Search

This paper's thesis is that many adolescent problems, particularly those involving sex, can be strikingly reduced or eliminated by intelligent, rationally planned parental management beginning at birth. Among the principal features of desirable parental management, the paper stresses effective parent-child communication. Of approximately 1,500 couples who received routine medical and psychological preparation for marriage over a period of 35 years, approximately 500 remained under continuing counsel and observation after their children came for premarital service. Thus conclusions could be drawn as to how effective she parents had been in preparing their children for adolescence and for marriage, and what type of parental management reduces problems of adolescence and increases capability for successful marriage. Young people' demand for earlier marriage is seen as acceptable when they have matured under improved standards of democratic process and sex education in the family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage Council of Philadelphia, a community service agency which offers leadership of sex education courses requested by schools, colleges, and lay and religious groups, uses a ‘counselor-educator’ approach and process rather than the traditional educator's emphasis on information-giving. Staff members try to help teenagers not only to increase sex knowledge but to enlarge their understanding of emotional interactions and to develop the verbal and nonverbal skills needed for interpersonal competence. This paper emphasizes the leader's approach to the concept that sex experience is related to the full range of self-expressiveness and communication, and hopefully to the full valuing of another human being in sex and in all of life's personal relationships. Contacts with parents, schools, and community groups are also described as part of the leader's responsibility in educating teen-agers about sex. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whom do parents see as the social agent(s) to be entrusted with the sex education of children? This paper investigates the question of the so-called take-over of a family function by another social institution. Data obtained from a random sample of mothers who had experienced a live-birth or stillbirth in the last five years suggest that most parents feel they should teach children about reproductive physiology, but that they also want the schools to help. Preference does not appear to be contingent on the extent of the mother's knowledge of reproductive physiology, on her fertility experience, or on the source of her sex information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmarried mothers are frequently unreached in our society. Even when they come to maternity homes, the babies are often the foci of agency concern, and the mothers leave with their basic problems untouched. This paper describes the attempt of an agency, the Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County, Florida, to reach out to a group of girls in a maternity home and to another quite dissimilar group of dropouts from school because of pregnancy. Group counseling is a process which can help many of these persons, some of whom can gain thereby the necessary strength and support to tolerate individual counseling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which identifies factors associated with singlehood in males and females. The authors argue that a lot of research has been conducted into the psychological sequelae that lead to singlehood, however factors from childhood can also account for this status. The findings support the hypothesis that higher levels of intelligence, education, and career status account for singlehood in females. Males, it was found, are more likely to remain single if they possess poor interpersonal relationships with parents or siblings.

Several theoretical ideas in role theory are integrated with the empirical literature that has investigated such role transitions as adjusting to the coming of the first child, retirement, bereavement, etc. This analysis is an attempt to build theory by identifying and reworking propositions that are sufficiently general and precisely stated that they can be used as a basis for deductively explaining why variation occurs in the ease of making various role transitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study concerning how the high school teachers in Florida gives advise to their students. The study attempts to estimate the amount of counseling done per year by vocational homemaking teachers to their students concerning dating relationships, premarital and marital relationships, intrafamilial relationships, personal growth and psychosexual development. It aims to determine the relationship between counseling done on the concerns mentioned and selected factors associated with the teachers, including recency of formal education, counseling education of training, amount of time available for counseling, among others. It is also mentioned in the paper that the study does not evaluate the effectiveness of their counseling.

