Project Parenting consists of 249 families, 123 adoptive and 126 birth.
All families who participated in the study are rearing at least one child with, or at risk for, a developmental disability.
Eighty-one percent of the parents in these families are married couples.
Fifty-nine percent describe themselves as Protestant, 31 percent describe themselves as Roman Catholic, and the remaining 10 percent describe themselves as either having no religious affiliation or as "other."
Eighty-three percent of the parents who participated are of Anglo-European origin, 14 percent are African American, and the remaining 3 percent are Hispanic or Asian.
The average number of years of education at initial interview was 14.1 for fathers and 13.6 for mothers.
Participating families had a median annual income of $40,000 in 1990, with a range from $3,530 to $615,000, and have an average of 3.1 children in the family.