Psychosocial Factors in Bronchial Asthma and Allergy in Childhood: A Prospective Study

Children at Risk of Allergic Development: The Parents’ Dyadic Relationship

“…The 161 families went through an extensive semistructured clinical, psychological interview which was conducted in two parts [for detailed description of procedure and method, see Faleide et al, 1987], A few minutes after the interview was finished (in the families' homes) the families were regrouped into a psychological high-and low-risk group according to a set of clinical psychological criteria [Faleide et al, 1987], It is important to slate that the psychological high-low classification was a matter of pure psycho logical, clinical intuition and made before any statis tical analysis of the interview data and the question naires.…”

“…The present study is part of an ongoing project initiated at the Psychological Institute, Uni versity of Oslo [for further description of general design and method see Faleide et al, 1987], Some results from this project have been presented earlier [Faleide et al, 1985[Faleide et al, , 1987, From now on this project will be referred to as the PRAD project (Psychoso cial Risk for Allergic Development). In this study we will draw attention to the following questions: (1) Are there significant differ ences in dyadic adjustment between psycho logical high-and low-risk families?…”

“…From this literature we have statements like 'rejecting', 'engulfing', 'de pressive' and 'dominating' mothers [Alexan der, 1950;Block et al, 1966;Meijer, 1980], Family studies on children with asthma/allergy have also mainly been concerned with mother-child relationship, but in the last two decades the total family communi cation pattern has been brought into focus [Minuchin, et al 1978]. However, the gener ation perspective, the role of the father and the parents' dyadic interaction style have largely been neglected [Faleide et al, 1987].…”

Are Parents of Asthmatic Children Different from Other Parents?

“…The mother and the mother-child relationship have been especially fo cused on and terms like dependency conflict [3,4], maternal rejection [5], emotional con trol [6], aspiration needs [7] and controlling [8], victimizing and dominating [6], re strictive, oppressive and overpossessive [7] mothers have been used. Compared to moth-ers the relationship between the role of the fathers and childhood asthma has hardly been investigated, but there are indications that they report lowered marital quality compared to fathers of nonasthmatic children [9], Both parents as a couple have been studied, too, although to a lesser extent. They are found to be more aggressive and less exhibitionistic than other parents [10], and rigid and ego centric in their communication [11], Asth matic families have been characterized by stress [12], enmeshment, overprotectiveness, rigidity and lack of conflict resolution [13], There are, however, several methodological pitfalls in the parent/family studies of asthmat ic children and the most important is the con trol problem attached to retrospective crosssectional or clinical studies.…”