Two studies investigating young adults' recollections of high levels of conflict and violence with a sibling during childhood and adolescence compared the experiences of four groups: those who were violence perpetrators, violence victims, those with reciprocal violence, and a control group. Of college students in the first study, 28% reported high levels of conflict or violence with a sibling. Female Ss and those who were the younger sibling experienced more conflict and violence than did male Ss and older siblings. In the second study, associations of conflict and violence with emotional adjustment revealed that female Ss had more negative emotional outcomes than did male Ss. A positive association was also found among severe violence in the parental and the sibling dyad.

SUMMARY We examined associations between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and emotional/behavioral difficulties, feelings about one's sexuality, and the "coming out" process in a sample of 227 lesbian and bisexual women, ages 18-23, recruited for an online questionnaire study. Participants with a CSA history ("experiencers") reported significantly more emotional/behavioral difficulties than their nonexperiencer counterparts, suggesting that CSA may be an important contributor to some problems and behaviors currently linked in the literature to sexual orientation. Lesbian and bisexual experiencers varied widely as to whether and how they felt a CSA history affected their feelings about their sexuality or their "coming out" process. We discuss the implications of these findings for counseling, research, and theorizing involving lesbian and bisexual young women.

This paper is an 8-year follow-up of 17 families in which fathers began as primary caretakers early in the lives of their children. The emphasis is on the developmental consequences for the children, now in the latency period, as well as their psychological experience of the father's increased significance.

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