Esther M Leerkes
Biographic Data
| ID | 303947 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Esther M Leerkes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Esther M |
| FAMILY NAME | Leerkes |
| SIGNATURE | LEERKES E M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Greensboro |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8181-6452 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 146 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Further validation of Leerkes’ cry questionnaire battery in an independent sample: Useful tools for infant mental health practitioners and scholars
The purpose of this report is to further validate three measures of maternal responses to infant crying. These are the Infant Crying Questionnaire, which assesses beliefs about infant crying, the My Emotions Questionnaire, which assesses emotional reactions to infant crying, and one subscale of the Maternal Responsiveness Questionnaire which assesses nonresponsiveness to crying. Mother–infant dyads ( N = 299) from the United States participated, …
Protocol for the infant growth and development (iGrowUp) study: The role of food and non-food self-regulation in children’s obesity-related risk
Childhood obesity remains a significant public health crisis. Despite growing evidence that a) self-regulation and appetitive traits impact childhood obesity-related risk, and b) obesity-related risk is determined by the interplay between biological, psychological, and home environment factors, research has occurred largely within disciplines, hindering the interpretability and application of findings. We describe the rationale and methods of the…
Mothers' recollections of parenting by their own mothers and fathers and maternal and infant outcomes
Primiparous mothers’ parenting self-efficacy in managing toddler distress: Childhood nonsupportive emotion socialization, adult attachment style, and toddler temperament as antecedents
Early maternal sensitivity to child distress is predictive of child subsequent social-emotional adjustment. A mother's global parenting self-efficacy shapes her adaptive responses to child challenging behaviors (e.g., negative emotions). However, little is known about the antecedents of maternal self-efficacy in managing child distress. Using longitudinal data from a diverse sample of 259 primiparous mothers and their toddlers, we tested a model …
Childhood Adversity Predicts Maternal Pre-Pregnancy BMI but not Gestational Weight Gain
Associations among eating behaviors, food security status, and dietary intake during pregnancy
Bidirectional associations between maternal controlling feeding and food responsiveness during infancy
Parental controlling feeding styles and practices have been associated with greater food-approaching appetitive behaviors (i.e., food responsiveness) linked to childhood obesity. Recent longitudinal research suggests that this relationship may be reciprocal such that controlling feeding predicts child appetite and vice versa. However, to date no studies have considered these associations during infancy. The current study investigates prospective …
The Validity of Prenatal Assessments of Mothers’ Emotional, Cognitive, and Physiological Reactions to Infant Cry
SYNOPSISObjective. The current study examines the stability, convergent validity, and predictive validity of assessing pregnant women’s emotional, cognitive, and physiological responses to infant cry. Design. In an ethnically diverse sample of 259 first-time mothers and their infants, during the prenatal period physiological arousal (skin conductance) and regulation (respiratory sinus arrythmia) were recorded as mothers were exposed to four 1-min…
Infant appetite and weight gain in early infancy: Moderating effects of controlling feeding styles
Maternal sleep problems, depression, and infant negative emotionality are associated with maternal feeding to soothe in early infancy
Protocol for iGrow (Infant Growth and Development Study): Biopsychosocial predictors of childhood obesity risk at 2 years
This study has the potential to inform (1) basic science about early life processes casually related to childhood obesity and (2) development of targeted intervention and prevention approaches that consider mother, infant, and family risks and resources
Mothers’ self‐reported emotion dysregulation: A potentially valid method in the field of infant mental health
In the current study, we evaluated the extent to which mothers reported emotion dysregulation on the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (DERS) (a) converged with physiological indices of emotion dysregulation while parenting, (b) correlated with maternal sensitivity, and (c) predicted infant attachment disorganization and behavior problems in a sample of 259 mothers and their infants. When infants were 6 months old, mothers’ physi…
The My Emotions Questionnaire: A self‐report of mothers’ emotional responses to infant crying
The purpose of this article was to examine the psychometrics of the My Emotions Questionnaire, a self‐report designed to assess mothers’ emotional reactions when their infants cry. Participants were 240 first‐time mothers. When infants were 6 months and 1 year old, mothers completed the new questionnaire and measures assessing beliefs and behavioral responses to infant crying, and interview‐based measures of mothers’ emotional reactions and causa…
