Parent and family engagement in early education programs is associated with better developmental outcomes for children. This chapter reviews theory and research on family engagement in early childhood programs, including home visiting, with an eye towards how dual-generation programs and services are delivered to support healthy parenting and enhance child development. We emphasize how publicly-funded school readiness programs serving low-income families, such as Head Start, serve as a key context for reaching parents and families with services that support the development of their children. Evaluations of interventions embedded within Head Start have shown that programs supporting family engagement at home and in preschool have direct benefits for young children; however, longitudinal evidence of impacts is less robust. Taking what we know about family engagement to scale requires a careful consideration of what is known to facilitate such engagement, and what barriers exist to including parents of culturally and linguistically diverse children in these efforts. We conclude our chapter with an examinination of the implications of our findings for policy and practice such as the expansion of affordable early care and education programs, increasing access to culturally sensitive and inclusive parenting programs, and outreach to families via greater integration across early care and education programs, schools, community organizations, and medical/health settings that promote health and well-being of children and families both in the United States and internationally.

In this chapter we focus specifically on parenting from birth to age 5, a period marked by rapid development for the child and widely believed to set the foundation and quality of the emerging parent-child relationship. We begin with an overview of key developmental milestones, stages and transitions that influence the emergence and evolution of parenting over the period from birth to age 5. Then we review relations between five dimensions of parenting (sensitivity and parent child attachment, socialization, cognitive stimulation, discipline, and maltreatment) and relevant child outcomes, attending to child characteristics that moderate these associations. Next, we described parental characteristics and experiences that predict parenting behavior and child outcomes. These include: normative parental beliefs and emotions; acculturation processes and discrimination; childhood experiences; adult stress and trauma; and psychopathology. Throughout our review, we attend to the roles of race, ethnicity, and culture. This is followed by consideration of the value of this work for policy, prevention, and intervention efforts. In the summary, we draw attention to recent advances in this line of inquiry along with remaining limitations. We conclude by emphasizing our primary thesis: parenting in infancy and early childhood is a key factor that can enhance or undermine children’s concurrent and long-term wellbeing and achievement depending on the quality and context in which it occurs.

Human infants are born needing their caregivers’ support to accomplish challenges related to both security and exploration. Accordingly, the quality of care infants receive influences their ability to appraise the degree of threat inherent to any challenge, signal needs for assistance, and regulate their responses. In this manner, parenting affects whether young children manage challenges with behavior or physiological responses. The extent to which stress physiology is repeatedly invoked in response to challenges, alongside variation in neural growth accompanying children’s exploratory behavior, in turn affects neurodevelopment and ultimately functioning with age. We discuss the processes through which this occurs, the potential impact on attachment schemas, and implications for intervention programs designed at improving parenting and well-being.

The field of mental health is experiencing a trend toward the implementation of early intervention using empirically validated parent-training programs. These programs serve to promote the social-emotional development, communication skills, and school readiness of children. Unfortunately, access to services to improve parenting behaviors is severely limited for many families, especially low-income families who live in rural areas. Through the use of recent advances in multimedia technology and the ubiquity of mobile/computer networking via the Internet, there now exists an opportunity to provide interventions to families distally. As well, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to use technology in order maintain safety. In response, remote-access interactive parenting interventions are emerging. Interactive Internet/mobile Computer Mediated Interventions (IICMI) in the home overcome common obstacles for parent participation, such as lack of transportation, harsh weather, long distances or schedule conflicts and have the capacity to provide menus of choices efficiently, tailor information to subject characteristics and interests, manage interactive programming, and provide support to professionals and peers. Yet, the digital divide mirrors health disparities and the process of getting accurate, best-practice information is harder rather than easier. This chapters seeks to address the issues associated with remote delivery of parent-training programs.

This chapter provides an overview of parents’ discipline and punishment in relation to child development. Main types of discipline (e.g., inductive reasoning, love withdrawal, power assertion) are described, and child- (e.g., behavior problems), parent- (e.g., stress), and community- (e.g., norms) level predictors of discipline are considered. The chapter then describes moderators (child gender, child age, temperament, overall climate of the parent-child relationship, and culture) and mediators (children’s perceptions of parental love and affection, social information processing, development of empathy and conscience, neurocognition) of associations between discipline and child outcomes. Next, implications of research on discipline for practice and policy are discussed in terms of the international agenda set by the Sustainable Development Goals, national bans on corporal punishment, and parenting interventions focused on discipline. The chapter concludes by examining limitations of the current research and suggesting directions for future research.

Parent-child relationships are extremely important for sexual and gender minoritized youth as they and their families navigate the challenges of “coming out” and living in a highly heteronormative and often homonegative and transnegative society. This chapter presents the current terminology for and demography of LGBTQ youth in the United States; discusses the unique experiences of LGBTQ children and their parents, including child and parent reactions to the coming out process and its reverberations through the family system; reviews the emerging scientific literature on parenting effects on LGBTQ child health and well-being; and considers the implications for policy and clinical practice that support parents of LGBTQ youth in ways that foster nurturance, advocacy, and the health and well-being of both youth and parents.