New medicine for neuromuscular diseases: An evolving paradox for patient and family hopes and expectations.

Recent developments in novel therapies for neuromuscular diseases offer parents new perspectives on their affected children's future. This article examines how the emergence of new therapies impacts the lives of parents of children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy or spinal muscular atrophy type 2, two genetic neuromuscular disorders characterized by progressive muscle degeneration. Aiming for a first-person perspective, fieldwork was conducted utilizing participant observation, semistructured interviews, and several internet sources.

A cross-sectional evaluation of acceptability of an online palliative rehabilitation program for family caregivers of people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and cognitive and behavioral impairments.

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive fatal neurodegenerative disease. Around half of the population with ALS develop cognitive and/or behavioral impairment. Behavioral changes in persons with ALS are perceived as the strongest predictor of psychosocial distress among family caregivers.

Caregiver and divine support: Associations with resilience among adolescents following disclosure of sexual abuse.

Background: Social support is believed to be important for fostering adolescent resilience following sexual abuse. Caregiver support is often examined as a source of support for adolescents, but divine support (support from God or a higher power) has received scant research attention.

Objective: This study examines relations of caregiver support and divine support with resilience following adolescent sexual abuse.

Spiritual intimacy, spiritual one-upmanship, and marital conflict across the transition to parenthood.

Dyadic discussions that directly tap into spouses' views on spirituality and religiousness (S/R) represent an understudied but important facet of marital functioning that may be tied, for better or worse, to marital conflict and resolution processes. This study used longitudinal data gathered from 164 married couples across the transition to parenthood (TtP) to address this possibility. Specifically, during late pregnancy and when their infant was 3, 6, and 12 months old, husbands and wives completed measures about both spouses' spiritual intimacy (i.

Sex through a sacred lens: Longitudinal effects of sanctification of marital sexuality.

Research attending to the role of religion and spirituality in enhancing sexuality in marriage is virtually absent. In response to this scarcity, this longitudinal study examined the sanctification of marital sexuality among newly married, heterosexual individuals (N = 67; married 4-18 months at Time 1). Greater sanctification of marital sexuality early in the marriage predicted more frequent sexual intercourse, sexual satisfaction, and marital satisfaction 1 year later for individual respondents, after controlling for initial levels of the dependent variable as well as age, frequencies of religious service attendance and prayer, and biblical conservatism.

The perception of fairness in infant care and mothers' postpartum depression.

This study investigates a potential causal effect of mothers' perceptions of the fairness of infant care on their postpartum depression. Based on the tenets of equity theory, it is hypothesized that, net of controls, mothers who see infant care as fairly apportioned between themselves and their husbands will be less depressed than others. We utilize data from a longitudinal study of a nonrandom sample of 178 heterosexual couples experiencing the birth of their first child together.

Predictors of Health-Related Quality of Life in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy from six European countries.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a progressive, genetically determined neuromuscular disease that affects males and leads to severe physical disability in early teenage years. Over the last decades, patient-reported outcomes such as Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) gained great interest in clinical research. However, little is known about factors affecting HRQoL in boys with DMD.

Equity Dynamics in the Perceived Fairness of Infant Care.

How is the perceived fairness of infant care affected by spouses' relative contributions to it as well as to other domains of their relationship? Longitudinal data on 178 couples expecting the birth of their first child were collected over a period spanning approximately the first year of the child's life. Overall, wives were more likely than husbands to see infant care as fair to the wife. Net of fathers' contributions to infant care, spouses were more likely to see infant care as fair to wives the more the father worked in paid labor and did housework and the more wives benefited in the sexual relationship.

Sibling Aggression Among Clinic-Referred Children and Adolescents.

Aggression against siblings has been associated with a number of negative outcomes within community samples of children and adolescents, but little is known about this phenomenon within clinical samples. The current study empirically identified subtypes of sibling aggression, assessed prevalence within a clinic-referred sample of children and adolescents, and described risk factors associated with sibling aggression. Surveys were administered as part of the intake procedures at a community mental health center serving children and adolescents.

Introduction to the special section on religion and spirituality in family life: pathways between relational spirituality, family relationships and personal well-being.

This special section on faith and family life presents 5 studies that each offer novel insights into the complex web of linkages between a target family member's religious and/or spiritual (R/S) functioning and parental or family factors that may influence the target family member's psychological or R/S functioning. The outcome domain of interest is adolescent psychological functioning in the first three studies, parental stress in the fourth study, and the R/S functioning of adult children in the fifth study. In this introduction, we feature unique findings from each study.

Introduction to the special section on religion and spirituality in family life: delving into relational spirituality for couples.

In light of the ongoing salience of spirituality and religion for individuals across the globe, this special section presents four rigorous empirical studies that tie conceptually based and potentially malleable spiritual constructs to better marital functioning. These studies exemplify an emerging subfield called Relational Spirituality, which focuses on the ways that couples can draw on specific spiritual cognitions and behaviors to motivate them to create, maintain, and transform their unions (Mahoney, 2010, 2013). In this introduction, we first provide a thumbnail sketch of the past 3 decades of empirical research in this area.

