Natasha Cabrera received her Ph.D. in Educational and Developmental Psychology from the University of Denver and her MA degree from the University of Toronto. Dr. Cabrera joined the University of Maryland faculty in 2002 and arrived with several years of experience as an SRCD Executive Branch Fellow with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Her current research topics include: father–child and mother–child relationships, predictors of adaptive and maladaptive parenting, children's social and emotional development in different types of families and cultural /ethnic groups, and, the mechanisms that link early experience to children’s later cognitive and social development. She has published in peer–reviewed journals on policy, methodology, theory and the implications of minority fathers’ and mothers’ parenting on children’s cognitive and social development. She is the co-editor of the Handbook of Father Involvement: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, second edition (2012), and two co-edited volumes entitled Latina/o Child Psychology and Mental Health (2011). She won the National Council and Family Relations award for Best Research Article regarding men in families in 2009.
She currently serves on the Academic Council at the Child & Family Blog.