The field of developmental psychopathology has grown rapidly over the pastseveral decades and research conducted within this framework has made substantial contributionsto our understanding of human adaptation and maladaptation (Cicchetti & Cohen, 1995a,1995b; Cicchetti & Richters, 1997; Cicchetti & Toth, 1998a). Influenced by thetheoretical expositions of several prominent developmentalists, including Jay Belsky (1984), UriBronfenbrenner (1979), Robert Emde (1994), Donald Ford and Richard Lerner (1992), MichaelLewis (1997), Patricia Minuchin (1985), Arnold Sameroff (1983; Sameroff & Emde, 1989),Alan Sroufe (Sroufe, Egeland, & Kreutzer, 1990), and Esther Thelen and Linda Smith(1994), theorists have called attention to the importance of viewing the development ofpsychopathology within a continuously unfolding, dynamic, and ever changing context (see, forexample, Belsky, 1993; Cicchetti & Aber, 1986; Cicchetti & Lynch, 1993; Cicchetti& Toth, 1998b; Coie & Jacobs, 1993; Jensen & Hoagwood, 1997; Richters& Cicchetti, 1993; Susman, 1993). Moreover, we now know that social contexts exerteffects not only on psychological processes but also on biological structures and processes(Boyce, Frank, Jensen, Kessler, Nelson, Steinberg, et al., 1998; Cicchetti & Tucker, 1994;Eisenberg, 1995; Nelson & Bloom, 1997).