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Both maternal and paternal supportive parenting (i.e., sensitivity, warmth, stimulation, and engagement) across early childhood have been found to be associated with multiple domains of children's positive socioemotional functioning. However, few studies have considered how maternal and paternal supportive parenting may interact to impact child development. Thus, the present study assessed direct and moderated longitudinal relations between maternal and paternal supportive parenting in toddlerhood (24 and 36 months, respectively) and fathers' and teachers' reports of children's socioemotional and behavioral adjustment in first grade. Data were drawn from a large, sample of Norwegian parents and children (N = 455, 51% female, 49% male, 10% endorsed financial strain, 75% of fathers and 86% of mothers born in Norway). After controlling for child temperamental activity level and soothability in infancy, path analysis revealed that higher paternal supportive parenting was associated with fewer symptoms of father-reported child hyperactivity/impulsivity in first grade. In addition, a significant interaction between maternal and paternal supportive parenting was evident for three out of the four assessed outcomes (per both father- and teacher-reports): externalizing problems, hyperactivity/impulsivity symptoms, and social skills. Simple slope analyses revealed a negative relation between parental supportive parenting and children's externalizing (father-reported) and hyperactivity/impulsivity problems (father- and teacher-reported) when the child's other parent engaged in low levels of supportive parenting. Similarly, paternal supportive parenting was positively associated with children's social skills (father-report) when mothers engaged in low levels of supportive parenting. Results are discussed with implications for including both mothers and fathers in early childhood research, intervention, and social policy.

Young children born preterm may be more affected by environmental influences than their full-term peers. Few studies have investigated whether such effects exist for older children and young adolescents. With participants aged 9 and 13 years, we examine whether children born preterm could be differentially affected by the quality of their relationship with their mothers and fathers. We used the Growing Up in Ireland dataset: a longitudinal sample of 8,568 children in Ireland (51.4% female, 48.6% male) and their parents. We found that parent--child conflict was consistently associated with poorer verbal, numerical, and socioemotional outcomes; in some instances, parent--child closeness was associated with better outcomes. Being born very preterm was consistently associated with negative outcomes. We found support for a diathesis-stress model of preterm birth in just one instance: children born very preterm displayed a stronger relationship between maternal conflict and increased socioemotional difficulties.

Parent-adolescent interactions can be very loving, although both parties might not always agree. The level of and discrepancy between ratings on parenting style are indicators for functioning within the family, affecting adolescents' psychological adjustment. This 4-year multiinformant study focuses on emotional warmth in parenting as a precursor for changes in adolescents' psychological adjustment. Altogether, 1,817 German adolescents and their parents report on the quality of their parental warmth, and the former additionally rates their emotional and social problems. Combining the latent true intraindividual change (TIC) and latent congruence (LCM) models, the results indicated that a higher level of jointly perceived parental warmth is linked to more positive adjustment for adolescents, whereas a discrepant rating in terms of a parental overreporting is associated with a lower adjustment. The meaning of shared and discrepant mother--adolescent and father--adolescent ratings for adolescents' psychological adjustment during late childhood and early adolescence is discussed.

The ability to categorize emotions has long-term implications for children's social and emotional development. Therefore, identifying factors that influence early emotion categorization is of great importance. Yet, whether and how language impacts emotion category development is still widely debated. The present study aimed to assess how labels influence young children's ability to group faces into emotion categories for both earliest-learned and later-learned emotion categories. Across two studies, 128 two- and 3-year-olds (77 female; Mean age = 3.04 years; 35.9% White, 12.5% Multiple ethnicities or races, 6.3% Asian, 3.1% Black, and 42.2% not reported) were presented with three emotion categories (Study 1 = happy, sad, angry; Study 2 = surprised, disgusted, afraid). Children sorted 30 images of adults posing stereotypical facial expressions into one of the three categories. Children were randomly assigned to either hear the emotion labels before sorting (e.g., "happy faces go here") or were not given labels (e.g., "faces like this go here"). Study 1 results indicated no significant effects of labels for earlier-learned emotion categories, F(1, 60) = 0.94, p = 0.337, [eta][subscript p][superscript 2] = 0.013. However, the Study 2 results revealed that labels improved emotion categorization for later-learned categories, F(1, 60) = 8.15, p = 0.006, [eta][subscript p][superscript 2] = 0.024. Taken together, these results suggest that labels are important for emotion categorization, but the impact of labels may depend on children's familiarity with the emotion category.

Past meta-analyses show that both child-mother and child-father attachment insecurity are independently and jointly associated with more externalizing behaviors in children. Little is known, however, on the ways that different types of insecure attachment independently and jointly predict the development of externalizing behaviors over time. Existing work also neglects the impact of children's gender within the context of child-father relationships. The current study addresses these limitations by investigating how insecure type of child-father attachment, child-mother attachment, and their interaction in the preschool years predict boys' and girls' externalizing behaviors in middle childhood, when controlling for children's externalizing behaviors in the preschool years. The sample included 144 preschool-aged children (M = 46.89 months, SD = 8.77, 83 girls) and both of their parents. At Time 1, children completed independent separation-reunion procedures with each parent, which were coded using the "Preschool Attachment Rating Scales." At Time 1 and Time 2 (5 years later), mothers and fathers completed the "Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire" to report on their children's externalizing behaviors. Results showed no systematic differences in the way that child-mother and child-father attachment predicted the development of externalizing behaviors in boys and girls. Across all children, results identified an interaction of child-father and child-mother ambivalence, by which the presence of ambivalence toward both parents predicted the development of more externalizing behaviors. In addition, child-father controlling-caregiving attachment predicted the development of fewer externalizing behaviors. These results provide insight into the ways that insecure child-father and child-mother attachment predict later socioemotional adaptation.

Parents are known to provide a lasting basis for their children's social development. Understanding parent-driven socialization is particularly relevant in adolescence, as an increasing social independence is developed. However, the relationship between key parenting styles of care and control and the microlevel expression of daily-life social interactions has been insufficiently studied. Adolescent and young adult twins and their nontwin siblings (N = 635; mean age = 16.6; age range = 14.2-21.9; 58.6% female; 79.5% in or having completed higher secondary/tertiary education; 2.8% speaking language other than Dutch at home) completed the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) on parental care and control. Participants also completed a 6-day experience sampling period (10 daily beeps, mean compliance = 68.0%) to assess daily-life social interactions. Higher overall parental bonding quality (of both parents) related to more positive social experiences in daily life (e.g., belonging in company), but not to more social behaviors (e.g., being with others). Factor analysis indicated a three-factor structure of the PBI, with care, denial of psychological autonomy, and encouragement of behavioral freedom. Paternal care was uniquely predictive of better social experiences. These findings demonstrate how parenting styles may be uniquely associated with how adolescents experience their social world, with a potentially important role for fathers in particular. This complements the long-held idea of socialization through parenting by bringing it into the context of daily life and implies how both conceptualizations of social functioning and interventions aimed at alleviating social dysfunction might benefit from a stronger consideration of day-to-day social experiences.

