How early triadic family processes predict children’s strengths and difficulties at age three

This study aimed to determine longitudinal associations of early triadic family processes and 3-year-old children’s strengths and difficulties and to control those associations for family risk factors. In 80 families expecting their first child, we assessed parents’ anticipations of future family relationships (Triadic Capacity) and parents’ psychological distress, marital quality, and education level. When the children were 4 months of age, we observed triadic family interaction in a standardized laboratory play scenario. The children’s strengths and difficulties at age three were assessed using multiple methods. As expected, parents’ Triadic Capacity assessed before the child was born predicted triadic family interaction 4 months after birth. Early triadic family processes explained variance in children’s emotional functioning at age three over and above the effects of family stress factors assessed before the child was born. However, early triadic family processes did not explain children’s co-operative behaviour or children’s symptoms at age three. Results also highlighted the roles of fathers’ education level in children’s externalizing behaviour, mothers’ psychological distress at children’s low co-operative behaviour, and low marital quality in children’s internalizing behaviour

Small wars in the age of Clausewitz: the watershed between partisan war and people's war

Around the time of Clausewitz’s writing, a new element was introduced into partisan warfare: ideology. Previously, under the ancien régime, partisans were what today we would call special forces, light infantry or cavalry, almost always mercenaries, carrying out special operations, while the main action in war took place between regular armies. Clausewitz lectured his students on such ‘small wars’. In the American War of Independence and the resistance against Napoleon and his allies, operations carried out by such partisans merged with counter-revolutionary, nationalist insurgencies, but these Clausewitz analysed in a distinct category, ‘people's war’. Small wars, people's war, etc. should thus not be thought of as monopoly of either the political Right or the Left