Ordinary Families?: Learning About Families and Parenting From Normative Studies

Studies of representative community samples of families—normative studies—offer the potential to learn how families function and to investigate family impacts and influences on children.

In this lecture, some examples are described of what has been learned from family studies that have methodological, practical, therapeutic, and policy significance. These relate to multiple informants and self versus partner accounts of parenting behavior; concordances in parenting behavior; and the importance of the quality of relationships within the household. The lecture concludes with some comments on access to families, ethics, and the future of normative studies.