This book highlights ways in which research, policy, and practice can be better integrated to promote the well-being and development of children from infancy into emerging adulthood. It explores policy questions relevant to the development of children living in specific cultural, social, and familial settings. The volume summarizes research that is relevant to policy, programming, and practices designed to address contemporary threats to positive child development. It highlights concerns for professionals working with children and parents in family court settings and explores critical issues in the psychiatric treatment of children, adolescents, and emerging adults.

Key areas of coverage include:

• The effects of changing family structures on children.
• Social and economic reparations to address the consequences of racial discrimination.
• Family violence among siblings, exposure to gun violence, immigration trauma, and grief.
• The concepts of parental alienation and permanency planning in family court.
• Practice guidelines for the conduct of family court evaluations.
• Challenges in the psychiatric treatment of children, adolescents, and emerging adults.

Child Development and Well-Being is an essential resource for professors, researchers, and graduate students as well as clinicians, administrators, policymakers, and other professionals in psychology, social work, family studies, public health, sociology, demography, prevention science, political science, family law, and economics.

Thomas J. McMahon, PhD is a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Child Study at the Yale University School of Medicine. As a clinician, researcher, and educator, he is broadly interested in developmental perspectives on psychopathology, developmentally informed approaches to clinical intervention, and public policy designed to promote the well-being of children, adolescents, and young adults living in fragile family systems.