Martha A. Rueter

Couple resilience to economic pressure.

Over 400 married couples participated in a 3-year prospective study of economic pressure and marital relations. The research (a) empirically evaluated the family stress model of economic stress influences on marital distress and (b) extended the model to include specific interactional characteristics of spouses hypothesized to protect against economic pressure. Findings provided support for the basic mediational model, which proposes that economic pressure increases risk for emotional distress, which, in turn, increases risk for marital conflict and subsequent marital distress. Regarding resilience to economic stress, high marital support reduced the association between economic pressure and emotional distress. In addition, effective couple problem solving reduced the adverse influence of marital conflict on marital distress. Overall, the findings provided substantial support for the extended family stress model.

Negotiating Adolescence in Times of Social Change: The Role of Economic Pressure in the Lives of Parents and Their Adolescents: The Family Stress Model

Social change in the form of economic restructuring and recessions has occurred across the United States throughout the countrys history. The Depression of the 1930s brought hardship to all regions of the country and produced a mass migration of farmers leaving the land. More recently, widespread unemployment resulting from worldwide competition in the Rust Belts steel industry, stagnation of U.S. car manufacturing in the face of foreign competition, the oil boom and bust in Texas, and the decline of the aerospace industry in the Northwest are all examples of macroeconomic change influencing the lives of thousands of families. Studies of unemployed autoworkers and their families, for example, revealed the staggering effects of unemployment: marriages fell apart, emotional and physical health problems increased, incidents of spouse and child abuse increased, and the demand for social services escalated (e.g., Kessler, Turner, & House, 1988; Perrucci & Targ, 1988). A similar period of economic decline struck agriculture in the 1980s and continues to plague rural areas of the country today. Riding the 1970s crest of unprecedented prosperity that included easy credit, escalating land values, and an increasing demand for grain, farmers of the Midwest mortgaged the family farm to modernize and expand, buying larger machinery and farming larger tracts of land. In many cases, plans were made to expand their operations to make room for their sons and daughters. These economic boom times also benefited the small towns that served farm families with increased retail sales, well-paying jobs related to agriculture, and an increased tax base that spurred local economic development such as newschools and community improvements.

Family FIRO Model: An Application to Family Business

This study applies the Family FIRO model, one of interpersonal dynamics and change, to family businesses (specifically, to family farming couples). It empirically tests the developmental sequence of three dimensions of the model: inclusion, control, and integration. Findings indicate that both a sense of inclusion in a family business and the manner in which control issues are managed have important influences on family business integration. Because inclusion predicts control dynamics, effective control may not be diminished without adequate levels of inclusion. The study offers practitioners a theory-based approach to working with the complex dynamics within family businesses. Family businesses will remain more resilient in times of change if the leaders understand and reassess patterns of inclusion when change is initiated.

Reciprocal Influences between Parenting and Adolescent Problem-Solving Behavior.

This investigation evaluated the hypothesis that the development of either effective or disruptive adolescent problem-solving behavior is reciprocally associated with the child-rearing strategies of parents. Longitudinal data collected over 3 time points from a large sample of families were analyzed at 1-year and 2-year measurement intervals by using structural equation modeling. Parent and adolescent behavior was assessed by independent observers. Reciprocal parent--adolescent interactions occurred primarily in the presence of disruptive adolescent behavior. Analyses involving positive adolescent behavior produced unidirectional effects from parent behavior to adolescent behavior. Also, reciprocal associations were most evident when the 2-year measurement interval was used.

Parent-child relationships as systems of support or risk for adolescent suicidality.

This study examined a process model of predicting adolescent suicidality. Adolescent emotional distress was hypothesized to mediate the relationship between parental behaviors and subsequent adolescent suicidality. The parental behaviors studied included parental warmth and parental hostility. A sample of 451 families from rural Iowa participated in this longitudinal study, which included both observational and self-report data. Models were tested with structural equation modeling. Adolescent emotional distress was found to be a mediating variable between paternal warmth and adolescent suicidality. Results indicated that maternal warmth predicted adolescent suicidality but not emotional distress. Parental hostility did not predict either latent variable. Clinical implications are provided.

Childhood Obesity and Interpersonal Dynamics During Family Meals

BACKGROUND: Family meals have been found to be associated with a number of health benefits for children; however, associations with obesity have been less consistent, which raises questions about the specific characteristics of family meals that may be protective against childhood obesity. The current study examined associations between interpersonal and food-related family dynamics at family meals and childhood obesity status. METHODS: The current mixed-methods, cross-sectional study included 120 children (47% girls; mean age: 9 years) and parents (92% women; mean age: 35 years) from low-income and minority communities. Families participated in an 8-day direct observational study in which family meals were video-recorded in their homes. Family meal characteristics (eg, length of the meal, types of foods served) were described and associations between dyadic (eg, parent-child, child-sibling) and family-level interpersonal and food-related dynamics (eg, communication, affect management, parental food control) during family meals and child weight status were examined. RESULTS: Significant associations were found between positive family- and parent-level interpersonal dynamics (ie, warmth, group enjoyment, parental positive reinforcement) at family meals and reduced risk of childhood overweight. In addition, significant associations were found between positive family- and parent-level food-related dynamics (ie, food warmth, food communication, parental food positive reinforcement) and reduced risk of childhood obesity. CONCLUSIONS: Results extend previous findings on family meals by providing a better understanding of interpersonal and food-related family dynamics at family meals by childhood weight status. Findings suggest the importance of working with families to improve the dyadic and family-level interpersonal and food-related dynamics at family meals.

