ASSESSMENT OF MOTNATiON FOR PARENTHOOD lN PARENTS .OF D‘STURBED & NORMAL CHILDREN Thesis for the Degree ~Of Ph. D. , H , MmHmAN STATE UNIVERSITY MARiLYN A MAJOR - 1967' LIBRARY I Michigan 5 rate University 1. 4—‘ i-..'--, This is to certify that the thesis entitled 1‘ “cnfipmenft: a? I‘m H vs- 'r-i mq 'i‘n'r‘ VOjfipn'Hnfifl/i :5 V1. Damn/we of Ti-irh=w'-"T\nr7 (9., fro—mm Clid'ld‘hen presented by l'/‘ / Mn't‘i 71/?»1 A, T"? 40'1" / has Ibeéccepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for 0-169 PLACE ll RETURN BOX to rcmavcthb checkout from your record. TO AVOID FINES return on or More data duo. DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE ABSTRACT ASSESSMENT OF MOTIVATION FOR PARENTHOOD IN PARENTS OF DISTURBED & NORMAL CHILDREN by Marilyn A. Major The present investigation involved two main fa- cets: (l) the development of a semi-structured projective technique, the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test (PPSCT), to assess some of the more covert levels of motivation for parenthood, and (2) an attempt to investigate whether fathers and mothers of disturbed children and parents of well-adjusted children had differing motives for parenthood. The steps in the development of the PPSCT were de- scribed with the final test consisting of nine pictures of parents and children accompanied by eleven story stems and story endings. The four response categories on the PPSCT correspond to those of the Child Study Inventory (CSI), a more direct measure, previously constructed to tap the mo- tivation for parenthood area. Responses on both tests were scored in one of the following motivational categories: Altruistic, Fatalistic, Narcissistic, or Instrumental. Every subject obtained a Total Score for each category (the sum of ranks on all the items), further broken down into two sub- scores (an Expectancy Score and a Motivation Score). Both the CSI and the PPSCT were used to study the differences be- tween males and females and between Adjusted and Disturbed groups. Marilyn Major The "Disturbed" Group consisted of 20 couples who were parents of children referred to a child guidance clinic. The "Adjusted" Group consisted of 20 couples who were parents of children considered well-adjusted by their teachers. The groups were matched on the following demographic variables: sex and age of the child, race, religion, and approximate socio-economic level. Results of the study can be summarized as follows: I. No differences were found between the two groups of par- ents with respect to the differences between scores on the projective and direct instruments. II. Significant sex differences were obtained with both in- struments but the projective technique was sensitive to more of these differences. A. On the Direct Instrument (CSI) 1. Females scored higher than males on the Fatalistic Total and Fatalistic Expectancy items. 2. Males scored higher than the females on all the Instrumental variables: Total, Expectancy, and Motivation. B. On the Projective Instrument (PPSCT) 1. On the total category scores, females scored higher on the Altruistic and Fatalistic responses when com- pared with males; the males scored higher on the III. Marilyn Major Narcissistic and Instrumental answers when com- pared with the females. 2. Females scored higher than males on both Altru- istic subscores (Expectancy and Motivation), while males scored higher on both Narcissistic subscores and on the Instrumental Motivation items. 3. These differences between males and females were most salient in the Disturbed Group. The following results were obtained from comparisons of the Adjusted and Disturbed Groups and were the same on both tests: A. As predicted, the Adjusted Group scored higher than the Disturbed Group on the Altruistic variable. On the projective measure, however, this difference was brought about by the marked differences between dis- turbed and adjusted males. No differences were found between groups on the Fatalistic variable, as was predicted. There were no differences between Adjusted and Dis- turbed Groups on the Narcissistic and Instrumental categories. However, clear and consistent trends in the predicted direction were obtained i.e., the Disturbed Group scored higher on both categories in every instance. Marilyn Major It was concluded that the motivation for parenthood area deserves further consideration and exploration. Sugges— tions were made indicating directions in which this research might proceed. 7 Chairman Date ASSESSMENT OF MOTIVATION FOR PARENTHOOD IN PARENTS OF DISTURBED & NORMAL CHILDREN by .O Marilyn A? Major A THESIS Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Psychology 1967 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author especially wishes to express her thanks to Dr. Albert Rabin, who served as committee chairman, for his guidance, encouragement, and his very real interest in this study. Dr. Rabin has been extremely generous in the sharing of both his time and his friendship. Special thanks is also extended to Dr. Charles Hanley who made many helpful suggestions and showed a great deal of patience. Apprecia- tion is extended to Professors Bertram Karon and Paul Bakan who served as committee members and provided additional gui- dance for this study. The author is also grateful to Dr. Gilbert DeRath and Dr. Thomas Schmitz of the Lansing Child Guidance Clinic and Mrs. Hilda Parker of the Michigan State University Psy- chological Clinic for their assistance in obtaining the sub- jects for this study. In addition, gratitude is extended to the various school authorities, superintendents, principals, and teachers, too numerous to name, who were most helpful in providing the author with a sample of well-adjusted children. Finally, the author wishes to express her thanks to her colleagues Robert Greene and Charlene Carter, who worked on and worried about similar projects and contributed many hours of stimulating discussion. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 LIST OF TABLES O O O O O O O O O O O O O O I 0 LIST OF APPENDICES O O O O O O O O C C O O O 0 Chapter I. II. III. IV. INTRODUCTION 0 O O O O O O O O O O I O I The Attitude Concept . . . . . . . . . Maternal Attitude Studies . . . . . . Group Discussion Studies . . . . . The Antecedents of Parental Attitudes: Motives for Parenthood . . . . . Sociological Variables: The Population Explosion . . . . . . . . . . Biological Motivation for Parenthood: Some Psychoanalytic Conceptions . . Report of Two Empirical Studies on Motivation for Parenthood . . . . . Choice of a Projective Method . . . . The Variable to be Considered: Motivation for Parenthood . . . . . PROBLEM AND HYPOTHESES . . . . . . . . . METHOD AND PROCEDURE . . . . . . . . . . Subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Procedure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DevelOpment of the Projective Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . Administration of the Two Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . Scoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RESULTS 0 O O O O O O O I O O I O O O 0 Testing of the Hypotheses . . . . . . Additional Male-Female Findings . . . Subgroup Comparisons . . . . . . . . . iii Page ii vii GUILD l-‘ \l 13 19 22 25 31 34 38 38 43 46 46 51 53 54 54 62 64 Chapter V. DISCUSSION The Results and Their Implications . Theoretical Issues Additional Motivations for Parenthood Instrumentation Subject Sampling . Suggestions for Further Research VI. REFERENCES APPENDICES SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION iv Page 72 73 79 81 83 86 88 90 94 98 Table 1. LIST OF TABLES Page Means of the Differences, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values Comparing Major Variables on the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Sex t Values of Scores on the Child Study Inven- tory, Expectancy and Motivation Items . . . 57 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Sex t Values of Scores on the Parental Picture- Story Completion Test, Expectancy and Mo- tivation Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values of Scores on the Child Study Inventory 0 I I O O O O O I O O O O O O I O 6 0 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values of Scores on the Parental Picture- Story Completion Test . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Sex t Values of Total Category Scores on the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test . . . . . . . 63 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between- Group t Values for Adjusted Males and Dis- turbed Males on the Major Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test . . . . . . . 65 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between- Group t Values for Adjusted Females and Disturbed Females on the Major Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Page Table 9 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values for Disturbed Males and Disturbed Fe- males on the Major Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture- Story Completion Test . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 10 Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values for Adjusted Males and Adjusted Females on the Major Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 vi LIST OF APPENDICES Appendix A. B. C. D. E. F. Letter to Disturbed Group . Criteria of Adjustment Letter to Adjusted Group Additional Statistical Tables Child Study Inventory . Figure 1 - Pictures Used as Visual Stimuli in the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test I O O O O O O 0 Parental Picture—Story Completion Test vii Page 99 100 101 102 107 110 111 ASSESSMENT OF MOTIVATION FOR PARENTHOOD IN PARENTS OF DISTURBED & NORMAL CHILDREN The purpose of the present investigation was to utilize a new set of diagnostic instruments to explore some of the psycho- logical motivations underlying parenthood and to consider the suggested effects of these motives on the eventual mental health of the child. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The_present population explosion is a matter of in- creasing concern to social scientists. Whereas previously this was felt to be the province of the sociologists alone (Stycas, 1963), demographers are finding themselves inadequate to: (l) accurately predict future pOpulation trends, and (2) indicate ‘what to do about overpOpulation. As a result, an interest is developing in the area of psychological motivation for parent- hood (Rabin, 1965). As man is gaining some control over the number of children he will have through the new contraceptive methods, family size becomes an increasingly interesting and important variable (Freedman, Freedman, & Whelpton, 1960; Rainwater, 1965). If the physiological variables can be con- trolled through the taking of a pill, family size becomes a matter of psychological motivation and eXpectation, making par- rental motives in this area the focus of study. Attitude studies in the past have mainly concentrated on the relation of maternal attitudes to child behavior (e.g., Loevinger & Sweet, 1961; Schaefer & Bell, 1958). Changes in child behavior have come about as a result of changing parental attitudes through discussion group sessions (e.g., Buchmueller & Gildea, 1949; Hereford, 1963). Rabin's (1965) exploratory data suggests that these attitudes toward children, and corre- sponding motivation for parenthood, may have been present before the child was born, since college students appear to have very definite feelings about whether or not they want children and what they expect of them. If these motives are present, and have been present in both parents for a long time, they ought to be assessible through use of selected diagnostic techniques, constructed for this purpose. While past studies have primarily been restricted to parental attitude research questionaires, which concentrated on child raising procedures and were typically administered only to mothers, (e.g., Loevinger & Sweet, 1961; Schaefer, 1959), it ought to be possible to design a different type of instrument that will assess these same motivations and will involve both parents. In addition, factors influencing a child may not entirely consist of the conscious, overt attitudes but may also be dependent on less conscious and more covert mo- tives (Allport, 1953). Therefore, use of techniques designed to tap different "levels" of motivation appears indicated. The present research is concerned with the development of a technique to assess some of the more covert levels of par- ental motivation. This instrument will then be used in conjunction with a questionaire developed from Rabin & Greene's (1966) data in an attempt to: (1) Indicate that conscious and less con- scious motivations for parenthood are probably not identical, and may or may not be similar, and (2) use both these instru- ments in an attempt to determine whether parents of children called to the attention of a child guidance clinic have differing motives for parenthood than parents of children considered well- adjusted by their teachers. Before turning directly to the proposed methodology, a brief survey of related work will be presented in an attempt to indicate how this area of 1nterest developed from several related areas and to designate some of the underlying theoretical orientations. The Attitude Concept A great deal of attention has been focused on the sci- entific study of parent-child relations in the current century. As Gildea, Glidewell, & Kantor (1961) point out, these studies have been concerned with two major goals: (1) to identify "healthy" relations, and (2) to attempt to bring reliability and objectivity to the conception of a highly emotionalized human relationship. In the majority of studies the unit of analysis for the investigation of the parental contribution has been the attitude. Thurstone (1936) defined an attitude as the sum total of affects centering around a psychological object. He recognized the verbal eXpression of attitude as an opinion and thus one way in which attitudes can be measured is by the acceptance or rejection of opinions. However, the measurement of attitudes expressed by a man's opinions does not necessarily mean accurate prediction of what he will do. It appears likely that whether or not an attitude will have a direct behavioral referent is dependent on many extraneous factors e.g., the situation, the need to be expressive, etc. Parental attitudes have been espe— cially difficult to measure since they vary widely, are subject to change, are difficult to isolate and define, and have widely varying effects on the child. Agreement with certain attitude statements may serve a defensive purpose since, as Stogdill (1936) noted, often parents will agree with apparently contra- dictory attitudes if one statement expresses what appears to be a healthy attitude while the other states its converse. Thus, considering these factors, it can be concluded that results of studies based on the attitude concept have been somewhat lim- ited and inconclusive when applied to the area of parent-child relations. An attitude, as defined by Thurstone, refers primarily to conscious Opinions measured typically by interview or ques- tionaire techniques. Many contemporary psychiatrists and psycho- logists feel that the referent for an attitude may instead lie, in part, in the unconscious. Attitudes would thus be unverba- 1izab1e, inaccessible by direct measurements of opinion, and only partly revealed by direct observations of behavior or clinical examination. Therefore one reason why parental atti- tude scales have been only moderatly helpful in predicting parent-child interactions may be because some of the important attitudes affecting the relationship were unconscious or pre- conscious ones. The present investigation will attempt to tap some of these more covert attitudes to determine whether they are indeed significant factors in the parent-child relationship. Maternal Attitude Studies Only in recent studies (e.g., Rabin, 1965), has a distinction been made between parental attitudes and motives. Past studies have been limited solely to the investigation of attitudes, with some researchers (e.g., Brody, 1956; Levy, 1943) attempting to discover specific patterns of parental attitudes which accompanied certain clinical syndromes in the child. Shoben (1949) was one of the first investigators to suggest that there were likely differences between parents of problem children and parents of non-problem children and implied that these differences would be found in differing parental attitude patterns. A large proportion of the attitude studies were de- voted to the construction of scales designed to tap various hypothesized attitudes (e.g., Schaefer & Bell, 1958) and to relate them to child rearing techniques (e.g., Loevinger & Sweet, 1961; Schaefer, 1959). Two main characteristics of these studies are evident: (1) the emphasis was placed on questionaire items rather than behavioral observations, and (2) for the most part the role of the father was ignored and only the maternal attitudes were given consideration. Two studies attempted to deal to some extent with the effect of socio-economic variables on parental attitudes. Schaefer & Bell (1958) concluded that mothers with more education generally possessed the more usually approved attitudes toward child rearing. An extensive study by Gildea, Glidewell, & Kantor (1961) indicated that mothers' attitudes toward the need for par- ental control of childrens' activities showed a decreasing per- ception of the need for control as one moved up the social class scale. The Gildea et a1 study (1961), though more extensive, is still typical of the maternal attitude studies previously cited in that work with the mother typically ends after the in-, terview or the administration of a questionaire. More recent attempts have been made to work with the parental attitudes in an attempt to change them and many recent investigations have also included the father in the research. These have been, for the most part, the group discussion studies. Group Discussion Studies A number of studies were conducted in St. Louis County involving parents of behavior problem junior high school students who were invited to attend a series of group therapy meetings (e.g., Buchmueller & Gildea, 1949,1955; Buchmueller, Porter, & Gildea, 1954; Kahn, Buchmueller, & Gildea, 1951). The investi- gators generally concluded that their work with the parents alone led to marked changes in the preadolescents' school and home behavior. Race appeared to be a pertinent factor in these studies, as the described technique was not successful with a group of Negro families (Kahn et a1, 1951). A similar study by Hereford (1963) indicated positive changes in the parental at- titudes of parents of younger children who attended a 6-weeks session of discussion groups. Both parents were included in most of these recent studies which would tend to indicate that attitudes of the father are beginning to be recognized as having some import. These studies are interesting in that they suggest that if parental attitudes can be isolated in some way, there is hope of changing these attitudes in a positive direction. However, it is conceivable that changing the parental attitude might be a superficial or transitory change whereas perhaps what needs to be changed, to insure lasting results, is the underlying motivation. To explain this hypothesis further, a distinction between attitudes and motives needs to be made. The Antecedents of Parental Attitudes: Motives for Parenthood A number of studies (e.g., Gildea, Glidewell, & Kantor, 1961; Shoben, 1949) have indicated that parental attitudes can have health-promoting potential or pathogenic implications. Rabin (1965) suggests that there is a difference between atti- tudes and motives and, while a great deal of emphasis has been placed on attitudes, scant attention has been paid to the origins of these attitudes, that is, to the motivations, overt or covert, underlying them. He implies that it may be the underlying moti- vation rather than the attitude which determines the healthy or pathogenic character of the interaction. A number of explorae tory studies currently in progress at Michigan State University have served as the basis from which to draw a tentative theoret— ical categorization of possible motivations for parenthood and their implications for the parental attitudes which eventually evolve. This prOposed categorization will be briefly considered. Motivations are conceived of as antecedents to the varying attitudes which emerge. Thus motivations for parenthood are present long before the individual becomes a parent and may, in fact, determine whether or not the individual does have chil- dren. When children do appear, the underlying motivation is seen as having given rise to the particular attitude the parent possesses or adOpts in relation to the child. The reason a person decides to have children is closely associated with the expectations he possesses in relation to the child e.g., he will expect quite different things from a child conceived because he is interested in watching children grow than from a child conceived to enhance his social status. While, as previously mentioned, studies in the past have concentrated on the parental attitudes implicit in the parent-child interaction (e;g., Loevinger & Sweet, 1961), the focus of the present re- search will be on the origins of these attitudes independent of the present interaction. This theoretical position implies that the attitudes do not come about as a result of the ongoing, dynamic relationship but have origins which are present prior to the beginning of the relationship and are independent, in part, of the particular child, although this may vary in re- gard to certain significant variables e.g., sex (Freedman, Freedman, & Whelpton, 1960). Nevertheless, each of the hypo- thetical motive categories is seen to lead directly to some general attitudes which have their correlates in behavior. Four dominant motives for parenthood appear to give rise to most parental attitudes. These are tentative groupings and, as such, may be incomplete. 