Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the diagnostic term used to describe patterns of behavior, beginning in childhood, related to deficient self-regulation. In the course of the twentieth century, ADHD has been called minimal brain dysfunction, hyperkinesis, or attention deficit disorder. The core symptoms include (a) difficulties in paying attention, particularly in situations that…
Attraction is an interactive process that involves one person who transmits verbal, visual, or other stimuli, and another who responds more or less positively to those stimuli. Early research viewed the attraction response as an attitude toward the target person that included favorable evaluations and the expectation that approach behaviors, such as a willingness to work with or date the person, w…
The term attribution refers to the interpretation of an event by inferring what caused the event to occur. This interpretation may also extend to inference of responsibility for an event and judgment about the trait qualities of another person, or of oneself. As an illustration of a common situation involving attribution activity, a husband may ask why his wife left the room with a sudden burst of…
Aunt refers to a sister of one's mother or father or the wife of one's uncle. In different cultures, both the terminology and the social significance of an aunt's role in a kinship network vary considerably. In English-speaking countries, the word aunt is typically used for the mother's sister, the father's sister, and an uncle's wife. The lack of distinct…
As in most Western countries, family life in Australia has changed dramatically over the last few decades. Some changes in family trends— including increases in divorce, more cohabitation, and the falling fertility rate—have sparked misgivings about the direction that marriage and family life is heading. Such issues are best understood within a historical framework. Is today differen…
The Republic of Austria is one of Europe's smaller countries, covering a landlocked area somewhat less than that of Hungary or Portugal. The 2001 census population of the country was 8.0 million, approximately the same as that of Sweden or Bulgaria. …
Any discussion of the Basque family must begin by acknowledging that Basque families can and do exist outside the Basque country. They differ even within the Basque country because sociological and political definitions are framed by the influence of two different states, Spain and France. The region known as the Basque country comprises an area of a hundred square miles (about the size of the sta…
The word Bedouin is the Western version of the Arabic word badawiyin, which means "inhabitants of the desert," the badia. Technically, the term refers only to the camel-herding tribes of desert dwellers, but it has been applied in English to all nomadic Arabs (Kay 1978). The Bedouin-Arab presence extends to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and elsewhere in the Mid…
Hormones are the chemical messengers the body uses to control and coordinate various physical processes. The major hormones influencing the female reproductive organs are estrogen and progesterone. Manipulation of these hormones may disrupt the normal processes required for fertility, such as ovulation, transport of egg and sperm in the Fallopian tubes, thinning of cervical mucus, and preparation …
Birth order refers to the order in which siblings are born into a family. Although siblings may be ranked numerically according to their order of appearance, four positions typically are recognized: first, middle, youngest, and only child. Only one sibling may occupy the first, youngest or only positions, but many children can be classified as middle. Alfred Adler (1927, 1956) was the first psycho…
On September 11, 2001, four commercial airliners were deliberately crashed—two into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and one into a field in Pennsylvania—and more than 4,000 families from over eighty countries were simultaneously plunged into uncertainty. Relatively few of these families knew with certainty whether their loved ones on …
Boundary dissolution, also termed boundary confusion, distortion, diffusion, or violation, refers to a failure to recognize the psychological distinctiveness of individuals or a confusion of their interpersonal roles. The concept of boundaries has a rich history in family systems theory but also is important to psychodynamic explanations of childhood psychopathology. Indeed, the concept itself mig…
Brazil is the fifth largest country in the world, with 170 million inhabitants distributed throughout twenty-six states and the Federal District. The official language is Portuguese. When the Portugueses arrived in 1500, there were between two and five million Indians living in the territory. They spoke around one thousand different languages (UnB revista 2001). As frequently happens with those wh…
In many societies where the economic aspects of life are intimately associated with group interests, bride-price is present as an arrangement between corporate groups that negotiate transfers of wealth and rights. Bride-price, sometimes referred to as bride-wealth, is a form of marriage payment in which the bride's group receives a payment of goods, money, or livestock to compensate for the…
Bundling is probably the best known courtship practice of colonial America, even though very little research on the topic has ever been published. It appears to contradict the otherwise sexually strict mores of the Puritans. It meant that a courting couple would be in bed together, but with their clothes on. With fuel at a premium, it was often difficult to keep a house warm in the evenings. Since…
Families in Canada—more so than in Britain, France, or even the Americas—are characterized by enormous diversity, especially regional and ethnic diversity. Canada has historically been a society of immigrants and of regions. First, the Aboriginal, or native people, arrived from Asia about ten thousand years ago. They organized into complex national groups with their own distinct cult…
To discuss First Nations families in Canada is to simultaneously learn about a core concept of indigenous social organization and to come to terms with the legacy of several centuries of colonialism. The common sense notion of family—a social unit comprised of husband and wife/parent(s) and child—is full of cultural connotations that render it ineffective as a way of understanding Fi…
Formal care to older adults includes care provided in the home and care away from the home. In-home services include, but are not limited to, visiting nurse services, homemaker services, respite care, and home health aide services. Care away from the home involves services such as care provided in a physician's office, day care provided in a nursing facility or other bureaucratic facility, …
The Caribbean, with a population of about 50 million, consists of a series of countries stretching from the Bahamian Islands and Cuba in the north, to Belize in the west, to Guyana on the coast of South America (Barrow 1996). The region can be divided by language with some of the countries speaking Spanish (e.g., Puerto Rico), some French (e.g., Martinique), some Dutch (e.g., Curacao), and others …
The Catholic Church traces its origins directly to the person and life of Jesus Christ. Therefore, any historical presentation of family life as it relates to the Catholic Church must go back two thousand years to the very dawn of Christianity. Scholars of this early period point to a major role played by the family in the life and expansion of Christianity. During the first three centuries of its…
The definition of abuse and neglect is difficult to determine even within a particular country. For example, Joaquín De Paúl and Olaya González (2001) note that before 1987 professionals in Spain could not reach an agreement concerning how one should classify child maltreatment cases: There was no commonly used definition of child abuse and neglect. Given the many cultural and…
Broadly defined, the term childcare includes all types of education and care provided for young children. The term is also used more specifically for the supplemental care of children from birth to age eight years by persons other than parents. Childcare is used for a variety of reasons, and programs vary by the number and age of children, the reason care is used, the preparation and status of car…
Child custody is the term used by most legal systems to describe the bundle of rights and responsibilities that parents have regarding their biological or adopted children under the age, usually, of eighteen. Custody includes the right to have the child live with the parents and to make decisions about the health, welfare, and lifestyle of the child. Issues about custody arise in three distinct co…
Childhood is usually defined in relation to adulthood: the condition of being an immature person, of having not yet become an adult. In some societies, physical or reproductive maturity marks the transition to adulthood, but in modern Western societies full adult status is not usually achieved until several years after puberty. Childhood is legally defined here as a state of dependency on adults o…
The establishment of identity is widely viewed as the key developmental task of adolescence, sometimes accompanied by emotional strain as adolescents grapple with the question of who they are and what they want to become. Identities can be based on roles, relationships, status in an organization, or those related to character traits (psychological and behavioral attributes). Westerners conceptuali…