Experiences in the family are presumed to play a significant role in the socialization of the child, the development of his or her personality, and the emergence of any pathological characteristics. Of primary interest in this research is the functioning of different sorts of families with respect to a central dimension of family life, the provision of care to its members. An immediate objective of this study is the development of a behavioral family interaction coding system that focuses on the giving and receiving of care among family members. The goal is for the coding system to be at the same time sufficiently broad in the conceptualization of """"""""caregiving"""""""" as to be applicable to family life in different cultures and family members of different ages, and sufficiently articulated as to be capable of differentiating families with and without varying kinds of internal and external stressors. An additional aim of the study is the examination of associations of parental depression and other family stressors with varying patterns of family caregiving.
This aim derives from the view that family caregiving is a potential mediator of factors such as economic distress or parental pathology that place children at risk for later problems. In this regard, the coding system is being piloted, refined, and used on a sample of disadvantaged families in Britain and a sample of families in the NIMH study, with and without parental depression.
