I was asked to share some thoughts at the 2013 conference on the future of our organization. I was hesitant at first. As a general rule, if you are interested in predictions, don't ask a social scientist because we have a terrible record of predicting things. We did not predict most of the major demographic shifts that fundamentally changed family life in the United States and the rest of the western world during the last half of a century. Similarly, economists did not foresee the Great Recession of 2007, which nearly wrecked the entire world economic system. This is not a good record.

So making predictions is a fool's errand. Nevertheless, because I am well qualified, and because the temptation is great, I will share a few thoughts with you about NCFR's future.

Let's start, however, by considering NCFR's early years.

In 1938, Ernest Burgess (one of our founders) wrote that one of the purposes of NCFR was to unite people in different fields of family research and welfare. His list of fields included child development, education, economics, home economics, social work, family and marriage counseling, law, biology, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, sociology, and religion. That's a long list. Interestingly, he also included eugenics, a point to which I return later.

Since 1939, NCFR has held an annual conference (at least in most years). At these early meetings, as now, people discussed research, social trends affecting families, and family life education. The first conference included many topics that still sound familiar today: the effects of unemployment on the family, the effects of divorce on children, and marriage preparation. Other session topics seem less familiar. For example, sessions focused on the parole system, housing problems, hospitalization for the poor, and the social security system.

The first issue of our journal was published in 1939. Back then it was called Living, before becoming Marriage and Family Living in 1941, The Journal of Marriage and the Family in 1964, and Journal of Marriage and Family in 1999. The first issue of Living included an article on predicting success or failure in marriage, a summary of marriage laws in the United States, and a discussion of marriage education courses in high schools. The first issue also included a poem and a story for children. "Three Horses" told the story of a child named Susan who grew sleepy and dreamed of three horses: a black horse, a brown horse, and a white horse. In the dream, she couldn't decide which horse she liked best, so she decided that she liked them all equally. I think this was an early lesson in valuing diversity. Imagine JMF publishing poetry and children's stories today!

Over its 75-year history, the scope of NCFR narrowed as our organization became more focused. Not many of our members these days are high school teachers, physicians, or family law scholars. NCFR also was more involved in social policy in the past than it is today, and there were times when NCFR was more international in its outlook. These are trends that we may wish to reverse as we move into the future.

We also corrected a few early mistakes. As I mentioned, eugenics was on Burgess's list of allied disciplines. Our first conference in 1939 had a session on eugenics. And the second issue of our journal contained a comprehensive review of eugenics and its social implications. The true nature of eugenics was revealed during World War II, however, and NCFR dropped its early flirtation with this misguided idea.

NCFR has changed a lot, and if we project 75 years into the future, we can expect many more changes. Most of these will be unanticipated. Indeed, in many respects, NCFR in 2088 will be unrecognizable to us.

Despite the inherent difficulty of foreseeing the future, here are my predictions:

1. An Affiliate Council will be active on Mars. After all, the Martian colonists will have a serious need for family life education.
2. The NCFR Board and President will be replaced by a highly intelligent but relatively inexpensive computer.
3. Rather than travel physically to annual meetings, members will immerse themselves in highly realistic holographic constructions of meeting venues. These will be held in exotic locations, such as the bottom of the ocean, the moon, or the rings of Saturn.
4. Given projected increases in longevity, it will take 100 years, rather than 25, to become a member of the Legacy Circle.

Although I'm pretty confident about these predictions, I also think the core of NCFR—promoting family research, education, and practice with the ultimate goal of strengthening families—will remain. As long as families continue to be the bedrock social institution responsible for raising children and enhancing personal health and well-being, there will be a need for NCFR.

There will be challenges as we go forward. We will need to manage the continuing tension that exists in our organization between researchers and practitioners, between qualitative and quantitative researchers, between members with socially conservative views and liberal perspectives, and between those who favor political activism and those who want to focus on the more fundamental but less glamorous job of making sure we get the facts right.

These different perspectives can never be completely reconciled, but some tension is healthy in an organization like ours. NCFR will continue to thrive as long as we can voice our differences in an atmosphere of mutual respect, tolerance, and cooperation. As the founding fathers and mothers of the United States believed, E pluribus unum, out of many—one. That philosophy has kept the nation vibrant for the last 200 years, and a similar philosophy—E pluribus NCFR—will serve us well as we embrace the inevitable changes and inherent unpredictability of the future.