In the past two decades there has been an explosion of research on fathers (see Booth & Crouter, 1998;Lamb, 1997; for recent reviews). There is now a broad consensus that fathers are important contributors to both normal and abnormal child outcomes. Infants and toddlers can be as attached to fathers as they are to mothers. In addition, even when fathers are not physically present, they may play an important role in their children's psychological lives. Other important issues about fathers and families remain controversial. For example, scholars continue to debate the extent to which paternal involvement has increased over the past 20 years (Pleck, 1997). Similarly, we are only beginning to study the ways that fathering identities vary across subcultures (Auerbach, Silverstein, & Zizi, 1997;Bowman & Forman, 1998;Roopnarine, Snell-White, & Riegraf, 1993). Nor do we understand clearly the effects of divorce on fathers and their children (Hetherington, Bridges, & Insabella, 1998).Overall, this explosion of research on fathering has increased the complexity of scholarly thinking about parenting and child development. However, one group of social scientists (e. g. Biller & Kimpton, 1997;Blankenhorn, 1995;Popenoe, 1996) has emerged that is offering a more simplistic view of the role of fathers in families. These neoconservative social scientists have replaced the earlier "essentializing" of mothers (Bowlby, 1951) with a claim about the essential importance of fathers. These authors have proposed that the roots of a wide range of social problems (i. e. child poverty, urban decay, societal violence, teenage pregnancy, and poor school performance) can be traced to the absence of fathers in the lives of their children. Biller DECONSTRUCTING THE ESSENTIAL FATHER

No abstract

How can research data about gender role strain improve clinical work with men? The authors present qualitative data from 3 groups of fathers in the Yeshiva University Fatherhood Project: Haitian American, Promise Keeper, and gay fathers. The data illustrate the specific types of gender role strain associated with contemporary fathering and show how men are spontaneously reconstructing fathering and masculinity in general. The authors use clinical examples to show how psychologists can make use of this research knowledge in the diagnosis and treatment of men.The purpose of this article is to illustrate how research data on gender role strain can be applied to clinical work with men.Research from a large-scale study on fathering shows that men are experiencing gender role strain as they try to enact the traditional fathering role, a role that was developed in a different social and historical context. This experience of strain has led the fathers to begin to reconstruct the fathering role into a new parenting paradigm that is more psychologically gratifying in the context of contemporary societal expectations. These changes contain important suggestions for ways in which professional psychologists can help men make these transitions in their fathering identities.In the past decade, both the popular press and scholarly literature have expressed concern about men in contemporary society. Many theorists writing in the field of the new psychology of men have pointed out the problems inherent in traditional masculinity ideology and have called for a reconstructed masculinity (e.g., Brooks & Silverstein, 1995;Levant, 1992;Levant & Kopecky, 1995). Most of these authors (ourselves included) have focused on the kinds of broad social changes that would have to take place in order for this reconstruction to occur. These include changes in cultural gender ideology (i.e., what it means to be "masculine" and "feminine"); changes in the socialization of boys in families, schools, and organized sports; and changes in the workplace that support men's active involvement with raising infants and young children. Fewer authors have addressed the concerns of professional psychologists working with individual men (Brooks, 1998;Brooks & Good, 2001;Levant & Silverstein, 2001).As men struggle to reconstruct their identity as parents, spouses, and workers, many would benefit from clinical interventions, such as parent support groups, individual and group psychotherapy, and family therapy. We argue that psychologists must be trained to understand this struggle in terms of normative gender role strain rather than intrapsychic or interpersonal pathology.We begin by describing the theoretical framework of gender role strain. Then we present qualitative data from three different samples of fathers: Haitian fathers, Promise Keeper fathers, and gay fathers. We close with the implications of these findings for clinical work with men.

No abstract

Recent trauma research has begun to investigate the possibility of posttraumatic growth. However, most studies have investigated posttraumatic growth using quantitative methods and thus have neglected people's subjective experience and have left unexamined post-traumatic growth in persons with visible impairment. To fill some of these gaps, the authors examined the process of recovery and posttraumatic growth using a qualitative method. They interviewed 10 participants with visible impairment from chronic illness or serious injury using a semistructured interview. Using a grounded theory data analysis procedure, the authors developed a stage model of trauma and recovery from the interviews. The stages that emerged are thematically entitled Apprehension, Diagnosis and Devastation, Choosing to Go On, Building a Way to Live, and Integration of the Trauma and Expansion of the Self. The authors discuss limitations of the study and clinical implications for psychological counseling with this population.