Book Reviews

Working and Growing Up in America. JeylanT. Mortimer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-sity Press. 2003. 304 pp. ISBN 0-674-00923-1.$45.00 (cloth).

Does paid work interfere with youth’s educa-tional and/or extracurricular activities, thusdecreasing youth’s chances for positive develop-mental outcomes? The controversy over whetheradolescents should engage in paid work hasbrewed for decades. Jeylan T. Mortimer, inWorking and Growing Up in America, dramatic-ally changes the context of the debate. She pro-vides ample evidence that not only is working inmoderation (20 hours or less) through high schoolnot harmful but that steady, low-intensityemployment may actually improve developmen-tal outcomes for youth.

In 1987, Mortimer initiated a longitudinalstudy designed to assess how the quantity andquality of paid work affect developmental out-comes of youth. The project began with an initialgroup of 1,010 Minnesota ninth graders, whowere followed through 7 years post–high school(1998). The participant retention rate is one of themany strengths of this study. Mortimer boasts93% retention at year 4 of the study (participantswere seniors), and in 1998, 75.9% of the originalparticipants were still involved. The researchdesign is also an excellent study. Quantitativeand qualitative data were collected from thestudents and their parents in order to reveal thedevelopmental processes and trajectories of bothworking and nonworking youth. Working andGrowing Up in America not only adds to thebody of knowledge regarding the consequences

of paid work on youth development but is also afine example of credible social science research.

This was inarguably a massive research pro-ject, yet Mortimer adopts a comfortable, easy-to-understand tone throughout the book. She speakssoftly, yet systematically refutes all of the usualarguments against paid youth work. Each chapterbegins with an overview of relevant researchliterature and concludes with a concise summary.The limitations of the research are clearly indi-cated. The author acknowledges that problemsare inherent in self-reported data, and that find-ings may or may not be generalizable to otherpopulations or geographic regions.

Chapter 1 is a lively introduction to the debateover whether youth should engage in paid work.Mortimer sets the stage for later chapters with abrief sociohistorical account of youth employmentin the United States, and a balanced presentation ofthe potential positive and negative consequences ofpaid work for youth. She introduces the YouthDevelopment Study (YDS) in Chapter 2, whereshe details the data collection protocols.

In Chapter 3, Mortimer discusses how youthallocate time among various activities. She dif-ferentiates between household work, schoolwork,volunteer work, and paid work, and then makes acompelling case that developmental outcomesmay be related to individual (subjective) percep-tions of each type of ‘‘work.’’ She introduces atypology of youth work characterized by durationand intensity of work. The identified categoriesare quite useful throughout the book forunderstanding how the complex processes ofyouth development can be affected by paidemployment.

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Chapter 4 explores paid youth work relative tothe other youth work environments previouslydiscussed. Mortimer concludes that the majorityof working youth are as involved in these activ-ities as their nonworking peers are. Chapter 5provides new insights into why youth choosepaid work in addition to other activities. Whenparticipants were asked why they work, mostindicated that they did it for the money. Mortimermoves past this obvious answer and engages in arather fascinating discussion about motivation foreach category from the typology of youth work.She concludes that ‘‘Distinct differences in workand time use patterns emerge, which are relatedto backgrounds and orientations measured asearly as ninth grade’’ (p. 138).

The developmental results of youth employ-ment are discussed in Chapter 6. It is here thatMortimer pens what may be the most powerfulstatement in the book: ‘‘Neither employment sta-tus nor hours of work significantly influenced thehigh school students’ mental health, educationalachievement, vocational development, or familyand peer relationship’’ (p. 181). In Chapter 7,Mortimer details outcomes for the paneliststhrough 7 years post–high school. Perhaps oneof the most startling and potentially useful find-ings revealed is that steady work at low intensity(20 hours or less weekly) through high schoolsignificantly increases educational attainmentfor youth exhibiting low educational promiseduring year 1 of the study.

Chapter 8 is effectively the discussion sectionfor the entire project and includes suggestions forresearch and policy. The section on policy impli-cations gave me the decidedly unprofessionaldesire to stand up and cheer! One of the manyimportant points Mortimer makes here is that pol-icy makers and youth development practitionersshould investigate avenues for providing steady,meaningful work opportunities to at-risk youth.

