In this study sixty-three treatment charts of boys and girls diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder are reviewed. These children were treated in an urban, school-based counseling program during the 1997–1998 school year. Specifics of treatment approach, treatment outcome, and the environmental context of the referrals were examined. Contextual risk factors, referral reasons and treatment outcomes for boys and girls were compared. Girls were found to have higher incidences of child abuse or domestic violence in their families, and were referred for treatment due to conflict with parents more often than boys were. Boys were found to have a higher incidence of out-of-home placements or a recent change in housing status. Frequency of other risk factors was similar for both boys and girls, including incidence of parental divorce and single-parent family structure, incidence of having a parent in jail and incidence of family substance abuse. A relational approach to treatment was found to be successful for both boys and girls. Implications of the study and suggestions for further study are discussed.

Until fairly recent history the roles of career woman and mother could not be undertaken concurrently by the majority of women, at least not while their children were young. It is, however, more the norm in modern society for working women to be actively parenting. Complications can arise as these women attempt to find a balance between their personal and professional roles. If the duties and expectations are found to be essentially the same in both venues, as they perhaps are in teaching and parenting, then the role juggling can be doubly difficult. It may also be that the familiarity of the tasks would make going from the mother role to the teacher role considerably easier. This study explores the history of the teacher/mother, the present day experience of the teacher/mother, and the perceptions these woman have concerning their two primary roles. It is the purpose of this study, using the lens of role theory, to explore the experience of teachers who are also mothers as they attempt simultaneously to tackle their roles as educators and parents. Secondary school teachers who are mothers to at least one child in school and still living in their homes were interviewed, using a phenomenological interviewing method, to determine how they perceive their roles as teachers and mothers, what importance they attach to these roles, and how they believe the two roles interact. Special attention was given to possible instances of role strain, and in particular, role conflict.

The present cross-sectional study adds to the extant literature by exploring how parenting and child behavior problems relate to elementary school children's academic achievement and engagement. Parenting was investigated as a possible mediator of the relationship between behavior problems and academic outcomes. A diverse sample of 62 children, their primary caregivers, and teachers participated in the study. Videotaped observation of parent-child dyads doing a homework task allowed the following behaviors to be studied: parental autonomy support, positive-minus-negative presence, quality of teaching, and child engagement. To assess behavior problems, parents and teachers completed behavior rating scales, and parents completed a structured interview. Children participated in language and literacy based achievement testing, and school personnel provided grades. Children who displayed higher levels of engagement performed better on measures of academic achievement. Positive parenting behaviors were associated with academic achievement and engagement. An exploratory analysis was consistent with child engagement partially mediating the relation between parenting behavior and reading achievement. Child behavior problems were related to lower engagement, but contrary to expectations, they were not related to parenting or achievement. Boys rated by teachers as displaying behavior problems, however, had lower academic achievement, but this was not the case for girls. Though parenting was not related to child behavior problems, findings did suggest that parenting and child behavior are associated with child engagement. This research points to the critical role of engagement as a component of academic success and the potential for parents to foster children's academic engagement and achievement through the parent-child relationship.

Research conducted over the last twenty years has found that parent involvement in the education of their children has a direct and positive relationship with higher levels of student motivation and achievement. Some of that research has also found that evidence of parent involvement diminishes rapidly as students move through the grades, particularly in the transition from middle school to high school. It was the purpose of this study to examine student perception of parent involvement as it related to student attitudes, motivation, and achievement at this point of transition for middle school students. The study was designed as a blend of quantitative and qualitative research and involved a sample of fifty students from a total grade population of 175 students from one of three middle schools in a small southeastern Massachusetts city. The data were gathered over a period of time during which these students were in grades seven and eight as they remained on the same teaching teams with the same classmates. Utilizing grade point averages in four core academic subjects as the achievement measure, a sample was drawn from the total population of the highest achieving twenty-five students and the lowest achieving twenty-five students. Perception scores derived from a four item response scale were compared with actual and expected GPA scores to determine the relationship between student perception of parent involvement and student achievement. Data were also drawn from purposefully selected student and parent interviews and interviews of all involved teachers, using a standardized open-ended format. These interviews and two open-ended questions were designed to gather additional information regarding perceptions of parent involvement and expectations for student achievement. Student records were also examined to review data involving ethnicity, special populations characteristics, and family composition. While the analysis of the quantitative data indicated that there appeared to be no significant relationship between the level of students' perception of parent involvement and student achievement, the qualitative data revealed that parent involvement was very important to and highly valued by the students, parents, and teachers in this study. In their view, it was directly and positively related to student attitude, motivation, and achievement.

