ABSTRACT
The importance of relationships to human health and happiness has been recognized for a very long time. Nevertheless, scientific efforts to describe, assess, and establish the significance of these entities have emerged slowly over the last 100 years. Deep-seated and widely held prejudices having to do with the impropriety of studying something so intimate and private as close relationshipsincluding relationships between children and their parents-still constrain progress. Research methods in this area also remain relatively unsophisticated, tempering support for scientific studies both within the behavioral sciences and the natural sciences more generally (Berscheid & Peplau, 1983; Hinde, 1997). Considerable progress, however, has been made since the mid-1960s.
