This paper suggests that helpers must often educate parents about the causes of stress and its effects on the parenting process. Parents with difficult children and adolescents often complain not only that their children misbehave or are unmotivated and depressed but that such behaviors create stress in the entire family. Many clinicians report…

Child abuse involves more than the use of corporal punishment with a child. Investigators have measured parents' emotional reactivity and attributions in relation to aversive child behavior. A "video recall" procedure has been used for assessing affective responding of adults engaged in marital conflict and has been valid for obtaining…

Studies the social adjustment of 30 Chilean refugee families who comprise the Arauco Housing Cooperative in Toronto, Canada. Concludes that preservation of the parent child relationship in times of stress is the key to the child's continuing development. (FMW)

Although much research has been done examining adult stressors, only recently have researchers focused attention on measuring levels of stress in children. Because children tend not to be aware of their own tense state, instruments are needed to measure levels of stress in children. The two main methods of measuring stress in children are to ask…

To determine whether support systems ameliorated the impact of divorce on family stress and child adjustment, the present study examined the availability to divorced families of various support systems, including the extended family, church, work, and community groups. Specifically, the study addressed the impact of parental support systems on…

Children today come to school with problems that are markedly different from those of only a generation ago. Because school is such a large part of a child's life, the school experience is a highly significant factor in the child's life-stress situation. Unfortunately, many of the current practices in the school, far from helping children to cope,…

A 3-year longitudinal study of children at risk for depression was completed, studying children (aged 8-16) of unipolar depressed, bipolar, chronically medically ill, and normal women. Nearly 100 children from 68 families were included, and the psychiatric status and functioning of the mothers and children were studied at 6-month intervals.…

This investigation explored relationships between parenting stress, dyadic adjustment, and social support in families with normal healthy infants of 18 months of age. It was expected that parenting stress would be high when social support was absent and that this would be related to poor marital relationships. Participants were 34 families…

This literature review compares the adjustment of mothers and fathers to the stress resulting from having a child with a disability. The ABCX model developed by Hill was selected for the analysis due to its emphasis on the response to stress in general of both the family as a whole and of individual family members. The model distinguishes between…

This study examined the relationship of multiple domains of the child's environment and attachment security within a socioeconomically at-risk sample of 101 families. Mothers65% percent of whom were Latinaand their children who were in a home visitor program or on the waiting list for the program were visited at home. Measures included observer…

The relationships between economic stress on the family and child and parental adjustment were examined for a sample of 199 girls and boys in grades one, four, and seven. These associations were examined separately for families in which both parents were present and in which mothers only were at home. Economic stress was associated with boys'…

This paper discusses infant attachment, which it defines as a long-lasting emotional bond revealed when a child under stress seeks out and tries to stay close to a specific figure. The paper addresses: (1) What is attachment? Who are the pioneers in attachment theory?; (2) How do we notice attachment in action?; (3) Is attachment the only…

Research findings produce a positive argument for the inclusion of relaxation training in the school curriculum. Since today's children face a great deal of stress, they must learn coping techniques. Learning to relax at will is one method of learning to survive, because the relaxation response is incompatible with anxiety; the child learns to…

This paper examines the problem of having many poor children in the wealthy United States and the need to find answers to this problem. Despite much recent talk about "family values," the dominant U.S. ideology holds that family welfare is a private rather than a public responsibility. Poor children are seen as a special population that diverts…

The Parenting Stress Index (PSI) is a clinical and research self-report instrument designed to identify mother-child systems which are under stress and to indicate the sources of stress. It is based on the research literature in child development, parent functioning, and stress. The normative sample for the PSI consisted of 470 mothers with at…