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Recent research on elder abuse highlights the importance of communication and conflict resolution in the families of older people. Although methods of handling detection and intervention of elder abuse exist, few prevention programs are available for use with community groups. This article reviews the literature on elder abuse and describes an educational curriculum designed to prevent avuse and neglect in families of the elderly.

This study addresses two questions. First, do adolescent mothers differ from older mothers with similar educational backgrounds in terms of the quality of care they provide for their toddlers? Secondly, can maternal child-rearing beliefs be used to predict which mothers are providing the most supportive care for their toddlers? The older mothers are found to have higher (more favorable) Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scores than the younger mothers. Both older and younger mothers who provide their toddlers with the most supportive care have beliefs about appropriate child-rearing practices that differ from the beliefs of their peers who provide less supportive care.

This longitudinal study of 724 rural families in nine central states investigates the potential effects of young adult children's leaving and returning home upon midlife rural fathers and their family relationships. As expected, only a minority of the rural fathers report distress or unhappiness over either and leaving home or returning home of a young adult child. However, when only the youngest children's leaving is considered, the farm fathers are significantly lower than the rural/nonfarm fathers on indicators of individual well-being and on marital and family satisfaction. More than twice as many farm fathers report distress and feeling bad when the child who left is the youngest child. On the other hand, the returning of adult children to the farm home may be a 'mixed blessing' to farm fathers. Several implications of the findings are suggested for family interventionists who work with farm and other rural families.