Racial discrimination has major implications for African American families and their young children. Considered to be an adverse childhood experience, persistent racial discrimination can lead to toxic stress, physiological changes in the body, and increased morbidity. In this article, the authors review how racial discrimination impacts the…

"The Resistance, Persistence and Resilience of Black Families Raising Children with Autism" presents nuanced perspectives in the form of counternarratives of what Black families who have children with autism experience at the intersection of race, class, disability and gender. It intentionally centers the expertise of Black parents,…

Research Findings: Structural racism places Black families at heightened risk for stress, parenting challenges, and child developmental concerns. These impacts on families persist across the lifespan, though Black families also thrive in spite of the oppression they face. Federally funded programs like Early Head Start (EHS) show promise in…

Background/Context: This work contributes to the growing body of scholarly and popular literature on middle-class parental anxiety and competition to ensure their children's academic success. Specifically, this study provides a better understanding of the measures parents will take to obtain high status gifted and talented (G&T) placements…

Recent images of President Obama's mother-in-law, Mrs. Marian Robinson, caring for her granddaughters in the White House are a powerful reminder of the prominence that grandmothers have had in African American communities. The significance of the grandmother figure can also be seen in award-winning literature for young adolescents such as in Rita…

Objective: In an effort to develop targets for childhood obesity interventions in non-Hispanic-Black (Black) families, this study examined parental perceptions of stress and identified potential links among parental stress and children's eating patterns, physical activity, and screen-time. Method: Thirty-three self-identified Black parents or…

Research Findings: This within-group exploratory sequential mixed-methods investigation sought to identify how ethnically diverse, urban-residing, low-income Black families conceptualize positive parenting. During the item development phase 119 primary caregivers from Head Start programs participated in focus groups and interviews. These…

Federal law stresses shared accountability between schools and parents for high student achievement. Yet, there is minimal regulation regarding what parental engagement programs must actually look like. As a result many school districts fail to consider nontraditional constructs of parental engagement that honor the available cultural capital,…

Academic achievement gaps for African American children have been associated with disparities in early cognitive development, inequitable access to high-quality education, and father absence, often resulting in lower rates of graduation. Examining ways that may mitigate this problem is important to families and educators. The purpose of this…

Discrimination concerns and parental expectations were examined as mediators of the relations between gender and parenting practices among 796 African American mothers of 11- to 14-year-olds from the Maryland Adolescent Development in Context Study. Mothers of sons had more concerns about racial discrimination impacting their adolescents' future,…

Persistent disparities exist between African American children and their European American counterparts across developmental domains. Early childhood intervention may serve to promote more positive outcomes among African American children. The current study examined whether and how the Early Head Start (EHS) program benefited African American…

Contextual, mother-, child-, and father-level variables were examined in association with fathers' emotion talk to infants during a shared picture book activity, in an ethnically diverse, low-income sample (N = 549). Significant main effects included the rate of emotion talk from fathers' romantic partners (i.e., the infant's mother), infant…

This study illustrates the parenting experiences of a random sample of members of "Mocha Moms, Inc.", a national organization dedicated to supporting women of color who predominantly have elected not to work full-time outside of the home "(www.mochamoms.org)". Using modified grounded theory methods on 25 telephone interviews, we summarized the…

I focus on the role of preschool intervention and developmental psychology researchers in defining the concept of the "disadvantaged child" and in designing and evaluating remedies to alleviate educational "disadvantages" in young children. I argue that preschool interventions concentrated especially on compensating for…

With the tendency of low-income African American and Latino children identified at-risk for school readiness and school success compared to their early-childhood counterparts, Head Start personnel are challenged to examine the role of family strengths in the promotion of academic success for these populations. This article provides a rationale for…