CHAPTER 10
Middle Childhood: Social and
Emotional Development
Theories of Social and Emotional
Development in Middle Childhood
Theories of Social and Emotional Development
in Middle Childhood
• Psychoanalytic theory
– Freud maintained children are in latency stage
• Sexual feelings remain repressed (unconscious)
• Focus is on development of intellectual, social, and other cultural
skills
– Erikson maintained children are in industry vs. inferiority stage
• Mastery of cognitive and social skills give children sense of industry
or competence
• Children having difficulties with peers or school may develop sense
of inferiority
Social-Cognitive Theory
• Focuses on rewards and modeling during middle
childhood
• Increase from external rewards and punishments to
regulation of own behavior
• Social cognition
– Perception of the social world
– Focus is on children’s perspective-taking skills
• Five levels of perspective-taking skills (Selman, 1976)
Table 10-1, p. 209
Development of the Self-Concept in Middle
Childhood
• More abstract internal traits or personality traits play a
role
• 9-year-olds focus on physical traits, such as eye color, in
self-definition.
• 11-year-olds indicate movement toward greater concern
with psychological traits and social relationships.
Self-Esteem
• Evaluation of self-worth in multiple areas as children age
• Children’s self-esteem declines through childhood and
increases again in adolescence.
– Girls tend to have positive self-concepts in academics and
helping others
– Boys have positive self-concepts in math, physical ability, and
physical appearance
• Children with favorable self-image tend to have parents
who are restrictive, involved, and loving.
• Parents and peers equally influential for self-esteem
Learned Helplessness
• Learned helplessness
– Acquired belief that one is unable to obtain the rewards that one
seeks
• “Helpless” children
– tend to quit following failure
– believe that success is more due to ability than to effort
– tend to have lower grades and lower IQ and achievement test
scores
• Regardless of ability, girls still view themselves as less
confident in math.
The Family
Parent-Child Relationships
• Control is gradually transferred from parent to child in a
process known as coregulation.
– Children begin to internalize the standards of their parents
• Children and parents spend less time together.
– Parents monitor less and give less direct feedback
• Children spend more time with mother than father.
• 10- to 12-year-olds evaluate parents more harshly than
they did in early childhood.
– Still rate parents as best source of emotional support
Lesbian and Gay Parents
• Psychological adjustment of children growing up with
gay parents similar to children growing up with
heterosexual parents
• Sexual orientation of children tends to be heterosexual
regardless of sexual orientation of parents
Generation X or Generation Ex? What Happens
to Children Whose Parents Get Divorced?
• 1 million American children experience divorce per year.
– 40% European-American and 75% of African-American children
spend at least part of their childhoods in single-parent families as
a result of divorce
• Most divorced women raise their children in poverty.
– Mother’s time is focused on working
• Fathers become more absent as time goes by following
a divorce.
• Children of divorce more likely to have conduct
problems, lower self-esteem, poor grades, and drug
abuse.
Generation X or Generation Ex? What Happens
to Children Whose Parents Get Divorced
(cont’d)
• Children’s physical health may decline.
• Fallout of children is worst during the first year after the
break up.
• Children rebound after a couple of years or so.
Life in Stepfamilies: His, Hers, Theirs, and...
• One in three American children spend part of their
childhood in a stepfamily.
• Stepchildren at greater risk of abuse
– Physical abuse by stepparent than biological parent
– Sexual abuse by stepparent by a factor of eight than by natural
parent
• Evolutionary psychologists maintain better treatment of
one’s own children increases own genes to flourish in
the next generation
Should We Remain Married “for the Sake of the
Children?”
• Severe parental bickering linked to same kinds of
problems that children experience when parents are
divorced or separated
• Children exposed to adult or marital conflict display
“alarm reaction”
– Heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating rise sharply
• Divorce may be positive alternative to family conflict
The Effects of Maternal Employment
• Maternal employment and nonmaternal care indicated in
some negative effects on children
• Maternal employment makes no difference with
delinquent behavior.
– However, lack of supervision does
• Daughters of employed mothers are more achievementoriented and set higher career goals for themselves than
daughters of nonworking women.
• Children of working mothers tend to be prosocial, less
anxious, and more flexible in their gender-role
stereotypes than other children.
Peer Relationships
Peer Relationships
• Peers are more important during middle childhood.
• Peers help with practicing cooperation, relating to
leaders, and coping with aggressive impulses.
• Peers help children with appropriate impulses.
• Peers serve as sounding boards when comparing
feelings and experiences, helping friends to understand
that they are not alone.
Peer Acceptance and Rejection
• Popular children tend to be attractive, good at academics
or sports, mature for their age
– Attractiveness more important for girls than boys
• Children displaying behavioral problems, learning
problems, and aggression, and who disrupt group
activities are more likely to be rejected by peers.
– Rejected children tend to remain on the fringes of the group
instead of conforming
Development of Friendships
• Between 8 and 11 years of age, focus on friendship
turns to recognition of importance of friends meeting
each other’s needs and possessing desirable traits
• Pick friends who are similar to them
– In behavior and personality
– Trustworthiness, mutual understanding, and a willingness to
disclose personal information characterize middle childhood
friendships and beyond
Development of Friendships (cont’d)
• Selman (1980) identified five stages in children’s
changing concepts of friendship
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0) Momentary physical interaction
1) One-way assistance
2) Fair-weather cooperation
3) Intimate and mutual sharing
4) Autonomous interdependence
• School-age friends are more verbal, expressive, relaxed,
and mutually responsive to each other during play than
are acquaintances.
