Volume 2, Issue 4, October-December 2002

EMPIRICAL REPORTS

Mutual Relations Between Mothers' Depressive Symptoms and Hostile-Controlling Behavior and Young Children's Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems
Jennifer F. Marchand, Ellen Hock, and Keith F. Widaman

Hostile-controlling and depressive parenting predict children's externalizing versus internalizing behaviors in unique ways, and mothers and children influence one another over time.

Maternal Sensitivity and Child Wariness in the Transition to Kindergarten
Diane M. Early, Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman, Martha J. Cox, Gitanjali Saluja, Robert C. Pianta, Robert H. Bradley, and C. Chris Payne

Among children who display early wariness, greater maternal sensitivity is associated with less inhibition in the transition to kindergarten; among children who do not display early wariness, maternal sensitivity is not related to inhibition in the transition to kindergarten.

Emotional Energy as an Explanatory Construct for Fathers' Engagement with Their Infants
Wendy A. Goldberg, K. Alison Clarke-Stewart, John A. Rice, and Ellen Dellis

Fathers' sensitivity and engagement in play with their 6-month-old infants were predicted by socioeconomic, familial, and individual factors that either sapped or supported fathers' emotional energy.

Parenting Stress as a Mediator of the Relation Between Parenting Support and Optimal Parenting
Darya D. Bonds, Dawn M. Gondoli, Melissa L. Sturge-Apple, and Lindsay N. Salem

Parenting stress mediates the relation between specific parenting support and optimal parenting but not between general social support and optimal parenting.

TUTORIAL

ECONOMICS AND PARENTING
Greg J. Duncan and Katherine A. Magnuson

Economic models of marriage, fertility, and childrearing and the empirical studies they have spawned constitute important contributions to the science of parenting.