Families

 

Work-Family

Members of families spend most of their waking hours working, including working for pay in the economy and doing the unpaid work of daily family life. Work, particularly paid work, affects many aspects of the human experience, including not only the well-being and development of individual workers, but also workers' relationships with their spouses, children, social networks, and communities.

Research

  • the intersection of work and family life, with particular attention to factors that make it easier and more difficult for workers to successfully fulfill their responsibilities at work and at home
  • military families
  • more

Relationships

Human beings are inherently social creatures. Familial relationships set a foundation and provide a context for emotional, social, and cognitive achievements. Research examines how parents, siblings, friends, in-laws, stepparents or children, and other social partners influence each other's well-being and development.

Research

  • child-parent attachment relationships in infancy and early childhood
  • marriage and family therapy
  • military deployment impact on marital dynamics
  • parent-child relationship and how parents talk with children about difficult topics
  • sibling influence on family relationships and individual adjustment
  • ties between adult children and their parents
  • more

Health

Health concerns are central to family life across the developmental spectrum. Parents of young children often closely monitor their children's health. Youth gradually develop greater responsibility for managing their healthcare. Families become increasingly important as adults face health care changes in old age. Particular areas of study are well-being and physical health in later-life, family functioning, and coping with cancer.

Research

  • connections between work stressors and psychological and physical well-being
  • how family variables and family contextual variables interact with personality factors to predict physical health, mortality, and other health outcomes
  • how couples and families manage the diagnosis and treatment of cancer
  • intergenerational exchanges and emotional patterns on parents' and offspring's well-being from young adulthood to late old age
  • sibling influence on one another's health risk behaviors in adolescence and early adulthood
  • more

Diversity and Culture

Diversity is an integral part of all societies and groups. Scholars from different theoretical perspectives and interests investigate variability and similarities across groups in developmental and family outcomes in several domains. Research focuses on the processes linked to group (i.e. culture, social class) variation and commonality.

Research

  • child-parent relationships and parenting practices across cultures
  • children's perceptions of conflict in varying political settings
  • pathways to literacy readiness across culturally, socially, and economically diverse groups
  • preschoolers' perceptions and interactions with children with disabilities
  • more