This study examined three questions: (a) What are the childhood predictors of becoming a teenage parent (versus a first-time parent as a young adult)? (b) Does becoming a parent in the teen years carry higher risk of young-adult internalizing and externalizing problems than becoming a first-time parent as a young adult? (c) Does the relation between childhood factors and adult mental health differ between teen parents and adult parents? We combined data from two U.S. samples that were followed up from age 6 through age 35. Family socioeconomic status, one’s parent’s marital status, parenting behavior received in childhood, child social behavior, and child internalizing and externalizing symptoms were measured at ages 6 and 12 or 13 in 143 participants who became teenage parents and 512 participants who first became parents in young adulthood. Childhood factors significantly predicted which participants became teen parents, and teen parents had higher internalizing and externalizing problems in adulthood. Developmental pathways to adult mental health were equivalent between the two groups, suggesting that greater childhood risks, not teen parenthood alone, explains higher internalizing and externalizing symptoms in teenage parents.
The present study examined the role of Turkish children’s attachment security in terms of predicting positive friendship representations in the preschool period and investigated the possible moderating function of the teacher–child representations (sensitivity, conflict resolution, harshness/punishment, and avoidance/emotional distance) in these predictive associations. We used the story completion method to understand children’s mental representations of their relationships with parents, teachers, and friends. The participants consisted of 115 children (65 boys) with a mean age of 66.97 months enrolled in seven classrooms in two state kindergartens in Türkiye. The results indicated that after controlling for children’s gender, there was a positive association between parent–child attachment security and positive friendship representations. Similarly, positive associations were found between children’s representations of sensitivity, conflict resolution, and avoidance/emotional distance in their relationships with teachers and their representations of positive friendship quality. Moderator analyses revealed that children’s representations of harshness/punishment in their relationships with teachers moderated the association between parent–child attachment security and positive friendship representations. Specifically, when children’s representations of harsh and punitive teachers were low, the relationship between parent–child attachment security and positive friendship was stronger. However, this relationship was not observed when children’s representations of harsh and punitive teachers were high. The results demonstrated the dynamic and interactive nature of the representations of children’s relationships with their parents, teachers, and friends. Implications for mental representations of children in close relationships are discussed.
While ageism experiences are associated with reduced well-being among older adults, the contexts in which they encounter ageism remain underexamined. This study investigated everyday contexts of perceived ageism among older adults in Canada, with a particular focus on TV and social media usage. We analyzed up to 14 days of evening diaries from 111 individuals aged 50 and above living in Canada (Age: M = 71.27 years, SD = 9.02; 75% female). Participants reported their daily TV viewing, social media screen time, purposes of social media usage and perceived ageism each evening. Multilevel models were employed to account for the nested data structure. As hypothesized, older adults reported higher levels of perceived ageism on days when they watched more TV than usual. In addition, those who spent more time on social media on average reported more perceived ageism. Moreover, using social media to connect with new people was linked to higher levels of perceived ageism at the between-person level, whereas using it to post content or to pass time was associated with lower perceived ageism at the within-person level. Findings suggest that TV and social media can be key contexts in which older adults perceive everyday ageism.
Memory functioning is central to everyday life, yet memory failures, such as forgetting names, words, or medications, are common daily experiences, particularly in later adulthood. How often individuals experience these memory failures may depend on their general and personal views of aging. General views include expectations for older adults (ageist attitudes), whereas personal views can include age-based experiences of discrimination (ageist experiences) and subjective age. Leveraging 14-day daily diary data from 974 participants (aged 50–94 years) who reported on a total of 12,261 days from the United States, Canada, Germany, Austria, Ukraine, India, China, Israel, and Türkiye (Study 1), and momentary data across 14 days with 7 assessments per day from 111 participants (aged 65–91 years) from Switzerland (Study 2), the current studies examined within-person fluctuations in daily ageism and daily subjective age and their links to everyday self-reported memory failures. Preregistered analyses tested between- and within-person effects of subjective age and ageism (ageist attitudes in Study 1, ageist experiences in Study 2) in predicting daily memory failures. Study 1 results indicate that within- and between-person ageist attitudes were positively associated with daily memory failures, but subjective age was not. Study 2 results from the Swiss data revealed no significant associations. These results suggest that endorsing expectations for older adults may be more powerful than personal views of aging in predicting daily memory failures.