I would be remiss not to mention a couple ofareas that could be strengthened. First, I wouldhave liked more information about how the mas-sive amounts of qualitative data were or will beused. Second, an explanation about how ‘‘mentalhealth’’ was conceptualized and operationalizedin Chapter 6 would have been extremely helpful.Third, I had hoped the ‘‘Implications for FutureStudies’’ (p. 224) would include well-developedsuggestions that could provide guidance to newresearchers in the field, as well as to otherswishing to extend Mortimer’s work to otherpopulations.

Working and Growing Up in America is sure tobecome a classic in the youth development litera-ture. This book has much to offer a wide varietyof audiences and should be read by policymakers, human development students andscholars, youth work practitioners, parents, highschool teachers, and guidance counselors. I alsoenvision the use of this book as supplementalreading in upper-level undergraduate and gradu-ate social science research courses. The researchprotocols alone are well worth the price of thisbook, and can shape the work of future socialscience research on several levels. All in all,Mortimer has created an outstanding volumethat will be read and used for many years tocome.

LYDIA B. BLALOCK

Rutgers Cooperative Extension

Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Cultureand Cultural Theory. Catherine Driscoll. NewYork: Columbia University Press. 2002. 377pp. ISBN 0-231-11913-5. $19.50 (paper).ISBN 0-231-11912-7. $52.50 (cloth).

As Driscoll and others note, the notion of‘‘self’’ as the knowing center of the world hasbecome a critical point of introspection for theor-ists—including feminist theorists—during thepast several decades. And yet, despite intensescrutiny about what makes knowing subjects pos-sible, little of this work helps us understand thecurrent state of ‘‘girlhood.’’ This lack of scholarlyattention to girls stands in contrast to theirincreasing visibility in popular culture. Girls isan attempt to remedy this invisibility of girls incultural studies as the discourse most likely toconsider their involvement in the production ofthe world that defines them (p. 3). It provides ahistory of ‘‘feminine adolescence’’ as the cat-egory through which we understand girls today,and by extension, through which girls understandthemselves and their lives.

Girls is no conventional history, however, no dis-covery of an adolescence that was ‘‘always there.’’Employing Foucault’s notion of genealogy, Dris-coll’s study focuses on how the idea of ‘‘feminineadolescence’’ works and what it has been used to say.The intent of Girls thus is not to deliver new know-ledge about girls, nor to document new forms ofgirlhood; rather, Driscoll wants to show how knowl-edge about girls has shaped what it means to be a girl

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and how girls experience their own positions in theworld in relation to diverse ways of talking about andunderstanding girls. In other words, her genealogyasks how knowledges and their objects work in his-torically specific sites, including legislation, develop-mental and popular psychology, educationalcurricula, girls’ magazines, anthropology and soci-ology, cultural studies, feminism, and popular music.Given this diverse range of discursive sites implicatedin the construction of feminine adolescence, Girls isorganized into a tripartite structure.

Part 1, ‘‘Becoming a Girl,’’ begins Driscoll’s ge-nealogical inquiry through an examination of thepublic redefinition of Victorian girlhood in Renais-sance literature as a venue popularizing the conceptsof the human subject and the child (p. 17). Alsoimportant is Freud’s transhistorical narrative aboutdesire, agency, and familial relations, a narrativethat reinforces assumptions that feminine adoles-cence was always there, waiting to be discoveredor understood. Following from these beginnings, therecognizable figure of feminine adolescence as adiscursive formation flourished through ‘‘a systemat-ic dispersion of statements about girls and girlhoodacross various fields’’ that include newspapers, le-gislation, parliamentary debate, literary and visualrepresentation, guidance manuals, and the popular-ization of developmental psychology. These venuesopened a speaking position for the girl. At the sametime, although adolescence was given shape as anecessary crisis in the formation of Selfhood, femi-nine adolescence failed to progress to subjectivity asthe marker of adulthood. Instead, feminine adoles-cents were characterized as awaiting the transforma-tion from girl to woman. This characterization isespecially evident in the discourses of puberty thatnaturalize the category of feminine adolescencewhile denying girls both desire and activity (p. 84).

