Welcome
The Child and Family Ecologies (CAFÉ) Lab is directed by Dr. Janean Dilworth-Bart at the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The goal of the CAFÉ Lab is to conduct research that can better inform parents and schools about healthy parent-child relationships and safe environmental spaces for children to live in. Because social science research often oversimplifies or excludes the experiences of families and children of color, our mission is to make these families more visible.
Our lab focuses on the intersections of environment, family structure, and race, and their relationship to early childhood school readiness. Our current projects explore how young children’s self-regulation and academic readiness are associated with home, school, and outdoor environments, as well as coparenting quality and parent-child interactions.