Family systems theory has been highly influential in the study of recurrent psychiatric disorders. This review examines two interrelated domains: research on expressed emotion (EE) attitudes among relatives (criticism, hostility, or emotionally overinvolvement) and relapses of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, and randomized trials of family intervention in these populations. The literature is discussed in terms of contemporary systems theory and concepts from developmental psychopathology research. Several conclusions are drawn: (a) levels of EE are correlated with caregivers' attributions regarding the controllability of patients' behaviors; (b) EE attitudes are associated with bidirectional, mutually influential cycles of interaction between relatives and patients; and (c) family psychoeducational therapy, when combined with pharmacotherapy, is associated with lower rates of relapse in schizophrenia and bipolar illness. Underlying disturbances in family systems may emerge in response to illness symptoms in a family member, but also have recursive effects on the developmental course of the illness once manifest. The nature and stability of these recursive effects will depend on dynamic processes in the patient, the relative, and their relationship. Future research should elucidate mediating and moderating variables in the pathways from EE to patients' outcomes, and the conditions under which family treatments bring about favorable outcomes of psychiatric disorder.Preparation of this article was supported by Grant MH62555 from the National Institute of Mental Health and a Distinguished Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression. The author thanks Martha Tompson for her conceptual input.

Semiparametric group-based mixture modeling was used with data from an adolescent school sample (N = 1205) for three purposes. First, five trajectory groups were identified to characterize different patterns of change in the frequency of marijuana use across four waves of assessment during adolescence. These trajectory groups were labeled Abstainers, Experimental Users, Decreasers, Increasers, and High Chronics. Second, trajectory group comparisons were made across eight adolescent risk factors to determine distinctive predictors of the trajectory groups. Findings indicated, for example, that the High Chronic group, relative to the other trajectory groups, had higher levels of delinquency, lower academic performance, more drug using friends, and more stressful life events. Third, adolescent trajectory group comparisons were made across 10 risk behaviors in young adulthood (average subject age = 23.5 years) and the occurrence of psychiatric and substance abuse disorders. Findings indicated some consistency across adolescence to young adulthood with regard to risk factors, and specificity with regard to the prediction of disorders. Adolescent trajectory group membership was significantly associated in young adulthood with cannabis and alcohol disorders but not with major depressive disorders or anxiety disorders.This research was supported by a grant (R37-AA07861) awarded to Michael Windle from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. An earlier version of this article was presented at the Michigan Symposium on Development and Psychopathology: Continuity and Discontinuity during the Transition to Adulthood, Ann Arbor, MI, June 14–15, 2002.

This study investigates how temperament factors are linked to internalizing and externalizing problems in a Dutch population sample of preadolescents (N = 2230). Internalizing and externalizing problems were assessed by the Child Behavior Checklist and the Youth Self-Report and temperament was evaluated by the parent-version of the Revised Early Adolescent Temperament Questionnaire. Temperament profiles were examined in children with (a) neither internalizing nor externalizing problems, (b) only internalizing problems, (c) only externalizing problems, and (d) both internalizing and externalizing problems. The results suggest clearly diverging temperament profiles for these groups of children, with High-Intensity Pleasure and Shyness (representing the broad dimension of Surgency) steering the conditional probability of internalizing and externalizing problems (direction markers), Frustration mainly being related to maladaptation in general (severity marker), and Fear and Effortful Control being associated with both the severity and the direction of internalizing and externalizing problems, respectively. Girls and boys differed in the distribution across the problem groups, but the associations between temperament and psychopathology were comparable for both genders.This research is part of the Tracking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS). Participating centers of TRAILS include various Departments of the University of Groningen, the Erasmus Medical Center of Rotterdam, the Vrije University of Amsterdam, the University of Nijmegen, and the Trimbos Institute, The Netherlands. TRAILS is financially supported by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (GB-MW 940-38-011, GB-MAG 480-01-006, ZonMw 100-001-001) and the Ministry of Justice (to F.C.V.) and by the participating centers.

