The main purpose of this study was to examine the role of specific social cognitive skills in psychosocial and relational adjustment to a chronic illness. The particular chronic illness investigated in this study was female breast cancer, and 30 married heterosexual couples facing the onset and treatment of breast cancer volunteered to be participants. The study was founded on the premise that chronic illness often presents as much of a social and relational challenge as it does a physical challenge. Based on this premise, the study's central argument was that persons equipped with relatively more sophisticated interpersonal communication skills would receive higher ratings of their communication functioning by their partners, express higher levels of marital satisfaction, and (in the case of wives) exhibit better psychosocial adjustment than would persons with less sophisticated communication skills. A significant association was revealed between participants' construct differentiation and message design logic. Contrary to predictions, no relationship was found between participants' social cognitive skills and partners' ratings of participants' communication functioning, or between participants' social cognitive skills and partners' assessments of global relationship satisfaction. A positive trend for wives and a significant positive association for husbands were found for the predicted relationship between participants' assessments of their partners' communication functioning and their own global relationship satisfaction. Partial support was provided for the predicted associations between wives' social cognitive skills and their own psychosocial adjustment to breast cancer, and between wives' social cognitive skills and their assessments of partners' communication functioning. Additional analyses revealed that wives' global relationship satisfaction was significantly associated with time since diagnosis and disease stage, whereas husbands' global relationship satisfaction was significantly associated with time since diagnosis only. Supplemental analyses also indicated several hypothesis-disconfirming negative associations between participants' social cognitive skills and participants' assessments of partners' communication functioning, global relationship satisfaction, and wives' psychosocial adjustment to breast cancer. These associations were found, however, only for couples wherein partners had highly discrepant construct differentiation scores. Despite providing only mixed support for the study's central argument, the study's results present several interesting findings that warrant further investigation. Intervention implications are also identified.

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the self-perceptions of college male binge drinkers and the motivations for such behavior. The subjects were social fraternity members at a major university. Potential subjects were administered a screening instrument, which determined their suitability for inclusion in the study. Five subjects were interviewed for three hours and the tapes were transcribed and entered into the QSR NUDIST program for coding and analysis. The findings were (1) that there seems to be a strong relationship between self-perceptions of drinking behavior and a core self image and that (2) there is a pervasive social component to the behavior. Seven hypotheses are advanced and implications for practice and recommendations for further research are given.

I extend the literature on the long-term effects of growing up in a single parent family by investigating patterns of entry into co-residential relationships. I address three primary questions: (1) what are the effects of family structure growing up, particularly time spent with a single parent, on entry into first marriage or cohabitation; (2) how do these effects vary depending on the type of disruption experienced, the age of the child when the disruption occurs, the number of years spent in a single parent home, the sex of the single parent and whether a parental remarriage occurred; and (3) how do the effects of growing up in a single parent home vary over cohort as the experience became one more commonly experienced? I investigate these issues within a life course perspective, along with mid-level explanations--including childhood socialization, social control, instability and change and economic. I also use cohort theories of social change to understand changes over time in the relationship between family structure growing up and relationship formation. Using data from the National Survey of Family and Households, I employ partial likelihood hazard models to address the above questions. The results indicate people who grew up in a single parent family tend to either accelerate or delay marriage and cohabitation, relative to the union-formation timing of their two-parent peers. The magnitude and direction of effects depends on specific aspects of family structure growing up--whether the single parent was a mother or a father, whether the custodial mother remarried, whether time spent with a single parent was in childhood or adulthood and whether there were multiple family structure transitions over the course of childhood and adolescence. The specific findings lend support primarily to the socialization and instability explanations, but do not support the social control explanation. As single parenthood became more common over the course of this century, the effects of family structure on marriage timing appears to be changing as well. The effects on early marriage largely remain but the effects on delayed marriage, compared to those from two-parent families, has generally declined.

The basic premise of the present research is that fathering may be best understood as a process through which men demonstrate care and support for their children on a day-to-day basis over time. Work and family roles for fathers are no longer viewed as occupying separate spheres, but rather these roles are seen as integrating in a complex weave. Work may enhance the family role for men by allowing them to fulfill their obligations and provide for their families. Work may also interfere with fathering to the extent that work stressors disrupt fathering activities. One way to examine the work-family interweave is to study the day-to-day connections of fathers' work and family experiences. The present study explores a transformation process, whereby daily work experiences, such as work cutbacks, are differentially predictive of fathering experiences at home. Using a daily experiences paradigm, this study combines both stable and dynamic characteristics of fathers' work and home settings to study how work and family are interwoven. Data for these analyses are from the National Study of Daily Experiences: one of the studies that is part of the National Survey of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS). The sample consisted of 1031 randomly selected respondents and 452 twin respondents from the MIDUS study who completed a short telephone interview on each of 8 consecutive evenings. The present analyses used a subsample of the MIDUS sample consisting of 290 fathers who had children age 20 or younger living in the household. Findings from the within-father HLM analyses provide some evidence supporting the transformation of fathers' work and home experiences. On days fathers experienced a cutback at work, they were two to two-and-a-half times more likely to be involved in a child-related stressor or provide emotional support (respectively) to their children than on days they do not have a cutback at work. Also, the findings indicate that work environments appear to make a difference in men's parenting experiences. Workplace characteristics such as control over the work situation, supportive work environments, and job discretion, moderate the relationship between work experiences and fathering behaviors.

