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Technology is pervasive in homes of families with young children, despite evidence for negative associations between infant exposure to screen‐based media and cognitive development that has led the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to discourage parents from exposing children under the age of 18 months to any kind of screen time (AAP, 2016). Here, we apply a propensity score matching approach to estimate relations between electronic screen‐based media use in infancy and executive function in early toddlerhood. In an international sample of 416 firstborn infants, parental report of regular exposure to screen‐based media at 4 months predicted poorer performance on a test of inhibition at 14 months, but was unrelated to either cognitive flexibility or working memory at 14 months. Results of this study are therefore consistent with the view that early exposure to screen‐based media adversely affects the development of executive function.

The overall goal of the current dissertation is to uncover predictors and outcomes of positive parenting in ethnic minority families. Chapter 2 provides an overview of commonly used observational instruments to measure sensitivity, showing the versatility and scientific importance of the construct. The results presented in Chapter 3 suggest that mothers of different cultural backgrounds and socioeconomic groups have a highly similar view on maternal sensitivity. In Chapter 4, the results show that both acculturation stress and general psychological distress mediated the relation between socioeconomic status and positive parenting in Turkish minority families with young children. The results of the empirical study presented in Chapter 5 suggest that family stress processes play a role in adolescents’ behavioral outcomes, whereas family investment processes play a role in adolescents’ cognitive-behavioral outcome in Turkish minority families. Overall, the studies described in this thesis have shown that parenting beliefs and behaviors in ethnic minority families can only be understood in light of factors that are often related to minority status, such as lower socioeconomic status, higher general family stress, and acculturation stress. These factors should be taken into account in research and practice regarding parenting behaviors and child development in ethnic minority families.

Analyses of the present data are reported in the article “Crossing Boundaries: A Pilot Study of Maternal Attitudes about Child Maltreatment in Nine Countries” [8]. Data were collected during home visits using the Maltreatment Q-Sort (MQS). A total of 466 mothers from nine different countries gave their opinion about child maltreatment by sorting 90 cards with parenting behaviors taken from the literature that reflect four types of child maltreatment, into 9 evenly distributed stacks (with 10 cards each) from least to most harmful for the child. This data article provides an overview of the content of the 90 items, which type of maltreatment they reflect, and the source of the items. The percentage of mothers labelling each of the MQS items as maltreatment is also presented. In addition, instructions are included about the administration of the MQS as well as data-entry and analyses of Q-sort data, accompanied by example datasets and syn- taxes. This can serve as a manual for researchers interested in using Q-sort data., (undefined)