This study examines interactions of heritable influences, prenatal substance use, and postnatal parental warmth and hostility on the development of conduct problems in middle childhood for boys and girls. Participants are 561 linked families, collected in 2 cohorts, including birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children. Heritable…

Parental involvement (PI) in their children's schools has been shown to have a positive influence on the children's behaviours and academic achievement. The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of PI and relations of PI in schools to child externalizing and internalizing behaviours. Data were from the fifth-grade wave of the Early Head…

Youth who experienced abuse may have significant differences from non-abused youth in social and academic development. Often research including abused adolescents focuses on youth in foster care, which limits the ability to generalize findings outside the foster care population. The current study compared social development and educational…

Objectives: This article introduces a youth-reported measure (Essential Youth Experiences [EYE]) developed to assess the experiences of foster youth in their home environment and their critical relationships across a number of service systems. Empirically, the article reports on the psychometric properties of a 9-item scale within the EYE that…

Internalizing problems are among the most common chronic psychological dysfunctions in childhood, yet the factors contributing to their emergence and persistence in preschool-aged children are still less understood. The contribution of specific individual variables (e.g. temperament), and that of proximal environmental factors, such as family…

Poverty is a well-established risk factor for behavior problems, yet our understanding of putative family mediators during early childhood (i.e., before age 5 years) is limited. The present study investigated whether the association between poverty and behavior problems during early childhood is mediated simultaneously by perceived parenting,…

Controversy continues to surround parenting by lesbian and gay (LG) adults and outcomes for their children. As sexual minority parents increasingly adopt children, longitudinal research about child development, parenting, and family relationships is crucial for informing such debates. In the psychological literature, family systems theory contends…

By tracking longitudinally a sample of American children (n = 1,097), this study examined the extent to which enrollment in private schools between kindergarten and ninth grade was related to students' academic, social, psychological, and attainment outcomes at age 15. Results from this investigation revealed that in unadjusted models, children…

Parent behaviors moderate the adverse consequences of pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI); however, it is unknown how these moderating effects change over time. This study examined the moderating effect of observed parent behaviors over time since injury on the relation between TBI and behavioral outcomes. Participants included children, ages…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the unique and interactive contributions of infant negative emotionality and family risk factors in the development of internalizing-only, externalizing-only, and co-occurring behavior problems in early childhood. The sample included 412 infants and their primary caregivers. Interviews and…

Family processes and parenting practices help explain developmental differences between children in low- versus higher-income households. There are, however, few studies addressing the question of: what are the key family processes and parenting practices for promoting low-income children's growth? We address this question in the present study,…

The study aimed to explore predictors of treatment effectiveness in a sample of 79 children with ASD who received cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for their anxiety disorders. Severity of anxiety disorders and anxiety symptoms were used to measure treatment effectiveness and was assessed pre-treatment, post-treatment, 3 months-, 1 and 2 years…

Children who are iron deficient (ID) or iron-deficient anemic (IDA) have been shown to seek and receive less stimulation from their caregivers, contributing to "functional isolation". Over time, the reduced interactions between child and caregiver are thought to interfere with the acquisition of normative social competencies and…

Mothers of children with autism report higher levels of depression than mothers of children with other developmental disabilities. We explored the relations between child characteristics of diagnostic severity and problem behaviors, parenting stress, relationship quality, and depressive symptoms in 70 mothers of young children with autism. We…

Whereas US-based data have contributed to our understanding of family composition changes over the last decades, data on Canadian families are limited, and previous studies have stressed the need for in depth, longitudinal investigations. This article begins to fill this gap in the literature by providing a current and detailed portrait of family…