Conference | Illinois Council on Family Relations

ILCFR 2025 Conference

Strengthening America’s Safety Net: Supporting Women, Children, and Families

ILCFR 2025 Conference & Theme

The Illinois Council on Family Relations would like to invite you to the annual conference on Friday, April 4, 2025. This conference will be a full day and hosted at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois.The faculty, staff and students in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences are very excited to welcome you back to NIU after a very successful ILCFR 2024 Conference.

The focus of this year's theme is about strengthening America's safety net. Women, children, and families need more support than ever before to balance the challenging demands of work and family life. In many families throughout the United States work and household responsibilities are unequal. Research indicates that employed mothers often bear the brunt of both childcare and household labor (e.g. Heilman & Calarco, 2023). Now more than ever educators, policy makers, and professionals who support families need to come together to work on solutions that allow individuals, couples, and families to thrive.

ILCFR 2025 Keynote Speaker

ILCFR is pleased to welcome Dr. Jessica Calarco a Sociologist and Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as this year's keynote speaker. She is the author of Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net (Portfolio/Penguin, 2024). Her award-winning research examines the intersections of policy, privilege, and power, with a focus on education and family life. Dr. Calarco has published four books, many peer reviewed research articles, and has written in a variety of major national news outlets like the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, and CNN.

Her previous books include Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research (with Mario Small; University of California Press, 2022), Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford University Press, 2018), and A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (Princeton University Press, 2020). She also writes the Hidden Curriculum newsletter and is a mom of two young children.

Conference Schedule & Registration

The ILCFR 2025 Conference is scheduled for Friday, April 4, 2025 from 8:30am - 4:15pm. Registration includes attendance to the all-day conference, keynote session, as well as breakfast, lunch, and snacks. The full conference schedule is now available. The full conference schedule is now available.

The cost for registration is $30 for students and $55 for professionals. If your organization is paying for multiple registrations, please send an email to Kristine Radtke so we can send you a custom invoice. Payment must be completed before April 5, 2024, or you will be asked for payment (e.g., credit card) when checking in for the conference. Please visit the registration page in order to register for the ILCFR 2025 Conference.

Hotel Information

On behalf of the ILCFR 2025 Conference planning committee we are excited to welcome you to DeKalb, Illinois and to the campus of Northern Illinois University. We know that many of you are traveling a distance to attend the upcoming conference on April 4th. We have reserved a block of rooms at the on campus Hotel at Holmes for the evening of Thursday April 3rd. The room rate of $79.00 plus tax includes many amenities for a comfortable stay and complimentary hotel parking. Complimentary parking is included in the room rate. Approximately five business days before arrival, the hotel will contact the guest to send them a parking invitation. When the guest completes the parking invitation, which will be sent by email, with the description of their car along with their license plate number, the invitation becomes their virtual parking pass. Please visit this link to book your hotel room and enter the Group #5169.

Wear Blue Day

On April 4th the same day as our conference, it is Wear Blue Day across the nation in recognition of National Child Abuse Prevention Month. ILCFR hopes to have festive pictures of our support for child abuse prevention. Please consider wearing blue at the conference and ask your colleagues and students to consider wearing blue to the conference. As explained by Prevent Child Abuse Illinois: "Wearing Blue connects you with millions of others across the country who support child abuse prevention efforts, strong families, and healthy children. Wearing Blue shows that you believe that 'All children deserve a great childhood because our children are our future!' Wearing Blue raises awareness and encourages others to support child abuse prevention as well."

The Illinois Council on Family Relations is an affiliate of the National Council on Family Relations.