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.
Young adults who live with their parents find that their relationships feel more tense, with higher highs and lower lows. But they are no worse off as a result of these daily experiences than young adults living elsewhere, according to a new study from The University of Texas at Austin.
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."
In parts of the 19 states where the practice is still legal, corporal punishment in schools is used as much as 50 percent more frequently on children who are African American or who have disabilities, a new analysis of 160,000 cases during 2013-2014 has found. Corporal punishment — typically striking a child with a wooden paddle — continues to be a widespread practice in disciplining children from pre-K through high school, according to a new study by Elizabeth Gershoff of The University of Texas at Austin and Sarah Font of Penn State University. The paper is published this week as a Social Policy Report by the Society for Research in Child Development.
Although recent societal shifts in many parts of the world have led to an improvement in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, LGBT youth often face discrimination in their primary pursuit—school.
Austin Mayor Steve Adler has proclaimed June 15, 2016 Priscilla Pond Flawn Day in honor of the longtime friend of the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences, who passed away this spring.
There’s a silver lining to the Great Recession: new research published in the Journal of Gerontology Psychological Sciences shows that the addition of an adult child to your home may no longer spell trouble for your marriage. The study compared marriage quality from 2013 to that from 2008, before the financial collapse.
