Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

2016 Alzheimer's disease facts and figures

The author discusses 3 variables that assess different aspects of social relationships—social support, social integration, and negative interaction. The author argues that all 3 are associated with health outcomes, that these variables each influence health through different mechanisms, and that associations between these variables and health are not spurious findings attributable to our personalities. This argument suggests a broader view of how to intervene in social networks to improve health. This includes facilitating both social integration and social support by creating and nurturing both close (strong) and peripheral (weak) ties within natural social networks and reducing opportunities for negative social interaction. Finally, the author emphasizes the necessity to understand more about who benefits most and least from socialconnectedness interventions.

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Social relationships and health.

In this chapter, we undertake to present the ecological model of human development that has been introduced in a prior edition of this Handbook. The bioecological model is an evolving theoretical system for the scientific study of human development over time. The model presented in this chapter represents major theoretical innovations from the 1983 chapter in both form and content. The new model is not a paradigm shift, but rather represents a transition from a focus on the environment to a focus on proximal processes as engines of development. We begin with the defining properties of the model, which involves four principal components (process, person, context, and time), and the dynamic, interactive relationships among them. We then turn to the research designs required for testing the model. In doing so, we not only present the next stage in the evolution of an ecological theory of human development, but we also document the requirements for conducting developmental research in the discovery mode. We conclude with a look to the future—and what the bioecological model means for the future development of our species.


Keywords:

bioecological;
context;
macrosystem;
microsystem;
person;
proximal processes;
time

The Bioecological Model of Human Development

A systematic review of the literature on social support shows that a stress-buffering effect is most consistently found when support is measured as a perception that one's network is ready to provide aid and assistance if needed (Kessler and McLeod, 1985). Two interpretations of this association are considered here: (I) that the perception of support availability indirectly indicates actual network responses to stressful events that more directly promote healthy adjustment; and (2) that the perception of support availability influences adjustment directly by modifying appraisals of the situation. No attempt has been made in the literature to discriminate between these two interpretations. One reason is that a strategy for critically evaluating the competing hypotheses has not yet been developed. A main contribution of our paper is that it exposits such a strategy. A rigorous evaluation of the competing interpretations requires a prospective research design and a data collection effort explicitly aimed at obtaining information about both actual support transactions and perceptions of support availability in hypothetical situations. We know of no data set that meets these dual requirements. As an illustration of the strategy suggested here, however, we analyze cross-sectional data from a large-scale national survey. Although limited, these data provide provisional information about the competing interpretations. Analysis shows that perceived support is, in general, more important than received support in predicting adjustment to stressful life events. We also present evidence that the influence of received support may be mediated by perceived support. These results demonstrate the power of the strategy and argue for a direct evaluation with more appropriate data.

Perceived support, received support, and adjustment to stressful life events.

The contagion of stress across multiple roles.

List of figures and tables Acknowledgments Prologue Part I. Theory and Function: 1. The structure of emotions 2. Intuitive and empirical approaches to understanding 3. Rationality and emotions 4. Mutual plans and social emotions Part II. Conflict and Unpredictability: 5. Plans and emotions in fictional narrative 6. Stress and distress 7. Freud's cognitive psychology of intention: the case of Dora Part III. Enjoyment and Creativity: 8. Happiness 9. Putting emotions into words Epilogue Notes References Author index Subject index.

Best-Laid Schemes: A Psychology of Emotions.

This study introduces the Daily Inventory of Stressful Events (DISE), an interview-based approach to the measurement of multiple aspects of daily stressors through daily telephone interviews. Using a U.S. national sample of adults aged 25 to 74 (N = 1031), the prevalence as well as the affective and physical correlates of daily stressors are examined. Respondents had at least one daily stressor on 40 percent of the study days and multiple stressors on 11 percent of the study days. The most common class of stressors was interpersonal tension followed by work-related stressors for men and network stressors (events that occur to close others) for women. Stressors that involved danger of loss were more prevalent than stressors in which loss actually occurred. Regression analyses showed that specific types of daily stressors such as interpersonal tensions and network stressors were unique predictors of both health symptoms and mood.

The daily inventory of stressful events: an interview-based approach for measuring daily stressors.

This study contributes to the growing body of research on situational determinants of coping. Based on a general population sample of 1556 married men and women, it goes beyond previous efforts in two ways. First, it presents the first large-scale analysis of situational determinants of coping effectiveness in response to a wide variety of stressful life events and chronic difficulties. This analysis documents that previous aggregate analyses overlooked a number of specifications which, when observed, provide insights into the mechanisms of coping effectiveness. Second, it assesses the importance of two empirically generated multivariate coping profiles, passivity and versatility. The study's findings suggest that these profiles are associated significantly with adjustment to stress, that these associations differ across situations, and that they help to interpret the effects of separate coping strategies.

Elaine Wethington

Papers

Perceived support, received support, and adjustment to stressful life events.

The contagion of stress across multiple roles.

Best-Laid Schemes: A Psychology of Emotions.

The daily inventory of stressful events: an interview-based approach for measuring daily stressors.

Situational determinants of coping and coping effectiveness.