Commentary: the path to safer children: identifying factors for unintentional injury in late childhood

Unintentional injuries remain the leading cause of death among children and adolescents in the United States (National Center for Health Statistics, 2025a, 2025b). Even non-fatal unintentional injuries can negatively impact the social and psychological well-being of both youth and their parents (Jones et al., 2021). Therefore, research has aimed to develop prevention strategies (Shetty et al., 2025) and identify key individual (e.g., demographic, behavioral) and environmental (e.g., caregivers, peers) factors associated with unintentional injury risk (Schwebel & Gaines, 2007). Against this backdrop, Weinberger and Morrongiello (this issue) offer a timely and developmentally sensitive analysis of how injury risk is influenced by both parent attributes (i.e., permissive parenting, injury beliefs) and child characteristics (i.e., gender, disclosure to parents about activities, risk-taking propensity, secret keeping). Using data from 118 parent–child triads, several regression and moderation analyses were conducted to examine parent and child characteristics that may predict injury risk. Results indicated that both parental and child factors contribute to injury risk in late childhood, an understudied developmental period in injury research. One of the most critical contributions of Weinberger and Morrongiello (this issue) is their investigation of how specific risk factors operate across gender and age. For example, the study found that risk-taking predicted sons’ injury risk, but not daughters. Additionally, Weinberger and Morrongiello (this issue) highlight the understudied role of fathers. A critical finding of the study is that fathers’ permissiveness and sons’ secret keeping from their fathers are both associated with higher injury risk in adolescence. This suggests that as children transition into late childhood and seek independence, the quality of father and son communication is important for injury risk (Weinberger and Morrongiello, this issue).