While Part 1 thus interrogates what kind ofdevelopmental stage the idea of girlhood provides,Part 2, ‘‘Becoming a Woman,’’ considers howfeminine adolescence works; in other words, howthe discourse surrounding feminine adolescencesustains the narrative of ‘‘girls becomingwomen.’’ Not surprisingly, the discursive sitesexplored in this section concern girls as daughtersand brides. More surprising, perhaps, is Driscoll’sinclusion of feminism. As she notes, while ‘‘femi-nine adolescence emerged at a nexus of various latemodern discourses’’ (p. 126), it exhibits a particu-larly tense engagement with feminism. Driscollshows how feminist theory can, however inadvert-ently, reconstitute the gender norms that uphold‘‘girlhood.’’ This is because feminist practice is

dominated by models of subjectivity based onadult women. Womanhood is presumed to be theend point of a naturalized process of developingindividual identity that relegates a vast range ofroles, behaviors, or practices to its immature past.The patriarchal capitalist coding of feminine ado-lescence as simultaneously desirable commodityand undesirable identity is thus fully effective infeminist theory; although the continuance of femi-nism requires the identification of girls, girls arenot identified as feminists (p. 130). In other words,girls are presumed to be more subject to ideologicalmanipulation than women: As Driscoll correctlypoints out, ‘‘If feminist narratives about howwomen are constrained by patriarchy weredeprived of girls as vulnerable object of sexualizedgender roles, they might be quite different narra-tives’’ (p. 132).

In sum, Part 2 of Girls includes the discourses ofwhat we now call feminist cultural studies. In clos-ing, Part 3, entitled ‘‘Girl Culture,’’ sketches a setof contemporary case studies for feminist culturalstudies. These studies come from both discourseson girls and sites of cultural production especiallyassociated with girls. Thus, one focus of Part 3 iscommercialized culture, including teen/youthfilms, beauty and fashion magazines, and ‘‘girl’’musicians. As a fitting close to Driscoll’s geneal-ogy, this section explores the deployment of girls incontemporary mass-produced culture as one site ofpublic debate over girl culture as either conformistor alternative entertainment. As Driscoll notes,both popular and academic debates deploy highlyambivalent ideas about girls: The dominant pre-sumption that subjectivity requires agency exer-cised as independent choice continues to prioritizecultural forms that maintain individualist authenti-city. One result is the marginalization or outrightomission of girls in contemporary theorizing aboutsubjectivity. Driscoll concludes (perhaps hope-fully) that ‘‘Girls might finally provide a significantfocus for considering relations between popularculture and critical theory insofar as they have notonly been pivotal to a series of renovations of themodern as an object of analysis but have also beenconstituted by the formation of late modern criticaltheory as much as popular culture’’ (p. 306).

In its totality, Girls is a rich compendium ofdiverse narratives about what it means to be a girlin the 19th and 20th centuries. As a consequence,a wide range of readers will find much of interest inthis book. To be sure, this book brings to light thediscursive realms that make feminine adolescencepossible in its modern sense, drawing attention to

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those discourses that ‘‘we never choose but that,paradoxically, initiate and sustain our agency’’(p. 102). I particularly appreciate the inclusion offeminist theory as a discursive (and contested) siteimplicated in this subjectification, in part becauseDriscoll draws attention to the ways in which femi-nist discourse unwittingly contributes to an antife-minist sentiment among girls. The problem for me,however, is that understanding exactly how knowl-edges of feminine adolescence sustain agencybecomes a matter of speculation. Part of the pro-blem is the continual shift in terminology through-out the book from ‘‘girls’’ to ‘‘girlhood’’ to‘‘feminine adolescence’’ and then to ‘‘girl culture.’’For the large part, Driscoll treats them (or at leastseems to) as equivalent in her story. One result isthe sense that while actual, embodied girls areevoked throughout Driscoll’s narrative, they aresomehow irrelevant to Girls, despite the author’sstated desire to understand her own experiences ofgirlhood. Although I appreciate that genealogicalexcavation is not about finding ‘‘a living, breathingbody,’’ it is hard to believe that an interrogation—ifonly at the theoretical level—of the relationshipbetween highly abstract discourses about girls/girl-hood/feminine adolescence/girl culture and girls‘‘on the ground’’ is not relevant. In Driscoll’s ownwords, the promise of a genealogy is an interroga-tion of ‘‘how knowledges and their objects work inparticular situations’’ (p. 4). The four-page conclu-sion to Girls suggests that Driscoll believes thatthis insight is self-evident in her narrative. In myreading, however, despite the many gems of insightin Driscoll’s genealogy, a lack of analytical coher-ence gives the reader far too much responsibilityfor making sense of it all. In the final analysis, Ifound reading Girls much like listening to ‘‘noise’’rather than music, a bit of a shame because there isa potential symphony in this rich text.

