Human Development

In this assignment, you will critically evaluate articles in the field of adult development. Each week, you will read two articles from the Annual Editions: Human Development textbook (see the weekly readings for the chosen articles). For each article, do the following:

Write a summary. 
Describe the main points of the article and how it relates to the week's course and text readings. 
Evaluate the article on the basis of your own thoughts and perspectives on the topic covered. 
Write your responses in a Word document, and name it PSY2022_W4_A2_lastname_firstname.doc. By Tuesday, February 4, 2014, submit your work to the W4: Assignment 2 Dropbox.

Use the lessons and vocabulary found in the readings. Your responses should clarify your understanding of the topic and should be original and free from plagiarism. Follow APA guidelines for the writing style, spelling and grammar, and citation of sources.

Assignment 2 Grading Criteria Maximum Points 
Wrote a summary for each of the articles. 20 
Described the main points of both the articles, explained how they relate to the week's topics and text readings, and evaluated the articles on the basis of your own thoughts and perspectives on the topics covered. 20 
Used correct spelling, grammar, and professional vocabulary and cited all sources using the APA format. 10 
Total: 50 

From your textbook, Annual Editions: Human Development: 
Article 30 Digitalk: A New Literacy for a Digital Generation 
Article 34 All Joy and No Fun: Why Parents Hate Parenting 

Article(1) 
Article 30 Digitalk: A New Literacy for a Digital Generation
KRISTEN HAWLEY TURNER
Teachers who recognize that “digitalk” is different and not deficient can find ways to harness this language en route to improving students' academic writing.

Lily: heyyyy (: 
Michael: waszgud B.I.G.? 
Lily: nm, chillennn; whatchu up too? 
Michael: Watchln da gam3 
Lily: mm, y quien ta jugandoo? 
Michael: Yank33s nd naTi0naLs. 
Lily: WHAAAATT A JOKEEEEE, dime comoyankeeslosttagainstt them yesterdaii 
Michael: i n0e, th3y suCk. 
Lily: & the nationalsss won like only 16 games one of the worst teamshomieeegee. 
Michael: t31L m3 b0uT it, i b3T y0u fIv3 d01LaRs th3Y g00nA10s3. 
Lily: AHA, naw gee thats easy $ for youu ! =p 
Michael: loliwaSplAylnG wl y0u. =D 
Lily: lolimma talk to you later … i got pizzaa awaitingggmeeeee (; 
Michael: iight pe3cE 
As I copy this text conversation between two adolescents into Microsoft Word, the screen lights up with red. Every line in this exchange is marked. Microsoft Word, it seems, does not “get” the language of these speakers and attacks the black-and-white text with its red pen. For Microsoft Word, these writers are wrong.

When I first encountered “computer-mediated language” (Crystal 2001: 238), I was as confused as my word-processing program is today. An English teacher and one of our school's “grammar gurus,” I couldn't understand why students were substituting “2” for “too” or “u” for “you” in their school writing. I was completely stumped by the language they were using to talk to each other digitally. Today, when I look at the exchange between Lily and Michael, I am amazed by their ability to manipulate language and to communicate effectively across time and space. I have evolved from being a grammar guru who questioned this teen language as a degradation of Standard English to one who sees adolescent digitalk as a complex and fascinating combination of written and conversational languages in a digital setting.

Article (2)


Article 34 All Joy and No Fun Why Parents Hate Parenting
JENNIFER SENIOR
There was a day a few weeks ago when I found my 2½-year-old son sitting on our building doorstep, waiting for me to come home. He spotted me as I was rounding the corner, and the scene that followed was one of inexpressible loveliness, right out of the movie I'd played to myself before actually having a child, with him popping out of his babysitter's arms and barreling down the street to greet me. This happy moment, though, was about to be cut short, and in retrospect felt more like a tranquil lull in a slasher film. When I opened our apartment door, I discovered that my son had broken part of the wooden parking garage I'd spent about an hour assembling that morning. This wouldn't have been a problem per se, except that as I attempted to fix it, he grew impatient and began throwing its various parts at the walls, with one plank very narrowly missing my eye. I recited the rules of the house (no throwing, no hitting). He picked up another large wooden plank. I ducked. He reached for the screwdriver. The scene ended with a time-out in his crib.

As I shuffled back to the living room, I thought of something a friend once said about the Children's Museum of Manhattan—“a nice place, but what it really needs is a bar”—and rued how, at that moment, the same thing could be said of my apartment. Two hundred and 40 seconds earlier, I'd been in a state of pair-bonded bliss; now I was guided by nerves, trawling the cabinets for alcohol. My emotional life looks a lot like this these days. I suspect it does for many parents—a high-amplitude, high-frequency sine curve along which we get the privilege of doing hourly surfs. Yet it's something most of us choose. Indeed, it's something most of us would say we'd be miserable without.

From the perspective of the species, it's perfectly unmysterious why people have children. From the perspective of the individual, however, it's more of a mystery than one might think. Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplines. Perhaps the most oft-cited datum comes from a 2004 study by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning behavioral economist, who surveyed 909 working Texas women and found that child care ranked sixteenth in pleasurability out of nineteen activities. (Among the endeavors they preferred: preparing food, watching TV, exercising, talking on the phone, napping, shopping, housework.) This result also shows up regularly in relationship research, with children invariably reducing marital satisfaction. The economist Andrew Oswald, who's compared tens of thousands of Britons with children to those without, is at least inclined to view his data in a more positive light: “The broad message is not that children make you less happy; it's just that children don't make you more happy.” That is, he tells me, unless you have more than one. “Then the studies show a more negative impact.” As a rule, most studies show that mothers are less happy than fathers, that single parents are less happy still, that babies and toddlers are the hardest, and that each successive child produces diminishing returns. But some of the studies are grimmer than others. Robin Simon, a sociologist at Wake Forest University, says parents are more depressed than nonparents no matter what their circumstances—whether they're single or married, whether they have one child or four.