The relation between social rejection and growth in antisocial behavior was investigated. In Study 1,259 boys and girls (34% African American) were followed from Grades 1 to 3 (ages 6-8 years) to Grades 5 to 7 (ages 10-12 years). Early peer rejection predicted growth in aggression. In Study 2,585 boys and girls (16% African American) were followed from kindergarten to Grade 3 (ages 5-8 years), and findings were replicated. Furthermore, early aggression moderated the effect of rejection, such that rejection exacerbated antisocial development only among children initially disposed toward aggression. In Study 3, social information-processing patterns measured in Study 1 were found to mediate partially the effect of early rejection on later aggression. In Study 4, processing patterns measured in Study 2 replicated the mediation effect. Findings are integrated into a recursive model of antisocial development.

Early physical maltreatment predicts adolescent psychological and behavioral problems, beyond the effects of other factors associated with maltreatment. Undetected early physical maltreatment in community populations represents a major problem worthy of prevention.

A longitudinal model of parent academic involvement, behavioral problems, achievement, and aspirations was examined for 463 adolescents, followed from 7th (approximately 12 years old) through 11th (approximately 16 years old) grades. Parent academic involvement in 7th grade was negatively related to 8th-grade behavioral problems and positively related to 11th-grade aspirations. There were variations across parental education levels and ethnicity: Among the higher parental education group, parent academic involvement was related to fewer behavioral problems, which were related to achievement and then aspirations. For the lower parental education group, parent academic involvement was related to aspirations but not to behavior or achievement. Parent academic involvement was positively related to achievement for African Americans but not for European Americans. Parent academic involvement may be interpreted differently and serve different purposes across sociodemographic backgrounds.Adolescence is a critical time for forming aspirations for the future, especially with regard to career aspirations (Schulenberg, Goldstein, & Vondracek, 1991;Vondracek & Lerner, 1982). School performance is a key mechanism through which adolescents learn about their talents, abilities, and competencies, which are an important part of developing career aspirations (Gottfredson, 1981;Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994. Parent academic involvement may ensure that adolescents obtain academic skills and knowledge that prepare them for considering higher level occupations (Young & Friesen, 1992). In fact, school performance and career Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nancy E. Hill, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Box 90085, Durham, NC 27708-0083. Electronic mail may be sent to nancy@duke.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript aspirations in adolescence are often correlated (Abu-Hilal, 2000;Mao, 1995;Trusty, Robinson, Plata, & Ng, 2000), and supportive parents are associated with the development of career aspirations (Hill, Ramirez, & Dumka, 2003;McDonald & Jessell, 1992; McWhirter, Hacket, & Bandalos, 1998; Young & Freisen, 1990; Young, Freisen, & Borycki, 1994). Although research has consistently shown that parent academic involvement is associated with achievement and achievement is related to career and educational aspirations, little is known about whether parental involvement in schooling is ultimately related to adolescents' aspirations for adulthood and the mechanisms of influence, especially across the middle and high school years. Thus, the focus of this study was on the following questions: Is parent academic involvement associated with career and educational aspirations? If so, to what extent is this relation explained by relations to school behavior or academic achievement?Parent academic involvement is largely defined as parents' work with schools and with their children to benefit their children's educational outcomes and futur...

Interviews were conducted with 336 mother -child dyads (children's ages ranged from 6 to 17 years; mothers' ages ranged from 20 to 59 years) in China, India, Italy, Kenya, the Philippines, and Thailand to examine whether normativeness of physical discipline moderates the link between mothers' use of physical discipline and children's adjustment. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that physical discipline was less strongly associated with adverse child outcomes in conditions of greater perceived normativeness, but physical discipline was also associated with more adverse outcomes regardless of its perceived normativeness. Countries with the lowest use of physical discipline showed the strongest association between mothers' use and children's behavior problems, but in all countries higher use of physical discipline was associated with more aggression and anxiety.