The “unresolved” state of mind with respect to loss or trauma as assessed in the Adult Attachment Interview is common in clinical and forensic groups, as well as in mothers whose infants are classified as disorganized in their attachment relationship to them. However, questions remain about what the unresolved state represents and what factors predict the unresolved state. This case controlled study reports on 64 women who had suffered stillbirth and who were pregnant with their next child. The study explores attachment, psychiatric, and social factors associated with the unresolved state or higher unresolved scores with respect to stillbirth. Women who had experienced stillbirth were more likely to be unresolved than control women. Although a similar number of stillbirth and control women had experienced childhood trauma, only women who had experienced stillbirth were unresolved with respect to this trauma, suggesting the unresolved state may be evoked or reevoked by subsequent traumatic loss. Higher unresolved scores in relation to stillbirth were predicted by childhood trauma, poor support from family after the loss, and having a funeral for the infant. The results are discussed in terms of the woman's sense of being causal in the loss.This study was funded by South Thames West R&D, Tommy's Campaign, and the Simenauer Trust (Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London). We thank the Editor and four anonymous referees for their extremely helpful suggestions, many of which we adopted. We also thank the nursing and medical staff and the mothers who generously gave their time to the study.

This report examines the predictive validity of sociometric status at age 9–10 to young adult (age 23–24) antisocial behavior, work and school engagement, and arrests using Oregon Youth Study males (N = 206). A variety of analytic strategies included (a) multivariate analyses to examine the variation in adult adaptation as a function of sociometric classification at age 9–10, (b) regression analyses to evaluate the relative contribution of “liked most” and “liked least” peer nominations, and (c) structural equation modeling to predict the young adult outcome constructs from social preference at age 9–10. Contrary to expectation, when controlling for early antisocial behavior and academic skills, boys' social preference scores still predicted young adult outcomes. Longitudinal findings are discussed with respect to the salience of male peer rejection in middle childhood and the social developmental processes that may account for the predictive validity of peer rejection.This project was supported by a grant (MH 37940) from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH) to Deborah Capaldi, PhD, Oregon Social Learning Center, and by grants (DA 05304 and DA 16110) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIH) to the second author (T.J.D.). Thanks to Ann Simas for editing and graphics preparation on this manuscript.

We examined two hypotheses about the developmental relation between substance abuse and individual differences in desistance from antisocial behavior during young adulthood. The “snares” hypothesis posits that substance abuse should result in time-specific elevations in antisocial behavior relative to an individual's own developmental trajectory of antisocial behavior, whereas the “launch” hypothesis posits that substance abuse early in young adulthood slows an individual's overall pattern of crime desistance relative to the population norm during this developmental period. We conducted latent trajectory analyses to test these hypotheses using interview data about antisocial behaviors and substance abuse assessed at ages 18, 21, and 26 in men from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (N = 461). We found significant individual variability in initial levels and rates of change in antisocial behavior over time as well as support for both the snares hypothesis and the launch hypothesis as explanations for the developmental relation between substance abuse and crime desistance in young men.We thank the Dunedin Study members, Dunedin Unit Director Richie Poulton, Unit research staff, and Study founder Phil Silva. Research assistance was provided by HonaLee Harrington. The Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit is supported by the New Zealand Health Research Council. We also thank Alex Piquero for his helpful comments. This research received support from the NIDA (Grant DA15398 and DA13148), NIMH (Grants MH45070 and MH49414), William T. Grant Foundation, and Air New Zealand.

Expressed emotion was examined in families of toddlers (N = 101) whose mothers had experienced major depressive disorder occurring since the child's birth, and contrasted with expressed emotion in demographically comparable families (N = 54) with no history of parental mental disorder to elucidate family systems processes as contributors to child functioning. Both mothers and fathers provided Five-Minute Speech Samples on their child, their spouse, and themselves, and completed measures of marital adjustment, trait affect, relationship quality with their own parents in childhood, and child behavior problems. Maternal-expressed emotion criticism regarding child, self, and spouse was higher in the families with depressed mothers; paternal criticism regarding self and spouse also was higher in the depressed families. Mothers and fathers in the depressed group also differed on relational/affective features, exhibiting lower marital satisfaction, higher trait negative affect, and more negative childhood relationship representations, relative to the nondepressed group, and mothers reported more child behavior problems. Mediational models were evaluated separately for the different targets of maternal and paternal criticism and child behavior problems, and findings supported both individual parent and spouse contributions as mediators of the relation between depression group status and expressed criticism and child behavior problems. The findings are discussed in terms of the multiple levels of family system influence on negativity in the emotional environment of toddlers of depressed mothers, developmental risk, and the need for family-level interventions.Completion of this work was supported by grant funding from the National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH45027) and the Spunk Fund, Inc. We thank Traci McCabe for her diligent coding of the Five Minute Speech Samples.

