human growth

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Ch10SocialandPersonalityDEVELOPMENTINMIDDLECHILDHOOD.ppt
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Who Am I?

During middle childhood, children begin to view themselves:

  • Less in terms of external physical attributes
  • More in terms of psychological traits

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Psychosocial Development in Middle Childhood

Success in the industry-versus-inferiority stage brings with it feelings of mastery and proficiency and a growing sense of competence

  • Industry = feelings of mastery and proficiency and a growing sense of competence
  • Inferiority = feelings of failure and inadequacy

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  • Lasting from roughly age 6 to age 12, the industry-versus-inferiority stage is characterized by a focus on efforts to meet the challenges presented by parents, peers, school, and the other complexities of the modern world.

Erik Erikson's middle childhood

  • Encompasses the INDUSTRY-VERSUS­INFERIORITY STAGE
  • Period from ages 6 to 12 years of age
  • Characterized by a focus on efforts to attain competence in meeting the challenges related to:
  • Parents
  • Peers
  • School
  • Other complexities of the modern world

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Understanding One's Self: A New Response to “Who Am I?”

How do school-agers change?

  • Children realize they are good at some things and not so good at others

  • Self-concept and self-esteem continue to develop
  • Children's self-concepts become divided into personal and academic spheres

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Looking Inward: The Development of Self

As children get older, their views of self become more differentiated, comprising several personal and academic spheres.

What cognitive changes make this possible?

(Source: Based on Shavelson, Hubner, & Stanton, 1976.)

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Social Comparison

Children use social comparison to themselves to abilities, expertise, and opinions of others

Festinger (1959)

  • When objective measures are absent children rely on social reality
  • How others act, think, feel, and view the world
  • Festinger is known for the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance which suggests a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions, and if conflict exists between attitude and behavior, attitude will likely change first.

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Sometimes…
Children Make Downward Social Comparisons

  • With others who are:
  • Less competent
  • Less successful

  • To raise or protect their self-esteem

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Self-Esteem: Developing a Positive-or Negative-View of the Self

Develops in important ways during middle childhood

  • Children increasingly compare themselves to others
  • Children are developing their own standards
  • For most children self-esteem improves in middle childhood
  • As children progress into the middle childhood years, however, their self-esteem is higher for some areas and lower in others. For example, a boy's overall self-esteem may be composed of positive self-esteem in some areas (such as the positive feelings he gets from his artistic ability) and more negative self-esteem in others (such as the unhappiness he feels over his athletic skills).
  • On the other hand, students with high self-esteem travel a more positive path, falling into a cycle of success. Having higher expectations leads to increased effort and lower anxiety, increasing the probability of success. In turn, this helps affirm their higher self-esteem that began the cycle.

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Change and Stability in Self-Esteem

Generally, overall self-esteem is high during middle childhood, but it begins to decline around the age of 12

  • School transition
  • Chronically low self-esteem for some

Breaking the Cycle of Failure

  • Promoting development of self-esteem

  • Using authoritative child-rearing style

Why do you think this style is recommended?

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  • Authoritative parents are warm and emotionally supportive, while still setting clear limits for their children's behavior.
  • In contrast, other parenting styles have less positive effects on self-esteem.
  • Parents who are highly punitive and controlling send a message to their children that they are untrustworthy and unable to make good decisions—a message that can undermine children's sense of adequacy.
  • Highly indulgent parents, who indiscriminately praise and reinforce their children regardless of their actual performance, can create a false sense of self-esteem in their children, which ultimately may be just as damaging to children.

Race and Self-Esteem

Early research found that African Americans had lower self-esteem than whites

  • More recent research shows these early assumptions to be overstated
  • African Americans
  • Hispanic Americans
  • Asian Americans

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  • Set of pioneering studies a generation ago found that African American children shown black and white dolls preferred the white dolls over the black ones (Clark & Clark, 1947).
  • Picture is more complex regarding relative levels of self-esteem between members of different racial and ethnic groups. For example, although white children initially show higher self-esteem than black children, black children begin to show slightly higher self-esteem than white children around the age of 11. This shift occurs as African-American children become more identified with their racial group, develop more complex views of racial identity, and increasingly view the positive aspects of their group membership.
  • Hispanic children, also show an increase in self-esteem toward the end of middle childhood, although even in adolescence their self-esteem still trails that of whites.
  • In contrast, Asian-American children show the opposite pattern: their self-esteem in elementary school is higher than whites and blacks, but by the end childhood, their self-esteem is lower than that of whites.

Why Does This Occur?

Social Identity Theory

  • Members of a minority group accept negative views held by majority group only if they perceive little realistic possibility of changing power and status differences between groups

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  • If minority group members feel that prejudice and discrimination can be reduced, and they blame society for the prejudice and not themselves, self-esteem should not differ between majority and minority groups.
  • As group pride and ethnic awareness on the part of minority group members has grown, differences in self-esteem between members of different ethnic groups have narrowed.

