The Family life Improvement Project: An Experiment in Preventive Intervention: Part I

Beck Bertram , “Can Social Work Prevent Social Problems?” in The Social Welfare Forum, 1960, Columbia University Press, New York, 1960, p. 181.

“Family Life Improvement Project—Research Action on Prevention of Family Disorganization,” Graduate School of Social Work, Rutgers–The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey (unpublished).

Geismar L. L. , and Ayres Beverly , Measuring Family Functioning: A Manual on a Method for Evaluating the Social Functioning of Disorganized Families, Family Centered Project, Greater St. Paul Community Chests and Councils, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1960; L. L. Geismar and Michael A. La Sorte, Understanding the Multi-Problem Family: A Conceptual Analysis and Exploration in Early Identification, Association Press, New York, 1964; L. L. Geismar, Michael A. La Sorte, and Beverly Ayres, “Measuring Family Disorganization,” Marriage and Family Living, Vol. XXIV, February 1962, pp. 51–56; L. L. Geismar, “Family Functioning as an Index of Need for Welfare Services,” Family Process, Vol. III, March 1964, pp. 99–113.

Geismar , op. cit., p. 101.

Geismar , La Sorte , and Ayres , op. cit., p. 52.

Goode William J. , “Family Disorganization,” in Contemporary Social Problems, Merton Robert K. , and Nisbet Robert A. (eds.), Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1961, pp. 411–12.

This appears reflected in the increasing number of agency registrations, denoting a growing and often unmet need for services and resources, as the family gets older. Geismar and La Sorte, op. cit., pp. 60–64. Other inferential evidence is contained in a comparison of the social functioning of middle-aged and young couples, with the latter showing a tendency to function in intrafamilial areas more adequately than the former. Walda Ciafone and others, “Relationship of Family Functioning to Anomie, Social Class, and Other Related Factors,” Graduate School of Social Work, Rutgers–The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, June 1963 (unpublished). A further Rutgers study, just completed, compares the social functioning of a representative sample of 61 young families with a representative sample of 65 older families. Both groups are living in a small New Jersey community. The older families were found to score significantly lower on the social functioning scale than the younger families.

Kenkel William F. , The Family in Perspective: A Fourfold Analysis, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1960, p. 335.

Monahan Thomas P. , “The Changing Nature and Instability of Remarriages,” in Selected Studies in Marriage and the Family (rev. ed.), Winch Robert E. and others (eds.), Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1962, pp. 627–35. Monahan, citing several sources, estimates that perhaps as many as three fourths of all divorcees remarry.

Monahan , op. cit., pp. 627–35. This is admittedly a controversial point, and evidence to support the above thesis is lacking. Monahan cites two contradictory prevailing points of view on the stability of remarriages following divorce. His own research in Iowa indicates a higher divorce rate among remarrying divorcees than among those married for the first time. Other researchers, using happiness and adjustment as criteria of success, found divorcees doing better in their second marriages than they did in their first.

Duvall Evelyn Millis , Family Development, J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia, 1957, pp. 123–476.

Beck Dorothy Fahs , “Marital Conflict: Its Course and Treatment as Seen by Caseworkers,” Social Casework, Vol. XLVII, April 1966, pp. 211–21.

Ciafone and others, op. cit.

Geismar L. L. , and Krisberg Jane , Preventive Intervention: A Model for Services to Young Families, Graduate School of Social Work, Rutgers–The State University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1965.

Schaefer Earl S. , and Bell Richard Q. , “Development of a Parental Attitude Research Instrument,” Child Development, Vol. XXIX, September 1958, pp. 339–61.

Srole Leo , “Social Integration and Certain Corollaries: An Exploratory Study,” American Sociological Review, Vol. XXI, December 1956, pp. 709–16.

Geismar , and Sorte La , op. cit., pp. 31–43, 205–22.

See Geismar , op. cit., p. 53. No representative group of older families has been studied by this technique. But older families that are known by agencies to have problems of economic dependency or behavior problems of the child revealed a substantially more problematic profile than the families in this study.

See Geismar , and Sorte La , op. cit., pp. 57–64. This is a smaller ratio than the estimates for two medium-sized North American cities.

See Kirkpatrick Clifford , “Measuring Marital Adjustment” in Selected Studies in Marriage and the Family, op. cit., pp. 544–53.

Chilman Catherine S. , “Child-Rearing and Family Relationship Patterns of the Very Poor,” Welfare in Review, Vol. III, January 1965, pp. 9–19.