Death is something that all human beings can expect to experience. But just as there are variations in when life is seen to begin, so too are there variations in when death is seen to occur. In Western cultures, death is assumed to occur when a person irreversibly stops breathing, their heart stops, and there is no evidence of brain activity (Frederick 2001), but this definition is not necessarily…
Decision making is a term used to describe the process by which families make choices, determine judgments, and come to conclusions that guide behaviors. That the process is called family decision-making implies that it requires more than one member's input and agreement (Scanzoni and Polonko 1980). The family decision-making process is a communication activity—it rests on the making…
Dementia (from the Latin de mens—from the mind) is not a specific disease itself, but rather a group of psychological and behavioral symptoms associated with a variety of diseases and conditions that affect the brain (Rabins, Lyketsos, and Steele 1999). Generally, dementia is characterized as the loss or impairment of mental abilities. With dementia, these cognitive losses (e.g., in reasoni…
Depression in adults can often have a negative impact on interpersonal relationships. Depressed people evaluate their social skills negatively, reporting that they do not enjoy, and are not very adept at, socializing (Davis 1982; Lewinsohn et al. 1980). Independent observers have documented that depressed people have fewer social skills than nondepressed individuals (Segrin 2000). The relationship…
Cognitive-developmental psychology traditionally coped with cross-cultural similarity by positing culture-general theories of knowledge development. The most famous of these theories was that proposed by Jean Piaget. Piaget suggested that reasoning in all kinds of cognitive domains (e.g., moral reasoning, physical reasoning, and logical reasoning) progressed through a series of universal stages th…
The term developmental disabilities was introduced in the United States in the late 1960s as a term to refer to the disabilities of mental retardation, epilepsy, and cerebral palsy. Parent leaders Elizabeth Boggs and Ilse Helsel advocated for the term in an effort to unify the political efforts of what was then the National Association of Retarded Children and United Cerebral Palsy Association (Pe…
Developmental psychopathology is an approach or field of study designed to better understand the complexities of human development. Its primary goal is to chart the diverse pathways individuals take in the development of psychological difficulties (e.g., aggression, depression, substance use) and normal or optimal psychological health (e.g., self-esteem, scholastic success, moral development). Sev…
The fundamental assumption of social dialectical theorists is that all relationships—friendships, romantic relationships, family relationships—are interwoven with multiple contradictions. Social dialectics is not a single theory but a family of theories (Montgomery and Baxter 1998). Like any family, the various dialectical approaches share some features in common yet differ in others…
This way of thinking about the reciprocal effects of the disability on the family and the family on the person with disability is called a family systems perspective (Patterson 1991a). This perspective has become increasingly important for those who develop policies and design programs and interventions to support persons with disability and their families to have a full and complete life (Dunst e…
For many parents, the word discipline refers to punishment intended to decrease child misbehavior. In truth, the word is derived from disciplinare, referring to a system of teaching or instruction (Howard 1996). Although few would dispute the value of teaching children, the topic of parental discipline has long been controversial, even among experts. In the leading parenting book of the 1930s, Psy…
Families provide love and support to adults and children, but homes are also workplaces, and households are important parts of the larger economy. Even when families do not directly produce or market goods and services, they keep the economy running by supporting and maintaining adult workers, buying and consuming products, and reproducing the workforce by having babies and socializing children. T…
One instructive means of thinking about divorce is to consider divorce not as a single event that influences people's lives, but rather as a process. This conceptualization of divorce suggests that the manner in which divorce ultimately affects children involves a confluence of factors and processes that occur early in the divorce, as well as processes occurring after the divorce. Moreover,…
Society, and the cultures that comprise it, change through time. The increasing prevalence of divorce is one example of change that societies and cultures experience. Data gathered on divorce in the United States indicate that approximately 50 percent of couples marrying can expect to divorce sometime in their lifetime (Coulson 1996). The divorce experience affects the parties divorcing, friends, …
A dowry is a type of payment or gift of property that accompanies a bride upon marriage. The custom has been most common in settled agricultural societies where it may form an important part of the financial arrangements for a marriage. The types of property included in a dowry vary tremendously depending on the economic circumstances of the families involved and the customary expectations of the …
The language of dual-earner families developed in research on families in industrialized societies. The term was needed to describe what was then a new family form that arose when women who had once worked inside the home, doing everything from nurturing work to family farming to producing goods such as candles and clothes, moved into a cash economy and took paid jobs. Questions that emerged from …
Eating disorders have become a major health problem in Western society, and there is evidence of their emergence in most parts of the world. The most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, with a number of variations on these, including binge eating disorder. What they have in common, besides an excess preoccupation with weight and shape, is poor self-esteem. Indeed, the…
For most contemporary Egyptians, the family remains the central and most important institution in their everyday lives. Few individuals live independently from their immediate family or kin, and single-person households are almost unheard of. Individuals of all classes constantly articulate and defend the importance of family within the community and the nation. Issues relating to family relations…
Although conflict in families has been a consistent theme in world literature since ancient times, elder abuse did not surface as a social problem until the mid-1970s, first identified in British literature, followed soon after in the United States and Canada. During the next decade several European countries and Australia began publishing reports on elder mistreatment. By the 1990s elder abuse re…
Attempts to define elders reveal cultural variations about what it means to be an elder in different societies. In some traditional societies, to be old is to be respected, considered wise, and revered as a teacher of traditions. In postmodern society most definitions of elder have come to be related to chronological age, degrees of disability, accepted roles (especially those considered economica…
It is not surprising that in cultures founded on principles of individualism, equality, and capitalism, such as in the United States, theories concerned with fairness and exchange would develop regarding close relationships. A large body of relationship research has originated from a group of theories associated with social-exchange principles, which conceptualize relationships as based on princip…
Ethnicity has been defined as a family's common ancestry through which identity develops as a result of evolved shared values and customs (McGoldrick, Giordano, and Pearce 1996). The definitions of ethnicity, or the more functional term, ethnic group, consist of individuals and families who are members of international, national, religious, cultural, and racial groups that do not belong to …
The passage from life to death should be serene and dignified, not an agonizing ordeal. This conception of eu (good) thanasia (death) is expressed in the term itself as it comes from Greek antiquity. A serene death might be achieved through skilled and compassionate care, as well as by the dying person's own sense of having lived a righteous life. There were circumstances, however, in which…