What is Psychosocial Development?
Psychosocial development: the development of the personality, and the acquisition of social attitudes and skills, from infancy through maturity.
relationships with parents
- Parenting styles
o Diana Baumrind (1971)
o Maccoby and Martin (1983) - Two dimensions:
o Acceptance-responsiveness
§ refers to the extent to which parents are supportive, sensitive to their children’s needs, and willing to provide affection and praise when their children meet their expectations
§ when the parent highl enages in praise.
§ Highly attuned to the cild’s needs
o Demandingness-control (sometimes called permissiveness-restrictiveness)
§ refers to how much control over decisions lies with the parent rather than with the child
§ response to the child in minimal, parent is more concerned with their own emotions.
o These dimensions can be crossed and result in the following categories.
basic patterns of child rearing
- Dimensions of relationships can be crossed and result in the following
- Four basic patterns of child rearing emerge from crossing the acceptance and the demandingness dimensions:
o Authoritarian
o Authoritative
o Permissive
o Uninvolved (Neglectful)
authoritatian parenting
- High demandingness-control and low acceptance-responsiveness
Parents impose many rules, expect strict obedience, rarely explain why the child should comply with rules, and often rely on power tactics such as physical punishment to gain compliance
authoritative parenting
o high demandingness-control and high acceptance-responsiveness
o parents set clear rules and consistently enforce them, but they also explain the rationales for their rules and restrictions, are responsive to their children’s needs and points of view, and involve their children in family decision-making
permissive parenting
o High in acceptance-responsiveness but low in demandingness-control
o Permissive parents are indulgent with few rules and few demands
They encourage children to express their feelings and impulses and rarely exert control over their behavior
uninvolved parenting
- Low demandingness-control and low acceptance-responsiveness
o They seem not to care much about their children and may even reject them
o Uninvolved parents may be so overwhelmed by their own problems that they cannot devote sufficient energy to expressing love and setting and enforcing rules
o Ignorant of the needs of the child.
SEE DIAGRAM
Baumrind (1967, 1977, 1991)
• Children of authoritative parents were the best adjusted – cheerful, socially responsible, self-reliant, achievement oriented, and cooperative with adults and peers
• Children of authoritarian parents tended to be moody and seemingly unhappy, easily annoyed, relatively aimless, and unpleasant to be around
• Children of permissive parents were often impulsive, aggressive, self-centered, rebellious, aimless, and low in independence and achievement
Parents shift along ateories.
Rue for western individualist countries. Different for other cultures as is the outcomes.
- Authoritarian parenting shifts across time and in birth order.
Style shifts depending on the child
bad developmental outcomes
• Subsequent research has shown that the worst developmental outcomes are associated with the neglectful, uninvolved style of parenting
• Children of neglectful parents display behavioral problems such as aggression and frequent temper tantrums as early as age 3
They tend to become hostile and antisocial adolescents who abuse alcohol and drugs and get in trouble
parenting style variables
- Parenting style varies according to
- Cultural background
- Specific circumstances
- Duration of parenting
- Birth order
- Number of children
- Changes and stresses in family
- Temperament of child
- Parenting styles are better thought of as a dimension (or spectrum) rather than categories
- Inconsistencies between parents can lead to confusion or “playing one against the other”
relationships with siblings
• Sibling relationships typically involve both closeness and conflict
• Sibling rivalry – the spirit of competition, jealousy, and resentment between brothers and sisters – is normal
• Siblings may be motivated to compete with each other for their parents’ time and resources
• Sibling conflict is most often about possessions
• The sibling relationship is generally close and positive, even in early childhood
• Siblings have important functions in children’s development
• Siblings provide emotional support
• Older siblings often provide caregiving services for younger siblings
• Older siblings also serve as teachers
• Siblings provide social experience
• Not preparation for peers
There is often a power differential in siblings (one older).
only children
‘Only’ children • Sometimes stereotyped as self-centred or spoilt • Concern that development might be adversely affected by being sole focus of parental attention • Research suggests higher in: • Self-esteem • Positive personality • Achievement motivation • Academic success
relationship with peers
- A peer is a social equal, someone who functions at a similar level of behavioral complexity, often someone of similar age
- Peer relationships have developmental value
- Peers help children learn that relationships are reciprocal
- Peers force children to hone their social perspective-taking skills
- Peers contribute to social-cognitive and moral development in ways that parents cannot
- In toddlerhood, about 10% of social interactions are with peers
- In middle childhood, about 30% of social interactions are with peers
peer groups
- Research indicates that peer groups typically contain children of different levels of competence
- Gender segregation – play with same-sex companions – becomes increasingly strong with age
- Now recognised as a critical period
- First time that children come in contact with peers outside of the family on a regular basis
- Contact with peers comes simultaneously with cognitive development including:
- Major advances in language development
- Major advances in perspective-taking abilities, and hence capacity for cooperative play, prosocial behaviour (and antisocial behaviour!) increases
- Advances in problem-solving ability means improved capacity to tackle conflict
development of skills
From infancy to early childhood, children
are also developing skills in…
Emotion regulation (linked to attachment and parent-child relationship)
Behaviour regulation (inhibitory control, control of aggressive impulses)
which contribute to social skills and peer
relations
carollee Howes
Peer relations of children aged 3-5 years are characterised by “growth in the social knowledge of the peer group”
Early childhood development in peer relations
includes
Conversational skill
Cooperative and prosocial behaviour (helping, sharing, comforting etc.)
Conflict and aggression, including problem-solving
Shared pretend play
Establishment of social networks
Differences in peer status emerge
Emergence of dominance hierarchies – power differentials within peer groups
Friendships become more stable and meaningful
“someone who plays with you”
“someone who shares their toys”
“someone who likes you”
“someone who is kind to you”
Differing views of friendships.
peers
- Researchers study peer-group acceptance through sociometric techniques
- Methods for determining who is liked and who is disliked in a group
- In a sociometric survey, children in a classroom may be asked to nominate several classmates whom they like and several whom they dislike or to rate all of their classmates in terms of their desirability as companions
categories of social status
- Using sociometric techniques, children may be classified into the following categories of social status
- Popular – well liked by most and rarely disliked
- Rejected – rarely liked and often disliked
- Neglected – neither liked nor disliked (isolated children who seem to be invisible to their classmates)
- Controversial – liked by many but also disliked by many (the fun-loving child with leadership skills who also bullies peers and starts fights)
- Average – in the middle on both the liked and disliked scales
popularity
- Popularity is affected by personal characteristics that a child typically cannot change
- Physical attractiveness
- Intelligence
- Social competence (successful use of social-cognitive skills in initiating social interactions, responding positively to peers, resolving interpersonal conflicts smoothly)
- Well-regulated emotions
rejected
- Rejected children may be characterised by the following
- High levels of aggression
- Tendency to social isolation, submissiveness, over-sensitivity to teasing, seen as “easy to push around”
neglected
- Neglected children may be characterised as
- Having reasonably good social skills
- Nonaggressive
- Tendency to be shy, withdrawn, and unassertive
cotroversial
• Controversial children often show good social skills and leadership qualities, like popular children, but they are also viewed as aggressive bullies, like many rejected children
gender role development
• Biological sex
• physical characteristics that define male and female
• Gender
• the features that a society associates with or considers appropriate for men and women
• the socially constructed categories of masculine and feminine
• Gender roles
• Societal expectations of males and females
• Different from each other
• Conform to stereotypes
• Gender typing
• Process of acquiring gender-consistent behaviours
