Two members of the Human Development and Family Sciences community have been awarded the 2023 SSHD Erin Phelps Award. The recognition was awarded to Fatima Varner and Lorraine Scott in collaboration with HDFS alumna, Kathleen Holloway for their 2021 article entitled, "The roles of gender and parenting in the relations between racial discrimination experiences and problem behaviors among African American adolescents" published in Research in Human Development. The article examines whether, in African American families with adolescents, the associations between adolescents' racial discrimination experiences and adolescents' internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors differed based on involved-vigilant parenting and the genders of the parent and child. They found that involved vigilant parenting from the same gender parent buffered the impact of racial discrimination on adolescent outcomes.
The SSHD Erin Phelps award honors the best article published in the last two years in Research for Human Development. Varner's research is focused on the roles of ethnicity, gender, and context on parenting, family processes, and adolescent outcomes. Her work examines the pathways through which racial discrimination and other race-related stressors influence parenting and adolescents' academic achievement and well-being in Black families. She has recently published studies looking at racial discrimination and mental health among Black American adolescents. A student of Dr. Varner, Lorraine is working on developing a more intersectional understanding of race-related stress, focusing on members of the African diaspora. Building on theoretical frameworks such as Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory, she analyzes the interconnectedness of race-related stress, health, well-being, racial identity, socialization, and various sociodemographic factors. This work sits at the theoretical and methodological intersections of Black Studies, Human Development, Sociology, Psychology, and Demography.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8953153/
Lorraine Scott
Fatima Varner
