This dissertation investigated a mediational model of the association between maternal depression and adolescent internalizing in a community sample of rural adolescents and their families. Mothers' and adolescents' perceptions of their videotaped interactions were the hypothesized mediators in the association between maternal depression and adolescent internalizing, particularly for girls. The mediational hypothesis was not confirmed in this study; however, important information was acquired while investigating the various steps of the mediational model and through other exploratory analyses. Two important findings from previous research were replicated with this particular sample. Girls exhibited higher levels of internalizing than boys, and maternal depression was associated with adolescent internalizing. Conflictual and submissive behaviors were related to both maternal depression and adolescent internalizing. More specifically, depressed mothers and internalizing girls exhibited a pattern of ineffectual conflict marked by higher levels of submission and conflict whereas internalizing boys exhibited higher levels of submission. Maternal depression and adolescent depression also were related to decreased sensitivity to conflictual and submissive behaviors. Implications of these interaction patterns for difficulties establishing autonomy and for exacerbating the risk for continued or more severe symptoms are discussed.

In this study I use migration as an analytical and empirical window to explore questions of intra-household decision-making, labor allocations and resource transfers. I critically evaluate the unitary household model and I develop alternative ways of conceptualizing the household and non-market exchanges in the migration process. Most studies assume that migrants are men because this allocation is consistent with the maximizing strategies of a household that acts collectively. In chapter 1, I present a model of the household that explains migration decisions when men control decision-making and resources in the household, but they use this control to maximize their own access to income. The patriarchal model also predicts gender differences in migration, but it shows further that if, as is common, men gain more through migrating than through remaining in the rural household, they will “over-migrate” relative to their comparative advantage over women in urban employment. Like most intra-family transfers, remittances cannot be directly contracted for by household members. Unlike most intra-family transfers, however, remittance data are often captured in national surveys. In chapter 2, I use this unique data opportunity to probe the reasons why household members share resources with each other. I show that remittance behavior is consistent not only with altruism but also with more self-regarding motivations, and that migrants remit not to “households” but to individuals in households. In chapter 3, I illustrate how placing migration in the context of a theory of intra-family transfers helps reconcile a debate in the empirical literature over the development implications of migration. By modeling the interaction between migrants who send remittances and recipients that spend remittances, I identify when migration will be associated with two stable outcomes: a higher-level equilibrium of higher remittances and more investment out of remittances, and a lower-level equilibrium of lower remittances that are consumed. In chapters 1 and 2, the predictions of the patriarchal model of labor allocation and the motivations for remittance behavior, are tested using migration data from South Africa. Chapter 3 offers a theoretical analysis that draws from a wide range of studies on migration in developing countries, including South Africa.

The area of parenting assessment lacks an inexpensive, comprehensive, psychometrically sound, and easy-to-use instrument that has been validated on an ethnically diverse group of parents. The area of parent training, in particular, lacks an instrument with these properties that also measures the parenting behaviors that are often the targets of such interventions. The Parent Behavior Scale (PBS), a parent self-report questionnaire, was evaluated with an ethnically diverse sample of 114 parents and their 4- and 5-year-old children. Thirty-eight percent of these parents self-reported as Hispanic, 26% as African American, and 36% as European American. The scale demonstrated adequate internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Scores on the PBS were significantly related to several measures of parenting. PBS scores were, in general, not strongly related to measures of child behavior problems. Four factors of parenting behavior were identified: They were (1) angry vs. warm, (2) permissive/frustrated vs. firm/calm, (3) powerless vs. purposeful, and (4) disengaged vs. active parenting. The PBS should help researchers evaluate the efficacy of behavioral parent-training interventions for child behavior problems, and this instrument should help clinicians who use such interventions to track their clients' progress.

Throughout their lives, siblings who have a brother or sister with a disability will face many challenges. Much of the research in this area has been quantitative and has resulted in contradictory conclusions. The purpose of this study was to investigate how siblings are affected by an exceptional brother or sister throughout life, how they adapt at different stages through the life span, and how adult siblings re-conceptualize their sibling relationships (retrospection reflection). Specifically, this study explored the developmental considerations when examining relationships with, effects of, and reactions to a sibling with a disability, and to compare and contrast the issues and themes across the life span. Open ended interviews were held with 12 key informants. The key segments of the interviews were transcribed and then analyzed for reoccurring themes at each stage, and changes across the stages. Insights into the sibling experience at different stages of development were offered and helped make sense of much of the previous quantitative research. What was discovered is that of course developmental periods do influence how siblings are affected, impacted, how they relate to their siblings, and how they cope. This research demonstrated that there are many common themes, sub themes, and facets and although the themes remain quite static across the 3 developmental periods, the underlying characteristics of the themes definitely change as siblings develop. However, this developmental investigation is so complex that there are no easy conclusions and findings differ somewhat in each individual sibling.

Using extrafamilial child sexual abuse (CSA) as an example of family trauma, the author interviewed 62 parents of sexually abused boys on multiple occasions to analyze the organization of gender, race, and class in parental coping processes. Despite access to alternative interpretations of CSA that challenge conventional notions of gender, parents in this study typically relied on traditional themes to make meaning of the CSA experience. The author organized the data analytically around gender strategies and found that parents used race- and class-specific gender strategies in the aftermath of trauma. Most important, mother-blame is theorized as a form gender reaffirmation. The author uses the term gender reaffirmation to illustrate the way social actors recuperate after a situation has been interpreted as detrimental, challenging, or stressful to heteronormative gender relations. Mother-blaming accounts encouraged race and class enactments of gender that had negative consequences for women and helped secure men's cultural power.