The objective of this study is to examine the associations between food parenting practices (FPP) and physical activity parenting practices (PAPP) with children’s weight-related outcomes (WRO), using food and physical activity parenting practices conceptual frameworks. Two systematic reviews with meta-analyses were conducted following PRISMA guidelines. Eligible studies included observational research reporting associations between FPP or PAPP domains—structure, control/coercive neglect/control, and autonomy promotion—and WRO in children aged 3–12. A total of 33 studies on FPP and 15 studies on PAPP were included. Findings from the meta-analyses suggest a small negative association between structure FPP and WRO. No significant associations were found for autonomy promotion or coercive control FPP domains. Regarding PAPP, our results suggest a small negative association between structure practices and lower WRO, and a small positive association between neglect/control PAPP and WRO. Structure parenting practices showed small but consistent associations with WRO, whereas findings for autonomy promotion and control/neglect domains were largely nonsignificant or mixed. Our findings do not support robust links between most FPP or PAPP domains and children’s WRO, but emphasize the need for high-quality longitudinal studies to clarify the predictive value and directionality of parenting practices on children’s WRO.
Numerous suicide risk assessment tools exist, but their psychometric quality, diagnostic accuracy and cultural applicability for youth are unclear. This review aims to synthesise the evidence on the psychometric performance and clinical feasibility of suicide risk assessment instruments for children and adolescents. A systematic review was conducted in accordance with the Cochrane Handbook and reported following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines and was prospectively registered in PROSPERO (CRD42024569168). Seven databases were searched from inception to July 2024, without language restrictions, for observational studies evaluating psychometric or diagnostic properties of suicide risk instruments in populations aged <19 years. Methodological quality was assessed using the Law–MacDermid tool and Roy’s criteria. Fifty included studies ( n = 36,966 participants) evaluated 11 instruments. The Ask Suicide-Screening Questions (ASQ) and Suicide Behaviours Questionnaire-Revised (SBQ-R) demonstrated the strongest evidence, with high internal consistency and excellent diagnostic accuracy (area under the curve [AUC] > .90) across emergency, inpatient, outpatient and primary-care settings. ASQ and SBQ-R currently provide the most robust evidence for brief suicide risk assessment in children and adolescents. Integrating these validated tools into routine nursing, school, and primary-care practice may strengthen early identification and referral pathways. These findings support global mental health priorities, including Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study investigated causal associations of genetic predisposition to sedentary behaviors (television viewing, computer use, driving) and mobile phone use duration with social anxiety/social phobia, an “anxiety, nerves, or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)” phenotype, and panic attacks. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary data were sourced from the IEU OpenGWAS repository, primarily comprising individuals of European ancestry from the UK Biobank (aged 40–69). Independent genome-wide significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) ( p < 5 × 10 −8 ) were selected as instrumental variables. Causal estimates were primarily derived using inverse-variance weighted (IVW) regression, supplemented by sensitivity analyses. Results demonstrated that genetically predicted mobile phone use was associated with increased liability to both social anxiety or social phobia (β = .011, p = .045) and panic attacks (β = .021, p = .033). Conversely, computer use showed a protective association with panic attacks (β = −0.028, p = .010), whereas television viewing was also associated with higher panic attack risk (β = .020, p = .047). These findings indicate modest causal effects of specific digital behaviors on anxiety-related outcomes, though interpretations are constrained by phenotypic and sample limitations.
This special section advances developmental psychopathology as a dynamic, multilevel, and contextually embedded perspective on human development. Moving beyond categorical models of disease vs. health, the six contributions emphasize dimensional, process-oriented, and culturally sensitive approaches to understanding heterogeneity in developmental pathways of psychosocial adaptation. Key topics addressed by this special section include strengths-based and global perspectives on positive youth development, resilience as a dynamic and multidimensional process, and person-centered approaches to investigate risk. Further papers examine the biopsychosocial embedding of early adversity and conceptualize personality pathology as a developmental disruption of identity formation. Most importantly, the special section also highlights the translation of developmental mechanisms into scalable interventions aiming at promoting positive development and preventing maladaptation. Together, the contributions demonstrate how integrating biological, psychological, and contextual processes studied under the umbrella of developmental psychopathology can inform developmentally sensitive prevention and intervention across the life course.
