Introduction Le modele explicatif predominant de la reussite de la transition des enfants de l’ec... more Introduction Le modele explicatif predominant de la reussite de la transition des enfants de l’ecole prescolaire vers l’ecole elementaire suppose que les risques et les facteurs de protection majeurs dependent principalement de l'enfant en ce qui a trait a sa « preparation » cognitive et emotionnelle pour l’entrer en maternelle. En accord avec cette hypothese, la plupart des efforts en matiere d’intervention impliquent des tentatives fondees au niveau scolaire pour ameliorer les habiletes cognitives et d’autoregulation des enfants. Les etudes sur les contextes sociaux et les relations qui affectent la transition des enfants vers l’ecole ne font que commencer a paraitre. Etonnamment, malgre la reconnaissance generale du fait que les relations parent-enfant constituent un contexte central pour le developpement des enfants, peu d’attention a ete portee aux roles que les parents jouent dans la transition des enfants vers l’ecole elementaire, et pratiquement aucune a la planification...
The Effect of Religiosity and Religious Festivals on Positional Concerns: An Experimental Investi... more The Effect of Religiosity and Religious Festivals on Positional Concerns: An Experimental Investigation of Ramadan * This paper examines the effect of religion on positional concerns using survey experiments. We focus on two of the dimensions of religion-degree of religiosity and religious festivals. By conducting the experiments during both the most important day of Ramadan (the Night of Power) and a day outside Ramadan, we find that Ramadan overall has a small and negative impact on positional concerns. Detailed analyses based on the sorting of individuals' degree of religiosity reveal that the decrease in the degree of positional concerns during Ramadan is mainly explained by a decrease in positionality among individuals with a low degree of religiosity. We also discuss the broader welfare implications of our findings.
What has been missing in child and family research and interventions? Until recently, fathers hav... more What has been missing in child and family research and interventions? Until recently, fathers have been missing from parenting research and interventions (Cabrera, Volling, & Barr, 2018). Intriguingly, when fathers are included in interventions, benefits for the parenting couple, their parenting strategies, and their children begin to emerge more convincingly (Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, & Pruett, 2018; Dadds, Schwartz, & Sanders, 1987). The recent inclusion of both parents in some studies of children's development had a second desirable consequence-the discovery that high, unresolved conflict in the relationship between parents, whether married, cohabiting, separated, or divorced, is associated directly with the quality of the parent-child relationships and, both directly and indirectly, with the ability of children and adolescents to manage their worlds-socially, emotionally, and intellectually (Davies, Coe, Martin, Sturge-Apple, & Cummings, 2015; Harold & Sellers, 2018). The findings about the effects of unresolved interparental conflict do not apply only to distressed families. More than 50 studies (Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003) have shown that there is a normative decline in marital satisfaction after having a child, which continues for at least 15 years. Thus, over time, many children in what appear to be low-risk populations are also at increased risk of developing problematic behaviors associated with the expectable increase in tensions between their parents. Based on an ecological, family system model, we and our colleagues have created and evaluated a couples' group intervention for parents of young children, in which clinically trained male-female facilitators help couples to find more effective and satisfying relationships as partners and parents. We use a curriculum that focuses on five aspects of family life that constitute buffers or risks for development: the parents' well-being or distress as individuals, as a couple, as parents, in their three-generational patterns, and, in their larger environments, coping with family stressors and enlisting supports to buffer them. The couple groups, which include structured and open time, are offered weekly over 4 months. Currently the group intervention has been validated by seven longitudinal studies, four of them random control trials (RCTs) in California, Alberta, Canada, and London in the UK. In the Becoming a Family study (Cowan & Cowan, 2000), after 24 weekly meetings before and after their transition to
Despite the well-established links between couple relationship quality and healthy family functio... more Despite the well-established links between couple relationship quality and healthy family functioning, and burgeoning evidence from the international intervention field, there is little or no evidence of the efficacy of couples-based interventions from the United Kingdom (U.K.). This study explored whether the Parents as Partners (PasP) program, a group-based intervention developed in the United States, brought about the same benefits in the U.K. The evaluation is based on 97 couples with children from communities with high levels of need, recruited to PasP because they are at high risk for parent and child psychopathology. Both mothers and fathers completed self-report questionnaires assessing parents' psychological distress, parenting stress, couple relationship quality and conflict, fathers' involvement in child care and, importantly, children's adjustment. Multilevel modeling analysis comparing parents' responses pre- and postintervention not only showed substant...
