"The long-cherished assumption that parenting "matters" to the development of children took a round of empirical blows in the 1990s. These findings dovetailed with new emphases on school reform as the best remedy for the perceived decline in academic skills and increase in behavioral and learning problems in young students. This volume reports on the findings of a longitudinal prevention study that was designed to explore the importance and interaction of the variety of factors at play in the role of children's adaptation to elementary school." "Two themes dominate this volume: First, parent-child relationships, once thought to be the primary psychological/behavioral determinants of children's academic and social competence, as well as behavioral problems, must be understood in the context of relationships within the family as a system. Although the parent-child relationship is clearly important, it exists within a set of relationships among nuclear family members and between family members, and within larger social systems. The second theme addresses the recent challenge to claims about the impact of parents on their children's development. Through their longitudinal studies that included a randomly assigned intervention for parents as couples, the editors describe causal links between the quality of family relationships and children's school adjustment."--BOOK JACKET