Attachment studies mostly follow the Western middle-class model in theory and methods. To demonstrate that the assessment of children's caregiving context is an often neglected, but crucial prerequisite for attachment studies, we (a) conducted a literature analysis of attachment research in non-Western contexts and (b) empirically investigated the…

Despite the increasing prevalence of 3-generation family households (grandparent, parent, child), relatively little research has studied these households during early childhood. Using nationally representative data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Birth Cohort ("N" = ~6,550), this study investigated the associations between…

Family obligation is an important aspect of family relationships among families from Mexican backgrounds and can have significant implications for adolescents' well-being. Prior research and theory regarding youths' obligations offer conflicting hypotheses about whether it is detrimental or beneficial for adolescents' well-being. In the current…

Most children in the U.S. today will experience one or more changes in family structure. The present study explores the implications of this trend for child development by investigating the conditions under which family structure changes matter most to child well-being. Using data from the Maternal and Child Supplement of the National Longitudinal…

With data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (n = 6,449), a nationally representative sample of births in 2001, we used hierarchical linear modeling to analyze differences in observed interactions between married, cohabiting, never-married, and divorced mothers and their children. In contrast to previous studies, we…