Data from a national survey of the value of children to parents were analyzed to (a)report the satisfactions of parenthood perceived by married American couples in the childbearing years, (b) test the adequacy of the kloffman and Hoffman (1973) need-based category scheme for conceptualizing the value of children, and (c) examine subgroup diff(~rences to test the hypothesis that groups with fewer alternative means for satisfying a particular need will value children more highly for this quality. Results indicated that the Hoffman and Hoffman (1973) scheme was adequate with some modifications. In both structured and unstructured questions, the two most important values were Primary Group Ties and Stimulation and Fun. The alternatives hypothesis received some support: Groups with less access to economic resources (less educated and blacks) gave more importance to economic-utility values than did others; women with traditional sex-role definitions gave more importance to adult status than did others; unemployed women gave more to fun and stimulation; Jews and nonaffiliated more to immortality; urban residents more to purpose in life. The alternatives hypothesis alone did not work as well in other cases, particularly achievement, probably because the intensity of the need was not considered in this analysis.

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This research relies on data from a survey conducted in 1981 to explore the potential negative and positive consequences of having multiple roles. The responses of 500 employed women to questions about self‐esteem, satisfaction with careers, partners, and children, and perceptions of life stress and pleasure were examined. The number of roles held by respondents ranged from 1 to 5 (worker, partner, parent, volunteer, and student). The results indicated that higher self‐esteem and greater job satisfaction were associated with holding more roles. However, neither marital nor parental satisfaction was consistently related to the number of roles held. Although the majority of working women reported their lives to be stressful, this finding was independent of the number of roles held, and women with more roles did not consistently report a greater number of stressful life domains. These findings suggest that, for employed women, having multiple roes may enhance psychological well‐being.

Counterfactual thinking entails the process of imagining alternatives to realitywhat might have been. The present study explores the incidence and content of counterfactual thinking about personal decisions in three samples of adults. The results indicate, first, that counterfactual thought occurs frequently among normal adults, with approximately half of each sample reporting that they would do something differently if they had their lives to live over. Secondly, there appear to be common themes to the counterfactuals reported in various real-life domains. For example, it is common to imagine states counter to the realities of having married early, having curtailed one's education, and having experienced unsatisfactory interpersonal relationships. In general, it appears that decisions and events that were unusual, that have proved less than ideal, or that have prematurely closed off important life options most often generate counterfactual thinking.The process of imagining alternatives to reality -what might have been -is sometimes referred to as counterfactual thought. Because of the inevitability of choice, misfortune, and conflict between choices, claims, or ways of life, counterfactual thought may be inevitable (Hampshire, 1983). The present study turns this presupposition into a set of empirical questions : How common is counterfactual thought? What sorts of matters are people most likely mentally to alter?The mental simulation of counterfactuals has been implicated in a variety of psychological processes, including causal reasoning (Dunning & Parpal, 1989 ;Gavanski & Wells, 1990;Goodman, 1973;Wells, Taylor & Turtle, 1987), emotional reactions to life events (Gleicher, Kost, Baker, Strathman, Richman & Sherman, 1990; Kahneman & Tversky, 1982a, 6; Landman, 1987a, b; Landman, in press;Lehman, Wortman & Williams, 1987), and social perception (Miller,' Turnbull & McFarland, 1990). However, nearly all the research has been carried out in the laboratory with hypothetical events as stimuli. The extent to which people engage in counterfactual thinking in real life, and its nature, remain * Requests for reprints.

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