This research examines women's narratives regarding the experiences that lead to becoming, sustaining, and challenging active community leaders. Seventeen women neighborhood leaders, age 28 to 73 years, completed in-depth interviews. Qualitative thematic content analyses identified prominent themes in participants' responses that were subsequently linked to a generativity framework. Analyses revealed that leaders reported circuitous rather than linear paths of emerging community participation and growing up among others who demonstrated an ethos of care in informal as well as formal community practices. Women's initial community engagement was most often in response to invitations to address community needs. Both communal and agentic rewards and challenges to community involvement were identified. Based upon the findings, strategies for promoting and sustaining women's community leadership are identified.Although there is broad recognition of women's responsibilities and skills in the private domain, women's roles in the public domain of community, nation, and world are less prominent. For example, women's leadership in managing and promoting the growth and development of family and friends is often acknowledged, yet women are routinely underrepresented in formal civic leadership positions around the world. Essentially, this means that the public fails to benefit from the skills and insights that women might otherwise bring to bear on diverse public issues. Moreover, this situation restricts the opportunities to nurture women's skills, interests, and networks that, in turn, foster women's

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Efforts to understand parent-adolescent conflict have largely ignored the broad adult cognitive frameworks that guide parent behavior. Mothers (n = 56) and their adolescents (n = 52) individually completed multiple measures regarding the nature of their parent-adolescent conflict. Mothers also completed interviews regarding their beliefs about knowledge. As hypothesized, mothers' epistemological beliefs predicted mothers' and adolescents' descriptions of conflict patterns. Mothers with more complex epistemologies reported engaging in less intense conflict and experiencing less negative conflict behavior and their adolescents reported more positive communication. These mothers and adolescents also described a conflict pattern that emphasized collaboration and an openness to multiple opinions. Promoting mothers' own understanding of knowledge may be an important strategy for supporting more constructive parent-adolescent interactions. KEY WORDS: epistemological beliefs • family interactions • parentadolescent conflict Journal of Social and Personal Relationships