Currently, despite the rapid growth of the population of Chinese immigrant families and children in the United States, preschool-aged Chinese-heritage children are an underrepresented group in research. The overarching purpose of this project was to provide a deeper understanding of Head Start Chinese immigrant parents' beliefs about children's social-emotional development, the value of play during the preschool period, and the potential role of cultural orientation. The study followed the steps of a mixed methods explanatory sequential design. First, using quantitative data collected from 213 primary caregivers, the study employed a person-centered lens to explore profiles of parents' cultural orientations and beliefs about play and academics in preschool to better understand the association of these profiles to children's social competencies. Next, 34 primary caregivers from the quantitative study participated in in-depth, focus group discussions to further explore parents' perceptions of children's social behaviors, cultural adjustment experiences, and their perceptions about U.S. preschools. Four reliable profiles were resolved quantitatively and showed within-group variations in patterns of Chinese immigrant parents' beliefs and cultural orientations that related differentially to children's social-emotional competencies as evidenced within peer play at home. Qualitative findings corroborated and elaborated the quantitative findings. These results underscored the importance of engaging with Chinese immigrant parents to inform research and program practices.

Despite its importance, replication has remained in the background of social development research. The aim of this special section was to elucidate and elevate the role of replication in peer relations research, examining its challenges and its utility for moving the field forward. To accomplish this aim, five sets of researchers undertook identifying an important finding from a widely cited article in the peer literature and tried to replicate its basic results using new data. As a group, the resulting five articles cover a broad range of topics, measures, and methods that are seen in peer research. Four of the five articles provide evidence of replication. This evidence was seen more for basic principles or processes observed in earlier studies than for exact or specific findings. In addition, the authors used varied approaches to replication, highlighting the need to embrace diverse methods when attempting to replicate complicated mechanisms of social development. It is argued that replication efforts should be aimed at identifying basic principles and processes of social development while clarifying the parameters that account for variability across studies in the specific findings.

The present study examined longitudinal associations between behavioral self-regulation and social-emotional functioning across four waves of measurement during the transition from preschool to kindergarten in a low-income sample. Participants included two cohorts of children (N = 558; 51% male). Children in both cohorts were 4 years old (Cohort 1: M = 4.82 years, SD = 0.31; Cohort 2: M = 4.80 years, SD = 0.31). Forty-four percent of children were Black, 32% were White, 13% were Latino, 10% were Multiracial, and 1% were Asian. Monthly income ranged from $0-5,539 (M = $1,508.18, SD = $892.92). Two statistical methods were used to examine relations among constructs. The cross-lagged panel model revealed a mixed pattern of relations between behavioral self-regulation and two indicators of social-emotional functioning (social skills and behavior problems) over time. There were no significant relations among behavioral self-regulation and social-emotional functioning during the preschool year; however, evidence for bidirectional associations were found between the spring of preschool and the fall of kindergarten. There were no significant relations among behavioral self-regulation and behavior problems at any time point. Finally, there were bidirectional relations among social skills and behavior problems in preschool, but directional relations emerged after this time point. A second model that included random intercepts was also run with the cross-lagged paths. Results from this model indicated that the random intercepts between behavioral self-regulation, social skills, and behavior problems were significantly related. Implications for future research are discussed.

This study examined the longitudinal contribution of four different childcare arrangements attended during the preschool years to social behaviors and academic achievement up to age 15 years. Children participating in a Canadian longitudinal survey with available information on childcare attendance between ages 3 and 5 years (N = 6,852) were measured on multiple social behaviors (hyperactivity/inattention, depression/anxiety, disruptive behaviors) and academic outcomes (mathematic skills, academic achievement) across both childhood and adolescence. We conducted a propensity score matching analysis to control the selection bias for childcare attendance and performed generalized estimating equation models for panel data among matched groups. Our results showed no clear social or academic long-term advantage for Canadian children of attending any childcare arrangement in comparison to children being exclusively cared for by their parents. In contrast, children attending daycare centers had higher levels of hyperactivity/inattention until the age of 15 years. Children also had lower mathematic skills if attending daycare centers or informal childcare at preschool age, but this effect dissipated from childhood to adolescence. Interestingly, children from low-income families had higher levels of depression/anxiety if being cared for at home by someone other than their parents or relatives. This finding supports the dual-risk hypothesis suggesting that children from already impoverished families and attending informal childcare in their own home are at greater risk for internalizing difficulties.

Adolescence is a critical period for social development, which COVID-19 has dramatically altered. Quarantined youths had limited in-person interactions with peers. The present study used an intensive longitudinal design to investigate changes in interpersonal dynamics and mental health during COVID-19. Specifically, we investigated whether the associations between different social contexts--that is, "spillover"--changed during COVID-19 and whether changes in social interactions during COVID-19 was associated with changes in depressive symptoms. Approximately 1 year prior to the onset of COVID-19, 139 youths reported depressive symptoms and daily interactions with parents, siblings, and friends, every day for 21 days via online questionnaires. Shortly after schools closed due to COVID-19, 115 of these youths completed a similar 28-day diary. Analyses included 112 youths (62 girls; 73% Caucasian; M[subscript age] = 11.77, range = 8 to 15 in Wave 1) who completed at least 13 diary days in each data wave. Our results show that younger adolescents experienced significant decreases in negative and positive interactions with friends, whereas older adolescents showed significant decreases in negative interactions with friends and significant increases in positive interactions with siblings. As predicted, within-day spillover of positive interactions and person-level association of negative interactions increased within the family during COVID-19, whereas within-day spillover of positive interactions between family and friends decreased. We also found a dramatic increase in depressive symptoms. More negative interactions and fewer positive interactions with family members were associated with changes in depressive symptoms. Our study sheds light on how youths' social development may be impacted by COVID-19.

