Professor
Program Head, Human Development and Early Childhood Disorders
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 1981
Family Processes, Early Childcare,
Family Influences on Development

Email: mowen@utdallas.edu
Phone: 972-883-6876
Office: GR 4.826

About Margaret Owen

Margaret Tresch Owen earned her M.A. in Human Development from the University of Kansas in 1975 and her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Michigan in 1981. She joined the faculty at the University of Texas at Dallas in 1995 after 12 years at the Timberlawn Psychiatric Research Foundation where she served as Associate Director.

Her research focuses on children's development in the context of family relationships and the implications of maternal employment and early child care experiences for children's development and family relationships. In these interrelated pursuits her research has contributed to our understanding of what constitute important interpersonal influences in children's lives, how family relations and child care experiences influence the young child's development, and how contexts of development are interrelated.

Some of her early work documents the influence of close, confiding marriages in the development of involved, sensitive mother-infant and father-infant interactions and, in turn, the development of secure infant-parent attachment relationships. It also addresses the detrimental effects of parents' marital conflict in the development of the children's attachment to their parents, particularly with respect to insecure/disorganized qualities in the infant-parent relationship.

Dr. Owen is an investigator in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, collaborating with investigators across the country in a prospective longitudinal study of the effects of early child care on over 1300 children and their families. The ongoing study, which has followed the children from birth through age 15, is guided by an ecological developmental framework that brings together information about the child care environment, the home and family, school experiences, peer experiences, and individual differences among children in understanding trajectories of children’s development across multiple domains. Findings from the first two phases of the study (through first grade) have addressed (1) characteristics of child care for infants and toddlers across various types and forms of care; (2) associations found between the use of child care and demographic and attitudinal characteristics of families; and (3) associations between child-care experiences and children's relationships with their mothers, adaptive and maladaptive social behavior, cognitive and language development, peer relations, qualities of mother-child interaction, health, and school achievement from preschool through middle school. In the fourth phase of the study we are examining the effects of early experiences and experiences over time on developmental trajectories through adolescence and the adolescent's health and well-being.

In the Dallas Child Care Project, Dr. Owen is studying developmental effects of relationship-focused child care for low-income ethnically diverse children in Dallas and variations in the quality of care provided by accredited centers serving low-income children.

Research Interests

My research focuses on children’s environmental contexts—particularly children’s home experiences and child-care experiences—and how they relate to the child’s development. I study linkages both within and across environmental contexts. Within the family, I study relations among mother-child, father-child, and husband-wife relationships, and I examine how qualities of these relationships are associated with children’s development. I have studied how a collaborating partnership between parent and child-care provider benefits parent-child and caregiver-child interactions and, in turn, relates to children’s developing competence.

Recent publications

Owen, M.T., Klausli, J.K., Mata-Otero, A., & Caughy, M. (in press). Relationship-focused childcare practices: Quality of care and child outcomes for children in poverty. Early Education and Development.

Belsky, J., Vandell, D.L., Burchinal, M., Clarke-Stewart, K.A., McCartney, K., Owen, M.T., and The NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (in press). Are there long-term effects of early child care? Child Development.

*NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2006). Infant-mother attachment: Risk and protection in relation to changing maternal caregiving quality over time. Developmental Psychology, 42, 38-58.

*NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2006). Child care effect sizes for the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. American Psychologist, 61, 99-116.

Owen, M.T., Ware, A.M., & Barfoot, B. (2005). Caregiver-mother partnership behavior and the quality of caregiver-child and mother-child interaction. In NICHD Early Child Care Research Network (Ed.), Child care and child development: Results from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, (pp. 224-230). New York: Guilford Press.

McCartney, K., Owen, M.T., Booth, C., Vandell, D.L., & Clarke-Stewart, K.A. (2003). Testing a maternal attachment model of behavior problems in early childhood. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 44, 1-14.

*NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2003). Social Functioning in First Grade: Associations with Earlier Home and Child Care Predictors and with Current Classroom Experiences. Developmental Psychology. 74, 1639-1662.