Center for Families

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

November 14, 2024

CFF welcomes Mark Suchman as a faculty partner!

Mark Suchman joins CFF as a Professor of Sociology. Research interests include The impact of law and legal institutions on social and economic life, with a particular focus on how legal conditions create—or foreclose—opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and technological change.

November 5, 2024

Recording Available – Building Connection, One Table at a Time – The Family Dinner Project Webinar

As part of its 30th anniversary, CFF hosted a webinar featuring Anne Fishel, PhD, to discuss the transformative impact of family meals. Learn how and why to harness the benefits of family dinners, and gain valuable insights.

November 4, 2024

Weathering the storm: How agribusinesses and farms can prepare for natural disasters

Maria Marshall

Major natural disasters, like Hurricanes Helene and Milton, caused severe economic and environmental damage in the southeastern region of the U.S. this fall.

November 4, 2024

Purdue Center for Early Learning finds new research PURPOSE

David Purpura, Sarah Eason

The Purdue University Center for Early Learning (CEL) is pushing the integration of early STEM and non-STEM education research with PURPOSE.

November 4, 2024

Parental warmth and parent–child conflict among U.S. Latinx families in middle childhood

Kim Updegraff

Grounded in family systems theory and using latent profile analysis, the present study examined (a) patterns of parent–child warmth and parent–child conflict within multiple dyads among 305 U.S. Latinx families with fifth graders and younger siblings and tested links of...

November 4, 2024

Competence Perceptions at the Intersection of Gender and Race-Ethnicity

Trenton Mize

Competence perceptions represent a fundamental dimension of human perception and have wide-ranging consequences for social interaction. Therefore, it is no surprise that multiple prominent social psychological theories emphasize the role of competence perceptions.

November 3, 2024

Parental involvement in Mexican-origin adolescents’ romantic relationships: An examination of parents’ cultural orientations and parent-youth relationships

Kim Updegraff

Romantic relationships are normative in adolescence, and parents can play a role in supporting or restricting adolescents' romantic experiences.

November 1, 2024

Parental and Caregiver Feeding Styles and Practices and Consuming a Dietary Pattern that is Aligned with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans: A Systematic Review

Heather Eicher-Miller

This systematic review was conducted by the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as part of the process to develop the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030. The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA) appointed the 2025...

November 1, 2024

Mode of pandemic school instruction associated with distress among military and non-military-connected students

Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth

Because they experience unique risk factors, students from military families may have responded differently to remote school instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

October 30, 2024

Lability in parent–child warmth and hostility and adolescent externalizing behaviors

Kristine Marceau

Both longer term developmental changes (increases in hostility, decreases in warmth) and lability (year-to-year fluctuations) in parent–child relationship quality across childhood and adolescence have been linked to adolescent externalizing behaviors.