Emotional and Social Development in Middle Childhood

1
Emotional and Social Development in Middle
Childhood
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ERIKSONS THEORY INDUSTRY VERSUS INFERIORITY

• According to Erikson, the personality changes of
  the school years build on Freuds latency stage.
• In Eriksons theory, industry versus inferiority
  is the psychological conflict of middle
  childhood, which is resolved positively when
  experiences lead children to develop a sense of
  competence at useful skills and tasks.

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• The danger at this stage is inferiority,
  reflected in the sad pessimism of children who
  have little confidence in their ability to do
  things well.

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SELF-DEVELOPMENT

• Changes in Self-Concept
• During the school years, children develop a much
  more refined me-self, or self-concept, organizing
  their observations of behaviors and internal
  states into general dispositions. Children
  describe themselves in terms of psychological
  traits, emphasizing competencies instead of
  specific behaviors.
• School children begin to make social comparisons
  in that they judge their appearance, abilities,
  and behavior in relation to those of others.

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Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Influences on
Self-Concept

• Cognitive development affects the structure of
  self-concept. School-age children show an
  improved ability to combine typical experiences
  and behaviors into stable psychological
  dispositions.
• The changing content of self-concept is a product
  of both cognitive capacities and feedback from
  others.

• George Herbert Mead believed that a
  well-organized self emerges when the childs
  I-self adopts a view of the me-self that
  resembles the attitudes of significant others.
• Perspective-taking skills emerging during middle
  childhood play a crucial role in the development
  of a psychological self.

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Cognitive, Social, and Cultural Influences on
Self-Concept cont.

• Children become better at reading messages they
  receive from others and incorporating them into
  their self-definitions.
• As school-age children internalize others
  expectations, they form an ideal self that they
  use to evaluate their real self.

• Although parents remain influential, between the
  ages of 8 and 15 peers become more important.
• In collectivist cultures, the self and social
  group are not differentiated as completely as
  they are in North American and Western European
  cultures.

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Self-Esteem

• A Hierarchically Structured Self-Esteem
• Classrooms, playgrounds, and peer groups are key
  contexts in which children learn to evaluate
  their own competence.
• By age 7 to 8, children have formed at least four
  separate self-esteemsacademic competence,
  social competence, physical/athletic competence,
  and physical appearancethat become more refined
  with age.
• School-age childrens ability to view themselves
  in terms of stable dispositions permits them to
  combine their separate self-evaluations into an
  overall sense of self-esteem.
• Although children and adolescents differ in the
  aspects of the self they deem most important,
  they way they perceive their physical appearance
  correlates more strongly with general self-worth
  than any other self-esteem factor.

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Self-Esteem cont.

• Changes in Level of Self-Esteem
• Self-esteem drops during the first few years of
  elementary school.
• Most children appraise their characteristics and
  competencies realistically while maintaining an
  attitude of self-acceptance and self-respect.
• From fourth to sixth grade, self-esteem rises for
  the majority of children.

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Influences on Self-Esteem

• Children with high social self-esteem are
  consistently better liked by their peers, and
  academic self-esteem predicts school achievement.
• Culture
• The strong role of social comparison in
  self-evaluation does not characterize children
  everywhere.
• A strong emphasis on social comparisons in school
  may underlie the finding that Japanese and
  Taiwanese children score lower in self-esteem
  than do American children, despite their higher
  academic achievement.

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Influences on Self-Esteem cont.

• Child-Rearing Practices
• Children whose parents use an authoritative
  child-rearing style feel especially good about
  themselves.
• Warm, positive parenting lets children know that
  they are accepted as competent individuals. Firm
  but appropriate expectations, along with
  explanations, help children make sensible choices.

• In contrast, highly coercive parenting
  communicates a sense of inadequacy to children.
  It tells them that their behavior needs to be
  managed by adults because they cannot manage it
  themselves.
• Indulgent parenting that promotes a feel good
  attitude no matter how children behave creates a
  false sense of self-esteem.