DAWN H. CURRIE

University of British Columbia

Assessment of Family Violence: A Handbook forResearchers and Practitioners. Eva L. Feindler,Jill H. Rathus, & Laura Beth Silver. Washington,DC: American Psychological Association. 2003.580 pp. ISBN 1-55798-900-1. $59.95 (hard-cover).

In recent years, the field of family violence haswitnessed a dramatic increase in empiricalresearch concerning the causes, consequences,

and potential intervention strategies for victimsand perpetrators. The extent to which thisresearch has benefited mental health practitionersand clinicians who work directly with victimsand perpetrators of family violence, however, islimited. The lack of available information aboutassessment tools has impeded practitioners’ abil-ity to adequately and accurately provide a multi-dimensional assessment of family violence.Assessment of Family Violence: A Handbook forResearchers and Practitioners makes an impor-tant and much needed contribution to our under-standing of family violence—in particular, theassessment of violence against children—by pro-viding a state-of-the-art review of family vio-lence assessment methods. This book reflectsEva Feindler, Jill Rathus, and Laura Silver’simpressive and comprehensive research of thefield of family violence assessment, and offersan extensive compilation of strategies to achievea multimodal assessment of family violence.Further, this book will prove to be helpful notonly to practitioners but also to researchers andacademics. The two most notable characteristicsof this book are the tremendous deliberation withwhich the authors went to present the material inan organized and straightforward manner, and theease with which the authors present informationregarding the assessment tools.

The methods of assessment selected for thisbook primarily reflect a behavioral assessmentapproach. As such, the book focuses on threetypes of assessment methods: interview, self-report, and analogue (i.e., direct observation,approximation in naturalistic settings). The bookis divided into four major parts. Part Oneincludes an overview of the book’s organizationand format. This section explains the generalissues in the assessment of family violence suchas the purposes for assessment, the role of cultureand diversity in assessment, and specific assess-ment approaches, including advantages and dis-advantages to each. Further, this section providesa brief yet valuable discussion of ethical andlegal issues surrounding family violence assess-ment, which may be particularly useful for caseworkers and social workers. Finally, Part Onediscusses test construction and psychometrics,including test scale development, reliability andvalidity, and difficulties in test construction.Because more clinically oriented practitioners orundergraduates may not be as well versed in thespecifics of statistical procedure (e.g., convergentversus criterion-related validity), it seems as if

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the authors were intentional in their attempts topresent information in a way that can be under-stood by a wide audience.

Parts Two through Four present methods ofassessment specific to three facets of family vio-lence. For example, Part Two focuses on theassessment of maltreated children and adoles-cents, including measures pertaining to child vic-tims, witnesses of family violence, and adultsurvivors of abuse. Part Three focuses on theassessment of parents and caregivers, includingmeasures of maltreating parents and parents whomay be at risk for maltreating their children. Astrength of this section is the attention to childneglect, a form of child maltreatment that is oftenoverlooked in family violence assessment.Finally, Part Four concentrates on assessment offamilies and examines characteristics of maltreat-ing or at-risk families, including assessment offamily structure, process, communication, andcohesion. Further, this section includes methodsto assess children’s perceptions of and reactionsto parental conflict.