The intergenerational transmission of emotion socialization
We examined the extent to which new mothers' recollections of their mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood predict sensitive/supportive responses to their own toddlers in distressing situations both directly and indirectly via effects on mothers' social information processing about infant cry signals. Mothers' adult attachment was tested as a possible moderator and we tested model invariance across racial groups. These question…
An Integrative Conceptual Model of Parental Racial/Ethnic and Emotion Socialization and Links to Children's Social-Emotional Development Among African American Families
Researchers have called for increased evaluation of the processes that contribute to African American children's successful emotional development in the face of discrimination. Parents’ racial/ethnic and emotion socialization have been linked to children's emotional adaption. Although few studies have explicitly evaluated their joint influence on African American children's emotion adaptation, researchers studying racial and ethnic socialization …
Latent profile and cluster analysis of infant temperament: Comparisons across person-centered approaches
There is renewed interest in person-centered approaches to understanding the structure of temperament. However, questions concerning temperament types are not frequently framed in a developmental context, especially during infancy. In addition, the most common person-centered techniques, cluster analysis (CA) and latent profile analysis (LPA), have not been compared with respect to derived temperament types. To address these gaps, we set out to i…
Gender and Ethnic Differences in Young Adults’ Emotional Reactions to Parental Punitive and Minimizing Emotion Socialization Practices
This study examined differences in how African American and European American participants ( N = 553) recalled feeling when their parents engaged in punitive and minimizing emotion socialization practices during childhood. We conducted this study to replicate and extend previous empirical work by using a more generalizable sample containing both male and female participants and by asking participants to report separately on their mothers and fath…
Maternal Punitive Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions and Young Adult Trait Anger: Effect of Gender and Emotional Closeness
The current study tested whether young adult's recollected reports of their mother's punitive reactions to their negative emotions in childhood predicted anger expression in young adulthood and whether emotional closeness weakens this association. Further, a three-way interaction was tested to examine whether emotional closeness is a stronger protective factor for young women than for young men. Results revealed a significant three-way interactio…
Links Between Remembered Childhood Emotion Socialization and Adult Adjustment: Similarities and Differences Between European American and African American Women
The purpose of this article was to examine whether recollections of mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood are linked to adult emotional well-being as indexed by depression, trait anger, and cardiac vagal tone, and whether these effects vary for African American and European American women. Participants included 251 women (128 European American, 123 African American) who ranged in age from 18 to 44 years ( M = 25 years). Multig…
Development and Assessment of Short and Very Short Forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised
Using data from parents of 761 infants from 6 independent samples, short (91 items, 14 scales) and very short (37 items, 3 broad scales) forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), a well-established caregiver report measure of temperament for infants aged 3 to 12 months, were developed. The forms were subsequently evaluated with data from 1,619 participants from 11 samples. Over 90% of Cronbach's alphas and part-whole correlation…
Ethnic Differences in Women's Emotional Reactions to Parental Nonsupportive Emotion Socialization
Recent evidence suggests that the association between parents' use of non-supportive emotion socialization practices and their children's subsequent negative emotional outcomes varies based on ethnicity. The goal of this study is to test the proposition that African American women interpret parental non-supportive emotion socialization practices less negatively than European American women. In this study, 251 European and African American women c…
African American parents’ racial and emotion socialization profiles and young adults’ emotional adaptation
The current study aimed to identify parents' profiles of racial and emotion socialization practices, to determine if these profiles vary as a function of family income and young adult child gender, and to examine their links with young adults' emotional adaptation. Participants included 192 African American young adults (70% women) who ranged in age from 18 to 24 years (M = 19.44 years). Four maternal profiles emerged: cultural-supportive (high c…
