Parenting of siblings in Latinx families during middle childhood.

Parents' management of their children's sibling relationships, or sibling-focused parenting, has substantial theoretical and practical importance but is rarely studied. This study's goals were to describe dimensions of sibling-focused parenting and to examine sociocultural resources and challenges as potential correlates among Latinx mothers and fathers in 262 families with two children in middle childhood. Families were recruited from 11 public elementary schools, and caregivers (248 mother figures; 118 father figures) participated in a home visit and phone interviews at the onset of the study. Sibling-focused parenting included three dimensions: positive guidance (10 items), nonintervention (four items), and authoritarian control (five items). Parents rated positive guidance as their most frequent strategy, and comparisons of mothers and fathers from the same families revealed that mothers engaged in more sibling-focused parenting overall than fathers. Regarding correlates, mothers' familism values and mothers' and fathers' family cohesion reports were associated with more positive guidance and mothers' cohesion was negatively related to nonintervention in sibling conflicts. For mothers only, parenting stress was linked to all three dimensions of sibling-focused parenting-negatively to guidance and positively to authoritarian control and nonintervention; maternal depressive symptoms were positively linked to authoritarian control. Economic hardship was not a significant correlate of any dimension. Findings suggest that sibling-focused parenting is a key domain of parenting in need of further research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

"More is better" or "better near the middle"? A U.S.-based individual participant data meta-analysis of socioeconomic status and depressive symptoms.

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a widely researched construct in developmental science, yet less is known concerning relations between SES and adaptive behavior. Specifically, is the relation linear, with higher SES associated with better outcomes, or does the direction of association change at different levels of SES? Our aim was to examine linear ("more is better") and quadratic ("better near the middle") associations between components of SES (i.e., income, years of education, occupational status/prestige) and depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale), and to explore moderation by developmental period (adolescence, young, middle, and older adulthood), gender/sex (female, male), and race/ethnicity (Asian American, Black, Latinx, multiracial, Native American, White). We hypothesized that there would be more support for a model containing quadratic associations. We conducted a two-stage meta-analytic structural equation model of 60 data sets (27,242 correlations, 498,179 participants) within the United States, accounting for dependencies between correlations, which were identified via the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research and handled using a two-step approach. Income was quadratically associated with depressive symptoms, but the quadratic model did not explain more variance in depressive symptoms than the linear model. Developmental period and race/ethnicity moderated the associations: Income was quadratically associated with depressive symptoms among middle-aged adults, and years of education were quadratically associated with depressive symptoms among White samples. Our findings suggest that researchers and clinical practitioners should consider the elevated risk of depressive symptoms for individuals from low and high-income backgrounds in the United States. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The importance of research about research on culture: A call for meta-research on culture.

OBJECTIVES: It is crucial to examine how research on culture is fueled by assumptions, policies, and practices. The goal of this article is to promote meta-research on culture, the critical study of how investigations on culture are performed and interpreted, how scientific knowledge about culture is produced and transmitted, and the importance of scrutinizing assumptions, policies, and practices in a way that challenge views of minoritized groups as deviant and pathological. METHOD: We define key concepts, such as meta-research, culture, and meta-research on culture. RESULTS: We approach cultural research as a system of people (researchers, participants), places (academic institutions, journals), practices (sampling, comparing groups), and power (legitimizing some groups as normative and others as deviant). We discuss assumptions, policies, and practices, and review landmark studies and methods. CONCLUSIONS: Meta-research on culture is an emerging field that can improve scientific understanding of human culture, guide efforts to elevate the perspectives of people who have historically experienced marginalization, inform institutional support and the creation of nurturing academic spaces, and guide the implementation of better research and training practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Socioeconomic status and depressive symptoms: An individual-participant data meta-analysis on range restriction and measurement in the United States.

INTRODUCTION: The association between socioeconomic status (SES) and depressive symptoms is well documented, yet less attention has been paid to the methodological factors contributing to between-study variability. We examined the moderating role of range restriction and the depressive-symptom measurement instrument used in estimating the correlation between components of SES and depressive symptoms. METHODS: We conducted an individual participant data meta-analysis of nationally-representative, public-access datasets in the United States. We identified 123 individual datasets with a total of 1,655,991 participants (56.8 % female, mean age = 40.33). RESULTS: The presence of range restriction was associated with larger correlations between income and depressive symptoms and with smaller correlations between years of education and depressive symptoms. The measurement instrument of depressive symptoms moderated the association for income, years of education, and occupational status/prestige. The Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale consistently produced larger correlations. Higher measurement reliability was also associated with larger correlations. LIMITATIONS: This study was not a comprehensive review of all measurement instruments of depressive symptoms, focused on datasets from the United States, and did not examine the moderating role of sample characteristics. DISCUSSION: Methodological characteristics, including range restriction of SES and instrument of depressive symptoms, meaningfully influence the observed magnitude of association between SES and depressive symptoms. Clinicians and researchers designing future studies should consider which instrument of depressive symptoms is suitable for their purpose and population.

Mother-Child Relationships in U.S. Latinx Families in Middle Childhood: Opportunities and Challenges in the 21st Century.

The 21st century has brought unique opportunities and challenges for parents, and this is particularly true for Latinx families, whose children comprise more than one-fourth of the school-age population in the U.S. today. Taking an ecological and strengths-based approach, the current study examined the role of mothers' cultural assets (familism values, family cohesion) and challenges (economic hardship, ethnic-race-based discrimination) on children's educational adjustment in middle childhood, as well as the indirect role of mother-child warmth and conflict in these associations. The sample included 173 Latinx mothers and their middle childhood offspring (i.e., 5th graders and younger sisters/brothers in the 1st through 4th grade). Mothers participated in home visits and phone interviews and teachers provided ratings of children's educational adjustment (academic and socioemotional competence, aggressive/oppositional behaviors). Findings revealed family cohesion was indirectly linked to children's educational adjustment via mother-child warmth and conflict, particularly for younger siblings. Discussion focuses on the culturally based strengths of Latinx families and highlights potential implications for family-based prevention in middle childhood.

Are Whites and minorities more similar than different? Testing the cultural similarities hypothesis on psychopathology with a second-order meta-analysis.

The cultural differences hypothesis is the assertion that there are large differences between Whites and racial/ethnic minorities in the United States, while there are small differences between- (e.g., African Americans and Latinos) and within- (e.g., Latinos: Mexican Americans and Cuban Americans) minority groups. Conversely, the cultural similarities hypothesis argues that there are small differences between Whites and minorities, and these differences are equal or smaller in magnitude than differences between and within minorities. In this study, we conducted a second-order meta-analysis focused on psychopathology, to (a) test these hypotheses by estimating the absolute average difference between Whites and minorities, as well as between and within minorities, on levels of psychopathology, and (b) determine if general and meta-analytic method moderators account for these differences. A systematic search in PsycINFO, Web of Science, and ProQuest Dissertations identified 16 meta-analyses (13% unpublished) on 493 primary studies (N = 3,036,749). Differences between Whites and minorities (d+ = 0.23, 95% confidence interval [0.18, 0.28]), and between minorities (d+ = 0.30, 95% confidence interval [0.12, 0.48]) were small in magnitude. White-minority differences remained small across moderators. These findings support the cultural similarities hypothesis. We discuss their implications and future research directions.