Chapter Ten
The Play Years:
Psychosocial Development
Emotional Development
Parenting Patterns
Gender Development
David Rowe
University of Arizona
Found adopted children raised in
homes with well-educated parents
had a 50-50 chance of above average
intellectual performance in their own
lives. In contrast, the biological
children of those educated parents
had an 80 percent chance of such
success.
Kyrsten Brooker
Science Writer
Parents are often unfairly blamed for
their children’s behaviors, such as
fearfulness, that are largely
biological in origin. “Parents who
bombard their kids with learning
materials might be wasting their
time; you can’t force kids to be
intellectual when it’s not in their
makeup.”
Judith Rich Harris
Author “The Nurture
Assumption”
• The thesis of Harris work is that parents’
importance in shaping their children’s
development has been greatly
exaggerated. According to Harris, there
is a great deal of evidence that the
differences in how parents rear their
children are not responsible for the
differences among the children.
• According to Harris, almost every
psychologist believes that “what the
child learns (or doesn’t learn) in
childhood helps them to succeed or
fail throughout life.”
• Note: Parents should be given less
credit for kids who turn out great
and blamed less for kids who don’t.
Role Play Exercise
Difficulties in Being an Authoritative
Parent
Scenario: A parent has just come home from
the grocery store with her 5 year old child
and accidentally discovers a candy bar in
the child’s pocket. The child claims that
someone “gave” it to them.
Baumrind’s Three Styles of
Parenting, cont.
• 3 Styles
– authoritarian—high standards and
expectations with low nurturance
• children likely to become conscientious,
obedient, and quiet—but not happy
– permissive—little control, but nurturing
• children likely to lack self-control and are
not happy
– authoritative—limits and guidance
provided but willing to compromise
• children are more likely to be successful,
articulate, intelligent, and happy
Developmental Fact or
Myth?
True/False Questionnaire
Initiative vs. Guilt
• Erikson’s 3rd Stage
– self-esteem emerges
• self-concept—understanding of the self—
develops
• spontaneous play becomes goal directed
• attention span gets longer
• pride leads to concentration and persistence
• guilt is a negative consequence of this stage
Emotional Regulation
• Ability to direct or change one’s
feelings
– externalizing problems—difficulties
arising from child’s tendency to
externalize emotions outside the self,
lashing out in impulsive anger and
attacking other people or things
– internalizing problems—difficulties
arising from child’s tendency to
internalize emotions or inhibit their
expression, being fearful and withdrawn
Neurons and Nurture
• Emotional regulation part of brain function
– also learned through social awareness
• Genetic variations
– some people naturally more emotionally
expressive
• Early stress
– result of damage during brain development
either prenatally or postnatally
. via maternal drug use, illness, stress, or if
infant malnourished, injured, or frightened
Neurons and Nurture, cont.
• Care History
- secure attachment = easier emotional
regulation
- parenting practices
- securely attached: regulate emotions,
show empathy
- insecurely attached: respond
abnormally to other children’s distress
- ability to modulate and direct emotion
essential to emotional intelligence
Cognition and Emotions
• First step to emotional regulation: awareness of
own emotions and the emotional response of others
• Emotional intelligence—Goleman’s term for the
understanding of how to interpret and express
emotions
– develops throughout life, but crucial in early
childhood
• amygdala—emotional hotspot in prefrontal
cortex of brain that children need to govern if
they are to become balanced and empathic
adults
• parents can use children’s natural attachment
to teach them how and when to express
feelings
Empathy and Antipathy
• Empathy—understanding another
person’s emotions
– leads often to prosocial actions
• helping another without obvious benefit
to oneself
• Antipathy—disliking or hating
someone else
– may lead to antisocial behavior
• injuring another person or destroying
something that belongs to another
Empathy and Antipathy, cont.