Previous research designed to investigate vasectomy attitude has studied men who had already obtained the operation and has identified these men's post-operative sexual and psychosocial adjustments or lack of them together with the relation of these factors to verbalized attitudes. In contrast, the present research studied potential vasectomees, men who have not yet had the vasectomy, and investigated these men's attitude as regards (1) the organization of their expectancy beliefs about vasectomy, and (2) the structural relationships between their attitude and expectancy beliefs. The analysis made identified (1) an organization of expectancy beliefs into six clusters, and (J) the key belief determinants of attitude. These results' theoretical implications and their practical implications to the screening and counseling of prospective vasectomies were then discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interview data collected from a sample of 210 persons in Detroit, aged 60 to 94, were analyzed. A series of twelve items was utilized as a measure of four types of evaluation of everyday life. The main hypothesis tested was that relative isolation (desolation) as reflected in becoming widowed or divorced, rather than absolute isolation, which includes the widowed, divorced, and the single, is related to negative evaluations. On the whole, the desolate (widowed and divorced) were found to be more negative than the nondesolate (single and married), with long-term, widowed desolates approximating nondesolates in their evaluations. A distinction between positive and negative desolation, and the anticipation of becoming desolate are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The major aim of this study was to investigate the influence on ego's attitudes toward his familial roles of husband and father and his nonfamilial role of student by the validation of those roles by his significant others. The sample consisted of 115 married undergraduate and graduate students. The findings supported theoretical arguments that individuals have two classes of significant others-role-specific significant others and orientational others. Further, the findings of a relationship between role validation and role attitude for role specific significant others and not for orientational others suggest very strongly that one's attitudes towards a given role are influenced more by situationally significant others than by people who are important to him as a "person". Finally, the differential impact of kin versus nonkin role-specific significant others on familial and nonfamilial roles was presented and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students at a large university, a small, church-related college, and a theological seminary were surveyed for the purpose of identifying familial factors which might account for "hawkish" attitudes toward war, under the assumption that some parents, as socialization agents, transmit pro-war attitudes to the young. In general, the data intimated that pro-war students were more frequently from lower-class and rural origins; from families which held conservative values and stressed conformity in parent-child relationships; and thus apparently from families which have accepted more traditional solutions in problem-solving. The data supported both the theories of "status politics" and the "authoritarian personality." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rokeach's notion of dogmatism viewed as a system or network of beliefs and attitudes was related to the area of adoption attitudes. The Dogmatism Scale and an Adoption Attitude Scale were administered to 113 college students. Hypotheses that dogmatism would be positively related to intolerant attitudes toward adoption and areas related to adoption were almost wholly supported for the 61 males in the sample, but not the females. The results are interpreted as suggesting that the emphasis on the maternal aspects of the feminine role in our society makes attitudes toward adoption an exception to Rokeach's theory of dogmatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The several "parenthood as a crisis" studies (including one significant but unpublished investigation) are critically reviewed. Possible explanations for the great discrepancy in published "crisis scores" are offered. In this context, the relationship of social class to variation in the ease with which the parenthood role is assumed is explored in some detail. Freilich's concept of the "natural triad" is shown as a potentially useful theoretical approach to understanding parenthood. It is suggested that future research the adjustment of parents to their children include (1) a distinction between objective behavioral changes required by parenthood and the subjective interpretation of these changes by the parents; (2) the use of standard, reliable, and valid instrument for measuring both the rewards and difficulties of parenthood; (3) larger and more representative samples; and (4) a continuing attempt to identify the structural variables related to degree of ease in making the transition to parenthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with practical problems in the operation and administration of the canon law of divorce and annulment of the Roman Catholic church at the parish level. The author has conducted personal interviews, primarily with parish priests, in order to determine the nature and extent of the role played by the parish priest in an action for an annulment or divorce. A major problem is the lack of legal grounds for consensual divorce. However, much can still be done depending upon the priest's attitude, expertise and other factors that may influence the success or failure of the action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing chiefly the California Test of Personality, this study compared the personal and social adjustment of 38 never-married women and 38 married mothers. Certain contemporary stereotypes picturing the never-married woman as deficient in personal and social adjustment and insisting that marriage and motherhood are essential to feminine fulfillment were not supported. The two groups in this study exhibited a comparable adjustment pattern, both scoring above the average on norms provided for the CTP. It is concluded that, through creative contribution to society, a never-married woman may achieve a satisfactory adjustment to life and that, though denied a husband and children, she may nonetheless experience adequate personality fulfillment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented below is a research report which seeks to shed light on the relationship between the social functioning of urban families and their ethnic status. More specifically, this research attempts to assess the influence of social class on the way ethnic group membership affects family behavior. New interest in this issue was sparked three years ago by the publication of the so-called Moynihan Report. Findings show that social status overshadows ethnicity in determining the nature of family functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study an attempt was made to replicate an earlier study and to determine whether variability among published findings on adjusting to the first child may be due in part to the use of different measuring instruments. An effort was also made to test the hypothesis that the amount of difficulty in adjusting to the first child was positively correlated with the child's age and to ascertain whether difficulty with the first child was negatively correlated with parents' marital adjustment scores. The replication confirmed that parenthood was not as severely stressful as earlier studies had suggested. Findings varied considerably when two indexes were used with the same research subjects, but checklist scores and interview ratings were correlated to- a statistically significant degree. The amount of difficulty in adjusting to the first infant and parents' marital adjustment scores were negatively correlated to a statistically significant degree for checklist scores but not for ratings of interviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A random sample of married couples from a middle-class community of about 6,000 was selected; 117 paired, usable questionnaires were obtained (a response rate of 88 percent of contacted families). Using the Dean Emotional Maturity Scale and the Nye Scale of Marital Adjustment, it was determined that the husband's emotional maturity (self-rated) correlated .28 with his marital adjustment score; his emotional maturity as rated by his wife (independently and confidentially) correlated .52. The wife's emotional maturity (self-rated) correlated with her marital adjustment score .35; her emotional maturity (spouse-rated, as above) correlated .39. Marital adjustment scores correlated with each other .59. The hypothesis is regarded as sustained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adolescent lacks the maturity to estimate the ultimate effect of coitus upon his total personality integration. Heterosexual activities may represent (1) efforts to compensate for nonsexual affectional frustration, (2) surrender to peer group pressure to maintain status, or (3) abdication of the capacity for self-discipline and individual responsibility. They may lead to an undesired and undesirable marriage. Deterioration of the self-image may initiate marital conflict and recrimination inimical to conjugal harmony. The marriage counselor, however, would do well to focus with the utmost empathy on the total personality of each self-defeating spouse. Personal and marital contentment might be enhanced by offering adolescents well-designed instruction in what it means to be a human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]