverse viewpoints within a family system, provides insight into a family's journey of accepting their gay identity, utilizes personal narratives of family members, and reveals how the reflexive process contributes to a family's creation of new stories. Implications for clinical practice and future research are discussed. / Ph. D.

The issue of reentry has become an important topic to criminal justice scholars and to law makers due to the sheer number of incarcerated individuals being released and the rate in which they cycle back to incarceration. Despite the attention reentry issues have received recently in the areas of policy and criminal justice and recommendations offered to ameliorate problems associated with reentry, the landscape of reentry remains largely unchanged in that many prisoners are released from prison and significant numbers of them return (Austin, 2001). Approximately 700,000 inmates were released from prisons and jails to their families and communities in 2005 (Harrison & Beck, 2006). Of those inmates, roughly 1/3rd were young adults aged 24 or younger (Mears & Travis, 2004). The outcomes for young adults (age 18-24) incarcerated at such young ages put them at overwhelming risk of a life course trajectory that includes cycles of future imprisonment and poor life outcomes such as economic hardship, poor mental and physical well being and lower life expectancy (Mears & Travis, 2004; Uggen, 2000; Western, 2002) . This study examined the meanings of formerly incarcerated young adult men and their caregivers made in regard to reentry, caregivers' ability to meet reentry needs, perceptions about reliance on family and the implications of a young adult child "returning home" within the context of release from incarcerative sentencing. This goal was achieved through conducting in-depth semi-structured interviews with formerly incarcerated men between the ages of 18 and 24 and their caregivers for a total of 18 individual interviews that reflect nine young men-caregiver dyads defined as families for this study. This qualitative study was informed using an integration of family life course perspective, symbolic interactionism and ecological theory. The theoretical amalgam provided the ability to examine the life course transitions of families impacted by incarceration, the perceptions and meanings made based upon the experience with incarceration while being imbedded within a socially stigmatized context of having a felony. The findings from this study suggest that upon reentry young adult men and their caregivers experienced ambivalence, happiness yet anxiety in moving forward after incarceration. This ambivalence was a major theme that was found not only in reunification, but in relying on family and in fostering independence. Caregivers were emotionally distressed as they juggled their feelings of wanting to help the young men with meeting the multiple demands placed on the family system with their concerns that he might return to his "old ways." Young men were particularly distressed as they negotiated transitioning from a state of independence (prior to incarceration) to dependence as a prisoner in the criminal justice system, to depending on caregivers upon reentry. The young men in this study reported achieving financial independence from their families prior to incarceration as adolescents through illegal means which gave them adult status in their families. These "off-time" transitions before and after incarceration fueled the ambivalence and ambiguity in the young men-caregiver dyads, specifically in terms of the meanings these families made when thinking about reunification, relying on family and in fostering independence. / Ph. D.

The concept of resiliency, or how young people thrive in the face of adversity, brings a positive focus to youth development research and has emerged as an important topic in the youth development field. Adversity, or risk factors, may be internally or externally generated, and may acute or chronic. Researchers often point to the balance of between risk factors and protective factors as the determining influences on a child's resiliency. If protective factors in the layers of a child's world (such as self, family, school, and community) outweigh the risk factors, then a child will be resilient. However, questions remain about why siblings who share the same family, school, and community, often respond differently to the same adversity. Though a child's temperament is often considered the answer, researchers also point to the fact that underlying relationship processes surrounding adversity play a role in how young people respond and how children in the same family may have different responses.

Background: The death of a child can be a devastating experience for many parents; research suggests it results in an intense and enduring grief which can negatively impact on parents' psychological well-being. Parents with surviving children face the task of navigating their own grief and continuing to parent. Surviving children's responses to the loss of a sibling is complex and sometimes problematic; it is suggested that family functioning is a key aspect of the sibling's response. Psychological literature shows that sibling bereavement has been under-researched (Woodrow, 2007) with little attention given to the quality of the emotional relationship between parent and child, before and after sibling loss. Aims: Research to explore the stories of bereaved parents and how they experienced their emotional relationship with their surviving children after the death of another child can build on and expand existing literature; resulting in suggestions for clinical psychologist on how to better support surviving relationships at this difficult time. Methodology: Qualitative methods allow for richness, context and allow parents to tell stories of their emotional relationships with surviving children. Stories are the way in which we give order and meaning to the events in our lives (Gilbert, 2010). Consequently, a narrative analysis was viewed as the most epistemologically and ethically appropriate research method; and most appropriate to answer the research question. Analysis and Findings: Parents told stories of connection and disconnection in their emotional relationship with their surviving children after the death of another child in the family. Emotional connection and disconnection is influenced by the competing and potentially incompatible tasks of 'parenting' and 'grieving'. Stories of connection with surviving children were constructed as 'putting my living children first' and 'avoiding the fog' of grief; these stories illustrated less connection to the deceased child and parental grief. Conversely, stories of disconnection with surviving children were constructed as getting 'stuck in the fog' of grief and 'remembering'; these stories illustrated more connection to the deceased child and parental grief.