This study was designed to identify what, if any, communications occurred between working-class mothers, who had experience as sole supporters of families, and their adolescent daughters to socialize the daughters to the role of education in the daughters' lives. Additionally, this study was designed to determine whether there was an intergenerational transmission of educational values between working-class mothers and their daughters, and to determine if mothers are their daughters' first educational role models or mentors. The participants were a homogeneous sampling of seven Caucasian working-class mother and daughter pairs from two rural western Massachusetts mill towns. After an initial questionnaire which helped to identify prospective participants, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with the pairs and a topical guide was used to gather comparable data from all participants. Thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the data. Participants in this study provided insights into both multigenerational and intergenerational messages transmitted across generations and the mechanisms by which those messages were transmitted. They also provided insights into how messages from their working-class work ethic both shaped and contradicted their aspirations for success. The intersection of social class and the mothers' experiences as sole supporters revealed specific messages about working-class values and what it meant for the participants to be successful or not. The mothers in this study used these messages to purposefully push their daughters toward success, which they believed began with a four-year college degree. Finally, this study revealed that these working-class mothers were their daughters' first educational role models and mentors. However, due to gaps in procedural knowledge and the mothers' passivity in assisting daughters in obtaining information that would help them prepare for college, there became a point where most mothers became ineffective mentors, thus highlighting the need for positive role models and mentors, for both mothers and daughters. Additionally, several unarticulated contradictions emerged between the messages and with regard to the participants' desire for success. The paper concludes with a discussion about implications for future research and practice.

The study focuses on the relationship between child care use and labor force participation among American mothers. The major research questions addressed are: (1) What is the nature of mothers' child care arrangements and how have these changed in the last two decades?; (2) What is the cost of and satisfaction with these arrangements?; (3) What are the determinants of types of child care used?; (4) What conflicts does child care pose for employed mothers; (5) To what extent is lack of child care a constraint to mothers who want to work for pay? Evidence on variation in child care use and conflicts with child care controlling for income level, race/ethnicity and marital status is presented. Data were analyzed from (1) a 1988 survey of a random sample of 989 working mothers of preschool age children in South Chicago, Camden and Newark, New Jersey, (2) a 1983-1984 survey of a random sample of 1694 low income black and Hispanic, single mothers in five U.S. cities and (3) a 24 month followup survey of 428 of the 1694 single mothers interviewed in 1983. Data from the 1975 National Child Care Consumer Study and from a 1985 supplement to the Survey of Income and Program Participation were also utilized. Since 1975, child care provided by relatives is the most common primary child care arrangements used by mothers. The reliance on family members is particularly prevalent among poor, single black and Hispanic mothers despite an overwhelming preference for group child care centers suggesting an absence of choice over type of child care used among these mothers. Problems with cost, availability and quality of child care have prevented substantial numbers of currently employed mothers from working in the past, or caused them to change jobs of job schedules. Among nonemployed mothers, lack of child care is a constraint to employment and a greater constraint to job search activities for poor, single mothers than for middle income mothers. Among poor, single mothers, a major obstacle to labor force participation is lack of job benefits.

In this dissertation I consider the relationship between child socialization and the perpetuation of social disparities, based upon ethnicity or race, within the context of a stratified world political economy. The goal was to derive a qualitative analysis of the ways in which children experience and respond to the moral, structural, behavioral and material aspects of socially constructed relations of inequality. Data for this study were collected during a twelve month stay in Belize, Central America, in 1984-85, primarily in Belize City among urban dwellers who identify themselves as "Creole." I maintained intensive interaction with approximately seventeen families and over forty-five children. To assist me in assessing the children's perceptions of themselves I engaged them in story telling, open-ended interviews, doll play, modeling with clay, drawing and casual exchanges. I also collected data on the images and messages conveyed in the market place, the church, the home, the media and the schools. Results indicate that children in Belize are exposed to a complex multilevel socialization process which serves to reinforce and perpetuate colonial and neo-colonial unequal relations of power. The colonial ideologies of power, paternalism and racial superiority are imbedded in the fabric of the society, negatively affecting the children's sense of themselves and their relationship to the world. Belizean children are found to be systematically denied the material and ideological tools with which to optimally exploit their environment. Their responses to these circumstances varies according to individual personalities and life histories. Conclusions drawn from my research lend support to the argument that the identity which children in this situation develop, contributes to the creation of the conditions for the continued maintenance and reproduction of a world stratified according to political, economic and social power in which invidious distinctions made between groups of people on the basis of phenotypic characteristics, such as skin color, influence access to critical, life sustaining resources. The children I know in Belize City are aware of the distinctions, aware of the power and aware of their position within this stratified world.