Identifying Mother–child Interaction Styles Using a Person‐centered Approach
Parent-child conflict in the context of a supportive relationship has been discussed as a potentially constructive interaction pattern; the current study is the first to test this using a holistic analytic approach. Interaction styles, defined as mother-child conflict in the context of maternal sensitivity, were identified and described with demographic and stress-related characteristics of families. Longitudinal associations were tested between …
Infant Distress and Regulatory Behaviors Vary as a Function of Attachment Security Regardless of Emotion Context and Maternal Involvement
Differences in infant distress and regulatory behaviors based on the quality of attachment to mother, emotion context (frustration versus fear), and whether or not mothers were actively involved in the emotion‐eliciting tasks were examined in a sample of ninety‐eight 16‐month‐old infants and their mothers. Dyads participated in the Strange Situation, a limiting task designed to elicit infant frustration, and a novelty task designed to elicit infa…
African American and European American Mothers' Beliefs About Negative Emotions and Emotion Socialization Practices
OBJECTIVE: Mothers' beliefs about their children's negative emotions and their emotion socialization practices were examined. DESIGN: Sixty-five African American and 137 European American mothers of 5-year-old children reported their beliefs and typical responses to children's negative emotions, and mothers' emotion teaching practices were observed. RESULTS: African American mothers reported that the display of negative emotions was less acceptab…
African American parents’ racial and emotion socialization profiles and young adults’ emotional adaptation
The current study aimed to identify parents' profiles of racial and emotion socialization practices, to determine if these profiles vary as a function of family income and young adult child gender, and to examine their links with young adults' emotional adaptation. Participants included 192 African American young adults (70% women) who ranged in age from 18 to 24 years (M = 19.44 years). Four maternal profiles emerged: cultural-supportive (high c…
Predictors of Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress
OBJECTIVE: The present study was designed to examine the extent to which mothers' emotional (i.e., empathy, negative emotions) and cognitive (i.e., accurate detection of distress, goals about infant crying, and emotion efficacy) responses to infant distress are related to maternal sensitivity in tasks designed to elicit infant distress. Mothers' emotional and cognitive responses to distress were assessed both prenatally in response to unfamiliar …
Infant and Maternal Behaviors Regulate Infant Reactivity to Novelty at 6 Months
Three issues were investigated: (a) the regulatory effects of presumed infant and maternal regulation behaviors on infant distress to novelty at 6 months, (b) stability of infant regulatory effects across contexts that vary in maternal involvement, and (c) associations and temporal dynamics between infant and maternal regulation behaviors. Participants were 87 low-risk infants and their mothers, observed at 6 months postpartum during infant expos…
Differentiating Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress and Non-Distress
Drawing from a domain specificity perspective, we assert that maternal sensitivity to infant distress cues is distinct from maternal sensitivity to non-distress cues. We review evidence from prior research demonstrating that the two constructs have more unshared than shared variance and that sensitivity to infant distress is a unique predictor of infants' early emotional well-being when both types of sensitivity are examined as simultaneous predi…
African American and European American Mothers' Beliefs About Negative Emotions and Emotion Socialization Practices
OBJECTIVE: Mothers' beliefs about their children's negative emotions and their emotion socialization practices were examined. DESIGN: Sixty-five African American and 137 European American mothers of 5-year-old children reported their beliefs and typical responses to children's negative emotions, and mothers' emotion teaching practices were observed. RESULTS: African American mothers reported that the display of negative emotions was less acceptab…
E uropean‐ A merican and A frican‐ A merican Mothers' Emotion Socialization Practices Relate Differently to Their Children's Academic and Social‐emotional Competence
The current study examines whether the relation between mothers' responses to their children's negative emotions and teachers' reports of children's academic performance and social-emotional competence are similar or different for European American and African American families. Two hundred mothers (137 European American, 63 African American) reported on their responses to their 5-year-old children's negative emotions and 150 kindergarten teacher…
Latent profile and cluster analysis of infant temperament: Comparisons across person-centered approaches