1. Altruistic Motivation - The parent with an altru- istic motivation for parenthood has positive feelings toward children in general and obtains pleasure from taking care of children and watching them grow and develop. This parent might be de- scribed as high in expression of nurturance, pro- viding a good deal of security for the child, but not SO'much that he overprotects the child. In fact, for the most part the Child has freedom to grow in the direction of his choice, not simply that of his parents' dictum. An "unselfish" motivation for parenthood. 2. Fatalistic Motivation - Fatalistic or "predestined" motivation implies that the parent has children 10 because it is an "act of God" or "a natural con- sequence of marriage." There is a passive ac- ceptance of children and of their rightful place in the family. The parent has little choice about having children but this does not especially dis- turb him and he accepts it as fact, e.g., man was brought into the world to procreate and perpetuate the species. The children are expected and wel- comed and again, for the most part, the child has freedom to develop in the direction he wishes and does have security. Thus the fatalistic and al- truistic motivations are similar in that neither implies any preconceived eXpectancies in regard to the child and there is a willingness to go along with the child for the most part. The dif- ference lies in the origin of the motivation--in the self for the altruistic parent, making it an active choice, and a statement of the will of God for the fatalistic parent, making it a passive acceptance. Narcissistic Motivation - In narcissistic moti- vation there is an indication of an identification, in part, of the parent with the child. The child may be seen as an extension of the parent or as a means through which the parent may re-live his own youth. Thus the child will be expected to perform 11 well or reflect glory on the parents. There is a preconceived set of expectancies on the part of the parent about what he expects the child to be and do. If the child performs in accordance with these expectancies, there should be no dif- ficulty. If he does not, however, a clash be- tween parent and child may result in a request for help at a child guidance clinic. Thus the child born to parents with narcissistic motiva- tions has much less freedom to act solely as he wishes than the child in the two previously de- scribed categories. Instrumental Motivation - In instrumental motiva- tion there is an implication that the child is to be "used" in some way by the parents. For example, the child might be used to cement the family to- gether, to enhance their social status, etc. The child enmeshed in a symbiotic relationship is serving a real function. In any case, these par- ents possess a preconceived set of expectancies about what the function or role of the child is to be. How the child is reacted to is then de- termined by the extent to which he steps into the role or serves the function e.g., if the child does not succeed in cementing the family together he may be rejected by the parents whereas if he does 12 succeed he may be accepted. Thus the security of the child's place in the family is dependent on whether or not he meets certain demands and his freedom to act independent of these demands is almost nonexistent if he wishes to retain his acceptance in the family. There may often be an overlapping of Narcissistic and Instrumental cate— gories since a child who serves parental narcis- sistic purposes may also be instrumental to the achievement of parental goals. Subsuming parental motivation under this fourfold classification appears to give some order to the varied responses obtained thus far. It is Open to revision in the light of addi- tional data which may be obtained in the present study or in studies being performed concurrently. Although many of the differences between attitudes and motives have just been pointed out, certain similarities do exist between them. It seems fair to say that both would be influenced by any environmental events or trends which have a direct or indirect bearing on the tOpiC under concern i.e., motivations for parenthood. Generally these events might be subsumed under the heading of sociology. The sociological area which appears most pertinent to the study of parental motivation, at least at the present time, is that of pOpulation. l3 Sociological Variables: The Population Explosion The population eXplosion, a result of increasing birth and survival rates, has had some impact on the present American culture but an even greater influence has been felt in many un- derdevelOped countries who cannot feed their present pOpulation, much less c0pe with an increase. The problem is not restricted solely to these countries however, for, as Rainwater (1965, p. 18) states: "While there is now in this country little sense of urgency about domestic p0pulation problems, there is never— theless a growing awareness that a prosperous economy is not immune to the problem of having to support too many people."v If this problem is indeed an important one, it is surprising that investigators appear to know so little about motivation for pOpulation increase i.e., parenthood. Stycas (1963, p. 5) phrases this clearly as he states: "It is probably fair to say, even now, that we know more about what people expect, want, and do with respect to planting wheat or purchasing t.v. sets than with respect to having babies." Unfortunately a survey of the literature has indicated that this is probably true since both number and quality of these studies are meager. Sociological studies on pOpulation typically have fo- cused on variables such as expectations of parents in regard to how many children they plan to have (e.g., Freedman, Baumert, & Bolte, 1959; Whelpton, Campbell, & Patterson, 1966). However, Freedman et a1 (1959) make the point that statements about ex- pectations cannot be accepted uncritically as indicating what 14 the couple will do in the future. Expectations may change, not only with general social and economic trends, but also with the couple's own life cycle. At some point it begins to sound as though these eXpectations are not unlike the attitudes and Opin- ions investigated by Thurstone (1936) and others, and that they are subject to the same variability and difficulties of method- ology. Nevertheless, sociologists appear to feel that such expectation statements are better than a demographer's "guess" of what size families will be for this generation. Whelpton et a1 (1966) state that individuals are only mediocre predictors of their own fertility, regardless of moti- vation. They interviewed 145 engaged couples in the middle 1930's and asked them how many children they planned to have. Twenty years later the correlation between the number of children the engaged woman said she wanted and the number she actually had was only .27, which indicates very poor agreement for individuals. However, the average number of children wanted before marriage wasvery close to the average number born, suggesting good agree- ment between prediction and performance for groups of persons. It is surprising that the individual prediction in this study was so poor and there is a real question as to whether the num— ber of children the wife thought she wanted was the "real" one. With a discrepancy this large, several explanatory hypotheses present themselves: the motivation may have changed over time, certain economic factors may have been operating, health pro- blems may have been present, unconscious factors may have been responsible, or perhaps some combination of these factors was 15 in Operation. Again the question arises as to whether the con- scious attitudes and expectations are really the most important ones for parental motivation. Freedman, Freedman, & Whelpton (1960) suggest that the preference for at least one child of each sex may be a signifi- cant factor in determining whether or not some couples have additional children. Its importance was found to increase with the number of children of identical sex within the two-child to four-child families studied. These authors suggest that there is direct parental "value" in having a child of each sex: boys bring about relations of their parents to outside groups which differ from those effected by girls; they involve their parents in different kinds of leisure pursuits; and children of either sex permit the parents to relive vicariously their childhood experiences or experiences they wish they had had. Thus the implications here are that parents do "use" their children to benefit themselves to some extent and that sex of the child does make a difference in terms of which benefits the parents do obtain. All the studies considered thus far have dealt pri- marily with expectations and predictions of statistical or sociological significance e.g., number of children, sex of children, etc. The two remaining studies to be reviewed in this section (Hoffman & Wyatt, 1960; Rainwater, 1965) are also sociological studies but possess more of a psychological ori- entation. They attempt to deal with how the individual speci- fically benefits from being a parent and how parenthood actually meets some adult needs e.g., for closeness and contact. 16 One very interesting theory which leans toward the psychological is that of Hoffman & Wyatt (1960). They suggest ’three groups of social trends that may have influenced women's attitudes toward maternity: 1. Changes that have occurred in the woman's role. Being a housewife is no longer considered a full- time job. Having a child is seen as highly crea-. tive--both in the physical sense of producing it and the social sense of molding it. Having a child keeps a woman from seeking employment and being competitive with her husband. Changes in thegparent role and the concept of parenthood. Since the strong parental influence on the child has been stressed, child rearing is being viewed as a creative and ego involving area. Also, if the child rearing function is accompanied by anxiety, this may be motivation for later chil- dren i.e., to do a better job. The loneliness and alienation that seems to char- acterize individuals in our society. The infant is totally dependent on the mother and this de- pendency helps rid her of loneliness. The child may represent a tie between the mother's life and immortality. By re-creating the self, in a sense, the parents can relive their own childhood. Thus Hoffman & Wyatt conclude that certain psycho-social variables, 17 such as parental roles and even the loneliness and alienation characterizing an entire society, may influence motivation for parenthood. Nevertheless, these social trends are not dealt with uniformly but their effect on the individual differs greatly e.g., certain segments of society are affected more than others, one must consider personality differences, etc. These authors suggest a taking into account of the general trend, but in add- ition, taking a close look at the individual. Finally, Rainwater (1965) concluded that an interest in children and a concern with parenthood seem to be universals of the human condition. He interviewed 152 married couples, 50 single men, and 55 single women in an attempt to investigate variables in the area of marital sexuality, family size, and contraception. In one section, he listed several motivations for large or small family preference, and thus, tangentially, for parenthood: 1. Growth of the country - we need to keep up the population 2. Pleasure one gets from the child 3. Individuality of each child 4. "Natural born mothers" 5. A way to hold the husband 6. To keep from being lonely 7. To see them grow and accomplish 8. The purpose of marriage - a God given right and responsibility 18 9. Family togetherness 10. Reproduction of self 11. Symbols of success Rainwater does not indicate which of these motives lead to which family preference and makes no judgment as to whether these are "healthy" or "unhealthy" reasons for parent- hood. He does make an attempt to focus on some of the psycho- logical reasons rather than simply attributing family size to variables of religion, education, etc. although he does mention these variables too. Rainwater isolated one central norm which appears to Operate as a kind of "rule" for parenthood: "one should not have more children than one can support, but one should have as many children as one can afford." There appeared to be an unspoken agreement that to have fewer children than one can afford is an expression of selfishness, ill health, or neurotic weakness; to have more is an eXpression of poor judgment or lack of discipline. Thus it seems that even in an area as "private" and individual as the number of children a person will have, there are certain unwritten cultural admonitions Which do appear to have an effect. Nevertheless, Rainwater too concludes that although man may have the technical devices which can limit the number of children he will have, he is not always willing to do so. In conclusion, it appears that there are many broad sociological variables e.g., parental roles, amount of aliena- tion in a society, etc. which are probably important in relation 19 to motivation for parenthood but are at the same time relatively difficult to do much about. It seems that individuals often make decisions about parenthood in spite of sociological and cultural admonitions. Thus in many ways the individual himself would appear to be a more logical unit of analysis. Some authors have even gone so far as to postulate a biOlogical basis for parenthood and these theories will be considered next. V Biological/Motivation for Parenthood: Some Psychoanalytic Conceptions Some psychoanalytic theorists discuss parenthood in terms of Freudian theory and speak of parenthood as a "develOp- mental phase," (e.g., Benedek, 1952, 1959) similar to the oral, anal, etc. phases. The implication is that the basis for par- enthood is thus a physiological one. Other theorists may not take a psychoanalytic position but would still support a bio- logical basis for parenthood (e.g., Deutsch, 1945). Some of these physiological theories will be considered briefly. Balint (1949) hypothesized that the mother-infant relationship is one of mutual and biologic interdependence. The mother tends to look upon her infant as a kind of private pr0perty with interests similar to her own, which may be a real distortion of reality. Balint suggests that the mother depends on the infant to satisfy her own instinctual wishes and that this dependency may eventually be frustrated as the child begins to grow up. 20 Helene Deutsch (1945), who has written extensively on feminine psychology, states that in the normal case, the mother's sexual instincts are sublimated into tenderness for her infant, and her aggressive instincts into protective activity in his be- half. Through these sublimations the mother facilitates the gratification of her own narcissistic wishes to be loved. She suggests that the process of mothering, though natural and bio- logic, does involve many difficult and complicated tasks, espe- cially when the mother's needs are contradictory to those of the child. In addition, she strongly feels that the capacity for attaining satisfying motherhood is based upon the kind of identifications a woman has made with her own mother. The person who comes out most strongly in favor of a biologic motivation for parenthood is Therese Benedek (1952, 1959). In her studies of the psychosexual functions in women (1952) Benedek suggests that there are periods in which active heterosexual desire alternates with and/or is masked by, desire for motherhood. The emotional manifestations of certain passive- receptive and narcissistic-retentive tendencies represent the psychodynamic correlates of the biological need for motherhood. There is a monthly repetition of these attitudes, even in fe- males who are not pregnant. Benedek points out that in the human, one is inclined to overlook the role of hormonal stimu- lation since motherliness, an idealized attitude of highest value, is considered as the fulfillment of ethical aspects of the personality rather than of "animalistic" biological functions. 