The current study uses an initial intake interview as an assessment tool in the Supporting Father... more The current study uses an initial intake interview as an assessment tool in the Supporting Father Involvement (SFI) intervention and considers it from a family systems theoretical perspective. SFI includes a 32-hour group for parents with young children that aims to reduce child abuse and promote family well-being through a curriculum focused on enhancing positive father involvement and coparenting. For this study, the initial clinical interview assessed partners' synchronies and dissonance in parenting, coparenting, and relationship satisfaction domains. Using thematic analysis, we qualitatively analyzed interviews with 15 committed, heterosexual couples, exploring themes that correspond with higher versus lower couple satisfaction measured by the Quality of Marital Satisfaction Index. Results showed a strong concordance between partners' satisfaction scores, with fathers less satisfied than mothers. Thematic differences between higher and lower satisfaction parents centered on approach to discipline, coparenting communication, and quality of support systems. The importance of father involvement and fathers as "learning" parents and coparents were recurring themes for mothers and fathers, especially among higher satisfaction couples. Higher substance abuse and employment/financial stress were indicative of lower satisfaction couples. Discussion reflects on the utility of an initial clinical interview as an assessment and intervention planning tool and future directions for research.
This chapter describes the evolution over five decades of a couples group intervention for parent... more This chapter describes the evolution over five decades of a couples group intervention for parents of young children. We begin with a personal account of how the issues to be addressed arose in our own lives as we made our transition to parenthood in the 1960s. We continue with an account of research and theory in the academic literature that shaped the creation of five intervention trials from Becoming a Family to Supporting Father Involvement/Parents as Partners programs in the USA, Canada, England, and Malta. Following a description of the existing separate interventions for mothers, fathers, and children we describe our innovative, integrated, evidence-based approach—couples groups that include both parents and focus on strengthening their couple relationship to provide a more positive context for parenting strategies that foster their children’s development.
Wahrend sich Kapitel 5 mit den grundsatzlichen Fertigkeiten von Gruppenleiterinnen und Gruppenlei... more Wahrend sich Kapitel 5 mit den grundsatzlichen Fertigkeiten von Gruppenleiterinnen und Gruppenleitern auseinandersetzt, wurden im vorliegenden Kapitel 6 Themen und Methoden zusammengefast, die im Ubergang zur Elternschaft von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Immer dann, wenn man Paaren anbietet, sich die fur den Ubergang so wichtigen Kompetenzen in der Gruppenarbeit anzueignen, darf die Behandlung der folgenden 10 Themen uber „die zentralen Veranderungen nach der Geburt“ nicht fehlen. Es wird empfohlen, alle 10 Themen im Ubergang zur Elternschaft (spater auch „ubergangsspezifische Themen“ genannt) in der Paargruppe zu behandeln. Diesen 10 zentralen Themen wurde in Kapitel 6 zwecks Erhalt der Chronologie, zwei Themen fur die Schwangerschaft („Paarorientierte Geburtsvorbereitung“und „Das Bild vom Kind wahrend der Schwangerschaft hinzugefugt.
This study explores marital processes that may underlie the apparent decline in satisfaction with... more This study explores marital processes that may underlie the apparent decline in satisfaction with marriage in partners becoming parents for the first time. We assessed 47 couples expecting a first child and 15 couples not yet decided about having children at pretest, post 1 (6 months postpartum or 9 months after pretest) and post 2 (18 months postpartum or 21 months after pretest). Questionnaires examined (1) psychological sense of self; (2) partners' role arrangements and communication; (3) parenting ideology; (4) perceptions of the family of origin; and (5) social support and life stress, including parents' work patterns. Support was found for three hypotheses: (1) In four of the five family domains men and women having a first child showed more negative changes over time than nonparent spouses; (2) New fathers and mothers grew increasingly different from one another in most of these domains; (3) A combination of gender differentiation and change (increasing conflict) appa...
