The current study used meta-analysis to ask whether age differences, sex differences, and family size are linked to differences in parental treatment, as well as whether effect-sizes were moderated by the way parental differential treatment (PDT) was measured, who reported on the PDT, and the domain of PDT. Between August 2015 and November 2020,…

The number of U.S. children living in households with extended families has greatly increased in the last 4 decades. This demographic shift calls for a reevaluation of the impact of household size on children's development. Household density (HHD), measured as the ratio of people to bedrooms in a home, has been shown to negatively relate to…

This study aimed to illuminate the implications of COVID-19 school closures for sibling dynamics among Latinx school-age children in the U.S. and to examine family and cultural factors that may have conditioned school closure effects. Data came from an ongoing study of Latinx families in Arizona that collected home visit and survey data…

Contrary to common stereotypes, loneliness is not restricted to old age but can occur at any life stage. In this study, we used data from a large, nationally representative German study (N = 16,132) to describe and explain age differences in loneliness from late adolescence to oldest old age. The age distribution of loneliness followed a complex…

Maltreating mothers often struggle to respond sensitively to their children's distress. Examining psychophysiological processing of own child cues may offer insight into neurobiological mechanisms that promote sensitive parenting among high-risk mothers. The current study used event-related potential (ERP) methodology to examine associations…

Social scientists do not agree on the size and nature of the causal impacts of parental income on children's achievement. We revisit this issue using a set of welfare and antipoverty experiments conducted in the 1990s. We utilize an instrumental variables strategy to leverage the variation in income and achievement that arises from random…

Examined factors associated with individual variation in false belief understanding in three- to five-year olds. Found that family size was strongly associated with false belief understanding in children who were less competent linguistically, suggesting that the presence of siblings can compensate for slower language development in developing…

This study examined role of shared family context in understanding differential parenting. Findings indicated that child age was the strongest child-specific predictor of positivity and differential positivity. Lower SES, marital dissatisfaction, and larger family size related to higher differential positivity. Children's temperament related to…