Parts Two through Four are organized in aconsistent, ordered fashion. First, the sectionsbegin with an overview of the issues relevant toeach specific subfield of family violence pre-sented in that section (i.e., maltreated childrenand adolescents, parents and caregivers, andfamilies). For example, in Part Four, the authorsprovide a detailed discussion of the importance ofexamining the interactional nature of the pro-cesses involved in the ‘‘abusive family environ-ment.’’ Second, interview assessments, self-report assessments, and analogue assessmentsare presented. Although the actual assessmentinstruments are not provided, detailed informa-tion for each instrument is offered. This includesinformation regarding the development anddescription of the assessment method, the targetpopulation, equipment needed, formatting issues(e.g., the number of items), psychometric evaluations(e.g., reliability, validity), advantages and lim-itations, scale availability (i.e., author’s directcontact information), and comments and recom-mendations for practitioners and researchers.

A central characteristic of the family violencefield is its reliance upon not only researchers andacademics but also clinical and mental healthprofessionals, police officers, court officials,legal advocates, and social workers, to name afew. Thus, as we continue our attempts to endthis social problem, a central goal should be tobridge the gap between research and practice by

addressing issues relevant to all those involved.Feindler, Rathus, and Silver’s handbook attemptsto achieve this goal by presenting informationthat is useful to both researchers and practi-tioners. This handbook will advance our abilityto properly assess family violence and encouragea continued eagerness to prevent and intervene infamily violence cases.

JANEL M. LEONE

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

The Silk Weavers of Kyoto: Family and Work in aChanging Traditional Industry. TamaraK. Hareven. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. 2002. 367 pp. ISBN 0-520-22818-9.$21.95 (paper).

Behind the elegant Nishijin obi (sash worn overkimono) there lies a complex history of human,family, and community relationships among theweavers, manufacturers, and other craftspeople. InThe Silk Weavers of Kyoto, Tamara K. Harevenexamines such complex lives within the Nishijinindustry in Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto, basedon the oral history and field research project thatspanned almost two decades. Hareven’s book isboth a historical and comparative analysis of thetraditional silk weaving industry, presented with 30captivating photos, including the production of obiusing the handloom, and weavers and their families.This engaging book is organized into two parts: theauthor’s historical and comparative analysis offamily, work, and the division of labor in Nishijin,and the numerous life stories told by weavers andmanufacturers through in-depth interviews. In termsof history, Hareven describes continuity, crisis, andchange in the Nishijin weaving industry, includingthe introduction of powerlooms and jacquard, andhow these technologies influenced weavers’ livesand families. In setting up the Nishijin weavingindustry in a comparative perspective, Harevenmainly uses her previous research on the AmoskeagMills that existed in Manchester, New Hampshire,before World War II.

In Chapter 1, Hareven describes her intellec-tual journey from her earlier research on theAmoskeag Mills to the present study on theNishijin industry and its craftspeople. It is clearfrom this chapter that despite the challenge for an‘‘outsider’’ to make an entry into such atraditional Japanese industry as Nishijin weaving,Hareven succeeded in building a rapport and a

262 Journal of Marriage and Family

strong bond with these craftspeople. Chapter 2describes the history of Nishijin by focusing onits division of labor, relationships betweenweavers and manufacturers, and technologicalchange. In Chapter 3, the unique characteristicsand history of the Nishijin weaving family busi-ness and cottage industry are presented usingseveral statistical figures collected by variousJapanese researchers. Perhaps the most intriguingsection for family scholars is found in Chapter 4,where Hareven describes the gendered nature ofNishijin weaving families with the use of oralhistory and survey data. It is not surprising tofind out that female Nishijin weavers take majorresponsibility in child care and housework, giventhe commonly accepted gender ideology inJapan. These women, however, are differentfrom the rest of Japanese working wives in thatthe Nishijin women are most likely to continueweaving after marriage and childbirth. A strongspiritual identity as a weaver and the commitmentto weaving work are described in Chapter 5,along with the dual ‘‘worker-homemaker’’ iden-tity among female Nishijin weavers. Reading thefirst part of the book, we come to better under-stand the important role that families play in theNishijin industry and the gendered division oflabor among these weavers.

