The global community is recognizing how "nurturing care" is critical for the developing child. The term encompasses health and nutrition, safety and security, responsive caregiving, and opportunities for inclusive early learning, all of which are afforded by loving parents and families and supportive communities. Public policies and…

The early home language environment, and parents in particular, form the foundation of children's language development. In this article, Dina Kapengut and Kimberly Noble explore the intersection of neuroscience and developmental psychology to explain how language experiences in the home, and the "home learning environment" more broadly,…

Parental sensitivity and nurturance are important mechanisms for establishing biological, emotional, and social functioning in childhood. Sensitive, nurturing care is most critical during the first three years of life, when attachment relationships form and parental care shapes foundational neural and physiological systems, with lifelong…

Including fathers is the next frontier for infant mental health. In this article, the authors describe the inclusion of fathers as equal partners in Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), an evidence-based treatment for young children experiencing or at risk for mental health problems following exposure to violence and other adversities. The authors…

The idea that parenting matters for early child development is now firmly recognised by policymakers. It is well established that parents' investments influence young children's development, and their chances in life. Parenting is one of the most important drivers of social inequalities in cognitive development before school. We also know that…

This study examined the bidirectional relationship between parenting and boys' externalizing behaviors in a four-wave longitudinal study of toddlers. Participants were 104 intact two-parent families with toddler sons. When their sons were 17, 23, 29, and 35 months of age, mothers and fathers reported on a broad range of parenting dimensions…

In an English sample of 1016 families, use of childcare was investigated at 3, 10, 18 and 36 months. Child behaviour problems and social competence were assessed at 36 months by maternal questionnaire. There was no effect of the amount or type of childcare on disruptive behaviour at 36 months, the main predictors being maternal minority ethnic…

Using data from the National Early Head Start (EHS) Research and Evaluation Project (N = 1851), the current study examined relations among cumulative family and social risk, assessed during infancy and the preschool years, and children's prekindergarten achievement, self-regulatory skills, and problematic social behavior, testing if these…

We examined the differences in conflict interaction between depressed mothers and their toddler and non-depressed dyads and whether these differences mediated the association of maternal depression with compromised child socioemotional development. Mother/child interaction was videotaped during a teaching task and during a free play task as part…

During early childhood, harsh and emotionally negative parent-child exchanges are expected to increase children's risk for developing later conduct problems. The present study examined longitudinal associations between the quality of parenting responses and children's distress reactivity during children's second year of life. Forty-seven…

This study investigated the influence of the intervention process on the effectiveness of a program aimed at promoting positive parenting. The study involved a homogeneous intervention sample (N = 120) of mothers and their 1-, 2-, or 3-year-old children screened for high levels of externalizing problems. The alliance between mother and intervener,…

This article examines how a sample of first-time mothers in the UK constitute childhood in general, and their own children in particular, in and through their talk about the mundane practices of childcare. The data analysed are drawn from a longitudinal qualitative interview study that followed a sample of mothers from late pregnancy until their…

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of an in-home parent management program for toddlers with behavior problems and developmental delays by comparing outcomes for a group of toddlers with developmental delays (n = 27) and a group of toddlers without developmental delays (n = 27). The majority of children lived in single…

Chaotic home systems have been linked with children's adverse psychological and academic outcomes. But, as they represent a departure from the suburban ideal of space, order, and family cohesiveness and stability, they should also be linked with low support for survival values. Using longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70)…

This study examined reactions of 1-year-olds and young 2-year-olds to being controlled by mothers. Mothers' supportive behavior predicted children's willing compliance. However, contrary to research with older children, defiance was also associated with variables linked to maternal competence, specifically, mothers' supportive behavior,…