The Development of Gendered Interests and Personality Qualities From Middle Childhood Through Adolescence: A Biosocial Analysis

This study charted the development of gendered personality qualities and activity interests from age 7 to age 19 in 364 first- and secondborn siblings from 185 White, middle/working-class families, assessed links between time in gendered social contexts (with mother, father, female peers, and male peers) and gender development, and tested whether changes in testosterone moderated links between time use and gender development. Multilevel models documented that patterns of change varied across dimensions of gender and by sex and birth order and that time in gendered social contexts was generally linked to development of more stereotypical qualities. Associations between time with mother and expressivity and time with father and instrumentality were stronger for youth with slower increases in testosterone.     

遮蔽:张爱玲小说父亲形象解读

父亲形象在张爱玲的小说文本中不以彰显的方式给予呈现，而以遮蔽作为表征。文章结合具体文本揭示其三种遮蔽方式：贬抑、置换、缺失。对父亲形象的丑化与幼化以及无情嘲讽是其贬抑的主要手段；通过兄长、母亲或家庭中其他成员对父权的行使达到对父亲形象的置换；以构想父亲的不存在造成父亲形象的缺失。文章另从女性的普遍心理共性及婚恋视角切入考察其对父亲形象遮蔽的原因。     

Teachers' perceptions of behavior problems in children from intact,single-parent,and stepparent families

This study examined differences in the incidence of behavior problems between children living with both natural parents and those in single-parent or in stepparent families. Subjects were 3,644 white children in kindergarten through eighth grade; 2,991 were living with both of their own parents; 312 with mother only; 43 with father only; 264 with mother and stepfather; and 34 with father and stepmother. Teachers provided background information and Behavior Problem Checklist ratings on the youngsters. Compared to children from intact homes, those living with mother only had more problems checked on all five scales of the checklist; those with father only, more Socialized Delinquency; those with mother and stepfather, more Conduct Problems and Socialized Delinquency; and those with father and stepmother, more Conduct Problems. Interactions were found for sex, social class, and grade in school.     

90年代西方依恋理论研究的概述

西方90年代依恋理论研究的争论;单一与多重依恋,陌生情境中“气质”与“母婴关系”的作用,母亲、父亲依恋的效果。依恋具有跨代传递性。依恋存在于同伴关系之中,对友谊会发生影响。     

大学生父母教养方式与性心理健康间的关系研究

选取武汉四所高校332名大学生为被试,采用性心理健康量表和父母教养方式评价量表(EMBU),研究了大学生父母教养方式和性心理健康的关系。其结果显示:大学生的父母教养方式和其性心理健康相关;其中大学生父母教养方式中父亲惩罚严厉、过分干涉、拒绝否认、过度保护以及母亲情感温暖和理解、过干涉和过保护、拒绝否认、惩罚严厉与性心理健康的水平存在相关;多元回归结果表明:父母教养方式中父亲惩罚严厉、过度保护、拒绝否认以及母亲的惩罚严厉对大学生性心理健康有负向预测作用;而父亲和母亲的情感温暖和理解对大学生性心理健康有正向预测作用。由此得出,父母教养方式对大学生性心理健康的形成有重要影响。     

Family relationships during infancy and later mother and father vocabulary use with young children

Very little previous research has considered the contributions of family relationships and interactions on the language input of mothers and fathers to their young children. This study examined the contributions of marital love and conflict, and broader family-level conflict, cohesion, and expressiveness to mother and father vocabulary in triadic interactions with their young children in 70 dual-earner families. It was found that after controlling for parent sensitivity and parent directive behavior, marital love and family conflict when children were 12 months of age were significant predictors of both father vocabulary and mother vocabulary to children at 24 months of age. In families with higher levels of marital love when children were 12 months of age, mothers and fathers used a more diverse vocabulary with their 24-month-old children. In families with lower levels of family conflict when children were 12 months of age, mothers and fathers used a more diverse vocabulary with their 24-month-old children.     

The effects of children's communicative status and task on parents' teaching strategies

The two goals of the study were to examine factors affecting parents' teaching strategies with their children and to identify the effectiveness of different teaching strategies for engaging children in tasks. It was hypothesized that teaching strategies would vary as a function of parent status (mother/father), children's communicative status (nonhandicapped-NCH/handicapped-CH) and different tasks (origami/book reading). Each of the 120 families included a target child (M = 4.5 years old), a mother, and a father; 60 families had a CH child and 60 matched families had an NCH child. Each parent engaged in book-reading and origami tasks with their target child. Parents' teaching strategies were recorded and categorized according to levels of cognitive demand. In addition, children's level of task engagement was rated. Results indicated that parents varied their teaching strategies according to both task and children's communicative status. Generally, they were more demanding and less directive of the more competent, NCH, children than of the CH children. Further, parents used different strategies with their NCH and CH children in both tasks to keep them engaged. Results are discussed in terms of Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development.     

