Recent research on intergenerational faith transfer has argued that (a) parents have a direct effect on the adolescence acquisition of religiosity and (b) parental effects are mediated through congregation and peers. This study tests the channeling hypothesis, which argues that parental influences are mediated through both peer selection and congregation selection. It examines both direct and indirect effects that parental influence has on the religiosity of offspring. A national survey of 11,000 adolescents and adults in six Protestant denominations produced a subsample of 2,379 youth. Contrary to the channeling hypothesis, the research showed that peer influence and parental influence remained stable during the adolescent years. Parental influence did not dramatically increase or decrease with age. Some findings support the channeling hypothesis, particularly the mediating effect of parents through peer influences. The findings of this study are discussed in light of the contradictory findings from other studies.

Drawing on data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada, we analyze factors shaping new immigrants' month-bymonth employment trajectories over their first 4 years of settlement. We treat trajectories as multidimensional and holistic entities, seeking to predict the correlates of a set of typical pathways identified via optimal matching techniques and cluster analysis. Human capital attributes and household context shapes trajectories in important ways, but patterns related to bias and discrimination are not straightforward and social ties have little impact. 1

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Mattessich and Hill (1987) charted an historical overview of the family life cycle and development perspective in The Handbook of Marriage and the Family. That same year Evelyn Duvall presented a distinguished lecture at the National Council on Family Relations meeting titled, “Family Development's First Forty Years.” These academic works capture the historical foundation of family development theory by two pioneers of the theory and provide a reference point for discussing the history, current state, and future of the theory. In this article, Hill's and Duvall's historical accounts are summarized, contextualized, and used as a reference point to present four challenges to the future relevance of family development theory. Recommendations for future theory, research and practice are suggested.

The growing popularity of life course research has given rise to an increasing number of methodological and statistical techniques that incorporate life course elements of events, timing, duration stages, and sequencing. The primary objective of this article is to advance dynamic family theories through methodological improvement in the form of optimal matching analysis (OMA). OMA has been growing in popularity as a method for studying