Across cultures, how parents manage children’s problem behaviors shapes the environment for children’s development. Our study addressed the existing lack of cross-cultural comparison on parents’ strategies for addressing young children’s externalizing and internalizing-type behaviors. A total of 104 parents of preschool-aged children from the United States ( n = 50, M age = 36.24) and China ( n = 54, M age = 35.68) participated in a semi-structured interview. Using a series of hypothetical vignettes depicting externalizing and internalizing behaviors in young children, we elicited open-ended responses regarding how parents would enact management in the face of children’s common problem behaviors. Parents’ responses were coded and composited into higher-order categories of parent management strategies. Across both sites, parents endorsed using non-aggressive power assertions most frequently in response to externalizing behaviors, while endorsing providing aid and support most frequently in response to internalizing behaviors. Our findings indicated main site effects on some but not all management strategies, with cross-site differences being more salient for externalizing-type behaviors. These findings enhance our understanding of cultural variations in the customary practices that may be used to manage different types of disruptive and distress-related behaviors in young children.
Temperament plays a crucial role in shaping children’s emotional responses and social behaviors, with behavioral inhibition (BI) predisposing children to emotional symptoms and peer problems. However, since not all BI children experience socio-emotional difficulties, we suggested that theory of mind (ToM), a crucial social cognitive capacity, may regulate the trajectory of their socio-emotional development. This study explored how BI and ToM influence socio-emotional adjustment across two developmental stages—early (age 4) and middle (age 7) childhood—in a longitudinal design ( N = 123). Children’s BI and ToM were assessed at age 4, and socio-emotional difficulties, including emotional symptoms and peer problems, were assessed via parental reports at both ages 4 and 7. The findings revealed that BI itself had a sustained impact on emotional symptoms, whereas its effect on peer problems was significant only in early childhood. In addition, ToM was found to mitigate the influence of BI on peer problems in middle childhood. These results highlight the developmental interplay between BI and ToM and underscore the importance of ToM in buffering the socio-emotional difficulties faced by BI children. The findings contribute to understanding how temperament and cognitive abilities interact to shape socio-emotional adjustment over time.
Forgiveness involves both outward reconciliation and internal emotional resolution, yet cultures may differ in how tightly these components are coupled. We conducted two preregistered experiments examining how relational closeness and transgressor remorse shape 6- to 8-year-olds’ evaluations of a victim’s decisional and emotional forgiveness in Germany and Japan. In Experiment 1, relational closeness (friend vs. classmate vs. stranger) was manipulated; in Experiment 2, remorse (apology present vs. absent) was manipulated. Following interpersonal transgression vignettes, children predicted the victim’s outward responses (decisional forgiveness) and internal emotions (emotional forgiveness). Remorse robustly increased both components across cultures, whereas relational closeness had minimal effects. Notably, remorse effects on attributed anger were stronger among German than Japanese children. Japanese children more frequently predicted conciliatory outward behavior despite maintaining negative emotional attributions, whereas German children showed tighter coupling between emotional attributions and outward predictions. Pooled analyses suggested that a relationship-focused parenting style is linked to children’s evaluations of emotional, but not decisional, forgiveness. These findings indicate that by middle childhood, children are highly sensitive to remorse when evaluating forgiveness, but culturally shaped scripts govern whether outward reconciliation coincides with internal emotional resolution.
Bystanders’ decision to intervene in defense of victims plays a fundamental role in reducing bullying. Previous research has demonstrated that teachers’ support for victims and school connectedness encourage bystanders’ defending behavior. This study examines the longitudinal associations among these variables within a comprehensive model testing for additive, partial, or fully mediated effects. A total of 363 adolescents (34% females; age M = 13.35; SD = 1.47) participated in a three-wave study. The findings highlight that teachers’ support for victims can indirectly increase bystanders’ actions to help victims, with this effect being fully mediated by students’ school connectedness. Implications for anti-bullying interventions are discussed.
