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. 

​Millions of children in the U.S. play a vital, but often overlooked, role in their families. These children of immigrants, known as "language brokers," help their parents translate job applications, medical documents and bills into their native language. They also help them navigate a completely alien culture. Researchers like Su Yeong Kim, in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, are debating whether being a language broker is good for children, or not.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

New research from The University of Texas at Austin shows that children adjust more poorly when parents react negatively in direct response to their child's crying, fussing and other aversive behavior than if the parent is negative in general. Children who routinely experience negative backlash from a parent are also less successful at navigating social situations.

Human Development and Family Sciences professor emeritus Karrol Kitt—vibrant, incisive, and perpetually poised to act—can distill her 38 years on campus into a metaphor that would be familiar to students who have taken her personal finance course. There, she talked about "the three-legged stool" approach to saving for retirement (stocks, bonds and cash), and now she says: "If my career were a stool, the three legs would include insurance regulation, student affairs, and education and research. I've had a wonderful career."