A study investigated whether routine, everyday communication in parent-child relationships affects relationship satisfaction as well as how conflict might fit into the relational picture. Fifty-two mothers (38 married and 14 single) with sons 5-14 years of age completed the Iowa Communication Record (ICR) to provide information about routine…

Parents of firstborn male and female infants completed questionnaires concerning their perceptions of their infants. One question focused on how important it was for their children to become either very masculine or very feminine. It was predicted that the less parents stressed the importance of gender appropriateness, the less they would view…

Although it has been suggested that contact with children is important for the satisfaction of the economic, emotional, and service needs of older parents, social gerontology research provides little direct evidence that childless elders or elders with few living children are less satisfied than others. To examine the effects of family size,…

Information on male linkage is usually generalized from studies of female linkage and the saliency of the father-son tie in later life is unclear. The importance of the father-son tie was examined in 56 men aged 65 and older through a comparative analysis designed to compare the levels of association and helping between fathers and sons to those…

Much research has attempted to understand the short-term effects of divorce, and it has shown overall harmful effects during childhood. The long-range implications, or effects in adulthood, have largely been ignored. This correlational study sought to understand the long-term effects of divorce by identifying interpersonal traits, intimacy, and…

A study was conducted to investigate the influence of systematic trends in the successfulness of children's performance upon subsequent parental disciplinary actions. A total of 30 mothers 24 to 45 years of age and their sons, ages 4 to 7.5 years, participated. Mothers were provided with predetermined sequences of trial-by-trial information about…

Support of aging parents is usually credited to daughters. To investigate the nature of support provided by sons and daughters to married or widowed mothers, married and widowed mothers from the 1977 Social Security Administration's Midwestern Retirement Community Study listed important people and details of the support (emotional, social, and…

The gender variable in adult child caregiving has not been clearly examined. Research often uses non-random participants, inappropriate caregiver definitions, non-differentiation of helping tasks, avoidance of daughter/son comparison, and the non-use of the elder's marital status as a control. A study was conducted to examine the gender variable…

A survey was made of 107 fathers of boys aged 11 and 12 competing in the Pee Wee Level Division III of the Connecticut State Ice Hockey Tournament. The questionnaire was designed to examine the career aspirations of the fathers for their sons in ice hockey, and to determine their attitudes toward their son's participation in the sport as it…

This study examines the interaction of mother-son dyads as a function of mothers' and sons' locus of control and the demand characteristics of specific tasks. The subjects were 32 third grade boys from parochial schools in the District of Columbia area and their mothers. They were assigned to internal or external locus of control groups based on a…

Assertions regarding the impact of the quality of the father-son relationship on sons' gender developmental experience have not been tested empirically in the literature. Such an examination is the focus of this study. As no relational account of the relationship exists, self-in-relation theory was used to ground these assertions theoretically.…

To examine black-white differences in the public's definitions of appropriate behavior toward a frail older parent for sons and daughters in dual earner couples, data were collected from a probability sample of 241 white and 64 black adults. Telephone interviews were used for data collection. Respondents were asked to rate the appropriateness of…

This study compared immediate, short-term effects of different training components on mothers' acquisition of non-directive play skills. Subjects were dyads of 49 mothers and their sons, ages 4 to 6. Mother-son pairs were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. The control group received no training. All other mothers viewed the videotape…

Adolescent offspring of alcoholics have been found to have higher alcohol reinforcement expectancies than do teenagers from nonalcoholic families. In particular, those with a positive family history of alcoholism expect more cognitive and motor enhancement with alcohol consumption. This study examined the alcohol expectancies of 58 matched pairs…

Adult children are the primary family supports to the frail elderly, and daughters predominate as providers of direct services. The trend toward smaller families and the increased proportion of working women, however, may limit the availability of daughters. Adult children (N=131) identified as the primary caregiving relative to an older parent…