Home » For the Media

Contact an Expert

NCFR members available to the media...areas of expertise, institution, background

Members of the media...
This Contact-an-Expert feature is intended as a convenient resource for you to locate expert researchers,  educators, and helping professionals who study, teach about, and serve families. These particpating NCFR members have agreed to inclusion in this media contact listing. All have advanced degrees and have been published in academic journals or presented at academic conferences.  Search using the "By Keyword" search function below or the "Filter by Category" box for areas of expertise.

NCFR members...
Guidelines for expert listing

Robert M. Milardo, Ph.D.

Robert M. Milardo

Professor, University of Maine
Ph.D., Penn State University, 1982
Specialty Areas: 
  • Divorce
  • Family Relationships, Aunts & Uncles
  • Family Violence
  • Relationship Issues
  • Social Networks

Robert M. Milardo is Professor of Family Relations at the University of Maine. He has published extensively in the field of family studies and is currently editor of the Journal of Family Theory and Review owned by the National Council on Family Relations, of which he was elected a Fellow in 2005. He is the author of The Forgotten Kin, published by Cambridge University Press, edits the Family Studies textbook series published by Routledge, and recently served as the editor of the Journal of Marriage and Family. Bob has a long-standing interest in the science of family relationships and served as the first president of the International Association for Relationship Research. His interviews and commentaries on family issues have appeared in a wide array of venues, including Psychology Today, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, and a variety of local and regional media.

Pat Tanner Nelson

Pat Tanner Nelson

Professor and Extension Specialist, University of Delaware
Ed. D., Columbia University
Specialty Areas: 
  • Just in Time Parenting
  • Balancing Work and Family
  • Stress
  • Childhood obesity prevention

Dr. Pat Tanner Nelson focuses on parent education and support, childhood obesity prevention, family stress management, and work/family integration. Collaborating with federal, state, and community organizations, Pat strives to build research-based education into the broad continuum of resources needed by families today. Pat is co-PI for eXtension Just in Time Parenting, a national interactive Internet resource that strives to bring high quality, research-based information to families at the time it can be most useful and make the biggest difference in their lives. Follow-up evaluations show that Just in Time Parenting is useful to all parents; the greatest impact is with those who are youngest, poorest and least educated.

Sharon Sassler

Sharon Sassler

Associate Professor, Cornell University
Ph.D., Brown University, 1995
Specialty Areas: 

• Union formation (marriage, cohabitation)
• Intimate relationships
• Young adult transitions

Sharon Sassler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University in 1995. A social demographer, her research examines factors shaping the activities of young adults and their life course transitions into school and work, relationships, and parenthood, and how these have changed over the past century. Some of her current research explores the tempo of relationship progression, the processes underlying entrance into cohabiting unions and how these differ by social class, and the impact of becoming a single mother on subsequent health and child outcomes.

Deborah B. Smith

Deborah B. Smith

Associate Professor of Sociology, Univeristy of Missouri - Kansas City
Ph.D., Cornell University
Specialty Areas: 

Dr. Smith's expertise and research is on:

  • retirement and couples
  • volunteering activities of midlife couples. 

She has been interviewed by  the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and NPR.

Nicholas Wolfinger

Associate Professor, University of Utah
Ph.D., University of California–Los Angeles, 1998
Specialty Areas: 
  • Divorce
  • Marriage
  • Parenting
  • Single motherhood
  • Gender equity in higher education
  • religion and families

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.