Study Overview
Our research program’s long-term goal is to expand our understanding of how parent-child genetic relatedness and family communication interact to influence child behavioral, physical, and mental health. Our guiding theory, Family Communication Patterns Theory, explains the importance of family communication to child well-being by describing the importance of creating family shared reality to family functioning. Because many attitudes and behaviors are genetically based, Family Communication Patterns Theory proposes that family communication is especially important to child well-being in families with genetically unrelated parents and children.
Our research particularly applies to the growing numbers of stepfamilies, adoptive families, and ART (assisted reproduction technology) donor families. As a first step in accomplishing our long-term goal, our current research focuses specifically on ART families. ART families allow comparisons of genetically related and genetically unrelated parents and children while holding confounding factors such as differences in marital status, infertility, prenatal environment, or adoption experiences, relatively constant.
Before undertaking a full test of our theory, our research team must fill two gaps in existing knowledge. First, because research with ART families has mostly involved infants and young children and/or taken place in Europe, recruitment strategies for US ART families with older children are needed. Second, no established measures of family shared social reality, a central concept in our guiding theory, currently exist. A pilot study of approximately 1000 ART families is planned to collect the knowledge needed to fill these gaps.
This first pilot study will inform researchers and the public about unique characteristics of ART families. It will provide recruitment models that can be used in future studies of ART-conceived child and provide measures and study protocols necessary to better understand how parent-child genetic relatedness and family communication interact to influence child health.