Short- and long-term effects of marital disruption on children.

The short- and long-term (5 years later) effects of parental marital disruption on the psychological adjustment of children were examined. A representative community sample of urban families (N = 1,034) in which 25-50% had experienced marital disruption constituted the sample. The effect of the presence and type of father figure in the home on children's adjustment, controlling for ethnic group and social class, was evaluated with respect to measures of psychological symptomatology (based on mother's report). Significant effects of the father figure variable on the dimensions measuring Noncompulsivity and Delinquency were found at both time periods. Children with natural fathers showed the least pathology on the Delinquency factor and those with surrogate fathers demonstrated the most disordered behavior on the Noncompulsivity factor. These findings complement previous research showing stability of antisocial behavior over time. Implications for preventive interventions and future research are discussed.

A behavioral classification of welfare children from survey data.

From survey data on 1000 urban Welfare AFDC children aged six to eighteen, a hierarchical cluster analysis yielded six distinct behavioral types of Welfare children. Characteristics of each type, and its relationship to treatment, ethnicity, and other variables are discussed. Advantages of this system of behavioral classification for research and population assessment are outlined.

Life dissatisfactions, job dissatisfaction and illness of married men over time.

This study examines the degree to which job and marital satisfaction and participation in leisure activities could predict concurrent and future health status relative to ethnicity, class and occupational factors, and mental health. Data were obtained from a longitudinal study of a random sample of 1034 Manhattan families with at least one child 6 to 18 years of age. The wives in these families were interviewed twice at 5-year intervals. Multiple regression analyses, using variables abstracted from the records of 640 wives of working husbands, indicated that husbands' health status at Time I (R = .33) and Time II, 5 years later (R = .28) was significantly predicted by the Time I assessments on 12 independent variables. The largest single unique contributor, i.e. net of all other independent variables, to concurrent husband's health was job dissatisfaction (partial r = .15), followed by husband's institutionalization for mental illness (r = .14), being Spanish (r = .10), and the factor of Unhappy Marriage (r = .09). This preliminary investigation indicated that uncertain life satisfactions were important predictors for either concurrent or future health status which operated across class, ethnic, occupational and mental health factors. These findings tend to support models which postulate stressful psychosocial conditions as potential etiologic agents in the development of illness.