Mastery involves a sense of having control over one's surroundings and an ability to accomplish meaningful goals and determine important meaningful outcomes across situations. Mastery is a dynamic, learned resource that has implications for mental health. Although mastery is known to be influenced by exposure to family members (i.e., parental…

Recent models of human capital formation represent a synthesis of the human capital approach and a life cycle view of human development that is grounded in neuroscience (Heckman 2007). This model of human development, the stability of the home and parental mental health can have notable impacts on skill development in children that may affect the…

Using data from the 1994-1998 waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth merged Mother and Young Adult file, this article examines the relationship between depressive symptoms and body mass index (BMI) in adolescence. The authors also examine whether this relationship varies by race and gender. Their findings indicate that over a 4-year…

This study seeks to assess the impact of maternal psychological well-being on the depression and anxiety levels and social withdrawal in a sample of young African American and Caucasian adolescents between the ages of 10 and 14 (N = 854) using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 child sample. Analyses using structural equation…

This longitudinal study tested the contribution of age and marital status at first birth to depressive symptomatology in early adulthood. Findings indicated that unmarried teenage childbearers displayed higher levels of depressive symptoms than women who first gave birth as married adults. The psychological health of married teenage mothers in…

The purpose of this research was to determine the influence of two subcomponents of auditory short-term memory on the developmental trajectories of behavior problems. The sample included 7,058 children from the NLSY79--Children and Young Adult survey between the ages 5 and 14 years. Results suggested that anxious/depressed behavior increases…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for poor children designed to help close the gap between those children and their more advantaged peers before they begin public schooling. Given that Head Start appears to have positive long-run impacts on its recipients, a natural and important next question to ask is: What are the channels…