The testimonies of Nishijin craftspeople pre-sented in the second part of the book are rich incontext and diverse in terms of the subjects, ran-ging from the middle-aged to elderly powerloomand handloom weavers, manufacturers, weaver’sassistants, and warpers. Although each story isunique, weavers are generally concerned withtheir earnings, manufacturers’ unfair work alloca-tion, and the future and potential demise of theNishijin weaving industry. The manufacturers’stories are somewhat more optimistic than thoseof weavers, but they also detail their efforts tokeep the economically stricken Nishijin weavingindustry alive. One common theme that arises inthese stories is the pride of the craftspeople intheir products despite their isolated work envir-onment, economic fluctuation, and the industry’sbleak future due to the decline of kimono sales.The concluding chapter describes differences andsimilarities between the Nishijin industry and itscraftspeople and their counterparts in the Amos-keag Mills. Despite the dramatic differences inproduction, family organization, and genderideology, craftspeople in both Nishijin and theAmoskeag Mills have in common their commit-ment to produce high-quality materials, their

relationships to their employers, and the roles ofwomen in the textile industry. Hareven alsodescribes the unique cultural characteristics thathave been influencing Nishijin craftspeople andits industry.

One drawback of the book is that the sameinterview quotes appear more than once in sev-eral sections, which can be a bit annoying toreaders. However, this is mainly due to thebook’s organization, in which the testimonies ofthe Nishijin craftspeople are presented in theirentirety in the second part of the book, and inthe author’s historical and comparative analysesin the first part of the book.

In sum, this book provides an excellent exampleof how family history can be studied andpresented with the use of oral history data.Accordingly, it is a valuable resource for thosewho are employing an oral history method intheir research. In my view, the intricate familyrelationships of the Nishijin craftspeopledescribed by the author in this book will be ofgreat interest not only to Japan specialists butalso to family researchers who specialize in thearea of work and family. Although this bookfocuses on Japanese traditional weaving familiesand industry, the underlying theme and family-related topics transcend cultural boundaries.Finally, this book serves as an appropriate sup-plementary reader for an undergraduate familyhistory class and as one of the main textbooksfor a graduate-level seminar on family and work.

MASAKO ISHII-KUNTZ

University of California, Riverside

The Loss of a Life Partner: Narratives of theBereaved. Carolyn Ambler Walter. ColumbiaUniversity Press. 2003. 304 pp. ISBN0231119690. $26.50 (paper).

Giving needed attention to intimate partner-ships (married partners, nonmarried opposite-sexpartners, gay partners, and lesbian partners), thisvolume sheds some light on the ways in whichdifferent groups of partnered people experiencegrief following the death of their loved ones. Thebook is divided into literature review, separatesections of narratives for each group of partnersdiscussed, and interventions and implications. Itis refreshing to see each group explored indepen-dently instead of seeing all partnerships lumpedtogether as though they are identical. However,

Book Reviews 263

the repetition across chapters of the many sharedexperiences among those four groups fails tofully acknowledge and integrate the many simi-larities across experiences of loss, resulting in asomewhat awkward volume.

Carolyn Ambler Walter begins by reviewingsome of the literature on grieving the death of aspouse or partner, promising a postmodern per-spective on grief. She explores in depth the con-cept of ‘‘disenfranchised grief,’’ which occurswhen the loss is not in the context of a sociallysanctioned relationship. Though the authorrepeatedly refers to a dearth of literature on thesubject of partner loss, there are relevant worksthat are not referenced. Walter describes how theparticipants were chosen in research terms (e.g.,‘‘snowball technique’’), but it is unclear whetherthe author intends for the work to be consideredresearch—which should be complete with theoryand methods for interview and analysis—or sim-ply a compilation of narratives and literaturereview.

As the title implies, the book’s focus and alsoits highlight is the sharing of 22 narratives ofbereaved partners of a deceased person, poignanttales of grief and growth, of love and loss. Theyallow the reader to understand some of thenuance of each person’s experience of personaltragedy, and to see how many different ways thatpeople in various relationships can suffer andthen emerge from that suffering changed. Thechapters of narratives begin with a brief introduc-tion to the group and the literature on that group,then each narrative is presented, followed by ananalysis of that narrative.

The sections on intervention and implicationsserve well as selective compilations of the litera-ture on those topics. The primary emphases ofthese two chapters are the importance ofclinicians’ openness to grieving partners’ varyingexperiences, and the usefulness of encouragingtransformation of the relationship with thedeceased person rather than working toward‘‘closure.’’ There are no references to couple orfamily work; the interventions suggested are rele-vant only to individual and group therapy.

