The four articles in this issue exemplify several exciting trends in the ongoing effort to understand the nature and sources of children's academic trajectories. Particularly noteworthy is the common thread of searching for key parenting and child mediators of the connection between parental educational accomplishments and child outcomes. In an effort to unite the contributions, a working conceptualization of parenting is proposed within which the pattern of positive and negative findings is interpreted. Implications for future theoretical and methodological advances are highlighted. (Contains 1 figure.)