The Year 2000 Volume: A Decade or More in Review

Good science has difficulty with compliance, Y2K notwithstanding, in that innovation derives from noncompliance. Given the symbolic ending of a millennium, the last we are likely to view in our lifetimes (assuming that none of us are cloned), we do have an interesting opportunity to explore noncompliance and innovation. This volume is assembled both to review advances of the last decade and to move beyond this scope and consider a broader time horizon, both across the distant past and within the glimmer of the future. The year 2000 volume of the journal is designed to address two essential goals. Our first goal is to take stock of the field of family studies and to review recent advances. These "decade reviews" will compose the November issue of the journal. There have been three previous decade reviews, including the initial one edited by Carlfred Broderick, which actually spanned three issues of the journal (November 1970, February 1971, and May 1971), one edited by Felix Berardo (November 1980), and the most recent, edited by Alan Booth (November, 1990). All have had a similar purpose and have been highly influential in guiding the next generation of scholars and their scholarship. The 1990 series of decade reviews is still in print as a separate volume, entitled "Contemporary Families: Looking Forward, Looking Back," and to date, it has sold over 5,000 copies above its initial distribution to subscribers. Twenty-four articles have been commissioned for the November 2000 issue, and each is charged with summarizing in some detail the recent advances in the field. These reviews are intended to be comprehensive and integrative of advances in theory and research, to cross disciplinary boundaries where appropriate, and to forecast future needs. With a broad mix of authors representing the fields of inquiry so familiar to our readersand some fields not so familiar-we hope to water the vigorous seedlings of innovation. This should not be terribly difficult. There have been extraordinary advances in the last decade in theory, research design, and measurement and in the sophistication of analytic techniques, both quantitative and qualitative. They are not typically discontinuous innovations or sudden drifts from usual practice but rather represent a continuous growth, centered and built upon what has been reported in the immediate past. One has only to observe topics that appeared in earlier editions of this journal to appreciate the continuity in development. For instance, the first decade reviews of the 1960s included articles on marital happiness and satisfaction, parent-child relations, family policy, minority families, sexuality, aging and the elderly, and kinship. In all, 7 of the 14 featured topics included in the 1960s review are featured in the year 2000 review. This growth, precisely because of its continuity, because of its subtle drift of increasing sophistication, requires acknowledgment and celebration, lest we fail to notice the subtlety in its utter breadth and profound importance. In the very first issues of the journal, Ernest Burgess wrote about predicting marital success; others penned studies of parenting, individual development, and social structural influences on families, and we find that these fundamental issues continue to confront the field and to yield innovations in all regards. We simply know a good deal about people and their close personal relationships, and more important, we know a good deal about how to think about families (i.e., theory) and about how to apply that thinking (i.e., methodology). My only prediction for the next millennium is that there will always be more to know, and although this should humble us, it should not detract from celebrating the accumulation of fine scholarship in the production of practical knowledge. The November issue will also include a series of 15 reviews of 14 classic books. Marc Baranowski, our book review editor, and I designed this feature to call attention to the more influential volumes published in this century (but prior to 1990). …