Black South Africans are disproportionately affected by HIV compared with White counterparts. In their unique social context, South African families affected by HIV are vulnerable to adverse psychosocial effects. U.S.-based and emerging South African research suggests mothers living with HIV may experience compromised parenting. In the United…

Early school engagement patterns set the stage for short- and long-term academic behaviors and progress, and low engagement at school entry can give rise to dysfunctional school behavior and underachievement in later years. Relationships with parents and teachers provide a foundation upon which children develop the skills and behaviors that are…

Using data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (N = 1,364), the present study supports an agentic perspective; it demonstrates that mothers' depressive symptoms in infancy predict children's poor first-grade cognitive functioning because depressive symptoms…

Emerging evidence suggests that some individuals may be simultaneously more responsive to the effects from environmental adversity "and" enrichment (i.e., differential susceptibility). Given that parenting behavior and a variable number tandem repeat polymorphism in the 3'untranslated region of the dopamine transporter (DAT1) gene are…

Children who are iron deficient (ID) or iron-deficient anemic (IDA) have been shown to seek and receive less stimulation from their caregivers, contributing to "functional isolation". Over time, the reduced interactions between child and caregiver are thought to interfere with the acquisition of normative social competencies and…

Parental anxiety and depression are associated with antisocial behaviour of children. Several mechanisms may mediate this association. The aim of this study was to test whether parenting is a mediator of the association of parental anxiety and depression with the antisocial social behaviour of preschool children. The analysis was based on…

Two studies tested hypotheses about the distinctive psychological consequences of children's patterns of responding to interparental conflict. In Study 1, 174 preschool children (M = 4.0 years) and their mothers participated in a cross-sectional design. In Study 2, 243 preschool children (M = 4.6 years) and their parents participated in 2 annual…

Advancing the long-term prospective study of explanations for the effects of marital conflict on children's functioning, relations were examined between interparental conflict in kindergarten, children's emotional insecurity in the early school years, and subsequent adolescent internalizing and externalizing problems. Based on a community sample…

Research suggests that the relation between student-teacher conflict and children's externalizing behavior might be reciprocal, and possibly also between student-teacher conflict and children's social skills. Because children with externalizing behavior also tend to display low levels of social skills, we do not know if one or both of these…

On the basis of longitudinal data across 9 years, this study examined the contribution of sustained attention and executive function to the poor cognitive and socioemotional adjustment of school-age children whose mothers had depressive symptoms during the child's infancy. Mothers (N = 1,364) reported depressive symptoms across their child's…

This study focuses on the associations between family variables and academic and social school readiness in low-income Black children. Analyses drew from the National Institute for Child Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development dataset. The participants included 122 children and their mothers. Data collection occurred…

The present study: (1) examined relations between parent psychopathology and adolescent internalizing problems, externalizing problems, and substance use in substance-abusing families; and (2) tested family functioning problems as mediators of these relations. Structural equation modeling was used to estimate the independent effects of parent…

Background: Recurrent respiratory infections (RRI) are among most common diseases in school-aged children. Little is known about possible associations between RRI and children psychological well-being. Aim: To study possible associations between RRI in junior school pupils and their emotional/behavioural characteristics. Methods: The RRI group…

The authors tested a series of models linking spanking and child social-emotional outcomes using a sample of 3,870 families from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study. Spanking was measured by the number of times the focal child was spanked by the mother at ages 1, 3, and 5. Internalizing and externalizing symptoms were assessed using the…

Background: It is well known that functional somatic symptoms (FSS) are associated with anxiety and depression. However, evidence is lacking about how they are related to FSS. The aim of this study was to clarify these relationships and examine whether anxiety and depression are distinctly related to FSS. We hypothesized that anxiety contributes…