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Dorothy L. Miller, D.S.W. Contracted by the National Institute of Mental Health, also supported by an NIMH grant Is schizophrenia genetically transmitted? This was a central question addressed in this study, one of an inter-related series of studies of state hospital mental patients. Also examined were other issues covered by a broader question: How does a psychotic mother affect the emotional development of her child? The core sample comprised 108 children of 28 schizophrenic mothers who had been released from state hospitals in 1956 to their Oakland, California, residences. By 1970, when the study was begun, the average age of these children was 19 -- within the age span when the first onset of schizophrenia was likely, according to many authorities. Construction of comparison samples was guided by the fact that many former state mental patients were poor and from minority groups; their children were, therefore, subject to varied stresses typical of their socioeconomic status. To ensure comparable environmental factors, comparison samples were drawn from three groups: (1) welfare families, (2) "matched" families of similar socioeconomic status residing in the same neighborhoods as the core sample, and (3) randomly selected "normal" families, whose children attended the same schools in 1956 as did the children of the core sample. The samples were compared with regard to three dimensions: social background, life experience, and level of social adjustment in 1970 as sketched in official records. In sum, the empirical data indicated that in behavior at school, in social adjustment, and in the incidence of mental illness, "the children of schizophrenic mothers do not differ markedly from other children of the poor." Only three children in all four samples had a clinical record of schizophrenia, and all three were among the 108 children of schizophrenic mothers. This made for a "transmission" rate of less than 3 percent, far lower than indicated by some other studies. An examination of the recorded symptomology, as compared with the symptomology of other mental cases in which different diagnoses were assigned, led to a critical question: since the symptoms were not markedly different, was the diagnostician influenced by the knowledge that the patients had schizophrenic mothers? The question could only he posed because the study did not entail independent psychiatric examinations, which were suggested for a further follow-up that would also include in-depth interviews of the subjects. A subsidiary finding, to which much significance was attached, showed that children of schizophrenic mothers, who were reared in their familial home, had significantly lower records of deviant behavior than those reared in foster homes. CHILDREN OF CONVICTS: A FIFTEEN-YEAR FOLLOW-UP STUDY Dorothy L. Miller, D.S.W. Supported by a grant National Institute of Mental Health The core sample for this study consisted of 24 minor children of convicts released from California state prisons in 1956. In 1971, when the study was conducted, the average age of these children was 22. A comparison sample of 51 children was chosen at random from schools attended by the core sample (or by others in a larger study – see CHILDREN OF DEVIANTS above). The study had two parts: (1) a comparative statistical analysis of factors entering into the social background, life experience, and social adjustment of the two samples, and (2) an estimate of the feasibility of locating, interviewing and testing such subjects to obtain their perspectives on their social situations and to evaluate their current mental and social status. The statistics over the 15-year span were compiled from school, police, social agency, and other official records. In sum, the statistical findings indicated that although the two groups had resided in the same urban school districts, they inhabited different worlds. The ratio of children from broken families among the core sample to those among the random sample 12 to 1. The ratio of children of an alcoholic father among the core sample to those among the random sample was 7 to 1. Members of the core sample were more prone than those of the random sample to live outside of the parents' home, to move often, and to have truncated school careers marked by problems and failure. Only one third of the core sample graduated from high school, while two thirds of the random sample graduated. In adulthood, half of the core sample had criminal records, while only one fifth of the random sample did. Meanwhile, the proportion of welfare recipients was seven times higher in the core sample than in the random sample, and while one fourth of the females in core sample were unwed mothers, none of females the random sample were. FOSTER CARE: POTENTIAL AND SELF AND PUBLIC IMAGE David Kallen, Ph.D. Contracted by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development This project was designed to respond to a critical gap between the demand for foster homes and the supply of foster parents by examining the possibilities for enlarging the potential foster family pool. A demographic survey of foster parents found that they are part of a vanishing breed -- i.e., city dwellers who had migrated from the country early in their adult lives and then settled rapidly and solidly into jobs and homes. This finding underscored the need for revising the processes for