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1996
Twenty-seven mothers and 27 fathers were given the Adult Attachment Interview (M. Main & ... more Twenty-seven mothers and 27 fathers were given the Adult Attachment Interview (M. Main & R. Goldwyn, in press) when their children were 3.5 years old. Continuous ratings of narrative coherence, probable experience quality (parents perceived as loving), and state of mind (current anger at parents) were entered as latent variables in partial least squares structural equation models that included observational measures of marital quality and parenting style. Models that include fathers' attachment histories predicted more variance in kindergarten teachers' descriptions of children's externalizing behavior, whereas models that include mothers' attachment histories predicted more variance in children's internalizing behavior. Marital data added predictive power to the equations. Discussion is focused on the importance of integrating attachment and family systems approaches, and of parents' gender and marital quality, in understanding specific links between parents' attachment histories and their young children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors.
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the hundreds of families who have generously... more The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the hundreds of families who have generously shared their lives in these studies, and the California Department of Social Services, Office of Child Abuse Prevention, the Palix Foundation in Alberta, Canada, and the Departments for Education and for Work and Pensions in Britain for their financial support to the Supporting Father Involvement intervention program and its evaluation.
Analyzing moving images is one of the fundamental practices in our attempt to understand the medi... more Analyzing moving images is one of the fundamental practices in our attempt to understand the medium. Building on Noël Carroll’s functional theory of film style, this article attempts to define a taxonomy of functional elements of shot composition in order to establish a clear methodology for the analysis of a moving image. Carroll criticizes forms of stylistic analysis that limit themselves to a few pre-selected aspects of the moving image, for example, genre motifs, individual filmmakers’ personal traits, or broad studies of film movements. Numerous writers have presented breakdowns of component parts of a moving image, often in wider discussions of film form. However these lists are often incomplete or do not have a clear methodology. This article identifies the key components of a moving image that could serve a functional purpose in individual films.
Work on this project was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants to Jennifer C. A... more Work on this project was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants to Jennifer C. Ablow (1 F3 MH11038), Jeffrey R. Measelle (1 F3 MH10816), and Philip A. Cowan and Carolyn P. Cowan (MH31109). Work on the development of training materials for the Berkeley Puppet Interview was supported by a grant to Jennifer C. Ablow and Jeffrey R. Measelle from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Psychopathology and Development (PR-10004).
Introduction Le modele explicatif predominant de la reussite de la transition des enfants de l’ec... more Introduction Le modele explicatif predominant de la reussite de la transition des enfants de l’ecole prescolaire vers l’ecole elementaire suppose que les risques et les facteurs de protection majeurs dependent principalement de l'enfant en ce qui a trait a sa « preparation » cognitive et emotionnelle pour l’entrer en maternelle. En accord avec cette hypothese, la plupart des efforts en matiere d’intervention impliquent des tentatives fondees au niveau scolaire pour ameliorer les habiletes cognitives et d’autoregulation des enfants. Les etudes sur les contextes sociaux et les relations qui affectent la transition des enfants vers l’ecole ne font que commencer a paraitre. Etonnamment, malgre la reconnaissance generale du fait que les relations parent-enfant constituent un contexte central pour le developpement des enfants, peu d’attention a ete portee aux roles que les parents jouent dans la transition des enfants vers l’ecole elementaire, et pratiquement aucune a la planification...
The Effect of Religiosity and Religious Festivals on Positional Concerns: An Experimental Investi... more The Effect of Religiosity and Religious Festivals on Positional Concerns: An Experimental Investigation of Ramadan * This paper examines the effect of religion on positional concerns using survey experiments. We focus on two of the dimensions of religion-degree of religiosity and religious festivals. By conducting the experiments during both the most important day of Ramadan (the Night of Power) and a day outside Ramadan, we find that Ramadan overall has a small and negative impact on positional concerns. Detailed analyses based on the sorting of individuals' degree of religiosity reveal that the decrease in the degree of positional concerns during Ramadan is mainly explained by a decrease in positionality among individuals with a low degree of religiosity. We also discuss the broader welfare implications of our findings.