• Sharing
– freely done or directed by others
• Aggression
– instrumental—used to obtain an object
such as a toy
– reactive—involves retaliation for an act
whether or not it was intentional
– relation—designed to inflect psychic
(mental) pain
– bullying aggression—unprovoked attack
Learning Social Skills
Through Play
• Peers—others of the same age and
status
- peers make the best playmates
- play is most adaptive and productive
activity of children
Active Play
• Rough-and-tumble play
- helps child develop muscle strength
and control
- caregivers should look for a “play
face” when attempting to figure out
if child is playing or fighting
Imaginative Play
• Sociodramatic play
- helps child explore and rehearse social
roles he/she has seen
- helps child test ability to convince
others
- helps child regulate emotions through
imagination
- helps child examine personal concerns
in nonthreatening way
Parenting Patterns
• Parenting patterns influence child’s
emotions
Baumrind’s Three Styles
of Parenting
• Baumrind’s 4 important dimensions
that influence parenting
–
–
–
–
expression of warmth or nurturance
strategies for discipline
quality of communication
expectations for maturity
Baumrind’s Three Styles of
Parenting, cont.
• 3 Styles
– authoritarian—high standards and
expectations with low nurturance
• children likely to become conscientious,
obedient, and quiet—but not happy
– permissive—little control, but nurturing
• children likely to lack self-control and are
not happy
– authoritative—limits and guidance
provided but willing to compromise
• children are more likely to be successful,
articulate, intelligent, and happy
Exercise
Parenting Style: Do you have a choice?
Imagine that you are the parent of a preschooler
who misbehaves in perfectly normal ways. For
each of the following misbehaviors, tell how you
feel and what you would say and do.
1.
The table is set for breakfast. Your
child spills a half-gallon of milk all over
the table.
2. Your little girl is dressed up to attend an
important holiday function or religious
service. Before you leave she falls,
dirties her dress, and tears her tights.
3. Your three year old son is playing at the
kitchen table while you are talking on the
phone. Before you notice what he is
doing, he has used up a whole package of
construction paper and has made crayon
marks on the table-cloth and all over the
wall.
4. Your five year old knocks over a display
of glassware in the department store,
breaking three very expensive crystal
glasses?
5. Review each question in your mind.
Imagine now that you are a parent with
three children and you have very little
money. For example, suppose you have an
income of no more than $500 a month
after you pay your rent: Your gas and
electricity, food, clothing, and any extras
must come from this sum.
Do your responses change?
If so, how and why?
Baumrind’s Three Styles of
Parenting, cont.
• Recent studies have found link between parenting
styles and child behavior less direct than Baumrind’s
original research indicated
– impact of child’s temperament
– influence of community and cultural differences
on child’s perception of parenting
– in poor or minority families, authoritarian
parenting tends to be used to produce highachieving, emotionally regulated children: strict
and warm can be successful
Punishment
• Discipline an integral part of
parenting
Punishment
• Studies of the effectiveness of
punishment in humans demonstrate that
punishment is most effective when it is
“immediate, firm, consistent, delivered in a
variety of settings, and accompanied by a
clear (and fair) explanation”
• Psychologists generally agree that
reinforcing good behavior is preferable to
punishing bad behavior.
Techniques of Discipline
• Culture is a strong influence
- expectations
- offenses
- punishments
• In United States
- time-out is used
• child stops all activity and sits in corner or
stays inside for a few minutes
Techniques of Discipline, cont.
• In deciding which technique to apply,
parents should ask: How does
technique relate to child?
– child’s temperament, age, and
perceptions crucial considerations
What About Spanking?
• Reasons for parenting variations
– culture, religion, ethnicity, national
origin
– parents’ own upbringing
• Developmentalists fear children
who are physically punished will
learn to be more aggressive
– domestic violence of any kind can
increase aggression between peers and
within families
The Challenge of Video
• Dilemma for parents about letting
children watch television and play
video games
– parents find video a good babysitter
– parents believe video can sometimes be
educational tool
• Experts suggest parents turn off the
TV to avoid exposing children to video
violence
The Evidence on Content
• Exposure to violence great—good
guys and bad guys show violent
behavior
• All good guys male; no non-white
heroes
• Women/females portrayed as victims
or adoring friends—not as leaders
• Content of video games even worse
than than that of television
– more violent, sexist, racist
The Evidence on Content, cont.
