The Transition to adulthood is an exciting new specialty within the family sciences. In the past 6 - 7 years, there has been some fabulous new research available.  I have written previous blogs about some of them.  If you need some good information quickly, try the MacArthur Foundation's Network on Transitions to Adulthood.  

Today, I'd like to highlight a new publication that NCFR members may wish to obtain for their professional library.  It's a collection of papers which formed the basis for one of Penn State's National Symposium on Family Issues. The book is titled "Early adulthood in a Family Context," edited by Alan Booth, Susan L. Brown, Nancy S. Landale, Wendy D. Manning, and Susan McHale--most of whom are NCFR members. This book has papers on young adulthood from those who are household names in our field--here are a few:  Richard Settersten, Kathryn Edin, Daniel Lichter, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, Frank Fincham, Marcia Carlson, Kelly Raley, our new editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family, just to name a few. This edited volume is available through the publisher, Springer. Springer provides a few pages of PDF for sample reading.

The annual symposium on families at Penn State always attracts the rock stars of the field to speak to its theme for the year. Their 20th Annual Symposium on Family Issues will be held October 8 - 9, 2012.  This year's symposium is titled, Emerging Methods in Family Research. The symposium description is: "Advances in research on families will rely on innovations in design, measurement, data collection and data analysis that allow researchers to capture the multi-level complexities of family systems. Sixteen scholars from the social sciences will address the question of whether new and/or alternative approaches are needed to address the complexities of family phenomena." A complete program and registration will be available in May. Here is the symposium website.