• Boys are more likely to play in large groups than girls; 9year-olds typically have 4 best friends
Table 10-2, p. 214
The School
The School
• School readiness/success considers three factors
– 1) The diversity and inequity of children’s early life experiences
– 2) Individual differences in young children’s development and
learning
– 3) Degree to which schools establish reasonable and
appropriate expectations of children’s capabilities when they
enter school
• Kindergarten teachers report that many children are
coming to school unprepared to learn.
– Lack of language skills, poor healthcare, inadequate stimulation,
and lack of support from parents place children at risk.
The School Environment: Setting the Stage for
Success, or . . .
• Effective schools have the following characteristics
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Active, energetic principal
Atmosphere that is orderly but not oppressive
Empowered teachers involved in decision-making
Teachers who have high expectations that children will learn
Curriculum that emphasizes academics
Frequent assessment of student performance
Empowered students who participate in goal setting, making
decisions, and engaging in cooperative learning activities
Teachers
• Teachers with high expectations influence achievement.
• Students learn more when actively instructed.
• Student achievement linked to emotional climate of the
classroom
• Negative responses such as criticism, ridicule, threat, or
punishment impede learning.
• Children learn best in pleasant, friendly atmosphere.
Teacher Expectations
• Pygmalion effect
– “You find what you are looking for”
• Self-fulfilling prophesy
– Teachers expect higher performance, and the child performs
accordingly
– Teacher expects lower performance, and the child performs
accordingly
• Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) tricked teachers into
believing that one set of children were about to blossom
forth intellectually during the current school year.
– Children made significant IQ gains
Teacher Expectations (cont’d)
• Teachers expect less from lower SES and minority
students.
– Hence less time is spent encouraging these children
• To motivate children, teachers can
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make the classroom interesting
ensure all children profit from social interaction
have a safe and pleasant classroom
understand diverse backgrounds
help students take responsibility for their successes and failures,
encourage the link between effort and achievement
help students establish attainable short-term goals
Sexism in the Classroom
• Girls
– treated unequally by their teachers, male peers, and the school
curriculum
– paid less attention to in math, science, and technology
– subject to sexual harassment from male classmates
• Teachers ignore it
• Stereotypical females depicted in textbooks
• Boys dominate classroom communication, call out
answers 8 times more than girls
– Calling out accepted by boys, girls reminded to raise their hands
– Teachers unaware until they saw the video of themselves
(Sadker and Silber, 2007)
Social and Emotional Problems
Social and Emotional Problems
• Conduct disorders (CD)
– Child persistently breaks rules or violates the rights of others
– Exhibits behaviors such as lying, stealing, fire setting, truancy,
cruelty to animals, and fighting
– Emerges by age 8; more prevalent in boys than girls
– More likely to engage in sexual activity before puberty, more
likely to smoke before puberty, drink, and abuse other
substances
• Causes of CD may be
– genetics, antisocial family members, deviant peers, inconsistent
discipline, parental insensitivity to child’s behavior, physical
punishment, and family stress
• Treatment of CD includes
– parent training, consequences for unacceptable behavior,
teaching methods for coping with feelings of anger that will not
violate others, and rewards for positive social behavior
Social and Emotional Problems (cont’d)
• Childhood depression
– Child feels sad, may show poor appetite, insomnia, lack of
energy and inactivity, loss of self-esteem, difficulty concentrating,
loss in interest in activities they were once interested in, crying,
feelings of helplessness, and thoughts of suicide
• Origins of depression
– Complex and varied
– Psychological and biological
Social and Emotional Problems (cont’d)
• Depression occurs equally in boys and girls.
• Can be comorbid with CD
• Longitudinal studies on children have found problems in
academics, socializing, physical appearance, and sports
can predict feelings of depression.
• A child’s attributional style may contribute to depression.
• Depressed children more likely to attribute the causes of
their failures to internal, stable, and global factors that
they are helpless to change.
Social and Emotional Problems (cont’d)
• Heritability of depression was found to be 49% in
females and 25% in males (Orstavik et al., 2007).
• Psychotherapy for depression is mostly cognitive
behavioral.
– Children encouraged to do enjoyable things and build social
skills
• Antidepressants for depression are administered with
caution due to link between use and suicidal thoughts.
Social and Emotional Problems (cont’d)
• Childhood depression can be comorbid with childhood
anxiety disorders.
• Children can suffer from generalized anxiety disorder
(GAD), phobias, separation anxiety disorder, and
obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
• Children from different cultures more likely to have one
disorder than another
• Separation anxiety disorder (SAD) more common in girls
and associated with school refusal; diagnosed when age
inappropriate, excessive
Social and Emotional Problems (cont’d)
• School phobia
– Fear of school
– Type of SAD
– High parental expectations to perform may heighten the phobia,
as well as problems with peers
• Treatment of school phobia
– Get the child back into school
– Symptoms disappear once the child is back in school
– May also consist of antidepressant medication along with
cognitive-behavioral therapy
• Most children in developed nations come through middle
childhood quite well and ready for adolescence.