Session summaries
The program for the 2010 Annual Conference is coming together now. Speakers and topics for Plenaries and Special Sessions will be identified early in the year and posted shortly.

Confirmed presenters are listed below.

Theme: "Families and Innovation"
Innovation is the creation of new objects or ideas - it is the process by which people introduce,re- think, adapt, surprise, generate, transform, and otherwise move some part of the world in a new direction. Innovation brings attention to human agency and creativity, and the importance of recognizing our capacity to think, act, and react beyond "the norm" or what is expected. The 2010 NCFR annual conference theme is "Families and Innovation." Plenary sessions will highlight new research on family issues that push against conventional ideas and/or illustrate the gaps between what we know and what we could know if we did things differently. The intention behind this theme is to invigorate the work of family researchers, teachers, policy makers, and practitioners by creating a forum for intellectually rigorous exploration, conversation, and debate.

Program details

Scheduled speakers (as of February 2010)

Do Children Need Both a Mother and a Father? (title tba)
Timothy Bilblarz, Ph.D., USC, and Judith Stacey, Ph.D., NYU, lead this signature plenary session. In their JMF article in February, Timothy Bilblarz and Judith Stacey challenged the idea that “fatherless” children are necessarily at a disadvantage or that men provide a different, indispensable set of parenting skills than women. The article is based on their analysis of relevant studies about parenting, including available research on single-mother and single-father households, gay male parents and lesbian parents.

Innovations in Family Policy
Maria Cancian, Ph.D., Professor of Public Affairs and Social Work, and an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Center for Demography and Ecology, La Follette School of Public Affairs, School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison
 
Fireside Chat with Glen Elder, Ph. D.and Maria Cancian: A Conversation About the Great Depression and the Current Recession
Glen Elder is Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Research, and Professor of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill;  Co-director, Carolina Consortium on Human Development
 
Intersexuality in Families: Beyond Pink and Blue
Sharon Preves, Ph.D., Chair and Associate Professor of Sociology, Hamline University College of Liberal Arts, St. Paul, MN
 
Healing From Torture: Current Issues in Interventions
Jon Hubbard, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist and Director of Research, Center for Victims of Torture, Minneapolis, MN
 
Recent Scholarship on Issues of Diversity and Family Studies: Looking Back and Moving Forward
Panel from the forthcoming Journal of Marriage and Family Decade in Review.
 
Plus:
• Many more exciting special sessions
• Qualitative and quantitative methodology workshops
• More than 400 presentations in varied formats: papers, symposia, workshops, posters, roundtables and pecha kucha
• Pre-conference Workshops
• President’s Reception
• Newcomers Reception
• Celebrations and networking with colleagues