Though Walter says she embraces a postmod-ern perspective, it is minimally incorporated inthe text. The only obvious reference is to theconcept of the ‘‘transformation’’ of the partner’srelationship with the deceased, which she con-trasts with classic grief theorists’ adherence to the‘‘closure’’ model. A postmodern stance in thebook would have been clearer had there been a

more thorough incorporation of Walter’s ownexperience with her partner’s death and her sub-sequent transformation and healing. She men-tions this salient life experience in theacknowledgements only, leaving the reader won-dering throughout the text how her perspectiveinfluenced her interaction with participants andher interpretation of their words.

Walter uses the word ‘‘loss’’ in her title, butthe text and narratives in the book refer exclu-sively to death. Because there are other types ofpartner loss, such as loss through divorce orbreakup, mental or physical disability, or disap-pearance, and because these losses can producegrief as intense as that experienced throughdeath, it is disappointing that the author neitherrefers to omitting discussion of these types oflosses nor explains that this text will focus exclu-sively on death.

Finally, an unusual number of editing errorsdetracts from what might otherwise be well-takenpoints, and the author’s writing style at timesobscures rather than elucidates the meaning ofthe participants’ narratives. The well-articulatedpoints sometimes fall short of combining to cre-ate either a full, nuanced theoretical argument ora handbook for clinicians or surviving partners.Although the author refers to her book as appro-priate for lay and professional populations, itmight have benefited from a more focused targetaudience. Nonetheless, the narratives remainmoving and useful as first-hand accounts of thejourney through grief.

ERIN MORGAN

University of Minnesota

Children’s Influence on Family Dynamics: TheNeglected Side of Family Relationships. AnnC. Crouter & Alan Booth (Eds.). Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum. 2003. 269 pp. ISBN 0-8058-4271-3.$59.95.

Many years of diligent study have informedour understanding of child development in thecontext of the family. Through this work, robustand consistent findings have shown that parentsare the key in predicting child developmentaloutcomes. What has been given less attention,both in research and in popular literature, is thepossibility that children are capable of influen-cing their parents. In a provocative volume, Ann

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Crouter and Alan Booth, in Children’s Influenceon Family Dynamics: The Neglected Side ofFamily Relationships, bring to bear work fromsome of the leading researchers in the field ofchild development to explore this intriguingquestion.

This edited volume is presented in four sec-tions. Each section is dedicated to a particular agegroup or research question relating to how chil-dren are substantially influential in evoking behav-iors, thoughts, and/or emotions from their parentsthat differentially affect the child’s development.Using a unique and dialectic format, the editorspresent seminal papers at the beginning of eachsection, followed by responses to those particularpapers.

The first section of the book is dedicated to anin-depth discussion of behavioral geneticresearch and its relation to environmentalresearch. The authors provide the reader with athorough discussion about the work in behaviorgenetics and the role that genetics have inexplaining how children influence various familyinteractions. David Reiss suggests that our oldway of partitioning variance to explain geneticand environmental effects is an ineffective way tounderstand family relationships. The authors posequestions about how genes manifest themselvesover the course of development, discuss theimportance of abandoning the ‘‘Equal Environ-ment Assumption,’’ and present potential adop-tion and intervention designs.

In the second section of the book, temperamentbecomes the focal point of dialogue. SusanCrockenberg and Esther Leerkes acknowledgethat 20 years of research relating to child andfamily interactions includes assessing the effectsof negative infant emotionality on maternal care-giving behavior. The authors in this portion ofthe book bring into question the constructs thatwe currently use to describe and assess specificbehaviors of both infants and caregivers. Forexample, Cynthia Stifter calls our attention toour definitions of ‘‘difficult temperament’’ and‘‘parenting sensitivity’’ (p. 79). In addition toquestioning familiar constructs, Stifter critiquescurrent methodologies used to study ‘‘transactiveprocesses.’’ James McHale, Kathryn Kavanaugh,and Julia Berkman similarly argue that asresearchers, we do not acknowledge the natureof infant signaling and, in light of that, we cannotaccurately estimate maternal sensitivity. ‘‘So,who is a sensitive parent?’’ (p. 95.) Further,how do different caregiving adults respond to

and ascribe meaning to one infant providingrepeated signaling effort? The section is con-cluded with Pamela Cole discussing how theuse of transactional models can be used to mapchild effects on parents, but is strong in hermessage that ‘‘caregivers can and will play themost crucial role in the path from child effects tochild effectiveness’’ (p. 117). Unfortunately, herargument does not follow with the spirit of thediscussion but instead reinforces the consistentlypowerful belief that regardless of how childrencome into the world, it is the parent’s job toredirect development gone awry.

