About the Family Life Project

The University of North Carolina and Penn State University are collaborating on a large and exciting longitudinal study of children’s lives in rural counties. The Family Life Project team brings together researchers with expertise in education, medicine, psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography and human development.

Existing research provides important information about families and children living in large, urban environments, but relatively little knowledge about how families and children are influenced by living in smaller cities, towns, and rural areas.

The Family Life Project’s primary goal is to develop a better understanding of how growing up in such areas might influence the development of young children in the birth to three year age range. In particular, we are interested in learning about how differences in children’s development are linked to variations in temperament, family experience, community structure, economic circumstances, and ethnicity.

The Family Life Project is organized into two parts. The first part involved an in-depth appraisal of community characteristics that affect families and children’s lives. We also conducted intensive interviews and observations with 72 families distributed equally across Wayne, Wilson, and Sampson counties in North Carolina, as well as Blair, Huntington and Cambria Pennsylvania Counties. These particular counties were chosen because their residents live in regions ranging from small cities to remote rural areas. This project began in November 2002.

In the second phase of the project, 700 families with newborns living in the three NC counties and 500 families living in the three PA counties participate in a series of home visits, childcare visits, and phone calls throughout the child's early life. During these home visits, the families will be interviewed, observed in their homes, and asked to engage in activities such as playing and reading with their children at various time points: when children are 2, 6, 15, 24, 36, 48, and 56 months of age. Childcare visits include observing the child in his or her caregiving setting. Regular contact will also be made by phone to document important changes in family life.

We recruited approximately 15 to 20 individuals from the community to serve as the research team and to assist us with collecting information about the children and their families. This North Carolina research team is employed by UNC-Chapel Hill. The Pennsylvania research team is employed by Penn StateUniversity.

Specific focus on three individual projects will highlight the importance of specific processes central to children’s developing competence that together can help us understand the transition to school for children living in rural poor communities.

Project I - Temperament, Psychobiological, and Cognitive Predictors of Competence among Children in Poor Rural Communities. (Clancy Blair, PI; Mark Greenberg, Doug Granger, Mike Willoughby, Emily Werner, and Janean E’guya Dilworth-Bart).

The development of self-regulation in early childhood is understood to be foundational for later cognitive and social development and early success in school. However, knowledge of relations among cognitive and social-emotional aspects of self-regulation in childhood and the relation of child characteristics and early experience to developing self-regulation is quite limited. Project 1 has assessed temperament (with physiological measures of cortisol and heart-rate, infant-toddler observations, and parent and observer report) throughout the first three years of life. We believe that these early temperamental differences will be related to the development of executive functions (EF) of inhibitory control (impulsivity), working memory and planning skills. In turn, both temperament and EF skills will predict both early success in schooling as well as the development of early behavioral problems by parent and teacher report. Thus, this study will examine the pathways through which temperament (infancy/toddlerhood), executive functions (from ages 2 to 6), and early behavioral and cognitive competencies lead to pathways that are predictive of both school failure/success. In combination with measurements of the family from Project III and measurement of language and emergent literacy in Project II, this project can contribute unique information about the relationships among these constructs from birth through second grade.

Project II: Learning in Context: Family, School, and Extracurricular Influences on Low-Income, Nonurban Children’s Literacy Trajectories (Lynne Vernon-Feagans, PI, Robert Pianta, Margaret Burchinal, and Ann Crouter).

There is growing recognition that early school achievement, especially in literacy is critical for later school success. Further, school success is the product of a) prior language and cognitive skills and experiences before formal schooling; b) the nature and quality of the contemporaneous classroom instruction in the early grades; c) parenting experiences in the home, and d) outside school activities. No previous studies have prospectively examined these issues for children in nonurban low-income communities...Careful measurement of the proximal processes in the home from Project III , child EF in Project I, and language, school, classroom, and out of school experiences will be obtained as they contribute to literacy skills and academic success in the first three years of school. Particularly important in this project is the measurement of the quality of childcare/ Head Start experiences from birth through school age through actual observation of the care setting, the observation and transcription of bookreading experiences in the home by both mothers and fathers, and the observation of the quality of instruction in the elementary school classroom as children make the transition to formal schooling. Unique to this project is the documentation of children’s activities after school that may provide support for activities and social relationships in school. This project, in conjunction with the measurements from Projects I and III will be able to understand the early precursors to school success as well as the role of current instruction in children’s early learning.

Project III: Family Processes in the Transition to School in Poor, Rural Communities.
(Martha Cox, PI; Keith Crnic, Vonnie McLoyd, Patricia Garrett-Peters, and Roger Mills-Koonce).

Poverty is associated with stress and increased risk for poor child outcomes in the transition to school. Poverty is likely to disrupt family processes that are critical for establishing early childhood competencies associated both with cognitive and social-emotional development and success in school. Project III will test a developmental systems model of family process links to child social, emotional, and academic competencies. By combining our assessments of family processes with measurements from Project I (child characteristics) and Project II (child language and classroom contexts), we can address unique and critical questions about children’s development in rural poor areas. It is of particular importance to note that the study has measured both parental substance use (retrospectively in the prenatal period and prospectively since child age 6 months) as well as mother’s report of depression and sense of competence.

It is also our hope that community members will contribute their knowledge and expertise during every phase of this project, as we wholly recognize that input and support from the community is integral to the success of our project.