ABSTRACT
In the 1980s researchers concerned with the development of children in families addressed three key questions: (a) What is the process by which family characteristics influence developmental outcomes? (b) What contribution do fathers make to this process? and (c) How does the family’s social context affect family process, or affect the way in which family process contributes to human behavioral development. Each chapter in this section makes a unique contribution to one or more of these questions. As a collection, the chapters set the stage for family research in the 1990s. A central theme of this stage setting is that family differences that deviate from some normative view of family structure or roles do not in themselves constitute family problems.