21 Yet she strongly feels that motherliness is a function of a Specific biological and psychic maturation. In a later article (1959) Benedek more clearly pro- poses that parenthood be thought of as a developmental phase, within which new integration of personality occurs. In each critical period of development, the child is thought to revive in the parent his own related developmental conflicts. This can lead to pathologic manifestations, if unresolved, or to a growth in the integration of the parent's personality if con- flict resolution occurs. In the case of motherliness what is involved is the repetition and working through of the primary oral conflicts with the mother's own mother. Benedek was also the first to postulate a biological drive toward fatherhood (1959). She suggests that there are two sources of fatherliness: (1) biological bisexuality, and (2) biological dependency upon the mother. The drive organiz- ation for fatherliness reaches its goal through the develop- mental resolution between male and female identifications, so that the adult male includes in his ego ideal the aSpiration to complete his role in procreation by fatherliness. A cul- turally influenced drive organization which motivates man's deveIOpmental goals toward marriage and fatherhood thus becomes integrated with his "regressive tendencies" through identifi- cation with his wife during her pregnancy. Benedek's work is interesting in that it does place a new focus on one of the possible motivations for parenthood-- a biological-developmental one. On the other hand, as Brody 22 (1956) points out, these views presuppose more definite know- ledge than yet exists about the relation between biologic and psychologic function and oversimplifies the relationship it— self. While many of Benedek's conclusions about physiological and psychological processes in women appear to have some sup- port, there is no physiological basis presented for the drive toward fatherhood in men which seems, at the moment, purely speculative. In any case, whether or not a biological basis for parenthood exists, it need not enter into the study of moti- vation for parenthood (Rabin, 1965). Although the physiolo- gical may be one factor underlying parental motivation, it is obviously not the only one as all peOple of marriageable age are not parents. It is obvious that some sort of psychological decision, either conscious or unconscious, must be made in re- lation to parenthood for oneself, and it is the basis for this decision that we are interested in pursuing. Two studies of an exploratory nature have already been performed directly along these lines and will be considered now. Report of Two Empirical Studies on Motivation for Parenthood Rabin (1965) used an incomplete sentences technique to study motivation for parenthood in 194 college undergraduates in Michigan and New York. All but two of these students planned to have children eventually. Rabin found that there were no significant differences in the way the male and female students 23 viewed motivation for parenthood. However, both sexes indicated that they felt males and females had different motivations for parenthood. Nearly 50% of the respondents in the Rabin study con- sidered the male's motivation as primarily narcissistic, in- volving self-enhancement, self-perpetuation, and proof of mas- culinity and virility. Only 9% of the re3pondents attributed the motive of proof of femininity to women who desire children. However, over 52% attributed to the woman an instinctive and predestined function of motherhood which she must fulfill. A1- truistic reasons and needs for succorance were attributed about equally to men and women. The overall distributions of the categories of reasons for having children were significantly different for men and women at the .001 level. In addition, the Rabin study noted differences in the expectancies of fathers and mothers relative to their children. Whereas the males stated that a father expects his children to be successful and to reflect favorably upon himself, the females appeared to believe that fathers are primarily concerned with obedience and respect of their offspring. The trend was reversed in the expectancies of mothers, in that the male respondents stressed their greater expectation of obedience and conformity, whereas the females considered respect and obedience to be im- portant less often than a variety of other characteristics e.g., being oneself, a loving mother, etc. 24 A number of motives for parenthood were seen in Rabin's data, sex differences were seen in their relative emphasis, dif- ferent motivations were attributed to male and female parents, and some regional differences were even indicated. In a more recent study (Rabin & Greene,l966) fourteen of Rabin's (1965) items, which appeared to be the most productive and relevant, were changed to a multiple choice format and com- bined with four filler items to make an 18-item questionaire. This questionaire, the Child Study Inventory, was one of the instruments used in the present study and will be described fur- ther in the Procedure Section. The four motivational categories described previously--A1truistic, Fatalistic, Narcissistic, and Instrumental--compose the four major scoring categories on this instrument. In Rabin and Greene's preliminary study with 36 col- lege students, 2 1/2 week test-retest reliabilities were as follows: Altruistic .79; Fatalistic .54; Narcissistic .68; Instrumental .53. There were no significant correlation co- efficients between the four scoring categories, indicating that there apparently is no significant duplication or overlap be- tween these response categories. The authors did report a con- sistent negative correlation between the Fatalistic category and all the others, suggesting that the Fatalistic orientation, implying a passive acceptance of events, may differ from the more active motivational trends.. The Altruistic and Instrumen- tal motivations were found to be most independent from each 25 other; possibly these may be two ends of a continuum with Fata- listic and Narcissistic motivations somewhere in the middle. In any case, the Child Study questionaire appeared to have a good potential for further exploratory work in the area of mo- tivation for parenthood and thus was selected as the "direct" method in the present study. Rabin's use of a sentence completion technique and Rabin & Greene's questionaire served to tap motivational sources at a relatively conscious level. Rabin (1965) suggests that in addition, investigators need to devise projective and non- projective methods, as well as interview schedules, which will attempt to assess motivations less readily assessible to aware- ness and less readily distorted by defensiveness. The present research will be an attempt to tap some of the motivations which are less conscious, and to note how these compare with the more overt, readily verbalized motives. The use of a semi- structured projective method appears to be the natural vehicle for this purpose. Choice of a Projective Method A great deal of controversy has existed over the is- sue of whether projective techniques really add any new or use- ful material to a personality analysis. Allport (1953) gives some justification for the use of projective materials. He quotes a study by Getzels (1951) in which normal subjects were found to give responses to projective methods which were iden— tical with the responses they gave to direct questioning. 26 Neurotic subjects, on the other hand, said one thing when queried directly and another on the projective item. Thus Allport concludes that a psychodiagnostician should never em- ploy projective methods in the study of motivation without at the same time employing direct methods (and the implication is vice versa). If he does not use both, he will never be able to distinguish a well-integrated personality from one that is not. The notion that projective techniques may tap dif- ferent motivational data from the more direct techniques sug- gests the concept of "levels." Stone & Dellis (1960) discuss the levels hypothesis and suggest that psychological tests reach different "levels of consciousness," some tests tapping conscious or preconscious material while others demonstrate principally unconscious material. They postulate an inverse relationship between the degree of stimulus and response struc- ture inherent in a psychological test and the level of per- sonality or "impulse control system" which is being tapped by the test. In other words, the more highly structured the test, the more likely that the greater amount of data gained from it will be from a more conscious level of personality and vice versa. Getzels & Walsh (1958) proposed the method of Paired Direct and Projective Questionaires. This pairing is based on a conceptual framework which relates in a psychologically meaningful way, the data furnished by the two classes of instru- ments. Methodologically it includes a technique that yields 27 direct and prOjective responses with respect to the same object of inquiry in comparable terms. This study will in part serve as a model for the present research in which a questionaire will serve as the more direct method and a picture story completion test as the less direct and more projective method. The object of inquiry will be the general area of motivation for parent- hood. A survey of existing research by Davids & Pildner (1958) indicated that few studies have compared performances on direct and projective measures which were explicitly designed to focus on certain defined personality variables. The present study will be an attempt to do this in the area of motivation for parenthood. Davids and Pildner go on to suggest that comparison of direct and projective testing results has revealed frequent contradictions, and as a result there has been an increasing inclination to re- gard the two methods as separate entities, each measuring a dif- ferent aspect or level. This may indeed be the case, but if the purpose of the research is to tentatively explore a new and re- latively undefined area, as is true in the present research, techniques throwing light on any one or more of the levels should be enlightening and useful. Forer, Rabin, Goldstein, & Lesser (1961) focused on the inadequacy of the traditional projective tests to predict in specific areas. They make a plea for either the develOpment of new techniques or the modification or adaptation of presently ex- isting techniques in order to eXplore given theoretical issues, 28 Specific personality variables, or to improve prediction. Little (1959) also suggests the possibility of constructing projective instruments designed to measure specific personality variables within certain theoretical frameworks. He indicated that for precision of measurement a minimum of about five rea- sonably independent projective "items" seems essential. Purcell (1958) would also agree that for specific behavioral predictions, stimulus material can be meaningfully selected or constructed so as to clearly resemble the predictive solution which constitutes the criterion. Thus the prevailing Opinion appears to be that construction of new tests in order to explore certain variables is not only acceptable but quite apprOpriate, and Forer et a1 (1961) cite several instances in which this has successfully been accomplished (e.g., Auld, Eron, & Laffal, 1955; Hurley, 1955). Forer et a1 (1961) also discuss the issue of the op- timal level of structure given to a new or modified stimulus variable. Degree of ambiguity of the stimulus is often a fac- tor in the amount of structure, since what is desired is sim- ilarity of stimulus to the variable being investigated, but not identity. Kenny & Bijou (1953) found that TAT cards of medium stimulus ambiguity values yielded more personality in- formation than cards with eigher high or low degree of ambiguous- ness. On the basis of findings in an earlier study, three sets of TAT cards varying in degree of ambiguity were selected and given to 18 young male adult subjects. Two "well-qualified" clinical psychologists, utilizing a Q-sort technique, judged 29 the significance of the personality factors injected into the fantasy stories. With increasing stimulus ambiguity there was an initial increase in the extent of personality factors re- vealed in the fantasy, and then a decrease. WeisskOpf (1950) increased the ambiguity of the TAT pictures by two methods: (1) incomplete tracings of the con- tours of the pictures, and (2) short exposure of the pictures” In both cases she found that the more ambiguous pictures eli- cited less projection than the less ambiguous ones when college students were used as subjects. Recent research suggests that fantasy interpretations of stimuli which suggest specific motives are also better pre- dictors of related classes of overt behavior than fantasy re- Sponses to stimuli which are ambiguous for these motive areas (e.g., Epstein & Smith, 1956; Kagan, 1956, 1959). Kagan (1959) points out that when the stimulus is structured to suggest a specific motive or conflict, one may assume that one of the subject's hypotheses for interpretation included the motive illustrated. Thus, absence of a certain motive in a theme told to a stimulus that suggests content is apt to be a more valid indicator of conflict than absence of this content to an ambi- guous stimulus. Thus Kagan (1956) found that boys who were rated as extremely nonaggressive were less apt to tell aggres- sive stories to pictures which suggested boys fighting than boys who were rated as more aggressive. The incidence of ag- gressive stories to ambiguous pictures did not differentiate the two groups. 30 Epstein & Smith (1956) performed an experiment similar to Kagan's using hunger motivation as the experi- mental variable. Incidence of hunger themes to pictures ambiguous for this content did not differentiate hungry from non-hungry S's. However, to the stimulus which suggested a hunger theme, the hungry men were less apt than the non- hungry S's to report this content. These authors hypothe- sized that when a fantasy stimulus suggests a content which is associated with anxiety, the S tends to inhibit a theme which includes the anxious material. Thus it would appear that what must be considered in designing tests to explore a new stimulus variable is: (1) an awareness of the levels of personality being tapped and a decision as to the importance of each level, (2) a clear delineation of ambiguity versus structure desired. In the present research on motivation for parenthood it would appear apprOpriate to explore both conscious and less con- scious levels of motivation. Considering the previous re- search results (e.g., Epstein & Smith, 1956; Kagan, 1956), it would also appear that a test with a moderate amount of structure would be indicated. Since the construction of a test in order to more fully explore a given area seems not only possible but de- sirable (Forer et a1, 1961), the first step in the procedure would be to define the specific area in which one's interest lies. This has been done, in effect, throughout this 31 literature review, but it is worth taking one last succinct look at the motivation for parenthood variable as a partial means of summary and explanation before going on to state hypotheses. The Variable to be Considered: Motivation for Parenthood The basic question to be considered in the present research is why do people want to have children? Generally this would refer to those cases in which the pregnancy was planned rather than being incidental or accidental. A side issue in the study is the expectancies that parents possess in regard to their children. The studies quoted in regard to maternal attitudes (e.g., Gildea et a1, 1961; Loevinger & Sweet, 1961) suggest that the parent's attitude toward the child can have far reaching effects on him in either a health- promoting or a pathogenic manner. Thus parental expectancies might give some indication of how the parent thinks of the child in relation to himself i.e., in basically a positive or negative fashion. Taylor (1955) discusses four main ways of thinking about children: 1. As a responsibility 2. As a nuisance 3. As a compensatory source of satisfaction 4. As a bundle of potentialities She feels that all four are found in the relations of most parents at one time or another, but the one which is dominant 32 most of the time colors the whole relation and to a large ex- tent determines the development of both parents and child. She suggests that some parental attitudes can only be seen as neurotic e.g., if parents think of their children primarily as responsibilities, they are also likely to consider them (sub— consciously) as competitors for the good things in life, as rivals for the affection of others, as frustrating elements, etc. Other immature parents tend to think of their child primarily as an instrument for fulfilling their own needs for affection, recognition, and mastery and seek to manipulate him to their own ends. Taylor suggests that of the four basic sets of parental attitudes, the only set acceptable in terms of its health-promoting qualities is that of looking on the child as a bundle of potentialities to be released through wholesome surroundings and wise guidance. Thus if there are some parental attitudes which can be considered "healthy" and other parental attitudes which are viewed as less healthy, or even destructive, it is reasonable to assume that parents of children with behavior problems possess attitudes which fall in the latter categories. If this can be shown to be true, then there is hOpe of possibly changing these attitudes by attempting to induce a change in their underlying motivations. In essence, this is the philo- SOphy operating in many child guidance clinics at the present time as most clinics will not treat the child unless the 33 parents agree to enter treatment concurrently.- If we obtain some insight into the reasons why peOple have children, we may be able to learn something about why they treat them as they do. CHAPTER II PROBLEM & HYPOTHESES Problem The aim of the present research was to investigate the motives, both conscious and unconscious, for parenthood; to look at some of the expectancies men and women are thought to possess in relation to their children; and, to compare the motives of parents of children being seen at a child gui- dance clinic with those of parents of healthy or well-adjusted children. This was accomplished through the following means: 1. The development of a projective research tool through which we attempted to tap withheld and covert motivations for parenthood. The Parental Picture-Story Completion Test (PPSCT) was de- signed for this purpose and can be described as a custom-made projective test in which there was innovation in both stimulus and response material, the latter being entirely used in the service of the hypotheses and predictions as outlined by Forer et a1 (1961). The PPSCT is an eleven item test, with nine items dealing with motivation for parenthood i.e., why peOple have children, and the remaining two items 34 35 dealing with expectancies men and women hold in relation to their children. Administration of the projective measure in conjunction with a more direct questionaire, the Child Study Inventory (CSI), designed to study the corresponding area. The CSI is an eighteen item test with nine motivation items, five expectancy items, and four "filler items" which are not scored. Both the Child Study questionaire and the PPSCT employ the same four major response categories described in the in- troductory section: Altruistic, Fatalistic, Narcissistic, and Instrumental. A comparison of motivation for parenthood in parents of children called to the attention of a child guidance clinic with the motivation for parenthood in parents of children who are con— sidered well-adjusted by their teachers. A comparison of the expectancy items from the two tests described above, in order to determine if there were sex differences in the parental expectancies attributed to males and females. Rabin (1965) found that there were no signifi- cant differences in the way male and female students viewed motivation for parenthood, but there were sex differences when the expectancies 36 of mothers and fathers relative to their chil: dren were considered. Thus the following hypotheses were tested: I. II. III. IV. VI. Responses to a projective test designed to tap motivation for parenthood and responses to a more direct questionaire dealing with the same subject matter will be more closely related (the difference scores smaller) in a group of parents of well-adjusted children than in par- ents of disturbed children. This hypothesis is based upon data presented by Allport (1953) as well as Davids & Pildner (1958). (l-tailed) There will be a significant difference in the way male and female S's rank answers on the Expectancy items. (2-tailed) There will be no significant sex differences in the rankings of male and female S's on the Moti- vation items. (2-tailed) Parents of disturbed children will give more answers indicating that they view the child as an instrument. (l-tailed) Parents of disturbed children will also give more answers which can be classified as narcis- sistic. (l-tailed) Parents of well-adjusted children will give 37 more answers indicating altruistic motives. (l-tailed) VII. There will be no differences between disturbed and well-adjusted groups on the fatalistic items. (2-tailed) CHAPTER III METHOD & PROCEDURE The Method and Procedure section will begin with a description of the subjects used in the present study. This will be followed by a discussion of the two diagnostic tech- niques.andthen a description of the administrative procedures. Subjects Subjects studied in the present investigation were 40 parent couples. They were divided into two groups of 20 couples each on the basis of whether their child was classi- fied as "well-adjusted" or "disturbed," thus including 20 men and 20 women in each group. Group I consisted of parents of children who had been referred to a clinic for treatment of any behavioral disturbance of a non-physical origin. Thirteen of these families were contacted through the Lansing Child Guidance Clinic, five through the Michigan State University Psycholo- gical Clinic, one family was obtained through the Lansing Day Care Center, and the remaining family was being seen at the Psychiatric Clinic in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In all in- stances parents of children with organic complications and parents of retarded children were omitted from the sample. 