News

A letter from the chair of the Department of Human Development & Family Sciences, Stephen T. Russell, and the director of the Priscilla Pond Flawn Child & Family Laboratory, Amy Bryan. 

Just as a pebble dropped in a lake sends rings of water far from the point of impact, parenting can create a ripple effect. By interacting with their children in certain ways, parents can set in motion later outcomes that are sometimes surprising.

Our picture of the classic bullies and their victims – the pale wallflower perched on a gym bench at a school dance or a gangly bookworm hovering at the edge of a basketball game – is due for an update. According to Stephen Russell, chair of The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, "Leave It to Beaver-style bullying" isn't the main problem for today's kids. Instead, most social isolation is linked to characteristics like race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

Every couple has conflict, and new research finds that having good friends and family members to turn to alleviates the stress of everyday conflict between partners. In fact, according to the study led by The University of Texas at Austin's Lisa Neff, social networks may help provide protection against health problems brought about by ordinary tension between spouses.

The College of Natural Sciences welcomes a number of new tenured and tenure-track faculty members to campus this fall. Whether determining the best ways to help disadvantaged families become stronger or examining prevention-based interventions that help communities, these industrious and trailblazing scientists build on the college's reputation for cutting-edge research and research-based teaching.

Despite increased acceptance of same-sex marriage and workplace equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people, many LGB youth continue to have higher-than-heterosexual rates of binge drinking, according to a new paper published today in Addiction.

When children avoid school to avoid bullying, many states can lose tens of millions of dollars in funding, and California alone loses an estimated $276 million each year because children feel unsafe.

New research from The University of Texas at Austin published in School Psychology Quarterly highlights the hidden cost to communities in states that use daily attendance numbers to calculate public school funding. When children are afraid to go to school because classmates target them because of bias against their race, gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation, schools lose tens of millions of dollars each year linked to this absenteeism.

"Bullying is a big social problem that not only creates an unhealthy climate for individuals but also undermines schools and communities," says Stephen Russell, professor and chair of human development and family sciences at UT Austin. "We are interested in the economics of bullying and how it can affect a whole school system."

Professor and chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences Stephen Russell has received the prestigious Distinguished Book Award from Division 44—the American Psychological Association's Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues.

Before Elmo and Cookie Monster come alive on the small screen, childhood experts like Jennifer Kotler Clarke, Vice President of Content Research & Evaluation at Sesame Workshop, conduct experiments and review data to ensure these and other Sesame Street Muppets have the intended impact on children, parents and educators all over the world.

Mothers have been celebrated and honored in the US for the last century on a national Mother's Day. But we all also know that families—and perhaps especially mothers—are under increasing pressure, financial, social and otherwise. Supporting mothers is critical for moms, kids, businesses and communities, and research from the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at UT Austin is pointing to what can be done.

While studying for her degree in Human Development and Family Science (HDFS), Marilu Sanchez—one of the world-changing CNS students graduating this month—dedicated herself to helping others.

The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) has ranked the University Texas at Austin among the top 10 universities worldwide in three College of Natural Sciences subjects: Family Studies (#7), Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications (#1), and Mathematics, Applied (#5).

The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) has conferred its prestigious Fellow status on Stephen T. Russell, the Priscilla Pond Flawn Regents Professor in Child Development in and Chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

On this morning, newspaper headlines herald Ma Ferguson's last days in the Texas capitol, Charles Lindbergh's plans to bypass the Atlantic by air, and Charlie Chaplin's divorce and tax evasion woes.

Migration—within and between countries—can have profound effects on children and their families. It was economic migration in rural China and the impact on children separated from their parents that first piqued Yang Hou's research interest. Now a UT Austin human development and family sciences graduate student, she is studying the effect of social context on families from the two largest immigrant populations in the US—Asians and Latinos.

Thinking about how to connect with distant friends and family? Searching for how to drop ten pounds in a week?

Everyone's engaged in the Lab School's Pecan Room. Fledgling engineers debate the construction of a block tower. Bookworms explore bright pictures unfolded on laps. Clothing tie-dyers fiddle with the gigantic plastic mitts covering hands. Artists converse while snipping florescent straws with blunt scissors.

This week—on November 22, 2016—U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. asked states to reconsider corporal punishment in public schools, noting that this form of discipline "is harmful, ineffective, and often disproportionately applied to students of color and students with disabilities."

A recent policy report by associate professor of human development and family sciences Elizabeth Gershoff showed that corporal punishment is not practiced with an even hand in the nearly half of the states where it remains legal. Gershoff and colleague Sarah Font analyzed 160,000 cases of corporal punishment from the 2013-2014 school year and found that children who are African American, have disabilities, or are male are more likely to be hit.