Parental attachment and conflict behavior: Implications for offspring's attachment, loneliness, and relationship satisfaction

This study assessed the implications of parental attachment security and parental conflict behavior for offspring's relational adjustment (attachment security, loneliness, and relationship satisfaction). Further, reports of parental conflict behavior were obtained from both parents and offspring, addressing questions regarding agreement between reporters and the origin and extent of discrepant perceptions. Results revealed consistent patterns of conflict behavior and moderate agreement between reporters. However, offspring reported parental conflict behavior more negatively than parents, especially when offspring or parents were anxious about relationships. Parental attachment security had direct associations with offspring's relationship anxiety, whereas associations between parental attachment and offspring's loneliness and discomfort with closeness were mediated by parental conflict behavior. Parental conflict behavior was also associated with offspring's relationship satisfaction. The results are discussed in terms of the mechanisms involved in the intergenerational transmission of relationship difficulties.

Ethics and health systems research in 'post'-conflict situations

Although considerable attention has been given to ethical issues related to clinical research in developing countries, in particular related to HIV therapy, there has been limited focus on health systems research, despite its increasing importance in the light of current trends in development assistance. This paper examines ethical issues related to health systems research in 'post'-conflict situations, addressing both generic issues for developing countries and those issues specific to 'post'-conflict societies, citing examples from the author's Cambodian experience. It argues that the destruction of health infrastructure results in a loss of structures and processes that would otherwise protect prospective research subjects who are part of vulnerable populations. It identifies the growth of health systems research as part of a trend towards sectoral and programmatic development assistance, the emergence of 'knowledge generation' as a form of research linked to development, and the potential for conflict where multilateral and bilateral donors are both primary funders and users of health systems research. It also examines the position of the health system researcher in relation to the sponsors of this research, and the health system being analysed.

Complexity, conflict and uncertainty: Issues in collaboration between child protection and mental health services

This paper provides an analysis of data from a state-wide survey of statutory child protection workers, adult mental health workers, and child mental health workers. Respondents provided details of their experience of collaboration on cases where a parent had mental health problems and there were serious child protection concerns. The survey was conducted as part of a large mixed-method research project on developing best practice at the intersection of child protection and mental health services. Descriptions of 300 cases were provided by 122 respondents. Analyses revealed that a great deal of collaboration occur-red across a wide range of government and community-based agencies; that collaborative processes were often positive and rewarding for workers; and that collaboration was most difficult when the nature of the parental mental illness or the need for child protection intervention was contested. The difficulties experienced included communication, role clarity, competing primary focus, contested parental mental health needs, contested child protection needs, and resources. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Faith and politics: The rhetoric of church-state separation

Criticism of religiously motivated contributions to public policy debate is largely misconceived. It assumes that the mischief which constitutional separation of church and state is supposed to cure is a domination of the state by the church. This presents only one side of the story. Subservience by the church to the slate should also be avoided. The law of a liberal state is legitimate to the extent that it does not conflict with the basic moral values of its citizens. Therefore, an ongoing conversation about basic values is necessary. Allowing churches and individual believers the freedom to make distinctive 'religious' contributions to this conversation is consistent with the separation of church and state. It is an aspect of the liberal democratic state's obligation to listen to all perspectives on difficult moral issues. A close relationship between church and state, on the other hand, has the capacity to impede the conversation.

Sibling relationships in adolescence: Learning and growing together

fit this article, I discuss the reasons for my interest in sibling relationships, and showcase studies on sibling relationships in adolescence carried out with my colleagues and students, in the context of the broader literature on sibling relationships. Our studies have focused on a number of important issues concerned with sibling relationships. First, I report on the associations between sibling relationships and other family relationships and the ways that the various family relationships affect each other. Second, I report a study of sibling relationships in the context of parental separation and divorce and show that sibling relationships in these families are more likely to be high in both warmth and hostility than is true for relationships in 2-parent families. Third, I report on several data sets showing an association between the quality of sibling relationships and adolescent adjustment and the link between differential parenting, adolescent adjustment, and the quality of the sibling relationship. Fourth, I report on a study of comparison and competition in sibling relationships and the associations between sibling relationship quality and reactions to being outperformed by a sibling. Finally, I discuss possible future directions for research on sibling relationships, including the importance of multimethod studies and a longitudinal perspective.

An analysis of relational complexity in an air traffic control conflict detection task

Theoretical analyses of air traffic complexity were carried out using the Method for the Analysis of Relational Complexity. Twenty-two air traffic controllers examined static air traffic displays and were required to detect and resolve conflicts. Objective measures of performance included conflict detection time and accuracy. Subjective perceptions of mental workload were assessed by a complexity-sorting task and subjective ratings of the difficulty of different aspects of the task. A metric quantifying the complexity of pair-wise relations among aircraft was able to account for a substantial portion of the variance in the perceived complexity and difficulty of conflict detection problems, as well as reaction time. Other variables that influenced performance included the mean minimum separation between aircraft pairs and the amount of time that aircraft spent in conflict.

A green stick or a fresh stick?: Locating customary penalties in the post-colonial era

Former colonies and dependencies in the South Pacific do not have the luxury of entirely ‘homegrown’ laws. Their legal systems are burdened with a ‘legacy’ of transplanted laws, developed for use in a foreign country, imposed on pre-existing systems of custom and culture. As a result, many small island countries are struggling to balance the demands of law from different sources, designed to operate in fundamentally different circumstances. In addition to the conflict that occurs in areas of substantive law, where customary and introduced law may prescribe a different rule for the same situation, the two systems differ in their approach to procedure, penalties and relief. This paper considers the divide between the theory and practice of introduced law and customary law and examines the way in which conflicts have been dealt with by the courts. In particular, it uses the example of banishment to illustrate the type of problems that arise in a plural system. The paper looks at the balancing exercise which has been necessary when custom, in the form of banishment, comes into conflict with introduced law, in the form of constitutional rights.