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A recent paper published in this journal (Poole & Kuhn, 1973) has reported that ‘a relatively large family appeared to be no impediment to the educational achievements of middle-class children’. This finding, however, is based upon an analysis which fell into a relatively unknown statistical trap. Poole & Kuhn are only the latest in a long line of victims of this trap and some of their predecessors are reviewed below. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The belief that the timing of a first birth has an enduring effect on a woman's chances for a favorable marital, family, and economic status and the number of children she will have was tested with data on 10,906 white and 6,044 nonwhite mothers from the 1967 Survey of Economic Opportunity. The risk of female family headship or living below the poverty line some 20 years after first birth seemed little different among ever-married mothers who had or had not borne an illegitimate child, or who had or had not been pregnant before marriage. Mothers of first births conceived before marriage had more children than mothers whose first birth was conceived after marriage. However, the difference between these two types of mothers is so small that the effect on the total number of children born is trivial. The status of never-married mothers is similar to ever-married mothers in disrupted marital statuses. Differences in family, marital, or economic status between older white and nonwhite mothers are not a consequence of differences in the timing of first births in the two populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The game of "Simon Says" was played individually with children in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and third grade. Errors decreased significantly with grade. First graders (average age 7) made substantial numbers of errors, indicating that "Simon Says" is more difficult than other tasks used to study children's impulsive errors and that estimates of ages at which children are able to inhibit impulsive responding depend on the demands of the task or situation. Third graders, first graders, and kindergarten girls improved with practice; kindergarten boys and preschoolers did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Activity-level and child-rearing questionnaires were ad- ministered to mothers and fathers of 43 children in nursery school. Mothers rated themselves as well as their children on their childhood activity level; fathers rated only themselves. The mother-child and father-child correlations for activity level were significant (r = .48 and r = .42, respectively). Correlations between parental attitudes toward child rearing and activity level of their children Were generally non significant, though mothers and fathers of active boys tended to he less protective and indulgent. The results were interpreted as consistent with a heritable component to activity level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the increasing sophistication o four communication technology, a new role for the home as a learning center is developing. The home as a learning center can serve the purposes of developing children's concepts of work and leisure; training young persons and adults for occupational competency; preparing older workers for new careers; developing competencies of men and women for their homemaking and family life responsibilities; serving in unique ways the career education needs of exceptional children; and promoting personal development and a sense of worth for persons of all ages. Career education in the home is a way to provide for increased learning opportunity for many people for an en tire life time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a new approach to use in presenting material to children. The concepts to be developed relate to members of the family, relatives they have visited, and the relatives who visit them. The aims of the first lesson that relate to members of the family are to develop the concept of who make up the members of the family and to develop the generalization that most families are made up in the same manner. The aim of the second lesson that relates the relatives they have visited is to the develop the concept of relatives as members of the family group.

For those social psychologists subscribing to self-role theory, the proposition that the self arises through interaction is a crucial one. In the past few years there have been several procedures developed to put into operational form the concepts "self" and "role," thereby rendering them useful in the formulation of empirical propositions. One of these, the Twenty Statements Test (TST), has been validated by the demonstration that dimensions of the self, abstracted from responses to the TST, are related to other aspects of behavior. In addition, Kuhn has found professional training, age, and sex to be related to the nature of the self as measured by the TST, while McPartland and Cumming report a relationship between social class and self-conception. The research reported here is a limited attempt to investigate a relationship between the role structure of a group and the way members of the group define themselves. Specifically, this research attempts to discern relationships between the role structure within families and the self-identifications of children of the families. That such relationships should prevail derives from our awareness that the family is a pervasive group in our society, and that the development and maintenance of the self for most individuals depends in large part upon the interaction that occurs within the family group. As families differ in structure this difference should be reflected in the ways children define themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous work suggests that chronic illness in one family member may affect the relationship between other members. Specifically, the onset of diabetes in a pre- adolescent child, examined here, may affect his parents' marital relationship. Pour independent measures tested the hypothesis that the marital integration of parents of diabetic children would be significantly lower than that of parents of matched non- diabetics. Results were statistically significant on two measures; in the predicted direction on the other two. it is suggested that diabetes is a crisis situation, intra- familial in origin, and thus has negative effects on family relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article narrates activities in the daily life of the author and his family. The top story of a building is the home of the author's family, a Chinese family not very rich and not very poor. At six o'clock in the morning the whole house is hushed, but there is a slight stir in the kitchen for our old servant, Ah Tung, is already busy preparing breakfast. A kettle of water is boiling on the stove, water for tea. Authors two little brothers are soon up and out of bed, playing together and jabbering in a flow of fluent Chinese which wakes their servant, Ah Yuet, up. Ah Yuet is a very fat, moon-faced girl. Every morning she spends a great deal of time combing her long, black hair Into a thick pigtail extending down her back. By seven o'clock the whole family is awake. Author's father and mother are reading the morning newspaper and his sisters prepare for school. The first words they utter as soon as they awake are good morning. For every morning there is an exchange of good morning greetings between members of the family and also between the family and servants. Chinese children are brought up to be very polite and respectful to one another and to their elders.

