Family is the primary learning environment for children. Parents are children's first social network. Prior to and concurrent with school education, the critical influence of parental expectation eventually permeates into all aspects of an individual's life. However, the subject of family relationships is rarely addressed within school curricula.…

Developmental research during COVID-19 suggests that pandemic-related disruptions in family relationships are associated with children's mental health. Most of this research has focused on 1 child per family, thereby obfuscating patterns that are differentially operative at the family-wide (i.e., between-family) versus child-specific (i.e.,…

This research examined the idea that children's inferences about their parents' goals for them is a possible mechanism by which parents' responses to their children's performance contribute to children's psychological functioning. American (N = 447; M[subscript age] = 13.24 years; 49% girls; 95% European American) and Chinese (N = 439; M[subscript…

In the past few decades, literature has consistently suggested that bilingual children are at risk for academic failure due to their limited language skills. However, many of these studies included underprivileged bilingual children, and few of them attempted to disentangle the effects of bilingualism from the effects of socio-economic status.…

Heritage language maintenance can be very challenging for diaspora communities worldwide. The role of technology on heritage language maintenance has recently started to spark the interest of researchers as a new emerging field but it still needs a lot of exploration. This exploratory study aims to provide an insight into Macedonian diaspora…

Theoretically framed at the intersection of language, identity, and transnationalism, this chapter examines how two Syrian refugee-background parents negotiated narrating and writing a bilingual and multimodal fictional story commonly used in Syria by parents as a bedtime story. Primary data included two audio recorded interviews: an oral…

As a core component of culture, family influence plays an essential role on youths and individuals who grow up in families of Chinese cultural heritage in North America. This influence, overtly and covertly, shapes many aspects of these individuals' life experiences, including their work-life experiences and vocational behaviours. In this article…

Maternal scaffolding and four-year-old children's linguistic skills were examined during toy play. Participants were 21 American-English monolingual and 21 Thai monolingual mother-child dyads. Results revealed cross-cultural differences in conversation styles between the two groups. American dyads adopted a high-elaborative style relative to Thai…

In the summer months of 2018, the world watched as thousands of young children were separated from their families and detained by immigration officials at the border between the United States and Mexico. On television screens and smartphone updates, it seemed the world collectively gasped at this cruel familial trauma and asked, "what can we…

This paper aims to encourage a broader dialogue about how Lao immigrant parents from low socio-economic environment are able to support their children's development. It discusses how despite the challenges that immigrant Lao parents face daily (i.e., lack of English proficiency, mental health issues, and lack of familiarity with U.S. schools),…

Purpose: The language that children hear early in life is associated with their speech-language outcomes. This line of research relies on naturalistic observations of children's language input, often captured with daylong audio recordings. However, the large quantity of data that daylong recordings generate requires novel analytical tools to…

The seven papers in this issue address a variety of challenges that parents in several different cultural places encounter as they do their best to ensure their children's safe, happy, and successful development from infancy through middle childhood: infant sleep, developmental agendas, temperament, preschools, academic success, and learning to be…

The purpose of this study was to examine the factor structure of the Family Involvement Questionnaire--Elementary Version with families in Belize. Participants were 185 primary caregivers of children in primary education settings in Belize. Caregivers were given the Family Involvement Questionnaire--Elementary Version to measure their educational…

The demographic composition in the United States has undergone shifts due to increasing immigration. This may change the way we think about families and children in the United States, and it is important to include immigrant families in parenting research. This study examined the relations between parent-child relationships and preschool-aged…

In this commentary, Sagi-Schwartz evaluates the article by Beckh and Becker-Stoll (2016) on attachment relationships with non-parental caregivers and how it may contribute to public child care. Beckh and Becker-Stoll first describe important background about research on early parent-child relationships, and how their nature and quality might…