I am a family sociologist teaching in the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at the University of Utah. My research has explored marriage and divorce, the changing economics of single motherhood, work-family issues among higher education faculty, and how religion affects marriage and other intimate relationships.
I am the author of Understanding the Divorce Cycle: The Children of Divorce in Their Own Marriages (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and the editor, with Lori Kowaleski-Jones, of Fragile Families and the Marriage Agenda (Springer, 2005). Two additional books are under contract: Soulmates: Religion and Relationships among African-Americans and Latinos (Oxford University Press), with W. Bradford Wilcox, and Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower (Rutgers University Press), with Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden.
Two leading scholars will offer a plenary on cohabitation. Dr. Scott Stanley, Research Professor, Department of Psychology, and Co-Director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies at the University of Denver, will discuss risk and findings from an ongoing longitudinal study in his presentation. Dr. Pamela Smock, Professor of Sociology and Research Professor in the Population Studies Center, University of Michigan, will cite recent evidence from social science research and examine the meanings of cohabitation in the United States as they vary by social class, gender, and race/ethnicity.
Andrew J. Cherlin, Ph.D., Griswold Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at Johns Hopkins University
Americans today marry more repeatedly and have more live-in partners than people in any other Western country. American children, more than any others, must cope with the frequent and often disruptive comings and goings of parents and parents’ partners. Dr. Cherlin will compare U.S. data with that from other countries; discuss the roots of this distinctive pattern; review the strength and limitations of the evidence of the effects on children; and discuss the implications for family policy.
Paul Amato is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a past Program Chair and Section Chair of NCFR and winner of the 2008 Burgess Award and Reuben Hill Award.
Observers disagree over whether children's well-being is improving or declining in the United States. Broad statements about children's well-being are problematic, however, because well-being is a multidimensional construct, and not all indicators have changed in the same direction. This presentation reviews evidence on various aspects of children's well-being (such as health, academic achievement, and poverty) and describes structural and policy factors that are linked with shifts in these outcomes.
Introduction of Speaker: David Demo
Session Presider: Anisa Zvonkovic, 2008 Program Chair
Implementing a Large-Scale Evaluation of Marriage and Relationships Skills Education: Progress of the Building Strong Families Project
M. Robin Dion is a Senior Research Psychologist at Mathematica Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Currently she is principal investigator for the Building Strong Families project, a large-scale demonstration and rigorous nine-year evaluation of multiple programs to support healthy couple relationships among unwed parents with young children.
Alan Hershey is a Senior Fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, and serves as its coordinator of studies relating to family formation and welfare. He is currently the director of Mathematica's Building Strong Families project for the Administration for Children and Families.
The Building Strong Families (BSF) project is the nation's largest and most rigorous evaluation of interventions to improve relationships among low-income unmarried couples with children. The project was motivated by earlier research findings that at the time of their child's birth, most unmarried couples report having loving relationships and aspirations to marry, but that many soon break up. The BSF intervention includes guided group sessions addressing common couple issues, as well as one-on-one support and referrals to other needed services. More than 5,000 unmarried couples have voluntarily enrolled in the BSF study at sites in seven states and been randomly assigned to a program or control group. The conference presentation will describe the intervention, including the relationship skills curricula on which it is based, as well as the progress of the evaluation, addressing such questions as who participates, the extent of their involvement in program services, and couples' responses to the intervention. It will also explain how BSF was implemented, including how host sites were found and the processes used to identify and recruit couples. The evaluation will assess the impact of the intervention on relationship quality and status, family well-being, and children's social, emotional and cognitive development; a preview will be given of analysis plans as the evaluation proceeds with its follow-up of families 15 months and 36 months after they enter the evaluation sample.
This is a workshop for family researchers interested in using secondary data to examine couple and family relationships. Dr. Elizabeth Cooksey of The Ohio State University will discuss the National Longitudinal Surveys data. Dr. Sarah Meadows of the RAND corporation will discuss the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Dataset. Dr. Gary Gates of the Williams Institute at UCLA will discuss How to Find GLBT Couples and Families in Secondary Data Sources.
Kathy Charmaz is Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University. As developer of “constructive grounded theory,” she has integrated the classic grounded theory guidelines of Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss with methodological developments of the past forty years.
Adele Clarke is professor of sociology and history of health sciences at UCSF. Her book, Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn offers an extension of grounded theory method focused on mapping strategies.
Conveners/Facilitators/Presiders: Robert Milardo, Jennifer Hardesty, Ramona Faith Oswald
Research on Relationship Dissolution: A Brief Overview, Paul R. Amato
Signs the End is Near: Causes of Relationship Breakups in Young Adults, Kay Pasley, Amber Vennum How Divorced Parents Manage Co-parental Relationships and Make Decisions About Their Children, Lawrence Ganong After the Divorce: How do Women Cope? Marilyn Coleman Theoretical Developments Related to Variability in Responses to Divorce, Mark A. Fine, David Demo
Promotes interdisciplinary research, education and practice and advances policy related to the social and emotional development of all children during the first five years.
The Department of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Missouri seeks a scholar specializing in Women's and Gender Studies or a closely related discipline to apply for the Dorothy Haecker Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship.
