Katherine R Allen
Biographic Data
| ID | 93795 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Katherine R Allen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Katherine R |
| FAMILY NAME | Allen |
| SIGNATURE | ALLEN K R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Virginia Tech |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9920-0333 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 93 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 638 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 93 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1986 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
A latent profile analysis of dyadic level information disclosure behaviours: An investigation of parent-teen dyads
Information disclosure decisions often have impacts beyond just the person who made the decision to share the information. This is especially true for family members, where one family member’s decision to share information can result in a privacy breach that affects the entire family. However, few studies have examined information disclosure decisions when more than one person is affected. This research uses a latent profile analysis of parent-te…
Post‐Divorce LGBTQ ‐Parent Families: Navigating Loyalty Conflicts and Stepfamily Closeting
Objective The purpose of this study was to investigate underexplored dynamics of post‐divorce LGBTQ‐parent families. Background In LGBTQ‐parent families in which children were conceived in the context of a prior different‐gender partnership, children experience the coinciding events of parental separation and a parent's coming out as LGBTQ. In recent decades, research on LGBTQ‐parent families formed following different‐gender divorce has stalled,…
Beyond “the talk”: Parent–adolescent sexual socialization in a culture that silences discourse about adolescent sexuality
Parent and adolescent perspectives on family problems during the Covid ‐19 pandemic: Implications for family resilience
Cultivating theoretical advances in family science: JFTR 's innovation continues
As Editor of the Journal of Family Theory & Review, I have the privilege of seeing the remarkable diversity that comes our way from intersectional, interdisciplinary, and international perspectives.JFTR readers and authors share a passion for theorizing about families from a wide range of traditional, critical, and emerging perspectives.JFTR deeply respects the family science canon, and we also encourage the bold, often risky, displays of innovat…
Challenges, adaptation, and learning in an immersive mindfulness-based practices course: College student perspectives
With the significant rise in mental health challenges among college students, opportunities exist for educators to adapt curricula that incorporate a focus on student wellness. This study brings qualitative and descriptive insights to the growing body of quantitative research on the effectiveness of mindfulness-based practices (MBPs) for improving student wellbeing. The data convey the perspectives of college students (n = 37) on the benefits and…
Cherished families, unspoken truths: Navigating hidden and challenging family experiences while growing up with LGBTQ parents
Objective This study aims to advance understanding of hidden, complex, and resilient family experiences as perceived by adult children from LGBTQ‐parent families. Background Difficult and taboo family topics (e.g., mental illness, substance abuse, violence, infidelity, poverty) are rarely examined, particularly among LGBTQ‐parent families, in part reflecting researcher and family concerns about stigmatization or misrepresentation. Unique, complex…
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Grandparent couples’ experiences of family leisure
Qualitative family research: Innovative, flexible, theoretical, reflexive
Qualitative research is increasingly part of the methodological repertoire of scholars who study families. In this article, we examine contemporary trends, tensions, and possibilities for the interdisciplinary enterprise of qualitative research on and about families. We situate our collaborative approach as critical family scholars who pursue social justice work. We then examine four trends that have recently emerged or evolved in qualitative fam…
Not alone: Family experiences across the life course of single, baby boom sexual‐minority women
Celebrating JFTR 's Stellar Niche
JFTR's venues and voices for family theorizing and critical review
Journal of Family Theory & Review (JFTR) offers an array of creative and critical voices that champion theory advancement, methodological innovation, and scholarly contributions to social justice. In the June 2023 issue, we build on established JFTR venues for publishing theory and literature reviews, including Original Voices, Methodological Innovations, and Theoretical Advances. We also introduce two inaugural venues, Emerging Voices and Reflex…
Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars
Feminism provides a worldview with innovative possibilities for scholarship and activism on behalf of families and intimate relationships. As a flexible framework capable of engaging with contentious theoretical ideas and the urgency of social change, feminism offers a simultaneous way to express an epistemology (knowledge), a methodology (the production of knowledge), an ontology (one's subjective way of being in the world), and a praxis (the tr…