There is renewed interest in person-centered approaches to understanding the structure of temperament. However, questions concerning temperament types are not frequently framed in a developmental context, especially during infancy. In addition, the most common person-centered techniques, cluster analysis (CA) and latent profile analysis (LPA), have not been compared with respect to derived temperament types. To address these gaps, we set out to i…
Antecedents of mothers' emotional and cognitive responses to infant distress: The role of family, mother, and infant characteristics
The antecedents of mothers' emotional and cognitive responses to infant distress were examined. Participants were 67 mothers and their infants. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their experiences in the family of origin and current marital relationships both pre- and postnatally and their coping strategies prenatally. Infant temperament was observed at 6 months, and mothers were interviewed about their emotional and cognitive responses t…
The intergenerational transmission of emotion socialization
We examined the extent to which new mothers' recollections of their mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood predict sensitive/supportive responses to their own toddlers in distressing situations both directly and indirectly via effects on mothers' social information processing about infant cry signals. Mothers' adult attachment was tested as a possible moderator and we tested model invariance across racial groups. These question…
The My Emotions Questionnaire: A self‐report of mothers’ emotional responses to infant crying
The purpose of this article was to examine the psychometrics of the My Emotions Questionnaire, a self‐report designed to assess mothers’ emotional reactions when their infants cry. Participants were 240 first‐time mothers. When infants were 6 months and 1 year old, mothers completed the new questionnaire and measures assessing beliefs and behavioral responses to infant crying, and interview‐based measures of mothers’ emotional reactions and causa…
Attachment to Parents, Social Anxiety, and Close Relationships of Female Students over the Transition to College
Identifying Mother–child Interaction Styles Using a Person‐centered Approach
Parent-child conflict in the context of a supportive relationship has been discussed as a potentially constructive interaction pattern; the current study is the first to test this using a holistic analytic approach. Interaction styles, defined as mother-child conflict in the context of maternal sensitivity, were identified and described with demographic and stress-related characteristics of families. Longitudinal associations were tested between …
Identifying Components of Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress: The Role of Maternal Emotional Competencies
Objective. Emotional competencies that can facilitate maternal sensitivity to infant distress were examined. These included accurate identification of negative infant emotions, emotional responses to distress, emotion goals, and emotion-related efficacy. Design. Sixty-seven mothers and infants participated. Maternal sensitivity was observed in the laboratory when infants were 6 months. Mothers were interviewed about their emotional and cognitive …
Associations among eating behaviors, food security status, and dietary intake during pregnancy
Infant appetite and weight gain in early infancy: Moderating effects of controlling feeding styles
Mothers’ self‐reported emotion dysregulation: A potentially valid method in the field of infant mental health
In the current study, we evaluated the extent to which mothers reported emotion dysregulation on the Difficulties with Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (DERS) (a) converged with physiological indices of emotion dysregulation while parenting, (b) correlated with maternal sensitivity, and (c) predicted infant attachment disorganization and behavior problems in a sample of 259 mothers and their infants. When infants were 6 months old, mothers’ physi…
Developmental history of care and control, depression and anger: Correlates of maternal sensitivity in toddlerhood
This study examined maternal sensitivity in response to toddler distress in relation to mothers' childhood care and control experiences with parents, maternal depression, and maternal anger. Fifty‐two mothers and infants participated. Mothers reported childhood care and control experiences prenatally. At 21⁄2 years, mothers reported depressive symptoms and anger on questionnaires, and reported maternal behavior in a daily diary for 1 week, yieldi…
The Validity of Prenatal Assessments of Mothers’ Emotional, Cognitive, and Physiological Reactions to Infant Cry
SYNOPSISObjective. The current study examines the stability, convergent validity, and predictive validity of assessing pregnant women’s emotional, cognitive, and physiological responses to infant cry. Design. In an ethnically diverse sample of 259 first-time mothers and their infants, during the prenatal period physiological arousal (skin conductance) and regulation (respiratory sinus arrythmia) were recorded as mothers were exposed to four 1-min…
