Decades of research have demonstrated that the parent-child dyad and the environment of the familyâ€"which includes all primary caregiversâ€"are at the foundation of children's well- being and healthy development. From birth, children are learning and rely on parents and the other caregivers in their lives to protect and care for them. The impact of parents may never be greater than during the earliest years of life, when a child's brain is rapidly developing and when nearly all of her or his experiences are created and shaped by parents and the family environment. Parents help children build and refine their knowledge and skills, charting a trajectory for their health and well-being during childhood and beyond. The experience of parenting also impacts parents themselves. For instance, parenting can enrich and give focus to parents' lives; generate stress or calm; and create any number of emotions, including feelings of happiness, sadness, fulfillment, and anger. Parenting of young children today takes place in the context of significant ongoing developments. These include: a rapidly growing body of science on early childhood, increases in funding for programs and services for families, changing demographics of the U.S. population, and greater diversity of family structure. Additionally, parenting is increasingly being shaped by technology and increased access to information about parenting. Parenting Matters identifies parenting knowledge, attitudes, and practices associated with positive developmental outcomes in children ages 0-8; universal/preventive and targeted strategies used in a variety of settings that have been effective with parents of young children and that support the identified knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and barriers to and facilitators for parents' use of practices that lead to healthy child outcomes as well as their participation in effective programs and services. This report makes recommendations directed at an array of stakeholders, for promoting the wide-scale adoption of effective programs and services for parents and on areas that warrant further research to inform policy and practice. It is meant to serve as a roadmap for the future of parenting policy, research, and practice in the United States.

Child Influences on Marital and Family Interaction: A Life-Span Perspective book grew out of a conference sponsored by the Division of Individual and Family Studies in the College of Human Development at the Pennsylvania State University in April, 1977. The chapters for this volume are revised versions of the papers originally presented at the conference. The book explores the conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues in the study of the child and his or her family. It details how the age-normative and atypical development of the child contributes to the parents' marital quality and to the entire family's interaction patterns across the life-span of both the child and parents. Consequently, the child is seen as capable of contributing to marriage and family relationships not only when he or she is in utero, a neonate, or an infant, but also when the child reaches middle and late childhood, adolescence, and the adulthood and aged years as well.

This completely updated second edition presents an integrated, multidisciplinary account of children's experiences of divorce from historical, cultural and demographic perspectives. The author highlights children's resilience, but is sensitive to children's pain throughout the divorce process and afterwards. In addition he reviews the psychological, social, economic and legal consequences of divorce, and examines how children's risk is predicted by parental conflict, relationships with both parents, financial strain, custody disputes, and other factors. The author uses his family systems model to integrate research findings into a theoretical whole and to evaluate psychological interventions with divorcing and divorced families.

The Family Context of Parenting in Children's Adaptation to Elementary School is a result of a longitudinal prevention study of 100 families begun the year before their first children entered kindergarten. Each family went through an assessment and then a subset was randomly chosen for group intervention. The children in both groups were then studied as they progressed through kindergarten and first grade to assess the quality of their adaptation to the school environment. The text focuses on how parent-child relationships are only one determinant of a child's academic competence, social competence, and behavior. Rather, these relationships must be understood in the context of the role they play within the family as a system. It also addresses the recent challenges to claims about the impact of parents on their children's development. The book sheds additional light on family influences within the larger social environment as a key determinant of the quality of children's adjustment to schooling. It appeals to scientists, professionals, and parents alike.