Background/purpose. This study aimed to explore various demographic and relational factors affecting adolescents, with a particular focus on their self-esteem. Materials/methods. This study employed a descriptive and correlational research design to gather quantifiable data and examine the relationship between parent-adolescent dynamics and…

"Research Findings:" Playfulness is an important personality tendency with an important role in the well-being, mental health, and various other aspects of an individual's life. Previous studies have shown that the development of children's playfulness is related to parents' playfulness. However, limited research has been conducted on…

Relationships are the essence of human existence (Close et al., 2020; Condon et al., 2019). Relationships can be introduced to humans as early as conception. While biological parents can be expected to serve as the primary figures to cultivate connectedness and bonds, literature has shown a great disruption between a child and their biological…

Maternal depression is a global public health concern with far-reaching impacts on child development, yet our understanding of mechanisms remains incomplete. This study examined whether parenting mediates the association between maternal depression and child outcomes. Participants included 841 rural Pakistani mother-child dyads (50% female).…

Self-regulation in early childhood, including the ability to regulate one's own thoughts, behaviors, and emotions, are associated with a range of outcomes including academic performance, and social development. Research has extensively examined the effects of mother's parental involvement and parenting experiences, such as parenting stress and…

Biopsychosocial models of children's socioemotional development highlight the joint influences of physiological regulation and parenting practices. Both high and low levels of children's baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) have been associated with children's maladjustment, indicative of nonlinear associations. Negative or unsupportive…

We examined the longitudinal relation between behavioral inhibition (BI) and social anxiety symptoms and behavior and the mediating role of emotion regulation (ER). Moreover, we investigated the influence of parenting behavior on the development of ER strategies. Participants were 291 children (135 male) followed longitudinally from 2 to 13 years.…

In this article, Melanie Wasserman reviews the latest evidence about the causal link between family structure and children's economic and social outcomes. Going beyond the question of whether family structure affects child outcomes--a topic that's already been covered at length, including in previous Future of Children volumes--she examines how…

The manner in which mothers engage in emotional discussion, or reminisce, with their young children about past emotional experiences poses important ramifications for child socioemotional and cognitive development. Maltreating mothers may have difficulty engaging in emotionally supportive reminiscing. The current study examined the role of…

Many children, especially those from lower-income families, face considerable instability early in their lives. This may include changes in family structure, irregular family routines, frequent moves, fluctuating daycare arrangements, and noisy, crowded, or generally chaotic environments. Moreover, instability and chaos affect young children's…

The National Association for Gifted Children's Whole Gifted Child (WGC) Task Force was the Presidential initiative of Dr. George Betts (NAGC President 2015-2017). The WGC Task Force reflects a collective of expertise related to gifted children, gifted education, counseling the gifted, and talent development. Dr. Betts charged the Task Force…

Psychologist Diana Baumrind's revolutionary prototype of parenting, called authoritative parenting, combines the best of various parenting styles. In contrast to previously advocated styles involving high responsiveness and low demandingness (i.e., permissive parenting) or low responsiveness and high demandingness (i.e., authoritarian parenting),…

Children's development is a product of parent-child interactions and the interplay between children's environments and the individuals within them. Therefore, parenting dynamics and the context in which parenting occurs should be explored when examining children's development. This study examines community violence exposure as a contextual…

Tyese Wright and Michelle Banks have very different lives; however, both women are independent, confident, and successful, and both were identified as deaf by the age of 18 months. Perhaps their success is partly a result of their upbringing. Both had parents who learned sign language and who became intimately involved in their education. In fact,…

It was a hot and humid afternoon in 2006, 3 months after the opening of the Children's House at the Infinity Children's School in Hong Kong. A 3-year-old boy selected a table-scrubbing activity. He moved erratically and without purpose, accidentally bumping into another child and spilling water on the floor. Meanwhile, a toddler girl strolled…