The present study was aimed at exploring the issues faced by previously incarcerated fathers and their children. A qualitative design utilizing face to face interviews was used to answer the question: according to previously incarcerate fathers, what are the differences between the reciprocal connectedness of fathers and their children prior to, during, and following incarceration? Interviews were conducted with 10 previously incarcerated fathers. Researchers found that all participants had positive relationships with their children at some point prior to incarceration. Furthermore, during incarceration the reciprocal connectedness of these relationships severely decreased due to limited or no contact. Following incarceration, fathers continued to have difficulty rebuilding the connection they once had with their children due to continued limited or nonexistent contact and mistrust by their children. Incarcerated fathers and their children are an underserved population in need of additional resources. The findings of the study add to the literature about the relationship between previously incarcerated fathers and their children, in hopes that further research and services will be developed.

A significant focus is placed on positive outcomes for children in today’s society. However, mental health clinicians attest that poor attachments, during early childhood, are likely to have negative effects on a child’s long-term outcomes. By using the post-positivist paradigm, 10 mental health clinicians were interviewed and each provided their perspectives regarding the negative social skills and emotional regulations of young children, when parents fail to appropriately bond with their children, during their early years. Their ideas were formulated, connected, and structured to develop a theoretical statement. The resulting theory focused on the parent’s ability to develop and strengthen the parent/child relationship, through a range of interventions. Parent’s inability to form positive attachments were influenced by a variety of issues, such as, depression, drug and/or alcohol dependency, poverty, poor relationships with the child’s parent, mental illness, violence, etc. These factors resulted in poor social dynamics with the parent; thereby, hindering their bonding. Children with poor attachments tend to display poor socioemotional affects, such as, poor social, coping, and problem solving skills, tantrums, clingy, withdrawn, or aggressive behaviors, etc. These negative effects, often impacts the child throughout their developmental years.

Recent models of adolescent development and psychopathology emphasize the importance of the social regulation of emotion during adolescence (Allen & Manning, 2007; Allen & Miga, 2010), and emotion regulation as a mediating factor between multiple aspects of adolescent development and adolescent adjustment (Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007). The present dissertation investigated these two phenomena in two separate studies of adolescent development, emotion regulation, and psychological adjustment. In study one, a new measure of adolescent social regulation of emotion – the Managing Distress Interpersonally Scale, or MANDI – showed good internal consistency, test-retest reliability and factor structure across two samples (217 college students in sample one and 63 community adolescents in sample two). The MANDI also showed good convergent and discriminant validity in its relations with independent assessments of adolescent emotion regulation, relationship functioning, psychological functioning, and physiological regulation of emotion. In study two, 64 community adolescents completed self-report, interview, and physiological procedures (salivary cortisol and respiratory sinus arrhythmia), while one of their parents also completed survey measures. Emotion regulation was found to mediate the developmental context and adolescent depressive symptoms, alcohol problems, and peer aggression. Findings are discussed in terms of the utility of intervening at the level of emotion regulation for adolescents displaying difficulty with internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

The purpose of this study was to explore the significant differences on elementary school students¡¦ attitude toward gender and their sex role identity among different background. Four hundred eighty participants from 7 different elementary schools were selected by stratified random sampling for completing ¡§Gender Attitude Scale¡¨ and ¡§Sex Role Identity Scale¡¨. Descriptive statistics, independent t-tests, analysis of variance, correlation, and multiple stepwise regression analysis were conducted on the quantitative data. The major findings were as follows: 1. Girls had significantly higher score on femininity than their boy counterparts. 2. Girls had significantly higher means on gender attitude scale than these boys. 3. The 6th grade students had significantly higher means on gender attitude scale than the 5th grade students. 4. Children with different birth order and parental marital conditions had similar mean scores on gender attitude and sex role identity. 5. Children come from families with girl only had significantly higher means on the femininity and gender attitude than these boy family children. 6. Children come from authoritative and permissive father practices families had significantly higher scores on sex role identity than these children come from uninvolved father practice families. 7. Children come from authoritative mother practice had significantly higher scores on gender attitude than these children come from uninvolved mother practice families. 8. Children with good peer relationships had significantly higher scores on gender attitude and sex role identity than other group counterparts. 9. There was significant positive correlation between students¡¦ gender attitude and sex role identity. 10. The three highest significantly predictors for elementary school children¡¦s attitudes toward gender and sex role identity were good peer relationship, gender, and grades. The conclusions of this study were to provide several suggestions for family educators, school educators, education administrators, and academic institute for future research.

