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This study examined relationships between mother-child interactions and children's behaviors in 119 urban African American mothers and their 6 - 7 year old children. Interactions during a cooking task and a follow-up child clean-up task were videotaped. Principal components analyses of behaviors during the cooking task yielded two factors in mothers (Sensitivity and Control), and three in children (Task Involvement, Responsiveness, and Communicative). Children's negativity during a clean up task was coded and mothers were interviewed about their children's problem behaviors. Parenting sensitivity was associated with positive child behaviors and parenting control was associated with negative child behaviors. Maternal education was associated with greater maternal sensitivity and less control. Child gender predicted their task involvement, responsiveness, communicativeness, negativity during clean-up, and behavior problems; maternal control and sensitivity mediated some of these relations. Findings underscore heterogeneity of African American parenting and factors that promote positive parenting and children's behavioral adjustment in early childhood.

Universal social-emotional screening in a busy pediatric practice is challenging. Significant percentages of children can be identified as being at risk for social-emotional problems, and colocation of a psychologist promotes the ability to effectively address young children's social-emotional development within their medical home.

Objective: The current study examined whether having a positive maternal postpartum depression screening was associated with maternal report of poorer infant social-emotional development and more negative maternal report of parent-child interaction, and whether scores on a measure of maternal feelings of attachment influenced this relationship. Methods: Two hundred and thirty-two first-time mothers and their infants were assessed using self-reporting questionnaires when infants were 2 and 6 months of age. At 2 months, mothers were screened for postpartum depression and their feelings of attachment to their infants were also measured. At 6 months, mothers reported on infant socialemotional development and the parent-child interaction. Results: Findings revealed an association between having a positive screening for maternal depression at 2 months, and reports of both at-risk infant social-emotional development and parent-child dysfunctional interaction at 6 months. Further analyses indicated that maternal feelings of attachment mediated rather than moderated these relationships. Conclusions: These results suggest that the association of maternal postpartum depression with later child outcomes may be the result of the negative effects of maternal depression on maternal feelings of attachment to her infant.

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SYNOPSISObjective. The primary purpose of this review is to highlight methodological challenges to the study of African American parenting. Over the past two decades, research on African American parenting has burgeoned, and attempts have been made to address the shortcomings of prior work in this area. Recent studies have shed new light on the heterogeneity of African American parenting and help to identify promising directions for future research. Design. In this paper, we overview research on African American parenting, with emphasis on studies conducted over the past two decades. We discuss challenges, strengths, and gaps in the areas of conceptualization, sampling, research approaches, measurement, and design. Results and Conclusions. Great strides have been made in the methodological rigor of studies on African American parenting which have yielded a more complex understanding of parenting practices and outcomes in this population. Future research should attend to variation in the nature and influences of parenting across different subgroups of the African American population. Additionally, researchers should increasingly rely on multiple methodologies (e.g., surveys, observations, qualitative interviews); ground the measurement of parenting in the experiences of African American populations; and examine patterns within a developmental context. These research directions promise to yield new findings on processes that are unique to African American families, as well as highlight those that are common to parents across racial and ethnic groups.

Parents want to discuss their ACEs and receive help and guidance from pediatricians. Furthermore, they perceive their child's pediatrician as having an important role to play in meeting their parenting goals. It is important to ensure that pediatricians have the training, skills and familiarity with available resources to meet parental expectations. (PsycINFO Database Record

Child social-emotional development is foundational for future success, and depends on the presence of caregiver-child relationships characterized by positive "serve and return" interactions, during which caregiver responses are reliable, consistent, and empathic. Caregivers with childhood trauma may be limited in their ability to provide this type of interaction, and child social-emotional development may be at risk. We describe a Healthy Steps (HS) program and the moderating effect of this program on the relationship between reported caregiver childhood trauma and child social-emotional development. In a quasi-experimental, longitudinal design, we determined the relationship between maternal report of childhood trauma and child social-emotional development on the Ages and Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional (ASQ:SE) at 36 months, adjusting for covariates, and tested for a moderating effect of participation in HS on this relationship. One hundred twentyfour children were assessed at 36 months. Children of mothers with childhood trauma had higher (worse) ASQ:SE mean scores than children of mothers without childhood trauma (75.9 vs. 35.9; p Ͻ .0001). Differences in adjusted mean ASQ:SE scores between children of mothers with and without childhood trauma were more apparent in the comparison group (90.4 vs. 28.3) than in HS (44.5 vs. 28.2; p Ͻ .001). Caregiver experiences of childhood trauma are related to deficits in socialemotional development in their 3-year-old children. HS, with a focus on caregiver trauma and child social-emotional development, may serve as a moderator of this association.