What has been missing in child and family research and interventions? Until recently, fathers hav... more What has been missing in child and family research and interventions? Until recently, fathers have been missing from parenting research and interventions (Cabrera, Volling, & Barr, 2018). Intriguingly, when fathers are included in interventions, benefits for the parenting couple, their parenting strategies, and their children begin to emerge more convincingly (Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, & Pruett, 2018; Dadds, Schwartz, & Sanders, 1987). The recent inclusion of both parents in some studies of children's development had a second desirable consequence-the discovery that high, unresolved conflict in the relationship between parents, whether married, cohabiting, separated, or divorced, is associated directly with the quality of the parent-child relationships and, both directly and indirectly, with the ability of children and adolescents to manage their worlds-socially, emotionally, and intellectually (Davies, Coe, Martin, Sturge-Apple, & Cummings, 2015; Harold & Sellers, 2018). The findings about the effects of unresolved interparental conflict do not apply only to distressed families. More than 50 studies (Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003) have shown that there is a normative decline in marital satisfaction after having a child, which continues for at least 15 years. Thus, over time, many children in what appear to be low-risk populations are also at increased risk of developing problematic behaviors associated with the expectable increase in tensions between their parents. Based on an ecological, family system model, we and our colleagues have created and evaluated a couples' group intervention for parents of young children, in which clinically trained male-female facilitators help couples to find more effective and satisfying relationships as partners and parents. We use a curriculum that focuses on five aspects of family life that constitute buffers or risks for development: the parents' well-being or distress as individuals, as a couple, as parents, in their three-generational patterns, and, in their larger environments, coping with family stressors and enlisting supports to buffer them. The couple groups, which include structured and open time, are offered weekly over 4 months. Currently the group intervention has been validated by seven longitudinal studies, four of them random control trials (RCTs) in California, Alberta, Canada, and London in the UK. In the Becoming a Family study (Cowan & Cowan, 2000), after 24 weekly meetings before and after their transition to
Despite the well-established links between couple relationship quality and healthy family functio... more Despite the well-established links between couple relationship quality and healthy family functioning, and burgeoning evidence from the international intervention field, there is little or no evidence of the efficacy of couples-based interventions from the United Kingdom (U.K.). This study explored whether the Parents as Partners (PasP) program, a group-based intervention developed in the United States, brought about the same benefits in the U.K. The evaluation is based on 97 couples with children from communities with high levels of need, recruited to PasP because they are at high risk for parent and child psychopathology. Both mothers and fathers completed self-report questionnaires assessing parents' psychological distress, parenting stress, couple relationship quality and conflict, fathers' involvement in child care and, importantly, children's adjustment. Multilevel modeling analysis comparing parents' responses pre- and postintervention not only showed substant...
The current study uses an initial intake interview as an assessment tool in the Supporting Father... more The current study uses an initial intake interview as an assessment tool in the Supporting Father Involvement (SFI) intervention and considers it from a family systems theoretical perspective. SFI includes a 32-hour group for parents with young children that aims to reduce child abuse and promote family well-being through a curriculum focused on enhancing positive father involvement and coparenting. For this study, the initial clinical interview assessed partners' synchronies and dissonance in parenting, coparenting, and relationship satisfaction domains. Using thematic analysis, we qualitatively analyzed interviews with 15 committed, heterosexual couples, exploring themes that correspond with higher versus lower couple satisfaction measured by the Quality of Marital Satisfaction Index. Results showed a strong concordance between partners' satisfaction scores, with fathers less satisfied than mothers. Thematic differences between higher and lower satisfaction parents centered on approach to discipline, coparenting communication, and quality of support systems. The importance of father involvement and fathers as "learning" parents and coparents were recurring themes for mothers and fathers, especially among higher satisfaction couples. Higher substance abuse and employment/financial stress were indicative of lower satisfaction couples. Discussion reflects on the utility of an initial clinical interview as an assessment and intervention planning tool and future directions for research.
This chapter describes the evolution over five decades of a couples group intervention for parent... more This chapter describes the evolution over five decades of a couples group intervention for parents of young children. We begin with a personal account of how the issues to be addressed arose in our own lives as we made our transition to parenthood in the 1960s. We continue with an account of research and theory in the academic literature that shaped the creation of five intervention trials from Becoming a Family to Supporting Father Involvement/Parents as Partners programs in the USA, Canada, England, and Malta. Following a description of the existing separate interventions for mothers, fathers, and children we describe our innovative, integrated, evidence-based approach—couples groups that include both parents and focus on strengthening their couple relationship to provide a more positive context for parenting strategies that foster their children’s development.
