Although deeply committed to the model of nondirective counseling, most genetic counselors enter the profession with certain assumptions about health and disability-for example, that it is preferable to be a hearing person than a deaf person. Thus, most genetic counselors are deeply troubled when parents with certain disabilities ask for assistance in having a child who shares their disability....

Research suggests that families have development histories which influence their responses to situations across the life course. The present study examined the effects of family relationship histories on intergenerational affection and conflict between adult children and their parents and how this affects parents' depressive symptoms. Path analysis based on matched reports of adult children and...

The interests of males and females over reproduction rarely coincide and conflicts between the sexes over mate choice, mating frequency, reproductive investment, and parental care are common in many taxa. In Drosophila melanogaster, the optimum mating frequency is higher for males than it is for females. Furthermore, females that mate at high frequencies suffer significant mating costs due to t...

Genomic imprinting refers to the process whereby genes are silenced when inherited via sperm or egg. The most widely accepted theory for the evolution of genomic imprinting-the kinship theory-argues that conflict between maternally inherited and paternally inherited genes over phenotypes with asymmetric effects on matrilineal and patrilineal kin results in self-imposed silencing of one of the c...

Posthatching maternal care such as food provisioning and protection has evolved several times in insects, allowing offspring (larvae, nymphs) to interact with their mothers and potentially influence their investment. The evolutionary conflict over the duration and amount of parental care is thought to promote the evolution of offspring begging behaviours either as honest signals of need or as c...

A growing literature reveals that parental divorce and marital discord can have undesirable effects on themental health and social well-being of children, some of which extendwell into adulthood. Our study augments this body of work by focusing on the interplay of divorce and discord in shaping the religious and spiritual lives of young adults. Several discrete subgroups of young adults are ide...

In modern welfare states, family policies may resolve the tension between employment and care-focused demands. However these policies sometimes have adverse consequences for distinct social groups. This study examined gender and educational differences in working parents' perceived work-family conflict and used a comparative approach to test whether family policies, in particular support for ch...

Understanding the evolution of parental care is complicated by the occurrence of evolutionary conflicts of interest within the family, variation in the quality and state of family members, and repeated bouts of investment in a family of offspring. As a result, family members are expected to negotiate over care. We present a model for the resolution of sexual conflict in which parents negotiate ...

In biparental species, parents may be in conflict over how much they invest into their offspring. To understand this conflict, parental care needs to be accurately measured, something rarely done. Here, we quantitatively describe the outcome of parental conflict in terms of quality, amount, and timing of incubation throughout the 21-day incubation period in a population of semipalmated sandpipe...

Asthma is a chronic respiratory disorder that affects over 7 million children in the United States. Evidence indicates that family stressors are associated with worsening of asthma symptoms, and some research suggests that these stressful experiences engender changes in children's immune systems in ways that exacerbate airway inflammation and contribute to both acute and chronic asthma symptoms...