38 39 These families were either selected from the clinic's treat~ ment waiting list (indicating that the child would be seen for treatment in the future but up until now had only been seen for purposes of diagnosis and recommendations), 2E! they were families who had been in treatment less than one month. To preserve confidentiality, the parents were approached by one of the clinic workers, either directly or through a let- ter (see Appendixlu and were asked if they would be willing to participate in a research project. If they indicated agreement, their names were then given to the writer who contacted them and set up an appointment. This group of par- ents, whose names were originally obtained through a clinic, will be referred to as the "Disturbed Group." Group II consisted of 20 couples who are parents of children considered "well-adjusted" by their teachers. Teach- ers from eight schools in four different school systems were asked to contribute the names of children they considered to be well adjusted to the classroom situation, following a set of criteria used by Hereford (1963) (see Appendix B). Typically the writer would speak with a teacher and make a specific re- quest in order to match the well-adjusted child with a child in the Disturbed Group e.g., she might ask for the names of three white, Protestant, 4th grade boys. Once the names were obtained from the schools, a letter was sent to the parents, explaining the project briefly, and indicating that they would be contacted by telephone the following week. If they were 40 willing to participate, an appointment time was then set up. Many of these couples inquired as to why their names had been selected and they were informed that the school had volunteered their names when the writer enlisted the aid of the school in obtaining a "normal" control group for this research. This reason appeared quite satisfactory and most of the couples were very willing to participate. This was in marked contrast to the Disturbed Group where almost all the couples were re- luctant and had to be persuaded to take part e.g., seven couples contacted through the clinics flatly refused to parti— cipate (at the insistance of the husband in four of these cases) and two additional families cancelled their appoint- ments numerous times until they were finally dropped from the sample. Only two couples obtained through the schools refused to participate and this was due to family illnes in one instance. The group of parents obtained through the schools will be re- ferred to as the "Well-Adjusted Group." Since, as Schaefer (1961) points out, the effects of maternal, and likely paternal, behavior vary with the age of the child, only parents of children ages 7 to 11 were included in the sample. Children in this age range were expected to have relatively few transient.symptoms of disturbance (Gildea, Glidewell, & Kantor, 1961) since most have made the initial ad— justment from home to school, yet have not begun to make the transition to adolescence.. Thus, in summary, the final dis- turbed sample consisted of 20 couples who were the natural 41 parents of children between the ages of 7 and 11 who had been referred to a clinic for some kind of help. The well-adjusted sample consisted of 20 couples who were the natural parents of children considered well-adjusted by their teachers and who were matched with the Disturbed Group on several pertinent variables, to be described next. The Disturbed and Well-Adjusted groups were matched one-to-one on the following variables: age of the child, sex of the child, race, and religion. These variables have been found to have a significant effect on family size (Rainwater, 1965). In some cases it was impossible to match all these variables exactly and in these cases, preference was given to matching on variables of sex and religion, since the exact age of the child would seem to be less important in a study on motivation for parenthood than sex or religion. All sub- jects were of the Caucasian race so this was not an issue. All couples were matched on the variables of sex of the child and religion. The most any children in a matched pair varied in age was one year and three months. Most ages matched with- in 6 months. An attempt was made to control, indirectly, for social class variables which appear to have a significant effect (Gildea et a1, 1961) in that choice of schools from which the names of the well-adjusted children were obtained was identical with, or approximately socio-economically com- parable to, those of the Disturbed Group. In some cases the 42 well-adjusted and disturbed children were obtained from the same classroom, in other cases the matching was dependent upon the subjective Opinion of the writer and the description of the socio-economic character of the school given to the writer by Dr. Edward Remick of the Lansing Board of Education.* Thus most of the matching was done after the disturbed families had been contacted i.e., a school was selected that matched the school of the disturbed child in approximate socio-economic character, and a request would be made for a child who matched the disturbed child in sex, age, and race. The first 20 children referred to a clinic who met the age and type of illness criteria (not organic or retarded) were selected for the study. The sample included twelve girls and thus twenty-four of the forty couples in the present study are parents of a female child. Ten of the forty couples (25% of the sample) were practicing Catholics whereas the re- mainder were Protestants or professed no religion at all. No Jewish couples were included in the study. One man in the Disturbed Group was unable to read and had to have the items read to him. This was not true of anyone in the Well-Adjusted Group but it was decided to retain this man in the sample since he appeared to understand the items and his anSwer choices were consistent. * The writer is very grateful to Dr. Remick for his assistance with these socio-economic descriptions and his prompt COOperation in enlisting the aid of four of the Lansing schools. 43 Techniques The Child Study Inventory (CSI) The Child Study Inventory develOped by Rabin & Greene (1966), is an 18 item questionaire based on data ob- tained from Rabin's (1965) study on motivation for parenthood in which he used a sentence completion method. Of these items, nine are directly concerned with why people have chil- dren and will be referred to as "motivation items," five in- quire about expectations peOple hold in regard to their children ("expectancy items"), and the remaining four items are "filler items," not used in the analysis, dealing with related areas such as birth control and family size. Sub- jects were asked to rank the four possible answers in order of preference. Each of the four stated answers had been con- structed so as to fall into one of the following motivational categories, previously defined in the introductory section: 1. Altruistic 2. Fatalistic 3. Narcissistic 4. Instrumental Thus, 14 times a subject ranks answers from these four cate- gories in order of preference, giving an indication of his dominant motive for parenthood by the category he most Often ranks first or the sum of the ranks in each category. 44 This questionaire was chosen for the direct measure in the present study because: (1) it was eSpecially con- structed to study the motivation for parenthood area, and (2) it asks the parent fairly directly which motivation he prefers. This test might best be described as a "thinly disguised technique" since the items are presented to the subject in terms of what parents, mothers, and fathers want, rather than what he wants but it is also clear that the sub- ject is to answer in terms of how he feels about the issue. The Parental Picture-Story Completion Test (PPSCT) The Parental Picture—Story Completion Test is a semi-structured projective test develOped as part of the pre- sent research (see procedure). The test consists of nine pictures involving parents and children (see Appendix F) in some kind of interaction. Each picture is accompanied by two or three sentences constituting a story stem. The task of the subject is to complete the story by ranking the four possible story endings in order of preference. In some cases the four story endings listed were selected from the most common completions given to these story stems in three small sample pilot studies. They were worded so as to fall into the same four categories utilized in previous exploratory work of Altruistic, Fatalistic, Narcissistic, and Instru- mental, since these appear to be the major motivational cate- gories in this area and theoretically should differentiate 45 neurotic from well-adjusted parental attitudes (Taylor, 1955). When the pilot data did not appear appropriate to the cate- gorization described, answers were constructed by the author in accord with the required major motivational area. Instructions to the subject on the Parental Picture- Story Completion Test are as follows: Indicate the story ending you think is the best by placing a one (1) in front of it. Rank the remaining endings (2, 3, 4) to show your order of preference. In order to keep the data from being too restric- tive, following completion of the multiple choice form of the test, each subject was given the following set of instructions on a separate sheet: Obviously these stories could have had a number of dif- ferent endings. Read through the 9 story stems once more and write in the additional answers which occur to you. Thus the subject was eventually able to respond in a more projective manner, exclusive of any specific motivational categories. These stories were collected primarily for exPloratory purposes and do not constitute a major part of the present study. Seven of the pictures in the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test deal with motivation for parenthood and two with expectancies (#‘s 2 and 4). More emphasis was placed on the motivational items since this was the primary area of in- terest. No filler items were included on this test as they seemed superfluous. This method, although semi-structured 46 by the stories in order to obtain answers relevant to the area of motivation for parenthood, can be considered a pro- jective method by virtue of the fact that the subject is not asked for his own opinion about an issue but is simply asked to complete a story about people in a picture. Procedure Development of the Projective Measure Several steps were involved in the development of the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test and these are out- lined below: 1. Approximately 50 pictures were selected from pOpular magazines which appeared as though they might tap the area of interest. These were scenes involving parents and children, delivery scenes, new parents returning from the hospital, etc. 2. A story stem was written for each picture to give a "set" to the subject. These were ori- ginally in the form of a sentence followed by one or two questions about motivations and ex- pectations e.g., "This picture gives a dramatic illustration of the present population explo- sion. Despite the dangers of overpopulation, peOple go on having children. Why?" 47 The author, with the aid of her advisor, se- lected 10 of these 50 pictures which they felt would elicit the desired material. It was de- cided to exclude pictures dealing with contra- ception controversies since this did not directly tap the Specific area of interest. The questions were omitted from the story stems. The stems were then revised in the form of two or three sentences to serve as the beginning of a story. Subjects were then asked to complete the story. In the first "pilot study" these 10 pictures and story stems were administered to six sub- jects, all of whom were parents. These sub- jects consisted of one psychology graduate student, two secretaries, and three teachers. They were given the pictures numbered from 1- 10 and then asked to respond to the story stem on another piece of paper while looking at the picture. In the original "pilot study" the stories did not really elicit motivations for parenthood, but rather these parents tended to identify with the children instead of the parents in their stories. Therefore all except two story stems were revised in detail to attempt to eli- cit more specific answers. Two of the pictures 48 were found to elic1t little or no material and thus were discarded. The remaining eight pictures were transformed into standard Size and mounted so that admin- istration would be easier. These eight pic- tures with their revised stories were presented to a second group of six peOple, mostly students, and were found to produce material which was considerably closer to the desired parental mo- tivation. One story (#8) was still lacking in specificity and needed to be revised. A brief description of the eight pictures which were retained, plus a ninth which was later added, is given below in order of administration: 1. An intern holding a baby 2. A mother and a baby boy 3. A poster illustrating the population explo- sion 4. A father and son 5. A pregnant woman and her husband 6. An adoption scene - mother and child 7. A young woman dressed up for a date 8. A man surrounded by five toddlers 9. A young man dressed up for a date The accompanying story stems and endings can be found in Appendix G. 49 Story #8 was again revised. An attempt was made to find a picture comparable to #7 in which a man is about to go out on a date with a woman who cannot have children. These pictures were presented to a third group of six subjects. The responses to the new picture appeared quite apprOpriate and this picture was then mounted and labeled #9. Thus the test consists of nine pictures with corresponding story stems. It was decided to cast all the answers into a multiple choice format. The story stem accom- panying picture #8 appeared to be adequate for this picture. Utilizing some of the most common answers given in the pilot studies, an attempt was made to cast these answers into four possible story con— clusions for each picture. In addition, each conclusion was constructed so that it fell with- in one of the four categories used in previous exploration studies performed at Michigan State University and in the construction of the questionaire. Each picture thus has one comple- tion item representing each response category. In addition, pictures 5 and 6 have one set of an- swers for the male in the picture and a corres- ponding set for the female, giving a total of 44 completions. In cases where the pilot data did 10. 50 not lend itself to the construction of story completions for the desired category, the au- thor simply constructed the answers herself or added to the incomplete pilot data. The 44 story completions, one representing each of the four described categories consistent with the content of each picture, and copies of the response class definitions were typed on sep- arate cards and submitted to three graduate students in clinical psychology.1 These judges were requested to indicate which of the four defined response classes was most consistent with each story ending. One judge placed all the story endings in the class for which they had been intended. A se- cond judge placed two responses in a different category than they had been designed for, and since these answers were also misplaced by the third judge, they were revised in detail. Both these items involved confusion of the narcis- sistic and fatalistic categories and care was taken to make a clear differentiation between the two. When re-submitted to one of the judges after the revisions had been made, she had no difficulty in correctly classifying them. Judge #3 misplaced two additional items and these were slightly modified by changing one or 1Suzanne Barnett, Charlene Carter, Jerry Treppa. 51 two words. Thus, the majority of story com- pletion items appeared to be consistent with the response class for which they had been in- tended since the most any judge misplaced was four items, all of which were subsequently modified to make the items more discriminating. 