The Construct of Co-Dependency

Vander-Zanden (1990) reported that in Western societies, in general, and in American society, in particular:

. . . patterns of sexual inequality have been sustained by assigning the economic provider role to men and the child rearing role to women . . . motherhood has been central to American definitions of the female role. (p. 343)

Furthermore, Hewlett (1986) has noted that, despite changing social values and mores, about 90 percent of women in contemporary times continue to most identify with the role of wife and mother.

Of interest to the proposed research is the assertion that the typical sex-role of wife and mother is, according to Jack (1991), a role that calls for an identification of self in terms of self's relationships to others; on the other hand, Jack reports that the typical male sex-role (i.e. aggressive, independent, competitive) is related to a more autonomous definition of self.

The foregoing characterization of sex-roles in relation to self-identification has an important implication with respect to the psychological construct of codependency. In this regard, Span and Fischer (1990) define codependency as:

. . . a dysfunctional pattern of relating to others. This pattern is characterized by extreme focus outside of self, lack of open expression of feelings, and attempts to derive a sense of purpose through relationships. (p. 27)

Codependency has been proposed as a pathological

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n (1994) looked specifically at this relationship without using the BSRI. In their study, the intent was to examine the relationship between gender, gender-stereotyped traits, and eight codependency scales. The participants were 339 female and 115 male college students. Of the participants, 63% were Caucasian, 14% Latino, 8% African-American, 5% Asian, and 10% other. This was a very young sample, with a median age of 22 and mean age of 26. However, 63% of participants indicated that they were currently in a committed relationship. Finally, 22% noted that they considered themselves children of an alcoholic parent, while 3% indicated that they themselves were currently attending a self-help program. The authors hypothesized that codependency would be associated with both positive and negative female-stereotyped traits, while it would be inversely related to positive male-stereotyped traits. They sought to determine this by using a codependency measure using items from codependency measures both from Beck and Potter-Efron. The students completed this measure, along with the Extended Personal Attributes Scale, which measures personality traits stereotypically associated with gender. Results supported part of the authors'
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Approximate Word count = 4984
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)

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