Examined association between residential density and parent/child speech in toddlers and parents participating in the University of Kansas Language Acquisition Project. Found that parents in crowded homes spoke with children in less complex, sophisticated ways than parents in uncrowded homes. The association was mediated by parental…

Parents of 30-month-old children were assessed on measures of affectivity, personality, and behavior. Parents of inhibited children showed lower extraversion, higher avoidance and shyness, and faster drawing times on a task that involved uncertainty than did parents of uninhibited children. (Author/BC)

In the current study, the authors tested the hypothesis that children of alcoholic parents (COAs) show deficits in social competence that begin in early childhood and escalate through middle adolescence. Teachers, parents, and children reported on the social competence of COAs and matched controls in a community sample assessed from ages 6 to 15.…

In this study, the author examines the patterns of leaving home in a sample of 93 participants and their parents. The quality of parent-child relationships, psychological symptomatology in adolescence and young adulthood, and attachment representation were assessed longitudinally from mid-adolescence to young adulthood. Attachment representation,…

A path model of genetic and family environmental transmission was fitted to published twin correlations and to general cognitive ability data from adoptive and nonadoptive families in which children were tested yearly through the fourth year. Longitudinal genetic correlations from infancy to adulthood were modeled explicitly, as were effects of…

Assessed stressful life events and psychological symptoms of 211 children and young adolescents and their parents. Findings supported a model in which daily stressors mediated the relation between major life events and psychological symptoms for family members. (RJC)

Interviews of families during winter and the following summer and winter revealed that (1) mothers who did not work during summer were more involved than fathers in parenting during the summer; and (2) in families in which the mother worked during summer, an egalitarian division of parenting was maintained during the summer. (BC)

Assessed the family environment and personality of 400 pairs of 59-year-old twins. Genetic influences on extraversion and neuroticism were related to genetic influences on the family environment factors of relationship and personal growth but not to the factor of system maintenance. (BC)

The current study examines relations of mean-level estimates, linear changes, and instability in income and family processes to child outcomes and addresses whether income, through its impact on family functioning, matters more for children living in poverty. Temporal changes and instability in family processes, but not income, predicted…

Prosocial behavior is important for the functioning of society. This study investigates the extent to which environment shared by family members, nonshared environment, and genetics account for children's prosocial behavior. The prosocial behavior of twins (9,424 pairs) was rated by their parents at the ages of 2, 3, 4, and 7 and by their teachers…

Mothers of about 100 toddlers completed the Toddler Temperament Scale when their children were 12, 18, and 24 months old. Other data sets were available for: (a) factors representing laboratory observations; (b) measures of mothers' temperament by mothers and by social workers; and (c) measures of the home and family environment by social workers.…

Examined longitudinally maternal emotional distress, parental behavior, and provision of cognitively stimulating activities as mediators of the association between family income and prematurely born young children's development. Found that provision of stimulating experiences in the home mediated the relation between family income and children's…

A 2-year study concludes that cognitive and developmental changes are less important determinants of children's television use than are family patterns and external variables affecting the opportunity to view. Subjects were 326 children within 3 months of their third or fifth birthdays at the beginning of the study and their families, most of…