Stress and strain from family roles and work-role expectations.

Used questionnaire and interview data from 200 elementary and high school teachers (primarily 21–55 yrs old) to examine the relationship between family roles and work-role expectations and stress and strain. Results are consistent with role theory's prediction that multiple roles can lead to stressors (work overload and interrole conflict) and to symptoms of strain. Family roles were related to strain by interaction with work-role expectations so that the relation between those expectations and work overload is progressively greater for single teachers, those who were married, and those who have children. In addition, family roles were directly and negatively associated with physical strain when their relation to interrole conflict was controlled, and they were indirectly related to strain through their relation to interrole conflict. Family-role expectations seemed to reduce the amount of physical strain individuals experienced. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting career indecision: A self-determination theory perspective.

The purpose of this study was to propose and test a model of career indecision based on self-determination theory (E. L. Deci & R. M. Ryan, 1985). This model posits that peer and parental styles predicted career indecision through perceived self-efficacy and autonomy. Participants were 834 college students (236 men, 581 women, 17 without gender identification). Results from structural equation modeling provided support for the proposed model and showed that the model was invariant across gender. Discussion centers on the theoretical and practical implications of the results. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Meaning of the health concept from the perspective of families at personal and social risk

The purpose of this study is to describe the meaning of health through the perspective of families under personal and social risk situations. The ethnographic analysis based the investigation and data were collected through interviews with the low income families of children attended by a Communitary Center in S?o Paulo city. The analysis of the interview contents allowed the identification of 7 cultural domains. The results of this study show the characteristics of knowledge, values and behaviours about the health concept, that are relevant to families, enabling the understanding of the family organization, that is significant to health care of each member and also the central role carried out by mothers in the studied culture.     

Men and women in optometry. II. Attitudes toward career and family

BACKGROUND: Optometry has experienced a dramatic upward shift in the percentage of women entering the profession during the past 20 years. Our survey assessed the mechanisms for sustaining balance in professional and personal roles used by women optometrists and how these mechanisms may differ from those of their male colleagues. METHODS: A survey questionnaire was mailed to a large nationwide random sample of optometrists, composed of equal numbers of men and women. RESULTS: Data were analyzed from 353 men and 358 women; margin of error was +4%. Most of the respondents indicated they derived personal satisfaction from their career. A majority of both groups did not indicate that lack of time for their career was a source of frustration. However, significantly more women than men indicated some frustration in pursuing those activities that lead to career advancement. There were significant differences in response patterns of men and women about the effect of family, child care, and household work on their careers. CONCLUSIONS: Both men and women optometrists are satisfied with their careers and neither group feels compelled to choose between career and family. Optometrists do not fit into one pattern, but instead make individualized career choices on the basis of needs.     

Mothers as family change agents.

Studied the impact of a counseling program for mothers on the perceptions and behavior of family members. The mother, father, and 1 8-12 yr old problem child of 13 experimental and 11 control families were evaluated before and after 7 weekly counseling sessions. Pre- and postexperimental measures included the Family Concept Q Sort, a family decision-making task, and a behavioral data chart maintained by the mother. The experimental spouses experienced a significant increase in perceived family integration. The experimental families reflected a significant increase in the number of positive responses and a significant decrease in the number of negative responses used by the 3 family members. The undesirable behaviors of problem children within the experimental families decreased significantly. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's comprehension of family role portrayals in televised dramas: Effects of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and age.

578 middle and lower socioeconomic status (SES), Black and White children in Grades 2, 5, and 8 participated in 2 fully-crossed replications of the same design. They viewed 1 of 2 edited television dramas that portrayed either a White middle-class family (Study 1) or a Black working-class family (Study 2) in similar conflict resolution situations. Ss' comprehension of central (plot-essential) and peripheral content and their inferences about actors' emotions and causes of action were assessed. Memory for content was age-related in both studies. However, in Study 1, middle-SES 2nd graders viewing the middle-class family show scored higher than lower-SES 2nd graders. In Study 2 lower-SES 2nd graders who viewed the working-class family show achieved higher scores than their middle-class counterparts. There were no SES effects among 5th- and 8th-grade participants and no consistent effects of ethnicity at any age. Additional analyses indicated that congruence between televised characters and settings and viewers' own experiences, as indicated by SES, facilitated 2nd graders' processing of program content. Implications of age-related processing skills for social effects of TV are discussed. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Family psychology and family law--a family court judge's perspective: Comment on the special issue.