11. Since the completion items had been established as representative of one of the four categories it was decided to ask subjects to rank these story completion items in order of preference. Thus they would rank choices on both the projective and the non-projective measures, but the material which they were to rank would vary considerably. Administration of the Two Techniques The two tests were first administered to the Dis- turbed Group (parents of children ages 7-11 who had been re- ferred to a clinic for treatment). These parents were all tested individually (with only their spouse present in the same room) in their homes, usually in the evening. Adminis- tration time was found to be about 45 minutes on the average. Half of the men in the group were presented with the Child Study Inventory first and half of the men with the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test first to counterbalance the presentation and control for any possible effects of set. The same procedure was followed for the women. While the 52 husband worked on one questionaire his wife worked on the other, since only one set of pictures for the PPSCT was avail- able. This procedure appeared to work out quite well. The examiner did note that whichever parent had the CSI first ap- peared to finish both questionaires a little earlier than his or her spouse. This may mean that doing the short items first makes the task easier since the individual develOps a set to rank rapidly and does not get so tied up in studying the qualities of the answer as does the individual who begins with the longer test. Administrative technique was identical in the Well- Adjusted Group except for the fact that this group was tested approximately two months later and again counterbalancing of the two tests was employed. Several couples in the Well- Adjusted Group expressed a great deal of interest in the test and its develOpment, a fact which was true only once in the Disturbed Group and that was in a couple where the husband was himself a Ph.D. candidate. As a group, the control cou- ples were considerably more friendly and COOPerative, likely due to the fact that they felt much less "threatened" than the Disturbed Group since they had been contacted through a school rather than through a clinic. Following the ranking of the multiple choice items, subjects were asked to write in their own answers to the story stems. This was not a part of the test per se but rather an attempt to give the subject freedom to respond with responses 53 other than those presented in the multiple choice form. There was a great deal of resentment expressed by couples in both the Disturbed and Well-Adjusted groups when they came to the end of the PPSCT and read the request for additional story endings. Most typically they would ask whether they "had" to do this and indicated that they were too fatigued or simply could not think of anything. Even when urged to try, many couples turned in blank sheets. Only about five couples out of forty turned in any new answers, and thus only 12% of the sample made any real attempt to meet this demand. For some reason most couples felt that they had done enough once they finished the questionaires. This pro- bably would not have been the case if the blank sheets had been administered before the multiple choice answers. Scoring Scores representing each subject's over-all pre- ferences for the four reSponse categories were derived by summing the ranks assigned by each subject to that class. Thus, the lower the numerical score, the higher the over-all preference that was expressed for the corresponding class of choices. Thus, theoretically, a minimum score on the CSI would be 14, a maximum score 56. Likewise, scores on the PPSCT could theoretically range from 11 to 44. CHAPTER IV RESULTS Hypothesis I was a l-tailed prediction stating that responses on the two tests would be more closely re- lated (the difference scores smaller) in the Well-Adjusted Group than in the Disturbed Group. This hypothesis was not confirmed. Table 1 shows the results of four matched-group t tests comparing the difference scores of the Adjusted and Disturbed groups on the four major variables for the two tests. No t test approached significance and thus it can be stated that both groups appeared equally consistent in their responses to the questionaire and to the more projec- tive measure and there were no significant differences be- tween groups in this regard, in either the predicted or the Opposite direction. Hypotheses II and III dealt with differences be- tween males and females on the Expectancy and Motivation items on the two tests. Hypothesis II was a 2-tailed pre- diction which stated that there would be a significant dif- ference between males and females on the Expectancy items. This hypothesis was confirmed for two of the four categories on the Child Study Inventory (Fatalistic Expectancy and In- strumental Expectancy), and for the other two categories on 54 55 TABLE l.--Means of the Differences, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values Comparing Major Variables on the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Mean Test Difference SD Between-Group Category Te'sts 1 & 2 Difference t Altruistic 3333:3333 3:22 2:33 0-14 N-s- Fatalistic 3333:3333 3:33 3:33 Narcissistic 333333333 3:33 3:33 Instrumental 3333:3333 3:33 3:33 N = 40 in each group the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test (Altruistic Expec- tancy and Narcissistic Expectancy). Thus hypothesis II was confirmed for every category once--either on the direct or the projective measure. The remaining two categories on each test showed no differences. Reference to Tables 2 and 3 indicates that the females scored higher (ranked answers lower) on the Child Study Inventory Fatalistic Expectancy category (.05 level) and on the Parental Picture-Story Completion Altruistic Expectancy category (.05). The males scored higher on the CSI 56 Instrumental Expectancy category (.01 level) and on the PPSCT Narcissistic Expectancy category (.05). No Expectancy cate- gory was found to successfully differentiate between males and females on both tests although every category differen- tiated between males and females on one test. No inconsis- tencies appeared between tests i.e., the females always scored equal to or higher than the males on the Altruistic and Fatalistic categories, even when the differences did not reach significance, and, likewise, the males scored higher than the females on the Narcissistic and Instrumental Expec- tancy items in every case. In no case did one sex score higher on a category on one test and lower on the corres- ponding category on the other. Thus it can be stated that there was a consistent direction in every category even though some statistical tests were significant and others were not. Since hypothesis II was confirmed for two of the four categories on each test, it will be regarded as partially confirmed. Hypothesis III was a 2-tailed prediction stating that no differences would be found between males and females on the Motivation items for either test. Again, referring to Tables 2 and 3, it can be seen that this hypothesis was confirmed for three categories on the Child Study Inventory (Altruistic Motivation, Fatalistic Motivation, and Narcis- sistic Motivation), and for one category on the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test (Fatalistic Motivation). The TABLE 2.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Sex t Values of Scores on the Child Study Inventory, Expectancy and Motivation Items CSI Sex Difference Category Mean SD t ALT Expectancy Men 7.08 2.88 . Women 7.08 3.12 0'00 N‘S' ALT Motivation Men 14.30 4.82 Women 12.50 3.94 1'87 ”'5' FAT Expectancy Men 12.80 4.39 2.20 * Women 10.70 3.01 FAT Motivation Men 22.45 5.65 Women 21.12 4.47 1'08 N's' NAR Expectancy Men 15.90 3.04 Women 16.30 1.77 ‘°°75 ”'3' NAR Motivation Men 27.40 5.80 Women 27.75 3.97 -°043 N.S. INST Expectancy Men 14.22 2.79 _2.57 ** Women 15.92 2.36 INST Motivation Men 25.85 4.04 -2.81 ** Women 28.62 3.79 N = 40 in each group * = Sig. .05 level ** = Sig. .01 level TABLE 3.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Sex t Values of Scores on the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test, ExpeCtancy and Motivation Items PPSCT Sex Difference Category Mean SD t ALT EXpectancy Men 3.42 1.39 2.52 * Women 2.72 0.93 ALT Motivation Men 17.45 3.83 3.19 ** Women 14.80 2.85 FAT EXpectancy Men 6.32 1.72 WOmen 5.78 1.40 1‘70 N'S' FAT Motivation Men 20.65 3.59 Women 19.18 2.56 1'92 N°S° NAR Expectancy Men 5.18 1.65 _2 l7 * Women 5.82 1.13 ° NAR Motivation Men 24.02 3.83 _2.77 ** Women 26.25 2.14 INST Expectancy Men 5.08 1.58 Women 5.68 1.49 ”1'70 N'S' INST Motivation Men 27.88 4.19 _2.04 * Women 29.72 3.13 N = 40 in each group * = Sig. .05 level ** = Sig. .01 level 59 males scored higher (ranked the motivation items lower) on the Instrumental category on both tests (CSI - .01 level, PPSCT - .05 level), and on the PPSCT Narcissistic category (.01 level). The females scored higher on the PPSCT Altru- istic Motivation category (.01 level). Again, there were no inconsistencies between tests and hypothesis III can also be regarded as partially confirmed. Thus, in summarizing the male-female differences, it can be stated that there were significant sex differences on the Expectancy and Motivation items in 8 out of 16 com- parisons. These differences appeared to be divided between Expectancy and Motivation items, between the four major scoring categories, and approximately between the two tests. Generally, the females tended to prefer the Altruistic and Fatalistic answers whereas the males preferred the Narcis- sistic and Instrumental answers when compared to the females. Thus Hypotheses-II and III must be regarded as partially con- firmed. Hypothesis IV was a 1—tailed prediction which stated that parents of disturbed children would give more answers in- dicating that they viewed the child as an instrument. This hypothesis was not confirmed as there were no Significant dif- ferences between Adjusted and Disturbed groups on the Instru- mental category on either test (Tables 4 and 5). When the mean scores of the Adjusted and Disturbed groups are compared, how- ever, it can be seen that on both instruments the differences 60 TABLE 4.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values of Scores on the Child Study Inventory CSI Group Difference Category Mean SD t Altruistic Disturbed 21.62 6.10 l 76 * Adjusted 19.32 5.21 ' Fatalistic Disturbed 33.20 7.22 Adjusted 33.88 6.45 '0'44 N°S° Narcissistic Disturbed 43.25 6.32 Adjusted 44.10 5.83 ‘0'62 ”'3' Instrumental Disturbed 41.92 5.46 Adjusted 42.70 5.63 '0'62 ”'3' N = 40 in each group * = Sig. .05 level are in the predicted direction i.e., the Disturbed Group scored higher on the Instrumental category even though these differences did not reach statistical significance. Hypothesis V was a l-tailed prediction that parents of disturbed children would give more answers classified as Narcis- sistic. This prediction was also not confirmed (Tables 4 and 5) since parents of adjusted and disturbed children did not differ significantly in their answers on the Narcissistic category on either instrument. Again, however, comparison of the mean scores of each group indicates that the differences, although not statistically significant, are in the predicted direction i.e., the Disturbed group scoring higher on the Narcissistic category. 61 TABLE 5.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values of Scores on the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test PPSCT Group Difference Category Mean SD t Altruistic Disturbed 19.92 4.01 1 7O * Adjusted 18.48 4.28 ' Fatalistic Disturbed 26.05 4.34 Adjusted 25.88 3.34 0'23 N's“ Narcissistic- Disturbed 30.42 3.99 Adjusted 30.85 3.90 -0'51 N'S' Instrumental Disturbed 33.60 4.27 Adjusted 34.75 4.41 “1'49 N°S° N = 40 in each group * = Sig. .05 level Hypothesis VI was again a l-tailed prediction which stated that parents of well-adjusted children would give more answers indicating Altruistic motivation for parenthood. Tables 4 and 5 indicate that this hypothesis was confirmed atthe .05 level on both the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test. Thus the Altruistic variable was the Single category which appeared to be sensitive to the adjustment-disturbance continuum in the present study. Hypothesis VII was a 2-tailed prediction which stated that there would be no differences between parents of 62 disturbed and well-adjusted children on the Fatalistic catev gory. Reference to Tables 4 and 5 shows that this hypothesis was confirmed on both tests. Thus, out of the seven predictions made, two were confirmed, two were partially confirmed, and three were not confirmed. Two of the four major hypotheses relating to the adjustment-disturbance continuum were found to be significant and in the direction predicted. The remaining two predic- tions did not reach significance but inspection of the mean scores on the Narcissistic and Instrumental categories in- dicates that these means are in the predicted directions i.e., the mean score of the Disturbed Group is higher than the mean score of the Adjusted Group in both these categories in all cases. Therefore a definite and consistent trend in the pre- dicted direction can be noted. Additional Findings Additional Male-Female Findings Comparisons of "total" category scores (Expectancy items plus Motivation items) between the sexes (Table 6) in- dicated that females scored higher than males (ranked items lower) on the CSI Fatalistic variable (p=.05) and on the PPSCT Altruistic (p=.001) and Fatalistic (p=.05) variables. Males scored higher on the CSI Instrumental variable (p=.01) and on the PPSCT Narcissistic (p=.01) and Instrumental (p=.02) TABLE 6.--Means, Standard Deviations and Between-Sex t Values of Total Category Scores on the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Test Sex Difference Category Mean SD t CSI Altruistic Males 21.38 6.53 Females 19.58 4.78 1'39 N'S' CSI Fatalistic Males 35.25 7.61 2 04 * Females 31.82 5.49 ° CSI Narcissistic Males 43.30 7.31 Females 44.05 4.53 ‘0‘65 “'5' CSI Instrumental Males 40.08 5.18 _3 39 ** Females 44.55 4.97 ° PPSCT Altruistic Males 20.88 4.34 3 42 ** Females 17.52 3.30 ' PPSCT Fatalistic Males 26.98 4.39 _2 19 * Females 24.95 2.95 ° PPSCT Narcissistic Males 29.20 4.61 _3 07 ** Females 32.08 2.40 ° PPSCT Instrumental Males 32.95 4.90 _2 44 * Females 35.40 3.35 ‘ N = 40 in each group * = Sig. .05 level ** = Sig. .01 level 64 variables. Thus on the total category scores, as well as on the Expectancy and Motivation items, the females tended to prefer the Altruistic and Fatalistic categories whereas the males leaned toward the Narcissistic and Instrumental ans- wers, especially on the PPSCT. It should be noted that in these total score comparisons the PPSCT was able to success- fully differentiate between males and females on all four major scoring categories. Subgroup7Comparisons Male Disturbed and Male Adjusted There were no significant differences between dis- turbed and adjusted males on the Child Study Inventory (Table 7). The adjusted males scored significantly higher than the disturbed males (ranked items lower) on the Parental Picture-Story Completion Altruistic category (p=.05), whereas the disturbed males scored higher than the adjusted group on the PPSCT Instrumental category (p=.01). Thus, although the total Adjusted and Disturbed Group comparisons did not reach significance on the Instrumental category, considering only the males, the finding for this category on the PPSCT is in the predicted direction with a high level of significance. The Altruistic finding corresponds to that of the total group. 65 TABLE 7.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values for Adjusted Males and Disturbed Males on the Major Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the ' Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Test Group Difference Category Mean SD t CSI Altruistic Dist. Males 22.55 7.19 Adj. Males 20.20 5.73 1'09 N'S' CSI.Fata1istic 3333-33333 33:33 3:33 CSIoNarcissistic §3§?'3333:S 32:38 3:33 -0... N-S- CSIoInstrumental 3333'333323 23:33 3:33 -°-14 N-S- PPSCT Altruistic ‘ Dist. Males 22.20 3.52 2 l3 * Adj. Males 19.55 4.75 ° PPSCT Fatalistic 3333-33338 33:33 3:33 PPSCT Narcissistic 233?'M333:S 33:38 3:33 -° 8° N-S- PPSCT Instrumental Dist. Males 31.40 4.55 _2.93 ** Adj. Males 34.50 4.85 N = 20 in each group * Sig. .05 level Sig. .01 level 66 Female Disturbed and Female Adjusted There were no significant differences between fe- male disturbed and female adjusted groups for any category on either test (Table 8). Male Disturbed and Female Disturbed The only significant difference between male and female disturbed subjects on the CSI was on the Instrumental category where the males scored higher at .05 level (Table 9). On the PPSCT, the disturbed females scored higher on the Altruistic (p=.01) and the Fatalistic (p=.05) categories, whereas the disturbed males scored higher on the Narcissistic (p=.05) and Instrumental (p=.01) categories. Thus the male- female differences are most clearly seen for the Disturbed Group on the more projective measure. Male Adjusted and Female Adjusted The only significant difference between male and female adjusted subjects was on the CSI Instrumental variable where the males scored higher at the .05 level (Table 10). Development of the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test In addition to the group differences, some results are included which deal with the development of the PPSCT and the relationship between the two tests. 67 TABLE 8.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values for Adjusted Females and Disturbed Females on the Ma- jor Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Test Group Difference Category Mean SD t CSI Altruistic Dist. Females 20.70 4.79 Adj. Females 18.45 4.62 1'47 ”'5' CSI Fatalistic Dist. Females 31.40 6.67 Adj. Females 32.25 4.12 0'37 N°S° CSI Narcissistic Dist. Females 44.00 4.93 _0 08 N S Adj. Females 44.10 4.23 ' ' ' CSI Instrumental Dist. Females 43.90 5.07 Adj. Females 45.20 4.90 ’°°7° ”'5' PPSCT Altruistic Dist. Females 17.65 3.12 0 21 N S Adj. Females 17.40 3.56 ‘ ° ' PPSCT Fatalistic Dist. Females 24.30 3.03 Adj. Females 25.60 2.80 '1°43 ”'5' PPSCT Narcissistic Dist. Females 32.25 2.49 0 44 N S Adj. Females 31.90 2.36 ' ° ' PPSCT Instrumental Dist. Females 35.80 2.55 Adj. Females 35.00 4.03 0.69 N.S. N = 20 in each group TABLE 9.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values for Disturbed Males and Disturbed Females on the Ma- jor Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Test Group Difference Category Mean SD CSI Altruistic Dist. Males 22.55 7.19 Dist. Females 20.70 4.79 0'87 N'S' CSI Fatalistic Dist. Males 35.00 7.47 Dist. Females 31.40 6.67 1'41 N°S° CSI Narcissistic Dist. Males 42.50 7.52 Dist. Females 44.00 4.93 “0'86 “'3' CSI Instrumental Dist. Males 39.95 5.22 _2 24 * Dist. Females 43.90 5.07 ' PPSCT Altruistic Dist. Males 20.20 3.52 . 2.95 ** Dist. Females 17.65 3.12 PPSCT Fatalistic Dist. Males 27.80 4.81 2 39 * Dist. Females 24.30 3.03 ° PPSCT Narcissistic Dist. Males 28.60 4.42 _2 64 * Dist. Females 29.80 3.87 ' PPSCT Instrumental Dist. Males 31.40 4.55 _3 09 ** Dist. Females 35.80 2.55 ' N = 20 in each group * = Sig. .05 level ** = Sig. .01 level 69 TABLE lO.--Means, Standard Deviations, and Between-Group t Values for Adjusted Males and Adjusted Females on the Major Scoring Categories of the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Test Group Difference Category Mean SD t CSI Altruistic 333: 33333.. 33:33 3:33 1-14 N-s- CSI Fatalistic 223: gzmgIes 32:35 4:13 1'45 N'S' CSI Narcissistic 333: 33333.. 33:33 Z133 0-00 N-s- CSI Instrumental Adj. Males 40.20 5.27 _2 49 * Adj. Females 45.20 4.90 ' PPSCT Altruistic 333: 33333.. 33:33 3:33 1-72 ms. PPSCT Fatalistic Adj: gzmzies ' 25:33 2:36 0’47 N‘S' PPSCT Narcissistic Adj: fizizies 31:38 2:36 0'10 N'S' PPSCT Instrumental Adj: gzizIes 35:33 4:33 -0'34 N'S' N = 20 in each group * = Sig. .05 level 70 Due to the fact that the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test develOpment was a part of the present research, Table 11 is included in Appendix D, which shows the Product- moment correlations between the major scoring categories for the adjusted, disturbed, male, and female groups. It is, however, difficult to interpret the meanings of these inter- correlations since the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test has a forced choice format with non-independence of the ranks assigned. It can be seen that what results from this type of correlational analysis is a series of medium to high negative correlations between the various categories. The alpha coefficient is the average of all the possible split-half coefficients for a given test (Cronbach, 1951) and was selected in order to obtain an internal con- sistency index for the PPSCT. Alpha would be the value ex- pected when two random samples of items from a pool, like those in a given test, are correlated. Thus, alpha coef- ficients determined for the four major Parental Picture- Story Completion categories, based upon 80 subjects, were as follows: Altruistic .63, Fatalistic .43, Narcissistic .50, Instrumental .62. This item analysis was based on only 11 items which may have been in part responsible for the moderate values of these reliability coefficients. 