The impact of family structure on children’s outcomes is a highly debated topic in literature on the family. This research made an attempt to engage in this debate by testing the family process perspective. Theorists who favor this perspective believe that the effects of family structure on children can be mediated by the family processes occurring within families, such as the quality of parent-child relationships. The psychological wellbeing of children from six family structures were compared. After controlling for family processes and background variables the majority of the effects of family structure on children’s psychological well-being disappeared. Only children from stepfamilies had significantly lower levels of psychological well-being than children from intact homes. Stepfamilies, however, are a very complex family form and this research could not account for the possible unique processes occurring within stepfamilies. Finally, children from divorced homes did not have significantly lower levels of psychological well-being even before family processes and background variables were controlled. Overall, this research shows support for the family process perspective. / Master of Science

Coercion within parent/child relationships can have lasting effects on the behavior of children. The Family Safety/Applied Behavior Analysis Initiative at the University of South Florida is part of a statewide project designed to serve foster parents and the children in the foster care system, has developed a training program entitled .Parenting Tools for Positive Behavior Change.. To date, the effectiveness of the parenting course has been evaluated in two ways. First, parents have been tested in role-play situations before and after training, and have shown improvements in their use of positive parenting skills. Second, frequency of foster home placement disruptions has been evaluated. The Preliminary results suggest that the parenting course was successful in decreasing the costs associated with placement disruptions, as well as reducing the number decreasing the costs associated with placement disruptions, as well as reducing the number of restrictive placements. Despite the promising results thus far, research has not been conducted to determine whether the parenting course reduces coercion in interactions between parents and children. The present study sought to demonstrate the effectiveness of .Parenting Tools for Positive Behavior Change. training course on the use of positive parenting tools within the context of authentic environments (i.e., within home settings) using parents and biological children. Although all parent participants. appropriate responding improved during the course of the study, results appeared more dramatic for some parents over others. In general, the parent participants seemed to do better in decreasing coercive responses with their child.s appropriate behaviors than their child.s inappropriate behaviors. Overall, affect on the parent.s coercive responses to their children.s behaviors was not as dramatic as the affect on their increase in responding appropriately to their child.s appropriate behaviors. It seems that the increase in more appropriate responses does not necessarily mean that this will also result in dramatic reductions in coercive responses by the parents.

This study examined the relationships between family structure (organization and control), family process (cohesion, expressiveness, and conflict) with parenting sense of competency (parenting efficacy) for mothers (n = 138) engaged in Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) related activities. Family structure in this study looked at how the family system is organized regarding clarity of family rules. In addition, family processes of the research participants looked at daily family routines and interactions. General parenting self-efficacy, task-specific self-efficacy for nurturance, and task-specific self-efficacy for teaching which are the dependent variables, looked at the degree to which parents feel competent and capable of solving problems related to these processes in the parent-child relationship. Research questions were answered using multivariate analysis of canonical correlational analysis (CCA) to examine the associations between the independent and dependent variables. Results showed significant relationship between family structure variables of control and organization and parents' self-report of their general efficacy and their task specific efficacy for teaching and nurturing. The study also showed an inverse relationship between process variable of conflict and overall self-efficacy of parents' and their task specific efficacy for teaching and nurturing.

Implicit family process rules refer to unspoken rules about family beliefs and expectations about communication, closeness, and organization and are an important dimension of family functioning that may have a powerful influence over adolescent psychological well being. This study focused on the relationship between implicit family process rules and adolescent psychological symptoms such as: Hostility, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, and somatization. It was hypothesized that more facilitative implicit family process rules would be related to fewer adolescent psychological symptoms. In addition, a model was created that included theexogenousindependent variables of family status, (defined as intact-marriage or non-intact), treatment status (whether the adolescent was currently in a psychological treatment program or not), and gender to test their relationships to implicit family process rules and adolescent psychological symptoms. A non-treatment sample (N=99) was recruited in Utah County, Utah, using a sample of convenience. The treatment sample (N=144) was recruited from an adolescent residential wilderness therapy program located in Duchesne County, Utah. The Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and the Family Implicit Rules Profile (FIRP) were administered to each participant along with a questionnaire requesting demographic information. Structural equation modeling was used to explore the relationships between the exogenous variables, facilitative implicit family process rules, and adolescent psychological symptoms. The model was tested using AMOS statistical software. Results showed that implicit family process rules were significantly related to adolescent psychological symptoms such that facilitative rules were related to fewer psychological symptoms. Males reported more constraining rules on the Expressiveness subscale of the FIRP while females reported more symptomology on the Interpersonal Sensitivity subscale of the BSI. These findings support previous research on family dynamics and psychological functioning and support the hypothesis that perceived implicit family process rules are important to study in adolescents. This research is a step toward a more epistemological approach to family therapy with adolescents as well as a step toward more preventative family therapy and education by addressing family rules. Implications for family therapists and future research are discussed.

This study is part of a larger research project examining family attachment processes. The current study tests a family process model that postulates the mediating role of parent-child attachment and sibling relationship quality in the associations of parent psychopathology or marital adjustment to children's psychological dysfunction. A community sample of 86 families with at least one school-aged (8-12 years) child was recruited from area schools and organizations. Families came to the UNT Family Attachment Lab, where they participated in research tasks, including interviews, self-report instruments, and videotaped interaction tasks. Specific questionnaires used in this study included the Sibling Relationship Questionnaire, the Security Scale, the Behavior Assessment System for Children, the Symptom Assessment-45 Questionnaire, and the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Using a single indicator for each variable, path analyses tested three paternal models, three maternal models, and three systemic models using different informants' (i.e., father, mother, child) reports of child functioning as the outcome variable. Results of this study highlight the positive relationship between parent marital adjustment and parent-child attachment security, as well as the inverse relationship between maternal psychopathology and mother-child attachment security. In addition, the inverse relationship between parent-child attachment security and child psychological dysfunction was significant across nearly all paternal and maternal models. Particularly noteworthy was the consistent mediating influence of attachment security in the association between marital adjustment and child psychological dysfunction across paternal and maternal models.