Robin O'Neil

Contributions of a supportive work environment to parents' well-being and orientation to work.

Examined the joint and unique contributions of informal social support in the workplace and formal, family-responsive benefits and policies provided by employers to the job-related attitudes and personal well-being of employed parents with a young child. Eighty married men, 169 married women, and 72 single women with a preschool child completed a survey concerning social support from co-workers and supervisor, utilization of family-responsive benefits and policies, readiness to leave the employer for additional benefits, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, role strain, and health symptoms. Among the findings: (a) Fathers and mothers expressed equal levels of job satisfaction and organizational commitment, but mothers reported more role strain and health symptoms; (b) nearly 48% of married womens organizational commitment was accounted for by measures of support in the workplace; (c) informal social support at work was significantly more important to mens well-being than that of women; and (d) formal, family-responsive policies appeared more consequential for the prediction of womens role strain, perhaps because of womens greater responsibility for adjusting work life to meet the demands of family roles.

Optimism in children's judgments of health and environmental risks

Although optimistic bias has been well documented for adults, little is known about how children view their own risks vis-à-vis those of their peers. Two studies of 6th graders examined optimism and the degree of differentiation in perceived risks across diverse health, lifestyle, and environmental problems. The findings revealed perceptions of relative invulnerability and highly differentiated risk assessments. The strongest levels of optimism emerged for controllable and stigmatizing events such as illicit drugs, smoking, and AIDS. The effects of gender, assessment context, and methodological variations were minimal. Discussion focused on the implications for health-promoting interventions with school-age children, the need for developmental information about risk perception processes, and the difficulty of distinguishing realistic from biased optimism.

Neighborhoods of Southern California Children and Families

Middle childhood is a time when children move beyond the boundaries of family to explore the neighborhood, forge their own relationships with friends and neighbors, and have experiences independent of their parents. Depending on the character of the surrounding community, parents are more or less comfortable allowing unfettered exploration by their children. This article reports a study of families with 9- and 10-year-olds in an array of southern California neighborhoods, showing close links between parent perceptions of their neighborhoods, the rules they impose on their children, and the childrens experiences and social skills.