This study aims at understanding stepfamily functioning from an adolescent's viewpoint in Kuwait to offer additional understanding of how members in stepfamilies interact. Stepfather-adolescent interaction as compared to the stepmother-adolescent interaction will be the main focus. Adolescent's satisfaction and communication with stepparent are the measures applied to assess the adolescent's adjustment to living with a stepparent. Additionally, how stepfamily satisfaction and communication relate to adolescents' school achievement is explored. A self-report questionnaire consisting of three sections was used, with separate forms for stepfather and stepmother households. Section one obtained demographic information of the subjects and their family. Section two is the stepparent-adolescent communication scale based on Barnes and Olson Inventory (1982). Section three is the satisfaction scale based on Olson and Wilson Inventory (1982). The sample consisted of 215 adolescents, of which 31 males and 82 females live with a stepfather and 32 males and 70 females live with a stepmother. Pearson product moment correlations were tested for significance of adolescents' perception of their satisfaction with the stepfamily and communication with stepparent, and GPA for each stepparent group to determine if there were significant relationships between the dependent variables. T-tests for two independent population means were used for comparative analysis between stepfather and stepmother households to determine if adolescents' stepfamily satisfaction, communication with stepparent, and GPA was the same in both households. For each dependent variable namely, adolescents' satisfaction, communication with stepparent, and GPA, a two-way analysis of variance based on adolescent's gender and grade level at time of transition to stepparent family as representative of their developmental stage was performed for each stepparent group. Lastly, Chi-Square analyses of other family factors and the dependent variables were performed. The results indicated a significant correlation between adolescents' satisfaction and communication with stepparent in both types of stepfamilies. Additionally, adolescents' average satisfaction response and GPA was significantly higher in stepfather households than in stepmother households. Other family demographic factors that related to adolescents' adjustment to the stepfamily environment were number of siblings, stepfather education level, and number of wives. Limitations of the study and implications for future research and practice are discussed.

Because of the many problems associated with litigating family disputes, mediation has been proposed as an alternative. Its proponents, claiming wide-ranging benefits for both the litigants and the legal system, have had tremendous success in advancing mediation in social policy. Because of the significant growth in the use of mediation across the country, this dissertation critically assesses the validity of its claimed benefits. The dissertation first considers the role of pro se representation and its potential consequences for evaluating mediation because of the increased use of pro se representation in divorce cases. The dissertation then describes mediation and the range of mediation practices that exists in this country. Because mediation varies considerably program to program and jurisdiction to jurisdiction, it is difficult to draw definitive conclusions across programs or jurisdictions. Therefore, another approach is used to assess the rationality of mediation laws--namely, evaluating the validity of the behavioral assumptions (e.g., presumed benefits) underlying these laws (Sales, 1983). The dissertation then articulates the goals attributed to the mediation process, litigants, and the legal system, identifies the behavioral assumptions underlying those goals, and critically reviews the social science data and theory that have directly tested the validity of the goals and assumptions or are indirectly relevant to the analysis. It is argued that the goals of divorce mediation may have been and may be unrealistic. The dissertation concludes by discussing the limits of current findings and suggesting future research to address these concerns.

