Chapter Questions
How does the number and importance of friendships vary across adulthood?
What gender differences are there in the number and type of friends?
What are the major types of sibling relationships?
What are the components of love? How do styles of love differ with age?
What characteristics make the best matches between adults? How do these characteristics differ across cultures?
What is the relation between type of abusive behavior and its cause?
What are the current explanations of elder abuse in terms of characteristics of the victim and of the abuser?
How do adults who never marry deal with the need to have relationships?
What are the reasons that people cohabit? How are cohabiting people and married people alike and different?
What are the relationship characteristics of gay male and lesbian couples?
What are the most important factors in creating stable marriages?
What are the developmental trends in marital satisfaction? How do these trends relate to having children?
What factors are responsible for long-term marriages?
What are the major reasons people get divorced? How are these related to societal expectations about marriage and attitudes about divorce?
What characteristics about remarriage make it similar and different from first marriage? How does satisfaction in remarriage vary as a function of age?
What are the characteristics of widowed people? How do men and women differ in their experience of widowhood?
Why do couples decide to have children? What effects do children have on relationships?
What is known about parenting and the age of the parent when the first child is born?
What are the important issues in being an adoptive parent, foster parent, or stepparent? What special challenges are there for gay and lesbian parents?
What impact does children leaving home have on parents? Why do adult children return?
How do middle-aged parents relate to their children?
What roles do middle-aged mothers assume in the family?
What are the important issues facing middleaged adults who care for their elderly parents?
How does independence relate to children, their middle-aged parents, and elderly parents?
What styles and meanings of grandparenting do people demonstrate?
How do grandparents and grandchildren relate?How do these relationships change with the age of the grandchild?
What ethnic differences have been noted in grandparenting?
What are the important issues and meanings of being a great-grandparent?