Assessing the attachment between a child and caregiver is an important task within the social worker's professional domain. This is mostly restricted due to a lack of training and expertise with regard to methods and techniques used in assessing attachment. The identified problem led to the implementation of a descriptive study aimed at exploring effectiveness of scales for the assessment of attachment between the child in the middle childhood years and his/her caregiver. The goal was achieved by studying and exploring available practices derived from an extensive literature review and empirical study. Seven social workers in Bloemfontein participated in the study. Target-sampling was undertaken to ensure that participants represented different areas in the work-field that employ the assessment of attachment. Social workers in South Africa show preference to qualitative assessment procedures, including an assessment of the child, an assessment of the caregiver, observation and a collateral investigation. Although such an approach is generally consistent with literature, the present study highlighted an additional need for the standardization of assessment scales for attachment in middle childhood to be utilized in conjunction with qualitative methods of assessment. The literature review confirmed the availability of a range of reliable scales, though not validated thoroughly, but thus far unexplored by social workers in South Africa. A qualitative approach within the Developmental and Utilization Model enabled the researcher to conduct an in-depth analysis of the existing problem. Information was gathered with regard to relevant aspects of attachment in middle childhood in a successful attempt to formulate guidelines for the development of an effective model for the assessment of attachment between the child in middle childhood years and his caregiver. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Assessing the attachment between a child and caregiver is an important task within the social worker's professional domain. This is mostly restricted due to a lack of training and expertise with regard to methods and techniques used in assessing attachment. The identified problem led to the implementation of a descriptive study aimed at exploring effectiveness of scales for the assessment of attachment between the child in the middle childhood years and his/her caregiver. The goal was achieved by studying and exploring available practices derived from an extensive literature review and empirical study. Seven social workers in Bloemfontein participated in the study. Target-sampling was undertaken to ensure that participants represented different areas in the work-field that employ the assessment of attachment. Social workers in South Africa show preference to qualitative assessment procedures, including an assessment of the child, an assessment of the caregiver, observation and a collateral investigation. Although such an approach is generally consistent with literature, the present study highlighted an additional need for the standardization of assessment scales for attachment in middle childhood to be utilized in conjunction with qualitative methods of assessment. The literature review confirmed the availability of a range of reliable scales, though not validated thoroughly, but thus far unexplored by social workers in South Africa. A qualitative approach within the Developmental and Utilization Model enabled the researcher to conduct an in-depth analysis of the existing problem. Information was gathered with regard to relevant aspects of attachment in middle childhood in a successful attempt to formulate guidelines for the development of an effective model for the assessment of attachment between the child in middle childhood years and his caregiver. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Study 1 examined the role closeness to father plays in the developmental-like process associating family form (divorced/non-divorced) with later young adulthood attachment style in a sample of 525 men and women. Participants reported their closeness to father while growing up and current comfort with closeness. As expected, closeness to father fully mediated the association between family form and comfort with closeness for both men and women, but more strongly for women. The association between family form and comfort with closeness was only evident for women; women who experienced parental divorce reported feeling less comfortable with closeness in relationships. Contrary to expectation, the mediating role of closeness to father in the association between family and form and comfort with closeness was not moderated by gender. The key role fathers may play in fostering their male and female children’s later attachment style in divorced and nondivorced families, as well as the attenuated role of gender in explaining young adults’ attachment style, are discussed. Study 2 examined the role of dyadic and family environment factors which are implicated in young adults’ insecure attachment in predicting relational resilience. Relationally resilient women were defined as women who experienced parental divorce yet experience comfort with closeness. Ninety-three women reported on the level of overt and subtle conflict in their families-of- origin, the effectiveness of their parents’ coparenting, and their closeness to father. Hierarchical logistic regression analyses predicted membership in the relationally resilient group based on these dyadic and family environment predictors. As expected, results demonstrate that lower pre-divorce subtle and overt conflict; higher levels of coparenting before separation, during separation, and after separation; and closeness to father while growing up all predicted membership in the relationally resilient group. However, no one variable uniquely predicted membership in the relationally resilient group. Study 2’s results are translated to preventative implications at the family, parental, dyadic and individual levels. Final remarks integrating the results of both studies follow. / Graduate

