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The nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a dramatic shift in the role of children in American society and families. No longer necessary for labor, children became economic liabilities and twentieth-century parents exhibited a new level of anxiety concerning the welfare of their children and their own ability to parent effectively. What caused this shift in the ways parenting and childhood were experienced and perceived? Why, at a time of relative ease and prosperity, do parents continue to grapple with uncertainty and with unreasonable expectations of both themselves and their children? Peter N. Stearns explains this phenomenon by examining the new issues the twentieth century brought to bear on families. Surveying popular media, *#8220;expert” childrearing manuals, and newspapers and journals published throughout the century, Stearns shows how schooling, physical and emotional vulnerability, and the rise in influence of commercialism became primary concerns for parents. The result, Stearns shows, is that contemporary parents have come to believe that they are participating in a culture of neglect and diminishing standards. Anxious Parents: A Modern History of Childrearing in America shows the reasons for this belief through an historic examination of modern parenting.

The association between parenting stress and child externalizing behavior, and the mediating role of parenting, has yielded inconsistent findings; however, the literature has typically been cross-sectional or unidirectional. In the current study, the authors examined the longitudinal transactions among parenting stress, perceived negative parental reactions, and child externalizing at 4, 5, 7, and 10 years old. Models examining parent effects (parenting stress to child behavior), child effects (externalizing to parental reactions and stress), indirect effects of parental reactions, and the transactional associations among all variables were compared. The transactional model best fit the data, and longitudinal reciprocal effects emerged between parenting stress and externalizing behavior. The mediating role of parental reactions was not supported; however, indirect effects suggest that parenting stress both is affected by and affects parent and child behavior. The complex associations among parent and child variables indicate the importance of interventions to improve the parent–child relationship and reducing parenting stress.

Quantity and quality of caregiver input was examined longitudinally in a sample of 50 parent—child dyads to determine which aspects of input contribute most to children's vocabulary skill across early development. Measures of input gleaned from parent—child interactions at child ages 18, 30, and 42 months were examined in relation to children's vocabulary skill on a standardized measure 1 year later (e.g., 30, 42, and 54 months). Results show that controlling for socioeconomic status, input quantity, and children's previous vocabulary skill; using a diverse and sophisticated vocabulary with toddlers; and using decontextualized language (e.g., narrative) with preschoolers explains additional variation in later vocabulary ability. The differential effects of various aspects of the communicative environment at several points in early vocabulary development are discussed.

In a nation lacking a comprehensive social safety net, people often scramble to find private solutions to structural problems. While existing scholarship primarily focuses on how adults, particularly mothers, navigate systematic gaps in social support, Language Brokers shifts our attention to bilingual children securing crucial resources for their families. Drawing upon interviews with working-class Mexican and Korean American language brokers, as well as healthcare providers, and months of participant observation in a Southern California police station, Hyeyoung Kwon reveals how children of immigrants translate more than simple verbal exchanges. Living at the intersection of multiple forms of inequality, these youth creatively use their in-between status to resolve structural problems to ensure their families' basic citizenship rights are upheld in interactions with teachers, social workers, landlords, doctors, and police officers. In an era of widespread racialized nativism, Language Brokers provides a critical examination of American culture, laying bare the contradictions between the ideals of equality and the exclusion of immigrants. Kwon underscores that dichotomous and racialized understandings of \"deserving\" and \"undeserving\" immigrants—which are embedded in everyday interactions and institutional practices—inform the routine ways in which immigrant youth attempt to cultivate belonging for their families.

Spawning Generations is a collection of stories by queerspawn (people with LGBTQ+ parents) spanning six decades, three continents, and five countries. Curated by queerspawn, this anthology is about carving out a space for queerspawn to tell their own stories. The contributors in this volume break away from the pressures to be perfect, the demands to be well adjusted, and the need to prove that they turned out \"all right.\" These are queerspawn stories, airbrushed for no one, and told on their own terms.

Using data from the 2004 Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, this article continues and extends recent cross-national research on proximity and contacts of older parents to their children. In addition to a brief description of the geography of families in 10 continental European countries, determinants of intergenerational proximity and contacts are examined. Even when microlevel factors are controlled for, the Mediterranean peoples continue to exhibit closer family relations than their northern counterparts. I also find noteworthy systematic differences in the effects of some explanatory variables between traditionally weak- and strong-family countries. When looking at the contemporary European picture as a whole, I find no indication for a decline of intergenerational relations.

This Handbook provides an innovative, interdisciplinary perspective on theory, research and methodology on dynamic processes in parent-child relations. It focuses on cognitive, behavioural and relational processes that govern immediate parent-child interactions and long-term relationships.

What is colloquially referred to as \"helicopter parenting\" is a form of overparenting in which parents apply overly involved and developmentally inappropriate tactics to their children who are otherwise able to assume adult responsibilities and autonomy. Overparenting is hypothesized to be associated with dysfunctional family processes and negative child outcomes. Predictions were tested on 538 parent-young adult child dyads from locations throughout most of the United States. Parents completed a newly developed measure of overparenting as well as family enmenshment, parenting styles, and parent-child communication scales. Young adult children completed measures of parent-child communication, family satisfaction, entitlement, and several adaptive traits. Results showed that overparenting is associated with lower quality parent-child communication and has an indirect effect on lower family satisfaction. Overparenting was also a significant predictor of young adult child entitlement, although it was not related to any of the adaptive traits measured in young adult children.

Parents may provide many types of support to their grown children. Parents age 40 to 60 (N = 633) reported the support they exchange with each child over age 18 (N = 1,384). Mothers and fathers differentiated among children within families, but provided emotional, financial, and practical help on average every few weeks to each child. Offspring received most assistance when they (a) had greater needs (because of problems or younger age) or (b) were perceived as more successful. Parents received more from high achieving offspring. Findings support contingency theory; parents give more material and financial support to children in need. Motivation to enhance the self or to assure support later in life may explain support to high achieving offspring.

Autism has attracted a great deal of attention in recent years, thanks to dramatically increasing rates of diagnosis, extensive organizational mobilization, journalistic coverage, biomedical research, and clinical innovation. Understanding Autism, a social history of the expanding diagnostic category of this contested illness, takes a close look at the role of emotion--specifically, of parental love--in the intense and passionate work of biomedical communities investigating autism.