Research suggests that women's autonomic nervous system responses to infant cries capture processes that affect their parenting behaviors. The aim of this study was to build on prior work by testing whether pregnant women's autonomic responses to an unfamiliar infant crying also predict their infants' emerging regulation abilities. Participants…

This longitudinal study examined the development of mother-infant objective and reported sleep quality and duration in solo-mother families (i.e., mothers who decided to parent alone) in comparison to two-parent families. We recruited 134 solo mothers and 161 married mothers during pregnancy, most representing the middle to upper socioeconomic…

Prenatal and postpartum depression are highly prevalent worldwide, and emerging evidence suggests they contribute to impairments in children's executive functions. Studies of maternal depression, however, have focused on the postpartum and postnatal periods with relatively less consideration of prenatal influences on child development. This study…

This study examined the development of caregiver mind-mindedness--defined as the propensity to see one's child as an agent with an independent mind--across the first 1,000 days of life. At four timepoints (i.e., third trimester of pregnancy, 4, 14, and 24 months postpartum), 384 first-time mothers (M[subscript age] = 32.55, SD = 3.63 years) and…

This longitudinal study examined whether changes in maternal emotional distress (depressive, anxiety, and parenting-stress symptoms) predict changes over time in subjective and objective infant sleep. We recruited 226 Israeli expectant mothers (M age 28.8 ± 3.3), most representing the middle-upper socioeconomic class. Maternal depressive and…

The effectiveness of Promoting First Relationships (PFR), a 10-week home visiting program with video feedback, was tested in a randomized controlled trial involving 252 mothers and their 8- to 12-week-old infants. Mothers were eligible if they initiated treatment after mental health screening (depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder…

Unraveling factors that influence parenting is of great importance, since parents play an important role in their children's development. In this study we focused on parental prenatal expectations, parents' gender and child's distress to limitations as possible influences on parental behavior and observed the longitudinal associations between…

Thirty-one children of gay single fathers and 28 children of heterosexual single fathers, all born through surrogacy, were compared with 31 children of gay partnered fathers through surrogacy and 30 children of heterosexual partnered fathers through in-vitro fertilization on their perceptions of self-worth and their father- and caregiver-reported…

Emerging evidence suggests that prenatal stress does not solely undermine child functioning but increases developmental plasticity to both negative and positive postnatal experiences. Here we test this proposition using the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort study while implementing an extreme-group (i.e., high vs. low prenatal stress) design (n =…

Many factors at the individual, relationship, family, and community or environmental levels could predict repeat teen pregnancies or births, but research on certain factors is limited. In addition, few studies have examined whether these factors can accurately predict whether teen mothers will have a repeat pregnancy. This study examined…

The children of teen mothers are at elevated risk for becoming teen parents themselves. The current study aimed to identify how levels of mothers' education were associated with risk of teenage childbearing for children of teen versus nonteen mothers. Through structural equation modeling, we tested whether children's environmental and personal…

We examined the extent to which new mothers' recollections of their mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood predict sensitive/supportive responses to their own toddlers in distressing situations both directly and indirectly via effects on mothers' social information processing about infant cry signals. Mothers' adult attachment…

This study examines interactions of heritable influences, prenatal substance use, and postnatal parental warmth and hostility on the development of conduct problems in middle childhood for boys and girls. Participants are 561 linked families, collected in 2 cohorts, including birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children. Heritable…

Maternal smoking during pregnancy (SDP) has been linked to poorer offspring executive function across development, but SDP does not occur independent of other familial risk factors. As such, poor and inconsistent control for potential confounds, notably shared familial (i.e., genetic and environmental) confounds, preclude concluding causal effects…

Fetal exposure to prenatal maternal stress can have lifelong consequences, with different types of maternal stress associated with different areas of child development. Fewer studies have focused on motor skills, even though they are strongly predictive of later development across a range of domains. Research on mechanisms of transmission has…