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This study examined whether Head Start, the nation's main two-generation program for low-income families, benefits children in part through positive changes in parents' use of spanking and reading to children. Data were drawn from the 3-year-old cohort of the national evaluation of the Head Start program known as the Head Start Impact Study (N = 2,063). Results indicated that Head Start had small, indirect effects on children's spelling ability at Age 4 and their aggression at Age 4 through an increase in parents' reading to their children. Taken together, the results suggest that parents play a role in sustaining positive benefits of the Head Start program for children's behavior and literacy skills, one that could be enhanced with a greater emphasis on parent involvement and education. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

An explanatory model for children's development of disruptive behavior across the transition from preschool to school was tested. It was hypothesized that child effortful control would mediate the effects of parenting on children's externalizing behavior and that child sex would moderate these relations. Participants were 241 children (123 boys) and their parents and teachers. Three dimensions of parenting, warm responsiveness, induction, and corporal punishment, were assessed via maternal report when children were 3 years old. Child effortful control at age 3 was measured using laboratory tasks and a mother-report questionnaire. Mothers and teachers contributed ratings of child externalizing behavior at age 6. Results showed that the hypothesized model fit the data well and that the pattern of associations between constructs differed for boys and girls. For boys, parental warm responsiveness and corporal punishment had significant indirect effects on children's externalizing behavior three years later, mediated by child effortful control. Such relations were not observed for girls. These findings support a sex-differentiated pathway to externalizing behavior across the transition from preschool to school.