Advances in Family Research Series – serie

This volume, the result of the second annual Summer Institute sponsored by the Family Research Consortium, focuses on family transitions--both normative and non-normative. The subject of family transitions has been a central concern of the consortium largely because studies of families in motion help to highlight mechanisms leading to adaptation and dysfunction. This text represents a collective effort to understand the techniques individuals and families employ to adapt to the pressing issues they encounter along their life course.

In the 1990s it is no longer "news" that families do not operate independently from other social organizations and institutions. Instead, it is generally recognized that families are embedded in a complex set of relationships with other institutions and contexts outside the family. In spite of this recognition, a great deal remains to be discovered about the ways in which families are influenced by these outside agencies or how families influence the functioning of children and adults in these extra-familial settings--school, work, day-care, or peer group contexts. Moreover, little is known about the nature of the processes that account for this mutual influence between families and other societal institutions and settings. The goal of this volume is to present examples from a series of ongoing research programs that are beginning to provide some tentative answers to these questions. The result of a summer workshop characterized by lively exchanges not only between speakers and the audience, but among participants in small group discussions as well, this volume attempts to communicate some of the dynamism and excitement that was evident at the conference. In the final analysis, this book should stimulate further theoretical and empirical advances in understanding how families relate to other contexts.

Because chronic disorder is becoming an ordinary feature of family life and development, understanding its impact has become critical. This volume, and the conference proceedings it reports, represents a major effort to examine the family's response to chronic physical or psychopathological illness in one or more of its members. Recent data are revising our notions of chronic illness. Evidence is mounting that chronic psychiatric disorders reflect, in part, abnormalities of brain structure and function. In this sense, they are, in part, medical disorders. On the other hand, a number of traditionally labeled medical disorders produce a broad range of psychological symptoms and are exquisitely sensitive to psychosocial influences. Families undergo a complex process of adaptation during which their response to stress and their fundamental beliefs about learning and parenting change. These beliefs endure and are difficult to alter. By examining the processes in a wide range of chronic conditions, this volume helps to identify the common, underlying processes of adaptation. The first three chapters concern the families' responses to disorders that are distinctly medical; the next three focus on families' responses to "grey zone" disorders or anomalies that appear early in life, minor physical anomalies, and communication handicaps; and one chapter focuses exclusively on schizophrenia. The last chapter reflects an effort to develop a model based on the experience of researchers with both psychiatric and medical illness.

Concern with stress and coping has a long history in biomedical, psychological and sociological research. The inadequacy of simplistic models linking stressful life events and adverse physical and psychological outcomes was pointed out in the early 1980s in a series of seminal papers and books. The issues and theoretical models discussed in this work shaped much of the subsequent research on this topic and are reflected in the papers in this volume. The shift has been away from identifying associations between risks and outcomes to a focus on factors and processes that contribute to diversity in response to risks. Based on the Family Research Consortium's fifth summer institute, this volume focuses on stress and adaptability in families and family members. The papers explore not only how a variety of stresses influence family functioning but also how family process moderates and mediates the contribution of individual and environmental risk and protective factors to personal adjustment. They reveal the complexity of current theoretical models, research strategies and analytic approaches to the study of risk, resiliency and vulnerability along with the central role risk, family process and adaptability play in both normal development and childhood psychopathology.

Based on a summer institute of the Family Research Consortium, this book presents theory and research from leading scholars working on issues of risk and resilience in families. Focusing on the splits and bonds that shape children's development, this volume's primary goal is to stimulate theoretical and empirical advances in research on family processes. It will be valuable to developmental, social, and clinical psychologists, sociologists, and family studies specialists.

The chapters in this volume were developed as a follow-up to the Summer Institute entitled "Continuity and Change: Family Structure and Process" conducted by the second Family Research Consortium. The goal of this book is to provide readers with a greater understanding of both the conceptual issues involved in the study of continuity and change in families, and also some of the methodological approaches that have been developed for investigating families over time.

Based on a summer institute of the Family Research Consortium, this book presents theory and research from leading scholars working on issues of risk and resilience in families. Focusing on the splits and bonds that shape children's development, this volume's primary goal is to stimulate theoretical and empirical advances in research on family processes. It will be valuable to developmental, social, and clinical psychologists, sociologists, and family studies specialists.

The chapters in this volume were developed as a follow-up to the Summer Institute entitled "Continuity and Change: Family Structure and Process" conducted by the second Family Research Consortium. The goal of this book is to provide readers with a greater understanding of both the conceptual issues involved in the study of continuity and change in families, and also some of the methodological approaches that have been developed for investigating families over time.

This collection updates research on family processes relating to aggression and depression. It contains state-of-the-art information and such recent methodological innovations as time series, sequential analysis, and method problems in the application of a structural equation modeling. An ideal supplementary text and reference for graduate students and professionals in clinical, social, environmental, and health psychology, family counseling, psychotherapy, and behavioral medicine.

In the 1990s it is no longer "news" that families do not operate independently from other social organizations and institutions. Instead, it is generally recognized that families are embedded in a complex set of relationships with other institutions and contexts outside the family. In spite of this recognition, a great deal remains to be discovered about the ways in which families are influenced by these outside agencies or how families influence the functioning of children and adults in these extra-familial settings--school, work, day-care, or peer group contexts. Moreover, little is known about the nature of the processes that account for this mutual influence between families and other societal institutions and settings. The goal of this volume is to present examples from a series of ongoing research programs that are beginning to provide some tentative answers to these questions. The result of a summer workshop characterized by lively exchanges not only between speakers and the audience, but among participants in small group discussions as well, this volume attempts to communicate some of the dynamism and excitement that was evident at the conference. In the final analysis, this book should stimulate further theoretical and empirical advances in understanding how families relate to other contexts.

This volume, the result of the second annual Summer Institute sponsored by the Family Research Consortium, focuses on family transitions--both normative and non-normative. The subject of family transitions has been a central concern of the consortium largely because studies of families in motion help to highlight mechanisms leading to adaptation and dysfunction. This text represents a collective effort to understand the techniques individuals and families employ to adapt to the pressing issues they encounter along their life course.

Because chronic disorder is becoming an ordinary feature of family life and development, understanding its impact has become critical. This volume, and the conference proceedings it reports, represents a major effort to examine the family's response to chronic physical or psychopathological illness in one or more of its members. Recent data are revising our notions of chronic illness. Evidence is mounting that chronic psychiatric disorders reflect, in part, abnormalities of brain structure and function. In this sense, they are, in part, medical disorders. On the other hand, a number of traditionally labeled medical disorders produce a broad range of psychological symptoms and are exquisitely sensitive to psychosocial influences. Families undergo a complex process of adaptation during which their response to stress and their fundamental beliefs about learning and parenting change. These beliefs endure and are difficult to alter. By examining the processes in a wide range of chronic conditions, this volume helps to identify the common, underlying processes of adaptation. The first three chapters concern the families' responses to disorders that are distinctly medical; the next three focus on families' responses to "grey zone" disorders or anomalies that appear early in life, minor physical anomalies, and communication handicaps; and one chapter focuses exclusively on schizophrenia. The last chapter reflects an effort to develop a model based on the experience of researchers with both psychiatric and medical illness.