Links Between Remembered Childhood Emotion Socialization and Adult Adjustment: Similarities and Differences Between European American and African American Women
The purpose of this article was to examine whether recollections of mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood are linked to adult emotional well-being as indexed by depression, trait anger, and cardiac vagal tone, and whether these effects vary for African American and European American women. Participants included 251 women (128 European American, 123 African American) who ranged in age from 18 to 44 years ( M = 25 years). Multig…
Ethnic Differences in Women's Emotional Reactions to Parental Nonsupportive Emotion Socialization
Recent evidence suggests that the association between parents' use of non-supportive emotion socialization practices and their children's subsequent negative emotional outcomes varies based on ethnicity. The goal of this study is to test the proposition that African American women interpret parental non-supportive emotion socialization practices less negatively than European American women. In this study, 251 European and African American women c…
Differentiating Processes of Control and Understanding in the Early Development of Emotion and Cognition
In this study we examined the hypothesis that preschoolers' performance on emotion and cognitive tasks is organized into discrete processes of control and understanding within the domains of emotion and cognition. Additionally, we examined the relations among component processes using mother report, behavioral observation, and physiological measures of emotion control. Participants were 263 children (42% non-White) and their mothers. Results indi…
The Development of Maternal Self‐Efficacy and Its Impact on Maternal Behavior
A developmental model of the origins of maternal self‐efficacy and its impact on maternal sensitivity was tested. Participants were 92 primiparous mothers and their 6‐month‐old infants. Mothers completed questionnaires about remembered care from their own parents and self‐esteem prenatally, satisfaction with support, infant temperament, and maternal self‐efficacy postnatally, and they participated in a laboratory observation with their infants. M…
The Impact of Maternal Characteristics and Sensitivity on the Concordance Between Maternal Reports and Laboratory Observations of Infant Negative Emotionality
The moderating role of maternal characteristics and maternal sensitivity on the concordance between maternal reports and laboratory observations of negative emotionality was examined. Participants were 90 primiparous mothers and their infants. Mothers completed questionnaires about remembered care from their own parents and their depressive symptoms prenatally, infant temperament (distress to novelty and distress to limitations), and depressive s…
Identifying Components of Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress: The Role of Maternal Emotional Competencies
Objective. Emotional competencies that can facilitate maternal sensitivity to infant distress were examined. These included accurate identification of negative infant emotions, emotional responses to distress, emotion goals, and emotion-related efficacy. Design. Sixty-seven mothers and infants participated. Maternal sensitivity was observed in the laboratory when infants were 6 months. Mothers were interviewed about their emotional and cognitive …
Infant and Maternal Behaviors Regulate Infant Reactivity to Novelty at 6 Months
Three issues were investigated: (a) the regulatory effects of presumed infant and maternal regulation behaviors on infant distress to novelty at 6 months, (b) stability of infant regulatory effects across contexts that vary in maternal involvement, and (c) associations and temporal dynamics between infant and maternal regulation behaviors. Participants were 87 low-risk infants and their mothers, observed at 6 months postpartum during infant expos…
Antecedents of mothers' emotional and cognitive responses to infant distress: The role of family, mother, and infant characteristics
The antecedents of mothers' emotional and cognitive responses to infant distress were examined. Participants were 67 mothers and their infants. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their experiences in the family of origin and current marital relationships both pre- and postnatally and their coping strategies prenatally. Infant temperament was observed at 6 months, and mothers were interviewed about their emotional and cognitive responses t…
The Development of Parenting Efficacy Among New Mothers and Fathers
Predictors of prenatal and postnatal parenting efficacy were examined in a sample of 115 primiparous mothers and 73 fathers in an effort to examine the association between preexisting parental characteristics and prenatal efficacy and the association between prenatal characteristics and postnatal efficacy when aspects of the current parenting context are taken into account. The most robust predictors of maternal postnatal efficacy included both p…
Differential Effects of Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress and Nondistress on Social-Emotional Functioning
