The authors suggest that the most promising route to effective strategies for the prevention of adolescent alcohol and other drug problems is through a risk-focused approach. This approach requires the identification of risk factors for drug abuse, identification of methods by which risk factors have been effectively addressed, and application of these methods to appropriate high-risk and general population samples in controlled studies. The authors review risk and protective factors for drug abuse, assess a number of approaches for drug abuse prevention potential with high-risk groups, and make recommendations for research and practice.

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Risk and protective factors for alcohol and other drug problems in adolescence and early adulthood: Implications for substance abuse prevention.

Family processes affecting the socioemotional functioning of children living in poor families and families experiencing economic decline are reviewed. Black children are of primary interest in the article because they experience disproportionate shares of the burden of poverty and economic loss and are at substantially higher risk than white children of experiencing attendant socioemotional problems. It is argued that (a) poverty and economic loss diminish the capacity for supportive, consistent, and involved parenting and render parents more vulnerable to the debilitating effects of negative life events, (b) a major mediator of the link between economic hardship and parenting behavior is psychological distress deriving from an excess of negative life events, undesirable chronic conditions, and the absence and disruption of marital bonds, (c) economic hardship adversely affects children's socioemotional functioning in part through its impact on the parent's behavior toward the child, and (d) father-child relations under conditions of economic hardship depend on the quality of relations between the mother and father. The extent to which psychological distress is a source of race differences in parenting behavior is considered. Finally, attention is given to the mechanisms by which parents' social networks reduce emotional strain, lessen the tendency toward punitive, coercive, and inconsistent parenting behavior, and, in turn, foster positive socioemotional development in economically deprived children.

The Impact of Economic Hardship on Black Families and Children: Psychological Distress, Parenting, and Socioemotional Development

This meta-analysis involved 92 studies that compared children living in divorced single-parent families with children living in continuously intact families on measures of well-being. Children of divorce scored lower than children in intact families across a variety of outcomes, with the median effect size being .14 of a standard deviation. For some outcomes, methodologically sophisticated studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did other studies. In addition, for some outcomes, more recent studies yielded weaker effect sizes than did studies carried out during earlier decades. Some support was found for theoretical perspectives emphasizing parental absence and economic disadvantage, but the most consistent support was found for a family conflict perspective.

/pdf/parental-divorce-and-the-well-being-of-children-a-meta-52j5x6ts8i.pdf

Parental divorce and the well-being of children: a meta-analysis.

A meta-analysis was performed of concurrent and longitudinal studies on the relation of family factors to juvenile conduct problems and delinquency. Analyses of longitudinal data show that socialization variables, such as lack of parental supervision, parental rejection, and parent-child involvement, are among the most powerful predictors of juvenile conduct problems and delinquency. Medium-strength predictors include background variables such as parents' marital relations and parental criminality. Weaker predictors are lack of parental discipline, parental health, and parental absence. The effect of these factors seems to be about the same for boys and for girls. Analyses of concurrent studies comparing delinquents with nondelinquents, and aggressive children with nonaggressive children, largely parallel these findings. Data from concurrent normal samples, however, show less importance for parental child socialization practices and relatively more importance for the child's rejection of the parent and th...

Family Factors as Correlates and Predictors of Juvenile Conduct Problems and Delinquency

A Brief History of the Oregan Model, Gerald R. Patterson et al The Early Development of Coercive Family Process, Gerald R. Patterson Social Contextual Factors and Competence in Early Development, Leslie D. Leve et al Reinforcement and Coercion Mechanisms in the Development of Antisocial Behaviour - The Family, James Snyder and Mike Stoolmiller Reinforcement and Coercion Mechanisms in the Development of Antisocial Behaviour - Peer Relationships, James Snyder Contextual Risk Across the Early Life Span and Association With Antisocial Behaviour, D.M. Capaldi et al A Developmental Model For Early-and Late-Onset Delinquincy, Gerald R. Patterson and Karen Yoerger Coercive Family Processes and Adolescent Depression, Betsy Davis et al Interventions For Antisocial Behaviour, John B. Reid and J. Mark Eddy Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care - Applications of the OSLC Intervention Model to High-Risk Youth and Their Families, Patricia Chamberlain et al Preventative Efforts During the Elementary School Years - The "Linking the Interests of Families and Teachers" Project, John B. Reid and J. Mark Eddy. (Part contents).

Antisocial behavior in children and adolescents: A developmental analysis and model for intervention.

Is the child reared by one parent at risk for psychological maladjustment? Four decades of research have not provided conclusive information. Design errors include poor control over extraneous natural covariates of family type, particularly socioeconomic status; unrepresentative samples; and invalid dependent measures. Conceptual blind spots include equation of conventional with healthy behavior and failure to anticipate either developmental lag or beneficial effects among children reared by one parent. Should findings of no difference attributable to number of parents and cause qf parent absence continue to result from well-controlled studies, the hypothesis of risk among children with one parent will have to be judged without empirical support.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/351272

Are children with one parent at psychological risk? A methodological review.

Family problem solving versus home notes as early intervention with high-risk children.

Families and schools together: Early behavioral intervention with high risk children

Conventional social-science wisdom about the family background of substance abusers breaks down into three hypotheses. The broken home causes substance abuse; overprotective mothers with or without neglectful fathers cause substance abuse; substance abuse is reinforced by the changes it brings about in family interaction. The broken-home hypothesis attributes substance abuse to sheer absence of a parent, usually the father. The overprotective-mother hypothesis emphasizes the effect of indulgent, dominant mother behavior sometimes combined with ineffectual father behavior. The increased-control hypothesis emphasizes the effects of substance abuser, parents, and siblings on one another. Because investigations of these hypotheses are necessarily correlational, existing research on the family backgrounds of substance abusers suffers from methodological flaws characteristic of weak correlational designs. These hypotheses are logical extensions of Freudian theory, early social-learning theory, and revised socia...

Conventional wisdom about familial contributions to substance abuse.

A comprehensive behavioral family intervention would serve a heterogeneous family population and would be comprised of public and replicable decision-making rules and intervention techniques. Current family behavior and priorities, rather than crude surrogates such as socioeconomic status, would generate matching decisions. As a step towards a comprehensive behavioral family intervention, this paper presents an algorithm to solve the problem of matching families and behavioral child-related interventions. The algorithm reveals that the needs of some families might not be met by the three prevalent child-related interventions: contingency management, contingency contracting, and problem-solving training. Sample interventions that might meet these needs are briefly described: parent self-control training, parent self-sufficiency training, and marital problem-solving training.

Elaine A. Blechman

Papers

Are children with one parent at psychological risk? A methodological review.

Family problem solving versus home notes as early intervention with high-risk children.

Families and schools together: Early behavioral intervention with high risk children

Conventional wisdom about familial contributions to substance abuse.

Toward Comprehensive Behavioral Family Intervention An Algorithm for Matching Families and Interventions