Adolescent-to-Mother Psychological Aggression: The Role of Father Violence and Maternal Parenting Style

BackgroundAdolescent-to-parent psychological aggression is often a precursor to physical aggression toward their parents. Recently, there have been 4 high-profile matricide cases that happened in China. To date, there is limited research in Confucian filial piety culture on child-to-parent psychological aggression, especially toward the mother who is overwhelming the target of children’s aggression.ObjectiveThe goal of this study is to explore the prevalence of adolescent-to-mother psychological aggression and examine the role of father violence and maternal parenting style in contributing to these behaviors in Confucian filial piety culture.MethodsParticipants were 1134 students from 7 to 12 grade (M = 14 years, SD = 1.5) in Qingdao located in Shandong Province in east side of China where the Confucian Culture began. The instruments used were a demographics questionnaire, adolescent-to-mother psychological aggression questionnaire, father’s violent behavior questionnaire and maternal parenting style questionnaire.ResultsTwo types of adolescent-to-mother psychological aggression were assessed: contempt and rebellion. The prevalence of adolescent-to-mother contempt and rebellion was 30.7% and 18.7%, respectively. Results from multiple regression analyses indicated that father’s conflict with grandparents, maternal control and over-protection were positively associated with adolescent’s contempt for mother. Parents divorced, father’s conflict with grandparents, father-to-mother physical violence and maternal rejection were positively associated with adolescent’s rebellion against mother. Maternal emotional warmth was negatively associated with adolescent’s contempt and rebellion against mother.ConclusionAdolescent-to-mother psychological aggression occurs within a broader family context of violence and disharmony. Observational learning of father’s conflict with grandparents or violent behaviors toward mother maybe the mechanism of violence passing from generations. However, maternal emotional warmth buffered the negative association between father’s conflict with grandparents and adolescent’s contempt for mother. But maternal control and over-protection exacerbated the positive relationships between father’s conflict with grandparents and adolescent’s contempt for mother.     

Maternal employment in a family context: effects on infant-mother and infant-father attachments

The relation between resumption of full-time employment by mothers of infants under 6 months of age, and subsequent infant-mother and infant-father attachments, was examined in this study. Attachment classifications and ratings of reunion behavior with mother and with father in Ainsworth's Strange Situation at 12 months were obtained for 57 nonemployed-mother families and 40 employed-mother families. No relation emerged between maternal work status and the quality of infants' attachments to their mothers, indicating that early resumption of employment may not impede the development of secure infant-mother attachment. A significantly higher proportion of insecure attachments to fathers in employed-mother families was found for sons but not for daughters. Joint examination of the infants' attachments to both parents revealed a trend suggesting that in employed-mother families, boys were more likely to be insecurely attached to both parents than were girls in employed-mother families or infants of either sex in nonemployed-mother families. These patterns are discussed in light of differences in maternal and paternal sex-typing behavior and of evidence suggesting boys' vulnerability to psychosocial stress.     

Family-Peer Connections: The Roles of Emotional Expressiveness within the Family and Children''s Understanding of Emotions

The purpose of this study was to explore patterns of parent and child emotional expressiveness within the family context, to examine links between these patterns and children's peer relations, and to examine whether these links might be mediated by children's understanding of emotions. Subjects were 61 kindergarten and first-grade white, middle-class children and their parents. Parent and child expressiveness were assessed in a laboratory ring-toss game designed to elicit a range of emotional responses. Parent expressiveness in the home was also assessed with Halberstadt's Family Expressiveness Questionnaire. The questionnaire, completed by both mother and father, assesses a range of emotions in a variety of settings typical of many families, and consists of items tapping both positive and negative expressiveness. Children were interviewed about their understanding of emotions across a broad range of areas. Results indicated that maternal expressiveness (home) and paternal expressiveness (home and laboratory) but not children's expressiveness with parents were associated with children's peer relations. Although children's understanding of emotions was generally not associated with family expressiveness, understanding predicted children's peer relations. In addition, children's understanding influenced the links between maternal expressiveness in the home and peer relations and between paternal expressiveness in the laboratory and peer relations. This pattern of results underscores the importance of the emotional climate of the family for the development of children's social relations with peers.     

Physically abusive fathers and risk assessment

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to identify factors that predict recidivism among families in which the father is the perpetrator of physical abuse and to compare these factors to the factors that investigators believe are related to higher risk. METHOD: A case-comparison design was used to understand risk among 137 predominantly Caucasian families in which a father had injured a child. RESULTS: The multivariate analysis showed that families in which the father was unemployed (greater time at risk), had younger children, was not the biological father of all of the children, did not take responsibility for his behavior, seriously injured a child, and maltreated a child in the past were more likely to re-abuse. These factors, along with whether the mother had a criminal history, correctly predicted recurrence for 83% of the families. The investigators correctly predicted recurrence for 70% of the families. CONCLUSIONS: The investigators placed too much emphasis on some variables that were not related to recurrence, such as the mother's mental health and whether she tried to protect her children. These results may be useful in adapting assessment systems that do not take into consideration the gender of the perpetrator.     