Intrusive parenting has been traditionally considered a negative parenting style and includes actions that are overly directive and controlling of children's behavior. However, current research aims to contextualize this parenting behavior. This study examined the relation between intrusive parenting and early childhood behavior problems or emotion regulation, as well as the moderating role of race/ethnicity and developmental delay. Participants (n = 511; 47.4% male) were part of a larger, longitudinal Early Head Start study, entitled Baby FACES, with a racially and ethnically diverse sample (40.1% White, 18.7% Black, and 41.2% Hispanic). Behavior problems and developmental delay were assessed via parent report, while parent intrusiveness and emotion regulation were rated by observers. More use of intrusive parenting at age 2 was associated with greater behavior problems and less emotion regulation at age 3. However, this relation was moderated by race/ethnicity and developmental level. Greater intrusiveness was related to increased behavior problems and poorer emotion regulation for White and Hispanic/Latino families; they were unrelated in Black families. Similarly, although intrusive parenting and behavior problems were positively associated at all developmental levels, the relation was strongest for children with typical development. Further, fewer maternal risk factors, being female, and being Hispanic/Latino were associated with higher emotion regulation, and more risk factors were associated with more behavior problems. These findings highlight the importance of considering how a child's context and development interact with parenting style. Children may benefit from clinical assessment and intervention that considers this intersectionality.

This study investigated the developing ability of children to identify emotional facial expressions in terms of the contexts in which they generally occur. We presented Dutch 6- to 9-year-old primary school children (N = 164, 98 girls) prototypical contexts for different emotion categories and asked them whether different kinds of facial expressions belonged to those contexts or not, using a 2-alternative forced-choice task. Correct and incorrect responses were quantified into a single index using signal detection theory, representing children's sensitivity to perceive each facial expression as categorically different from each of the others in terms of their prototypical contexts. Results show age-related improvements in identifying facial expressions as belonging to their prototypical contexts. In addition, we found that older children not only made less misidentifications but also misidentified less kinds of facial expressions to the prototypical contexts. Furthermore, the kinds of misidentifications children made suggest that they do not identify facial expressions based on their conceptual emotional valence. Results were discussed from a perceptual learning account.

Developmental theories and previous research have emphasized the significance of cooperation and self-control in middle childhood. The present study extends previous research by examining (a) the growth of cooperation and self-control as well as the relations between them in middle childhood (third to sixth grade) and (b) the extent to which mothers' and fathers' parenting during early childhood (54 months and first grade) was associated with children's cooperation and self-control. The sample included 705 children (51% female, 86% White) and their mothers, fathers, and teachers in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD). Children, on average, exhibited increases in self-control but not cooperation from third to sixth grade though the increases were smaller for children who had higher self-control or cooperation at third grade. Children who exhibited higher self-control at third grade tended to exhibit higher cooperation at third grade; similar positive associations emerged for the changes in self-control and cooperation over time. In addition, if a child exhibited higher self-control at one time point relative to their typical average level, they tended to also exhibit higher cooperation at the same time point relative to their typical average level. However, these relative deviations within person were not associated over time. Lastly, maternal and paternal sensitive and stimulating parenting in early childhood was positively associated with children's cooperation and self-control in middle childhood. Overall, our findings shed light on the growth of and the relations between cooperation and self-control in middle childhood and highlight the role of maternal and paternal parenting in early childhood.

The present investigation examined the benefits of pre-K through the end of kindergarten for children from low-income homes who lived in a large and diverse county (n = 2,581) as well as factors associated with a reduction in benefits during the kindergarten year. Results revealed that pre-K graduates outperformed nonattenders in the areas of achievement and executive functioning skills at the end of kindergarten, and also that the benefits of pre-K at the start of the year diminished by a little more than half. This convergence between groups' performance was largest for more constrained skills, such as letter-word identification, and was attributed to the fact that nonattenders made greater gains in kindergarten as compared with graduates of pre-K. Importantly, convergence in the groups' performance in kindergarten was not attributed to pre-K children's classroom experiences in kindergarten. Convergence was, however, attributable to preexisting individual differences, and there was support for the notion that even though children's skills are susceptible to improvement as a result of pre-K, their longer-term outcomes are likely to be impacted by factors that are outside the scope of early schooling.

We examined the development of sharing behavior of children (aged 6 to 12) within the unique, minority population of Christian Arab children in Israel (N = 319). Children had the opportunity to share candy with a needy or non-needy recipient. Parents' level of religiosity was assessed using the Duke University Religion Index questionnaire (DUREL). Results replicate previous research that focused primarily on the majority populations of the societies in question, by demonstrating an overall increase in the incidence of sharing with age. Furthermore--as previously found among the majority of Jewish children in Israel--the recipient's neediness moderated the association between household religiosity and sharing, such that religiosity predicted greater levels of sharing only when the recipient was described as "poor" (a child whose parents have little money), not when the prospective recipient was not specified as such. Finally, the neediness of the recipient increased the incidence of sharing regardless of age, suggesting that in this unique minority population, sensitivity to the recipient's neediness emerges already at the age of 6. We discuss possible mechanisms behind this developmental pattern.

Ingroup favoritism influences third-party norm enforcement: Third-party punishers are more lenient when an ingroup member has been unfair. By contrast, in 2-party contexts, where punishers are the victims of unfairness, group bias effects are absent or inconsistent. Thus, group bias appears to be particularly influential when enforcing fairness among others, but less so when protecting oneself from unfairness. This would have implications for theories of how cooperation and intergroup cognition interact, but a more direct empirical test is lacking. To this end, developmental data are particularly useful as they can tell us whether and if so how group bias and fairness norm enforcement are related from their first emergence. Using a minimal groups manipulation, we induced ingroup bias in 6- to 9-year-olds and tested their willingness to reject disadvantageous (more for you) and advantageous (more for me) resource allocations when paired with in- and outgroup members. Group bias did not affect children's rejections of unfair allocations, although they reported that it was worse when an outgroup member had more. Our findings suggest that ingroup bias does not influence children's costly endorsement of equality, indicating that children perceive the equality norm to be indiscriminate and enforceable across group boundaries.

People frequently need to cooperate despite having strong self-serving motives. In the current study, pairs of 5- and 7-year-olds (N = 160) faced a one-shot coordination problem: To benefit, children had to choose the same of 3 reward divisions. They could not communicate or see each other and thus had to accurately predict each other's choices to succeed. One division split the rewards evenly, while the others each favored one child. Five-year-olds mostly chose the division favorable to themselves, resulting in coordination failure. By contrast, 7-year-olds mostly coordinated successfully by choosing the division that split the rewards equally (even though they behaved selfishly in a control condition in which they could choose independently). This suggests that by age 7, children jointly expect benefits to be shared among interdependent social partners "fairly" and that fair compromises can emanate from a cooperative rationality adapted for social coordination.

