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1. Pedagogical Questions in Parent-Child Conversations

   https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12850  

   Yu, Yue; Bonawitz, Elizabeth; Shafto, Patrick (July 2017, Child Development)

   Questioning is a core component of formal pedagogy. Parents commonly question children, but do they use questions to teach? This article defines “pedagogical questions” as questions for which the questioner already knows the answer and intended to help the questionee learn. Transcripts of parent–child conversations were collected from the CHILDES database to examine the frequency and distribution of pedagogical questions. Analysis of 2,166 questions from 166 mother–child dyads and 64 father–child dyads (child's age between 2 and 6 years) showed that pedagogical questions are commonplace during day‐to‐day parent–child conversations and vary based on child's age, family environment, and historical era. The results serve as a first step toward understanding the role of parent–child questions in facilitating children's learning. 

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2. The father’s role in risk and resilience among Mexican-American adolescents.

   O'Gara, Jaimie L.; Calzada, Esther J.; Kim, Su Yeong (January 2019, American journal of orthopsychiatry)

   Research suggests fathers are important to adolescent well-being, yet there is limited information regarding how fathering is associated with adolescent risk and resilience in Mexican American families. This cross-sectional study utilized a structural equation model to examine whether parent–child alienation mediated the relations between parental displays of warmth and hostility and the outcomes of adolescent resilience and delinquency in Mexican American families (N = 272). Results indicated that adolescent-perceived alienation from parents was a significant predictor of both resilience and delinquency. Additionally, alienation mediated the relations between father warmth and resilience and father warmth and delinquency, as well as the relations between mother hostility and adolescent outcomes. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. 

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3. Family Cohesion Moderates the Relation between Parent-Child Neural Connectivity Pattern Similarity and Youth’s Emotional Adjustment

   https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0349-23.2023  

   Zhou, Zexi; Chen, Ya-Yun; Yang, Beiming; Qu, Yang; Lee, Tae-Ho (July 2023, The Journal of Neuroscience)

   Despite a recent surge in research examining parent-child neural similarity using fMRI, there remains a need for further investigation into how such similarity may play a role in children’s emotional adjustment. Moreover, no prior studies explored the potential contextual factors that may moderate the link between parent-child neural similarity and children’s developmental outcomes. In this study, thirty-two parent-youth dyads (parents: Mage = 43.53 years, 72% female; children: Mage = 11.69 years, 41% female) watched an emotion-evoking animated film while being scanned using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We first quantified how similarly emotion network interacts with other brain regions in responding to the emotion-evoking film between parents and their children. We then examined how such parent-child neural similarity is associated with children’s emotional adjustment, with attention to the moderating role of family cohesion. Results revealed that higher parent-child similarity in functional connectivity pattern during movie viewing was associated with better emotional adjustment including less negative affect, lower anxiety, and greater ego resilience in youth. Moreover, such associations were significant only among families with higher cohesion, but not among families with lower cohesion. The findings advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying how children thrive by being in sync and attuned with their parents, and provide novel empirical evidence that the effects of parent-child concordance at the neural level on children’s development are contextually dependent. 

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4. How to Support “Little Engineers:” Exploring Preschool Parent–Child Talk during an Engineering Bridge Challenge

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-025-02088-2  

   DeMaster, Dana; Westerberg, Lauren E; Zucker, Tricia A (February 2026, Early Childhood Education Journal)

   Although considerable research demonstrates the value of parent–child discourse about early mathematics during informal learning, less is known about how family talk during engineering activities unfolds. The current study aims to describe and explore the dynamics of engineering and mathematical language that occurs between parents and preschool-aged children (n = 87; M = 59.27 months) while engaging in a bridge-building, engineering challenge. Most of the families in this sample were experiencing poverty and many spoke languages other than English at home. Video recordings of the bridge-building task were coded to examine the frequency of both child and parent engagement in engineering process talk. This analysis included talk about engineering processes related to goal setting, planning, testing, redesigning the bridge, and the use of mathematical language. Regression analyses demonstrated a significant association between parent engineering process talk and children's engineering process talk. Mediation analyses indicated that frequency of child mathematical language partially mediated the relation between parent and child engineering process talk; however, parent mathematical language was not a significant mediator of this relation. An exploratory mediation analysis was conducted, indicating that the relationship between parent mathematical language use and child engineering process talk was fully mediated by child mathematical language use during bridge building, suggesting that children's mathematical talk may facilitate their engagement in engineering discussions. This research, unique in its focus on engineering process talk in early childhood, addresses a gap in the literature on preschool informal engineering experiences. 

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5. Parent–adolescent discrepancies in reports of parenting and adolescent outcomes in Mexican immigrant families.

   Hou, Yang; Kim, Su Yeong; Benner, Aprile D. (January 2018, Journal of youth and adolescence)

   Parents and adolescents often have discrepant views of parenting which pose challenges for researchers regarding how to deal with information from multiple informants. Although recent studies indicate that parent–adolescent discrepancies in reports of parenting can be useful in predicting adolescent outcomes, their findings are mixed regarding whether discrepancies relate to more positive or more negative adolescent outcomes. This study examined the longitudinal implications of parent–adolescent discrepancies in reports of parenting (warmth, monitoring, and reasoning) on adolescent behavioral, psychological, academic, and physical health outcomes among Mexican immigrant families in the United States. Participants were 604 adolescents (54% female, Mage.wave1 = 12.41 years) and their parents. Taking a person-centered approach, this study identified distinct patterns of parent–adolescent discrepancies in parenting and their different associations with later adolescent outcomes. Adolescents’ more negative perceptions of parenting relative to parents were associated with more negative adolescent outcomes, whereas adolescents’ more positive perceptions relative to parents related to more positive adolescent outcomes. There were also variations in discrepancy patterns and their associations with adolescent outcomes between mother–adolescent vs. father-adolescent dyads. Findings of the current study highlight individual variations of discrepancies among parent–adolescent dyads and the importance of considering both the magnitude and direction of discrepancies regarding their associations with adolescent well-being. 

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