This dissertation is concerned with the experiences of South Indian male and female immigrants in the Portland. Oregon area, where some—but not all—of the sample has been employed in high-technology. Twenty South Indian high-tech men, 18 South Indian high-tech women, and 20 South Indian homemakers were interviewed to explore the effect of employment on gender role ideology and assimilation. The sample was further confined to South Indian Hindus who have lived in the U.S. between four and 20 years, and are married (but not to each other). The stories of South Indian men and women shed light on the consequences for assimilation of ‘where you start’ in terms of traditional vs. modern values, as well as the consequences of being male or female. Homemakers and men married to homemakers experience the greatest change in comparison with dual professional high-tech couples in terms of gender roles, behavior, and ideology. This is brought about by a transition from a relatively more conservative and restrictive environment into a more open and less restrictive environment. The change is less dramatic for high-tech couples, as their ideas and behaviors in India were more similar to the ideas and behaviors that govern their world today. This research v indicates that immigration brings structural changes in one's environment—greater independence, autonomy, and isolation. The structural changes lead to cultural changes—increased liberalism in regard to gender roles and relations. The significance of these changes and the implications for gender roles, values, and behaviors, is negotiated within the family. Viewing the family as a site of struggle as well as a source of cultural maintenance, allows one to see how gender roles and relations are negotiated over time in the new cultural milieu.

This dissertation offers a theoretical rationale and a methodology for the critical analysis of microprocesses. Noting that systemic therapists lack descriptions of their work as ideological, this research offers a vocabulary that can address the twinned concepts of power and intentionality in systemic practices, inserting a critical perspective in family therapy. A review of the family therapy literature reveals that the Cartesian mind/body dualism splintered the development of family therapy into two groups: the "systemic" therapies followed Bateson's distrust of "purposive" processes and subsequently, disqualified power as an issue in clinical practice. The other group, best represented by the structuralists and the feminists, accent "purposive" processes and in doing so, rely on a notion of power that leads to normative therapeutic practices. Despite attempts to reconcile these two positions on power, the field has remained unable to language power in a systemic way--a systemic view of power. Hegemony, the production of consent, dissolves the dichotomy between "systemic" and "purposive" because the location of ideology shifts from inside the heads of individuals to inside discursive practices. Hegemony facilitates a focus on language as ideological discursive practices which legitimate certain world views and privilege particular language games. It is argued that a systemic approach to power mandates the re-organization of the concept "intentionality" because talk about intentionality always dominates any discourse about power. To avoid the ontological difficulties that intentionality brings, I focus on intentionality as a discursive practice which has narrative structure. Using Anscombe's concept of intention as a language game, intention becomes a way of talking that performs certain functions in conversation. Intention talk manages key terms, moral orders and person locations and regulates its own closure. These functions are linked to ideology as they are important tools for the management of meaning and the production of consent. The examination of a clinical case offers empirical support for the ideological relationship between intention talk and consent. This method will hopefully prove to be a useful heuristic device for the critical analysis of micro processes.

This dissertation utilizes an object relational framework to explore how prospective fatherhood represents an important transitional moment in a man's normative psychological and emotional development. The interpersonal and intrapsychic changes wrought by this transitional moment are first conceptualized around several related themes: (1) how becoming a father engenders a concurrent identification with and separation from one's father and family of origin; (2) how the process of becoming adult symbolically destroys and transforms the relationship with a parent and how becoming a parent generates an opportunity to make reparation; (3) how the child's birth reverberates against oedipal wishes for omnipotence and immortality yet also presages the limits of generational authority and one's physical mortality; (4) how becoming a father conjures up feelings of envy about a woman's procreative capacity and her relationship with the fetus and resurrects aspects of a man's childhood relationship with his own mother. Twenty men whose partners were in the last trimester of their first pregnancy were interviewed. A qualitative analysis of the interview data was used to illuminate how prospective fatherhood: (1) engendered an internal dialogue between an established and inchoate sense of self; between the self as adolescent and the self as adult; (2) intensified an emotional dependence on their partners, generated a sense of awe and reverence towards their partner's bodies, and produced feelings of helplessness about being responsible for their infants, all of which resurrected aspects of a man's early childhood relationship with his mother. Ten case studies are presented focusing on subjects' relationships with their fathers to demonstrate how prospective fatherhood enables men to engage in three inter-related dimensions of reparative work. Prospective fathers can repair: (1) their own fathers by offering the grandchild as a quid pro quo for the child they have lost and by enabling the father to be idealized anew by the grandchild precisely when the sons become increasingly aware of their fathers' mortality; (2) the father/son relationship as men identify more with their fathers; the experience of prospective fatherhood represents a potential emotional bridge back to their fathers; and (3) themselves as the desire to create a different relationship with their own children and the related identification with the unborn child reflects a need to alleviate the emotional wounds they endured as children.

The problem of this study was to investigate the degree to which Title I fathers had a say in deciding school program. The purposes of the study were to obtain and analyze data on the problem and to make recommendations which would aid educators in meeting the needs of disadvantaged students and their families in planning parent involvement activities.

No description available.