How are family-centered helpgiving practices related to parent, family, and child behavior and functioning? This monograph is for those interested in the results of that inquiry and in understanding the extent to which causal statements about the relationships between family-centered practices and the study outcomes are warranted. The authors identified 52 family-centered helpgiving studies and used meta-analysis to combine results within and between studies to obtain the best estimates of the sizes of effects between the independent, mediating, and outcome measures. The theory, methods, findings, and implications the authors discuss will prove useful to many working with families and their children, including researchers, graduate students, university faculty, and program administrators. Readers will discover where the knowledge base is rich, where there are knowledge gaps, and where knowledge is especially lacking in terms of investigations of the influences of family-centered practices in different domains of functioning.