John W. Santrock

1. Children 10 Socioemotional Development in Early Childhood John W. Santrock

2. Socioemotional Development in Early Childhood • What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? • What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? • How Are Peer Relations, Play, and Television Involved in Young Children’s Development?

3. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? The Self • Initiative versus guilt • Third of Erikson’s eight stages • Initiative: enthusiasm for new activities; governed by conscience • Guilt: results when children’s efforts result in failure or criticism; lowers self-esteem

4. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Self-Understanding • Child’s representation of self; substance and content of child’s self-conceptions • Self-recognition begins about 18 months • Young children view self in physical terms • Active dimension is central part of the self • Traits and emotions included by age 4 to 5

5. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Emotional Development • Self-conscious (evaluative) emotions • Pride, shame, guilt, and embarrassment • First appear at about 2½ years • Pride and guilt more common • Heavily influenced by parents’ responses • Influenced by gender differences

6. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Young Children’s Understanding of Emotions • Ages 4 to 5: children show increased ability to reflect on emotions • Self-regulation of emotions continues • Parents have important role in helping • Emotional-coaching: nurtures, uses praise • Emotional-dismissing: ignores, denies

7. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Emotional Regulation and Peer Relations • Emotions have major role in relations • Moody, negative children experience greater peer rejection • Emotionally positive children are popular • Children controlling emotional responses are more likely to show social competence

8. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Moral Development • Refers to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors regarding rules and regulations about what people should do in interactions with other people

9. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Moral Development • Freud: superego, Oedipal Conflict • Child conforms to avoid guilt • Girls express more guilt than boys • Empathy contributes to guilt • Piaget’s moral reasoning • Two distinct stages for children

10. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Piaget’s Theory of Moral Development

11. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Moral Development • Heteronomous morality • Justice and rules seen as unchangeable • Belief in immanent justice – punishment is immediate when rule is broken • As child ages • Thinking gets more sophisticated • Understands cooperation and negotiation

12. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Moral Behavior • Behavioral view • reinforcement, punishment, and imitation • Social cognitive view • influenced by situation, self-control development

13. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Parenting and Young Children’s Moral Development • Parents give role-taking opportunities • Quality of parent-child relationships • Mutual obligations • Closeness • Proactive parenting strategies • Conversation and discipline

14. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Gender • Social and psychological dimension of being female or male • Gender roles: set of expectations of how females or males should think, act, or feel • Gender identity: self-awareness of being male or female • Gender-typed preferences: masculine or feminine

15. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Biological Influences on Gender • 46 chromosomes; 23rd pair • Sex hormones • Estrogens: influence female physical sex characteristics • Androgens: promote growth of male genitals • Ambiguous genitals; sex surgically assigned, nature vs. nurture questions

16. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? The Evolutionary Psychology View • Differing reproductive roles led to different evolutionary pressures • Males: multiple sexual partners for more offspring; dispositions for competition, violence, and risk-taking • Females: devote efforts to parenting and choose long-term mate who can provide

17. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Social Influences • Social role theory • Gender differences caused by contrasting social roles of women and men • Less power, status, and pay for women • Women show more cooperation

18. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Social Influences • Psychoanalytic theory of gender • Preschool child sexually attracted to opposite-sex parent • At age 5 to 6, anxious feelings cause identification with same-sex parent • Unconsciously adopts same-sex parent’s characteristic behaviors

19. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Social Influences • Social cognitive theory of gender • Gender develops through observation and imitation, use of rewards and punishments • Culture, school, media, and peer influence • Parental influences and behaviors

20. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Social Influences • Gender and peer influences • Gender plays important role • Gender composition of groups • prefer same-sex groups by age 3, preference increases through age 12 • Group size • boys prefer organized games, larger groups

21. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Social Influences • Gender and peer influences • Interaction in same-sex groups • Boys in groups engage in rough-and-tumble play, competition • Girls engage in collaborative discourse • More time in same-sex groups linked to more gender-stereotyped behavior

22. Same-Sex Mixed-Group 75 50 Percent of social playtime 25 4.5 years old 6.5 years old Developmental Changes in Percentage of Time Spent in Same-Sex and Mixed-Group Settings Fig. 10.3

23. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? School and Teacher Influences on Gender • Concerns of classroom gender biases • Girls • More compliant • Easily identify with and model teachers (majority are female)

24. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Cognitive Influences on Gender • Cognitive Developmental Theory • Gender-typed behavior occurs aftergender constancy is developed • Children prefer activities, objects, and attitudes consistent with this label

25. What Characterizes Young Children’s Socioemotional Development? Cognitive Influences on Gender • Gender Schema Theory • Children gradually develop schemas of what is gender-appropriate and gender-inappropriate in their culture • Gender schema: organizes world in terms of female and male

26. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Parenting • Attachment to caregiver is key • Socialization influenced by • Parenting styles • Sibling relationships • Context of family structure

