This paper explores the process of going back in qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) to gather later accounts of unfolding personal experiences. The design of interview-based QLR is usually premised on collecting data, over-time, around an unfolding experience or event. This design facilitates the establishment of an on-going research…

This commentary on "Motherhood in the Shadow of Incest" by Rachel Lev-Wiesel, is divided into three sections. In the first section, this author addresses the issue of the role of mothers in incest. Faller contends that, with regard to research findings on the role of mothers' own sexual victimization in her child's experience, previous research…

Dichotomizes literature on nonoffending mothers of sexually abused children into opinion-based and research-based studies. Argues that most information on nonoffending mothers is opinion based, not research based, and the literature disregards the sources of data. It appears that opinions have been accorded the same validity as research findings.…

The author was invited to prepare a commentary in response to the Lev-Wiesel manuscript titled "Intergenerational Transmission of Sexual Abuse? Motherhood in the Shadow of Incest." Lev-Wiesel's stated intent in the study was to understand an important issue, namely how is intra-familial sexual abuse perpetuated across successive generations. This…

Offers an explanation of why Cohn and Tronick's (1988) result replicates that of Kaye and Fogel (1980) in spite of important differences in the way interactive behavior is conceptualized, coded, and treated statistically. Suggests that stochastic variability in onset times has profound implications for the understanding of interaction process and…

Factors influencing the psychological impact of menarche include age at time of first period, social factors, amount of preparation, and cultural factors. (Author/MP)

This presentation describes research on families with mentally retarded children, focusing on trends since 1983, the year that family research issues were reconceptualized in a paper titled "A Model of Stress, Coping, and Family Ecology" by Keith Crnic and others. The trend analysis concentrates on four issues: (1) the magnitude of the impact of…

A major fear of many who are concerned with the welfare system is that the system itself tends to create pathology among recipients, and in the case of children, to cause mal-socialization. There are a number of problems with these assertions. The chief problem is that there is not much good evidence, one way or another, concerning the effects of…

Responds to Fogel's (1988) concerns about the validity and preferred uses of scaled monadic phases and introduces a note of caution about prematurely concluding that stochastic organization alone is of significance to development. (RH)

Examined effects of early parental employment on children, using data from National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Found that more work hours were associated with slightly lower cognitive development through age 9 and lower academic achievement before age 7, but not with behavior problems, compliance, or self-esteem. Early parental employment was…

Three areas are addressed in this paper: the family-in-crisis motif; the family as educator; and parent education. (1) The family in crisis: The family-in-crisis motif pervades both professional and popular commentary on the contemporary American family. There are powerful continuities in our perception of the American family crisis in every…

The effects of sampling biases upon research studies requiring different time commitments of Ss in mother-infant studies were examined. Twenty mothers who participated in 35 hours of observation were compared with 17 mothers who refused to participate but completed a questionnaire. Questionnaire responses did not differentiate the two groups.…

Suggests that the model by Parke, MacDonald, Beitel, and Bhavnagri (1988) of ways that parents influence children's social development might be used to organize the study of abnormal development in children of depressed mothers. Components of a theoretical model of developmental psychopathology are outlined. (RH)

Do sampling biases introduced in studies requiring a large amount of time make those samples less representative than the samples in studies requiring less subject involvement? This question was explored in the context of mother-infant interaction studies by comparing maternal attitudes of two groups of primiparous mothers: 20 mothers who…

Multiple discriminant function analysis was conducted with data from Strange Situations. Results enable researchers to obtain attachment classifications directly from scores on interactive behavior and crying during reunion episodes. (PCB)