Parenting at risk: new perspectives, new approaches.

In this lead paper for this special section, we advance the perspective that new insights into parenting at risk can be gained by focusing on the dynamic emotional processes that occur during parent-child exchanges, with special emphasis on parental emotions as experienced and their regulation of emotion and underlying cognitions, as well as the role of developmentally rooted cognitions in shaping these associations. We discuss the very few but germinal studies that embody this perspective and introduce work in this section that examines emotion dynamics during parenting in real time. We believe this perspective will move us beyond static conceptualizations of parenting at risk, broadens our understanding of parenting as a process, and accelerates our ability to identify the essential targets of intervention when parenting is at risk.