Margaret Tresch Owen, PhD School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences
Professor and Director of the Center for Children and Families
Dr. Owen’s research focuses on parent-child relationships, children's development and the effects of maternal employment and early child care experiences on children.
Her current research, the Dallas Preschool Readiness Project, involves collaboration between research teams at The University of Texas at Dallas and The University of Texas School of Public Health. They are studying the development of preschoolers’ self-regulation skills and racial/ethnic disparities in school readiness.
Owen’s work also documents the influence of close, confiding marriages in developing sensitive mother-infant and father-infant interactions and, in turn, creating secure infant-parent attachments. It addresses the detrimental effects of parents' marital conflict on children's attachments to their parents.
Owen was an investigator in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Early Child Care and Youth Development Study 1990-2007. She collaborated with investigators across the country to study the effects of early child care on more than 1,300 children and their families.
Owen received her PhD from the University of Michigan.
News Coverage
NIH Grant to Fund Study of Preschoolers’ Behavior
Prof to Direct Center for Children and Families
Updated: February 1, 2013