Three experiments showed that gratitude positively affected preschool children's prosocial behavior. In the studies, the experimenter induced gratitude by giving a token gift and then making a request for help or to share resources. Experiment 1 (N = 126, 4- to 6-year-olds) showed that gratitude increased helping behaviors toward the benefactor, and that emphasis on the benefactor's intention had a significant effect on helping behaviors. Experiment 2 (N = 129, 4- to 6-year-olds) indicated that grateful emotions increased the likelihood that the children would help not only the benefactor but also a stranger. Experiment 3 (N = 133, 3- to 6-year-olds) showed that gratitude motivated preschoolers' sharing behavior with the benefactor. Children's theory-of-mind and their understanding of the benefactor's intention mediated the relationship between children's age, gratitude, and prosociality.

Attention to youth advocacy and sociopolitical efficacy has been evident in developmental research on critical consciousness, yet this literature has given little attention to sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth or issues, or to the interplay between these dimensions of critical consciousness over time. We addressed these limitations within the context of gender-sexuality alliances (GSAs). Among 366 youth members (M[subscript age] = 15.53 years) in 38 GSAs across Massachusetts who completed surveys at the beginning and end of the school year, multilevel models indicated that youth who reported more active engagement in GSAs at the beginning of the school year reported greater advocacy throughout the year and greater sociopolitical efficacy at the year's end (adjusting for baseline advocacy and efficacy). There was a significant indirect association between greater GSA engagement and greater sociopolitical efficacy at the year's end through reported advocacy done over the school year. Furthermore, group-level contextual effects indicated that youth in GSAs with a more youth-led orientation reported doing less advocacy but reported greater sociopolitical efficacy at the year's end than youth in GSAs with less of a youth-led orientation. Finally, advocacy and sociopolitical efficacy were reciprocally associated with one another: Greater initial efficacy was associated with greater advocacy over the school year, and advocacy was associated with greater efficacy at the year's end. These findings extend the critical consciousness literature and carry implications for how GSAs and similar groups could support SGM youth and their allies in resisting oppression.

Parent emotion talk (ET), a type of emotion-related socialization practice, is theorized to foster children's emotion-related regulation and socioemotional skills. Yet, there has been limited research linking parent ET to children's effortful control, a top-down regulatory process. Despite the observed cultural differences in ET between Chinese and European American families, few researchers tested whether the socioemotional benefits of ET are generalizable to Chinese American families, an immigrant group with contrasting values in their heritage and host cultures. The present study examined Chinese American parents' ET, its associations with sociocultural factors, and prospective relations to school-age children's effortful control, sympathy, and socially appropriate behaviors. In a two-wave (1.5 years apart) longitudinal study of first- and second-generation Chinese American children (N = 258, age = 6-9 years at Wave 1, 52% from low-income families), the content and quality of parent ET (e.g., the overall quality of emotion talk, frequency of emotion explanations, emotion questions, and number of emotion words) was coded from a video-recorded shared book reading task. Children's effortful control, sympathy, and social behaviors were rated by parents, teachers, and children. Results showed that the Chinese American parents from lower socioeconomic status families, families with lower English proficiency, or more recent immigrants displayed lower ET. Parent ET was prospectively related to children's higher effortful control after controlling for stability, and higher effortful control was concurrently associated with children's higher sympathy and more socially appropriate behaviors. The findings provide empirical support for the socioemotional benefits of ET for school-age children in Chinese American immigrant families.

The goal of this study was to apply aspects of the heuristic model advanced by Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad (1998) to the study of socialization that takes place in preschool and elementary school classrooms. Investigating socialization in this context is important given the number of hours students spend in school, the emotional nature of social interactions that take place involving teachers and students, and the emotions students often experience in the context of academic work. Guided by Eisenberg, Cumberland, et al.'s (1998) call to consider complex socialization pathways, we focus our discussion on ways teachers, peers, and the classroom context can shape students' emotion-related outcomes (e.g., self-regulation, adjustment) and academic-related outcomes (e.g., school engagement, achievement) indirectly and differentially (e.g., as a function of student or classroom characteristics). Our illustrative review of the intervention literature demonstrates that the proposed classroom-based socialization processes have clear applied implications, and efforts to improve socialization in the classroom can promote students' emotional and academic competence. We conclude our discussion by outlining areas that require additional study.

Although research has demonstrated that both parents and peers influence adolescent development, it is not clear whether these relationships also serve as contexts for emotion socialization. In the current longitudinal study, we investigated whether maternal and peer emotion socialization were related to adolescent girls' daily emotions, emotion regulation, and social and emotional adjustment. The sample included 160 adolescent girls from low-income families followed across 2 years. At Time 1 (T1), girls reported on maternal and peer emotion socialization practices during laboratory visits. At Time 2 (T2), girls reported on daily negative and positive affect using ecological momentary assessment across 2 weeks. Emotion regulation, internalizing problems, and prosocial behavior were assessed during laboratory visits at both T1 and 2 years later (Time 3 [T3]). Results demonstrated that higher levels of maternal and peer emotionally supportive socialization practices were associated with lower levels of girls' daily negative affect. Mothers' supportive practices also predicted increases in girls' emotion regulation over time. Both maternal and peer unsupportive practices predicted more internalizing problems, and peer unsupportive practices predicted less prosocial behavior over time. This study supports and expands Eisenberg's heuristic model by demonstrating that both maternal and peer emotion socialization are associated with adolescent girls' emotional and behavioral outcomes, and maternal and peer emotion socialization have differential effects.

Parents' behaviors--particularly their emotion socialization behaviors (ESBs)--drive children's emotion socialization (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998). We propose that a major next step in the effort to promote healthy emotional development is to improve the field's understanding of the most proximal contributor to parent ESBs: parents' own experience and regulation of emotions in the context of caregiving. As an initial step, this paper integrates Eisenberg and colleagues' model of emotion socialization with theoretical and empirical work on parental emotion. We review the literature on the emotionally evocative nature of parenting, which influences parental ESBs, including parents' expressions of emotions and their responses to children's emotions. However, whereas parental emotions "influence" behavior, they do not necessarily "determine" it; parents may regulate their emotions to engage in optimal ESBs. Thus, parental regulation contributes to emotion socialization not only by modeling emotion regulation strategies for children, but also by influencing the quality of parents' ESBs. From a clinical perspective, parental emotion regulation is of utmost importance due to the degree of parental involvement in interventions for childhood emotional and behavioral disorders, which are often aimed at promoting child self-regulation. To illustrate practical applications of Eisenberg's model, we discuss evidence-based practices that include enhancement of parent emotion regulation as a primary target, with the ultimate goal of promoting child emotional development. Ultimately, we aim to spur future theoretical, empirical, and translational work in this area.

