Journal of Marriage and Family 64 (August 2002): 557 557

ALEXIS WALKER, EDITOR

Oregon State University

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EDITORIAL

From the Editor

As a gerontologist, I am delighted to see work inJournal of Marriage and Family on families inmiddle and later life. In 1998 in this journal, KurtLuescher and Karl Pillemer proposed a new con-ceptualization of the ties between parents andadult children that they named intergenerationalambivalence. As often happens with thoughtfultheoretical papers, ideas about ambivalence in therelationships between parents and their adult chil-dren have been percolating ever since. The con-struct takes several steps forward in these pages.

The Special Collection on Ambivalence in In-tergenerational Relationships begins with an es-say by Ingrid Connidis and Julie McMullin ex-tending Luescher and Pillemer’s work.Throughout the review process, reviewers debatedtheir ideas rather than the way in which the workwas carried out. Such debates belong in our jour-nals, so this issue includes comments from VernBengtson et al., Sara Curran, and Kurt Luescher.As is only fair given their gracious response tomy suggestion that we invite responses to theirwork from their potentially harshest critics, Con-nidis and McMullin have the last word.

While the lead essay and the responses to itwere crossing national and continental borders, Ireceived a manuscript from Karl Pillemer and Jill

Suitor describing an empirical study of ambiva-lence. As reviewers appropriately were extremelyfavorable about this work, I was pleased to add tothis collection what is perhaps the first empiricalinvestigation of intergenerational ambivalence.

Four other articles under the broad category offamily gerontology are included as well. Thisseems an opportune time to thank Jo Anne Leon-ard Petersen for the support of family gerontologyat her alma mater, Oregon State University. A goalof the Petersen gift is to enhance understandingof the intersection between families and devel-opment in later life. In part, Petersen funds sup-port my work with JMF, and surely this issue fur-thers that goal.

For those whose passions are centered on otherstages of the life span, children and adolescentsalso receive attention in the November issue. Ad-ditional articles focus on cohabitation, union for-mation, race differences in marriage rates, religionand parental involvement, and the connection be-tween economic distress and intimate violence. Fi-nally, among the fine work edited by Sally Gal-lagher, there are two reviews of books in familygerontology. I have every expectation that thework herein will stimulate yet more research onfamilies in middle and later life.