71 Relationship Between the Two Tests Major scoring categories on test I (the CSI) were positively correlated to a significant degree with the cor- responding categories on test II (PPSCT), with significant correlations between test I and test II ranging from .28 for the females to .57 for the Disturbed Group (Tables 12 and 13 in Appendix D). The Fatalistic variables alone had signifi- cant correlations between test I and test II for all groups: adjusted, disturbed, males, and females, and the Fatalistic variable showed the only significant between-test correlation for the females. In the Altruistic category, Altruistic Mo- tivation was the most consistent variable between test I and test II as it was correlated to a significant degree in ad- justed, disturbed, and male groups. The most inconsistent category appeared to be Narcissism, with Narcissistic Moti- vation never correlated significantly on the two tests. In like manner, the Instrumental Expectancy variable was not significantly correlated between test I and test II for any group. Spontaneous Stories Subjects in the present study were extremely re- luctant to produce Spontaneous stories in response to the PPSCT pictures. So few subjects produced truly creative stories that it did not appear apprOpriate to attempt to quantify this material. Some of the qualitative aspects of the stories will be dealt with in the Discussion section which follows. CHAPTER V DISCUSSION The main proposal of the present study, namely that parents of disturbed children had differing motives than par- ents of well-adjusted children for becoming parents in the first place, can be regarded as partially confirmed since the predicted findings in regard to the Adjusted and Disturbed Groups occurred for two of the four major scoring categories on both tests (Altruistic and Fatalistic). Parents of well- adjusted children obtained higher scores on the Altruistic category and there were no differences between groups on the Fatalistic category. While the findings for the Narcissistic and Instrumental categories did not reach statistical signi- ficance, clear and consistent trends in the direction pre- dicted for these categories were noted since the mean score of the Disturbed Group was higher than that of the Adjusted Group in every case. Since consistent trends in the directions predicted by the hypotheses were fOund, it appears as though the failure to obtain the expected results on the Narcissistic and Instru- mental categories was likely due to a lack of sensitivity in the instruments used rather than a deficiency or error in the theoretical underpinnings. To throw some additional light on this issue in retrospect, this section will be concerned 72 73 with a summary of the findings and their implications, fol- lowed by a consideration of the theoretical underpinnings of the study as well as a closer look at the instruments used and the subject sampling. The section will be concluded by some brief suggestions for further research. The Results & Their Implications Hypothesis I predicted that responses on the Child Study questionaire and on the more projective measure would be more closely related for the Well-Adjusted Group than for the Disturbed Group. This hypothesis was not confirmed, as both groups gave equally consistent responses when their performances on the two instruments were compared. The pre- diction of larger differences in the Disturbed Group was based upon the hypothesis of Allport (1953) who noted that normal subjects tended to give similar responses to direct and projective methods whereas more neurotic subjects were likely to give differing types of answers to these methods. The present.study did go a step further in making the addi- tional assumption that neurotic behavior in the child implies neuroticism or instability in the parents which may not be true in all cases. As Dachowski (1966) points out, Allport's hypothesis may be true only for the individual whose personality organization has broken down and who is unable to function ef- fectively. This would not be true of the parents in the pre- sent study who had not been referred to a clinic themselves 74 and showed no obvious indication of loss of effective func- tioning e.g., all the males in the study held jobs in the community and were supporting their familes and the females appeared to be functioning adequately in their roles of housewives and mothers. Another possible eXplanation for the lack of sup- port for Allport's hypothesis in the present study would appear to be that the two instruments in question, the Child Study Inventory and the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test, were constructed in so similar a manner that these subjects did not differentiate between them. If the PPSCT had been an Open-ended test in which the subjects were simply asked to respond to the pictures with a creative or imagina- tive story, rather than being forced to rank answers, the present procedure would have been more in the nature of the method of Paired Direct and Projective Questionaires proposed by Getzels & Walsh (1958), and might have given more support to the predicted differences. Hypotheses II and III dealt with differences be- tween men and women on the Expectancy and Motivation items and were partially confirmed on both tests. That the Expec- tancy items even approached significance was somewhat sur- prising since there are only five expectancy items on the CSI and only two expectancy items on the PPSCT (two categories showing significant differences on each test). Therefore, further work with the differing expectancies of men and women 75 in regard to their children appears indicated, especially with the inclusion of more test items in order to further eXplore the type and extent of these differences. The Moti- vational item findings were not as unexpected since these categories included most of the items on each test and cor- responded very closely to the total scores in the four major categories. The projective measure appeared to possess greater sensitivity than the more direct measure in regard to differences between males and females on the Motivation items, since three categories on the PPSCT showed male-female differences whereas only one category on the CSI was indica- tive of these differences. When the total scores were com- pared (Table 6) the projective measure successfully differen- tiated between males and females on all four scoring categories. These differences were not predicted but perhaps they should have been because of known or hypothesized cultural differences existing between males and females. On the PPSCT four major test categories the females preferred the Altruistic and Fatalistic category answers where- as the males selected the Narcissistic and Instrumental items more frequently. Thus, the male-female differences were con- sistent and clear when the total category scores were compared on the more projective measure. A comparison of subgroup findings indicates that these differences were primarily con- fined to the Disturbed Group since the Adjusted males and fe- males did not differ on any category on the projective measure. 76 When total groups were compared on the direct (CSI) measure only two categories (Fatalistic and Instrumental) showed corresponding male-female differences. In regard to the sub— groups, the only male-female difference on the direct measure was on the Instrumental category where the males scored higher than the females in both the Adjusted and Disturbed groups. Thus, it appears as though differences between males and females in regard to Instrumental items may be a cultural phenomenon since they appear consistently on both direct and projective tests and for both Adjusted and Disturbed groups. However, the male-female differences on the remaining cate- gories (Altruistic, Fatalistic and Narcissistic) may be re- lated to pathology (showing up only in the Disturbed Group) and to the level of consciousness tapped (showing up only on the more projective measure which should tap less conscious material). The total male-female findings in the present study are consistent with the earlier results reported by Rabin (1965) since the college students in his study considered the male's motivation for parenthood as involving self-enhancement, self-perpetuation, and proof of masculinity or virility (Nar- cissistic or Instrumental answers). Rabin found that Altruistic reasons were attributed about equally to men and women whereas in the present study the females were seen to prefer the At- truistic category significantly more often than the males. This could conceivably be a function of the forced choice format 77 since if a male chooses to rank a Narcissistic or Instrumental answer high, he must then rank the Altruistic item lower by virtue of the way the test is constructed. A female may choose Altruistic, not because of a strong preference for this cate- gory but perhaps to avoid Narcissistic or Instrumental answers. In any case, both this study and Rabin's study point to some clearcut male—female differences in terms of their thinking about motivation for parenthood which may be related to cul- tural phenomena, to presence or lack of pathology, and/or to level of consciousness tapped by the instrument in question. Hypotheses IV through VII dealt with differences on an Adjustment-Disturbance continuum. Only one category, the Altruistic, appeared to be sensitive to this continuum with the Well-Adjusted Group ranking this category lower (prefer- ring the category) than the Disturbed Group on both instru- ments. Looking at the results of the various subgroup com- parisons, it can be seen that it is the male disturbed-male adjusted comparison that leads to this difference since the disturbed and adjusted females did not differ on this vari- able. Therefore, although males as a group did not choose the Altruistic category answers as often as the females did, apparently some males selected these answers more frequently than others and these were the men with well-adjusted chil- dren. Therefore, the presence of the father and his general benevolent and nurturant attitudes (or lack of them) may have a definite effect on the child which lends support to research 78 efforts (e.g. Hereford, 1963) involving both parents rather than just mothers. The Disturbed Group did not select answers falling in the Narcissistic and Instrumental categories more frequently than the Adjusted Group, as was predicted. However, a defi- nite trend in the predicted direction was noted as the mean scores of the Disturbed Group were higher than those of the Adjusted Group on these categories for both tests. Between subgroups, the disturbed males did score higher than the ad- justed males in the Instrumental category. Again, the dif- ferences appear for the males but not for the females, indi- cating that the presence and attitudes of the father may indeed make a significant difference. Since only the Altruistic category indicated clear- cut differences along the adjustment-disturbance continuum, it is possible that perhaps the adjustment dimension may not be the most important dependent variable for exploration in this area i.e., certain motivations for parenthood may indeed have a distinct influence but this influence may not manifest itself in terms of the adjustment or maladjustment of the child. It is especially likely that there may be differences between peOple who plan to have children and those who do not, but again these differences may not show up on an adjustment dimension. Some other theoretical possibilities will be dis- cussed in the following section. 79 Theoretical Issues A statement of the theory behind this research pro- ject was presented in Section I. Briefly, it was suggested that what determines the attitude of a parent toward a child is a basic underlying motivation toward parenthood i.e., the reasons why a person wants to have children. These motiva- tions were conceived of as present prior to the birth of the child and as independent of any particular parent-child in- teraction. Four motive categories were suggested as containing the dominant motives for parenthood and compose the response categories for the instruments used in the present study. The following theoretical issues appear to be pertinent and may have affected the findings in the present study. It is possible that parental motivation alone may not be the most significant variable but rather the interac- tion of the original motivation with what happens after the birth of the child. An example of this might be a couple who have a child to hold the marriage together but after the child is born and becomes a personality in his own right, the par- ents change in their attitudes toward him and may adopt another motive pattern e.g., Altruistic. A theoretical addition might be the inclusion of a Control-Demand dimension which could, at the present time, be functioning as a suppressor variable. For instance, it is possible that a given set of parents desire a child whom they, 80 can control or one who is capable of meeting a given demand e.g., to hold the marriage together. As long as the child submits to their control and does not insist upon his free- dom from this obligation or, perhaps more realistically, as long as the child is able to meet this demand, there may be no adjustment difficulties. Perhaps only when the child does not comply with parental wishes do serious adjustment prob- lems develOp. Thus, theoretically, both parents of adjusted children and parents of disturbed children may have made In- strumental or Narcissistic demands (or any other type) but somehow the adjusted children were better able to meet these demands and thus were accepted rather than psychologically rejected by their parents. One further possibility is that it may be apprOpriate to have any of these motivations within certain limits, and only when a given motivation becomes all- pervading do difficulties occur e.g., all couples may have some instrumental motivations and the instrumental type of motivation may be bad for the child only when the other types of motivation are lacking or are subservient to this category. In addition, the present theory assumes that parents have similar motivations in regard to all their children and it is implied that they make similar demands on each one. However, this is unlikely as, in the case of the disturbed children, generally only one child in the family is referred for treat- ment. How the child is reacted to may derive from a very specific basis e.g., the child who gets parental demands may 81 be the oldest child, the first girl, etc. Perhaps the par- ental motivations are apprOpriate and healthy with respect, to all but this one child and therefore the parents respond with healthy attitudes on these.questionaires, thinking of their other children as they fill them out. The present theoretical position also conceives of motivation for parenthood as a personality variable which may be entirely apprOpriate. However, it is conceivable that this variable may be very710wcon the individual's hierarchy of personality needs and may be overshadowed by motives which are more prominent in the need hierarchy e.g., a person's mo- tivation for parenthood may be primarily altruistic which should lead to theoretically healthy relations with the child.; However, if this person has a need to be aggressive which overshadows his need to be altruistic, he may end up having a very undesirable interaction with the child even though his original motivation for having the child was a healthy one. Thus, once again it appears that it may be the interaction of the prior motivation with the present situation which leads to the attitude toward the child rather than the influence of the motivation alone. Additional Motivations for Parenthood It was felt that one possible theoretical and in- strumental deficiency might be a too severe limitation ththe. possible motivations for parenthood and for this reason, as 82 a part of the procedure, subjects were asked to indicate any reasons, in addition to those covered in the questionaires, that they felt people might have had for becoming parents. Some of these were as follows: 1. Having children can be a personal growth ex- perience--both exciting and educational. 2. Several peOple stated that they looked forward to having children to see what they looked like. This did not appear to be a humorous statement but rather a serious and somewhat perplexing kind of curiosity. 3. Having a child makes you feel good because it is something you personally can do to help soci- ety. 4. A child is the symbol of the parents' love for each other. Although these additional answers could conceivably be classified fairly easily in one or more of the present cate— gories, they do lend some new approaches to the present moti— vational categories. The four existing categories have also, for the most part, excluded the psychoanalytic reasons sug- gested for having children e.g., a narcissistic need to be loved (Deutsch, 1945), or maturation from a working through of developmental conflicts (Benedek, 1959) in any form. It is certainly likely that people do not walk around thinking about these kinds of psychoanalytic reasons, yet these may 83 really be the more important motivations and, if presented in a way that did not "threaten" or overwhelm people taking the questionaires, they might be checked or ranked more readily than some of the more "superficial" reasons. In the present categorization there is no room for a biological mo- tivation for parenthood. Thus, some of the theoretical considerations and possible deficiencies have been presented. Since no theory can be really assessed without instrumentation which is ap- prOpriate and adequate to test the theory, the two tests used in the present study will be briefly considered. Instrumentation Since the development of the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test was a significant part of the present research, it appears reasonable to look at this test, and also at the Child Study Inventory, which is also a newly developed test, to consider whether or not these are adequate measures of the variable under consideration i.e., motivation for parenthood. Since the response categories on the two tests were. identical, the more projective measure may not have functioned in as projective a manner as predicted, especially for those subjects who were administered the CSI first and had a chance to get a look at the type of responses presented. An attempt to make the PPSCT method more projective and less identical with the direct questionaire might lend more support to the hypotheses presented. 84 In both the CSI and the PPSCT the social desirabil- ity of the test items was a pertinent issue. For a person V wishing to appear "normal" or "adjusted" on these tests it may have been fairly easy to determine which answers were more socially apprOpriate, especially if the individual possessed some psychological SOphistication. There may especially have been pressure on the Well-Adjusted Group to look adjusted since several of these people knew they were part of an ad- justed or normal control group. The inclusion of more "dis— guised" items, possibly with psychoanalytic, body image, or vicarious survival implications, might add to the credibility of some of the items and make it less easy to determine a "good" answer. Items beginning with the statement "most peo- ple" may have been somewhat misleading since many subjects indicated that they viewed the motivations of "most people" as different from "mine" and would often ask the writer which answer she was interested in. In these cases it was suggested that they respond in accordance with their own feelings. Looking at the CSI data from all the groups, almost every subject ranked the Altruistic category the lowest (pre- ferred this category the most often), followed by Fatalistic, Instrumental, and Narcissistic respectively. For some reason the Narcissistic items appeared to become linked with the con- cept of selfishness in the minds of most of the subjects and for this reason the Narcissistic items should probably be some- what revised in form if the CSI is to be used in the future. 