University of Virginia Library

Child Psychologists: Fastest Growing Specialty

By ROBIN RHODES

"Students have become
very oriented towards the idea
that if you're going to change
society, the place you start is
in working with young people
when they are forming their
ideas, explained psychology
Prof. E. Mavis Hetherington.

Working primarily in the
field of Child Psychology, Mrs.
Hetherington came to the
University in September of
1971 to help set up a new
program in this area. Since her
arrival, the Psychology
department has added several
child psychologists, including
newcomers Robert S. Marvin
and Curtis W. McIntyre, who
entered the faculty last fall. In
addition, a Child Clinician is
elated to come next year.

"We are building,"
commented Mrs. Hetherington.
"There will be a fairly
substantial group by the time
we are finished."

In discussing her specific
field of study, Mrs.
Hetherington said, "Child
psychology is probably the
fastest growing specialty within
psychology today.

"You're getting different
kinds of people in child
psychology now," she
continued. "They're more
action oriented, more
humanistic oriented, and
they're a lot of fun to work
with. It's all very exciting."

Mrs. Hetherington, who
took her Ph.d. in psychology at

the University of California at
Berkeley, definitely a woman
who enjoys her work. When
asked about her current
experimental endeavors, her
eyes lit up and she
enthusiastically replied, "I do a
wide range of things. My basic
areas of interest are the family,
the personality and social
development of children, as
well as psychopathology and
deviant behavior in children."

Within this framework, her
experiments center around
family interaction and its
effects on the development of
masculinity and femininity, the
family structure and patterns
of interaction, and an extensive
investigation of the one-parent
family and its effects on the
children.

One specific question under
investigation currently is the
effect that working has on the
mother and her child. "If she
works and enjoys what she is
doing," Mrs. Hetherington
explained, "it can play a very
constructive role; if she doesn't
enjoy what she is doing or if
she is working because she has
to, then it has a very
destructive role in the child's
development."

Being a working mother
herself, Mrs. Hetherington has
reservations. "My children
suffer a certain kind of neglect
due to the fact that I'm away
from home a great deal. But we
have a very child-focused
family life. When we get home,
the time from 6 to 9 at night
we spend interacting with the
children."

Her children are proud of
the fact that she works. With a
slight smile on her face she
related, "Sometimes the boys
get ticked off that I'm away so
much, but they enjoy talking
about what I'm doing and
where I'm going."

"In terms of being a
psychologist, I'm not sure of
the effect on my children. I
suppose I'm more aware of
what's going on, but I don't
think I do any better."

In the February issue of
Psychology Today, Mrs.
Hetherington published the
results of a five year study on
the effects of father-absence in
adolescent girls.

This study was necessitated
due to the fact that "most of
the studies on the effect of
father-absence were focused on
boys. What few studies there
have been were on very young
girls and the effects were not
particularly harmful."

The experiment entailed a
close examination of
"daughters of divorcees,
daughters of widows, and girls
from intact homes," through
observation in a recreation
center and various testing
procedures.

"To summarize what we
found, you get very different
patterns coming out of
daughters of divorcees and
widows. Both groups reported

they were tense and
apprehensive around males, but
showed very disparate patterns
in their coping with this."

She goes on to explain that
the girls from divorced families
were very aggressive in their
behavior with males, having
attention-seeking approaches,
while daughters of widows
showed patterns of avoidance
of males.

"When you look at their
interactions with women," she
added, "there are no
differences among the three
groups."

In an attempt to discover
the factors influencing this
behavior, Mrs. Hetherington
examined the attitudes of the
girls' mothers. She found that
"the divorcees report
themselves as being less
fulfilled in life, less happy,
having more doubts about their
adequacies."

The widows received
support following the
separation as opposed to the
blame which many divorcees
had to deal with.

"The daughters of divorcees
had very negative feelings about
their fathers while the widows
and their daughters had an
aggrandized image of the
father."

These disparate attitudes
show themselves in the girls'
dealings with males. Mrs.
Hetherington pointed out that
"We're doing a follow-up of
this study to see who the girls
marry. They're marrying their
image of the father. Daughters
of divorcees are marrying
unstable-men; they marry early
and fight more.

"Daughters of widows are
marrying men who are just
repulsively wholesome. They
are sort of a glorified image of
the father who was too good to
be true."

Pausing reflectively she
added, "That was kind of an
interesting study."

Among her many duties in
the Psychology department,
Mrs. Hetherington supervises
both graduate and
undergraduate research
programs. "I enjoy working
with students very much," she
stated. "I think that teaching is
one of the most gratifying
things I do."

No matter how "gratifying"
teaching is, research holds a
certain kind of mystery. "It's
like a detective story," she
bubbled. "You ask a question
and design a study to find an
answer. It's very exciting."