The third section of the book offers what isperhaps the most provocative discussion in thevolume: The authors broach the question of howparents monitoring their adolescents can haveimpact on reducing delinquency. In an incrediblypromising study, Margaret Kerr and Hakan Stat-tin provide evidence that parents who reducetheir monitoring efforts of their teenagers whoexhibit delinquent behaviors are not causingtheir child’s delinquent behavior but instead arereacting to it. This paper sparked a rather intensedebate among researchers and writers whoresponded in this section. For example, DeborahCapaldi offers criticism to the design of the studyand the findings and presents data from studiesconducted with her team showing quite the oppo-site. Capaldi’s team has consistently turned outrobust findings that parental monitoring is highlycorrelated with adolescent delinquent behavior. Akey message from Kerr and Stattin, in response tothis critique, is that they are not insinuating thatthe direction is only from child to parent; rather,they posit that their model is supportive of thetopic of the book, and that a bidirectional modelis what they support. They further argue that theparental monitoring construct most commonlyused in studies is not measuring parental moni-toring at all. This section of the book is a realpage turner for anyone interested in a theoreticaldebate about directional effects of child-parentinteractions, particularly in adolescence.

In the last section of the book, focus is shiftedto how children influence other relationshipswithin the family system. Of particular interestis that of the marital relationship and how genderplays a role in the influence of parent-child inter-actions. Eleanor Maccoby’s article provides anice background for what is already knownabout gender and parent-child interactions. Shedoes concede, however, that we cannot determinecausality from any of the models we currently

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hold dear. She also introduces the idea that thedyad is more than the sum of its parts anddescribes a relationship that ‘‘emerges’’ out ofthe dyad that is unique unto itself. It has charac-teristics of its own that are not related more toone of the partners over the other. Although thisdescription hits home for some scholars with asystems background, it did not sit so well withthe other authors in the section. McHale andCrouter called for clarification of the concept.In contrast, Stattin and Kerr heralded her workas important to revisit because it really showshow much we think the field has moved towardthinking about the child as a key influence infamily dynamics.

This volume is incredibly promising for sev-eral different reasons. First, it is a bold step intoterritory that has been solid and, I might add,unchallenged. The belief that parents are thekey mediator between child characteristics andchild developmental outcomes is firmly ingrainedin our literature, our beliefs, and our organiza-tions. Further, it offers hope to families of chil-dren who suffer from emotional and behavioralchallenges. What we know now is that no matterthe expertise of the parents, the child effects seemgreater and less amenable to change. However, itis refreshing to see the field take an interest in atopic that has received little to no attention.

This volume does, however, lack papers andstudies that focus on middle childhood. This agegroup was overlooked or omitted from thevolume, and is an important acknowledgement.It is in middle childhood (elementary to juniorhigh school age) that many of the dynamicsspoken about emerge in parent-child dyads overtime, and are said to become ‘‘firm’’ in this rangeof development. For intervention purposes, itwould seem that this is the age at which wewant to direct most of our efforts to redirectingdevelopmental trajectories for children and theirfamilies who are off track. This is important workthat needs to be included when discussing parent-ing of any group.

In conclusion, this book offers a fresh perspec-tive on an age-old problem. Recognition of theinfluence of children on family dynamics—andthus, on the children’s own development—shouldspur research models that develop interventionsfor children in addition to interventions involvingtheir parents. It is hoped that it will create agenerative amount of activity among researchersthat should prove profitable in our pursuit ofunderstanding parents, children, and familydynamics.

THERESA REA

Portland State University

266 Journal of Marriage and Family