From a developmental perspective, work has been considered as both a deleterious and salutary experience. According to one prominent view, part-time work places adolescents at risk because it limits participation in more developmentally beneficial activities and confronts them with stressors for which they are not yet ready. If this were the case, teenage part-time work would be “stress sensitizing,” lowering thresholds of reactivity to subsequent stressors and increasing the risk of poor young-adult mental health. As a result, early work experience could interfere with adequate preparation for adulthood. A more optimistic perspective, shared by some social scientists and most parents, is that employment for the young person signifies progress in moving toward adulthood and promotes adaptation to the work environment. Challenges at work are considered to be “steeling,” fostering coping resources that alleviate the detrimental effects of subsequent stressors, especially those encountered in the workplace. These processes would promote resilience and psychological well-being in early adulthood. This research examines these alternatives, using data from the Youth Development Study (1988–2000) covering the period from adolescence (age 14–15) to early adulthood (age 26–27). The analysis indicates that the character of their teenage work experience is a source of resilience as young adults make the transition from school to work.Earlier versions of this article were presented at the World Congress of Sociology, Brisbane, Australia, July 2002; at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, August 2002; and at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Tampa, April 2003. This research is supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD44138) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH42843). The authors thank Michael Finch for helpful advice regarding the data analysis.

In the decade since the first observationally based empirical studies of coparenting process in nuclear families made their mark, most investigations of early coparenting dynamics have examined whether and how such dynamics drive child development trajectories, rather than identifying factors that may contribute to the differential development of such dynamics in the first place. In this prospective study, we examined both individual-representational and dyadic-interpersonal predictors of early coparental process. Fifty married couples expecting their first child portrayed their expectations and concerns about family life after the baby's arrival, and took part in a set of problem-solving tasks used to help evaluate marital quality. Both mothers' and fathers' prebaby expectations about the future family, and prenatal marital quality, predicted observed coparenting cohesion at 3 months postpartum. Maternal– and marriage–coparenting trajectories differed as a function of infant characteristics, with pathways most pronounced when infants were rated high in negative reactivity. Results reveal how the prenatal environment can come to shape early coparenting process, and indicate that family models must take into account the role that child characteristics can play in altering prebirth–postpartum pathways.This study was supported by National Institute of Child Health and Development Grant RO1 HD42179. We thank the families who contributed their time and effort to the investigation and our colleagues Regina Kuersten–Hogan, Wendy DeCourcey, Julia Berkman, Valerie Haskell, Meaghan DiLallo, Nina Olsen, Amy Alberts, Oliver Hartman, Stefanie Giampa, Eleanor Chaffe, and Kate Fish for their assistance with various aspects of this project.

Studies of adults who have been diagnosed with, and treated for, bipolar disorder have shown that these patients exhibit impairment on measures of executive functioning. However, it is unclear whether executive dysfunction precedes the diagnosis of bipolar illness, or develops subsequent to its onset. Moreover, investigators have failed to control for the effects of premorbid attentional problems on cognitive performance in these patients. The present authors explored these questions using data from a longitudinal prospective study of individuals at risk for major mood disorder. Results revealed that 67% of participants who met criteria for bipolar disorder in young adulthood showed impairment on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) when they were assessed during adolescence, as compared with 17% of individuals with no major mood diagnosis, and 19% with unipolar depression. This association between performance on the WCST and bipolar illness was not accounted for by high rates of premorbid attentional disturbance. In fact, among participants with early attentional problems, only those who ultimately developed bipolar disorder exhibited impairment on the WCST. Early attentional problems that preceded unipolar depression or no mood disorder were not associated with executive dysfunction.The findings presented in this paper come from the doctoral dissertation of the first author, which was funded by an NIMH Intramural Research Training Award. The authors are enormously grateful to Roger E. Meyer for his comments on earlier drafts of this paper and to Anne Mayfield, without whom this project would not have been possible. We are deeply indebted to Ann S. Masten, W. Andrew Collins, L. Alan Sroufe, Monica Luciana, and Carrie Borchardt, who provided invaluable guidance throughout all stages of this project, as well as Robert Asarnow, who was an important mentor during the review process. In addition, we acknowledge the contributions of Gail Inoff–Germain, who administered diagnostic interviews and neuropsychological measures at adolescent follow-up; Rula B. Garside, who undertook the painstaking job of establishing interrater reliability; Erika Sundstrom, who devoted many hours to data organization and quality assurance; and Sara Avery Torvik and Patricia Kasdan, whose combined gifts of organization and warmth created a comfortable atmosphere for study participants. Finally, we thank the extraordinary research participants of the NIMH Childrearing Study, who have shown enormous bravery and dedication by sharing with us 23 years of their lives.