The article focuses on the family of the author. The author's family consists of seven persons: Father, Mother, two boys and three girls. Father is head of the house, and all respects his opinions. Mother is a housewife, and her functions are feeding, caring for, clothing, and worrying about the family. She is physically weak, and all the members of the family protect her, and try to ease her burden. Father and Mother together discipline the family and the older children have a hand in the discipline of the youngsters. The author's parents are Japan-born, and had only a Japanese elementary school education. Father and Mother consult each other a great deal. Evening mealtime is the only time during the day when the whole family sits at the table together. During the day, Father and the girls eat at home in shifts; the youngsters are in school and Big Brother at work. Religion plays an important part in their lives. In those days when the author's family attended language school at Fort Gakuen and at Hong-wanji, regular attendance at the Buddhist Sunday School there came naturally to them.

The article focuses on psychological role relationships shared by four children belonging to the same family. Four children of Toller family, Frank, Elizabeth, Nancy, and Sam were chosen for studying the desired aspects. There was a close bond between all the children, who needed each other's support against the parents, but there were frequent quarrels as well. These were worst between Frank and Elizabeth, who accordingly earned added disapproval, from the parents. Elizabeth was bossy and dictatorial to Nancy and would sometimes put false blame on to her. Nancy accepted this, and it was due to her generally placating attitude that the two managed to get along together. Both Elizabeth and Nancy showed a sense of protective responsibility to Sam, though Elizabeth was also bossy and spiteful at times. Sam allowed himself to be looked after, and did not retaliate towards Elizabeth. Both girls were also good with their other younger siblings, like their mother, though again, Elizabeth was sometimes openly unkind.

The article focuses on the methodology adopted by social workers to conduct research among a group of young girls. Over the age of 7 the children were divided according to age and sex, following the tendencies in natural groups, but there were too few children to take other factors into account. This was a handicap, but less serious since all the children of the families were invited, and approximately half of the group members came without an overt problem. It was agreed to limit each group to five members, but owing to a dearth of girls, mine usually numbered three. Each group met once a week for one and a quarter hours after school or on Saturday. The group work premises were in the basement of the office building and consisted of two medium-sized rooms with stone hallway between, and a third room leading into a small garden. Inside were two sinks with running water and two gas rings. The equipment included sandtray, powder paints, clay, woodwork and garden tools, dolls, puppets, dressing-up clothes, a baby's feeding bottle and various puzzles and games, biscuits, orangeade, and provisions for making tea were also available.

This article discusses the trends in broken homes among delinquent children. The importance of a continuing family structure for the child was recognized and given a prominent place in explanations of juvenile delinquency in former years, even though it was death which accounted for a large proportion of the broken homes for children. Nevertheless, of late there is a growing opinion that it might be better for children in unhappy homes if their parents were legally divorced, and some studies have been conducted which seek to compare children in unhappy intact homes and children from broken homes as to their general maladjustments. Information upon the kinds of broken homes among delinquent children over any long period of time is practically non-existent. During the period 1927-1936, the Children's Bureau assembled data from a number of courts, each of which severally included different classes of offenders, with no differentiation as to color. These gross data had little value except to serve as an indication of the high proportion of broken homes among delinquents, specially for females.

This article addresses the need for city planning and housing projects to provide opportunities for the growth and development of children and for the enrichment of family life. In the course of a lifetime an individual absorbs a great many changes and expects the next generation to meet further ones. Yet in recent decades changes have been coming so fast and on so many different levels that often a family's traditions as well as its expectations have been significantly affected. Some of the difficulties stand out particularly in the new factory-made suburbs that have sprung up in all parts of the country around large cities. In these we can see, along with the material advantages they offer to families escaping from crowded homes in crowded cities, the effects of uprooting people from their communities, their churches, their educational, cultural and civic activities. Parent educators find in these suburbs conditions that they could not have anticipated, in spite of their preoccupation with the many common problems of family relationships and family adjustments. As children get a little older, mothers--and fathers too--might start some new enterprises that will bring other kinds of people into the community. The main thing is that parents should be aware that they do not now have a real community--they have merely an aggregation of homes.

