Center for Families

Harnessing the power of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends to improve our quality of life.

April 29, 2019

CFF Director honored with University engagement award

Purdue’s Office of Engagement named winners of the annual faculty and staff engagement awards for 2019 at a luncheon on April 16. Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth, PhD, CFF director, received the 2019 Faculty Engagement Fellow Award which recognized her work that...

April 29, 2019

The human cost of raising youth sports to a ‘$17 billion’ industry

A 2016 Families in Sport Lab study found that parents reported spending between 2 to 10 percent of their family’s gross annual household income on athletic activities, per child. “You think about families maybe that have two or three or

March 29, 2019

Children Are Using Text Crisis Lines To Report Abuse

Children are reaching out to text-based crisis communication hotlines to seek help for mental illness. Laura Schwab-Reese, PhD, finds they’re also using them as a method to report abuse.

February 28, 2019

Invisible families, invisible conflicts: Work-family conflict for LGB families

2019 Kanter Lecture: Dr. Katina Sawyer's research which calls attention to the overly restricted assumptions about “family” in prior WFC research, and seeks to serve as an impetus for aligning WFC research more fully with the complex realities of modern...

December 29, 2018

Family members can share grief during the holidays, but how each person grieves is different

Heather Servaty-Seib, a professor of counseling psychology in the College of Education, said people are creatures of habit and traditions around the holidays can highlight the loss of a loved one for a person and for a family, whether in...

November 29, 2018

How Addiction Crisis Impacts Indiana Families

Indiana has one of highest rates of children in foster care and much of the blame is placed on neglect related to substance use. The Center for Families at Purdue University hosted a meeting to frame what is working in...

November 12, 2018

MFRI helps organizations advance change for military and veteran families

The Military Family Research Institute at Purdue, in partnership with the Association of the United States Army, will host “Building Your Battle Plan to Support Military and Veteran Families” on Nov. 13 in Arlington, Virginia. Led by experts and authors...

November 7, 2018

Impact of opioids on families, children to highlight state meeting

The Center for Families at Purdue University has partnered with the Commission on Improving the Status of Children in Indiana and the Indiana Consortium of Family Organizations for this program.

August 9, 2018

Opioid response support: community-based prevention education

Purdue Extension is providing community-based prevention education to address the opioid crisis that affects communities throughout Indiana is one of Purdue Extension’s top priorities. “We are dedicated to developing partnerships throughout the state to serve as a proactive, preventive and...

June 29, 2018

Foli recognized by APNA for book that seeks to close research practice gap in psychiatric nursing

Karen J. Foli, PhD, RN, CFF faculty partner, associate professor of Nursing, and Director, PhD in Nursing Program, has written a book that truly seeks to close the research practice gap in psychiatric nursing. Dr. Foli is the recipient of the...