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BACKGROUND: Positive youth development emphasizes that adaptive features of adolescence may contribute to teenage pregnancy prevention. METHODS: Using data from approximately 1300 seventh-ninth graders, we describe positive youth development assets (external and internal) and their association with sexual risk taking. School-, sex-, and race/ethnicity-stratified logistic or linear models assessed associations between developmental assets and 6 outcomes (continuous attitudes about teenage sex and marriage, abstinence intentions, and nonsexual risk-taking behavior; dichotomous high risk-dating behavior, friends' sexual activity, and prior sexual activity). RESULTS: Associations between developmental assets and youth sexual behavior differed by school, sex, and race/ethnicity. White female respondents showed the most consistent associations between higher amounts of each of the positive youth development assets and attitudes and behaviors conducive to delaying sexual activity while black youth showed the fewest associations. CONCLUSION: These results contribute to the positive youth development literature by identifying that relationships between assets and adolescent risk differs by race and sex.

In this paper, the author presents detailed clinical material to portray the experience of intensive therapy shared with a young school-aged boy and his very troubled mother. The therapy involved a challenging combination of triadic sessions along with dyadic child-therapist sessions observed by the boy's mother from behind a one-way mirror. The discussion centers on the impact of complex transference and countertransference experiences and recommends conjoint sessions as the first option when treating young school-aged children in relationship with a highly troubled parent.KEY WORDS: parent-child psychotherapy; high risk parent; mother-child relationship; child psychotherapy; mother-child psychotherapy. TREATING THE HIGH-RISK MOTHER-CHILD RELATIONSHIP:A CASE STUDY Shared parent-child therapy, although a relatively recent innovation in the field of child psychotherapy, is becoming a more frequent practice when the child is very young and the parent relatively healthy. In this paper, however, I will describe the joint therapy of a I am indebted to Jacqueline Hanley for her support and encouragement, without which this paper might not have been written. Thanks are also due to Jack Howard MLS for his reference assistance.