Are Children of Immigrant Families Well Adjusted?

  • Tend to have equal or better grades than children with US born parents
  • Often more highly motivated to succeed and place greater value on education than do children in nonimmigrant families
  • Show similar levels of self-esteem to nonimmigrant children
  • Report feeling less popular and less in control of their lives

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  • More than 13 million children in the U.S. are either foreign born or the children of immigrants—some one-fifth of the total population of children.
  • The story is less clear, however, when immigrant children reach adolescence and adulthood.

Moral Development: Kohlberg

  • Proposes series of fixed stages in development of moral reasoning
  • Uses moral dilemmas to assess moral reasoning
  • Provides good account of moral judgment but not adequate at predicting moral behavior

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Kohlberg Stages

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Kohlberg Criticisms

  • Based solely on observations of members of Western cultures
  • Theory initially based largely on data from males

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  • Cross-cultural research finds that members of more industrialized, technologically advanced cultures move through the stages more rapidly than members of nonindustrialized countries.
  • Nature of morality may differ in diverse cultures.

Carol Gilligan

  • Way boys and girls raised leads to differences in moral reasoning
  • Suggests Kohlberg's theory inadequate and places girls’ moral reasoning at lower level than boys’

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  • Boys view morality primarily in terms of justice and fairness.
  • Girls see morality in terms of responsibility and compassion toward individuals and a willingness to sacrifice for relationships.

Gilligan's Stages of Morality in Girls

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  • “Orientation toward individual survival” - where females concentrate on what is practical and best for them.
  • “Goodness as self-sacrifice” - where females think they must sacrifice their own wishes to what others want.
  • “Morality of nonviolence” - women come to see hurting anyone as immoral, including themselves.

Friends in Middle Childhood

  • Provide emotional support and help kids to handle stress
  • Teach children how to manage and control their emotions
  • Teach about communication with others
  • Foster intellectual growth
  • Allow children to practice relationship skills

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Damon's Stages of Friendship

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Damon's Stages of Friendship

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Damon's Stages of Friendship

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Likes me…likes me not!

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  • Children develop clear ideas about which behaviors they seek in their friends—and which they dislike. As can be seen in Table 10-3, fifth- and sixth-graders most enjoy others who invite them to participate in activities and who are helpful, both physically and psychologically. In contrast, displays of physical or verbal aggression, among other behaviors, are disliked.

King or Queen of the Hill…Status Hierarchies

  • Children's friendships show clear hierarchies in terms of status

  • Status is the evaluation of a role or person by other relevant members of a group

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High Status Children

  • Form friendships with high status children

  • More likely to form exclusive and desirable cliques

  • Tend to play with a greater number of children

  • Have greater access to resources such as games, toys, books, and information

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Low Status Children

  • Form friendships with other lower status children
  • Tend to play with a lower number of children than higher status children
  • Are more likely to play with younger or less popular children
  • Tend to follow the lead of higher status children

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Unpopular Children

Lack of popularity may take two forms

Neglected children

  • Receive relatively little attention from their peers in the form of either positive or negative interaction

Rejected children

  • Are actively disliked and their peers may react to them in an obviously negative manner

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Teaching Social Competence

Several programs teach children set of social skills that underlie general social competence

  • Before we review these, take a few minutes to visit with a classmate about what kind of program would best enhance social competence.

  • Report to the class.

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  • See: Susan H. Spence. (2003) Social Skills Training with Children and Young People: Theory, Evidence and Practice. Child and Adolescent Mental Health: 2, 84–96,
  • Making Friends: Parents Can Teach Children How to Make Friends/Boystown Tip Sheet. Available at: http://www.boystownpediatrics.org/ParentTips/makefriends.asp

Schoolyard-and Cyber-Yard-Bullies

At school

  • 160,000 U.S. schoolchildren stay home from school each day because they are afraid of being bullied
  • Almost 85 percent of girls and 80 percent of boys report experiencing some form of harassment in school at least once
  • Others encounter bullying on the Internet, which may be even more painful because often the bullying is done anonymously or may involve public postings

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Schoolyard-and Cyber-Yard-Bullies

The bully

  • About 10 to 15 percent of students bully others at one time or another
  • About half of all bullies come from abusive homes
  • Bullies tend to watch more television containing violence, and they misbehave more at home and at school than do
  • nonbullies
  • When their bullying gets them into trouble, they may try to lie their way out of the situation, and they show little remorse for their victimization of others

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Bully

School-bullied

  • Some 90 percent of middle-school students report being bullied at some point in their time at school, beginning as early as the preschool years

  • Characteristics
  • Loners who are fairly passive
  • Often cry easily
  • Lack the social skills that might otherwise defuse a bullying situation

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Reducing Bullying

  • One of the most effective ways to reduce the incidence of bullying is through school programs that enlist and involve students

  • For example, schools can train students to intervene when they see an instance of bullying, rather than watching passively

  • Empowering students to stand up for victims has been shown to reduce bullying significantly

Boyfriend, girlfriend…any friend?