Presents news briefs and notes related to marriage and family issues in the U.S. as of February 1, 1944. List of the new officers of the Illinois Conference on Family Relations; Decrease in the number of children under 5, according to the 1940 Census; Plan of Mills College to offer a third family relations workshop in the summer of 1944; Publication of the book "Understanding Marriage and the Family," by The American Family.

The article presents a description of all Southern Jews. Iron City, Utah, is a steel, rubber, and textile town of some 60,000 people. Located in the hilly north of one of the Deep South states, Iron City is blessed with many natural resources but not with much new investment in the past decade. Jews and Catholics are recognized as white minorities. The distinction between old and new is not an easy one but although it is implicit, the Iron City Jews appear to understand it well enough and to behave accordingly. Roughly, there are two dimensions in the distinction, one of time and one of place. Not all the old Jews have been residents of Iron City for over a generation; and many of the new Jews can at least claim to have seen the "Depression" come and go in their present businesses. The new Jew, in contrast, is one who himself came to town from the North. Differences in the marital patterns of the two communities are more difficult to discern because they become submerged in extremely strong family solidarity and hidden from the observer. There are more marriages outside the faith among children of the old families, but the greater significance here lies in their small numbers and the reaction of the old Jews to such marriages.

The article provides information on the welfare functions of the Filipino family. For the study forty-eight families in a government housing project in Quezon City, Philippines, were taken at random and interviewed. Twenty-seven of the forty-eight families found to have dependent relatives living with them. The number of relatives per family varied from one to four giving a total of forty-six. A study of the economic effect of the "welfare burden" showed that smaller families with a slightly higher income were more apt to have dependent relatives. Most of the families reported that the presence of dependent relatives made no difference in their recreational habits while about a fifth of the families said that the presence of relatives enabled them to go out more frequently. The Filipino family is engaged in the extension of relief but is not functioning as a social welfare agency. In the Filipino family, not only the father and mother exercise authority over the children. The protective attitudes frequently shown by the Filipino family nay be a hazard to individual enterprise.

This article examines the role of the family as the primary cultural agent. Each individual child must be inducted into the culture and must be socialized if culture and social life are to continue. The child must learn to relinquish his naive biological behavior and physiological functioning and accept the socially sanctioned conduct and physiological requirements of the group. The growing child is also instructed in the use of and response to language, symbols, the institutional practices of money and credit, of voting and litigation, and so on and so on. The pictures of the world, of man, of social life, and of human nature, and the innumerable socially sanctioned practises of our group life are transmitted to the child by the family, guided usually in this by the church and the school. But in rearing the child and teaching these many and difficult lessons, each family presents its version or interpretation of the official culture, placing different emphasis and using different sanctions and explanations, often stressing some portions and neglecting others. Moreover, each family, being composed of individual personalities, each with peculiar emotional bias and feeling toward the world and toward each child, also gives this teaching an affective meaning, or emotional significance, that makes these lessons even more distinctive for each child.

The purpose of this study was to provide a large sample validation of the Family Attitude Measure (FAM) developed by Delhees et at. (7). The FAM was given to the parents of 250 junior high school children, and the items factored. The results of the analyses on two of the sub tests were found to be interpretable and are described in detail. Few of the factors identified were as interpretable in the sense of the Delhees et at. factors, but this could be due to the fact that this study involved the factoring of items rather than the "packages" which served as variables in the Delhees article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effect of birth order on intelligence. Some studies have indicated a superiority in intelligence of later born over firstborn, while other studies have suggested that firstborn are superior in intelligence to those of later ordinal positions. Differences in intelligence do not appear significantly large enough to account for the observed large differences in achievement among the ordinal positions reported in numerous studies, and economic hypotheses likewise fail to explain the differential achievement by birth order. Further research on birth order, therefore, may be more fruitful if focused on some of the social-psychological variables reported to be associated with ordinal rank. The findings reported herein for two, three, four and five-child families point toward a slight superiority in intelligence of firstborn over last born, with a tendency for intermediate born to have intelligence scores between their older and younger siblings. However, while these differences between firstborn and last born are statistically significant in a majority of the cases, the mean difference in the standardized intelligence scores between firstborn and last born is 1.64, comparable to 3.28 IQ points. Such a small difference is unlikely to have any practical effects on the achievement of firstborn relative to that of last born.