Associations between maternal sensitivity to infant distress and nondistress and infant social-emotional adjustment were examined in a subset of dyads from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care (N = 376). Mothers reported on infant temperament at 1 and 6 months postpartum, and maternal sensitivity to distress and nondistress were observed at 6 months. Child behavior problems, social competence, and affect dysregulation were measured at 24 and 36 mo…
Developmental history of care and control, depression and anger: Correlates of maternal sensitivity in toddlerhood
This study examined maternal sensitivity in response to toddler distress in relation to mothers' childhood care and control experiences with parents, maternal depression, and maternal anger. Fifty‐two mothers and infants participated. Mothers reported childhood care and control experiences prenatally. At 21⁄2 years, mothers reported depressive symptoms and anger on questionnaires, and reported maternal behavior in a daily diary for 1 week, yieldi…
Predictors of Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress
OBJECTIVE: The present study was designed to examine the extent to which mothers' emotional (i.e., empathy, negative emotions) and cognitive (i.e., accurate detection of distress, goals about infant crying, and emotion efficacy) responses to infant distress are related to maternal sensitivity in tasks designed to elicit infant distress. Mothers' emotional and cognitive responses to distress were assessed both prenatally in response to unfamiliar …
Attachment to Parents, Social Anxiety, and Close Relationships of Female Students over the Transition to College
Differentiating Processes of Control and Understanding in the Early Development of Emotion and Cognition
In this study we examined the hypothesis that preschoolers' performance on emotion and cognitive tasks is organized into discrete processes of control and understanding within the domains of emotion and cognition. Additionally, we examined the relations among component processes using mother report, behavioral observation, and physiological measures of emotion control. Participants were 263 children (42% non-White) and their mothers. Results indi…
Infant Distress and Regulatory Behaviors Vary as a Function of Attachment Security Regardless of Emotion Context and Maternal Involvement
Differences in infant distress and regulatory behaviors based on the quality of attachment to mother, emotion context (frustration versus fear), and whether or not mothers were actively involved in the emotion‐eliciting tasks were examined in a sample of ninety‐eight 16‐month‐old infants and their mothers. Dyads participated in the Strange Situation, a limiting task designed to elicit infant frustration, and a novelty task designed to elicit infa…
African American and European American Mothers' Beliefs About Negative Emotions and Emotion Socialization Practices
OBJECTIVE: Mothers' beliefs about their children's negative emotions and their emotion socialization practices were examined. DESIGN: Sixty-five African American and 137 European American mothers of 5-year-old children reported their beliefs and typical responses to children's negative emotions, and mothers' emotion teaching practices were observed. RESULTS: African American mothers reported that the display of negative emotions was less acceptab…
Differentiating Maternal Sensitivity to Infant Distress and Non-Distress
Drawing from a domain specificity perspective, we assert that maternal sensitivity to infant distress cues is distinct from maternal sensitivity to non-distress cues. We review evidence from prior research demonstrating that the two constructs have more unshared than shared variance and that sensitivity to infant distress is a unique predictor of infants' early emotional well-being when both types of sensitivity are examined as simultaneous predi…
E uropean‐ A merican and A frican‐ A merican Mothers' Emotion Socialization Practices Relate Differently to Their Children's Academic and Social‐emotional Competence
The current study examines whether the relation between mothers' responses to their children's negative emotions and teachers' reports of children's academic performance and social-emotional competence are similar or different for European American and African American families. Two hundred mothers (137 European American, 63 African American) reported on their responses to their 5-year-old children's negative emotions and 150 kindergarten teacher…
Identifying Mother–child Interaction Styles Using a Person‐centered Approach
Parent-child conflict in the context of a supportive relationship has been discussed as a potentially constructive interaction pattern; the current study is the first to test this using a holistic analytic approach. Interaction styles, defined as mother-child conflict in the context of maternal sensitivity, were identified and described with demographic and stress-related characteristics of families. Longitudinal associations were tested between …
Development and Assessment of Short and Very Short Forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire–Revised