Sanctification of marriage and spiritual intimacy predicting observed marital interactions across the transition to parenthood.

We examined whether 164 heterosexual, married couples' reports of the sanctification of their marriage and their spiritual intimacy predicted their observed behavior across the transition to parenthood, using highly conservative statistical strategies to control for time-invariant factors and time-varying factors (marital love, collaborative communication skills) that could explain away these links. Spouses provided self-reports of marital sanctification and love, and joint reports of spiritual intimacy and collaboration by each partner. Criterion variables were positive and negative behaviors that spouses exhibited during dyadic discussions of marital conflicts, videotaped during pregnancy and when the couple's first infant was 3, 6, and 12 months old.

Fathers' Contributions to Housework and Childcare and Parental Aggravation Among First-Time Parents.

This study investigated the associations between fathers' contributions to housework and childcare and both spouses' parenting aggravation. It was hypothesized that greater father contributions to domestic labor would be associated with more paternal aggravation but less maternal aggravation. Data are from a four-wave study of 178 married couples undergoing the transition to first parenthood.

Parents who hit and scream: interactive effects of verbal and severe physical aggression on clinic-referred adolescents' adjustment.

The goals of this study were first, to delineate the co-occurrence of parental severe physical aggression and verbal aggression toward clinic-referred adolescents, and second, to examine the interactive effects of parental severe physical aggression and verbal aggression on adolescent externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. This research involved 239 referrals of 11- to 18-year-old youth and their dual-parent families to a non-profit, private community mental health center in a semi-rural Midwest community. Multiple informants (i.

Perceptions of lesbian and gay (LG) individuals as desecrators of Christianity as predictors of anti-LG attitudes.

This study applied religious coping theory to examine the relationship between participants' perceptions that lesbian and gay (LG) individuals desecrate Christian values (the stressor) and anti-LG attitudes (the response) and whether religious coping influences the relationship between these variables. Greater agreement with desecration messages was associated with higher levels of anti-LG attitudes. Positive religious coping was associated with lower levels of anti-LG attitudes while negative religious coping was associated with higher levels.

Spiritual stress and coping model of divorce: a longitudinal study.

This study represents the first longitudinal effort to use a spiritual stress and coping model to predict adults' psychosocial adjustment following divorce. A community sample of 89 participants completed measures at the time of their divorce and 1 year later. Though the sample endorsed slightly lower levels of religiosity than the general U.

Doing the Scut Work of Infant Care: Does Religiousness Encourage Father Involvement?

Considerable debate exists regarding whether religiousness promotes or impedes greater father involvement in parenting. Our study addresses this issue using a Midwestern longitudinal dataset that tracks the transition to first parenthood for 169 married couples. We focus on performance of the "messier" tasks of infant care.

Sanctification of sexuality: implications for newlyweds' marital and sexual quality.

Research on the intersection of sexuality, religion, and spirituality has primarily examined whether global levels of religiousness (e.g., service attendance) deter premarital and extramarital sexual activity.

Religion in families 1999 to 2009: A relational spirituality framework.

This review examines the role of religion, for better and worse, in marital and parent-child relationships according to peer reviewed studies from 1999-2009. A conceptual framework labeled "relational spirituality" is used to: (a) organize the breadth of findings into the three stages of the formation, maintenance, and transformation of family relationships, and (b) illustrate three in-depth sets of mechanisms to delve into unique ways religion may shape family bonds. Topics include union formation, fertility, spousal roles, marital satisfaction and conflict, divorce, domestic violence, infidelity, pregnancy, parenting children, parenting adolescents, and coping with family distress.

A randomized controlled evaluation of a spiritually integrated treatment for subclinical anxiety in the Jewish community, delivered via the Internet.

Objective: This study evaluated the efficacy of a spiritually integrated treatment (SIT) for subclinical anxiety in the Jewish community.

Method: One hundred and twenty-five self-reported religious Jewish individuals with elevated levels of stress and worry received SIT (n=36), progressive muscle relaxation (PMR, n=42), or a waitlist control condition (WLC, n=47). SIT and PMR participants accessed Internet-based treatment on a daily basis for a period of 2 weeks.

Sanctification of Marriage and General Religiousness as Buffers of the Effects of Marital Inequity.

Theory suggests that relationship inequity will be associated with less marital and personal distress among the more religious, and that this interaction effect will be stronger for women than men. Data are from 178 married couples experiencing the third trimester of pregnancy of their first biological child. Five outcome variables were assessed for each spouse: marital satisfaction, love, marital conflict, depression, and anxiety.

Broken vows and the next generation: Recognizing and helping when parental divorce is a spiritual trauma.

Recent national surveys show that older youth who have experienced parental divorce tend to disengage from organized religion but feel as close to God as peers from intact families. In this paper, we offer a conceptual model and concrete guidelines to help adults engage in sensitive, yet direct, dialogues with older youth about the spiritual dimensions of parental divorce. Based on a recent line of empirical research on the role of religion and spirituality for post-divorce adjustment, we argue that parental divorce can be experienced as a spiritual trauma where the event is interpreted as a sacred loss and desecration, and can also trigger painful spiritual struggles.