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Influences on Self-Esteem cont.

• Achievement-Related Attributions
• Attributions are our common, everyday
  explanations for the causes of behavior. These
  explanations can be attributed to luck, ability,
  or effort.
• Mastery-oriented attributions are attributions
  that credit success to high ability and failure
  to insufficient effort. They lead to high
  self-esteem and a willingness to approach
  challenging tasks.
• Learned helplessness involves attributions that
  credit success to luck and failure to low
  ability.
• Learned-helpless children hold a fixed view of
  abilitythat it cannot be changed.
• When a task is difficult, they experience a loss
  of control and quickly give up.
• Childrens attributions affect their goals.
  Master-oriented children focus on learning goals
  while learned-helpless children focus on
  performance goals.

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Influences on Self-Esteem cont.

• Influences on Achievement Related Attributions
• Learned-helpless children tend to have parents
  who set unusually high standards yet believe
  their child is not very capable and has to work
  harder to succeed.
• Teachers play a role in fostering a
  master-oriented approach.
• Girls more often than boys blame their ability
  for poor performance. Girls also tend to receive
  messages from teachers and parents that their
  ability is at fault when they do not do well.

• Low-SES ethnic minority children are also
  vulnerable to learned helplessness.
• Cultural values for achievement also affect the
  likelihood that children will develop learned
  helplessness. For instance, children growing up
  on Israeli kibbutzim are shielded from learned
  helplessness by classrooms that emphasize mastery
  and cooperation rather than ability and
  competition.

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Influences on Self-Esteem cont.

• Supporting Childrens Self-Esteem
• Attribution retraining is an approach to
  intervention that encourages learned-helpless
  children to believe that they can overcome
  failure by exerting more effort.
• Another approach encourages low-effort children
  to focus less on grades and more on mastering the
  task for its own sake.

• Learned-helpless children also need instruction
  in metacognition and self-regulation to make up
  for development lost in this area and to ensure
  that renewed effort will pay off.
• Low self-esteem can be prevented by minimizing
  comparisons among children, helping them overcome
  failures, and designing school environments that
  accommodate individual differences in development
  and styles of learning.

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EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Self-Conscious Emotions
• In middle childhood, the self-conscious emotions
  of pride and guilt become clearly integrated by
  personal responsibility these feelings are now
  experienced in the absence of adult monitoring.
• School-age children do not report guilt for any
  mishap, but only for intentional wrongdoing.
• They tend to feel shame when they violated a
  standard that was not under their control.
• Pride motivates children to take on further
  challenges, and guilt prompts them to make amends
  and strive for self-improvement as well.

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Emotional Understanding

• School-age childrens understanding of
  psychological dispositions means that they are
  likely to explain emotion by making reference to
  internal states rather than physical events.
• These children are also more aware of the
  diversity of emotional experiences.
• Similarly, school-age children appreciate that
  emotional reactions need not reflect a persons
  true feelings, and they can use information about
  a persons past experiences to predict how he or
  she will feel in a new situation.
• Cognitive and social experience also contribute
  to a rise in empathy.

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Emotional Self-Regulation

• Children come up with more ways to handle
  emotionally arousing situations as they make
  rapid gains in emotional self-regulation during
  middle childhood.
• When the development of emotional self-regulation
  has gone along well, school-age children acquire
  a sense of emotional self-efficacy a feeling of
  being in control of their emotional experience.
• Emotionally well-regulated children are generally
  upbeat in mood, more empathic and prosocial, and
  better liked by their peers.
• Both temperament and parenting affect emotional
  self-regulation.

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UNDERSTANDING OTHERS Perspective Taking

• Perspective taking is the capacity to imagine
  what other people may be thinking and feeling.

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Robert Selmans 5-stage model of major changes in
childrens perspective taking skill.