  • Avoidance of opposite sex becomes very pronounced during middle childhood

  • Children's friendships are almost entirely sex-segregated

  • When sexes interact it is called “border work,” is often romantic, and helps emphasize clear boundaries between sexes

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Cross-Race Friendships: Integration In and Out of the Classroom

  • Closest friendships largely with others of same race
  • Decline with age in number and depth of friendships outside own racial group

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  • By the time they are 11 or 12, it appears that African American children become particularly aware of and sensitive to the prejudice and discrimination directed toward members of their race.

At that point, they are more like to make distinctions between members of ingroups (groups to which people feel they belong) and members of outgroups.

A good deal of research supports the notion that contact between majority and minority group members can reduce prejudice and discrimination (Kerner & Aboud, 1998; Hewstone, 2003).

Reducing Prejudice through
Contact Between Groups

Contact

  • Must occur in equal status settings

  • Enhanced through cooperative activities that are important to children

  • Must promote equality and disconfirm negative stereotypes

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Middle Childhood in the 21st Century

In addition to other changes, children experience:

  • Increasing independence
  • Co-regulation with parents
  • Sibling relationships and rivalry

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  • Start with: In addition to: increase in the number of parents who both work outside of the home, a soaring divorce rate, and a rise in single-parent families…
  • Middle childhood, then, is a period of coregulation in which children and parents jointly control behavior.
  • Siblings also have an important influence on children during middle childhood, for good and for bad. Although brothers and sisters can provide support, companionship, and a sense of security, they can also be a source of strife.

Siblings

Siblings

  • Sibling relationships are likely to endure across lifespan
  • Early relationships between siblings shape how children relate to others and choices made in later life

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  • Children who negotiate well with their siblings in early childhood enjoy better relations with their teachers and classmates in middle childhood.
  • Destructive conflict solving between siblings is associated with continued aggressiveness in boys.
  • Older children also can function as role models for their younger sibling, but not always in a positive way.

What about children who have no siblings?

  • Only children are as well-adjusted as children with brothers and sisters
  • In some ways, only children are better-adjusted, often having higher self-esteem and stronger motivation to achieve

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When Both Parents Work Outside the Home: How Do Children Fare?

In most cases, children fare quite well

  • When parents
  • Are loving
  • Are sensitive to their children's needs
  • Provide appropriate substitute care

  • Good adjustment of children relates to psychological adjustment of parents, especially mothers

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  • In general, women who are satisfied with their lives tend to be more nurturing with their children.
  • When work provides a high level of satisfaction, then, mothers who work outside of the home may be more psychologically supportive of their children.
  • Children with mothers and fathers who work full-time spend essentially the same amount of time with family, in class, with friends, and alone as children in families where one parent stays at home.

Good or bad?

Self-care children

  • Youngsters who let themselves into their homes after school and wait alone until their parents return from work
  • Consequences of being a latchkey child are not all harmful

  • Some children report being lonely

  • Some children develop a sense of independence and competence

  • Some research shows latchkey children have higher self-esteem because they are helping family

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The Consequences of Divorce

  • Only half of children in the U.S. will pass through childhood living with both parents each of whom has been married only once
  • School-age children tend to blame themselves for the breakup

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  • By the age of 10, children feel pressure to choose sides, taking the position of either the mother or the father. Because of this, they experience some degree of divided loyalty.

For many children, there are minimal long-term consequences.

After the Break…

Both children and parents may show several types of psychological maladjustments for 6 months to 2 years

  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Sleep disturbances
  • Phobias

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Rediscovering the Status Quo

  • After 18 months to 2 years, most children return to their predivorce psychological adjustment

  • Twice as many children of divorced parents require psychological counseling as do children from intact families

  • For some children, living in a home with unhappy marriage and which is high in conflict has stronger negative consequences than divorce

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  • How children react to divorce depends on several factors. One is the economic standing of the family the child is living with. In many cases, divorce brings a decline in both parents' standards of living. When this occurs, children may be thrown into poverty.

Single Parents

Almost one-quarter of all children under 18 in the U.S. live with only one parent

Numbers are higher for minority children

  • 60% of African-American children live in single parent homes
  • 35% of Hispanic children live in single parent homes

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Multigenerational Families

  • Opportunity for rich experiences and conflicts
  • Greater among African Americans than among Caucasians
  • In some families, cultural norms tend to be highly supportive of grandparents taking an active role

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Yours, mine…ours

  • Blended families include remarried couple that has at least one stepchild living with them

  • Experts predict that by 2000, over 50 percent of children born in the last decade will be stepchildren

  • Living in blended family involves role ambiguity, in which roles and expectations are unclear

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Not all the news is bad!!