We explored attachment in a family context by applying family systems principles to the investigation of multiple attachment relationships within families. This study focused on maternal adult attachment with respect to family of origin experiences (assessed using the Adult Attachment Interview [AAI]) as well as maternal marital attachment (assessed using the Marital Attachment Interview [MAI]). We examined associations between maternal adult attachment (or marital attachment) and three levels of family functioning including individual maternal depression symptoms, dyadic marital satisfaction (reported by mothers), and family unit functioning. We also examined associations between combined attachment security (consistent secure, AAI secure/MAI insecure, AAI insecure/MAI secure, and consistent insecure) and family outcomes. Finally, we assessed the extent to which attachment representations operate differently in the context of family stress, namely maternal depression. We found that attachment security with respect to particular relationships was differentially associated with different levels of family functioning. Examination of the security of combined adult and marital attachment further supported the multilevel organization of the family system.

Patterns of continuity and change in competence and resilience over the transition to adulthood were examined in relation to adversity and psychosocial resources, with a focus on adaptive resources that may be particularly important for this transition. Variable-focused and person-focused analyses drew on data from the Project Competence longitudinal study of a school cohort followed over 20 years from childhood through emerging adulthood (EA) into the young adulthood (YA) years with excellent retention (90%). Success in age-salient and emerging developmental tasks from EA to YA was examined in a sample of 173 of the original participants with complete data on adversity, competence, and key resources. Regressions and extreme-group analyses indicated striking continuity in competence and resilience, yet also predictable change. Success in developmental tasks in EA and YA was related to core resources originating in childhood (IQ, parenting quality, socioeconomic status) and also to a set of EA adaptive resources that included planfulness/future motivation, autonomy, adult support, and coping skills. EA adaptive resources had unique predictive significance for successful transitions to adulthood, both overall and for the small group of individuals whose pattern of adaptation changed dramatically from maladaptive to resilient over the transition. Results are discussed in relation to the possibility that the transition to adulthood is a window of opportunity for changing the life course.This article is based on data collected as part of the Project Competence longitudinal study, which was initiated under the leadership of Norman Garmezy, and was supported through grants to Ann Masten, Auke Tellegen, and Norman Garmezy from the William T. Grant Foundation, the National Science Foundation (SBR-9729111), the National Institute of Mental Health (MH33222), and the University of Minnesota. Preliminary results of this study were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence in Baltimore (March 2004). The authors gratefully acknowledge the contributions to this study by the participants, who shared their lives over time to benefit others, and by the many research team members, students, and faculty, who added ideas and data to this endeavor over the years. The authors particularly want to acknowledge the role of Doug Coatsworth in designing the emerging adulthood assessments pertinent to this article and the current members of the Project Competence research team who improved this article through their thoughtful critiques and comments as the analyses and writing progressed.

The present study examined how marital conflict may compromise parenting by identifying interdependencies across marital and parent–child subsystems in a sample of 86 two-parent families with a child aged 9–13. The study used direct observation of three family discussions to examine interdependencies across family subsystems. The study also assessed whether a history of husband-to-wife aggression strengthened interdependencies. Overall, families with husband-to-wife aggression showed a negative tone that pervaded throughout the family. Consistent with theories about physically aggressive men tending to withdraw from conflict, fathers who had engaged in husband-to-wife aggression showed an association between marital hostilities and lower levels of empathy toward their children. Consistent with stress theories, women who had been exposed to husband-to-wife aggression showed a link between marital hostilities and negative affect when interacting with their children. These findings illustrate how a history of exposure to marital aggression can create a family environment of multiple risks for children. For children in families with prior marital aggression, ongoing marital hostilities can be linked to the additional risk of erosions in parental support.This study was partially supported by a grant from the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, NIMH Grants R01MH36595 and F31MH10947, NICHD Grant K23HD041428, and a California State University, Fullerton, Junior Faculty Research Grant. We are grateful to our USC Family Studies Center colleagues who helped collect these data, to the dedicated groups of coders, and to the families who participated in the study.

That behavior reflects ongoing transactions between person and context is an enshrined proposition of developmental theory, although the dynamic properties of these transactions have not been fully appreciated. In this article, we focus on reciprocal links between the Pearlin mastery scale and life events in the transition to adulthood, a strategic relationship given that control orientations are thought to mediate links between stressors and a range of indicators of distress, and given that life events become increasingly likely in young adulthood. Drawing on 12 waves of data from the Youth Development Study, spanning ages 14–15 to 26–27, we examine a series of growth curve models that interrelate mastery and life events. Results for females reveal that mastery during the senior year of high school predicts life events for the following 4-year period, which in turn predicts mastery over the 5-year period spanning ages 21–22 to 26–27. For males, mastery during the senior year (and perhaps the sophomore year) predicts subsequent life events, which in turn have short-term implications for mastery. Thus, transactions between life events and mastery are observed, although the temporal patterns of these exchanges are complex. These findings are discussed in terms of the developmental properties of transactions between person and context.The Youth Development Study is supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (HD44138) and the National Institute of Mental Health (MH42843). Support for the research reported in this article comes in part from a subcontract to the first author (“Role configurations and well-being in the transition to adulthood”). The authors thank Lance Erickson and Sondra Smolek for helpful assistance.

