Research during the past decade shows that social class or socioeconomic status (SES) is related to satisfaction and stability in romantic unions, the quality of parent-child relationships, and a ...range of developmental outcomes for adults and children. This review focuses on evidence regarding potential mechanisms proposed to account for these associations. Research findings reported during the past decade demonstrate support for an interactionist model of the relationship between SES and family life, which incorporates assumptions from both the social causation and social selection perspectives. This review concludes with recommendations for future research on SES, family processes, and individual development in terms of important theoretical and methodological issues yet to be addressed.
Focusing on gender and the family, this erudite and innovative history reconsiders the origins of Egyptian nationalism and the revolution of 1919 by linking social changes in class and household ...structure to the politics of engagement with British colonial rule. Lisa Pollard deftly argues that the Egyptian state's modernizing projects in the nineteenth century reinforced ideals of monogamy and bourgeois domesticity among Egypt's elite classes and connected those ideals with political and economic success. At the same time, the British used domestic and personal practices such as polygamy, the harem, and the veiling of women to claim that the ruling classes had become corrupt and therefore to legitimize an open-ended tenure for themselves in Egypt. To rid themselves of British rule, bourgeois Egyptian nationalists constructed a familial-political culture that trained new generations of nationalists and used them to demonstrate to the British that it was time for the occupation to end. That culture was put to use in the 1919 Egyptian revolution, in which the reformed, bourgeois family was exhibited as the standard for "modern" Egypt.
Recent studies have confirmed that repeated wartime deployment of a parent exacts a toll on military children and families and that the quality and functionality of familial relations is linked to ...force preservation and readiness. As a result, family-centered care has increasingly become a priority across the military health system. FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress), a family-centered, resilience-enhancing program developed by a team at UCLA and Harvard Schools of Medicine, is a primary initiative in this movement. In a large-scale implementation project initiated by the Bureau of Navy Medicine, FOCUS has been delivered to thousands of Navy, Marine, Navy Special Warfare, Army, and Air Force families since 2008. This article describes the theoretical and empirical foundation and rationale for FOCUS, which is rooted in a broad conception of family resilience. We review the literature on family resilience, noting that an important next step in building a clinically useful theory of family resilience is to move beyond developing broad “shopping lists” of risk indicators by proposing specific mechanisms of risk and resilience. Based on the literature, we propose five primary risk mechanisms for military families and common negative “chain reaction” pathways through which they undermine the resilience of families contending with wartime deployments and parental injury. In addition, we propose specific mechanisms that mobilize and enhance resilience in military families and that comprise central features of the FOCUS Program. We describe these resilience-enhancing mechanisms in detail, followed by a discussion of the ways in which evaluation data from the program’s first 2 years of operation supports the proposed model and the specified mechanisms of action.
Systemic theory offers a valuable framework for integrating the diverse ideas found throughout the mental health arena in both theory and clinical practice. With this accessible new book, Arlene ...Vetere and Rudi Dallos take you on an enjoyable and coherent journey through systemic theory. They start by highlighting some significant and enduring systemic concep6ts and their applications in systemic practice, moving on to demonstrate a model of systemic formulation. This leads into a review of the research into family therapy, process and outcome, and concludes with a critical review of the major recent developments in theory and application. At the end of several chapters are reflexive notes containing exercises that relate to the ideas and processes found within the chapter to further develop the reader’s understanding. The conclusion draws together the ideas found throughout the book, with particular emphasis on the interlocking triangle of formulation, intervention and evaluation and how this will impact on systemic practice in the future.
Demographic trends in the 2000s showed the continuing separation of family and household because of factors such as childbearing among single parents, the dissolution of cohabiting unions, divorce, ...repartner ing, and remarriage. The transnational families of many immigrants also displayed this separation, as families extended across borders. In addition, demographers demonstrated during the decade that trends such as marriage and divorce were diverging according to education. Moreover, demographic trends in the age structure of the population showed that a large increase in the elderly population will occur in the 2010s. Overall, demographic trends produced an increased complexity of family life and a more ambiguous and fluid set of categories than demographers are accustomed to measuring.