Emerging adulthood (herein referring to ages 16-25) is a distinct developmental period marked by identity exploration, increasing autonomy, and heightened exposure to social, economic, and structural precarity. While this life stage presents opportunities for growth, it also coincides with elevated vulnerability to mental health difficulties, particularly among marginalised young people. This study explored how emerging adults in Ireland experience adversity and cultivate resilience, and whether purpose-built digital mental health supports can enhance mental health and well-being. Using data from creative workshops and interviews with 41 participants, reflexive thematic analysis identified six interconnected domains: individual, relational, systemic, cultural, digital, and purpose-built digital supports. Findings indicate that adversity during emerging adulthood is multidimensional and intersectional, shaped by educational and employment pressures, family dynamics, systemic barriers, stigma, discrimination, and digital environments. Resilience emerged as a dynamic, socio-ecological process involving self-regulation, peer and community connection, and strategic engagement with institutional and digital resources. Purpose-built digital supports were valued for accessibility and mental health literacy but limited by engagement, safety, and cultural relevance. Findings highlight the need for integrated, co-produced digital and relational supports to promote mental well-being and resilience during emerging adulthood.
This study advanced a rationale for employing a person-centered approach to examine covariations between parenting dimensions and child behaviors, using family-level (triadic) profiles that simultaneously included multiple maternal and paternal parenting dimensions and child behaviors as indicators. Participants included 385 preschool children ( M age = 4.8 years, SD = 0.41, 53% boys) and their parents from Beijing and Dalian, China. Results revealed five family profiles that extend existing research, which commonly separates parenting profiles from child behaviors. The five profiles included (1) joint-parents authoritative with behaviorally competent children, (2) joint-parents intrusive/father coercive with socially withdrawn children, (3) joint-parents coercive and controlling with aggressive children, (4) joint parents uninvolved with behaviorally problematic children, and (5) joint-parents median average with behaviorally thriving children. Findings yielded unique results and demonstrated a new path for studying co-occurring parenting and child behaviors from a more holistic perspective.
Research on children's knowledge of contamination and contagion has been conducted mainly in industrialized settings, and little is known about it in Low- and Middle-Income Countries where contamination and infectious illness are significant health hazards. In this study, 75 children (4-9 years of age) living in Tanzania were interviewed about scenarios showing contaminated and contagious situations. They were also asked how they learned about contamination. All children had a good understanding of water and food contamination and contagion. Younger children were less knowledgeable than older children for scenarios that did not depict contamination, suggesting uncertainty in these situations. Children reported learning about contamination from relatives and teachers. Implications for health interventions, including health-related aspects of climate change, are discussed.
Although existing studies have separately documented the heterogeneous development of Problematic internet use (PIU) and aggression and identified sex differences, little is known about their sex-specific co-developmental patterns among Chinese adolescents. Even less is known about how these patterns are linked to changes in mental health over time. Therefore, this study aims to (a) examine the sex-specific co-developmental trajectories of PIU and aggression, (b) examine whether baseline mental health predicts membership in different joint trajectory classes, and (c) examine whether these trajectory classes are differentially associated with subsequent mental health outcomes. This longitudinal study collected data from 1,531 Chinese junior middle school students (age: M = 12.30 years, SD = 0.55, range = 11-15 years, 51.05% girls) at three points at 6-month intervals. PP-LCGM models revealed three trajectories for boys (i.e., average, congruent-low, and moderate-increasing) and four trajectories for girls (i.e., low-increasing, moderate-increasing PIU and moderate-stable aggression, congruent-low, moderate-stable PIU and moderate-decreasing aggression). Further analyses indicated that mental health exhibited stronger predictive effects in the girls subgroup than in the boys subgroup, with significant variations in mental health outcomes observed within both subgroups. Findings highlight the importance of prioritizing prevention and intervention efforts for high-risk subgroups.