  • School-age children often adjust relatively smoothly to a blended family
  • Financial status of family improves

  • More people to share household chore

  • More social interaction and attention

  • But…not all children adjust well, especially if the new relationship is threatening

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Race and Family Life

What do you know about…?

  • African-American families
  • Hispanic families
  • Asian-American families

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  • African American
  • Frequently willing to offer welcome and support to extended family members in their homes.
  • Relatively high proportion of families headed by older adults, such as grandparents, and some studies find that children in grandmother-headed households are particularly well adjusted.
  • Hispanic families
  • Children are taught to value their ties to their families, and they come to see themselves as a central part of an extended family.
  • Ultimately, their sense of who they are becomes tied to the family. Hispanic families also tend to be relatively larger, with an average size of 3.71.
  • Asian American families
  • Although relatively little research has been conducted on Asian-American families, emerging findings suggest that fathers are more apt to be powerful figures, maintaining discipline.
  • In keeping with the more collectivist orientation of Asian cultures, children tend to believe that family needs have a higher priority than personal needs, and males, in particular, are expected to care for their parents throughout their lifetimes.

African-American families

  • Particularly strong sense of family
  • Often offer welcome and support to extended family members

Hispanic families

  • Stress importance of family life, community, and religious organizations
  • Tend to be relatively large

Asian-American families

  • Fathers are more apt to be powerful figures, maintaining discipline
  • Children tend to believe family needs have a higher priority than personal needs

Poverty and Family Life

Poor families

  • Fewer basic everyday resources
  • More disruptions in children's lives
  • Higher likelihood of stress

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  • The stress of difficult family environments, along with other stress in the lives of poor children—such as living in unsafe neighborhoods with high rates of violence and attending inferior schools—ultimately takes its toll.
  • Economically disadvantaged children are at risk for poorer academic performance, higher rates of aggression, and conduct problems. In addition, declines in economic well-being have been linked to mental health problems.

Group Homes…

  • Term “orphanage” replaced by group home or residential treatment center
  • Group homes used for youngsters whose parents are no longer able to care for
    them adequately

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Anybody home?

  • The number of children in group care has growth over 50 percent

  • About three-quarters of children in group homes are victims of abuse and neglect

  • Most will eventually return home, however, one-fourth will be in group care throughout childhood

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Good or Bad?

  • Experts disagree on advantages and disadvantages of group care
  • Some see them as solution to unwed mothers who become dependent on welfare
  • Many who work in these homes say they cannot provide adequate love and support as family could
  • Group homes cost ten times as much as foster care or welfare

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Closing the Digital Divide: Some Unintended Consequences

Digital divide

  • Distinction between technological haves and have nots
  • Unintended consequences
  • Non-educational use of computers
  • Much media use unmonitored by parents
  • Media use drops dramatically with parental monitoring

School Daze

  • During school year, more of day is spent in a classroom than anywhere else
  • Schools have large influence on children's lives

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How do children explain academic success and failure?

Attributions

  • Children attempt to explain their behavior in one of three ways
  • Whether the cause is internal (dispositional) or external (situational)
  • Whether the cause is stable or unstable
  • Whether the cause is controllable or uncontrollable

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  • Attribution theory: theory of motivation based on people's ATTRIBUTIONS, their understanding of the reasons behind their behavior.

Attributional Confounds

Race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status have strong influences on attributions of success and failure

  • African-American children are less likely to attribute success to internal causes, feeling that prejudice and discrimination are to blame

  • Women tend to attribute failure to low ability and success to luck

  • In Asian countries, academic success is perceived as being caused by hard work

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Developmental Diversity: Explaining Asian Academic Success

  • US attribute school performance to stable, internal causes
  • Japan, China, and other East Asian countries see temporary, situational factors as cause of their performance

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  • Asian view, which stems in part from ancient Confucian writings, tends to accentuate the necessity of hard work and perseverance.
  • Asian students tend to assume that academic success results from hard work, they may put greater effort into their schoolwork than American students, who believe that their inherent ability determines their performance.
  • These arguments suggest that the attributional style of students and teachers in the United States might well be maladaptive.
  • They also argue that the attributional styles taught to children by their parents may have a significant effect on their future success.

EPILOGUE

Return to the prologue—about Matt Donner's social struggles—and answer the following questions:

  • Why do you think Matt seems to blame himself for being the victim of bullies?
  • What might be the motivation for other kids to bully Matt? How might it make them feel about themselves?
  • If a school guidance counselor wanted to help Matt adjust to his new school and make friends, what advice could she give him?

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EPILOGUE

  • Why might Matt's parents be so in the dark about what was going on with their son at his new school? Why do you think Matt wanted to keep it that way?

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