Associations between grandparental investment and child outcomes were investigated using three waves of a longitudinal British Millennium Cohort Study that included children between the ages of 9 months and 5 years (n = 24,614 person-observations from 13,744 children). Grandparental investment was measured by parent--grandparent contact frequency…

Whether and to what extent kindergarten children's executive functions (EF) constitute promising targets of early intervention is currently unclear. This study examined whether kindergarten children's EF predicted their second-grade academic achievement and behavior. This was done using (a) a longitudinal and nationally representative sample (N =…

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) often experience lower academic attainment than monolingual peers. In this study, teachers provided ratings of English language proficiency and social, emotional, and behavioral functioning for 782 children with EAL and 6,485 monolingual children in reception year (ages 4-5). Academic…

Spending leisure time with deviant peers may have strong influences on adolescents' delinquency. The current 3-wave multi-informant study examined how parental control and parental prohibition of friendships relate to these undesirable peer influences. To this end, annual questionnaires were administered to 497 Dutch youths (283 boys, mean age =…

Associations between maternal reports of hours in child care and children's externalizing problems at 18 and 36 months of age were examined in a population-based Norwegian sample ("n" = 75,271). Within a sociopolitical context of homogenously high-quality child care, there was little evidence that high quantity of care causes…

Findings are presented on a U.K. study of 41 gay father families, 40 lesbian mother families, and 49 heterosexual parent families with an adopted child aged 3-9 years. Standardized interview and observational and questionnaire measures of parental well-being, quality of parent-child relationships, child adjustment, and child sex-typed behavior…

This study tests a model of reciprocal influences between absenteeism and youth psychopathology using 3 longitudinal datasets (Ns = 20,745, 2,311, and 671). Participants in 1st through 12th grades were interviewed annually or biannually. Measures of psychopathology include self-, parent-, and teacher-report questionnaires. Structural cross-lagged…

Three waves of data from a prospective longitudinal study in Sierra Leone were used to examine internalizing trajectories in 529 war-affected youth (ages 10-17 at baseline; 25% female). Latent class growth analyses identified 4 trajectories: A large majority of youth maintained lower levels of internalizing problems (41.4%) or significantly…

This study examined childhood antecedents and developmental outcomes associated with trajectories of mild and harsh parental physical discipline. Interview, questionnaire, and observational data were available from 499 children followed from ages 5 to 16 and from 258 children in an independent sample followed from ages 5 to 15. Analyses indicated…

High school students (approximately 14-18 years old; N=2,568) completed questionnaires in which they reported on their involvement in substance use and delinquency, and their perceptions of parental warmth, control, monitoring, and knowledge. Three alternative models were compared describing the nature of relations among these variables. Problem…

Data from 918 children from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care were examined to test the interrelation of attachment and attentional performance and 2 known risks for poor attentional performance: male gender and social-contextual adversity. Attachment was measured using the Strange…

Examined relationships among mothers' hostile attribution tendencies regarding their children's ambiguous problem behaviors, mothers' harsh discipline, and children's externalizing behavior problems. Assessments over four years demonstrated that mothers' hostile attributions predicted children's externalizing school behavior problems. The…