We examined the nature and directionality of associations between interparental discord and parenting practices in a sample of 227 mothers and fathers of kindergarten children over two measurement waves spaced 1 year apart. Cross-lagged models indicated that associations between interparental discord and maternal and paternal parenting practices (i.e., acceptance, discipline) were generally negligible with one exception: interparental discord at Time 1 predicted decreases in maternal acceptance from Time 1 to Time 2. However, consistent with the family systems conceptualization of the family as an open system, prospective associations among interparental and parent–child subsystems varied significantly as a function of parental depressive symptoms, interparental relationship insecurity, and child-rearing disagreements. The moderating role of adult characteristics commonly varied across the type of adult vulnerability (e.g., depressive symptoms, interparental relationship insecurity, child-rearing disagreements), dimension of parenting practices (e.g., maternal and paternal acceptance and inconsistent discipline), and the directionality of the paths between interparental and parent–child subsystems.This research was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (Project R01 MH 57318) awarded to Patrick T. Davies and E. Mark Cummings. Melissa L. Sturge–Apple was supported by a postdoctoral National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (F32 MH 66596). The authors are grateful to the children, parents, teachers, and school administrators who participated in this project. Gratitude is also expressed to the staff who assisted with the project, including Courtney Forbes, Marcie Goeke–Morey, Amy Keller, Michelle Sutton, and the graduate and undergraduate students at the University of Rochester and the University of Notre Dame.

The purpose of this study was to examine how successes and difficulties with various developmental tasks of early adulthood relate to the course of well-being. Three waves of national panel data spanning ages 18–26 were drawn from the Monitoring the Future study (N = 3518). Based on self-reports, respondents were assigned scores (succeeding, maintaining, or stalling) to reflect progress in seven domains of developmental tasks: education, work, financial autonomy, romantic involvement, peer involvement, substance abuse avoidance, and citizenship. We identified trajectory groups of well-being (based on self-esteem, self-efficacy, and social support) that reflect diverging trajectories during the transition: steady–high versus high–decreasing, and low–increasing versus steady–low. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to predict membership in the diverging well-being trajectory groups as a function of developmental task domain scores. Maintaining or gaining a salutary trajectory of well-being across the transition was found to be a function of more success and less stalling across the developmental tasks, specifically in the work, romantic involvement, and citizenship domains. Compensatory effects (e.g., succeeding in education compensated for not succeeding in work) and threshold effects (e.g., succeeding in both achievement and affiliation domains was necessary for a salutary trajectory) were also found.This study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (DA01411). The authors thank Dante Cicchetti, Kate Fiori, Jennifer Maggs, Wayne Osgood, and Arnold Sameroff for helpful comments and suggestions and Ginny Laetz and Tanya Hart for assistance with the preparation of this article.

The confluence of two different types of transitional processes is explored: human development and normative ecological transitions. There are periods of greater vulnerability than others in the developmental life course as well as particular normative ecological transitions that are more disruptive than others. When there is a confluence of developmental vulnerability and a disruptive ecological transition, a “turning point” in development may ensue. This can take the form of an opportunity for growth and development or a developmental mismatch. Consequently, such turning points may represent opportune times and places at which to launch prevention/promotion programs. A two-step analytic procedure, nomothetic analyses followed by idiographic analyses, is described and illustrated to test the utility of this framework. First, these issues are illustrated using the self-esteem trajectories of low-income, urban public school students making a normative school transition to a junior and senior high school. Second, new data are presented on the early adolescent self-esteem trajectories and their association with long-term psychopathology. Third, the significance of this two-step procedure is discussed in regard to several normative ecological transitions that are common when older adolescents make the developmental transition into adulthood (e.g., into full-time employment, marriage).Work on this article was supported in part by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (MH43084) and the Carnegie Corporation (B4850) awarded to Edward Seidman, J. Lawrence Aber, LaRue Allen, and Christina Mitchell. We express appreciation to the adolescents and schools whose cooperation made this study possible.