Family science and students: Pedagogical connections that transform our lives
Experiences of black women adult foster care providers for aging adults: Negotiating power and care
This study explored experiences of 23 Black women owners and operators of Adult Foster Care (AFC) homes for midlife and older adults. Semi-structured interview data focusing on multiple dimensions of the care context were analyzed using grounded theory methods. Women leveraged their resources as they invested their expertise, time, and relationships to support their residents and embraced the value of residents for their contribution to the succe…
Using critical family theorizing and intersectional feminist praxis to navigate reflexive conversations on race and power in academic settings
Conversations related to racism, antiblackness, and oppression have expanded over the past years in response to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others. As family scholars, we recognize the impact of the legacy of violence against Black and Brown people and are at a point in history where the United States is struggling to address ramifications of unacknowledged race‐based traumas. Critical intersectional feminist praxis sugge…
Family theorizing for social justice: A critical praxis
Although families are subject to multiple social stratifications and systemic injustices, family science was built upon foundational ideas that theorized a unitary, normative structure of family life. Increasing social and political awareness has brought a new urgency to theorize about and study how families actually live, with a need for critical theories to explain and understand the multiplicity and reality of family experiences. We examine ne…
Divorced and separated parents during the Covid‐19 pandemic
The COVID‐19 pandemic has caused significant stress for individuals, couples, and families. Divorced and separated couples with children face unique stresses amid the pandemic. This mixed‐methods study explored these challenges among 296 divorced and separated parents: namely 204 women formerly partnered with men, 34 men formerly partnered with women, and 58 women formerly partnered with women, who were surveyed during Summer/Fall of 2020. Partic…
Lesbian adoptive mothers’ emotional responses and adaptation in the wake of relational dissolution
Relational dissolution is often characterized by heightened feelings, especially around co-parenting and child custody. Lesbian mothers may experience their emotions in uniquely nuanced ways due to intersections among female gender, minority sexual orientation, and family structural change. Framed by a critical feminist perspective, we conducted a qualitative analysis of telephone interview and online survey responses by 17 lesbian adoptive mothe…
Christine Elizabeth Kaestle: January 28, 1972 to July 16, 2020
Christine E. Kaestle was a Professor of Human Development and Family Science at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia, USA. A beloved scholar
Adolescent Sexual Development: A Family Perspective
Adolescent sexual development is informed by individual, relational, generational, institutional, and cultural perspectives. Families matter: they are the social institution at the intersection of adolescent development and broader social systems, charged with the responsibility for rearing children and adolescents to adulthood. This narrative review maps insights from family theory and research onto adolescent sexual development research. Our pu…
Preparing the Educators Who Teach About Families: Engaging Family Science in the University Setting
In this article, we address foundational and innovative aspects of preparing educators who teach about families, including theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations. We approach our task by defining and utilizing a human development and family science (HDFS) worldview, which, like the related foci on translational family science and family life education, integrates both the need for comprehensive academic grounding and profession…
Gender, Feminist, and Intersectional Perspectives on Families: A Decade in Review
This review of the gender, feminist, and intersectional literature on families from 2010 to 2019 examines the following three streams of research, theorizing, and praxis: (a) the framing of gender as systemic social stratification and inequalities, (b) the application of feminist perspectives and praxis to highlight and change power disparities in private and public spheres; and (c) the application of intersectionality perspectives to examine and…
Nature as nurture: Rural older women’s perspectives on the natural environment
Rural older women are surrounded by nature, a dynamic context for human development. Informed by place attachment and attention restoration theory, and guided by a life course perspective, this qualitative study focused on the perceived influence of nature in the lives of 34 rural older women. Using grounded theory techniques to analyze in-depth interviews, two primary findings emerged: (a) nature was integral to the women's identity; and (b) int…