This study examined the associations of 11 discipline techniques with children's aggressive and anxious behaviors in an international sample of mothers and children from 6 countries and determined whether any significant associations were moderated by mothers' and children's perceived normativeness of the techniques. Participants included 292 mothers and their 8-to 12-year-old children living in China, India, Italy, Kenya, Philippines, and Thailand. Parallel multilevel and fixed effects models revealed that mothers' use of corporal punishment, expressing disappointment, and yelling were significantly related to more child aggression symptoms, whereas giving a time out, using corporal punishment, expressing disappointment, and shaming were significantly related to greater child anxiety symptoms. Some moderation of these associations was found for children's perceptions of normativeness.The study of parents' disciplinary practices has been central to developmental psychology for at least the last half century, tracing back to Sears, Maccoby, and Levin's landmark book, Patterns of Child Rearing (1957). Their study of several hundred White working-and middleclass parents in and around Boston in the 1950's provided the first detailed data on what discipline techniques parents use, why they use them, and how discipline is linked with children's behaviors. Theirs was one of the first studies to document that, contrary to predictions that controlling parents would have better-behaved children; in fact the opposite was true. In the ensuing 50 years, researchers have taken these same themes and tested relations among Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elizabeth T. Gershoff, University of Michigan School of Social Work, 1080 S. University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. Electronic mail may be sent to liztg@umich.edu.. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptChild Dev. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 March 1. Published in final edited form as:Child Dev. 2010 March ; 81(2): 487-502. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01409.x. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript them in increasingly sophisticated models. What the field has not done consistently is to expand the populations of interest beyond families in the U.S., or, in many cases, beyond White, middle class parents.The over-reliance on children and parents from North America in research on parenting has led to the criticism that the theories and recommendations developed from North American samples are not universal (as they are often assumed to be) and may not apply to parents and children in other countries and cultures (Dasen & Mishra, 2000;Rogoff, 2003). Cultures differ in the value they place on different child qualities and behaviors and in their beliefs about which parenting practices will promote these qualities and behaviors (Bornstein, 1995;Mistry, Chaudhuri, & Diez, 2003;Ripoll-Nuñez & Rohner, 2006;Super & Harkness, 1986). Cultures also differ in their evaluations of what parenting practices are consider...

In identifying environmental factors affecting chil-dren's development, researchers have typically focused on the quality of children's home or family environments. Less attention has been paid to environmental stability as a factor influencing children's well-being. This is partially due to outdated notions of children's living arrangements and to the fact that children in the least stable environments are often the hardest to involve and retain in research. Recent research suggests that there are associations between the degree of environmental instability and difficulties in adjustment, such that children exposed to higher levels of family instability (e.g., more frequent separations from parent figures and more frequent residential moves) show worse adjustment across a variety of developmental domains. Although there is still uncertainty regarding the causal direction of these associations (does instability cause children's problems or do the problems cause instability?), the sources and consequences of family instability clearly deserve greater attention in future research on child and adolescent adjustment.

In this prospective longitudinal study of 574 children followed from age 5 to age 21, the authors examine the links between early physical abuse and violent delinquency and other socially relevant outcomes during late adolescence or early adulthood and the extent to which the child's race and gender moderate these links. Analyses of covariance indicated that individuals who had been physically abused in the first 5 years of life were at greater risk for being arrested as juveniles for violent, nonviolent, and status offenses. Moreover, physically abused youth were less likely to have graduated from high school and more likely to have been fired in the past year, to have been a teen parent, and to have been pregnant or impregnated someone in the past year while not married. These effects were more pronounced for African American than for European American youth and somewhat more pronounced for females than for males.Keywords physical abuse; violence; delinquency; problem behavior; longitudinal Child maltreatment is an urgent public health problem for many reasons, not least of which concern the negative effects of early maltreatment on later social and psychological functioning. Of particular concern is the extent to which early physical abuse leads to later aggression and violence, that is, the extent to which "violence begets violence" (Widom, 1989). Although several studies have linked early maltreatment to later aggression and delinquency (e.g., Smith & Thornberry, 1995;Stouthamer-Loeber, Loeber, Homish, & Wei, 2001), the connection between early physical abuse and adolescent violence, per se, is less clear. In addition, much of the literature on the sequelae of early abuse is beset by methodological limitations such as the use of retrospective reports of childhood maltreatment and samples that confound maltreatment with experience in the child protective services system. In the present study, we use a prospective longitudinal design with a community sample in which abuse was measured through in-depth interviews to examine the links between early NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript physical abuse and violent delinquency and other socially relevant outcomes during late adolescence (at age 18) or early adulthood (at age 21). We also examine the extent to which the child's race and gender moderate these links. Early Physical Abuse and Later Aggression and DelinquencyImportant insight into the links between early physical abuse and later aggression and delinquency has come from a series of longitudinal studies drawing on 676 abused or neglected children, according to substantiated cases recorded from 1967 to 1971, and 520 matched control children drawn from birth records and school records (Widom, 1992(Widom, , 1998. All participants were interviewed between 1989 and 1995 when they were, on average, 29 years old. Participants who had been abused or neglected were 38% more likely than the matched controls to have been arrested for a violent crime (Wi...

Background-Parents' use of physical discipline has generated controversy related to concerns that its use is associated with adjustment problems such as aggression and delinquency in children. However, recent evidence suggests that there are ethnic differences in associations between physical discipline and children's adjustment. This study examined race as a moderator of the link between physical discipline and adolescent externalizing behavior problems, extending previous research beyond childhood into adolescence and considering physical discipline at multiple points in time.