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The key feature in our analysis is that the shadow price of children with respect to their number (i.e., the cost of an additional child, holding their quality constant) is greater the higher their quality is. Similarly, the shadow price of children with respect to their quality (i.e., the cost of a unit increase in quality, holding number constant) is greater, the greater the number of children. Furthermore, with appropriate change of language, the same may be said of the other commodities consumed by the family. However, to simplify the analysis in this paper, we make the quantity-quality distinction only for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses upon the ways in which size of the family group affects the lives of its members, their characteristic values, the ways of rearing children and the behavior traits and patterns stressed in this rearing process. If it can be shown that differences in size of families makes differences in the conditioning or molding process, it would follow that families of different size produce different types of persons. The small family system is an intellectual achievement: its overall theme is planning, its spirit is democratic, its methods are persuasive, its emphases are intensive; it is a quality system, but its size creates or intensifies a number of emotional problems. The characteristics of the large family system are in many respects the direct opposite: it is not a planned family; parenthood tends to be extensive rather than intensive; it emphasizes the group rather than the individual: growing up in such a family involves a coming to terms with the realities of life. Large family living is both rewarding and a rigorous experience for its members. Conclusion: Is there an optimum size of family for child development? Some comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Findings are reported regarding the relationship between the level of self-de-rogation of adult subjects and the prior experience of a broken home during childhood. Data were collected by survey research methods from a sample (N=500) of the adult population of Harris County (including the city of Houston), Texas. The data were analyzed to determine the particular characteristics of the broken home situation (those relating to resultant living arrangements, cause of broken home, subject's age at time of broken home, parental remarriage, and subject's age at time of parental remarriage) which were associated with high self-derogation scores relative to subjects from intact families. Results are reported for the total sample and for subgroups differentiated by the race, sex, and social class of the subject. [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]

Relevant research is drawn upon to try to determine if marital success is in any way dependent upon number and spacing of children in the family. It is concluded that this question cannot be answered satisfactorily without taking into account the values parents bold regarding number and spacing. Value is seen as an intervening variable, ad it is "value-behavior discrepancy," more than behavior alone, that is likely to cause difficulty. In other words, more important to marital success than just how many children and how long between them is how successful the couple becomes in controlling number and spacing according to their desires, or else in adjusting their desires to conform with reality, or some of both-but, in any event, reducing the discrepancy between desire and occurrence. The article ends with a recognition of limitations in this partially tested theory and with brief suggestions for "next step" in its further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A test is made of the theory that children's creativity varies according to the degree to which the child's role in the family requires conformity to conventional norms. A test of this ‘conformity-inhibition’ theory is made possible by the known differences in degree to which Indian and American society expect normative conformity of children, and also because both societies expect greater conformity on the part of girls. Creativity was measured by the ability to generate ideas which might solve a puzzle in the form of a game presented for solution to husband-wife-child groups. Data for 128 family groups show that the Bombay children had lower scores than the Minneapolis sample. Girls' scores were lower than those of boys in both societies. Sex differences in creativity were greatest in Bombay. The lesser sex difference in the Minneapolis sample is interpreted as reflecting the greater freedom and individuality permitted girls in American society. As societies change towards a less restrictive normative code, individual creativity is likely to increase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The method of character education employed by the Communists, their system of developing socialist morality, and their childrearing practices are reviewed and commented upon in the light of practices and standards prevalent in the United States. The tremendous social problems that are confronting us present the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced. These problems must be solved by individuals who have learned to live responsibly in a democracy. The ultimate hope of humanity lies in man's capacity to be concerned for others in such a way as to establish a human fellowship that will cross all lines of political difference, social class, race, sex, philosophy, and religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical and empirical bases are presented in this paper for considering the situation of parents during the period after the children leave the family of orientation as an emergent and identifiable phase of the family cycle. The post parental period is found to be generally a satisfactory one for marital partners although problems arise in role-taking and adult socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the possible effects of divorce upon the behavior of adolescent children. A large sample of parents (N = 1,566) completed usable questionnaires; the sample was then divided into the independent variables of family type and social class and the dependent variables of adolescent characteristics and school social relationships. Nonsignificant differences were found for the majority of relationships tested pertaining to the detrimental effects of divorce upon children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social backgrounds of 63 heroin addicts and 63 non-addict personality disorders are compared. Backgrounds of both groups are disturbed. Common to both groups is an unstable home in childhood. The backgrounds of 20 ftmale addinct and 20 healthy primiparae are compared and a marked contrast in stability is demonstrated. It is suggested that the spread of addiction will be contained more by stabilizing the family structure than by treatment of the addinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses child's control of his kindred in view of geographical mobility and it's effects. In the U.S., to move is more usual than not to move, especially when a family is young. For the purpose of learning about the child's appreciation of such constant geographic mobility, a study was conducted of the effect this movement may have upon the young child's knowledge of the composition of his family cell. In the effort to discover what effect the dispersion of children's near relatives had on their conception of the composition of their family, 98 boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 13 were given the task of naming and identifying their parents' siblings and their spouses and then looked at the accuracy of these answers in terms of present location of these persons. It is apparently clear that geographic distance improves only the likelihood of the older child's remembering his aunts and uncles, and may have an inverse effect on the younger boys especially. These boys were most often wrong. The younger girls presented a pattern of responses more like the older boys than like the older girls, whose answers were nearly perfectly adult.

