Examines impact of farm women's paid off-farm work experience on their marital adjustment and stability. Finds survey of Louisiana farm households does not provide clear support for either status competition or status enhancement models. Discusses implications of findings in context of recent increases in part-time farming. (LFL)

Reports recent research on family violence in eight articles. Deals with issues in wife abuse such as why women leave violent relationships and wife abuse programs. Discusses child abuse, its relationship to maternal employment and maturity, and child stealing. Analyzes the current state of knowledge and research. (JAC)

Expanding welfare benefits to include two-parent families has long been considered an option for a public policy designed to strengthen family units. Findings suggest that these families would be better aided by wage subsidies that reduce unemployment of family heads and raise earnings of the family's working members. (JOW)

Assessed association between interspousal aggression and child problems after controlling for parents' general marital discord among 87 couples requesting marital therapy. Spouses completed measures of marital aggression, marital discord, child problems, and family demographics. Results showed that marital aggression contributed unique variance to…

Interviewed a national panel of 1,668 married women and men in 1980 and 1983 to assess effects of shift work on 6 measures of marital quality (marital happiness, interaction, disagreements, general problems, sexual problems, and child-related problems) and probability of divorce. Results suggested that shift work has a modest but general adverse…

Examined the triggering effect of maritally related suicide stories in the mass media on monthly suicide rates of those involved in divorce or in marital distress. Support was found for this effect, independent of season and of changes in unemployment, but the unemployment rate was more closely associated with suicide than suicide stories in the…

Reports on interviews with 20 assaulted women about their concerns for their children and how these concerns affected the decision to leave the assailant. Fifty-five percent of the women's children had witnessed violence, and 90 percent of these children had become involved in the physical or psychological abuse in some way, even after separation.…

Argues for two distinct forms of couple violence. Review of large-sample surveys and data gathered from women's shelters suggests that some families suffer from occasional violence by either husbands or wives (common couple violence), while other families are terrorized by systematic male violence (patriarchal terrorism). Implications are…

Examines a clinical sample of 215 cases of allegations of sexual abuse in families involved in divorce. Cases are categorized according to the circumstances surrounding abuse allegations, clinical substantiation, and legal outcomes. Court substantiation rate is about half the clinic substantiation rate. Nearly one-fifth of parents raising concerns…

Examined whether spouses' attributions for partner behavior are related to their behavior by assessing their attributions and observing the problem-solving discussions of cohabitating couples (n=52) in which neither spouse was depressed or distressed, the wife was depressed and both spouses were distressed, and the wife was not depressed and both…

A community sample of 617 adult women completed a questionnaire about witnessing interparental physical conflicts before the age of 16. Twenty percent of respondents reported witnessing some type of physical conflict between parents. Mean age when physical conflict was first observed was eight. Women who witnessed parental physical conflict…

The links among marital relations and children's representations were examined. Forty-seven children between the ages of 5 and 8 completed the Family Stories Task (FAST) to obtain their narrative representations of family relations and performed a variation of a puppet procedure (Mize & Ladd, 1988) to assess children's dispositions towards peer…

Historically, alcoholism has been defined as an individual problem, and as a result, family factors have received little attention. During the past decade, however, a new theoretical-methodological perspective has been introduced which draws upon general systems theory for rationale, family theory for substance, and behavioral psychology for…

Economic loss and hardship during the 1929 Depression produced marital tension resulting from increased conflict over finances and temperamental behavior of husbands and wives. Data on 110 couples were obtained from the Berkeley Study at the Institute of Human Development in California. Annual data were collected from wife, home observer, and…

Comparisons of graduate student couples indicated lower levels of marital adjustment (consensus and affection) for couples where only the husband was a student. Suggests variables other than student status may relate to marital adjustment. When only the wife was a student, family income was higher and couples were older. (Author)