International assessments of academic achievement are common. They are usually accompanied by attempts to infer the determinants of cross-country achievement gaps, but these inferences have little empirical foundation. This paper applies the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition to the problem of explaining why primary students in Cuban schools score than…

Data from the Children in the Community Transitions Study were used to examine gender differences in the impact of family contact on the development of finance and romance instrumentality from ages 17 to 27 years. Family contact decreased among both men and women across emerging adulthood, although it decreased more rapidly in men than in women.…

How is life different for someone who grows up with a sibling who has mental retardation? In this phenomenological case study, I profile the life experiences of a 39-year-old woman as sibling to a 35-year-old man with Down syndrome, using her own words as she explored her sibling experience and how this relationship shaped her identity,…

This article presents an overview of a research-informed family resilience framework, developed as a conceptual map to guide school counselors' preventive and interventive efforts with students and their families. Key processes that characterize children's and families' resilience are outlined along with recommendations for how school counselors…

Within-family estimates have been considered a remedy to selection bias in estimates of long-run consequences of teen motherhood. A major critique, however, is that heterogeneity within the family might still bias the estimates. Using Swedish data on biological sisters, I revisit the question of the consequences of teenage motherhood. My…

Students in sixth and ninth grades were surveyed to determine attitudes toward reading and identify factors in the lives of older children and teens associated with the development of a love of reading. A group of 14 students who love to read, as well as an equal number of students who prefer not to read, were then interviewed about their reading…

Using data from the 1996 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79) merged mother-child sample, we investigate the impact of two family events, parental divorce and the birth of a sibling, on the cognitive stimulation and emotional support provided to children in the home. We use fixed-effect regression techniques to control for unmeasured…

Based on a developmental contextual perspective advocated by Vondracek, Lerner, and Schulenberg, this article provides a comprehensive review of the research published since 1980 related to family of origin influences on career development and occupational choice. Because individuals are most likely to seek assistance with career decisions from…

Eighty-three first-year Latino students from seven institutions participated in this qualitative study of the familial influences on identity development. Using grounded theory methodology, the category of Situating Identity is further explored by looking specifically at the condition called Generation in the United States and Familial Influences…

Cognitive, home, and family factors that theoretically could influence whether or not preschoolers' interests were focused on domains characterized by the acquisition of knowledge concerning object concepts (e.g., dinosaurs, horses) were assessed in a short-term longitudinal investigation of 211 4-year-olds. Boys were six times as likely as girls…

This study investigated reciprocity in parent-adolescent interactions among 102 families from lower or higher socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Negative behaviors between parents and adolescents were more reciprocal (strongly correlated) in higher SES than lower SES families, and this reciprocity correlated with higher family relationship…

This article examines gender and family composition differences in 98 biethnic adolescents reports of familial ethnic socialization and ethnic identity. Using analysis of variance, four groups (i.e., adolescent males with Latina mothers and European American fathers, adolescent females with Latina mothers and European American fathers, adolescent…

The present study investigated the role of identity in the relationship between family functioning and behavior problems in a sample of Hispanic immigrant early adolescents and their families. The sample consisted of 181 Hispanic immigrant adolescents (92 males, 89 females) and their participating caregivers (who were mostly mothers). Identity was…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine, from the perspectives of both HIV-infected children and such children's primary guardians, the barriers children face in adhering to combination antiretroviral therapies. Nine HIV-infected young children and 14 guardians of HIV-positive children were interviewed about what the children's lives…

Ten children's views from New Zealand were investigated on the use of physical discipline in a small study that was an adaptation of a larger study conducted in 1998 by Willow and Hyder in the United Kingdom. This paper reports on children's views of smacking as a method of discipline in New Zealand families. A significant finding is that…