Married couples without children are more geographically mobile than those with children, at least through age 45. Among husband-wife couples with children, ages of children exercises a consistent mobility differential; when age of family head is controlled for, families with children under 6 years old only are the most mobile both within and between counties, followed by those with children under 6 and 6-17 years old, and followed in turn by families with children 6-17 years old only. The relationship between number of children and the probability of moving within counties has a reverse J-shape for family heads at each age under 45; after age 45 the relationship assumes a more normal J shape. Number of children is inversely related to the probability of migrating (moving between counties) for husband-wife families in which the husband is under 35; after age 35 the relationship is erratic. The effect of ages of children generally holds for each size of family. Female family heads with children are generally more geographically mobile than male family heads (wife present) at the same age and with the same number and ages of children present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article evaluates a program of parent education in a children's hospital. Parent education becomes a medical as well as a psychologic necessity, therefore, if the parent is to bring reality to circumstances, which may appear highly enigmatic to the child, and also where proper follow up care must be assured. The physician must depend upon the parent for the child's adherence to the prescribed program of prophylaxis and follow up care. The parent actually becomes a surrogate physician in those cases where the child will require prolonged convalescent and prophylactic care. Parents must, therefore, have not only the best intentions and the fervent hope of his child's recovery, but also the facts necessary to facilitate that recovery. Illness and hospitalization in childhood have frequently been called both disruptive and potentially psychologically traumatic. These bad effects can be minimized by the continued participation of the parent, especially the mother, in those aspects of the child's daily routine which hospital circumstances permit.

Verbal and concrete transitivity tests were presented to 320 subjects between 8 and 18 years of age. 2 criterion measures, correctness of answer and justification for answer, were employed. Both measures reflected an increase in transitive reasoning with increasing age; correct answers were not necessarily associated with adequate justifications, nor were incorrect answers with inadequate justifications. More correct answers, but less adequate justifications, were obtained with the concrete test; test differences were partly due to encoding difficulties introduced in verbal test. Analysis of the discrepancy between criterion measures indicates the importance of the process-achievement distinction for experimental developmental analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to determine the relative salience of skin color and physical disability in establishing children's preference for other children. The method employed was' to obtain a rank-order preference of drawings in which skin color and handicap were systematically varied. Subjects were children aged 10-12 from lower-income Negro, white, and Puerto Rican families, and from upper-income while Jewish families. Results suggest that, for all subject, physical handicap is such a powerful cue in establishing preference that it largely masks preference based on skin color. Interpretation of results was aided by use of sociometric data on race preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the intercorrelations between the four family scales, namely; Love, Household Duties and Responsibilities, Social Restriction and Family Cohesion, with systematically varied populations of elementary school children. Reliability and validity of the scales; Evidence obtained about the family's socioeconomic status and the children's adjustment to school; Comparison of the effects of population variations on the results.

This paper presents a study that explored aspects of the assumption that specific money education practices of parents affect children's knowledge and use of money. Subjects were 512 children and 484 different mothers and fathers, selected in part at random and in part to represent rural families in the Blue Grass area of Kentucky. The variables usually relating to measures of educational status, age, IQ, parent education, and socioeconomic status, had positive linear relations with children's scores on the coin tests of knowledge of money use and the experience with money scale, with the amount of money given to children, and with parents' scores on the parent recommended practices scale. It was concluded that these measures, developed in this project, had the usefulness required to test aspects of typical recommendations for parents.

Evaluates the acceptance of reciprocity as a justice-principle in children. Relationship between the level of intelligence and acceptance of reciprocity; Decrease in the acceptance of reciprocity; Lack of a relationship between the level of intelligence and acceptance of reciprocity.