Family lifestyles project

The Family Lifestyles Project examined the effects of different attitudes, values, and child rearing practices in alternative family environments on children's health and physical development, cognitive functioning and elementary school performance, and on social and emotional development. The project followed parents and one child from each family, grouped according to four different family structures (single mother families, communal/living group families, unwed/social contract families, and two-parent nuclear families) over a 14-year period. Each group consisted of approximately 50 families with the initial number of participants totaling 209 children (47% girls; 53% boys) and 208 parents (all but one of whom are mothers). At the first wave of data collection, 141 fathers were also interviewed. The participants are White and predominantly middle/upper middle class (60%); also included are members from the working class (30%), and poverty class (10%). Child participants were assessed at 15 data collection points starting prenatally through 12 years old. Parent participants (usually mothers) were followed annually between 1973-1980 and again in 1985-1986. When parents were initially contacted they ranged in age from 18 to 35 years. A broad selection of measures was used in data collection including interviews, questionnaires, structured and semi-structured psychological tests, and naturalistic home observations. In general, these measures assess values, family organization and stability, attitudes towards pregnancy, aspirations for the child, social supports, child rearing practices, conventional and nonconventional family values and commitment to the counterculture, caregiving behaviors, physical aspects of the home, child's health, student grades, student cognitive scores, and family SES. The Murray Center holds computer-accessible data for the first 6 years of the project. The center expects to receive additional waves of data in the future.