The Rochester Center for Research on Children and Families (RCRCF) is directed by
Dr. Patrick Davies, Dr. Melissa Sturge-Apple, and Dr. Zhi Li. We are affiliated with
the department of Psychology at the University of Rochester and are also based at the
Mount Hope Family Center.
The Rochester Center for Research on Children and Families seeks to better understand
children’s adaptation and maladaptation within the context of family relationships and
processes. Informed by the developmental psychopathology emphasis on risk and resilience, our work is focused on elucidating the costs and benefits of children’s specific patterns of responding to family processes. The center currently houses several projects, including several large scale, multi-method, multi-level longitudinal research studies funded by the National Institutes of Health.
RCRCF takes on
SRCD ’25 in
Minneapolis!
As a more specific guide to characterizing how children adjust to family challenges,
our theoretical models and research studies are framed by ethological and evolutionary
conceptualizations. Using these conceptualizations affords an opportunity to carefully:
- Distinguish between different patterns of children’s adaptation to specific family
(e.g., interparental, parent-child, sibling) and interpersonal
(e.g., peers, friendships) contexts. - Understand the developmental advantages and disadvantages of adopting each of these
response patterns for long-term mental and physical health. - Identify the earlier child attributes (e.g., temperament) that serve as precursors
to these different patterns of coping in family and interpersonal relationships.
We utilize this approach to address a variety of questions of high public health
significance, including understanding the nature, origins, and health sequelae of
children’s individual differences in their reactivity to different forms of family
conflict (e.g., interparental, sibling), parent-child attachment quality, and stressful
peer relationships. A guiding theme across the areas is an emphasis on understanding
how differences in children’s success of achieving security and safety in these
different interpersonal contexts may inform pathways between earlier family experiences and children’s psychological and physical functioning from infancy through adolescence.
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