As an undergraduate student, Thomas Schofield was frustrated with the negativity he saw in his psychology classes.

“Everyone seemed to be talking about what everybody’s doing wrong, and dysfunction and dismay and doom and gloom, and how families and society are screwing things up,” said Schofield, an assistant professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State University. “I just wanted to see what people are getting done right … (Families) have been adapted for thousands of years and every culture has families, so why don’t we ask what they’re getting right? Because there must be some reason everybody has families. If they weren’t useful more than destructive, then we wouldn’t have them all over the place.”

Schofield wanted to focus his research on the positive aspects of families, and his new research shows parents who have a healthy relationship with their children can drastically decrease the risk of substance abuse for their children.

The study, which was published in the journal “Drug and Alcohol Dependence,” shows parents who know what is going on with both their own children and their children’s friends can help kids avoid hanging out with the wrong crowd and finding friends that lead them to substance abuse.

Schofield and his colleagues, Rand Conger and Richard Robins from the University of California, conducted their research based on observations from specifically Latino parents and children — as a way to understand if cultural differences created any different outcomes.

The group observed nearly 675 children twice, in fifth grade and in seventh grade, as the age range for a baseline for changes in the child’s behavior and when children may begin to show signs of substance abuse.

In a second study, Schofield also showed parents can have an impact on each other. As two people get married and have kids, Schofield said each person can, over time, affect the other person’s actions or idea of parenting.

“We have an effect on the people around us, and the people around us have an effect on us,” he said. “It’s OK to just embrace that reality and then make deliberate choices about who you want to co-habit and have a kid with. Because the reality is, they’re going to impact your parenting.”

The research, which Schofield conducted with Jennifer Weaver, of Boise State University, used data from two-parent families in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study on Early Child Care and Youth Development, and was published in the Journal of Family Psychology.

Schofield said he will continue research on both subjects in the future, and he specifically wants to control genetic factors in the next round of research on his substance abuse study. A grant in the future would allow his study to ask similar questions, “but have controlled or partialed out both parent and child genetic traits that would push them toward alcohol use.”

For Schofield, he said he wants his research to emphasize that a parent contributes more to their child than just their genes.

“There’s a very cynical view that floats around right now, and was prevalent about a decade ago, that the only thing parents really do for their kids is pass on genes. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors,” he said. “The current study controls for child temperament and suggests that no, actually parent behavior does seem to be doing something. I like that story.”