This special issue consists of 20 articles that focus on issues related to Eisenberg and colleagues' (Eisenberg, Cumberland, & Spinrad, 1998; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Cumberland, 1998) model of emotion socialization processes and its relevance for understanding a range of aspects of children's socioemotional functioning. The various papers have addressed a variety of issues including key mediating pathways, predictions of emotion-related socialization behaviors, moderators of pathways, and various potential outcomes of emotion-related socialization behaviors. Methods used in the articles include experimental interventions and nonexperimental longitudinal studies. The goals for this commentary include organizing the findings in this special issue to better highlight their relevance for the 1998 heuristic model and suggesting issues to consider in future research. Moreover, some gaps in the literature are noted. Finally, several minor changes to the model are suggested.

The amount of time adolescents spend communicating via digital technologies such as smartphones has led to concerns that computer-mediated communication (CMC) is displacing face-to-face (FtF) interactions and disrupting social development. Although many studies have examined CMC in adolescents' relationships with friends, few studies have examined the role of CMC in adolescents' renegotiation of closeness and autonomy with parents. To examine this issue, we administered an online daily diary with 169 U.S. adolescents to estimate the time they spend in CMC and FtF interactions and the number of texts they exchange with friends and parents. On the last day of the survey, we asked adolescents about their emotional closeness to friends and parents and their balance of closeness and volition with parents. Overall, we found more evidence for social stimulation than displacement effects of CMC. Texts and CMC time with friends predicted friend closeness after accounting for FtF time with friends; texts with parents predicted parent closeness after accounting for FtF time with parents. We also found support for our hypothesis that CMC would be associated with greater adolescent volition. CMC time with parents predicted greater volitional dependence (volition plus closeness) whereas texts with friends predicted greater independent decision-making (volition plus distance). We discuss how communication technologies are integrated into U.S. adolescents' relationships with friends and parents and how CMC can facilitate, rather than stifle, adolescents' adjustment of autonomy-relatedness with parents and their construction of emotional closeness with friends.

Adolescence is a developmental period when youth are increasingly likely to turn to their peers for support, and it is also a time of increased salience and development of ethnic-racial identity (ERI). Ethnic-racial centrality, a dimension of ERI, could be a predictor in the development of peer support, as youth with a stronger self-concept on the basis of their ethnic-racial identity might garner stronger peer relations. The current study examined trajectories of academic and emotional peer support as well as the role of centrality of one's ethnic-racial identity (i.e., ethnic-racial centrality) in predicting such trajectories among Black American and Latinx adolescents (N = 143, M[subscript age] = 11.91). Average levels of both academic and emotional peer support did not change over time. However, greater ethnic-racial centrality was positively related to higher initial levels of academic and emotional peer support. Ethnic-racial centrality as a potential asset for youth of color in the development of peer support is discussed.

Governments around the world are increasing investments in early childhood education as a way to promote children's learning and development. As research grows on the longer-term effects of early educational programs, some have hypothesized that sustained impacts may depend on the quality of children's subsequent classroom environments and may be more likely to occur in certain nonacademic domains. This study is the first to examine these questions in sub-Saharan Africa, using longitudinal data from a school-randomized trial in Ghana. A 1-year teacher-training and coaching program, delivered with (TTPA) and without (TT) parental-awareness meetings, was implemented when children were enrolled in 1 of 2 grades of preprimary school. Previous studies showed that in Year 1, the implementation year, the TT treatment had positive impacts on children's literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional development, while the TTPA treatment yielded no positive impacts for children in both grades. In this study, I examine impacts in Year 3, at the end of children's 1st or 2nd year of primary school. I find persistent positive impacts of TT on literacy, and new negative impacts of TTPA on numeracy, but these depend on levels of classroom emotional support and teacher burnout in primary school. In addition, there were small persistent impacts of both treatments on children's executive function, and these were not conditional on subsequent classroom environments.

Ownership is a cornerstone of many human societies and can be understood as a cooperative arrangement, where individuals refrain from taking each other's property. Owners can thus trust others to respect their property even in their absence. We investigated this principle in 5- to 7-year-olds (N = 152) from 4 diverse societies. Children participated in a resource task with a peer-partner, where we established ownership by assigning children to one side or the other of an apparatus and by marking resources with colors to help children keep track of them. When retrieving resources in the partner's presence, the majority of children took their own things and respected what belonged to their partner. A proportion of children in all societies also respected ownership in their partner's absence, although the strength of respect varied considerably across societies. We discuss implications for the development of ownership concepts and possible explanations for societal differences.

Prior research suggests that social relations may play a role in explaining individual differences in cognitive functioning in older adulthood. In particular, early life maternal relationship quality (MRQ) has been shown to be a strong predictor of later-life socioemotional outcomes and may also contribute to later-life cognitive outcomes. The current study aimed to examine longitudinal associations between retrospective early life MRQ and later-life episodic memory directly and indirectly through socioemotional pathways. Three waves of data spanning 6 years of the Health and Retirement Study were used (T1: 2008, T2: 2012, T3: 2014; n = 5,263, M[subscript age] = 69.31, SD = 10.75 at T1). A longitudinal mediation model tested the direct and indirect effects of retrospectively reported MRQ at T1 on T2 memory and latent change in memory from T2 to T3 through depressive symptoms, social network size, and loneliness at T2. Analyses revealed that better MRQ at T1 was associated with less loneliness and fewer depressive symptoms at T2, and in turn, each was independently associated with less decline in memory from T2 to T3. Overall, findings suggest an enduring effect of early life social experiences on later-life cognitive functioning through socioemotional pathways. These findings further highlight the necessity of taking an integrative and life course perspective when examining the relationship between social relations and cognition.

