Linking Changes in Parenting to Parent-Child Relationship Quality and Youth Self-Control: The Strong African American Families Program

Recent research consistently reports that persistent poverty has more detrimental effects on IQ, school achievement, and socioemotional functioning than transitory poverty, with children experiencing both types of poverty generally doing less well than never-poor children. Higher rates of perinatal complications, reduced access to resources that buffer the negative effects of perinatal complications, increased exposure to lead, and less home-based cognitive stimulation partly account for diminished cognitive functioning in poor children. These factors, along with lower teacher expectancies and poorer academic-readiness skills, also appear to contribute to lower levels of school achievement among poor children. The link between socioeconomic disadvantage and children's socioemotional functioning appears to be mediated partly by harsh, inconsistent parenting and elevated exposure to acute and chronic stressors. The implications of research findings for practice and policy are considered.

To lay the foundation for our model, we first describe existing conceptions of successful aging, underlying assumptions of development, and criteria for success. The model presented extends the discourse on this topic in three directions: (a) It frames the discussion of successful aging in the broader context of life course development; (b) it accounts for both normative and nonnormative (i.e., exceptional) success; and (c) it integrates motivational processes into a theory of successful aging. Successful aging is equated with the development and maintenance of primary control throughout the life course, which is achieved through control-related processes that optimize selection and failure compensation functions. Selection processes regulate the choice of action goals so that diversity is maintained and positive and negative trade-offs between performance domains and life stages are taken into account. Compensation mechanisms serve to maintain, enhance, and remediate competencies and motivational resources after failure experiences. Both compensation and selection processes are motivated by desires for primary control and can be characterized in terms of primary and secondary control processes.