From the inception of Family Science as a discipline, researchers have shown great interest in understanding the workings of marital relationships. This effort intensified with relatively recent statistics on high rates of divorce and marital failure. In the 50th anniversary issue of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, several authors discussed the dominating presence of topics related to marital quality throughout the history of family research (Adams, 1988; Nye, 1988). Although the most examined human social relationships in our field, prominent researchers still suggest that the workings of a marriage are unknown to us (Gottman, 1994; Nye, 1988). One limitation of past research on marital quality has been the dominating presence of prediction-based research. Although conventional methods have furthered our understanding, scholars have suggested that divergent, interpretive data may produce "new insights" which may enhance or challenge conventional thinking (Elder, 1981; Jayaratne, 1983; Walker & Thompson, 1984). Various research strategies, placed under the broad label of qualitative methods have attempted to empower respondents by allowing them to describe a phenomenon of interest. The present study modeled the qualitative research method advanced by Paul Colaizzi (1978). The primary research goal of his descriptive approach is to allow the respondents to answer the question, what does it mean to have a successful marriage in our own historical time? More specifically, the research questions addressed were: How will the respondents describe successful marriages? How well do the emergent themes correspond with the themes delineated from the review of current measures of marital quality? To what extent do group differences or similarities exist between researchers and lay respondents? Ninety-eight respondents provided detailed descriptions of events that exemplified successful marriages. Descriptive analysis generated the following 16 global themes of marital success: relationship climate, daily nurturing, supportiveness, overcoming hardships, differences disagreements, communication, knowledge of spouse, growth and learning, relationship vs. Individual, commonalities, individual characteristics, equal partnership, teamwork, longevity and resiliency, spirituality, and outside influence. It was found that among others, general emergent themes such as spirituality, supportiveness, individual and mutual growth, and knowledge about the spouse, were not represented in many of the widely utilized measures of marital quality.

A model of gendered social control is presented based on the concept of logic statements which undergird the two overarching discourses surrounding the social problem of domestic violence: a social service discourse and a feminist discourse. Two arguments are made. First, there will be a coherence between discourse and the program agendas offered at domestic violence shelters, a coherence between discourse or program agenda and organizational variables, and a coherence between discourse or program agenda and funding sources. The most robust empirical finding supported the coherence between a social service discourse and a program agenda based on the logic statements associated with masculinism, liberal individualism and medicalization. The second argument posits functional relationships among discourse, program agenda, the organizational variables and the funding variables. Social service programs were predicted by social service discourse and by federal monies and feminist programs were predicted by the number of women sheltered; social service discourse was predicted by social service programs and feminist discourse was predicted by the number of women sheltered. These findings suggest that some program agendas put in place by domestic violence shelters may actually contribute to masculinism as a cultural practice.

The negative impact of parental death and divorce, and poor quality parental affection, during childhood is well documented. However, little information exists regarding the impact of these early childhood experiences of disrupted parental social support on well being during adulthood. Using attachment theory and the model of allostatic load, the present study examined daily physical health and mood, and stressor reactivity, in a sub-sample of participants (N = 368) from the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE). Descriptive analyses indicate that respondents from non-intact families, specifically those from divorced families, had more daily health symptoms and greater levels of negative mood during adulthood, as compared to those from intact families. Regression analyses indicate that subjective ratings of mother-child relationship quality or affection during childhood were significant predictors of daily well being during adulthood. To assess daily stressor reactivity within individuals over time, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM; Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992) was used. Reactivity is estimated by fitting a within-person model that assesses the daily covariation of daily mood and physical health and the occurrence of daily stressors. HLM analyses indicate that respondents who reported low maternal affection during childhood are more emotionally reactive to stressors that involve other people. Implications for understanding developmental pathways involved in linking early life experiences to adulthood outcomes are discussed.

Compatibility is a concept that has enjoyed considerable attention in the arena of close relationship research and has emerged as a consistent factor in the experience of positive relational outcomes such as relationship satisfaction and stability. Despite this attention, however, the treatment of compatibility has generally been limited to domains specific to the studies in which it has been utilized. The present study sought to integrate research and theory in two distinct domains, need fulfillment and compatibility, in an attempt to provide an overarching explanation for findings linking compatibility to relational outcomes based on interpersonal need fulfillment. This task involved two distinct, but related, domains. First, general associations among interpersonal need fulfillment, well-being, and social network structure were examined in an attempt to develop a more refined understanding of the interaction between need fulfillment and specific relationships with respect to overall effects on well-being. Analyses were confined to the consideration of interpersonal needs (those requiring others for fulfillment) and relied on the three-dimensional model proposed by Schutz (1966) and comprised of needs for affection, inclusion, and control. Second, need fulfillment was examined in the context of exclusive romantic relationships, and a form of compatibility based on the interpersonal need levels of the partners was introduced and posited to represent an overarching form of compatibility and a major predictor of relationship satisfaction. Analyses involved 91 couples involved in exclusive romantic relationships and 105 individuals who were not involved in exclusive relationships at the time. Results indicated that interpersonal need fulfillment plays an important role in the experience of overall well-being. Furthermore, the fulfillment of specific needs and the experience of well-being were associated with the presence of certain relationships in one's social network (specifically an exclusive romantic relationship). Interpersonal need compatibility in the areas of inclusion and control was found to be a significant predictor of relationship satisfaction, supporting the validity of the interpersonal need compatibility construct. Overall, the proposed framework demonstrated utility value, and important insights regarding need fulfillment and network structure emerged, but additional research is needed to fully understand the interplay of these factors.