Aspiring thinkers require a stage for their performance and an audience to help give their actions distinction and meaning. To be made durable and influential, their charismatic stories have to be ...framed by supporting ideals, practices, and institutions. Although the biographies of the Empire's most famous thinkers have a comfortable platform in modern Russia's printed record, scholars have yet to explore fully the intimate context surrounding their activities in the early nineteenth century. There is, as a result, a certain homeless quality to our understandings of Imperial Russian culture, which this history of one extremely productive home will help us correct.—from The House in the Garden The House in the Garden explores the role played by domesticity in the making of Imperial Russian intellectual traditions. It tells the story of the Bakunins, a distinguished noble family who in 1779 chose to abandon their home in St. Petersburg for a rustic manor house in central Russia's Tver Province. At the time, the Russian government was encouraging its elite subjects to see their private lives as a forum for the representation of imperial virtues and norms. Drawing on the family's vast archive, Randolph describes the Bakunins' attempts to live up to this ideal and to convert their new home, Priamukhino, into an example of modern civilization. In particular, Randolph shows how the Bakunin home fostered the development of a group of charismatic young students from Moscow University, who in the 1830s sought to use their experiences at Priamukhino to reimagine themselves as agents of Russia's enlightenment. Some of the story Randolph tells is familiar to historians. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, whose early philosophical evolution Randolph describes, was born at Priamukhino, while the radical critic Vissarion Belinsky claimed to have been transformed by his experiences there. When Tom Stoppard sought to portray the spiritual history of the Russian intelligentia in his trilogy, The Coast of Utopia , he chose Priamukhino as the scene for act 1. Yet Randolph's research allows us to watch this drama from a radically different perspective. It shows how the culture of Russian Idealism—so long presumed to be a product of alienation—actually relied on the support provided by the cult of distinction that the Russian government had built around noble homes. It also allows us to see the other actors and agents of private life—and most notably, the Bakunin women—as participants in the creation of modern Russian social thought. The result is a work that revises our understanding of Russian intellectual history while also contributing to the histories of women, gender, private life, and memory in nineteenth-century Russia.
Glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and its canonical receptor Ret can signal together or independently to fulfill many important functions in the midbrain dopaminergic (DA) system. ...While Ret signaling clearly impacts on the development, maintenance and regeneration of the mesostriatal DA system, the physiological functions of GDNF for the DA system are still unclear. Nevertheless, GDNF is still considered to be an excellent candidate to protect and/or regenerate the mesostriatal DA system in Parkinson disease (PD). Clinical trials with GDNF on PD patients are, however, so far inconclusive. Here, we review the current knowledge of GDNF and Ret signaling and function in the midbrain DA system, and their crosstalk with proteins and signaling pathways associated with PD.
Children who experience multiple transitions in family structure may face worse developmental outcomes than children raised in stable, two-parent families, and perhaps even worse than children raised ...in stable, single-parent families-a point denoted in much prior research. Multiple transitions and negative child outcomes, however, may be associated through common causal factors such as parents' antecedent behaviors and attributes. Using a nationally-representative, two-generation longitudinal survey that includes detailed information on children's behavioral and cognitive development, family history, and mothers' attributes prior to children's births, we examine these alternative hypotheses. Our results suggest that, for white children, the association between the number of family structure transitions and cognitive outcomes is largely explained by mothers' prior characteristics but that the association between the number of transitions and behavioral outcomes may be causal in part. We find no robust effects for number of transitions for black children.
Several good books exist about systemic understanding in therapy and a few about dialogic understanding. However, none try to bridge the gap between these two world views, which have some ...similarities, but also a whole array of differences. This book is an attempt to find a bridge. According to systemic theory, we exist only in and because of the network of relationships we are embedded in. In dialogic theory, we inhabit different worlds, and we need dialogue (we need engaging in that hard struggle that is proper dialogue) in order to make them communicate with each other. Putting these different views together poses problems but provides a good dialogic exercise too. The author found it increasingly necessary as he felt more and more uncomfortable with the more conventional versions of Batesonian systemic wisdom he had adopted in previous years. At the same time he did not feel convinced by some of the new ideas about dialogue, where one was compelled to get rid of everything one thought valuable in systemic understanding.
There is currently a lack of reliable scales with which to assess the construct of family quality of life, particularly for families who have children with disabilities. The current work presents 2 ...studies, including a total of 488 families with children with disabilities, which were conducted to complete the development of a scale to assess family quality of life. The measure was refined through confirmatory factor analyses into 25 items that assess 5 domains of Family Quality of Life: Family Interaction, Parenting, Emotional Well-Being, Physical/Material Well-Being, and Disability-Related Support. Each subscale was found to be unidimensional and internally consistent. An initial examination of test-retest reliability and convergent validity is also presented. Implications for future research, scale use, and policy are discussed.
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