Findings from a study of family functioning following divorce suggest ways in which the parents' ongoing relationship‐both as former spouse and as coparent‐may moderate the effects of divorce on their children. Level of conflict in the “spouse” role was found to be less predictive of children's adjustment than were degree of cooperation and style of conflict resolution in the “coparent” role. Implications for intervention are considered.

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Predictive associations of infant attachment to mothers and fathers with later school functioning, beyond the contribution of contemporaneous representations of relationships and circumstances of caregiving, were examined in 66 young adolescents who were raised in infancy in Israeli kibbutzim with collective sleeping. The Strange Situation Procedure was used to evaluate early attachment to mother and father, the Separation Anxiety Test was used to assess contemporaneous representation of relationships, and teachers' reports evaluated school functioning. Circumstances of caregiving included parental reports of quality of marital relations and a change from collective sleeping to home sleeping for children. Results showed that infant attachment to mother, but not to father, contributed signi cant additional variance to the prediction of children's scholastic skills and emotional maturity beyond the contribution of concurrent representations of relationships and changes in circumstances of caregiving. T he results support the secure base construct as an organising concept of longitudinal investigations of attachment.

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The literature on adolescent risk is reviewed, a model of risk that emphasizes risk antecedents and markers is proposed, and an overview is presented of an emergency service delivery strategy that integrates services, emphasizes interagency coordination, and addresses the full range of service needs for youth at risk. Highlights of programs currently in operation are described.

Wives' marital satisfaction was evaluated as a function of a premarital counseling typology in an analysis of data from several thousand military couples surveyed in 1992. Among couples who jointly reported participation in premarital counseling, results indicated that both having premarital counseling and reporting higher satisfaction with the counseling experience were associated with higher levels of marital satisfaction. Among couples who disagreed about having had premarital counseling, results were still favorable but less consistent. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.

Past research on the relationship between family factors and military readiness in the Army has suggested that family issues affect retention far more than readiness. New data on individual soldier readiness were analyzed to assess the relative importance of family factors (internal and external family adaptation) compared to unit readiness, longevity, rank, and gender. Family factors were significant predictors, although external family adaptation appeared to be more important than internal family adaptation. Although variables related to retention were more strongly related to family factors than our readiness variables, the differences were less substantial than those reported previously. The data seemed to suggest that reserve-component readiness might be more affected by family stress than the active component and that officer readiness might be more strongly affected by family worries than enlisted personnel readiness, but more research is needed to confirm those results.

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