Family literacy programs, of which there is no shortage, need to be examined to know "if" and "why" a program is successful. Family literacy programs, like any literacy programs, must be viewed from a critical reflective stance. This paper aims to describe one way of evaluating the effectiveness of family literacy programs. The paper contends that the two main components in understanding a family literacy program are content/format and participants--both of these suggest that a program is more than the sum of its parts. It explains that the program which formed the basis of a study is the PRINTS (Parents' Roles Interacting with Teacher Support) Program, initiated by the author/researcher to meet a perceived gap between homes and schools in terms of parents supporting the literacy development of their young children. The paper describes the PRINTS Program; and to determine the transfer of effect across participants, a sample of 80 parents was chosen from those parents who had participated in the PRINTS Program. The paper states that to determine how the learning of one cohort group at one link of the chain affected the learning of the group following, a methodology labeled reverse learning effects was used. Because of the magnitude of the study, the paper reports only data on the parents' evaluations of the program. It concludes that family literacy programs are not just about one group of participants--they are about all the participants who are involved at different points along the chain of learning. (NKA)