Aggression in early childhood has been found to predict future psychopathology, academic problems, and delinquency. In a sample of 136 mother-child pairs (M[subscript age] = 4 years, 11 months, SD = 11 months, 58% boys) associations among mothers' responding with distress to children's negative emotions, children's emotional control, and…

Emotion regulation is essential to cognitive, social, and emotional development and difficulties with emotion regulation portend future socioemotional, academic, and behavioral difficulties. There is growing awareness that many developmental outcomes previously thought to begin their development in the postnatal period have their origins in the…

Employing a multi-method approach, we investigated observed and parent-rated child behavioral inhibition (BI) and maternal reports of their own negative affectivity (NA) as predictors of young children's internalizing problems. Participants were 201 children who were siblings between 2.5 and 5.5 years of age (mean = 3.86, standard deviation =…

This article focuses upon perceptions of girls' education in the family context within which decisions around children's education and opportunities are made. The article presents a framework showing how parental attitudes to girls' education are shaped by an objective logic framed by the notion of returns, relating to potential benefits of…

The current study investigates associations among marital satisfaction, family emotional expressiveness, the home learning environment, and preschool-aged children's emergent literacy skills among 385 Midwestern mothers and their children. Path analyses examined how marital satisfaction related to emotional expressiveness in the home and whether…

Lower levels of parent-child affective flexibility indicate risk for children's problem outcomes. This short-term longitudinal study examined whether maternal depressive symptoms were related to lower levels of dyadic affective flexibility and positive affective content in mother-child problem-solving interactions at age 3.5?years…

The "postpartum blues" is a mild, predictable mood disturbance occurring within the first several days following childbirth. Previous analyses of the "blues" symptom structure yielded inconclusive findings, making reliable assessment a significant methodological limitation. The current study aimed to explicate the symptom…

Interactions between reactive and regulatory dimensions of temperament may be particularly relevant to children's adjustment but are examined infrequently. This study investigated these interactions by examining effortful control as a moderator of the relations of fear and frustration reactivity to children's social competence, internalizing, and…

Recent research has demonstrated that social responsiveness (comprised of social awareness, social information processing, reciprocal social communication, social motivation, and repetitive/restricted interests) is continuously distributed within the general population. In the present study, we consider temperament as a co-occurring source of…

Objective: Prior research has established links between child social functioning and both parenting and child ADHD severity; however, research examining the way that these variables work together is lacking. The current article aims to test three possible models (main effects, mediation, and moderation) by which ADHD severity and positive and…

The current study is one of the first prospective examinations of longitudinal associations between observed father caregiving behaviors and child cortisol reactivity and regulation in response to emotional arousal. Observations of father and mother caregiving behaviors and child cortisol levels in response to challenges at 7 months and 24 months…

This study compared Mainland Chinese, Chinese American and European American mothers' self-reported emotional expression within the family. Mothers of 3-year-old European American (n = 40), Chinese American (n = 39) and Mainland Chinese (n = 36) children (n = 20 girls per group) completed the Self-Expressiveness in the Family Questionnaire (SEFQ),…

The relationships among communication, modeling, body image dissatisfaction, and maladaptive eating attitudes and behaviors in preadolescent girls were investigated in a cross-sectional study of 69 girls in fourth through sixth grade and their mothers. Participants completed questionnaires assessing familial and peer influences, body image…

Although there is growing consensus that parental stress is a risk factor in child development, longitudinal studies of its effects are few. This study tested a sample of 231 mother-child dyads in terms of whether the relations between the global experience of stress in mothers (perceived stress scale) and child temperamental characteristics…

Semistructured interview and questionnaire were used to determine attitudes of 100 mothers and fathers toward their young children's creation of imaginary companions. Results indicated that parents did not hold positive attitudes about their children playing with imaginary companions. Many reported they would react neutrally to such play and a…