Effortful control (EC), the regulatory component of temperament, has been found to predict various types of developmental outcomes (Eisenberg et al., 2016). Parenting behaviors have been found to predict and be predicted by children’s EC. However, existing findings on the magnitude and direction of the relations between parenting behaviors and children’s EC are not conclusive. Thus, to help resolve replication crisis and obtain more comprehensive findings from both published and unpublished studies and from diverse populations, I conducted a meta-analysis of the existing literature focusing on the direction of effects and magnitude of the longitudinal relations between parenting behavior and children’s EC. In this work, two research questions were addressed: 1) What were the magnitudes of the prediction from parenting behaviors to later children’s EC, and of the prediction from children’s EC to later parenting behaviors? 2) If heterogeneity existed among relations between parenting behaviors and children’s EC, was the variance explained by a) publication status, and b) other moderators, such as sample characteristics, types of EC and parenting behaviors, and aspects of study design? Using 2506 effect sizes from 271 studies, I found significant small to moderate effect sizes for both the overall parent effect and the overall child effect. Further, heterogeneity existed among both the parent and the child effects. Moderators including child age, race and ethnicity, types of parenting behaviors, types of children's EC, method similarity of parenting versus EC, and consistency of informants were found to explain the heterogeneity of parent effects. Moderators including child age, child gender, family structure (i.e., whether the household has two parents), parent gender, types of parenting behaviors, the measurement of EC, method similarity of parenting versus EC, and consistency of informants were found to explain the heterogeneity of child effects. Based on results of the overall effects, tests of publication bias, and moderation analyses, I provided theoretical and methodological implications and related future directions. Strength, limitations, and implications for intervention studies or practices of the present review were also discussed.

The hypothalamic pituitary adrenal (HPA) axis is a primary neuroendocrine system posited to mediate the associations between early life stress and long-term deleterious psychological and physical health outcomes. The effects of early life adversity on HPA axis functioning have been well-documented in primarily White samples, with statistical advances allowing researchers to isolate latent trait cortisol as a stable indicator of HPA axis functioning to account for day-to-day influences on diurnal cortisol patterns. However, directional associations have been mixed depending on developmental stage, demographic composition, and methodological differences across studies. The few studies of early adversity and HPA axis functioning in Hispanic/Latino/a/x samples demonstrate complex interactions between cultural processes and adversity in predicting HPA axis output. Further, nascent literature has isolated the cognitive, meaning-making, and prosocial skills involved in ethnic racial identity (ERI) and its subconstructs of exploration, resolution, and affirmation as promotive during the adolescent stage of development in Latinx youth. Such skills might better prepare youth for neurobiological stress regulation after adversity. To my knowledge, no study has examined whether ERI plays a protective role against the effects of early adversity on trait-level indicators of the HPA axis during adolescence, despite the particularly high rates of cumulative exposure to early life adversity in Latinx youth as compared to White counterparts. Guided by adaptive cultural resilience theories, this study of 197 socioeconomically diverse Latinx older-adolescents aimed to leverage recent findings of stable trait indicators of cortisol output to 1) identify consistent directional markers of the effects of early life adversity on latent trait cortisol in a Latinx sample and 2) elucidate the degree to which ERI might act as a promotive feature for HPA axis levels and protective factor against cumulative early life adversity. Confirmatory factor analyses identified a theory-driven model as an adequate measure of latent trait cortisol. Greater exposure to early adversity predicted lower latent trait cortisol, but ERI demonstrated neither protective nor promotive effects. The present study reifies that early adversity exposure has deleterious effects on trait-level HPA axis functioning, but identifying sources of cultural resilience among Latinx youth remains critical for the future of health equity.

Socioeconomic status (SES) is one of the most well researched constructs in developmental science, yet important questions underly how to best model it. That is, are relations with SES always in the same direction or does the direction of association change at different levels of SES? In this dissertation, I conducted a meta-analysis using individual participant data (IPD) to examine two questions: 1) Does a nonmonotonic (quadratic) model of the relations between components of SES (i.e., income, years of education, occupation status/prestige), depressive symptoms, and academic achievement fit better than a monotonic (linear) model? and 2) Is the magnitude of relation moderated by developmental period, gender/sex, or race/ethnicity? I hypothesized that there would be more support for the nonmonotonic model. Moderation analyses were exploratory. I identified nationally representative IPD from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). I included 59 datasets, which represent 23 studies (e.g., Add Health) and 1,844,577 participants. Higher income (β = -0.11; β = 0.10), years of education (β = -0.09; β = 0.13), and occupational status (β = -0.04; β = 0.04) and prestige (β = -0.03; β = 0.04) were associated with a linear decrease in depressive symptoms and increase in academic achievement, respectively. Higher income (β = 0.05), years of education (β = 0.02), and occupational status/prestige (β = 0.02) were quadratically associated with a decrease in depressive symptoms followed by a slight increase at higher levels of income and a diminishing association towards higher levels of education and occupational status/prestige. Higher income was also quadratically associated with academic achievement (β = -0.03). I found evidence that these associations varied between developmental periods and racial/ethnic samples, but I did not find evidence of variation between females and males. I integrate these findings with three conclusions: (1) more is not always better and (2) there are unique contexts and resources associated with different levels of SES that (3) operate in a dynamic fashion with other cultural systems (e.g., racism), which affect the integrated actions between the individual and context. I outline several measurement implications and limitations for future research directions.