Using data from parents of 761 infants from 6 independent samples, short (91 items, 14 scales) and very short (37 items, 3 broad scales) forms of the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), a well-established caregiver report measure of temperament for infants aged 3 to 12 months, were developed. The forms were subsequently evaluated with data from 1,619 participants from 11 samples. Over 90% of Cronbach's alphas and part-whole correlation…
Ethnic Differences in Women's Emotional Reactions to Parental Nonsupportive Emotion Socialization
Recent evidence suggests that the association between parents' use of non-supportive emotion socialization practices and their children's subsequent negative emotional outcomes varies based on ethnicity. The goal of this study is to test the proposition that African American women interpret parental non-supportive emotion socialization practices less negatively than European American women. In this study, 251 European and African American women c…
African American parents’ racial and emotion socialization profiles and young adults’ emotional adaptation
The current study aimed to identify parents' profiles of racial and emotion socialization practices, to determine if these profiles vary as a function of family income and young adult child gender, and to examine their links with young adults' emotional adaptation. Participants included 192 African American young adults (70% women) who ranged in age from 18 to 24 years (M = 19.44 years). Four maternal profiles emerged: cultural-supportive (high c…
Maternal Punitive Reactions to Children's Negative Emotions and Young Adult Trait Anger: Effect of Gender and Emotional Closeness
The current study tested whether young adult's recollected reports of their mother's punitive reactions to their negative emotions in childhood predicted anger expression in young adulthood and whether emotional closeness weakens this association. Further, a three-way interaction was tested to examine whether emotional closeness is a stronger protective factor for young women than for young men. Results revealed a significant three-way interactio…
Links Between Remembered Childhood Emotion Socialization and Adult Adjustment: Similarities and Differences Between European American and African American Women
The purpose of this article was to examine whether recollections of mothers' emotion socialization practices during childhood are linked to adult emotional well-being as indexed by depression, trait anger, and cardiac vagal tone, and whether these effects vary for African American and European American women. Participants included 251 women (128 European American, 123 African American) who ranged in age from 18 to 44 years ( M = 25 years). Multig…
Gender and Ethnic Differences in Young Adults’ Emotional Reactions to Parental Punitive and Minimizing Emotion Socialization Practices
This study examined differences in how African American and European American participants ( N = 553) recalled feeling when their parents engaged in punitive and minimizing emotion socialization practices during childhood. We conducted this study to replicate and extend previous empirical work by using a more generalizable sample containing both male and female participants and by asking participants to report separately on their mothers and fath…
An Integrative Conceptual Model of Parental Racial/Ethnic and Emotion Socialization and Links to Children's Social-Emotional Development Among African American Families
Researchers have called for increased evaluation of the processes that contribute to African American children's successful emotional development in the face of discrimination. Parents’ racial/ethnic and emotion socialization have been linked to children's emotional adaption. Although few studies have explicitly evaluated their joint influence on African American children's emotion adaptation, researchers studying racial and ethnic socialization …
Latent profile and cluster analysis of infant temperament: Comparisons across person-centered approaches
There is renewed interest in person-centered approaches to understanding the structure of temperament. However, questions concerning temperament types are not frequently framed in a developmental context, especially during infancy. In addition, the most common person-centered techniques, cluster analysis (CA) and latent profile analysis (LPA), have not been compared with respect to derived temperament types. To address these gaps, we set out to i…
Protocol for iGrow (Infant Growth and Development Study): Biopsychosocial predictors of childhood obesity risk at 2 years
This study has the potential to inform (1) basic science about early life processes casually related to childhood obesity and (2) development of targeted intervention and prevention approaches that consider mother, infant, and family risks and resources
Developmental psychology (33 works) · Psychology (33 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (31 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Clinical Psychology (19 works) · Infant Health and Development (14 works) · Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum (14 works) · Distress (13 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (11 works)