The Family and Child Well-being Research Network has drawn together researchers representing a wide range of skills, experience, and knowledge in child and family-related research. The Network was conceived as a framework within which such diverse disciplines as sociology, medicine, economics, public health, psychology, and statistics could not only pursue their own individual research agendas but also collaborate in studies of greater breadth and social import.

The initial announcement of the Family and Child Well-being Research Network invited investigators and scholars from across the broad spectrum of child and family-related research disciplines to compete for a small number of research grants. These were awarded in April of 1999 by the Network parent, the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch of the National Institutes for Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). The total commitment to the Network is in excess of $10,000,000 million over a five-year period.

Within the Network's interdisciplinary framework, the members will be generating new questions and research pathways through consensus. The members also will collectively provide NICHD with a sense of where its greatest potential may lie for the support of future scientific inquiry regarding family and child well-being in our society, and how such inquiry might further assist in the evolution of useful social policies.