• At first, children have only a limited idea of
  what other people might be thinking and feeling.
• Over time, they become more conscious of the fact
  that people can interpret the same event in
  different ways.
• Soon, they can step in another persons shoes
  and reflect on how that person might regard their
  own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
• Finally, they can examine the relationship
  between two peoples perspective simultaneously.

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MORAL DEVELOPMENT

• School-age children are not as dependent on
  adult oversight, modeling, and reinforcement
  as they were at younger ages. These changes
  lead children to become considerably more
  independent and trustworthy.

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Learning About Justice Through Sharing

• Distributive justice concerns beliefs about how
  to divide up material goods fairly.
• William Damon studied childrens changing concept
  of distributive justice over early and middle
  childhood.
• As children enter middle childhood, ideas of
  fairness are based on equalitychildren in the
  early school grades are intent on making sure
  that each person gets the same amount of a
  treasured resource.
• Soon children start to view fairness in terms of
  meritextra rewards should be given to someone
  who has worked especially hard or otherwise
  performed in an exceptional way.
• Around age 8, children can reason on the basis of
  benevolencethey recognize that special
  consideration should be given to those in a
  condition of disadvantage.
• Parental advice and encouragement support these
  developing standards of justice, but the
  give-and-take of peer interaction is especially
  important.

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Moral and Social-Conventional Understanding

• As their ideas about justice advance, children
  clarify and create linkages between moral rules
  and social conventions.
• School-age children distinguish social
  conventions with a clear purpose from ones with
  no obvious justification.
• Children age 6 and older realize that peoples
  intentions and the context of their actions
  affect the moral implications of
  social-conventional transgressions, and these
  understandings improve with age.

• In middle childhood, children also realize that
  people whose knowledge differs may not be equally
  responsible for moral transgressions. Children
  are more tolerant of people holding immoral
  beliefs than expressing them, and more tolerant
  of people expressing such beliefs than acting on
  them.
• Children in Western and diverse non-Western
  cultures use the same criteria to distinguish
  moral and social-conventional concerns.

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Moral Education

• There is a great debate over whether and how to
  teach morality in the public schools.
• On one side are educators who call for character
  education teaching students to follow a common
  set of moral virtues.
• Critics claim that transmitting a ready-made
  morality ignores their developing capacity to
  consider multiple variables.

• Darcia Narvaez and her colleagues recommend moral
  education with four componentsmoral sensitivity,
  moral judgment, moral motivation, and moral
  charactermoving from the concrete level to more
  abstract understandings. This offers a
  comprehensive basis for moral education.

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GENDER TYPING

• Gender-Stereotyped Beliefs
• As children think more about people as
  personalities, they label some traits as more
  typical of one sex than the other.
• Throughout the school years, children regard
  reading, art, and music as more for girls and
  mathematics, athletics, and mechanical skills as
  masculine.
• Girls adopt a general stereotype of males as
  smarter than females.
• As they develop the capacity to integrate
  conflicting social cues, children realize that a
  persons sex is not a certain predictor of
  personality traits, activities, and behaviors.
• Both children and adults are fairly tolerant of
  females violations of gender roles, but they
  judge males violations very harshly.

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Gender Identity and Behavior

• Self-ratings on personality traits reveal that
  from third to sixth grade, boys strengthen their
  identification with the masculine role.
• In contrast, girls identification with
  feminine attributes declines they still lean
  toward the feminine side, but they also begin
  to describe themselves as having some
  other-gender characteristics.
• Perhaps girls realize that society attaches
  greater prestige to masculine traits.

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Cultural Influences on Gender Typing

• Girls are less likely to experiment with
  masculine activities in cultures and
  subcultures in which the gap between male and
  female roles is especially wide.
• When social and economic conditions make it
  necessary for boys to take over feminine tasks,
  their personalities and behaviors become less
  stereotyped.

