Robert D. Laird Department of Psychology, University of New Orleans
Families & Teens Project	Contact Information
Conference Presentations and Handouts	Vita
My research interests center on the contexts in which children develop social and behavioral competencies with an emphasis on parent-child and peer relationships. I conduct research designed to understand family and peer relationship contributions to the development of social skills and problem behaviors. Specifically, I am interested in what parents do to influence their children’s peer relationships (intentionally or unintentionally) and what influences parenting and peer relationships have on the development of children and adolescents. In addressing these issues, I take the position that family and peer relationships are multi-dimensional and bi-directional, and that findings must be interpreted within the larger developmental context. My current research efforts center on the Families & Teens Project, an NSF-Funded research project seeking to better understand whether and how parenting and parent-child relationships are transformed as children become adolescents.