recruiting and selecting foster parents to meet the growing demand. Interviews with a random sample of White and Black women females in Baltimore were designed to ascertain their potential as foster mothers. The finding was that one third of the White married women and one half of the Black married women fell into a "high" potential category, as distinct from "limited" and "low" potential categories in a structured Foster Care Recruitment Scale. Criteria used by agencies to screen prospective foster parents were then applied to the sample. Those that tended to eliminate the largest proportions of the high potential group were: substandard housing and high anomie for Black women, and lack of confidence in the foster mother role for White women. About half of both ethnic groups failed to meet the residential stability standard requiring continuous dwelling for five years or more. The report suggested: (1) instead of eliminating Black families with substandard housing, agencies would do better to help them attain housing that meets the requirements; (2) high anomie need not disqualify Black families, as disaffection from the larger White dominated society might well signify adjustment in the black subculture; (3) lack of confidence among potential White foster mothers might be overcome by education and closer cooperation of agencies; (4) a more flexible residential stability standard would more closely conform to residential mobility patterns in contemporary America. Another suggested possibility for enlarging the foster care pool was relaxation of the rigid policy that excludes unmarried couples and gay couples from consideration, regardless of their stability or other positive characteristics. The need for more money was recognized, but it is argued that money in itself will not solve the crisis without a change in the attitudes and policies of the agencies, both federal and local, that wield power in the foster care family system. PARENTAL IMPACT ON THE ADOLESCENT'S MORAL DEVELOPMENT Constance B. Holstein, Ph.D. Assisted by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health The moral judgment development of 52 upper middle-class, White adolescents of both sexes and 97 of their parents was assessed twice; once when the adolescents were age 13 (Time 1), and again three years later, when they were 16 (Time 2). The major measure used was Lawrence Kohlberg's moral judgment scale, which is based on responses to hypothetical moral conflict story-dilemmas. The data offered little support for the proposition that Kohlberg's six moral judgment stages described a fixed progression. In Kohlberg's design each of three levels of moral judgment encompasses two developmental states, as follows: Level I - Preconventional (Stage 1: punishment and obedience orientation, Stage 2: instrumental relativist orientation); Level 11 - Conventional (Stage 3: personal concordance, Stage 4: law and order); Level III - Postconventional or Principled (Stage 5: social contract, Stage 6: universal ethical principles). "We call our types 'stages' because they seem to represent an invariant developmental sequence," Kohlberg explained. "True stages come out at a time and always in the same order. All movement is forward in sequence and does not skip steps.... An individual may stop at any given stage and at any age, but if he continues to move he must move in accord with these steps." In this study, Regression occurred for higher stage subjects and many exceptions to the requirement of invariant stepwise sequence were found for those who progressed over the three-year interval. The empirical evidence suggests that only the first two levels of the three-level moral judgment hierarchy fulfill the requirements of a strong developmental model. Significant relationships between mother and son's moral judgment stage were found at Time 1 and Time 2. Father and son's judgment correlated at Time 2, but not at Time 1. No positive parental relationship with daughter's stage of development was found at either Time 1 or 2. Correlations provided no evidence of causality, and the one-way influence model of parent affecting child, appeared untenable. Presence or absence of socio-political involvement at age 16 was found to vary by level of moral judgment at age 13 and by political self-identification (broadly categorized as radical or liberal and moderate or conservative on the basis of responses to six test issues) at age 16. Conservatives or moderates tended not to be involved at age 16 regardless of their moral judgment maturity at age 13. However, adolescents who were at least at the conventional level of moral reasoning at age 13 identified themselves more often as liberal or radical at age 16, the category most prone to socio-political involvement. Generally, political attitudes at Time 2 were significantly correlated with moral judgment stage for both adolescents and adults, with clear sex differences emerging, especially for conventional level subjects. Stage 3 males were relatively conservative, Stage 3 females were liberal. All Stage 4 (law and order) subjects, male and female, were conservative. CHILD REARING PRACTICES OF COMMUNAL FAMILIES Bennett Berger, Ph.D. Supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health Based on research conducted at eight rural "hippie" communes (i.e., non-kin "families") in the western United States, principally California, this report is divided into three parts: (1) a description of some ways in which children are integrated into the adult life of these communes in keeping with the communes’ egalitarian ethos, (2) a discussion of how such egalitarian integration becomes "ideological," and (3) speculation on potential consequences of these phenomena for relations between generations in the future. In such matters as drug use, sex, inter-personal quarrels and their resolution, work roles, and a political voice in communal affairs, children were not, in general, subjected to age-graded restrictions or exclusions. The pattern of egalitarian "inclusion" of children in communal life seemed "normal" to communards, and situational factors such as isolated locale, natural setting, primitive conditions of existence reinforced this sense of normalcy. However, like any other taken-for-granted social pattern, the pattern of egalitarianism between children and adults rested on a structure of moral assumptions that may not have been consciously formulated or explicitly rendered, but was nonetheless present. This moral value structure derived from many aspects of the "counter-culture" critique of modern life, which included the contention that much of middle-class child rearing is arbitrary, unjustifiably restrictive, and self-serving. That the hippie parents' arguments to legitimate their own approach to child rearing might also seem self-serving does not negate the contribution that the communal experience could make to the critique of dominant practices. There was not much reason to believe that communes in their present most highly publicized forms would become "the wave of the future." But "good" communes demonstrated that with the right people and under the right conditions, communal living could sustain a sense of kinship and solidarity that many people no longer get from religion, neighborhood, occupation, or in the nuclear family. Parts of "alternative family styles," it seemed clear, would be selectively adapted to middle-class life. It was predicted that experiments in communal living would continue, and would involve older and more affluent people. As the "movements" of the 1960s left its imprint on race relations and sexual mores, so it seemed that the communal experience, in which the fraternal treatment of children brought the generations closer together, would leave an enduring mark on American conceptions of the family. PATHWAYS TO
PREVENTION: A 20-YEAR LONGITUDINAL Dorothy L. Miller, D.S.W. Supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism The sample for this study was derived from a sample used in a series of prior studies beginning in 1961 with a survey of 1,045 state mental hospital patients released to Alameda County, California in 1956. Subsequent studies focused on children of a select number of those mental patients together with a control sample drawn from other "deviant" or stigmatized populations and from a "normal" group matched by race, age, sex and socioeconomic status, supplemented by a randomly selected group. In the instant study, subjects were drawn from the above groups. In sum, the overwhelming majority of the subjects in this study were children of multi-problem, urban families. They were divided into two samples on the basis of one distinction: the presence or absence of alcoholic parents. In the prior studies a mass of data was accumulated from hospital, school, welfare, and other official records, on the subjects and their parents. This data base, going back 20 years, was supplemented by two interviews with each subject -- the first largely biographical, and the second a psychiatric evaluation. The samples were compared on a host of measures: personal problems, family life problems during their developmental years, school careers, social services received during their developmental years, and the marital, parental, and socioeconomic status of the young adults in each group. On all of these measures, the children of alcoholics fared worse than their counterparts in the control sample. The study also intensively examined the drinking patterns of the children of alcoholics in relation to a series of variables (e.g., negative childhood experiences, school performance, degree of parental harmony, runaway episodes, social-psychological state, etc.). Correlations were found between heavy drinking and negative factors in the other variables. Seven hypotheses were tested and a Goodman log-linear path analysis was conducted on six variables: socio-demographic status, parental alcoholism, family crisis and the subject's age when it occurred, socialization failure, self-esteem, and social adaptation in young adulthood (the outcome variable). The path analysis indicated that the inter-relationship among the variables explained 26 percent of the outcome (adult social adaptation). The analysis also indicated the varied impact of the several variables upon the outcome. "This path analysis," the report concluded, "suggests a number of critical social-psychological junctures where some form of prevention intervention might play an important role." The report also presented 21 case histories of families with parental alcoholism and three case histories of families without alcoholic parents with the intent of discerning factors that might help to explain why some children became heavy drinkers and others did not, despite coming from similar family backgrounds in which one or both parents were alcoholics.