85 On the PPSCT, again Altruistic and Fatalistic categories were ranked the lowest followed by Narcissistic and Instrumental categories respectively. Thus, on the projective measure the Narcissistic items appeared somewhat more appealing than the Instrumental items for all the groups. In regard to the PPSCT alone, most of the subjects reported that they did not use the pictures to any great ex- tent and concentrated primarily on the content of the stories. Most subjects did comment on the attractiveness and inter- esting materials in the pictures however. There was a very poor response to the writer's request for additional story endings, most subjects remarking that they were either too tired or felt uncreative. It would probably be best to re- quest the subjects' free response to the pictures first if additional stories or responses are sought in the future. The PPSCT involved no pictures of parents and children in unpleasant interactions, a fact which is unfortunate as per- haps these items might have been more discriminating. The overall impression of the writer is that these instruments did not seem to be as sensitive as would be de- sirable in measuring the motivation for parenthood variables. Many of these items appear superficial and may not be tapping the critical motivations. A search through the relevant li- terature to compile items for a more sensitive test would appear to be a logical next step. Since most peOple did react 86 favorably to the PPSCT pictures, perhaps they could be uti- lized as a part of the test or in eliciting further material from which to construct test items. It is, of course, a possibility that the results of the present study were due to subject rather than instu- ment variables. These will be considered in the next sec- tion. Subject Sampling The clinic sample obtained in the present research was somewhat atypical in that 12 of the 20 clinic subject names obtained were girls. This is unusual in that typically there are more boys than girls referred to a child guidance clinic within the 7-ll age range. The first twenty cases re- ferred were selected for the study but the fact that 24 out of the 40 couples in the study had female children may have had some influence on the results. Since some of the clinic subjects were obtained through a referral rather than a treatment procedure there is always the possibility that some of these children were diagnosed as essentially healthy and dismissed. Conversely, the possibility exists that some of the families in the Well- Adjusted Group may have been very similar to the Disturbed Group even though they were not being seen at a clinic at this time. The method of selection of the Well-Adjusted Group, through the global impression of teachers, leaves room for pos- sible bias through teacher favoritism. Thus one can speculate 87 that there could have been a good deal of overlap between the groups in terms of personality dynamics and/or functioning although there is no way to determine whether or not this was actually the case. In looking over the protocols which constitute the radeata for the subjects tested, it can be seen that some of the subjects in each group did exactly what was predicted e.g., if a subject was in the Disturbed Group he scored high on Narcissistic and Instrumental, low on Altruistic and Fa- talistic when compared to the Well-Adjusted Group. Other subjects, however, had protocols which appeared completely contradictory in regard to the predictions that had been made. This raises the question of a possible suppressor variable which would effect the answers of some couples and not others. The religion variable is a possibility here since 25% of the present sample consisted of Catholic families who tended to rank the Fatalistic variables somewhat higher than most of the other couples in the sample and the well-adjusted Catholic families appeared to select the instrumental items slightly more often than the well-adjusted Protestant families. This makes a good deal of sense since the Catholic doctrine lends itself to a more Fatalistic vieWpoint and in very large fami- lies (such as three of the Catholic families in the present study) it is almost a necessity to "use" the children, es- pecially the older children, in a somewhat instrumental manner e.g., to help with the housework. 88 One possible procedure, that was not a part of the present study, might be to make a differentiation of the pathology of the Disturbed Group. It may be that certain kinds of parental motivations lead to varying kinds of symp- tomatology or to varying degrees.of severity of symptomato- logy. Generally the children referred to the clinics in the present study would be considered psychoneurotic although no further differentiation of symptomatology was made. One last tendency of all the subjects in the present study was to regard the whole issue in somewhat of a jesting or joking manner. There seemed to be a general tendency for sub- jects, and especially unSOphisticated subjects, to be extremely flippant, and likely inconsistent, in their answers. Perhaps care needs to be given to a way in which this issue can be presented so that the individual is given some indication as to its importance. Suggestions for Further Research Finally, the question arises as to where we proceed from here. Since four of the seven stated hypotheses were partially or completely confirmed, and two of the three re- maining hypotheses showed trends in the predicted direction, it would certainly appear that the motivation for parenthood area deserves further consideration and eXploration. An at- tempt to develop a more sensitive instrument through which to tap the crucial differences in this area appears indicated. 89 This attempt should probably begin with a search for new and more inclusive test items. Further attention should also be given to the male- female differences, both in regard to parental motivation and parental expectancies, since it is unclear whether these dif- ferences are cultural or related to the pathology of the in- dividuals concerned and/or the level of personality being tapped by the test. Since the projective measure appeared to isolate more of these differences than the direct measure, perhaps a new test to be develOped should include some, if not all, projective items. The present theory on motivation for parenthood assumes that all individuals think of parenthood in much the same way which may be an erroneous assumption. Perhaps a more idiographic method is needed wherein the individual can state where and how this motivation fits into his own need hierarchy. There appears to be no reason to assume that this would be the same for every subject. Perhaps the best vehicle for this kind of inquiry would be some sort of a structured interview which was flexible enough to be modified to encom- pass the individual's ideas on motivation for parenthood. Sending out general questions to be discussed in the inter- view, a week or so in advance, might give people an Opportunity to evaluate their feelings on this issue and perhaps suggest that this is an issue worthy of serious regard. Simply asking parents why they are glad they did have children might provide additional insights and might be very appropriate in this kind of analysis. CHAPTER VI SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The present investigation involved two main fa- cets: (l) the development of a semi-structured projective technique, the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test (PPSCT), to assess some of the more covert levels of moti- vation for parenthood, and (2) an attempt to investigate whether fathers and mothers of disturbed children, and par- ents of well-adjusted children, had differing motives for parenthood. The steps in the develOpment of the PPSCT were described with the final test consisting of nine pictures of parents and children accompanied by eleven story stems and story endings. The four response categories on the PPSCT corre5pond to those of the Child Study Inventory (CSI), a more direct measure, previously constructed to tap the motivation for parenthood area. Responses on both tests were scored in one of the following motivational categories: Altruistic, Fatalistic, Narcissistic, or Instrumental. Every subject obtained a Total Score for each category (the sum of ranks on all the items), further broken down into two sub- scores (an EXpectancy Score and a Motivation Score). Both the CSI and the PPSCT were used to study the differences 90 91 between males and females and between Adjusted and Disturbed groups. The "Disturbed" Group consisted of 20 couples who were parents of children referred to a child guidance clinic. The "Adjusted" Group consisted of 20 couples who were parents of children considered well-adjusted by their teachers. The groups were matched on the following demographic variables: sex and age of the child, race, religion, and approximate socio-economic level. Results of the study can be summarized as follows: I. No differences were found between the two groups of par- ents with respect to the differences between scores on the projective and direct instruments. II. Significant sex differences were obtained with both in- struments but the projective technique was sensitive to more of these differences. A. On the Direct Instrument (CSI) 1. Females scored higher than males on the Fatalistic Total and Fatalistic Expectancy items. 2. Males scored higher than the females on all the Instrumental variables: Total, Expectancy, and Motivation. B. On the Projective Instrument (PPSCT) 1. On the total category scores, females preferred the Altruistic and Fatalistic responses when III. 92 compared with males who preferred the Narcissistic and Instrumental answers. 2. Females scored higher than males on both Altruistic subscores (EXpectancy and Motivation), while males scored higher on both Narcissistic subscores and on the Instrumental Motivation items. 3. These differences between males and females were most salient in the Disturbed Group. The following results were obtained from comparisons of the Adjusted and Disturbed Groups and were the same on both tests: A. As predicted, the Adjusted Group scored higher than the Disturbed Group on the Altruistic variable. On the projective measure, however, this difference was brought about by the marked differences between dis- turbed and adjusted males. No differences were found between groups on the Fa- talistic variable, as was predicted. There were no differences between AdjuSted and Dis- turbed Groups on the Narcissistic and Instrumental categories. However, clear and consistent trends in the predicted direction were obtained i.e., the Disturbed Group scored higher on both categories in every instance. 93 It was concluded that the motivation for parent- hood area deserves further consideration and exploration. Suggestions were made indicating directions in which this research might proceed. REFERENCES Allport, G. W. "The Trend in Motivational Theory." American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 1953, 23, 107-119. Auld, F.; Eron, L. D. & Laffal, J. "Application of Guttman's Scaling Method to the TAT." Educational and Psy- chological Measurement, 1955, 15, 422-435. Balint, A. "Love for the Mother and Mother-Love." Inter- national Journal of Psychoanalysis, 1949, 30, Benedek, Therese. Psychosexual Functions in Women. New York: Ronald Press, 1952. Benedek, Therese. "Parenthood as a DevelOpmental Phase." Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1959, 7, 389—417. Brody, Sylvia. Patterns of Mothering. New York: Interna- tional University Press, 1956. Buchmueller, A. D. & Gildea, Margaret C. L. "A Group Therapy Project with Parents of Behavior Problem Children in Public Schools." American Journal of Psychiatry, 1949, 106, 46—52. Buchmueller, A. D. & Gildea, Margaret C. L. "Group Therapy for Parents of Behavior Problem Children in Public Schools: Report of Work in Schools in St. Louis County." International Journal of Social Psychi- atry, 1955, 1, 51-56. I Buchmueller, A. D.; Porter, Frances & Gildea, Margaret C. L. "A Group Therapy Project with Parents of Behavior Problem Children in Public Schools: A Comparative Study of Behavior Problems in Two School Districts." Nervous Child, 1954, 10,415-424. Cronbach, L. J. "Coefficient Alpha and the Internal Structure of Tests." Psychometrika, 1951, 16, 297-334. 94 95 Dachowski, Marjorie M. "Inconsistency Among Direct, Indirect and Projective Tests and General Neuroticism." Journal of Projective Techniques, 1966, 30, 525-529. Davids, A. & Pildner, H. "Comparison of Direct and Projec- tive Methods of Personality Assessment Under Dif- ferent Conditions of Motivation." Psychological Monographs, 1958, 72, 1-30. Deutsch, Helene. The Psyghology of Women. Vol. II., New York: Grune & Stratton, 1945. Epstein, S. & Smith, R. "Thematic Apperception as a Measure of the Hunger Drive." Journal of Projective Tech- Forer, B. R.; Rabin, A. I.; Goldstein, F. J. & Lesser, G. S. "Custom—Built Projective Methods: A Symposium." Journal of Projective Techniques, 1961, 25, 3-31. Freedman, R.; Baumert, G. & Bolte, M. "Expected Family Size and Family Size Values in West Germany." POpulation Freedman, Deborah 8.; Freedman, R. & Whelpton, P. K. "Size of Family and Preference for Children of Each Sex." American Journal of Sociology, 1960, 66, 141-146. Getzels, J. W. & Walsh, J. J. "The Method of Paired Direct and Projective Questionaires in the Study of Atti- tude Structure and Socialization." Psychological Monographs, 1958, 72, l-26. Gildea, Margaret C. L.; Glidewell, J. C. & Kantor, Mildred B. "Maternal Attitudes and General Adjustment in School Children." In J. C. Glidewell (Ed.) Parental Atti- tudes and Child Behavior. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1961, pp. 42-89. Hereford, C. F. Changing Parental Attitudes Throu h Group Discussion. Austin, Texas: University exas Press, 1963. Hoffman, Lois W. & Wyatt, F. "Social Change and Motivation for Having Larger Families: Some Theoretical Con- siderations." Merrill Palmer Quarterly, 1960, 6, 235-244. 96 Hurley, J. R. "The Iowa Picture Interpretation Test: A Multiple Choice Version of the TAT." Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1955, 19, 372-3761 Kagan, J. "The Measurement of Overt Aggression from Fantasy." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1956, 52, 390-393. Kagan, J. "The Stability of TAT Fantasy and Stimulus Ambi- guity." Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1959, 23 266-271. Kahn, Jane; Buchmueller, A.D. & Gildea, Margaret C.L. "Group Therapy for Parents of Behavior Problem Children in Public Schools: Failure of the Method in a Negro School." American Journal of Psychiatry, 1951, 108, 351-357. Kenny, D. T. & Bijou, S. W. "Ambiguity of Pictures and Ex- tent of Personality Factors in Fantasy Responses." Journal of Consulting Psychology, 1953, 17, 283-288. Levy, D. M. Maternal Overprotection. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943. Little, K. B. "Problems in the Validation of Projective Techniques." Journal of Projective Techniques, 1959, 23, 287-290. Loevinger, Jane & Sweet, Blanche. "Construction of a Test of Mothers' Attitudes." In J. C. Glidewell (Ed.) Parental Attitudes and Child Behavior. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1961,7pp. 110-123. Purcell, K. "Some Shortcomings in Projective Test Validation." Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1958, 57, 115-118. Rabin, A. I. "Motivation for Parenthood." Journal of Pro- jective Techniques, 1965, 29, 405-4111 Rabin, A. I. & Greene, R. J. "Exploring Motivation for Par- enthood." Michigan State University, 1966. (Un- published paper) Rainwater, L. Familnyesign: Marital Sexuality, Family Size, and Contraception. Chicago: Aldine PubliShing Co. 1965. 97 Schaefer, E. S. "A Circumplex Model for Maternal Behavior" Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1959, 59, 226-235. Schaefer, E. S. "Converging Conceptual Models'for Maternal Behavior and for Child Behavior." In J. C. Glidewell (Ed.) Parental Attitudes and Child Be- havior, Springfiéld, Illinois: Charles D. Thomas, 1961,pp. 124-146. Schaefer, E. S. & Bell, R. Q. "Development of a Parental Attitude Research Instrument." Child Development, 1958, 29, 339-361. Shoben, E. J. "The Assessment of Parental Attitudes in Re- lation to Child Adjustment." Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1949, 39, 101-148.?“ Stogdill, R. M. "The Measurement of Attitudes Toward Par- ental Control and the Social Adjustment of Chil- dren." Journal of Applied Psychology, 1936, 20, 359-367. Stone, H. K. & Dellis, N. P. "An Exploratory Investigation Into the Levels Hypothesis." Journal of Projective Techniques, 1960, 24, 333-340. Stycas, J. M. "Obstacles to Programs of Population Control - Facts and Fancies." Marriage and Family Living, 1963' 25, 5-130 Taylor, Katherine W. "The Opportunities of Parenthood." In Becker, H. & Hill, R. Family, Marria e, and Parent- hood. Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1355,pp. 454-492. Thurstone, L. L. The Measurement of Attitude. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1936. WeisskOpf, Edith A. "An Experimental Study of the Effect of Brightness and Ambiguity on Projection in the Thematic Apperception Test." Journal of Psychology, 1950, 29, 407-416. Whelpton, P. K.; Campbell, A. A. & Patterson, J. E. Fertilit and Family Planning in the United States. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1966. Appendix "11 til 0 0 w 3’ APPENDICES Letter to Disturbed Group Criteria of Adjustment Letter to Adjusted Group Additional Statistical Tables Child Study Inventory Figure 1 - Pictures Used as visual Stimuli in the Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Parental Picture-Story Completion Test 98 APPENDIX A LANSING MENTAL HEALTH CLINIC CHILD GUIDANCE DIVISION 600 Lesher Place Lansing, Michigan 48912 Phone 482-6287 September 12, 1966 Dear Mr. and Mrs. We would like to enlist your cooperation in a re- search study. This project will require the participation of both parents for about one hour and will involve filling out two questionnaires. This can be done either in the Clinic or in your home and results will be kept confidential. No identifying information will be requested. ' If you would be willing to take part, please indi- cate this by checking "yes" on the enclosed card and returning it to us as soon as possible. You will then be contacted by Miss Marilyn Major who has been an intern in our Clinic for the past two years, and she will set up an appointment time at your convenience. As Miss Major needs 40 couples who are parents of children ages 7-11 for her sample, if you could cooperate, it would be very much appreciated. Sincerely, enclosure mdv 99 APPENDIX B Criteria Submitted to Teachers to Help Them in Selecting Well-Adjusted Children (Hereford, 1963) You have been asked to select three children whom you consider to be well-adjusted to the classroom situation. Some factors to consider in evaluating classroom adjustment might be: 1. The child's relationship with you, the teacher. 