Mission Statement: Center for Children and Families
The Center for Children and Families is a dynamic setting for advancing the well-being of children and families through basic and applied research, the dissemination of research findings, and service. Divorce and marital discord, physical and sexual abuse, child neglect, and inappropriate parenting often result in serious developmental delays for millions of children each year. Families under stress - due to interparental conflicts, financial crises, or mental illness - are often unable to maintain or strengthen their marriages, and support their children’s development through active, positive parenting practices. These pressing social problems require intense, research-based study and innovative applied programs aimed at strengthening positive family functioning and stability if they are to be solved in our lifetime.
Our Center provides a unique setting where families from all social classes and ethnic groups can easily take part in cutting-edge research on family and child development, and participate in outreach activities and benefit from educational programs about healthy and well-adjusted family life. The work is also being extended to include research and applied programs for advancing understanding and application cross-culturally, including understudied areas (e.g., South America) and areas of political violence (e.g., Northern Ireland, Israel).
The expertise of the Center is reflected in the high rates of publications of the faculty in premier national and international journals, the frequent citations of our work in scholarly publications and popular press on marriage, parenting, and child development, and the success in obtaining significant competitive external grant support. The Center also plays an important educational role for undergraduate and graduate students through course-work and direct training of research and applied skills. With further support, our hope is to continue to build research and outreach centers, including mechanisms to disseminate our findings, including application to the development of outreach-related programs to serve as models for prevention and intervention nationally and internationally.
Our vision for the future is that the Center will serve as a vital catalyst for increasing Notre Dame’s role as a highly visible and renowned center for research on children and families, including the potential for increasing productive multi-disciplinary involvement, including disciplines such as Anthropology, Sociology, Economics, and the Law, among the possibilities.