Family Development Project
This project was started in 2001 with the goal of studying family relationships and transitions of parenthood. We are interested in knowing how couples with a young child adapt to their newly expanded family and how their children adapt to their families and other people around them. We are really excited about our project because we study both mothers and fathers. Believe it or not, researchers did not study much about fathers until the mid-1970s and even most research today includes only mothers. Moreover, we are lucky to be able to follow the same group of children and their families and try to understand their developmental trajectories in the social and emotional domains.

What is this project about?
We first started visiting expectant mothers and fathers during their third-trimester of pregnancy back in 2001 and followed up with them after their babies turned 3.5 months. We invited these family back to our lab where we observed the babies' interactions with their parents at 12 and 13 months. At 3 and 4.5 years, we visit these families at their home. We are interested in how children develop and how they interact with their parents as they grow up. Parents also complete questionnaires at each time point to give us more information about their child and families.

How do parents benefit from this study?
Many parents find our study interesting and rewarding. At the completion of each phase, the family will receive a gift certificate. Participating families will also receive a periodic newsletter about the preliminary results of this study.

Sincere thanks to our participating families
Research in child development greatly depends on the support of parents and children. We truly appreciate our participating families for all of their time and great help with our data collection. If you are interested in enrolling you and your family in research of child development, other research laboratories in departments such as Psychology, Educational Psychology, and Human and Community Development have ongoing research projects involving families and children and will welcome your participation.