Feminist theory, method, and praxis: Toward a critical consciousness for family and close relationship scholars
Feminism provides a worldview with innovative possibilities for scholarship and activism on behalf of families and intimate relationships. As a flexible framework capable of engaging with contentious theoretical ideas and the urgency of social change, feminism offers a simultaneous way to express an epistemology (knowledge), a methodology (the production of knowledge), an ontology (one's subjective way of being in the world), and a praxis (the tr…
A Conscious and Inclusive Family Studies
I argue that family scholars must take bolder steps to engage the tensions between our heritage of positivist science and its postmodern challenges. I also argue that constructing theories, utilizing research methods, and examining substantive issues should be relevant to the diversity of the families we study and to ourselves as members of families. I offer examples of developing an informed reflexive consciousness to broaden the rationalist fou…
The Families of Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Frontier in Family Research
To examine the extent to which the family relations of lesbians and gay men are integrated into the family literature, we reviewed over 8,000 articles published between 1980 and 1993 in nine journals that publish family research. Our review shows that research on lesbian and gay families is quite limited, and that, where these families have been studied, they have been problematized and their diversity has been overlooked. We describe and define …
The Ethic of Care: Leisure Possibilities and Constraints for Women
The purpose of this paper is to provide a review and an interpretive framework for examining the “ethic of care” (i.e., the activity of relationships) as it offers possibilities and constraints for the leisure of women. The explanatory implications of the ethic of care are useful in further understanding antecedent and intervening constraints to leisure as well as understanding the empowering possibilities of leisure for women. The paper uses a f…
Feminists and the Ideology and Practice of Marital Equality
In her 1972 book, The Future of Marriage, and again in second edition (1982), Bernard concluded that future viability of marriage will depend upon upgrading marriage for women. After reviewing literature on marriage, she declared that two marriages exist, his and hers, and that marriage is more attractive and healthier for former than for latter. Bernard (1982) was optimistic that couples were struggling to improve marriage to make it beneficial …
Communicating Qualitative Research: Some Practical Guideposts for Scholars
The purpose of this article is to provide guidance to scholars regarding key aspects of writing qualitative manuscripts. The aim is to offer practical suggestions as opposed to examining epistemological or theoretical issues and debates related to qualitative family research. The authors begin by providing guideposts in writing the major sections of a qualitative article (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion). In doing so, they address i…
Diversity within Lesbian and Gay Families: Challenges and Implications for Family Theory and Research
This paper describes and discusses diversity among lesbian and gay families along central dimensions of social stratification: gender, sexual orientation, generation, age, race and ethnicity. We examine implications of this diversity for traditional family theories, identify and discuss sexist and heterosexist assumptions of dominant family theories and suggest the usefulness of an integrative approach that combines insights from positivist and p…
Ethical and Epistemological Tensions in Applying A Postmodern Perspective to Feminist Research
We examine tensions that arise in applying postmodernism to feminist research. First, we consider epistemological tensions generated in the process of deconstructing existing knowledge and constructing new knowledge that benefits women. Second, we examine six ethical issues that reflect the tensions in feminist practice as we attempt to justify the dialectic between knowledge and power. In keeping with a postmodernist perspective, we pose these s…
Feminist Theory and Research on Family Relationships: Pluralism and Complexity
Perspectives on Extended Family and Fictive Kin in the Later Years: Strategies and Meanings of Kin Reinterpretation
To identify perspectives on the roles of extended family and fictive kin, the authors conducted a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with 45 older adults diverse in gender, race, and class. Five strategies of kin reinterpretation were found. Kin promotion defined a distant blood relative as a closer blood relative. Kin exchange reclassified a parent-child tie as a sibling tie or vice versa. Nonkin conversion created fictive kin by turnin…
Feminist Theory in Family Studies: History, Reflection, and Critique
In this invited commentary, I address the history and impact of feminist theory in family studies, casting a critical perspective on theorizing in both feminist studies and family studies. I assess indicators of the impact of feminist theory on the study of families, consider the enduring tensions in feminist family theory, and trace 4 generations of feminist theorizing and activism as a prelude to the ways that feminist theory critiques the patr…