• Children, especially males, who
watched educational television
became teens who earned higher
grades, read more
• Children, especially females, who
watched violent television had lower
grades
The Evidence on Content, cont.
• Content of video games crucial reason
behind great concern of
developmental researchers
- research shows that violent TV and video
games push children to be more violent
than they normally would be
• computer games probably worse, as children
are doing the virtual killing
Several long-term studies clearly
demonstrate that television violence
may correlate with overall aggressive
behavior in both sexes.
L. Rowell Huesmann
Researcher
University of Michigan
In a 20 year study of more than 300
Chicago-area children, Huesmann
found that the more violent
television a child, boy or girl,
watched between the ages of 6 and
8, the more aggressive behavior that
child displayed.
15 years later in interviews with the now
adult participants, the correlation between
the television-viewing habits of childhood
and adult aggression remained significant.
The more television violence the child
watched, the more aggressive the man or
woman was.
Note: 16.7 percent of the young women who
had been “high-violence” television viewers
as girls reported having punched, beaten,
or choked another adult, in contrast to 3.6
percent of other women.
The Evidence on Content, cont.
• Developmentalists look at the
following to evaluate poor content
- perpetuation of sexist, ageist, and racist
stereotypes
- depiction of violent solutions for every
problem and no expression of empathy
- encouragement of quick, reactive,
emotions rather than thoughtful
regulation of emotions
Boy or Girl: So What?
• Male or female—important feature of
self-concept
– Sex differences—biological differences
between males and females
• far less apparent than in adulthood
– Gender differences—culturally imposed
differences in roles and behaviors
• more significant to children than to adults
Exercise
Gender-Role Quiz
Development of Gender
Awareness
• By age 2, awareness of gender-related
preferences and play patterns
• By age 3, cognitive awareness of own
gender
• By age 4, awareness of “gender
appropriate” toys or roles
• By age 6, well-formed ideas and
prejudices about own sex and the other
sex
Theories of Gender
Differences
• Psychoanalytic
– Freud’s view: sexual attraction to
opposite-sex parent
• phallic stage—according to Freud, 3rd stage
of psychosexual development; occurring in
early childhood when penis becomes the
focus of psychological concern and
physiological pleasure
Theories of Gender Differences, cont.
• Oedipus complex—according to Freud, occurring in
the phallic stage, in which
boys have sexual desire for their mothers and
hostility towards their fathers; guilt and fear
resolved by gender appropriate behavior
– Identification
• Superego—personality part that is self-critical and
judgmental
• Electra complex—girls’ understanding they can’t
replace mother, so want to be like her
Behaviorism
• Gender-appropriate behavior learned
through observation and imitation
• Children learn gender-appropriate
behavior by modeling it after that of
people they want to imitate
• Especially for young boys, conformity
to gender expectations rewarded,
punished, modeled
Cognitive Theory
• Gender typing occurs after concept
of gender has developed
• Once gender consistently conceived,
child organizes world based on that
understanding
• Gender schema organizes the world in
terms of male and female
- internal motivation to conform to
gender-based cultural standards and
stereotypes guides attention and
behavior
Sociocultural Theory
• Gender values strenuously kept
• Many traditional cultures emphasize
gender distinctions
• To break through restrictiveness of
cultural expectations, some embrace
the idea of androgyny—a balance of
male and female psychological
characteristics
- true androgyny possible if supported by
whole culture
Epigenetic Theory
• Every aspect of human behavior a mix
of genetics and environment
– environment shapes, enhances, or halts
genetic impulses
• Differences between male and female
brains
• Environmental influences
Conclusion: Gender and
Destiny
• 5 theories lead to 2 conclusions and
1 question:
– Gender differences are not simply
cultural or learned—biological foundation
much greater than originally suspected
– Biology is not destiny—environment and
experiences shape children