Traditional socialization theories suggest that parents shape their children, and parents’ socialization strategies are decided upon largely independent of the children. These ideas, however, have received criticism. In this dissertation, I focus on how children and adolescents influence their parents’ behaviors. Specifically, I examine parents’ reactions to problematic behaviors in their adolescents. In the three studies, I presented theoretical models that offered explanations why parents react as they do to problematic behaviors in their adolescents. In these models, parents’ cognitions worked as mechanisms to explain their subsequent reactions. The overall pattern in the studies was that parents tended to shift in cognitions about their own role as parents and their adolescents’ behaviors when they were faced with problematic behaviors, which influenced their behaviors toward their adolescents. In Study I, parents became less strictly opposed to adolescent drinking when they encountered their adolescents intoxicated. This reaction was explained by a reduction in dissonance between their attitudes to adolescent drinking and their knowledge of their own adolescents’ drinking. In Study II and Study III, parents of adolescents with hyperactivity, impulsivity, and attention problems (HIA) reported that their adolescents did not respond to their attempts to correct their behaviors. This cognition made them feel powerless and, as a consequence, they increased in negative behaviors and decreased in positive parenting strategies. In these two studies, parents decreased in their thoughts of being able to deal with their adolescents’ misbehaviors. In addition, as was shown in the third study, these cognitions seem to be influenced by parents’ earlier experiences with their first-born children. In sum, the results of this dissertation suggest that adolescents influence their parents’ cognitions and behaviors. Further, the results highlight the importance of focusing on how parents’ ways of thinking influence their parenting strategies.

Master of Science / School of Family Studies and Human Services / Elaine M. Johannes / Permanently moving from one country to another affects the family. This can include the ways in which parents interact with their children. That interaction can be especially challenging when Muslim families move to primarily non-Muslim Western societies such as the United States. This report reviews challenges, opportunities, and strategies for Muslim parents residing in the United States to embed Islamic values and religious practices with their adolescent children. This report also identifies effective ways for Muslim parents to help their adolescent children understand, accept, and practice the Muslim faith. After a review of scholarly literature and existing Islamic religious practice materials, recommendations are provided to help parents effectively model and support appropriate Islamic religious practice to their adolescent children based on the parents’ traditional Muslim beliefs.

The study examined the relationships between various parental discipline styles and perceived powerlessness in antisocial adolescents. The literature on adolescent antisocial behavior frequently describes states of disaffection, alienation, and powerlessness as characteristic of the delinquent youth. The parent-child relationship is also frequently implicated as the significant precursor of antisocial behavior in adolescents. The purpose of this study was to determine if perception of control orientations function as cognitive mediators between perceived styles of parental discipline and subsequent behavior in adolescents. It was concluded, on the basis of the data obtained from this study, that antisocial adolescents do not perceive themselves to be more powerless than non-antisocial adolescents. It was recommended that caution should be exercised in applying such a label to those exhibiting antisocial patterns of behavior. It was also concluded that punishment applied in an unpredictable fashion may have detrimental effects on the development of female adolescents.