This comment presents the responses of an experienced family court judge to the eight articles published in this special issue. The value of these scholarly articles to family court judges is enormous. Judges have little, if any, formal training in family dynamics and child development, yet are called upon to make rulings in complex cases that have life-long ramifications for all family members. The changing demographics and current realities of traditional and nontraditional family structures in our society as well as the increasing divorce rates have widened the gap between legal precedence and current social science research. It is essential that the material covered in this issue can be accessible to family law personnel in language that they can understand and learn from. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A legal perspective on family psychology and family law: Comment on the special issue.

A certified family law practitioner reviews the articles in this special issue and discusses how the research and conceptual discussions in the articles are invaluable to family law professionals. The recognition of the interaction between mental health and family court professionals is essential to strengthen collaboration and more positive outcomes. Some questions are raised about the sampling and generalizability of some of the studies, and there is strong encouragement for further scholarship in these areas and dissemination to family law professionals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Early human experience: A family perspective.

Reviews recent research on the father–infant relationship. Those studies documenting changes in parent and infant behavior when the mother–infant dyad is transformed into the mother–father–infant triad are especially important to the study of early human experience, since they highlight the influence of the marital relationship on the parent–infant relationship. These investigations of "2nd-order effects" document the fact that inclusion of the father in the study of infancy creates a family system composed of marital and parent–child relations. The need for "wedding" the disciplines of family sociology and developmental psychology in their respective concerns for marital and parent–infant relationships is emphasized, and a transactional framework for examining early experience in the family system is proposed. Evidence from family sociology and developmental psychology is reviewed to illuminate influences within the family system during infancy and to stimulate interdisciplinary investigation. (3? ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changes in family roles, socialization, and sex differences.

Sex differences in socialization experiences reflect adult role expectations that females will be mothers and males will be workers. However, because of smaller family size, longer life expectancy, and higher employment rates for women, motherhood has come to occupy less of a woman's adult life, and work outside of the home has come to occupy more. As awareness of these social changes increases, the sex-linked differences in socialization may be expected to diminish, with the result that sex differences in behavior will also eventually diminish. The research literature supporting this thesis is reviewed. This includes findings bearing on (a) changes in the role of women, (b) sex differences in socialization and behavior that appear to reflect traditional sex role expectations, and (c) the direct effects of maternal employment on sex differences in children. (59 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Music-dependent memory: The roles of tempo change and mood mediation.

Music-dependent memory was obtained in previous literature by changing from 1 musical piece to another. Here, the phenomenon was induced by changing only the tempo of the same musical selection. After being presented with a list of words, along with a piece of background music, listeners recalled more words when the selection was played at the same tempo than when it was played at a different tempo. However, no significant reduction in memory was produced by recall contexts with a changed timbre, a different musical selection, or no music (Experiments 1 and 2). Tempo was found to influence the arousal dimension of mood (Experiment 3), and recall was higher in a mood context consistent (as compared with inconsistent) with a given tempo (Experiment 4). The results support the mood-mediation hypothesis of music-dependent memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Perceptions of organizational change: A stress and coping perspective.

Few organizational change studies identify the aspects of change that are salient to individuals and that influence well-being. The authors identified three distinct change characteristics: the frequency, impact and planning of change. R. S. Lazarus and S. Folkman's (1984) cognitive phenomenological model of stress and coping was used to propose ways that these change characteristics influence individuals' appraisal of the uncertainty associated with change, and, ultimately, job satisfaction and turnover intentions. Results of a repeated cross-sectional study that collected individuals' perceptions of change one month prior to employee attitudes in consecutive years indicated that while the three change perceptions were moderately to strongly intercorrelated, the change perceptions displayed differential relationships with outcomes. Discussion focuses on the importance of systematically considering individuals' subjective experience of change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memorable lessons from a multifaceted career.

Summarizes some of the major lessons of the author's experience consulting with thousands of patients, trainees, and supervisees in several dozen countries and hundreds of cities. The need for versatility in treatment style and approach is stressed, as well as the need of therapists to nurture and to know themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Type A behavior pattern and the judgment of noncontingency: Mediating roles of mood and perspective.