Grandchildren's Perceptions of Caring for Grandparents
Despite the fact that caregiving related issues are well researched in the field of family gerontology, the developmental experiences of grandchildren caregivers and the meanings of their caregiving experiences have not been explored. Influenced by the lifespan perspective and a constructionism lens, interviews were conducted with 17 grandchildren (ages 21 to 29 years old) who were currently providing care for a grandparent. Grandchildren cargive…
Family theorizing for social justice: A critical praxis
Although families are subject to multiple social stratifications and systemic injustices, family science was built upon foundational ideas that theorized a unitary, normative structure of family life. Increasing social and political awareness has brought a new urgency to theorize about and study how families actually live, with a need for critical theories to explain and understand the multiplicity and reality of family experiences. We examine ne…
The Role of Masturbation in Healthy Sexual Development: Perceptions of Young Adults
It's All About Power: Integrating Feminist Family Studies and Family Communication
Feminist family studies bring a framework of power and intersectional analysis to unpack the issue of gender in families. Moving beyond the concept of gender as either benign or simply one of difference between men and women, a feminist perspective offers a way of conceptualizing the multiple contexts in which families are situated and where conflict and care inevitably comingle. A feminist lens has challenged family scholars to investigate and u…
Reconstructing Masculinity and Sexuality
This paper attempts to synthesize general issues pertaining to masculinity and male sexuality using essentialist and postmodern theoretical ideologies. According to essentialist ideologies, the construction of male gender requires one's molding into a masculine role, which presupposes autonomy, competition, and aggressiveness, and the suppression of the innate human needs for connectedness, intimacy, and self-disclosure, which have been tradition…
Sexual Activity During Menstruation: A Qualitative Study
This study utilized a grounded theory method to analyze qualitative narratives about sexuality and menstruation from 108 young women (ages 18-23; M = 19.8, SD = 1.07) and 12 young men (ages 18-24; M = 20.4, SD = 1.46). Five patterns were found: Sixteen women identified themselves as virgins and had not faced the issue of negotiating sex during menstruation. Among the 92 women who said they were sexually active, 37 women said they would never have…
Grandfathers' Perceptions and Expectations of Relationships With Their Adult Grandchildren
Combining life course, feminist, and social-constructivist approaches with an inductive qualitative methodology, the authors explored the relationships of older men with their grandchildren. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 men, ranging in age from 59 to 82, who were part of a larger sample of 45 older adult grandparents. From their analyses of the men's perceptions of their family relationships, three main themes emerged: Geographic pr…
Dating is Hard Work: A Narrative Approach to Understanding Sexual and Romantic Relationships in Young Adulthood
A Family’s Coming Out Process: Systemic Change and Multiple Realities
Imagining Men: Lesbian Mothers' Perceptions of Male Involvement During the Transition to Parenthood
Much popular and professional literature has focused on the effects of father absence, particularly in lesbian parent households; yet, little attention has been paid to lesbian parents' preferences and intentions surrounding male involvement. This qualitative study of 60 lesbian women who were transitioning to parenthood explores this issue. Most women desired some level of male involvement, even before their children were born. Far from describi…
Forgotten Streams in the Family Life Course: Utilization of Qualitative Retrospective Interviews in the Analysis of Lifelong Single Women's Family Careers
Katherine R. Allen, Robert S. Pickett, Forgotten Streams in the Family Life Course: Utilization of Qualitative Retrospective Interviews in the Analysis of Lifelong Single Women's Family Careers, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 517-526
The Families of LGBTQ Older Adults: Theoretical Approaches to Creative Family Connections in the Context of Marginalization, Social‐Historical Change, and Resilience
This article examines how families are theorized at the complex crossroads of age, sexuality, and gender, and explores theoretical innovations derived from analyses embedded in the families of LGBTQ older adults, who have lived outside the embrace of heteronormativity. To address the extent of theorizing, we conducted a content analysis of 36 studies from 2010 to 2019. The articles revealed a social justice orientation that contextualized the mar…
Adolescent Sexual Development: A Family Perspective
