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In recent decades, the influence of parenting styles and practices on children’s emotional and mental health has been recognised (Gardner & Shaw, 2009). This edition’s research digest is divided into two thematically-linked parts. The first comprises studies which focus on the links between parental factors and behaviours and various aspects of child social, emotional and cognitive development. We have included studies which investigate, for example, factors which mitigate the risks post to children exposed to prenatal maternal psychological distress or childhood abuse (Schechter et al., 2017; Tracey, Salo & Appleton, 2018), the role of cultural norms and variations in determining the impact of parenting styles (Lansford et al., 2018) and the links between parental and childhood depression (Lewis et al., 2018; Eckshtain et al., 2018). These studies demonstrate both the intergenerational transmission of emotional distress and maladaptive behaviours, and the growing understanding of factors which could be co-opted in the service of interrupting these damaging cycles.
The importance of supporting parents with the challenges of child-rearing, particularly those parents who may be put ‘at-risk’ by experiences of poverty, trauma, abuse or mental health difficulties, has been incorporated into multiple government policy documents (e.g., England NHS, 2016). As such, the second part of this digest focuses on recently published research into interventions with parents aimed at supporting child mental health. Ryan, O’Farrelly & Ramchandani’s (2017) review of the effectiveness of six parenting programmes, two of which are recommended by NICE, and all of which are widely available in the UK, is a helpful overview of the benefits and limitations of these largely behavioural and educational programmes. Several recent research studies attempt to evaluate interventions aiming to address some of the limitations of parent training programmes, for example a parenting group a