Early Brain Development: African-American Mothers’ Cognitions about the First Three Years

Child Development Knowledge and Father Engagement: The Mediating Role of Parenting Self-efficacy

“…Limited research suggests that parental knowledge of children's developmental abilities and stages may be related to certain parent and child outcomes. Combs-Orme et al (2013) found that mothers' child development knowledge was related to parenting beliefs, including beliefs about discipline. As parenting attitudes and beliefs have been found to predict parenting behaviors (Bornstein et al, 2003;Combs-Orme et al, 2013), parental knowledge of children's typical development may play a role in determining the behaviors in which they choose to engage.…”

“…In an effort to increase parental engagement, many programs attempt to educate mothers and fathers about children and parenting (Al-Hassan & Lansford, 2011;McGinnis et al, 2019;Self-Brown et al, 2017), with the expectation that parents with more knowledge of children's capabilities and developmental milestones may engage more with young children. Although this relationship between child development knowledge and engagement is explored in the literature, many studies have examined mothers' child development knowledge (Combs-Orme et al, 2013;Jahromi et al, 2014) and less is known about fathers' knowledge and its relationship with father engagement. If a relationship between knowledge and engagement exists, one potential mechanism for this relationship is confidence in parenting abilities.…”