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Children who experience violence in their families and communities are at increased risk for a wide range of psychological and behavioral difficulties, but some exhibit resilience, or adaptive functioning following adversity. Understanding what promotes resilience is critical for developing more effective prevention and intervention strategies. Over 100 studies have examined potential protective factors for children exposed to violence in the past 30 years, but there has been no quantitative review of this literature. In order to identify which protective factors have received the strongest empirical support, we conducted a meta-analysis of 118 studies involving 101,592 participants. We separately evaluated cross-sectional (n = 71) and longitudinal (n = 47) studies testing bivariate, additive, and buffering effects for eleven proposed protective factors. Effect sizes generally were stronger in cross-sectional than longitudinal studies, but four protective factors—self-regulation, family support, school support, and peer support—demonstrated significant additive and/or buffering effects in longitudinal studies. Results were consistent across type of violence experienced (i.e., maltreatment, intimate partner violence, community violence). The review highlights the most robust predictors of resilience, identifies limitations of this work, and offers directions for improving our understanding of the processes and programs that foster resilience in children exposed to violence.

Objective: The present study assessed the associations between caregivers' adverse experiences with childhood caregivers, adult and parental reflective functioning (RF), and emotion socialization strategies with their preschoolers in an effort to illuminate the unique and joint contribution of adult and parental RF in caregiving. Background: Parental RF is defined as parents' ability to reflect on their child's state of mind, whereas adult RF involves parents' capacity to reflect on their own experiences with childhood caregivers. Most research on adult and parental RF has examined these constructs separately, making it unclear whether adult and parental RF play similar or different roles in caregiving. Method: Participants were 64 preschooler-caregiver dyads from Head Start programs (Mchildage = 4; 81% Black). A multimethod approach was used, including self-report, interview, and observational measures. Hierarchical linear regression analyses were employed to evaluate whether adult and parental RF accounted for unique or joint variance in caregivers' emotion socialization behaviors after accounting for caregivers' adverse experiences with childhood caregivers. Adult RF also was tested as a moderator of the relation between caregivers' adverse experiences with childhood caregivers and emotion socialization strategies. Results: Adult and parental RF each demonstrated unique associations with particular emotion socialization strategies. Adult RF also moderated the association between caregivers' exposure to maladaptive parenting in childhood and emotion socialization behaviors. Conclusion and implications: Findings suggest that both types of RF are important for caregivers' ability to validate children's emotions and that reflecting on caregiving received in childhood can act as a protective mechanism and help promote effective caregiving behaviors.

ObjectivesPrior research on caregiving behaviors associated with resilience in children exposed to adversity has focused primarily on broad constructs, such as parental warmth and supportiveness, as protective factors. In an effort to provide more precise analysis of caregiver behaviors related to adaptive functioning in high-risk preschoolers, the present study used a multi-method design to examine the unique and joint relations of specific emotion socialization behaviors and parental warmth with adaptive functioning in preschool-aged children.MethodsParticipants were 124 children aged 3–6 years from Head Start programs and their primary caregiver. Caregivers and teachers reported on preschoolers’ functioning across multiple domains (emotion regulation, social competence, school readiness, and low levels of emotional/behavioral problems), and caregivers’ emotion coaching, validating, and invalidating behaviors were measured with self-report and observation.ResultsThe emotion socialization behaviors together accounted for significant variance on a global index of adaptive functioning after accounting for exposure to adversity, with emotion coaching serving as a unique predictor. Further, parental warmth moderated the association between particular behaviors (caregiver-reported emotion coaching and observed emotional invalidation) and adaptive functioning.ConclusionsThese results suggest that engaging in emotion socialization behaviors in the context of a warm and supportive relationship can promote positive developmental outcomes in high-risk preschoolers.

Caregivers with a childhood history of abuse and neglect are at a greater risk for the intergenerational transmission of maltreatment due to the reenactment of maladaptive caregiving behaviors learned from their caregivers. Some parents, however, are able to make sense of their childhood experiences and break this cycle by establishing secure and supportive relationships with their children. Theory and research suggest that reflective functioning (RF), the ability to understand and interpret one’s own and others’ behavior as an expression of thoughts, feelings, and intentions, offers a framework to understand how early experiences with caregivers play a role in the intergenerational transmission of caregiving behaviors. Much of the research to date has separately examined the constructs of RF (adult and parental RF), making it unclear whether adult and parental RF play similar or unique roles in caregiving. Further, RF has been primarily evaluated in relation to general support-based behaviors but it is proposed to promote caregivers’ use of more specific emotionally responsive strategies. In effort to illuminate the unique and joint contribution of adult and parental RF on specific caregiving behaviors, the present study used multiple, converging measures (i.e., interview, observation, caregiver report) to assess the association between adult and parental RF on emotion socialization strategies in a sample of caregivers of preschool-aged children.Participants were 64 children aged 3-5 years from Head Start programs and their primary caregiver. Caregivers’ adverse experiences with childhood caregivers were measured with self-report; caregivers’ RF abilities were assessed with self-report and interview methods; and caregivers’ emotion socialization strategies were measured with self-report and observation. Results indicated that adult and parental RF together accounted for significant variance on caregiver-reports and observed emotion socialization strategies, with both adult and parental RF serving as unique predictors of specific caregiving behaviors. Further, adult RF moderated the association between caregivers’ exposure to maladaptive parenting in childhood and particular observed emotion socialization behaviors. These results suggest that reflecting on the type and quality of caregiving received in childhood can promote effective and positive caregiving behaviors among caregivers exposed to maladaptive parenting behaviors in childhood.

The present study examined the association between specific parenting practices and the development of resilience in preschoolers from high-risk families. The current study used a multi-method, multi-informant design to identify parenting behaviors associated with positive adjustment and well-being in preschoolers exposed to adversity. Families were recruited from Head Start programs and 124 child-caregiver dyads agreed to participate. Child participants (51% male) from grades K3 through K5 ranged from 3-6 years of age (M = 4), while caregivers (85.5% female) were between the ages of 19 and 69 years (M = 32). Participants were predominately Black or African American. Resilience was assessed using caregiver and teacher reports of preschoolers’ level adjustment in multiple domains of functioning, including effective emotion regulation skills, social competence with peers, school readiness, and low levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Self-report and observational measures were used to identify parenting behaviors, including parental warmth, emotion coaching, emotional validation, and emotional invalidation. Together, emotion coaching, validating, and invalidating parenting behaviors accounted for a significant variance in resilience after accounting for parental warmth, with emotion coaching uniquely predicting resilience. Additionally, caregivers’ emotion coaching behavior significantly predicted individual domains of resilience, including higher functioning in the domains of emotion regulation, social competence, and school readiness. Findings also demonstrated that parental warmth predicted greater levels of resilience when caregivers engaged in higher levels of emotional validation and emotion coaching behaviors. These results highlight the importance of caregivers from high-risk families being taught specific validating and emotion coaching behaviors to promote greater resilience in their children.