Adolescent sexual development is informed by individual, relational, generational, institutional, and cultural perspectives. Families matter: they are the social institution at the intersection of adolescent development and broader social systems, charged with the responsibility for rearing children and adolescents to adulthood. This narrative review maps insights from family theory and research onto adolescent sexual development research. Our pu…
The Influence of Fictive Kin Relationships and Religiosity on the Academic Persistence of African American College Students Attending an HBCU
Academic persistence among African American college students has become an important issue due to the consistent lack of increase in retention and graduation rates of these students attending 4-year institutions. Despite the importance of this issue in the field of education, little has been done to study how cultural factors may influence college students' academic success. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the ways in which f…
Chapter 13: Family Versus Career Responsibilities
No abstract available for this article
Forgotten Streams in the Family Life Course: Utilization of Qualitative Retrospective Interviews in the Analysis of Lifelong Single Women's Family Careers
Katherine R. Allen, Robert S. Pickett, Forgotten Streams in the Family Life Course: Utilization of Qualitative Retrospective Interviews in the Analysis of Lifelong Single Women's Family Careers, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Aug., 1987), pp. 517-526
The Realistic Therapist: Modesty and Relativism in Therapy and Research
Introduction PART ONE: A VIEW OF THE WOODS A View of the Woods PART TWO: DECISIONS TO BE MADE Decisions to Be Made Individual Variables and Their Context Individual People and Their Systems Substrate Versus Intentionality Wanting Versus Caring PART THREE: GOALS TO BE RELINQUISHED Causality Objectivity and Behavior Freedom from Values PART FOUR: CHANGING Minimal Therapy Therapy and Relationship Politics Research Computations The Future of Imaginat…
Single Women/Family Ties: Life Histories of Older Women
Introduction Working Class Single Women in Historical Perspective The Research Process Growing Up in Working Class Families Pathways in Young Adulthood Remaining Single and Becoming Married The Middle Years Taking Care of Families Growing Old as Single Women The Family Careers of Lifelong Single Women In Context
Single Women/Family Ties: Life Histories of Older Women
The Ethic of Care: Leisure Possibilities and Constraints for Women
The purpose of this paper is to provide a review and an interpretive framework for examining the “ethic of care” (i.e., the activity of relationships) as it offers possibilities and constraints for the leisure of women. The explanatory implications of the ethic of care are useful in further understanding antecedent and intervening constraints to leisure as well as understanding the empowering possibilities of leisure for women. The paper uses a f…
Ethical and Epistemological Tensions in Applying A Postmodern Perspective to Feminist Research
We examine tensions that arise in applying postmodernism to feminist research. First, we consider epistemological tensions generated in the process of deconstructing existing knowledge and constructing new knowledge that benefits women. Second, we examine six ethical issues that reflect the tensions in feminist practice as we attempt to justify the dialectic between knowledge and power. In keeping with a postmodernist perspective, we pose these s…
What's a Mother to Do? Conversations on Work & Family
The Dispassionate Discourse of Children's Adjustment to Divorce
Women and Families: Feminist Reconstructions
Families--often a source of satisfaction, growth, and fulfillment for women--can also be an arena of domination, abuse, and pain. This volume uses a postmodern feminist perspective to elucidate women's myriad experiences in the family, providing an integrated analysis of critical aspects of intimate relationships, sexuality, childbearing decisions, care giving, and work within the family context. Throughout, the book focuses on the nature of the …
The Families of Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Frontier in Family Research
To examine the extent to which the family relations of lesbians and gay men are integrated into the family literature, we reviewed over 8,000 articles published between 1980 and 1993 in nine journals that publish family research. Our review shows that research on lesbian and gay families is quite limited, and that, where these families have been studied, they have been problematized and their diversity has been overlooked. We describe and define …
Feminists and the Ideology and Practice of Marital Equality
In her 1972 book, The Future of Marriage, and again in second edition (1982), Bernard concluded that future viability of marriage will depend upon upgrading marriage for women. After reviewing literature on marriage, she declared that two marriages exist, his and hers, and that marriage is more attractive and healthier for former than for latter. Bernard (1982) was optimistic that couples were struggling to improve marriage to make it beneficial …
Mothers and Work in Popular American Magazines