According to several developmental theories some children are more sensitive to the quality of their environment than others, but most supporting empirical evidence is based on relatively distal markers of hypothesized sensitivity. This study provides evidence for the validity of behaviorally observed Environmental Sensitivity as a moderator of parenting effects on children's early development in a sample of 292 children (Mage = 3.74; SD = 0.26) and their mothers. Sensitivity was coded using a newly developed observational measure for the specific and objective assessment of Environmental Sensitivity, the Highly Sensitive Child-Rating System (HSC-RS). HSC-RS factorial structure, associations with temperament traits, and interactions with parenting quality in the prediction of socioemotional child outcomes are reported. Findings supported a 1-factor solution. Observed sensitivity was relatively distinct from observed temperament and interacted with both low and high parenting quality in the development of behavior problems and social competence at ages 3 and 6.

This study investigated whether adolescent vagal stress reactivity to parent--adolescent conflict moderates the effects of family instability on the development of adolescent behavioral problems. Participants were 192 adolescents (M age = 12.4) and their parents across 2 measurement occasions. Results indicated that the interaction between family instability and vagal stress reactivity significantly predicted change in externalizing problems. Greater family instability was associated with increases in externalizing problems only for adolescents showing greater vagal suppression (i.e., higher vagal reactivity) during a laboratory triadic family conflict discussion. Further tests suggested the interaction was consistent with diathesis stress, such that adolescents with higher vagal stress reactivity show higher increases in externalizing problems under high instability but not lower increases in externalizing symptoms with low family instability. Findings indicate disruptions in the proximal rearing contexts may differentially influence development for adolescents, but the impact may differ as a function of stress reactivity.

Emotions form the foundation of infants' early social interactions and yet their role in prosocial behaviors is generally limited to situations of distress and other negative emotions. The present article argues that both positive emotions and the emotion of interest play important roles in prosocial behavior and development. First, we explore the ways in which positive emotions characterize infants' everyday prosocial behavior and the relationships that support these behaviors. We then examine the emotion of interest and its role in infants' prosocial behavior. This article synthesizes recent research on positive emotions in early prosocial development and provides a first attempt to link the emotion of interest to prosocial behavior. We close by discussing future directions for research on prosocial behavior with these emotions.

Around their first birthdays, infants begin to point, walk, and talk. These abilities are appreciable both by researchers with strictly standardized criteria and caregivers with more relaxed notions of what each of these skills entails. Here, we compare the onsets of these skills and links among them across two data collection methods: observation and parental report. We examine pointing, walking, and talking in a sample of 44 infants studied longitudinally from 6 to 18 months. In this sample, links between pointing and vocabulary were tighter than those between walking and vocabulary, supporting a unified sociocommunicative growth account. Indeed, across several cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, pointers had larger vocabularies than their nonpointing peers. In contrast to previous work, this did not hold for walkers' versus crawlers' vocabularies in our sample. Comparing across data sources, we find that reported and observed estimates of the growing vocabulary and of age of walk onset were closely correlated, while agreement between parents and researchers on pointing onset and talking onset was weaker. Taken together, these results support a developmental account in which gesture and language are intertwined aspects of early communication and symbolic thinking, whereas the shift from crawling to walking appears indistinct from age in its relation with language. We conclude that pointing, walking, and talking are on similar timelines yet distinct from one another, and discuss methodological and theoretical implications in the context of early development.

Children often encounter events that bear on their moral and other evaluations, such as physical aggression and material disorder. Children's perceptions and evaluations are decisive for how they respond to and learn from these everyday events. Using a new method for investigating the development of social perceptions and evaluations, researchers interviewed 3- to 6-year-olds about naturalistic video recordings of "harm, disorder", and "joint play" events. Children distinguished between the situations in the perceived intent of the protagonists, evaluations, justifications, and what they thought the protagonist should do after. Age differences suggested that perceiving and evaluating simple everyday situations was challenging for younger children. This research highlights the importance of studying children's everyday social perceptions and evaluations and validates a new paradigm for doing so.

Humans possess a tendency to rapidly and consistently make character evaluations from mere facial appearance. Recent work shows that this tendency emerges surprisingly early: children as young as 3-years-old provide adult-like assessments of others on character attributes such as "nice," "strong," and "smart" based only on subtle variations in targets' face shape and physiognomy (i.e., latent face-traits). The present research examined the behavioral consequences of children's face-trait judgments by asking whether, and if so when in development, the appearance of face-traits also (a) shapes children's judgments "of" targets' behaviors and (b) guides children's behavior "toward" targets. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that, by 3 years of age, children used facial features in character evaluations but not in judgments of targets' behavior, whereas by 5 years of age, children reliably made both character and behavior judgments from face-traits. Age-related change in behavior judgments was also observed in children's own behaviors "toward" targets: Experiments 3 and 4 showed that, by age 5 (but not earlier), children were more likely to give gifts to targets with trustworthy and submissive-looking faces (Experiment 3) and showed concordance between their character evaluations and gift-giving behaviors (Experiment 4). These findings newly suggest that, although children may rapidly make character evaluations from face-trait appearance, predicting and performing social behaviors based on face-traits may require more developed and specific understanding of traits and their relationships to behaviors. Nevertheless, by kindergarten, even relatively arbitrary and subtle face-traits appear to have meaningful consequences in shaping children's social judgments and interactions.

Theoretical models posit real-time bidirectional processes between parents and children as integral to child development, yet few studies have examined such processes. In this study, cross-lagged autoregressive latent growth models were used to assess the dynamic organization of mother and toddler behavior across a snack-delay task. Maternal support and nonsupport and toddler aversive behaviors were rated in 15-s intervals (N = 127 dyads; mean toddler age = 32.7 months). As hypothesized, within-mother increases in nonsupport predicted within-child increases in aversive behavior in the subsequent interval. Likewise, within-child increases in aversive behavior predicted within-mother increases in nonsupport. Maternal support was unassociated with child aversive behavior. Findings are consistent with a dynamic model of mother-toddler influences on negative behaviors during a regulatory challenge.

Research published in the special section documents how children's and adolescents' awareness and sensitivity to group-level exclusion, inequality of opportunity, and broader patterns of economic inequality in society influence and are associated with moral emotions, moral reasoning, and decisions about resource allocation. It also assesses the intersecting influence of societal hierarchies on youth's understanding of economic inequality and the socioemotional and behavioral correlates of their discernment of structural arrangements that produce inequality and marginalization. These advances in knowledge raise several interesting issues, among them (a) when during the life course explanations of poverty and distributive justice reasoning crystallize; (b) whether distinct developmental trajectories exist in these domains; (c) whether early patterns of moral emotions, reasoning, and decision-making shape interactions with less economically advantaged peers and predict subsequent attitudes and behavior pertaining to social justice issues; (d) the role of educational experiences and parental socialization in youth's understanding of structural causes for group inequalities; and (e) whether and why structural thinking about inequalities may be domain-specific (e.g., race, social class, income, gender).

