During the second year of a 3-year study involving 112 Iowa farm families, mothers of children aged 4 to 10 years old expressed expectations of independence, responsibility, and hard work from their children during home interviews. The importance of the parent-child relationship together with the lack of sufficient child-rearing research on rural…

The 12 states comprising the North Central Region have been affected in similar ways by the farm crisis of the 1980s. Statewide surveys show sizeable proportions of farm operations that are experiencing moderately high levels of financial stress. The problems caused by chronic stress on family structure and functioning, the loss of mainstreet…