This longitudinal study examined academic self‐efficacy and performance among Science/Technology/Engineering/Math (STEM) majors who are underrepresented in STEM education and occupations; i.e., women, specific ethnic minorities, and low‐socioeconomic status (SES) individuals. Performance on academic tests and self‐perceptions of academic skills were assessed at admission and graduation from a STEM mentoring program. At admission, women perceived themselves as academically weaker than men despite similar academic performance. However, by graduation, women's academic self‐efficacy was equivalent to men's. In addition, students with double STEM‐minority statuses, by ethnicity and SES, had lower academic self‐efficacy and performance than d id students with single STEM‐minority status. Exploratory analyses of change over time by ethnic/SES groups showed varying patterns of change that depended on the outcome variable. This study's finding of an increase in academic self‐efficacy for women and students with STEM‐minority status by both ethnicity and SES at graduation from a mentoring program is perhaps an indication of the positive impact of mentoring. The mixed findings at program completion for students with single versus double STEM‐minority status call for attention to the complex relationship between social disadvantage, academic self‐efficacy, and academic performance.

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Resilience can be defined as establishing equilibrium subsequent to disturbances to a system caused by significant adversity. When families experience adversity or transitions, multiple regulatory processes may be involved in establishing equilibrium, including adaptability, regulation of negative affect, and effective problem-solving skills. The authors’ resilience-as-regulation perspective integrates insights about the regulation of individual development with processes that regulate family systems. This middle-range theory of family resilience focuses on regulatory processes across levels that are involved in adaptation: whole-family systems such as routines and sense of coherence; coregulation of dyads involving emotion regulation, structuring, and reciprocal influences between social partners; and individual self-regulation. Insights about resilience-as-regulation are then applied to family-strengthening interventions that are designed to promote adaptation to adversity. Unresolved issues are discussed in relation to resilience-as-regulation in families, in particular how risk exposure is assessed, interrelations among family regulatory mechanisms, and how families scaffold the development of children’s resilience.

Despite policy advancements ensuring equality for lesbians and gay men, families headed by LG individuals still experience stigmatization and discrimination, both of which are chronic forms of adversity that can compromise healthy family functioning. Yet research demonstrates that many families headed by same‐sex parents are functioning well. Research using deficit‐comparison approaches has not contributed to a deeper understanding of variations in child rearing and child outcomes that may contribute to, or impede, healthy family functioning among the population of LG families. We describe a model of family resilience, grounded in minority stress theory, that may help inform the research agenda on families headed by same‐sex parents. Our conceptual framework of family resilience can guide the next wave of research with LG families and may help programs to promote key family strengths.

Ecological perspectives emphasize social network influences on child rearing, but do these effects vary with ethnicity, and are they mediated by parental well‐being? Low‐income parents (N= 500) of ethnically and ecologically diverse backgrounds completed a multidimensional hierarchical social map and measures of parental self‐esteem and child‐rearing practices. Consistent with prior ethnographic studies, American Indians had frequent interchanges with an interconnected web of kin; Hispanic1 parents had large, close‐knit social networks but a smaller number of people who provided emotional support; and Anglo parents had structurally diffuse but emotionally supportive networks. Within‐ethnicity regression analyses, covarying psychosocial risk, revealed that the affective but not structural dimensions of social networks were consistently related to parenting. Parental self‐efficacy was strongly related to child‐rearing practices across all ethnic groups, and mediated the effects of social support. Implications for the social ecology of child rearing and the central role of parental self‐appraisals are discussed.