Publicly funded center-based preschool programs were designed to enhance low-income children's early cognitive and social-emotional skills in preparation for kindergarten. In the U.S., the federal Head Start program and state-funded public school-based pre-kindergarten (pre-k) programs are the two primary center-based settings in which low-income children experience publicly funded preschool. Although evidence suggests that these programs generally promote cognitive and social-emotional skills for low-income children overall, whether the benefits of program participation vary for low-income children with difficult temperaments is unexplored. Difficult temperament status is a source of vulnerability that connotes increased risk for poor early school outcomes--risks that may be ameliorated by public preschool programs known to promote kindergarten readiness among other vulnerable populations. Using a nationally representative sample of low-income children (N ˜ 3,000) drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study -- Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), this study tests whether associations between public preschool participation and children's cognitive and social-emotional skills in kindergarten are moderated by difficult temperament status. We focus on Head Start and public school-based pre-k, comparing both with parental care and with each other. Results provide weak evidence that public preschool's benefits on children's cognitive and social-emotional skills in kindergarten are moderated by child temperament. School-based pre-k is significantly associated with better reading skills relative to parental care only for children with difficult temperaments. Additionally, for children with difficult temperaments, Head Start is significantly associated with better approaches to learning relative to parental care, and with reduced externalizing behavior problems relative to school-based pre-k.

This study examined the impact of a commonly adopted elementary universal social-emotional learning program, Second Step, on student social-emotional and academic outcomes following 2 years of implementation. The cluster-randomized wait-list control trial included 61 schools, 321 teachers, and 8,941 early elementary students across 2 states, with assessments collected in the fall and spring across 2 years. We developed 8 theoretically derived growth patterns that potentially described the intervention and counterfactual conditions, and then selected the model with the greatest support from the data for each outcome with an information-theoretic approach. Differences between intervention and control groups were tested within the best-fitting model in order to reduce misspecification and maximize generalizability. Most measures fit a pattern in which students improved only during instructional time in school and not during the summer; the data rarely fit the commonly assumed linear growth model. Improvements related to Second Step were observed for emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, skills for learning, and emotion management, but these were modified by either pretest levels or student sex. Condition effects for peer problems were larger for students with initially low ratings and for boys. Boys also showed improvements in conduct problems. Study impacts generally did not depend upon student grade level. The results confirmed the importance of identifying developmentally sensitive trajectories and suggested important implications for Second Step implementation in early elementary grades.

Relatively little research has addressed whether conceptual frameworks of early learning generalize across different national contexts. This article reports on a cross-country measurement invariance analysis of the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA). The IDELA is a direct assessment tool for 3- to 6-year-old children, intended to measure Early Literacy, Early Numeracy, Motor, and Social-Emotional development. Its generalizability is evaluated using samples from 5 countries: Afghanistan (N = 2,629); Bolivia (N = 480); Ethiopia (N = 682); Uganda (N = 504); and Vietnam (N = 675). The 4-domain model of the IDELA was supported in each country, although the domains were highly correlated. Measurement invariance analysis revealed that most IDELA items do not provide a basis for comparing children's development over the 5 countries. This research supports the use of the IDELA for program evaluation and within-country monitoring purposes, but cautions against its use for international comparisons.

The manner in which mothers engage in emotional discussion, or reminisce, with their young children about past emotional experiences poses important ramifications for child socioemotional and cognitive development. Maltreating mothers may have difficulty engaging in emotionally supportive reminiscing. The current study examined the role of maternal sensitive guidance during reminiscing as a process variable that may explain associations between child maltreatment and 3 child self-regulatory dimensions: lability/negativity, emotion regulation, and inhibitory control. Participants included 111 maltreating and 65 demographically matched, nonmaltreating mothers and their 3- to 6-year-old children (N = 176). The dyads participated in a joint reminiscing task about 4 past emotional shared experiences. Mothers reported on their children's emotion regulation and lability/negativity while children participated in a behavioral assessment of inhibitory control. Results indicated that maltreating mothers engaged in less sensitive guidance when reminiscing compared with nonmaltreating mothers. In the main analysis, maternal sensitive guidance mediated relations between maltreatment and child emotion regulation and inhibitory control, respectively, but not lability/negativity.

Extracurricular activities represent a key setting for prevention and promoting positive youth development. However, to date, a crucial aspect of activity participation--activity breadth (participation in a variety of extracurricular settings)--has been largely overlooked as a resource for bolstering adolescents' long-term adjustment, especially the development of self-concept. To examine the long-term psychosocial effects of involvement in multiple extracurricular settings, this study modeled latent trajectories of general, social, and academic self-concept and intensity and breadth of participation across 5 years (Grades 8-12) for 1,146 Australian youth (55% female; age[subscript wave 1] 12-14). We investigated multivariate change in self-concept and breadth of participation, while concurrently modeling intensity of participation. Self-concept and breadth followed a quadratic trajectory, declining across the early to-middle high school years and increasing during the final high school years. Intensity was also quadratic, but increased early on, followed by steep declines. Notably (and controlling for intensity), wider breadth of participation at the transition to high school predicted less-steep declines in general and academic self-concept across the early to-middle high school years. Findings support the potential for breadth of participation as a promising avenue for stimulating adolescents' adjustment by buffering against early declines in their views of self.

Although the human proclivity to engage in impression management and care for reputation is ubiquitous, the question of its developmental outset remains open. In 4 studies, we demonstrate that the sensitivity to the evaluation of others (i.e., evaluative audience perception) is manifest by 24 months. In a first study, 14- to 24-month-old children (N = 49) were tested in situations in which the attention of an audience was systematically manipulated. Results showed that when the experimenter was inattentive, as opposed to attentive, children were more likely to explore an attractive toy. A second study (N = 31) explored whether same-aged children would consider not only the attention of the experimenter but also the values the experimenter expressed for two different outcomes when exploring a toy. We found that children reproduced outcomes that were positively valued by the experimenter significantly more when the experimenter was attentive but were more likely to reproduce negatively valued outcomes when the experimenter was inattentive. A third control study (N = 30) showed that the significant effect of Study 2 disappeared in the absence of different values. Lastly, Study 4 (N = 34) replicated and extended the phenomenon by showing toddler's propensity to modify their behavior in the presence of 2 different experimenters, depending on both the experimenter's evaluation of an outcome and their attention. Overall, these data provide the first convergent demonstration of evaluative audience perception in young children that precedes the full-fledged normative, mentalizing, and strong conformity psychology documented in 4- to 5-year-old children.