This investigation explored through intensive case studies the coping progress of a group of Jewish individuals and also recorded the areas in which they simultaneously observed the Jewish religious mourning rituals. The in-depth interviews of fiver persons, three women and two men, and selections from two additional interviews have been recorded. Their losses included both parents and both spouses. They were invited by the researcher when reports of their losses appeared in the newspaper obituary columns. Each subject was personally interviewed three times to coincide with the three stages of the Jewish ritual practice. The questionnaires utilized to evaluate the subjects' grief and coping were based upon questions developed in three previous studies: (a) The study of the Attachment Theory and Multiple Dimensions of Grief by Selby C. Jacobs, et al. (1986) of the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University. (b) The Expanded Texas Inventory of Grief developed by Sidney Zisook, et al. (1982). (c) The Center of Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale. The questionnaires to determine the areas of the subjects' observance or non-observance, of the Jewish ritual system were developed by this researcher. The purpose of this study was to provide the two parallel records of grief coping and structured mourning procedure observance so that future researchers might have a basis for determining the influence of the latter on the former. An additional result is that in all cases the subjects themselves commented on what, if anything, observing the ritual meant to them. A further area of future study could, therefore, be to determine how one's own perception of the ritual one is observing determines the effect it has upon one's grief coping. In the Summary and Recommendations observations are made on the efficacy of the questionnaire instruments employed in the studies mentioned above. Suggestions for improving their usefulness are made.

This exploratory study looks at Chinese-Caucasian interracially married parents' experience of raising their children. The goal is to characterize these parents' stances toward their children's ethnic identity. A semi-structured, clinical interview was developed for the study in order to gather information about the respondent's family and individual histories, as well as their childrearing practices and beliefs. The sample consisted of 29 interracially married parents who had at least one child older than nine years old. Eight intraracially married Chinese parents were also interviewed for comparison purposes. The interview data was subjected to a content analysis which generated the following six-dimensional conceptual framework of ethnic identity: (1) Group Identification; (2)Ethnic Continuity; (3) Physical Characteristics; (4) Objective Culture; (5) Subjective Culture; (6) Sociopolitical Consciousness. It was found that parents did not feel that their children's ethnic identity was the focus of a great deal of concern. Parents also emphasized that it had rarely been a source of psychological or social difficulty for their children. The ethnic identity of the Chinese parent was stressed far more than the ethnic identity of the Caucasian parent. Surprisingly, parents expressed very little concern about their children's racial marginality or the issue of racial continuity. On a conscious level, parents were more strongly committed to "group identification" and "objective culture." In actual practice, however, their commitment in these areas carried a great deal of ambivalence. On an unconscious level, parents were most likely to pass down "subjective culture." This was the one area of regular cultural conflict in these families, particularly around expectations about family roles. These parents' greatest concern revolved around their children losing their Chinese culture. However, parents were generally unsuccessful when they tried to actively guide their children in an ethnic direction. Parents stressed that their children's most durable ethnic commitments developed largely independently of their own efforts to influence, emphasizing that their own personal ethnic involvements (modelling) seemed to have the most impact. The study concludes by offering some integrative comments about the nature of ethnic identity and the forces that propel it across generations. An important area of future research would be to talk with these parents' biracial children about their ethnic identities.

As a discipline virtually unknown thirty years ago, family therapy has expanded in a rapid manner. However, surprisingly little scientific attention has been given to the process of supervision and training. Supervision remains mainly a matter of intuition and individual experience. This dissertation attempts to understand the supervisory process by examining how experienced supervisors make intervention decisions during live supervision. The subjects of study are three experienced family therapy supervisors who train students in agency settings. Theoretical and empirical literature pertaining to live supervision is reviewed. Included is literature that describes the context of family therapy supervision, literature which defines the cognitive maps used by supervisors, and descriptive accounts of training programs for supervisors. Two conceptual models are reviewed, Schon's (1983) theory of "reflection-in-action." and Gorman's (1988) model of the context of family therapy supervision, which was developed to guide the present inquiry. The moment-of-intervention, defined as the point during live supervision when the supervisor communicates with the trainee in order to affect the session's activity, is the unit of analysis providing a window into the supervisory process. A total of 24 moments-of-intervention (8 per supervisor) were observed. Video tapes of these interventions were transcribed and rated based on a typology consisting of eight different dimensions. All three supervisors tended to make interventions that were direct, specific, supervisor-initiated, and immediate. A subsample of 12 moments-of-intervention (4 per supervisor) was chosen for further study. Interviews with each of the supervisors revealed important influences in decision-making were the expectations of the employing agency and the pervasive influence of the supervisor's training-of-origin. Next in importance was the supervisor's family-of-origin and immediate collegial group. Least influential was awareness of the expectations of the larger profession. The results are valuable because they offer a description of the supervisory process grounded in systematic observation of actual interventions. The results confirm a number of theoretical expectations, highlight some elements of the supervisory process that were not incorporated in either theoretical model, and suggest directions for future research.