Panel attrition in adolescent research is not merely a methodological nuisance but often reflects substantive developmental discontinuities during critical transitions. Unlike adult populations, adolescents face unique attrition risks associated with institutional changes and shifting developmental trajectories that traditional linear models often fail to capture. This study investigated the predictors of panel attrition using data from the Korean Education Longitudinal Study 2005, which covers the extensive developmental period from early adolescence to early adulthood. Random survival forests (RSF) were used to capture the complex, nonlinear trajectories of adolescent behavior obscured by traditional linear models. We found that structural instability, specifically school transfer experience, was the strongest predictor of attrition. Crucially, RSF uncovered distinct nonlinear patterns: a threshold effect for academic achievement, whereby risk was concentrated among low achievers, whereas maternal education showed a U-shaped pattern with elevated risk at both extremes. These findings highlight that attrition is associated with divergent developmental mechanisms such as academic disengagement and strategic parental gatekeeping, emphasizing the need for developmentally sensitive methodologies in longitudinal research.
Influential work in the gerontological literature in the 1990s has demonstrated that the discrepancy between objective and subjective evaluations of health increases with age. It is an open question though whether the direction and size of the age gradient in the discrepancies has changed over historical time. In this study, we examine cohort differences in age-related divergences in health evaluations using two markers of objective health (illnesses/functioning) and two markers of subjective health (overall/compared to others) obtained from cross-sectional samples of older adults in the Berlin Aging Studies in 1990-1993 (n = 516, aged 70-103) and 2018-2020 (n = 625, aged 68-94). We use both person-oriented and variable-oriented methodological frameworks that specifically facilitate study of aging as a process that propels individuals through a multidimensional health space: permutational multivariate analysis of variance (PERMANOVA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). The person-oriented PERMANOVA results revealed that divergence across markers of health increased with age, but did not evidence any cohort differences. Complementary results from variable-oriented SEMs corroborated that the four-dimensional variance-covariance structure did not differ across cohorts and that the age pattern was consistent across cohorts. Results suggest that objective and subjective indicators of health are increasingly discrepant after age 70, but reveal no evidence that age gradient of the divergences has changed across historical time.
This cross-sectional study used Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory to assess the structure of opportunity beliefs among Latino youth, and how these beliefs link to academic and behavioral outcomes. A total of 383 Latino high school students ( M age = 15.25) completed surveys assessing opportunity beliefs, academic achievement, delinquent behavior, and gang involvement. A three-factor model (i.e., Opportunity Structure, Oppositional Culture, and Ethnic Barriers) was identified and demonstrated adequate internal consistency. Male students reported higher Oppositional Culture beliefs than female students, and first-generation youth reported higher Opportunity Structure beliefs than second-generation youth. Furthermore, a nonsignificant trend was observed between country of origin and generational status; for Central Americans, first-generation youth reported higher Oppositional Culture beliefs than second-generation youth, whereas no generational differences were found for Mexican-American youth. Opportunity Structure was positively associated with grade point average (GPA) and inversely with gang involvement and delinquency, whereas these associations were reversed for Oppositional Culture. The study provides partial support for Ogbu’s cultural-ecological theory, identifying three factors that capture opportunity beliefs among Latino youth. Findings underscore key demographic factors that may in part shape how Latino youth perceive the Opportunity Structure and how opportunity beliefs relate to academic and behavioral outcomes.
Callous-Unemotional (CU) traits are key predictors of conduct problems. Although primary and secondary CU variants have been identified, longitudinal evidence and the role of gender remain limited. This study examined CU subtypes, predictors, and outcomes using data from the ELISA Project ( n = 2,163; 49.4% girls; M age T1 = 4.26; M age T6 = 10.92). Children were classified as Low CU/Low Anx (77.9%), Primary CU (11%), Anxiety (8.9%), or Secondary CU (2.2%) based on CU and anxiety scores. Predictors (i.e., fearlessness, emotionality, parenting variables, parental stress) were analyzed using ridge penalized MLR, and aggression correlates and emotional-behavioral outcomes with MANOVAs. Risk for Primary CU was associated with elevated fearlessness, punitive parenting, and lower parental warmth across genders, as well as higher parental inconsistency among girls. Risk for Secondary CU was characterized by increased punitive parenting among boys and reduced parental warmth across genders. At T4, exploratory analyses suggested higher relational aggression among girls within the Primary CU group, whereas boys in the Secondary CU group tended to show higher overt aggression. By T6, the Secondary variant was characterized by overall poorer emotional and behavioral outcomes compared with the Primary variant. Findings point to distinct developmental pathways across CU variants and underscore the importance of gender-sensitive perspectives in CU research.