RUNAWAYS
-- ILLEGAL ALIENS IN THEIR OWN LAND: Dorothy L. Miller, D.S.W. Supported by a grant from the Social and Rehabilitation Service This two-year study of runaway youth and runaway services in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas was conducted to: (1) develop a useful runaway typology, and (2) determine current needs of runaways and how or if they were being met. A total of 215 runaways (121 girls, 94 boys; 124 referred by social agencies, 91 recruited "on the street") and 38 parents were interviewed. Intensive studies were conducted of eight runaway-serving agencies, equally divided into four types: public social welfare, private, juvenile court diversion, and "counterculture." Additionally, a structured questionnaire was used to elicit perceptions of a wide range of agency workers nationally with respect to runaways, their needs, and services being offered to them. On the basis of the runaways' own "vocabulary of motives" for leaving home, six types were identified: (1) Victims, fleeing parental abuse or assault; (2) Exiles, banished by their parents; (3) Rebels, whose flight culminated long-standing authority conflicts with their parents; (4) Fugitives, escaping some form of retribution for their own misbehavior; (5) Refugees, running from a foster home or institution; and (6) Immigrants, desiring independence, seeking "freedom" or "adventure." An analysis of available services and of how they were regarded and utilized found much distrust and little utilization. Some 59 percent of the runaways "distrusted" public agencies, fearing detention and return to the homes they were fleeing. Only 27 percent actually used any one of the available programs. "Counterculture" agencies were preferred: 32 percent viewed facilities such as crash pads and free clinics as helpful, whereas only 8 percent mentioned public agencies as helpful. Common survival expedients of the runaways included panhandling (59% of the boys, 45% of the girls) and drug dealing (boys 62%, girls 56%). Less frequent but not rare was resort to theft (boys 28%, girls 33%) and prostitution (boys 19%, girls 23%). To illustrate life on the run, case histories of the six runaway types are presented. A central theme emerging from the data concerned the contradiction in public policy, as embodied in legislation, that regarded runaways as outlaws -- "illegal aliens in their own land" -- and as youngsters needing help. Their outlaw status discouraged runaways from seeking such services as are offered. Similarly, that status often inhibited service providers from meeting needs of runaways in forms acceptable to them. Resolution of this contradiction was seen as a prerequisite for effective services. Moreover, a diversification of services was urged to meet the needs of the diverse runaway types. See: Dorothy L. Miller, Donald Miller, Fred Hoffman, and Robert Duggan, Runaways Illegal Aliens in Their Own Land: Implications for Service, (New York: Praeger, 1980). GROUP
HOMES FOR ADOLESCENTS: Scott Kester, Ph.D. Supported by a grant from the Office of Human Development Services This was a study of group homes for adolescents in Los Angeles, which at the time was far ahead of the rest of the country in resorting to this form of child-placement service. The study focused on three essential components: (1) the agencies that placed juveniles in group homes and the decision-making processes that went into such placements; (2) the group homes themselves, their operation and their methods, and their organizational structure as it affects costs and quality of care; (3) the clients, their characteristics, their demographic composition as it relates to the homes in which they are placed, and their reactions to group-home placement. A systems analysis of the group home structures and their consequences critiqued many issues. These findings were used to modify group home regulations at the federal level. NATIVE AMERICAN CHILDREN: THE URBAN WAY Dorothy Lonewolf Miller, D.S.W. Supported by a grant from the National Institute on Mental Health This project is one of a series of studies on the urbanization of Native American families, relocated from reservations into metropolitan areas. In this instance, the focus shifted from a sample of 120 Native American families residing in Oakland, California, and its environs to public agencies and their responses to the needs of Indians in the urban environment. Native American researchers interviewed 109 employees (ranging from line workers to top administrators) in three general types of agencies: social change (public schools), social support (welfare, health), and social control (law enforcement). In the interviews, three vignettes that represented typical problems encountered by urban Indian youth were presented to the respondents and each was asked how he or she would handle the hypothetical situation. Most respondents (roughly three fourths) said they would refer the cases to some other agency, most often a law enforcement agency. This was so even when a given agency was mandated under law to handle the presenting problem. Although 40 percent of the respondents said they had referred Indian clients to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, only 8 percent knew the address of the BIA office and most had egregious misconceptions of BIA services in an urban setting. The interviews with agency personnel were supplemented by participant-observation of agencies in operation and interviews with Indian clients. Data from all these sources led to a general conclusion that institutional access was blurred and restricted for urban Indians because of their lack of information regarding rules and personnel, and services were restricted because of staffs' lack of information about Indians. Such institutional blockages, it was found, led to racist attitudes toward Indians. Further evidence of institutional racism was offered in a long list of quotations from agency personnel that suggested stereotypes of Indians as "un-Christian savages, as uncaring parents, as quietly stoic people, as drunkards and as untrustworthy persons." The finding of institutional racism was buttressed by the absence of any Indians in the random sample of agency workers. As a first step to remedy the situation, it was proposed that staffs be trained to cope with the unique problems of urban Indians, and that recruitment programs be instituted to bring Native Americans into social services. Looking beyond the immediate focus of this study, the report argued that the growing population shift of Native Americans into urban areas confronts Indian culture with its greatest challenge since the conquest. Much further research is urged to "discover the potential development of the 'bicultural man,' as opposed to the older models of 'marginal man' or 'vanishing American.'" In line with the findings of a previous studies, the theoretical hypothesis was that the bicultural model represents the best hope for Indian survival in the hostile, ethno-destructive urban context. GROUP