Diversity within Lesbian and Gay Families: Challenges and Implications for Family Theory and Research
This paper describes and discusses diversity among lesbian and gay families along central dimensions of social stratification: gender, sexual orientation, generation, age, race and ethnicity. We examine implications of this diversity for traditional family theories, identify and discuss sexist and heterosexist assumptions of dominant family theories and suggest the usefulness of an integrative approach that combines insights from positivist and p…
Older Women, Their Children, and Grandchildren: A Feminist Perspective on Family Relationships
Using gerontological and feminist frameworks, we explored the relationships older women have with their children and grandchildren. In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with 34 women, ranging in age from 55 to 88. From our analyses of the women's perceptions of their family relationships, two themes were prevalent: the centrality of children and the peripherality of grandchildren in their everyday lives. The women had varying degrees o…
Commitments and Constraints to Intimacy for African American Couples at Midlife
This study focuses on the contributors and detractors to intimate relationships for African American couples at midlife. Qualitative analysis revealed that commitment to faith provided a foundation for familial and intimate relationships and mediated the constraints of aging and racism. African American couples were devoted to their families and to their spiritual beliefs. Midlife was a time of change and stability for couples with the competing …
Families in the Middle and Later Years: A Review and Critique of Research in the 1990s
Research on families in the middle and later years came into its own during the 1990s, documenting the complexity, malleability, and variety of older family connections. We examined 908 articles on family gerontology topics, observing 4 trends: Conceptually, an appreciation for pluralism and resilience as individuals and families age is apparent. Theoretically, life course, feminist, socioemotional selectivity, and family solidarity theories are …
A Conscious and Inclusive Family Studies
I argue that family scholars must take bolder steps to engage the tensions between our heritage of positivist science and its postmodern challenges. I also argue that constructing theories, utilizing research methods, and examining substantive issues should be relevant to the diversity of the families we study and to ourselves as members of families. I offer examples of developing an informed reflexive consciousness to broaden the rationalist fou…
Older Adults' Preferences for Future Care: Formal Plans and Familial Support
A total of 45 adults, ranging in age from 56 to 88, were asked whom they expected to provide care for them if they became frail. Past experiences, family structure, and current relationships with children and grandchildren influenced their perceptions of how they would manage in the future. For some individuals, evidence of family conflict was linked with plans not to rely on family members. Others with formal plans, and those who identified fami…
Reconstructing Masculinity and Sexuality
This paper attempts to synthesize general issues pertaining to masculinity and male sexuality using essentialist and postmodern theoretical ideologies. According to essentialist ideologies, the construction of male gender requires one's molding into a masculine role, which presupposes autonomy, competition, and aggressiveness, and the suppression of the innate human needs for connectedness, intimacy, and self-disclosure, which have been tradition…
Finding New Paths to Family Scholarship: A Response to James White and Sheila Marshall
Making the World Safe for Difference
Key Words: Autobiographyfeminismoppressionsexualityqualitative research
Feminist Visions for Transforming Families: Desire and Equality Then and Now
Using a social-historical perspective, the author provides a synthesis of key feminist ideas that have been influential in the lives of women and their families. The author addresses a variety of feminist theories and strategies for knowledge production. These ideas are illustrated with examples from her own life course as a way to demonstrate the transformative value of feminist insights for family studies
Grandfathers' Perceptions and Expectations of Relationships With Their Adult Grandchildren
Combining life course, feminist, and social-constructivist approaches with an inductive qualitative methodology, the authors explored the relationships of older men with their grandchildren. In-depth interviews were conducted with 11 men, ranging in age from 59 to 82, who were part of a larger sample of 45 older adult grandparents. From their analyses of the men's perceptions of their family relationships, three main themes emerged: Geographic pr…
Janet Saltzman Chafetz Plenary: Discussant Comments
Sociology (74 works) · Psychology (71 works) · Gender Studies (53 works) · Social Psychology (50 works) · Developmental psychology (38 works) · Gender Studies (33 works) · Social Psychology (28 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (24 works) · Gender Roles and Identity Studies (21 works) · Political science (21 works)