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FAMILY INFLUENCES

• ParentChild Relationships
• During middle childhood, the amount of time
  children spend with parents declines
  dramatically.
• Reasoning works more effectively with school-age
  children because of their greater capacity for
  logical thinking and increased respect for
  parents knowledge and skill.

• Coregulation is a transitional form of
  supervision in which parents exercise general
  oversight, while permitting children to be in
  charge of moment-by-moment decision-making.
• Although school-age children often press for
  greater independence, they know how much they
  need their parents continuing support.

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Siblings

• When siblings are close in age and of the same
  sex, parental comparisons take place more
  frequently, and more quarreling and antagonism
  results. This effect is particularly strong when
  fathers prefer one child.
• Even after brothers and sisters are born, the
  oldest child receives greater pressure for mature
  behavior from parents. As a result, the oldest
  child is slightly advantaged in IQ and school
  achievement.
• Younger children tend to be more popular with
  agemates and they become especially skilled at
  negotiating and compromising.

• Siblings provide one another with companionship,
  help with difficult tasks, and comfort during
  times of emotional stress.
• In middle childhood, children participate in a
  wider range of activities, and parents often
  compare siblings traits, abilities, and
  accomplishments which may lead to an increase in
  sibling rivalry.

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One-Child Families

• Sibling relationships are not essential for
  normal development.
• Only children are just as well adjusted as other
  children and score higher in self-esteem and
  achievement motivation.
• Favorable development also characterizes only
  children in China, where a one-child family
  policy has been strictly enforced for 2 decades.

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Gay and Lesbian Families

• Several million American gay men and lesbians are
  parents, most through heterosexual marriages that
  ended in divorce, a few through adoption or
  reproductive technologies.
• Families headed by a homosexual parent or a gay
  or lesbian couple are very similar to those of
  heterosexuals.
• Children of gay and lesbian parents are as well
  adjusted as other children, and the large
  majority are heterosexual.

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Never-married Single-Parent Families

• Over 10 percent of American children have parents
  who have never married.
• The largest group of never-married parents are
  African-American young women. African-American
  women postpone marriage more and childbirth less
  than do all other American ethnic groups.

• Living in a single-mother household makes it
  harder to overcome poverty.
• Strengthening social support, education, and
  employment opportunities for low-income parents
  would encourage marriage as well as help
  unmarried-mother families.

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Divorce

• Currently, the divorce rate in the United States
  is the highest in the world. At any given time,
  one-fourth of American children live in
  single-parent households.
• Children spend an average of 5 years in a
  single-parent home, or almost a third of their
  total childhood.
• About two-thirds of divorced parents marry a
  second time. Half of these children eventually
  experience the end of their parents second
  marriage.

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Divorce cont.

• In newly divorced households, many new conditions
  are evident.
• Family conflict often rises.
• Mother-headed homes typically experience a sharp
  drop in income.
• Three-fourths of divorced women who are supposed
  to receive child support from the absent father
  get less than the full amount or none at all.
• Divorced mothers often move to new housing for
  economic reasons, reducing supportive ties to
  neighbors and friends.
• Minimal parenting occurs when the typical home
  routine is no longer evident. Mothers dole out
  harsh and inconsistent discipline. Fathers who
  see their children only occasionally are inclined
  to be permissive and indulgent.

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Divorce cont.

• Childrens Age
• Younger children often blame themselves and take
  the marital breakup as a sign they could be
  abandoned by both parents. They may whine and
  cling, displaying intense separation anxiety.
• Preschoolers are especially likely to fantasize
  that their parents will get back together.
• Older children can recognize that strong
  differences of opinion, incompatible
  personalities, and lack of caring for one another
  are responsible for parental divorce.
• Particularly when family conflict is high, older
  children are likely to display adjustment
  difficulties.
• For some older childrenespecially the oldest
  child in the familydivorce can trigger more
  mature behavior and the taking on of more
  responsibilities around the house.

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Divorce cont.

