Family Research: Reports & Books
Reports
The American Family Assets Study
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The American Family Assets Study presents a compelling national portrait of families. It introduces a new framework of Family Assets: relationships, interactions, opportunities, and values that help families thrive. These assets are associated with positive outcomes for young teens and their parenting adults, explaining more of the differences in outcomes than many demographics and other individual and family characteristics explain. Download the Study Highlights, Study Report, Discussion Questions, Technical Report, and Family Assets Framework from the Search Institute website: search-institute.org/familyassets/study.
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The Changing American Family
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American households have never been more diverse, more surprising, more baffling. In this special issue of the New York Times "Science Times," Natalie Angier takes stock of the changing definition of family - with research summaries and profiles of today's American families.
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The Changing American Family
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Decades of demographic, economic, and social change have transformed the structure and composition of the American family. The interactive charts online at Pew Research show trends related to marriage, children, and household composition.
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Culture of American Families
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The Culture of American Families Project is a three-year investigation into the family cultures that are impacting the next generation of American adults. Designed and conducted by the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, this project adapts the tools of contemporary social science to an investigation that is broadly interpretive and contextual. Our goal is to distinguish the cultural frameworks and diverse moral narratives that both inform and are informed by American family life. Specifically, this involves telling the complex story of parents’ habits, dispositions, hopes, fears, assumptions, and expectations for their children.
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The Decline of Marriage and the Rise of New Families
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The transformative trends of the past 50 years that have led to a sharp decline in marriage and a rise of new family forms have been shaped by attitudes and behaviors that differ by class, age and race, according to this new Pew Research Center nationwide survey. (Pew Research Center)
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Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? Project Report
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Given that about one million children in the U.S. each year experience the divorce of their parents, there has been strikingly little attention given to how growing up in a divorced family might shape the religious identities and faith journeys of young people. One-quarter of today’s young adults are grown children of divorce. How this generation approaches questions of moral and spiritual meaning—and what choices they make for themselves and their families with regard to religious identity and involvement—will undoubtedly influence broader trends in the churches. Does the Shape of Families Shape Faith? represents a major effort to examine and understand the religious and spiritual lives of young adults who experienced parental divorce. We have learned that when children of divorce reach adulthood, compared to those who grew up in intact families, they feel less religious on the whole and are less likely to be involved in the regular practice of a faith. (Center for Marriage and Families)
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Exploring the Links between Family Strengths and Adolescent Outcomes
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Families are critical to the positive development of children and youth, as well as to problems that may affect that development. Thus, it is important to examine not just the deficits, but also the assets and strengths that families of all income levels bring to raising children. This Research Brief reports on findings that indicate that family strengths are associated with significantly better outcomes for adolescents in both lower-income families and higher-income families. Specifically, adolescents from families that have these strengths are more likely to perform well in school, to avoid risky behaviors, and to demonstrate positive social behaviors than are adolescents from families that lack these strengths.
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Growing Number of Dads at Home with the Kids
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This report examines the demographic characteristics of U.S. fathers who lived with their children younger than 18 in 2012 and did not work outside the home. It compares them with their counterparts in earlier years and reports on trends for this population since 1989, using U.S. Census Bureau data. In addition, it compares the characteristics of stay-at-home fathers with those of fathers who work for pay outside the home, and with stay-at-home mothers.
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Family Matters: Multigenerational Families in a Volatile Economy
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Today more than 51.4 million Americans of all ages – or about one in six – live in multigenerational households, a more than 10% increase since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. Some multigenerational families choose to live together; others form because of the widespread impact of the economy. Whatever the reasons, multigenerational households are an increasingly important part of the fabric of the United States. What motivates Americans to live in a multigenerational household today? To explore that question, Generations United commissioned a nationwide survey by Harris Interactive.
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Helping Kids Keep the Faith: Four Research Insights Every Parent Needs to Know
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A new addition to the research on families comes from University of Southern California sociologist Vern L. Bengtson in his book Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down Across Generations. The book arises out of a 35-year study of families begun in 1970, and focuses on the question of how religion is passed across generations This multigenerational study dispels certain widely-held myths and brings to light some very useful findings. This article reports on four key findings most relevant to families and congregations.
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How Family Religious Involvement Benefits Adults, Youth, and Children and Strengthens Families
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A growing body of empirical research demonstrates that a family’s religious involvement directly benefits adults, children and youth in many ways. Divorce rates are lower and marital satisfaction and quality scores highest among religiously involved couples. Religious practices are linked with family satisfaction, closer father-child relationships, and closer parent-child relationships. There is less domestic violence among more religious couples and religious parents are less likely to abuse or yell at their children. Religious involvement promotes involved and responsible fathering and is associated with more involved mothering. Greater religiosity in parents and youth is associated with a variety of protective factors for adolescents.