Adolescent Suicide: Risk Factors and Prevention Strategies

Suicide represents a major concern for pediatricians and other health professionals dedicated to ensuring the medical and psychological health and well-being of youth. Suicide remains the third leading cause of death for adolescents and is associated with a multitude of other significant mental health conditions and high-risk behaviors. Suicide and these comorbid factors contribute not only to mortality but to morbidities that affect the lives of adolescents and their families. There are many factors that increase an adolescent’s risk for suicide. These risk factors are categorized into individual, familial, sociodemographic, and life stressors. Each risk factor potentially increases the likelihood that an adolescent may attempt or commit suicide. Strategies to reduce the likelihood that an adolescent will attempt suicide can be seen in the context of a public health approach of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Prevention strategies have been implemented to increase the recognition and referral of suicidal youth. Primary prevention strategies provide education and awareness to identify the risk factors associated with adolescent suicide. Secondary prevention strategies screen adolescents at risk and provide tools for adolescents, schools, and health providers to address these risk factors. Finally, tertiary prevention consists of treatment for those who attempt suicide to provide the necessary health, social service, and mental health services to assist the youth, the family, and the community in its healing and recovery. It is estimated that each day about 18 adolescents in the United States will succeed in taking their own lives. 1 This statistic highlights the present gap in the identification of adolescents at risk and the difficulty in implementing effective prevention strategies. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among 15 to 19 year olds. 2,3 According to Beautrais, there has been a

Adolescent Suicidal Ideation Subgroups and their Association with Suicidal Plans and Attempts in Young Adulthood

Suicidal ideation during adolescence is quite common. Longitudinal ideation patterns may predict adolescents at greatest risk of progressing to more serious suicidal behaviors. We enumerated suicidal ideation trajectory subgroups and estimated subgroup association with later suicidal plans and attempts using data collected across a 13-year period from 552 Caucasian adolescents. Three subgroups were found: non-ideators (no ideation), decreasers (ideation decreased), and increasers (ideation persisted or increased). Probability of planning a suicide was greatest among increasers (females: .54, males: 51, p < .01). Probability of attempting suicide was greatest among male decreasers (.36, p < .01) and female increasers (.25, p < .01).

Considerations of Elder Sibling Closeness in Predicting Younger Sibling Substance Use: Social Learning Versus Social Bonding Explanations

Adolescent siblings are often similar in a variety of adjustment outcomes, yet little is known about the processes that explain sibling influences during adolescence. Two alternative explanations were tested, attachment (based in social bonding theory) and anaclitic identification (based in social learning theory). Hypotheses were tested with a sample of 613 adolescent sibling pairs (206 nonadopted, 407 adopted; elder sibling mean age = 16.1 years, younger sibling mean age = 13.8 years) across three sibling contexts (gender composition, age difference, and genetic similarity). Attachment explanations were supported so that the greater the perceived sibling emotional and behavioral closeness, the lower the likelihood of substance use; however, there were considerable moderating effects of sibling gender composition. Anaclitic identification explanations were not supported; closeness and elder sibling substance use did not interact to predict younger sibling substance use. Overall, this research adds to a body of work demonstrating important sibling influences on adolescent substance use.

The Relationship between Parent-Child Conflict and Adolescent Antisocial Behavior: Confirming Shared Environmental Mediation

Prior studies have indicated that the relationship between parent-child conflict and adolescent antisocial behavior is at least partially shared environmental in origin. However, all available research on this topic (to our knowledge) relies exclusively on parent and/or adolescent informant-reports, both of which are subject to various forms of rater bias. As the presence of significant shared environmental effects has often been attributed to rater bias in the past (Baker et al. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 16:219–235, 2007; Bartels et al. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 42:1351–1359, 2003, Twin Research 7:162–175, 2004; Hewitt et al. Behavior Genetics 22:293–317, 1992), it would be important to confirm that findings of shared environmental mediation persist when even examining (presumably more objective) observer-ratings of these constructs. The current study thus examined the origins of the relationship between parent-child conflict and adolescent acting-out behavior, as measured using both observer-ratings and various informant-reports. Participants included 1,199 adopted and non-adopted adolescents in 610 families from the Sibling Interaction and Behavior Study (SIBS). Results indicated that parent-child conflict consistently predicts acting-out behavior in adopted adolescents, and moreover, that this association is equivalent to that in biologically-related adolescents. Most importantly, these findings did not vary across parent- and adolescent-reported or observer-ratings of parent-child conflict and acting-out behavior. Such findings argue strongly against rater bias as a primary explanation of shared environmental mediation of the association between parent-child conflict and adolescent antisocial behavior.