• Childrens Temperament and Sex
• When temperamentally difficult children are
  exposed to stressful life events and inadequate
  parenting, their problems are magnified.
• Easy children are less often targets of parental
  anger and are also better able to cope with
  adversity when it hits.
• Girls sometimes respond with internalizing
  reactions such as crying and withdrawal. At other
  times, they show demanding, attention-getting
  behavior.
• In mother-custody families, boys experience more
  serious adjustment problems.
• Children of both sexes show declines in school
  achievement during the aftermath of divorce, but
  school problems are greater for boys.

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Divorce cont.

• Long-Term Consequences
• The majority of children show improved adjustment
  by 2 years after divorce.
• Boys and children with difficult temperaments are
  especially likely to experience lasting emotional
  problems.
• Young people who experienced parental divorce
  display a rise in sexual activity at adolescence,
  adolescent childbearing, and increased risk of
  divorce in their adult lives.

• The overriding factor in positive adjustment
  following divorce is effective parentingin
  particular, how well the custodial parent handles
  stress, shields the child from family conflict,
  and engages in authoritative parenting.
• Several studies indicate that outcomes for sons
  are better when the father is the custodial
  parent.
• There is clear evidence that remaining in a
  stressed intact family is much worse than making
  the transition to a low-conflict, single-parent
  household.

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Divorce cont.

• Divorce Mediation, Joint Custody, and Child
  Support
• Divorce mediation is a series of meetings between
  divorcing adults and a trained professional, who
  tries to help them settle disputes. Its purpose
  is to avoid legal battles that intensify family
  conflict.
• In joint custody situations, the court grants
  both parents equal say in important decisions
  about the childs upbringing.
• All states have established procedures for
  withholding wages from parents who fail to make
  court-ordered child support payments.

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Blended Families

• A blended, or reconstituted, family is a family
  structure resulting from remarriage of a divorced
  parent that includes parent, child, and new
  steprelatives.
• MotherStepfather Families
• Boys usually adjust quickly and welcome a
  stepfather who is warm and responsive.
• In contrast, stepfathers disrupt the close ties
  many girls established with mothers in a
  single-parent family, and girls often react with
  sulky, resistant behavior.
• Older school-age and adolescents of both sexes
  find it harder to adjust to blended families.

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Blended Families cont.

• FatherStepmother Families
• Research consistently reveals more confusion for
  children under fatherstepmother family
  conditions.
• In the case of noncustodial fathers, remarriage
  often leads to reduced contact they tend to
  withdraw from their previous families, more so
  if they have daughters rather than sons.
• Girls, especially, have a hard time getting along
  with their stepmothers.
• Support for Blended Families
• Family life education and therapy can help
  parents and children adapt to their new
  circumstances.
• Only when a warm bond has formed between
  stepparents and stepchildren is more active
  parenting possible.

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Maternal Employment and Dual Earner Families

• Today, single and married mothers are in the
  labor market in nearly equal proportions, and 78
  percent of those with school-age children are
  employed.
• Maternal Employment and Child Development
• Children of mothers who enjoy their work and
  remain committed to parenting show especially
  positive adjustment.
• Employed mothers who value their parenting role
  are more likely to use authoritative child
  rearing and coregulation.
• Girls, especially, profit from the image of
  female competence.
• Working long hours and spending little time with
  school-age children are associated with less
  favorable outcomes.

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Maternal Employment and Dual Earner Families cont.

• Support for Employed Parents and Their Families
• In dual-earner families, the husbands
  willingness to share household responsibilities
  is crucial.
• Part-time employment and flexible schedules,
  job-sharing, and paid leave when children are ill
  help employed mothers juggle the demands of work
  and child rearing.

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Maternal Employment and Dual Earner Families
cont.

• Child Care for School-Age Children
• Self-care children are the estimated 2.4 million
  5- to 13-year-olds in the United States who
  regularly look after themselves during
  after-school hours.
• Self-care children who have a history of
  authoritative child rearing, are monitored from a
  distance by telephone calls, and have regular
  after-school chores appear responsible and well
  adjusted.