2. How well he is accepted by the other children. 3. His reaction to rules and regulations. 4. His attitude and cooperativeness. 5. His general emotional maturity. This project is BEE directly interested in the child's academic achievement or his intelligence level. Neither is the research concerned with the kind of adjustment problem leading you to reject certain individuals as well-adjusted e.g., we do not care if the reason you do not put a boy on the list is because he is too withdrawn or too aggressive or for some other reason. All we need from you is three names of well-adjusted children. Thank you very much for your cooperation. 100 APPENDIX C November 10, 1966 Dear Mr. & Mrs. My name is Marilyn Major and I am a graduate student in clinical psychology at Michigan State University. I‘am con- ducting a doctoral research project involving parental atti- tudes and, since you are the parents of a child between the ages of 7 and 11, I would like to enlist your cooperation in my study. My project requires the participation of both parents for about one hour and will involve filling out two questionaires. An appointment time will be set up at your convenience and I will be happy to come to your home. No identifying data will be required and results will be kept strictly confidential. I will be contacting you by telephone sometime in the next week to explain the project further and to answer any ques- tions you might have. Participation in this research is, of course, voluntary, however I would like to say that I think the couples who have participated thus far have found it an enjoyable experience. Since I need to administer these questionaires to 40 couples in all, if you could participate, I would appreciate it very much. Sincerely, Marilyn Major 101 APPENDIX D TABLE ll.--Intercorrelations of Scores on the Parental Picture- Story Completion Test for the Adjusted, Disturbed, Male, and Female Groups Fatalistic Narcissistic Instrumental I. Adjusted Altruistic 0.06 -0.43** -0.63** Fatalistic -0.48** -0.38* Narcissistic -0.ll II. Disturbed Altruistic 0.13 -0.40** -0.70** Fatalistic -0.71** -0.48** Narcissistic 0.16 III. Males Altruistic 0.06 -0.35* -0.61** Fatalistic -0.59** -0.40** Narcissistic -0.11 IV. Females Altruistic -0.14 -0.25 -0.67** Fatalistic -0.52** -0.36* Narcissistic -0.02 a- II N = 40 in each group Sig. .05 level Sig. .01 level 102 103 Hm>ma Ho. .mwm n .. . Hm>ma mo. .mflm u « msoum comm cw oe u 2 «tom. EH «gem. 2H mo.l MH «hm. HZ mm. 22 «vm. m2 «smv. Eh Bummm sthv. Sm IHH ummB «mm. mm «mm. Bfl «hm. Zfl HH.I m¢ BH 2H WH 82 22 m2 8m 2m mm Bfi 24 m< HmU I H ummB mmamz .H .mmsouw mamemm Hmuoa new mam: Hmuoa may you Aumma cofiuoameoo muoumumusuowm Hmucmummv HH umma can Amuoucm>qa spasm oaflnov H name no mcofiumamuuooumucHuu.mH mamas Q XHQZflQQfl 104 Hm>ma Ho. .msm Hm>mH mo. .mwm «« u « macho comm cw ow u z 0H.I EH OH.W o~.I mo. mo.l $0.: «mm. EH MH 82 22 m2 Eh HmU .1 mm. *mN. Eh mm H Umwfi ma. Efi ma. EH 2H NH 82 :2 NZ em eommm 2m -HH puma mm 5 «o. m¢ Md mmamsmm .HH UmsnflHGOUII.NH mqmdfi 105 Hm>ma Ho. .mam Hm>ma mo. .mflm II « macaw comm cw ov u z sum. «ewe. mH.I «mm. om. «mm. «om. EH SH MH E2 22 m2 Em HmU EH SH NH E2 22 Hz Eh «mm. Sm «mm. mm Hm. Ed «om. 2d ¢Q.I md 2h mm Ed 2d Nd I H ummE EUmmm IHH ummE msouo omumawaa .H .mmsouw ombudsman can cmpmsnpd map How AummE sowumHmEoo huoumlmusuoflm Housmummv HH umma can Awuoucm>cH mcsum pawnuv H umma mo msowumamuuoonmusHll.mH mqmde 106 Hw>mH Ho. Hm>mH mo. tn a U) ll i msoum some CH ow u z som. EH Hm. EH vo. MH NN. 0H. om. «sum. «#mv. «mm. E2 :2 NZ Eh Sh mm HmU I H “mmE «mm. Ed «um. Ho.I .Hd EH 2H NH E2 22 m2 Eh Em E 2‘ EUmmm IHH ummE mwouw pmnusumfln .HH posswusooll.ma mqde APPENDIX E Child Study Inventory Indicate the answer you feel is the best by placing a one (1) in front of it. Rank the remaining answers (2,3,4,) to show your order of preference. Paren ( AAA ts ) VVV expect their children To fulfill the purpose of life To strengthen the family To be healthy and happy To follow in their footsteps Men want children because c ) ) ) ) They would like to prove their sexual adequacy It is a natural instinct , They need them to enhance their social status They like children ontrol Is a necessary measure Is inherently wrong Requires agreement of both husband and wife Is not natural Mother expects her daughter ( ( ( ( Men w ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) To give her companionship and affection To take the place in the world for which she is destined To be like herself To be happy and well a t children because n ) ) ) ) Children hold the marriage together They like to care and provide for children It is a function of the mature adult They want to perpetuate themselves Father eXpects his son ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) To be happy and well To take the place in the world for which he is destined To give him companionship and affection To be like himself Women want children because ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) They like children They need them to enhance their social status They would like to prove their sexual adequacy It is a natural instinct 107 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 108 Planned parenthood ( ) Is impossible Should be considered by all Is most desirable Leads to problems Generally, people want children because ( ) They are destined to reproduce ( ) They desire to help someone grow and develop ( ) They create someone in their own image ( ) They provide companionship Father expects his daughter ( ) To believe in him ( ) To be happy and well ( ) To take her place in the world ( ) To give him companionship and affection Women want children because ) Children hold the marriage together ) It is a function of the mature adult ) They like to care and provide for children ) They want to perpetuate themselves Large families Are happy ones Cause large problems Are obsolete Are closer than small families AAAA VVVV Women want children because ( ) They are destined to reproduce ( ) They desire to help someone grow and develOp ( ) They provide companionship ( ) They create someone in their own image Generally, people want children because ( ) They like to care and provide for children ( ) They want to perpetuate themselves ( ) Children hold the marriage together ( ) It is a function of the mature adult Mother expects her son ( ) To take his place in the world ( ) To give her companionship and affection ( ) To be happy and well ( ) To believe in her Men want children because ( ) They provide companionship ( ) They create someone in their own image ( ) They are destined to reproduce ( ) They desire to help someone grow and develop 109 17. Children who are not planned ( ( ( ( ) ) ) ) Are a welcome blessing Are hard to accept Are loved and cherished Are sometimes unwanted. 18. Generally, people want children because ( ) vvv It is a natural instinct They like children They need them to enhance their social status They would like to prove their sexual adequacy I PPT'TYDITC F Picure l.——Tictures Tsed as Visual Stimuli in the Parental Picture—"tory Completion Test. 110 APPENDIX G Parental Picture-Story Completion Test Instructions: Indicate the story ending you think is the best by placing a one (1) in front of it. Rank the remaining endings (2,3,4) to show your order of preference. Story Stem: John Thompson is completing his year of internship in an obstetrics specialty. He is married, but because of the expense of medical school, he and his wife Jane have put off having children. While re-examining his first delivery, John is wondering about the advantages of having a child of his own. Story Endings: ( ) At long last John is fulfilling his purpose in life - he is a doctor, studying in his chosen speciality, and helping other peOple. Having his own child would make his contribution complete. (Fatalistic) ( ) John is thinking that the most he can give to his patients is a few minutes of his time and the advan- tage of his medical knowledge. There is so much more that he could give a child of his own in terms of a close relationship in which each gets to know the other. (Altruistic) ( ) It occurs to John that having a child would give Jane some companionship so she would feel less lonely when he was forced to work long hours at the hOSpital. (Instrumental) ( ) As John examines each of the children, he finds him- self wondering what they will make of their lives. He imagines his own son, perhaps following in his footsteps, maybe even discovering a cure for cancer and becoming famous. (Narcissistic) Story_Stem: Janice Collier is holding her small son Alan while she is daydreaming about his future. Many things run through her mind but she is able to come up with three or four especially important things that she expects of him. - 111 112 Story Endings: ( ) Janice eXpects that Alan will continue to bring her and her husband closer together, especially as he grows older and they can do more things as a "family unit." (Instrumental) ( ) Janice expects that Alan will act in keeping with the values that she and her husband have shown him and that he will carry these values and traditions down to his own family. (Narcissistic) ( ) Janice expects Alan to accept his fate, whatever it may be, and not waste energy trying to change things that cannot be changed. (Fatalistic) * ( ) Janice expects Alan to grow and develop his own in- dividuality so that eventually he will be able to select for himself the things which will make him most happy. (Altruistic) *Revised story ending after original was misplaced by two judges. Stornytem: Fred and Alice Smith have no children as yet. They are looking at this poster which illustrates the dangers of a pOpulation eXplosition and are asking themselves why they should have children. Story Endingy: ( ) Fred and Alice see themselves as being somewhat above average in health and intelligence. They expect that their children will be like them in these respects and may even have the ability to become leaders. (Narcissistic) * ( ) Fred and Alice view having a child as simply following a natural instinct—~not to do so would be going against the natural order of things. (Fatalistic) ( ) Having children would give Fred and Alice an entrance into the community since most of the couples they know already have children and many community activ- ities are planned around them. (Instrumental) ( ) Fred and Alice like children, would enjoy caring and providing for them, and feel this is reason enough. (Altruistic) *Revised story ending after original was misplaced by two judges. 113 Story Stem: *Expectancy Item Mr. Drake often plays with his little boy David after work. One night he begins to think about David's future and Mr. Drake realizes that he expects certain things of his son. Three or four of these expectations stand out in his mind. Story Endings: ( ) Mr. Drake hopes that David will grow up to feel good about himself and about whatever he decides to do. (Altruistic) ( ) Mr. Drake expects that David will go forth to meet his destiny, whatever it may be, and will calmly accept what life has to offer him. (FataliStic) ( ) The Drakes would like to feel that in the eyes of the world they have raised a "good person" and therefore, David is expected to always be consid— erate of other people and to contribute to their happiness whenever possible. (Instrumental) ( ) Mr. Drake expects that David will, in many ways, he like himself. If this is true, David will probably decide to do a lot of the things that Mr. Drake wanted to do but couldn't. (Narcissistic) Story Stem: Now that Jane Adams has reached her 8th month of pregnancy, she and her husband Ralph are thinking of what they went through these last eight months and are wondering why they are having a baby in the first place. It seems that each of them has his or her own reasons. Story Endings - Jane: ( ) Jane had a very good time dating in high school and looks forward to re-living some of these pleasant experiences through her own child. (Narcissistic) ( ) Jane has always wanted to be a mother, mainly be- cause she feels she has a lot of love to give to children and would enjoy caring for them. (Altruistic) ( ) Jane naturally desires children and motherhood is something every woman expects to follow from marri- age. (Fatalistic) 114 ( ) With Ralph gone most of the day and her activity limited because of the pregnancy, Jane has been feeling very much alone. ‘She looks forward to the baby who will keep her from being so lonely again. (Instrumental) Story Endings - Ralph: ( ) Ralph believes that having a child is a natural thing for the mature person and accepting this re— sponsibility makes him feel that he is fulfilling his role in life. (Fatalistic) ( ) Having a child serves to assure Ralph of his mas- culinity and adds to his general feeling of ade- quacy. (Instrumental) ( ) Ralph dreams of having a son who could take part in athletics as he did and might even be a better player than his father was. If the baby is a girl, Ralph is sure she will be enough like her parents to like sports too. Either way he can't lose. (Narcissistic) ( ) Ralph feels proud that he is financially able to pro- vide for his wife and expected child, especially since it makes him feel good to take care of others. (Altruistic) Story Stem: The Browns, unable to have any children of their own, have just adOpted a young girl. While Mr. and Mrs. Brown both wanted this child, their reasons for wanting her were slightly different and each parent has reacted somewhat differently to her. Story Endings - Mrs. Brown: ( ) Mrs. Brown felt very inadequate when she learned she was unable to have children and found herself begin- ning to wonder about her "worth" as a woman. Adopting this child has helped her to feel more capable and the child provides some "proof" of her femininity. (Instrumental) ( ) Mrs. Brown planned on having several children as a natural outgrowth of her marriage. When this was not possible she decided to adOpt a child. Having grown attached to her daughter, she now feels that perhaps Fate did not deal such a cruel blow after all. (Fatalistic) 115 ( ) Mrs. Brown is thrilled to at last have a daughter with whom she can share confidences and perhaps re- live in a way, some of the pleasant experiences of her own youth. This girl seems very much like what Mrs. Brown would have expected her own daughter to be. (Narcissistic) ( ) Mrs. Brown's heart went out to the little girl and she immediately wanted to begin caring and providing for her. Any reservations she had had about adopting a child disappeared instantly. (Altruistic) Story Endings - Mr. Brown: ( ) Mr. Brown is a little bit frightened of this child, but is at the same time fascinated by all the pos- sibilities she possesses. He feels very privileged to play a part in her develOpment. (Altruistic) ( ) Mr. Brown did not like learning that he and his wife were unable to have children but he found it somewhat easier to accept this fact than she did. Being of the Opinion that everything that happens has a purpose, Mr. Brown felt that finding this child to adOpt fitted naturally into the scheme of things. (Fatalistic) ( ) Mr. Brown is hoping that this girl will keep his wife from feeling too badly about the fact that they cannot have children and will give the marri- age a common bond and stability that childless marriages do not have. (Instrumental) ( ) Mr. Brown agreed to adopt this child primarily be- cause his wife wanted her so much, but he agrees that it is nice to have a namesake and he hopes she will reflect pride on her family. (Narcissistic) Stornytem: Judith is about to attend dinner with a man she has been dating steadily for the last six months. She has a strong hunch that he has picked this night to prOpose and is thinking about her answer. She knows he does not want children.‘ This gets Judith to thinking why she wants children so much and how important it is to her. StoryfiEndings: ( ) Judith has always felt that it was a natural desire to want children, a basic part of being a woman. Not being able to have children would make her feel kind of empty and useless. (Fatalistic) 116 ( ) Judith likes children and has always imagined that it would be fun to watch your own children grow up. She hates to give up something that would give her a great deal of pleasure. (Altruistic) ( ) Judith would like the security of knowing that there Will be someone around to take care of her in her old age if something were to happen to her husband. Children provide the security of knowing that you probably won't be left alone. (Instrumental) ( ) Judith has always hoped that her children might be outgrowths of herself and her husband, carrying on their hopes and wishes as well as their physical traits. (Narcissistic) Story Stem: Mr. Gilmore is taking care of his five toddlers while his wife is at the hospital having another baby. He knows that both he and his wife wanted to have lots of children, but for the first time he sits down and begins to think about some of the reasons why. Story Endings: ( ) Both Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore enjoy taking care of chil- dren and watching them grow and develOp. They have learned that no two children are alike and are fas- cinated with how different each of their own children is from the others. (Altruistic) ( ) Mr. Gilmore takes pride in viewing these children as images of himself, as his own flesh and blood. They are his hope for the future; perhaps they can contri- bute to the world on a larger scale than he has. (Narcissistic) ( ) Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore feel that they will gratefully accept any number of children that God sees fit to bless them with. Children are part of the purpose of life and can bring their parents much pleasure. (Fatalistic) ( ) Having a large family leads to a great deal of at- tention, and usually admiration, from the community. By being "well known," and kind of unusual the Gilmores meet many people and do many things that would otherwise be impossible. (Instrumental) 117 9. Story Stem: Jason has been regularly seeing a girl named Sandra whom he likes very much. He is, in fact, seriously con- sidering asking Sandra to marry him when he receives a promotion next month. Recently Jason learned that Sandra is unable to have children. He is now thinking about the reasons he would like children of his own. Story Endingy: ( ) Jason would like children because they would be a part of him and would carry on his family name. (Narcissistic) ( ) Jason has always felt that he was meant to be an executive and is really fulfilling his destiny by choosing this occupation. Having children would complete the pattern. (Fatalistic) ( ) Jason has always been intrigued with the fresh, new View of the world that is often seen through the eyes of a child. He has been looking forward to the time when he could share and communicate ex- periences with his own son. (Altruistic) ( ) Jason has always felt that children contribute to the stability of a marriage by keeping both part- ners aware of their need to remain together and by keeping the husband and wife from becoming too de- pendent on each other. (Instrumental) (The story endings for each picture were numbered from 1-4 and arranged in these orders by reference to a table of random numbers.) 118 Instructions: Obviously these stories could have had a num- ber of different endings. Read through the nine story stems once more and write in the additional answers which occur to you. 4. (etc.) "I71111111711111111