Looking Toward the Horizon: Present and Future in the Study of Family Systems

The past decade or so has brought a relatively new kind of research into the field of development. In the early 1980s, it was possible to cite both the impressive accumulation of knowledge about children’s development and the paucity of concepts and research concerning the family as an interactive system. That situation has altered considerably. The emergence in the mid-1980s of the Journal of Family Psychology, devoted to the study of the family system, is one important indicator of changing perspectives.