In this article a conceptual model for the study of child development in minority populations in the United States is proposed. In support of the proposed model, this article includes (a) a delineation and critical analysis of mainstream theoretical frameworks in relation to their attention and applicability to the understanding of developmental processes in children of color and of issues at the intersection of social class, culture, ethnicity, and race, and (b) a description and evaluation of the conceptual frameworks that have guided the extant literature on minority children and families. Based on the above considerations, an integrative conceptual model of child development is presented, anchored within social stratification theory, emphasizing the importance of racism, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, and segregation on the development of minority children and families.

In this article a conceptual model for the study of child development in minority populations in the United States is proposed. In support of the proposed model, this article includes (a) a delineation and critical analysis of mainstream theoretical frameworks in relation to their attention and applicability to the understanding of developmental processes in children of color and of issues at the intersection of social class, culture, ethnicity, and race, and (b) a description and evaluation of the conceptual frameworks that have guided the extant literature on minority children and families. Based on the above considerations, an integrative conceptual model of child development is presented, anchored within social stratification theory, emphasizing the importance of racism, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, and segregation on the development of minority children and families.

This study examined the relationships of stress and social support to maternal attitudes and early mother-infant interactive behavior. 52 mother-premature infant pairs and 53 mother-full-term infant pairs were seen for structured home interviews at 1 month, and behavioral interactions at 4 months. Maternal life stress, social support, life satisfaction, and satisfaction with parenting were assessed at the 1-month home visit. Although no group differences were found, both stress and support significantly predicted maternal attitudes at 1 month and interactive behavior at 4 months when data were pooled. Mothers with greater stress were less positive in their attitudes and behavior, while mothers with greater support were significantly more positive. Intimate support proved to have the most general positive effects. Additionally, social support moderated the adverse effects of stress on mother's life satisfaction and on several behavioral variables. Maternal social support was further found to have several significant effects on infant interactive behavior. Results are discussed in terms of the ecological significance of social support to parenting and infants' early development.

SYNOPSISObjective. We investigated the role of mothers' elevated depressive symptoms on scaffolding and availability to assist preschool children's regulatory development. Design. A sample of 208 3-year-olds and their mothers was drawn from an ongoing longitudinal study and followed to child age 4. Maternal scaffolding behaviors and children's emotion regulation competencies were assessed using behavioral coding schemes applied to observations of structured laboratory tasks, and maternal depressive symptoms and child behavior problems were based on parental reports. Results. Mothers who reported depressive symptoms above an established threshold at child age 3 had children who exhibited greater dysregulation and behavior problems at age 4. Depressed mothers were less effective at providing emotional, motivational, and technical scaffolding. Mothers who scaffolded less effectively, regardless of depression status, had children who were more emotionally dysregulated with more behavior problems by age 4. Scaffolding did not mediate maternal depression and child dysregulation. Conclusions. Maternal depression constitutes a risk factor for ineffective scaffolding, and scaffolding during the preschool period is related to children's emotional and behavioral competence.

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This study examined interrelations among different types of parental emotion socialization behaviors in 88 mothers and 76 fathers (co-residing with participating mothers) of 8-year-old children. Parents completed questionnaires assessing emotion socialization behaviors, emotion-related attitudes, and their children’s social functioning. An observed parent-child emotion discourse task and a child social-problem solving interview were also performed. Parent gender differences and concordance within couples in emotion socialization behaviors were identified for some but not all behaviors. Fathers’ reactions to child emotion, family expressiveness, and fathers’ emotion coaching during discussion cohered, and a model was supported in which the commonality among these behaviors was predicted by fathers’ emotion-coaching attitudes, and was associated with children’s social competence. A cohesive structure for the emotion socialization construct was less clear for mothers, although attitudes predicted all three types of emotion socialization behavior (reactions, expressiveness, and coaching). Implications for developmental theory and for parent-focused interventions are discussed.

In order to advance understanding of the phenomenon of coparenting, naturalistic observations of firstborn sons were undertaken when they were 15 months of age at a time when both parents were home and family life was demanding. Narrative records of coparenting events were scored to determine the frequency with which parents supported and undermined each other and to test two hypotheses pertaining to individual differences in coparenting: that greater differences between spouses in demographic factors, personality, styles of relatedness and child-rearing attitudes would forecast more unsupportive and less supportive coparenting; and that the adverse effects of such spousal differences would be amplified by high levels of family stress, as indexed by frequency and intensity of daily hassles. Both hypotheses received support and are discussed in turn.

Epidemiological studies of children and adolescents with intellectual disability have found 30-50% exhibiting clinically significant behavior problems. Few studies, however, have assessed young children, included a cognitively typical comparison group, assessed for specific disorders, and/or studied family correlates of diagnosis. We assessed 236 5-year old children, 95 with developmental delay (DD) and 141 with typical development (TD), for clinical diagnoses using a structured interview. Every disorder assessed was more prevalent in the developmental delay group. The percent of children meeting criteria for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) most highly differentiated the two groups (ratio 3.21 to 1). There was high stability from externalizing behavior problems at age 3 to ADHD diagnoses at age 5 in both groups. In regression analyses, parenting stress at child age 3 related to later ADHD diagnosis in both groups and maternal scaffolding (sensitive teaching) also predicted ADHD in the DD group.Children and adolescents with developmental delays are at high risk for emotional and behavioral problems. Epidemiological studies of youth with intellectual disability (ID) have reported clinically significant emotional and behavior problems and/or diagnosable mental disorder in a third to a half of cases (Cormack, Brown, & Hastings, 2000;Dekker & Koot, 2003;Einfeld & Tonge, 1996;Emerson, 2003a;Koskentausta, Iivanainen, & Almqvist, 2007). In the present study we assessed behavior disorders longitudinally from age 3 to 5 in children with developmental delay (DD) or typical development (TD), focusing on ADHD. We use the term "developmental delay" rather than the more formal diagnosis of intellectual disability for this sample of young children, as classification would be less stable over time than with school-aged and older children and it was based upon IQ alone. We had three primary aims: (1) to determine the relative risk of diagnosable mental disorders in children with or without DD; (2) to determine whether early externalizing behavior problems are stable and predict subsequent ADHD diagnosis; and (3) to explore whether family characteristics relate longitudinally to ADHD diagnosis.Correspondence should be addressed to: Dr. Bruce L. Baker, Department of Psychology, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles, CA. 90095. baker@psych.ucla.edu. NIH Public AccessAuthor Manuscript J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2011 January 1. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptMost studies of co-occurring psychiatric diagnosis among youth with ID have sampled children with a wide age range, often from age five or six years through mid or late adolescence. From these age-mixed samples, often assessed at a single time point, one can draw only limited conclusions about age of onset and trajectory of emotional and behavior problems. In one notable exception, the authors conducted three assessments over a five year period and used multi-level growth curve a...