HOMES: IMAGES AND REALITIES OF Scott Kester, Ph.D. Supported by a grant from the Office of Human Development Services This study of group homes in the Los Angeles area compared the "ideal" group home as evolved in the literature with the group home as it existed in practice in the Los Angeles area. Principal data were derived from interviews with 35 placement workers in the four principal public placement agencies and with 33 group home operators. The operators were drawn from three types of homes, as categorized by the placement workers: "Good" (12), "Problem" (8), and "Mixed" (13). Those labeled "Mixed" had been categorized as "Good" by some placement workers and as "Problem" by others. Agency workers acknowledged that the most common determinant of placement was expediency – i.e., the conjunction of an available bed and the time pressure to place a child. The next most common determinant was familiarity with a given home. "Fit" between a child's needs and a home's services did not appear to play a significant role in the placement process. Interviews with operators indicated inadequate staffing with high turn-over, mixed clientele (e.g., delinquent youth, some of them violent offenders, and non-delinquent youth), and a lack of program specialization -- factors rendering dubious an effective response to individual needs. Both placement workers and group homes operators perceived group homes as useful and viable services for troubled adolescents. Yet, both groups, from different and at times conflicting perspectives, indicated concern about the quality of care and about the ambiguity of who (placement worker, licensing agency, or group home operator) is responsible for what in the group home system. Both groups were highly critical of how the licensing function was performed, and both were highly critical of each other. Ultimately it was found that the attributes of the idealized image of the group home -- a facsimile of "normal" home environment, individually tailored treatment programs administered by resident staff, openness, community involvement -- were most often honored in the breach. Recommendations included: interviews with a representative sample of group home residents to ascertain their experiences and perceptions, initial work on development of a "quality-of-care" measure, a subsidy system to encourage group home specialization and facilitate matched placements, development of a "services receipt" that would provide each group home resident with a detailed list of services to he delivered, and a training program for placement and group home workers. CALIFORNIA INDIAN YOUTH ALCOHOL EDUCATION PROJECT Dorothy Lonewolf Miller, D.S.W. Supported by a grant from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism This preventive education research and development program was designed to support, inform, and assisted the California Coalition of Indian Controlled Education to make Indian youth aware of the dangers of alcohol abuse. It provided cultural and recreational alternatives to "Oppressive Reality drinking" over a three-year period. Cooperative sharing among six scattered rural communities, field trips, and Coalition meetings were coordinated from a central office with the help of an audiovisual evaluation research mobile unit. After a needs assessment survey, projects were routinely evaluated with matching control groups in a longitudinal research design. During the second year, subsamples of youth who were benefiting from the program received special attention so that research-based adaptations could be developed and implemented. Audiovisually disseminated cultural products of participating tribal groups promoted self-image and pride in Indian traditions and placed anti-alcoholism messages into a meaningful context. Principal research interests included the systematic analysis of the simultaneous application of alternative modalities to establish which components were most effective, and the development of culturally-relevant preventive education materials for Indian youth. According to the post-project evaluations, the operation of these alternatives to drinking benefited the target population INTERGENERATIONAL CHILD ABUSE: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY Dorothy L. Miller, D.S.W. Supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health This study explored the intergenerational character and effects of child abuse. Are abused children more prone than other children to become abusive parents? The answer to that question was sought by studying a group of young adults, male and female, from ethnically diverse, multi-problem families, some of whom were abused as children and some whom were not. There was a unique advantage of a comprehensive data base of subjects, compiled over 20 years. Their attitudes and practices with respect to rearing their own children were examined. The study attempted to identify the intervening factors in the development of those who became abusive parents and those who did not, determining why some abused children became successful parents, and others did not. A major thrust of the research was to identify the "turning points," or "escape routes," available to subjects who were reared and abused as children in urban, socially disadvantaged homes, so that they do not replicate the pattern of abusive parenthood. The findings from this study were that only a fourth of the children of abused parents were themselves abused as children – far fewer than commonly assumed. In fact, many abused adults were found to be excessively permissive and not disciplinary with their offspring. |
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