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Modern Parenthood: Roles of Moms and Dads Converge as They Balance Work and Family
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The way mothers and fathers spend their time has changed dramatically in the past half century. Dads are doing more housework and child care; moms more paid work outside the home. Neither has overtaken the other in their “traditional” realms, but their roles are converging, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of long-term data on time use. At the same time, roughly equal shares of working mothers and fathers report in a new Pew Research Center survey feeling stressed about juggling work and family life: 56% of working moms and 50% of working dads say they find it very or somewhat difficult to balance these responsibilities.
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After a Decades of Decline, A Rise in Stay-at-Home Moms
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This report examines the demographic characteristics of U.S. mothers who lived with their children younger than 18 in 2012 and did not work outside the home. It compares them with their counterparts in earlier years and reports on trends for this population since 1970, based on U.S. Census Bureau data. In addition, it compares the characteristics of stay-at-home mothers with those of mothers who work for pay outside the home. The report also compares the time use of stay-at-home and working mothers, using data from the American Time Use Survey, and reports on trends in public opinion about working and stay-at-home mothers.
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The New American Father
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Being a father in this era of changing family structures and converging gender roles means more than bringing home a paycheck or delivering punishment to a misbehaving child. A new survey by the Pew Research Center finds that Americans expect dad to be more of a moral teacher and emotional comforter than a breadwinner or disciplinarian.
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New Digital American Family
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The New Digital American Family is getting older, smaller, growing more slowly and becoming more ethnically diverse than at any point in history. Diversity in all its dimensions defines the emerging American Family archetype, with no single cultural, social, demographic, economic or political point of view dominating the landscape.
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A Portrait of Stepfamilies
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Today, more than four-in-ten American adults have at least one step relative in their family – either a stepparent, a step or half sibling or a stepchild, according to a nationwide Pew Research Center survey. People with step relatives are just as likely as others to say that family is the most important element of their life. However, they typically feel a stronger sense of obligation to their biological family members (be it a parent, a child or a sibling) than to their step relatives, the survey finds.
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A Rising Share of Young Adults Live in Their Parents’ Home
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In 2012, 36% of the nation’s young adults ages 18 to 31were living in their parents’ home, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. This is the highest share in at least four decades and represents a slow but steady increase over the 32% of their same-aged counterparts who were living at home prior to the Great Recession in 2007 and the 34% doing so when it officially ended in 2009. A record total of 21.6 million Millennials lived in their parents’ home in 2012, up from 18.5 million of their same aged counterparts in 2007. Of these, at least a third and perhaps as many as half are college students.
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Reaching the New Digital Parent
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The demand for more effective use of technology both in the classroom and in school-to-home communications is being increasingly driven by the emergence of a new, digitally proactive cadre of parents within the school community. This new digital parent is fluent with technology tools personally, and has high expectations for the use of digital tools and resources within their child’s learning environments. This report covers key characteristics of the digital parent; using digital tools to communicate with digital, parents; involving digital parents in digital learning; and creating a shared vision with the new digital parents.
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A Reminder of an Oft-Forgotten Reality
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This article, based on Fuller Youth Institute research, describes how parents matter in the spiritual formation of their children.
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Sparks - How Igniting Our Teenager’s Sparks Can Support and Save Our Children and Their Future
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This introductory chapter from Sparks by Peter Benson provides an overview of the research that the Search Institute has done on thriving in childhood and adolescents by identifying the Sparks that enable a person to thrive in a changing world. Read a Search Institute summary of the research in Thriving. Read about the research on Thriving: www.search-institute.org/thriving. Watch the Sparks video presentation by Peter Benson at: www.search-institute.org/sparks.
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The State of the Church &
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The State of the Church and Family Report reports on 19 different factors that are affecting the role of congregations in parents’ lives, such as What kinds of churches do parents prefer? and Does having children stimulate parental involvement in church? The Family & Technology Report addresses questions such as: How can churches assist families in the digital age? Has technology had a positive or negative influence on families?
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Sticky Faith Research Articles Fuller Youth Institute
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Talking About Religion: How Highly Religious Youth and Parents Discuss Their Faith
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This study builds on previous research regarding parent-child religious conversations to explore the transactional processes of these conversations. Findings suggest that when parent-adolescent religious conversations are youth centered, the emotional experience is more positive for parents and adolescents than when they are parent centered. Parents from both traditional and progressive faith communities reported that they understood the value of transactional conversation processes over a more hierarchical, preachy, or parent-centered approach. (Journal of Adolescent Research 2008; 23; 611)
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Books
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Families and Faith: How Religion is Passed Down Across Generations
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Inside Out Families: Living the Faith Together
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The Parent App: Understanding Families in the Digital Age
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The Secrets of Happy Families
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Sparks: How Parents Can Help Ignite the Hidden Strengths of Teenagers
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