Educational Institutions or Extended Families? The Reconstruction of Gender in Women's Colleges in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

This article aims to develop our theorisation of gender as a category of analysis in education, by examining how the meaning of gender has been socially constructed historically within specific educational contexts. A post‐structuralist perspective is used to show how gender meaning is constructed both from competing and conflicting discourses within these specific historical contexts, and also by the transformation of existing discourses into new contexts. It first discusses how the discourse of social practice and family organisation in the Victorian middle‐class home were translated from their domestic setting and transformed to provide new meanings in the institutional context of women's colleges. The translation and transformation of these domestic and familial discourses was relatively straightforward; but the construction of the new role of the woman principal from the discourses of Victorian middle‐class femininity was always highly problematic. The second part of the article examines the difficulties faced by women principals in constructing their dual gender role as both father and mother of the institutional families which they served. Finally I attempt to decode the homoerotic friendships which some principals formed in order to express the emotional and sexual needs of their own feminity.     

Fathers' Early Contributions to Children's Language Development in Families from Low-income Rural Communities

This study utilized a large sample of two-parent families from low-income rural communities to examine the contributions of father education and vocabulary, during picture book interactions with their infants at 6 months of age, to children's subsequent communication development at 15 months and expressive language development at 36 months. After controlling for family demographics, child characteristics, as well as mother education and vocabulary, father education and father vocabulary during the picture-book task were related to more advanced language development at both 15 and 36 months of age. Only mother education, but not vocabulary during book-reading was related to children's later language. These findings support the growing evidence on the importance of fathers in understanding children's early communication and language development.     

Families Created by Egg Donation: Parent–Child Relationship Quality in Infancy

Increasing numbers of children are being born through egg donation and thus do not share a genetic relationship with their mother. Parent–infant relationship quality was examined in 85 egg donation families and a comparison group of 65 in vitro fertilization families (infant M = 11 months). Standardized interview and observational measures were used to assess mother–infant and father–infant relationship quality at the representational and behavioral levels. Few differences were found between family types in parents’ representations of the parent–infant relationship. Differences were found between family types in the observational assessment of mother–infant relationship quality, indicating less optimal interactions in egg donation families. Findings suggest that egg donation families function well in infancy overall, but there may be subtle yet meaningful differences in mother–infant interaction quality.     

Adoptive Gay Father Families: Parent–Child Relationships and Children's Psychological Adjustment

Findings are presented on a U.K. study of 41 gay father families, 40 lesbian mother families, and 49 heterosexual parent families with an adopted child aged 3–9 years. Standardized interview and observational and questionnaire measures of parental well‐being, quality of parent–child relationships, child adjustment, and child sex‐typed behavior were administered to parents, children, and teachers. The findings indicated more positive parental well‐being and parenting in gay father families compared to heterosexual parent families. Child externalizing problems were greater among children in heterosexual families. Family process variables, particularly parenting stress, rather than family type were found to be predictive of child externalizing problems. The findings contribute to theoretical understanding of the role of parental gender and parental sexual orientation in child development.     

How do parenting concepts vary within and between the families?

How do parenting concepts vary within and between the families? The present study regards parenting as a complex family process by considering three concepts of parenting: styles, differential treatment and coparenting consistency. A main question was addressed: whether and how these parenting concepts vary within the families towards siblings or between the two parents, and between the families according to the child's, the parent's and the family's characteristics? The parenting concepts were computed from the EPEP questionnaire (Meunier &; Roskam, 2007) in a sample of 101 non-divorced families: 101 mothers and 101 fathers of two siblings from 6- to 12-years-old. The parenting concepts were found to vary within the families towards two siblings and between the mother and the father. They were also found to vary between the families according to the child's age and personality traits as well as a function of the parent's educational level and the number of siblings.     

The Center Academy of the Brooklyn Jewish Center

“It is revealed and known in front of the One who spoke and the world came into existence that a child loves¹ his mother more than his father because she appeases him with words. Therefore the Holy One Blessed be He put love of father before love of mother. And it is revealed and known before He who spoke and the world came into existence that a child fears his father more than his mother because he teaches him Torah. Therefore, the Holy One Blessed He put fear of mother before fear of father.²     

不同社会经济地位城市家庭大班幼儿读写能力的比较研究

以上海市不同社会经济地位城市家庭大班幼儿为被试所进行的读写能力比较研究发现,来自不同社会经济地位家庭的幼儿在读写能力的总体水平以及词汇、文字认读能力等方面存在显著差异,而在书写技能上无显著差异;低社会经济地位家庭幼儿的读写能力发展不理想;与家庭经济收入和父亲职业相比,母亲的学历更能有效预测幼儿的读写能力发展状况。     

Nigerian Women in Science and Technology

This study provides insight into the profile of women scientists and technologists in Nigeria. The sample comprised two subgroups of women: young women undergraduates who were pursuing careers in the sciences and humanities (N= 2600); and career women in the field of science and technology (N= 209). Overall, the profile of the woman scientists which emerged from the findings sugests that she is of a certain social background: mother with high education, father in science‐based occupation and attendance at single‐sex schools. Her personal attributes include a positive attitude towards science, high rating of self‐ability, and low concern with the reward of a career in the field; as well as certain behaviour patterns involving regular participation in academic activities in science.