Handbook of Family Theories: A Content-Based Approach

Organized by content areas rather than by theory, this comprehensive, accessible handbook helps readers gain greater insight into how key theories have impacted today’s family research. Most competing books, organized by theory, do not provide a strong sense of the links between theory and research. Using the 2000 and 2010 decade-in-review issues of the Journal of Marriage and Family as a resource, the book addresses the most important topics impacting family studies research today.

The introductory chapter, written by the editors, provides an overview of the role family theories have had on the field. This chapter is followed by 23 others on family-related content areas written by renowned scholars in the field. The book is organized around the most important domains in the field: parenting and parent-child relationships, romantic relationships, conflict and aggression, structural variation and transitions, demographic variations, and families and extra-familial institutions. Each of the contributors describes how theory has been used to generate new knowledge in the field and suggests future directions for how theory may be used to extend our knowledge base. The book helps readers acquire a working knowledge of the key family science theories, findings, and issues and understand how researchers make use of these theories in their empirical efforts.

To maximize accessibility, each of the renowned contributors addresses a common set of issues in their chapter:
• Introduction to the content area
• Review of the key topics, issues, and findings
• A description of each of the major theories used to study that particular content area
• Limitations of the theories
• Suggestions for better use of the theories and/or new theoretical advances
• Conclusions about future theoretical developments.

An ideal text for graduate and/or advanced undergraduate family theories courses, this book’s unique organization also lends itself to use in content-based family studies/science courses taught in family studies, human development, psychology, sociology, communication, education, and nursing. Due to its comprehensive and current approach, the book also appeals to scholars and researchers in these areas.

Mark A. Fine received a PhD from the Ohio State University in Clinical Psychology and is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was editor of Family Relations from 1993 to 1996 and the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships from 1999 to 2004. He has published almost 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as nine books. In 2000, he was selected as a fellow of the National Council on Family Relations. He is on the editorial boards of nine peer-review journals in family studies, relationship science, and human development. 

Frank D. Fincham obtained a doctoral degree in Social Psychology as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and then completed postdoctoral training in clinical psychology at Stony Brook University. He is currently Eminent Scholar and Director of the Family Institute at Florida State University. The author of more than 200 publications, his research has been widely recognized by numerous awards, including the Berscheid-Hatfield Award for “sustained, substantial, and distinguished contributions to the field of personal relationships” from the International Network on Personal Relationships and the President’s Award for "distinguished contributions to psychological knowledge" from the British Psychological Society. A Fellow of five different professional societies, Frank has been listed among the top 25 psychologists in the world in terms of impact (defined as number of citations per paper).