Wahrend sich Kapitel 5 mit den grundsatzlichen Fertigkeiten von Gruppenleiterinnen und Gruppenlei... more Wahrend sich Kapitel 5 mit den grundsatzlichen Fertigkeiten von Gruppenleiterinnen und Gruppenleitern auseinandersetzt, wurden im vorliegenden Kapitel 6 Themen und Methoden zusammengefast, die im Ubergang zur Elternschaft von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Immer dann, wenn man Paaren anbietet, sich die fur den Ubergang so wichtigen Kompetenzen in der Gruppenarbeit anzueignen, darf die Behandlung der folgenden 10 Themen uber „die zentralen Veranderungen nach der Geburt“ nicht fehlen. Es wird empfohlen, alle 10 Themen im Ubergang zur Elternschaft (spater auch „ubergangsspezifische Themen“ genannt) in der Paargruppe zu behandeln. Diesen 10 zentralen Themen wurde in Kapitel 6 zwecks Erhalt der Chronologie, zwei Themen fur die Schwangerschaft („Paarorientierte Geburtsvorbereitung“und „Das Bild vom Kind wahrend der Schwangerschaft hinzugefugt.
This study explores marital processes that may underlie the apparent decline in satisfaction with... more This study explores marital processes that may underlie the apparent decline in satisfaction with marriage in partners becoming parents for the first time. We assessed 47 couples expecting a first child and 15 couples not yet decided about having children at pretest, post 1 (6 months postpartum or 9 months after pretest) and post 2 (18 months postpartum or 21 months after pretest). Questionnaires examined (1) psychological sense of self; (2) partners' role arrangements and communication; (3) parenting ideology; (4) perceptions of the family of origin; and (5) social support and life stress, including parents' work patterns. Support was found for three hypotheses: (1) In four of the five family domains men and women having a first child showed more negative changes over time than nonparent spouses; (2) New fathers and mothers grew increasingly different from one another in most of these domains; (3) A combination of gender differentiation and change (increasing conflict) appa...
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1996
Twenty-seven mothers and 27 fathers were given the Adult Attachment Interview (M. Main & ... more Twenty-seven mothers and 27 fathers were given the Adult Attachment Interview (M. Main & R. Goldwyn, in press) when their children were 3.5 years old. Continuous ratings of narrative coherence, probable experience quality (parents perceived as loving), and state of mind (current anger at parents) were entered as latent variables in partial least squares structural equation models that included observational measures of marital quality and parenting style. Models that include fathers' attachment histories predicted more variance in kindergarten teachers' descriptions of children's externalizing behavior, whereas models that include mothers' attachment histories predicted more variance in children's internalizing behavior. Marital data added predictive power to the equations. Discussion is focused on the importance of integrating attachment and family systems approaches, and of parents' gender and marital quality, in understanding specific links between parents' attachment histories and their young children's externalizing and internalizing behaviors.
The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the hundreds of families who have generously... more The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the hundreds of families who have generously shared their lives in these studies, and the California Department of Social Services, Office of Child Abuse Prevention, the Palix Foundation in Alberta, Canada, and the Departments for Education and for Work and Pensions in Britain for their financial support to the Supporting Father Involvement intervention program and its evaluation.
Analyzing moving images is one of the fundamental practices in our attempt to understand the medi... more Analyzing moving images is one of the fundamental practices in our attempt to understand the medium. Building on Noël Carroll’s functional theory of film style, this article attempts to define a taxonomy of functional elements of shot composition in order to establish a clear methodology for the analysis of a moving image. Carroll criticizes forms of stylistic analysis that limit themselves to a few pre-selected aspects of the moving image, for example, genre motifs, individual filmmakers’ personal traits, or broad studies of film movements. Numerous writers have presented breakdowns of component parts of a moving image, often in wider discussions of film form. However these lists are often incomplete or do not have a clear methodology. This article identifies the key components of a moving image that could serve a functional purpose in individual films.
Work on this project was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants to Jennifer C. A... more Work on this project was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants to Jennifer C. Ablow (1 F3 MH11038), Jeffrey R. Measelle (1 F3 MH10816), and Philip A. Cowan and Carolyn P. Cowan (MH31109). Work on the development of training materials for the Berkeley Puppet Interview was supported by a grant to Jennifer C. Ablow and Jeffrey R. Measelle from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Psychopathology and Development (PR-10004).
Uploads
Papers by Philip Cowan