Parents' Discussions of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Death With Young Children.

Death and loss are often uncomfortable topics for adults to discuss with young children. Disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, made the avoidance of these topics nearly impossible. The current study explored how 20 parents engaged with their young children (ages 3-6) in discussions about death, dying, and loss as they jointly experienced this global crisis.

Family functioning, contributions to college expenses, access to mentors, and college student's health and flourishing: Examining moderation by family structure.

To evaluate how family functioning, family contributions to college expenses, and access to mentors are associated with college student's self-reported health and flourishing, and to test for moderation by family structure. Undergraduate college students (N = 238) recruited through an email list-serve at a large midwestern state university. Participants completed an online survey (distributed through Qualtrics) in February 2020.

Siblings as ethnic-racial socialization agents: A call for research.

Research illustrating the adverse impact of discrimination and the increasing ethnic and racial diversity in the United States has resulted in a substantial body of work examining risk and protective factors for marginalized and ethnic and racial minority individuals. One factor that has received considerable attention over the past several decades is ethnic-racial socialization (ERS). Extant empirical research on ERS has heavily focused on parents, especially mothers, as socialization agents.

Chinese childbearing decision-making in mainland China in the post-one-child-policy era.

In 2016, China enacted its two-child policy, further lifted to a three-child policy in 2021, in response to low birth rates and imbalanced sex ratios resulting from the almost 40-year one-child policy. Despite this, China's birthrate is at a historic low as fewer parents are having children. Now more than ever, inductive explorations are needed to understand what motivates Chinese parents to have first and second children in the post-one-child policy era, particularly explorations that situate individual decision-making within the larger social context.

Parents' Anticipated Discussions About Death With Young Children.

Guided by family communication patterns theory and terror management theory this mixed-methods investigation explored how parents ( = 112) of young children (ages 3-6) described the way they would discuss death when it comes up in conversations. Responses were coded inductively, resulting in four themes: explanations that death is inevitable, explanations that death is in the distance, the use of religion to frame discussions of death, and finally, discussing afterlife connections to deceased family members. Logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate whether parents' conformity or conversation orientations were associated with the frequency with which parents discussed death with their child and the content of parent vignette responses.

Conversations between African American mothers and children about school and education.

Objectives: This study investigated what low-income, African American mothers say to their children about the value of education and how children respond to these messages.

Method: Qualitative methods were used to analyze 43 videotaped mother-child conversations about disagreements regarding school and education. The conversations had been videotaped for the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project when children were in fifth grade.

Family-Centered Care and Positive Developmental Outcomes for Youth With Special Health Care Needs: Variations Across Family Structures.

Drawing on a social determinants of health framework, we evaluated associations between perceived family-centered care (FCC) and positive developmental outcomes for youth with special health care needs across six different family structures (married biological families, cohabiting biological families, married stepfamilies, cohabiting stepfamilies, divorced/separated single-mother families, and never-married single-mother families). Using data from the 2011-2012 National Survey of Children's Health, we found that married biological families perceive greater FCC than do other family structures. Perceived FCC was positively associated with all three positive youth outcomes evaluated (children's health, participation in extracurricular activities, and flourishing) in married biological families, and two of the three outcomes (children's health and flourishing) in married stepfamilies and divorced/separated single-mother families.

The interplay of maternal sensitivity and toddler engagement of mother in predicting self-regulation.

Using data from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project, a cross-lag mediation model was tested to examine longitudinal relations among low-income mothers' sensitivity; toddlers' engagement of their mothers; and toddler's self-regulation at ages 1, 2, and 3 years (N = 2,958). Age 1 maternal sensitivity predicted self-regulation at ages 2 and 3 years, and age 2 engagement of mother mediated the relation between age 1 maternal sensitivity and age 3 self-regulation. Lagged relations from toddler self-regulation at ages 1 and 2 years to later maternal sensitivity were not significant, suggesting stronger influence from mother to toddler than vice versa.