Rates of participation in early childhood education (ECE) programs are on the rise globally, including in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet little evidence exists on the quality of these programs and on the role of classroom quality in predicting learning for young children across diverse contexts. This study uses data from the Greater Accra Region of Ghana (N = 3,407; M[subscript age] = 5.8 years; 49.5% female) to examine how changes in four culturally validated dimensions of ECE classroom quality predict children's growth in early academic and social-emotional skills from the beginning to the end of one academic year. We find that improvements in domains of classroom instructional quality are related to small, positive gains in children's early academic and social-emotional outcomes over the school year, and that these improvements are generally larger for children and classrooms with higher baseline proficiency and quality levels. Associations between changes in social-emotional aspects of classroom quality and child outcomes were mixed. These results extend the knowledge base on ECE quality to a new and underrepresented context while also providing important information regarding the contexts and children for whom teacher training and other quality-focused improvement efforts may be most needed.

There is evidence that children of incarcerated parents are at risk of poor developmental and educational outcomes. However, much of this evidence is limited by biased samples, as studies must rely on opt-in recruitment. Administrative data present an opportunity to overcome this challenge, as they capture information on all incarcerated individuals. This study used administrative data on convictions of the parents of 19,071 children aged 5-6 years in Western Australia. Records of parental convictions (starting from 1 year prior to the child's birth) were linked to children's scores on the Australian Early Development Census, which is a teacher-reported measure of children's physical, social, emotional, communicative, and cognitive development. Logistic regression models estimated the odds of children of convicted parents being developmentally vulnerable. Models were adjusted for child, parent, and neighborhood sociodemographic factors. Compared to children in the comparison group, children whose parent had either served a community order or been incarcerated were at risk of poor development across all developmental domains, even after adjusting for sociodemographic factors. Furthermore, children of incarcerated parents had higher odds of developmental vulnerability on multiple domains compared to children of parents who had served community orders only. The results suggest that, although children of convicted parents experience a higher incidence of sociodemographic risk, their parents' criminal activity constitutes an independent risk factor for their development. Intervention to support the early development of children of convicted parents is therefore essential, and should consider the family context.

We investigated the role of sociocultural (between-groups) and individual (within-group) factors on the development of preschoolers' resource-allocation preferences. We tested claims of the "joint impact hypothesis" of social values development that social-emotional understanding skills would predict the transition from simpler (individualistic allocations) to more complex (cooperative, competitive allocations) social values and that cultural background would determine which values emerged. American children ages 37-67 months from Spanish-speaking Latino (n = 134), English-speaking Latino (n = 50), and English-speaking Caucasian (n = 98) backgrounds twice completed a resource-allocation task and a social-emotional understanding assessment, separated by 6 months. Contrary to predictions, results revealed that for no group were complex choice allocations more common at Time 2 than at Time 1. Moreover, for the Caucasian group, social-emotional understanding did not predict time-dependent choice allocation behavior. For Latinos, however, results revealed differential social values development according to language background. For Spanish-speaking Latinos, higher social-emotional understanding scores predicted emergent cooperative choices, and for English-speaking Latinos, higher scores predicted emergent competitive choices. Findings are consistent with differential socialization wherein social-emotional understanding skills facilitate the development of culturally mainstream values for more acculturated Latinos and ethnic cultural values for less acculturated Latinos.

Although research has shown fade-out of the cognitive benefits of classroom-based preschool interventions, less is known regarding the durability of social-emotional impacts. This study examines the extent to which the multicomponent Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP) intervention lowered risk of internalizing, externalizing, attention, and social difficulties from Head Start through elementary school for 602 low-income children. Results suggest that most children in this sample showed few social-emotional difficulties over time. However, one quarter of the sample exhibited profiles of transitory or building difficulties over six years. Random assignment to the CSRP preschool intervention significantly reduced children's odds of transitory attention and social difficulties in middle childhood, with preliminary evidence suggesting stronger impacts for children attending elementary schools characterized by low academic rigor and high neighborhood crime. CSRP was not found to be effective in preventing more robust, increasing forms of difficulty in the externalizing and attention domains. Implications for early childhood intervention and policy are discussed.

We assessed the extent to which feelings of sympathy and aggressive behaviors codeveloped from 6 to 12 years of age in a representative sample of Swiss children (N = 1,273). Caregivers and teachers reported children's sympathy and overt aggression in 3-year intervals. Second-order latent curve models indicated general mean-level declines in sympathy and overt aggression over time, although the decline in sympathy was relatively small. Importantly, both trajectories were characterized by significant interindividual variability. A bivariate second-order latent curve model revealed a small-moderate negative correlation between the latent slopes of sympathy and overt aggression, suggesting an inverse codevelopmental relationship between the constructs from middle childhood to early adolescence. In terms of predictive effects, an autoregressive cross-lagged model indicated a lack of bidirectional relations between sympathy and overt aggression, underscoring the primacy of the variables' rank-order stability. We discuss the codevelopment and developmental relations of sympathy and aggression, their potential conjoint social-emotional mechanisms, and the practical implications thereof.

Although social difficulties have been identified as sequelae of children's experiences with interparental conflict and insecurity, little is known about the specific mechanisms underlying their vulnerability to social problems. Guided by emotional security theory, this study tested the hypothesis that children's emotional insecurity mediates associations between interparental conflict and their social difficulties by undermining their affiliative goals in best friendships. Participants included 235 families with the first of 5 measurement occasions over a 10-year period occurring when children were in kindergarten (mean age = 6 years). Findings from the lagged latent difference score analyses indicated that intensification of multi-method assessment of interparental conflict during the early school years predicted subsequent increases in children's emotional insecurity 5 years later in adolescence. In the latter part of the cascade, rises in emotional insecurity predicted decreases in adolescent friendship affiliation, which, in turn, were specifically associated with declines in social competence. The specificity of this cascade of changing processes in predicting social problems was supported by the robustness of the findings after the inclusion of static measures of each construct as predictors, parent-child relationship insecurity as a covariate, and increases in children's internalizing symptoms as an alternative outcome.