• Those children left to their own devices are more
  likely to bend to peer pressures and engage in
  antisocial behavior.
• After-school programs for 6- to 13-year-olds are
  increasing, but are not widespread, in American
  communities.
• When high-quality after care is available with
  a staff trained in child development a generous
  adultchild ratio positive adultchild
  communication and stimulating, varied
  activities, children show better social skills
  and psychological adjustment.

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SOME COMMON PROBLEMS OF DEVELOPMENT

• Fears and Anxieties
• As children begin to understand the realities of
  the wider world, the possibility of personal harm
  and media events often trouble them.
• Fears decline steadily with age, especially for
  girls, who express more fears than do boys
  throughout childhood and adolescence.
• From 10 to 20 percent of school-age youngsters
  develop an intense, unmanageable anxiety of some
  kind.

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Fears and Anxieties cont.

• School phobia is a severe apprehension about
  attending school, often accompanied by physical
  complaints that disappear once the child is
  allowed to remain home.
• Most cases of school phobia appear around 11 to
  13 and result when children find a particular
  aspect of the school experience frightening.
• Several childhood anxieties may also arise from
  harsh living conditions.

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Child Sexual Abuse

• Characteristics of Abusers and Victims
• Sexual abuse is committed more often against
  girls than boys. Reported cases are highest in
  middle childhood, but sexual abuse also occurs at
  younger and older ages.
• Generally, the abuser is a malea parent or
  someone whom the parent knows well.
• Abusers have great difficulty controlling their
  impulses, may suffer from psychological
  disorders, and are often addicted to alcohol or
  drugs. Often they pick out children who are
  physically weak, emotionally deprived, and
  socially isolated.
• Reported cases of child sexual abuse are strongly
  linked to poverty, marital instability, and
  resulting weakening of family ties.

45
Child Sexual Abuse cont.

• Consequences of Sexual Abuse
• The adjustment problems of child sexual abuse
  victims often include depression, low
  self-esteem, mistrust of adults, feelings of
  anger and hostility, and difficulties in getting
  along with peers.
• Younger children may have sleep difficulties,
  loss of appetite, and generalized fearfulness and
  anxiety.
• Adolescents may show runaway and suicidal
  reactions, substance abuse, and delinquency.
• Abused girls often enter into unhealthy
  relationships and many become promiscuous.

46
Child Sexual Abuse cont.

• Prevention and Treatment
• Once child sexual abuse is revealed, the
  reactions of family members can increase
  childrens distress.
• Long-term therapy with children and families is
  usually necessary.
• Prevention is the best way to reduce the
  suffering of child sexual abuse victims.
• Courts are prosecuting abusers more rigorously.
• Childrens testimony is being taken more
  seriously, including the use of new courtroom
  procedures that protect them.
• In schools, educational programs can help
  children recognize inappropriate sexual advances
  and show them where to go for help.
• Educating teachers, caregivers, and other adults
  who work with children about the signs and
  symptoms of sexual abuse can help to identify
  victimized children and ensure they receive the
  help they need.

47
Fostering Resiliency in Middle Childhood

• Many studies indicate that only a modest
  relationship exists between stressful life
  experiences and psychological disturbances in
  childhood.
• Three broad factors that consistently protect
  against maladjustment
• Personal characteristics of childrenan easy
  temperament, high self-esteem, and a
  mastery-oriented approach to new situations.
• A family environment that provides warmth,
  closeness, and order and organization to the
  childs life.
• A person outside the immediate family who
  develops a special relationship with the child,
  offering a support system and a positive coping
  model.

48
Fostering Resiliency in Middle Childhood cont.

• When negative conditions pile up, the rate of
  maladjustment is multiplied.
• Children are more vulnerable during periods of
  developmental transition because they are faced
  with many new tasks social supports are
  especially important during these times.