Tested past research findings that Type A's (coronary-prone) and Type B's (non-coronary-prone) differ in their behavioral responses to lack of control. 73 undergraduates, classified as Type A or B on the Jenkins Activity Survey, were used to examine perceptual judgments of noncontingency. Types A's and B's assumed the role of either an actor or an observer on a standard contingency-judgment task. Consistent with previous research, both Type A's and B's exhibited an illusion of control when in the role of actor. Only Type B's exhibited an illusion of control when observing another person perform the task. Additional analyses indicated that the absence of an illusion of control by Type A observers reflected accuracy rather than a motivational distortion. Mood was also found to mediate control judgments, but only for actors. The plausibility of a memory-based interpretation for the mood effects is discussed. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Control from the actor's perspective.

Examines a situation that embodies the entire spectrum of perceived control ranging from extreme helplessness to extreme domination. The authors consider sexual trauma from the perspective of the victim. From the actor's perspective, an important distinction is made between choice and prediction. This shows that, even in situations of apparent helplessness, perceived control may be legitimate from the actor's perspective. From this perspective, current theoretical frameworks on control may have distorted the actor's reality. It is suggested that future research on perceived control should be guided by the actor's perspective. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Commitment to family roles: Effects on managers' attitudes and performance.

The authors tested the premise that family role commitment (i.e., marital role commitment, parental role commitment) has simultaneous negative and positive effects on managers' (N = 346) life satisfaction, career satisfaction, and performance through family-to-work interference and enhancement. The authors also explored whether psychological strain mediates the effects of interference and enhancement on outcomes. The authors expected family role commitment to reduce the favorability of outcomes by increasing interference. To the contrary, they found that neither marital nor parental role commitment was associated with increased interference. The authors expected family role commitment to improve outcomes by increasing enhancement. As expected, marital role commitment was associated with increased enhancement, which, in turn, seemed to reduce strain and strengthen outcomes. Parental role commitment was also associated with increased enhancement. However, parental role commitment had direct positive effects on outcomes that were more substantial than its indirect effects through enhancement. Overall, marital and parental role commitment had more benefits than costs. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relation of family responsibilities and gender to the productivity and career satisfaction of medical faculty

BACKGROUND: Studies have found that female faculty publish less, have slower career progress, and generally have a more difficult time in academic careers than male faculty. The relation of family (dependent) responsibilities to gender and academic productivity is unclear. OBJECTIVE: To describe dependent responsibilities by gender and to identify their relation to the aspirations, goals, rate of progress, academic productivity, and career satisfaction of male and female medical school faculty. DESIGN: 177-item survey questionnaire. SETTING: 24 randomly selected medical schools in the contiguous United States. PARTICIPANTS: 1979 respondents from a probability sample of full-time academic medical school faculty. MEASUREMENTS: The main end point for measuring academic productivity was the total number of publications in refereed journals. Perceived career progress and career satisfaction were assessed by using Likert scales. RESULTS: For both male and female faculty, more than 90% of time devoted to family responsibilities was spent on child care. Among faculty with children, women had greater obstacles to academic careers and less institutional support, including research funding from their institutions (46% compared with 57%; P < 0.001) and secretarial support (0.68 full-time equivalents compared with 0.83 full-time equivalents; P = 0.003), than men. Compared with men with children, women with children had fewer publications (18.3 compared with 29.3; P < 0.001), slower self-perceived career progress (2.6 compared with 3.1; P < 0.001), and lower career satisfaction (5.9 compared with 6.6; P < 0.001). However, no significant differences between the sexes were seen for faculty without children. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with female faculty without children and compared with men, female faculty with children face major obstacles in academic careers. Some of these obstacles can be easily modified (for example, by eliminating after-hours meetings and creating part-time career tracks). Medical schools should address these obstacles and provide support for faculty with children.     

A causal model of the career orientation and career choice of adolescent women.

Expanded on R. E. Fassinger's (see record 1990-21225-001) model of career choice in college women by testing 2 causal models of career choice and orientation with high school women. Ss were 409 adolescent women enrolled in their last year of high school in an all-female private liberal arts high school in a large Midwestern city. Structural equation modeling analyses suggested that the career orientation and career choice of adolescent women were predicted by ability, agentic characteristics, gender role attitudes, and relationship with mother. Young women who possessed liberal gender role attitudes, were instrumental and efficacious with regard to math and careers, and exhibited moderate degrees of attachment and independence from their mothers tended to value their career pursuits. Adolescent women who selected nontraditional and prestigious careers showed high ability and strong agentic characteristics. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)