Field Of Family Science Research Articles

Using Relational Feminism as an Approach to Practice in Working with Families in Special Education

Families of children with disabilities have unique relational needs that may be addressed by practitioners in the field of family science. In this article, we discuss how relational feminism was used as an approach to working with families in a rural Special Education program to facilitate success for very young students with neurodevelopmental disorders and non-specified disabilities. This article provides a brief history of families’ roles in Special Education advocacy, along with the tenets of relational feminism. We discuss ways that relational feminism was used to create connections within the professional community, and with marginalized families. We also discuss the strengths and limitations of using relational feminism to promote connection and voice for families of marginalized and vulnerable individuals in the public education context.

Interlinking Structural Racism and Heteropatriarchy: Rethinking Family Structure's Effects on Child Outcomes in a Racialized, Unequal Society.

In the field of family science and in the broader family policy discourse, debate is ongoing about the importance of family structure for child outcomes. Missing from this debate is a full integration of how the foundational pillars of White supremacy, namely structural racism and heteropatriarchy, impact both family formation and child outcomes, especially among diversely configured Black families. From a critical intersectional lens, we argue that conceptual models used to explain racialized child outcomes based on family structure effects are problematic because they compare family structure statuses without accounting for structural racism and interlinked heteropatriarchal conditions. We present a new conceptual model that integrates structural racism and heteropatriarchy to examine the salience of family structure statuses for child outcomes and discuss approaches to research design, empirical measurement, and interpretation in order to bring this new model into practice.

THE MILITARY FAMILY: DYNAMICS, STRENGTHS AND CHALLENGES

THE MILITARY FAMILY: DYNAMICS, STRENGTHS AND CHALLENGES

Surfacing Family Privilege and Supremacy in Family Science: Toward Justice for All

In family science, a great deal of scholarly work has focused on marginalized and disadvantaged families with stated goals of improving family outcomes and well‐being. Yet little attention has been paid to family privilege and the ways in which the advantages of privileged families are maintained within a White heteronormative hegemonic society to the continued disadvantage of others. In this article, I define family privilege and consider how it intersects with other privileges (e.g., White privilege) to maintain the supremacy of the Standard North American Family. I theorize how family privilege is masked yet perpetuated and instantiated in the field of family science. I conclude with a discussion of approaches that family scientists can employ to surface and redress family privilege in the self, family privilege in family theories and methods, and the mechanisms that perpetuate family privilege and the maintenance of advantage. This work is critical to advancing family equality and social justice.

Are We Doing What is Best for the Children? Parenting Arrangements on Children's Outcome

In light of the growing research on family diversity, the field of family science has yet another critical topic to explore: the implications of family structures on children’s outcomes. With family policy and laws in many countries providing the option for shared parenting, this research on how children cope in different parenting arrangements comes at a necessary and opportune time. For this special issue, shared parenting is broadly defined as a collaborative arrangement regarding child custody where parental responsibilities for caregiving are shared by parents after divorce or separation occurs. Our first paper examines the co-parenting relationship following divorce with an emphasis on co-parenting support, overt, as well as covert conflict on child outcomes. Parental alienation is discussed in the following two papers – the first examining parental alienation in terms of contact time while the second extends this to an examination of parental alienation as a form of child abuse. The final paper in this set examines how parents make decisions about custody arrangements following divorce through an exchange theory framework.

Massive Open Online Courses: Potential Implications for Advancing the Field of Family Science

Massive Open Online Courses: Potential Implications for Advancing the Field of Family Science

Models of Resilience: Developing Psychosocial Interventions for Parents of Children with Chronic Health Conditions

Research regarding family adaption and resilience in children with chronic health conditions has resulted in the development of a number of theoretical models and data‐driven psychosocial interventions in the field of pediatric psychology, some of which may not be well known in the field of family science. These models incorporate family systems theory and multiple resiliency factors within their framework to better describe the complex process of adaptation and subsequent adjustment outcomes. In this article, three contemporary resilience models within pediatric psychology are briefly reviewed and discussed. The development of a psychosocial intervention targeting uncertainty management for caregivers of children with cancer and the preliminary results are also presented as an exemplar of how such models may utilized to build interventions. Finally, the implications of the authors' findings and future research directions involving psychosocial interventions for families of children with chronic health conditions are discussed.

Beyond the family life cycle: Understanding family development in the twenty-first century through complexity theories

Perspectives on family development have been organized, mainly, around the idea of the family life cycle. However, a family life cycle approach is probably too simplistic and norm-oriented to understand family development, particularly in face of the diversity of family forms and challenges in the twenty-first century. In this article, we discuss how family science can borrow inspiration from concepts and methods of complexity sciences in order to (re)conceptualize family development as the time unfolding of a complex self-organizing system, in the direction of increasing differentiation and integration. We highlight some strategies to inspect developmental coordination dynamics at the level of the whole family, as a complex system. We hope this reflection opens a new space of debate and new avenues for theoretical development and research in the field of family science.

Family Science and Social Policy: A Young Professional's Perspective on the Need for Integration

Family scientists are faced with the challenging task of translating empirical work and theory development into useful information for social policy makers. Additionally, family scientists must play a more active role in the shaping of social policy. This article presents an overview of the linkage between family science and social policy. Perhaps one of the most difficult tasks faced in the field of family science is translating empirical work and theory development into useful information for application purposes. While journal publications result in the communication of important information to family researchers, there remains a void in the dissemination of this information to other fields. Examples of other fields include psychology, sociology, and social work which have interests closely aligned to family science. However, family science is relevant to more than just these social sciences. Professionals such as teachers, administrators, family financial planners, and clergy are able to benefit from useful applications of family science research. Creative strategies, then, are needed to develop cooperative efforts between these various disciplines or fields.