About Us
Dr. George Holden
Professor and Project Director
GEORGE W. HOLDEN is Professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. After receiving his BA from Yale University and his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he was a member of the psychology faculty at the University of Texas at Austin for 23 years.
Holden’s research interests are in the area of social development, with a focus on parent-child relationships. His work, into the determinants of parental behavior, parental social cognition, and the causes and consequences of family violence, has been supported by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Justice, Department of Health and Human Services, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, The Timberlawn Research Foundation, and, most recently, the U.S. State Department.
He is the author of numerous scientific articles and chapters, as well as three books Parenting: A Dynamic Perspective (2010), Parenting: A Dynamic Perspective, 2nd Ed. (2015) and Parents and the Dynamics of Child Rearing (1997). In addition, he co-edited Children Exposed to Marital Violence (1998) and the Handbook of Family Measurement Techniques (2001). Holden is a fellow of the American Psychological Society (APS) and a member of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), the International Society on the Prevention of Child Abuse & Neglect (ISPCAN), and the Society for Research in Human Development (SRHD), where he served as president. He has been or is on the editorial boards of Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Emotional Abuse, Journal of Family Psychology, and Parenting: Science and Practice. He was a member of State of Texas Task Force to Address the Relationship between Domestic Violence and Child Abuse and Neglect (Senate Bill #434). He is a founding steering committee member of the U.S. Alliance to End the Hitting of Children (endhittingusa.org). (His twitter name is @DrNoSpank.) In addition, he is the President-Elect of the board of Family Compass, an organization devoted to preventing child maltreatment in the Dallas community. Dr. Holden received the Outstanding Mentor Award in 2010 from the Society for Research in Human Development, the Lightner Sams Foundation Child Advocate Prism Award in 2011 from Mental Health of Greater Dallas, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center on the Human Rights of Children, Loyola University, Chicago in 2014. He is married and the father of three adult children.
Contact Information
Telephone: (214) 768-4696
Email: gholden@smu.edu
Doctoral Students
Rose Ashraf is a graduate student in clinical psychology at Southern Methodist University. Ashraf received her BS in Psychology from The University of Texas at Dallas. While obtaining her undergraduate degree, Ashraf worked with Dr. Marion Underwood studying adolescents’ relationships with their peers. As a student at The University of Texas at Dallas, Ashraf received several awards including the Buhrmester Research Award, Santrock Travel Award, Dean’s Scholar Award, and the Mary McDermott Cook Outstanding Student Award. Currently, Ashraf is pursuing her interests in the parent-child relationship under the advisement of Dr. George Holden. Specifically, her interests include various parenting practices, the immediate and long-term impact on children, and children’s perspectives of these behaviors. Ashraf’s thesis involves an examination of Verbal Negatives (e.g., yelling, threats, verbal hostility) directed at children by their parents.
Contact Information
Email: rashraf@smu.edu
Margaret Smith is a graduate student in the clinical psychology doctoral program. She received her BA in Psychology with Honors from the University of Texas at Austin, where she studied parental involvement for treatment of anxious youth. Her broad research interests are parenting education and interventions. Smith has worked on a program evaluation of an attachment-based parenting program. She is currently pursuing work on mindful parenting and empirically testing positive parenting strategies. Clinically, Smith is interested in working with at-risk youth with a history of trauma. She has worked in community mental health, juvenile justice, and residential treatment centers.
Tricia Gower is a clinical graduate student in Southern Methodist University. Her B.A. in psychology was from McGill University. After graduating, she worked as a research assistant studying predictors of outcome for batterer intervention programs, including demographic variables and previous trauma exposure. Currently, she is investigating the mechanisms responsible for relations between adverse childhood experiences, adult intimate partner violence, and negative parenting strategies.
Undergraduate Students
Our undergraduate research assistants play an integral role in the research process. Research assistants have the opportunity to take part in coding, data management, literature reviews, as well as other miscellaneous lab tasks. On occasion, research assistants pursue independent projects and may present their findings at conferences.