Despite increasing interest in the effects of parenting stress on children and families, many questions remain regarding the nature of parenting stress and the mechanism through which stress exerts its influence across time. In this study, cumulative parenting stress was assessed across the preschool period in a sample of 125 typically developing…

This study provides an empirical description of the dimensions of community values, beliefs, and opinions through a survey conducted in the Pueblo Indian community of Zuni in New Mexico. The sample was composed of 200 randomly chosen community members ranging from 21 to 103 years old. A principal component factor analysis was conducted, as well as…

New Jersey, like many other states, is experiencing a significant influx of new immigrants--from countries such as India, Pakistan, China, Russia, Poland, Nigeria, Liberia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, and Haiti. In addition, New Jersey remains one of the most segregated states in the country, educating the majority of its African-American families…

In the process of choosing early out-of-home care and education for their young children, 3 mothers living in a working class neighborhood in New York City coconstructed understandings of care and education settings and practices offered within their community. A feminist-pragmatist framework guided the analysis of data that highlighted the…

This paper comments on a critical review of cohort studies on PCB-related neurodevelopmental deficit in young children by D.V. Cicchetti, A.S. Kaufman, and S.S. Sparrow (CKS). Major points of criticism of CKS, namely alleged violation of statistical principles, presumed lack of clinical significance of findings, and alleged insufficient control of…

Open-ended questions were used to obtain narrative accounts of what makes a girl (or a boy) popular (or unpopular) at school. The participants were 489 African American students in Grades 1, 4, and 7 recruited from high-risk inner-city neighborhoods. Appearance and self-presentation were mentioned the most in Grades 4 and 7. Prosocial…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether music instruction was related to significant gains in the development of young children's phonemic awareness, particularly in their phoneme-segmentation fluency. Beginning in January 2004 and continuing through the end of April 2004, each of four intact classrooms of kindergarten children (n =…

Many early childhood teachers report lacking confidence to teach science. Today, science education is defined as "doing science", as opposed to memorization of facts (Seefeldt & Galper, 2002). This paper discusses developmentally appropriate practices in the context of teaching science. Knowledge of child development, individual differences and…

The study presented here examines the influence of social and family contexts on the self-esteem of Mexican (n = 287), Mexican American (n = 558), and Puerto Rican (n = 212) children. Using data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth, tests of a longitudinal path model show significant social and family effects on the cognitive…

This study looks at how the environment in an infant child care setting can have an impact on young children's humourous experiences and therefore their learning and development. With the use of multiple qualitative methods, participant and non-participant observations, journal writing, videotaping, interviewing, and document review this study…

Background: The present study was designed to investigate the association between visual exploratory behaviour in early infancy, novelty seeking in adolescence, and the dopamine D4 receptor (DRD4) genotype. Methods: Visual attention was measured in 232 three-month-old infants (114 males, 118 females) from a prospective longitudinal study using a…

Aims: To compare siblings of children with autism (SIBS-A) and siblings of children with typical development (SIBS-TD) at 4 and 14 months of age. Methods: At 4 months, mother-infant interactional synchrony during free play, infant gaze and affect during the still-face paradigm, and infant responsiveness to a name-calling paradigm were examined (n…

Background: Findings are presented of the second phase of a longitudinal study of families created through surrogacy. Methods: At the time of the child's 2nd birthday, 37 surrogacy families were compared with 48 egg donation families and 68 natural conception families on standardised interview and questionnaire measures of the psychological…

This paper reviews the school-family partnership in Hong Kong in the past decade. The typology of Epstein's six types of partnership is adopted as the analytical framework. The results show that there has been an increase in shared experience in school education among various stakeholders. Schools have become more convinced that they have a role…

Western preschools and schools find it important to nurture democracy. However, in order to succeed in nurturing democracy, democratic ideas must be implemented in all situations. Education alone, therefore, is not enough. All children must experience real influence over their situations, and experience the opportunity for self-determination in…