The Individual, the Family, and Social Good: Personal Fulfillment in Time of Change

Abstract

Melton, Gary B., The Individual, the Family, and Social Good: Personal Fulfillment in Time of Change. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press. 227 pp. IBSN #0803231857, cloth price $35; paper price: $20. This volume is the forty-second to be published from the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation. Anyone well versed in family policy and research may not find a substantial amount of new material in any given chapter, but the collection overall is broad enough (covering psychology, economics, anthropology, law and politics) that almost any reader will find something interesting and unfamiliar in it. As Melton states in this introductory chapter, this symposium is not only the most diverse of the entire Nebraska series, but much of it is also uncharacteristically cautionary in tone. (Actually, he claims the chapters are emotionally charged, which must be relative to the even more academic style of previous volumes.) The chapter by James Garbarino is typical of his work, both stylistically and substantively, and is one of the best parts of the book. Engagingly written, it argues that the reason that children and families face so many problems in the 1990s is that their social environment-in the form of television, violence, economic and other stressors-has become increasingly toxic. I have two minor complaints with this chapter. One section seems to blame our torn social fabric on the decline of and highrisk neighborhoods. My other complaint is that Garbarino's laudable solutions are somewhat divorced from current political and economic realities. Tom Tyler and Peter Degoey attempt to tie family and community approaches to the promotion of social good by viewing the dynamics of social good through a social-psychological lens. This sounds very promising and perhaps most central of all the chapters to the focus of this volume and series. It does include some interesting research on attitudes toward procedural justice in terms of the perceived legitimacy of various kinds of authority and of family and community social identification. But it may be a reflection of how far social psychology has strayed from its applied roots that this chapter ignores so much valuable family and community psychological theory, research, and intervention. Given that Mati Heidments is a professor of social and environmental psychology in Estonia, it is surprising that, except for a brief but enlightening section on communist housing policy, his chapter ignores environmental influences on individual behavior and family well-being. Although it provides an interesting counterpoint to the others, reflecting the recent macropolitical and social upheavals in Eastern Europe, it may be a little too philosophical to have much direct relevance for addressing family problems in either society, and its conclusions are overgeneralized in their point-by-point comparison of communism (bad) and his society's post-capitalist (good) future. The other three chapters seem more thorough and practical, perhaps because they are more narrowly focused on disordered social relations within the family. Allen Parkman examines the deterioration of the family from a law and economics perspective. Jill Korbin explores cross-culturally the positive and negative influences of social networks and family violence and Eleanor Maccoby discusses the rights, needs, and obligations of mothers, fathers, and children in divorce and custody arrangements. …