27. Classification of Parenting Styles Classification of Parenting Styles Accepting, responsive Rejecting, unresponsive Demanding, controlling Undemanding, uncontrolling Fig. 10.5

28. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Parenting Styles in Context • Juvenile delinquents • Adjudicated for serious offences • Those with authoritative parents were more psychosocially mature and academically competent than those with neglectful parents • Those from authoritarian or indulgent functioned best

29. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Parenting Styles and Ethnicity • Asian American families • Trainingyields positive outcomes • Latino childrearing • Encourage development of family and self- identity; requires respect and obedience • African American families • Use of nonabusive physical punishment

30. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Punishment and Discipline • Corporal (physical) punishment • Spanking linked to antisocial behaviors • Strong emotional support of parents reduces link • Associated with immediate compliance or aggression and lower levels of morality

31. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Punishment and Discipline • Corporal (physical) punishment • Reasons to avoid physical punishment use • Provides out-of-control role models • Punishment instills negative feelings • Fails to tell or show what is expected • Punishment can be abusive • Experts recommend reasoning, time-out • Coparenting is important

32. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Child Maltreatment • Types of child maltreatment • Physical • Child neglect • Sexual: fondling, penetration, exploitation • Emotional: psychological, verbal/mental

33. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? The Context of Abuse • Many factors cause child maltreatment; culture, family, and development • Regular diet of violence on television • Parents lacking sufficient resources or help • Context of family interactions • Parental history and beliefs

34. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Developmental Consequences of Abuse • Poor emotion regulation • Attachment and peer relation problems • School difficulties • Psychological problems • Anxiety, personality disorder, depression, suicide attempts, conduct disorder • Later risk of violence, substance abuse

35. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Sibling Relationships and Birth Order • Sibling relationships • Can be both pleasant and aggressive • Siblings treat children different than parents • Extensive conflict linked to poor outcomes • Birth order affects sibling relationships

36. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Birth Order

37. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Working Parents • Many researchers find no detrimental effects of maternal employment • Greater risk of problems if: • Work stress spills into home • Mother works in child’s first year • Type of day care environment may impact

38. 30 25 20 Percent of families with children under 18 15 10 5 0 USA Sweden Canada Germany UK Australia France Japan What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Single-Parent Families in Different Countries Fig. 10.7

39. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Divorced Families • More likely to show poorer adjustment • Socially mature, responsible children show fewer behavioral problems • Less-competent children have lower self-esteem, more behavior problems • Joint custody and sole custody

40. 30 20 Percent of children showing serious emotional problems 10 0 Intact, never divorced Divorced Type of family Divorce and Children’s Emotional Problems 25% of children from divorced families show serious emotional problems compared to only 10% of children from intact, never divorced families Fig. 10.8

41. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Communicating About Divorce • Explain the separation • Explain it is not the child’s fault • Explain it takes time to feel better • Keep door open for more discussion • Provide as much continuity as possible • Provide support for self and children

42. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Other Divorce Issues • Should parents stay or go? • Family processes matter in divorce • Factors affecting child’s adjustments • Personality, gender, temperament, maturity • Custody, relocation, and SES • Custody issues and effects of gay and lesbian divorces

43. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Variations in Families • Cross-Cultural • Warm, controlling style most common • Ethnicity • Linked to family size, structure, education, income, composition, extended networks

44. What Roles Do Families Play in Young Children’s Development? Socioeconomic Status • Lower-SES parents • Focus on child conformity, parental authority • More use of physical punishment as discipline • More directive, less conversational with children • Higher-SES parents • Focus on child initiative, delayed gratification • Less directive, more conversational • Child has input in rules; less use of physical punishment

45. How Are Peer Relations, Play, and Television Involved in Young Children’s Development? Peer Relations • Peers: • Individuals near same age or maturity level • Help children learn comparison, reciprocity, fairness, justice • Negative influences possible

46. How Are Peer Relations, Play, and Television Involved in Young Children’s Development? Functions of Play • Play: pleasurable activity engaged in for its own sake; functions, forms vary • Functions • Health, tension release, master conflicts • Affiliation with peers • Cognitive development and exploration • Therapists and play therapy

47. How Are Peer Relations, Play, and Television Involved in Young Children’s Development? Parten’s Categories of Play Unoccupied Child not engaging in play as commonly understood; might stand in one spot Solitary Child plays alone, independently of others Onlooker Child watches other children play Parallel Child plays separately from others, but in manner that mimics their play Associative Play that involves social interaction with little or no organization Cooperative Play that involves social interaction in group with sense of organized activity

48. Sensorimotor Infants derive pleasure from exercising their sensorimotor schemes Practice Repetition of behavior when new skills are being learned Pretense/Symbolic Occurs when child transforms physical environment into symbol Social Involves social interactions with peers Constructive Self-regulated creations or solutions Games Activities engaged in for pleasure; include rules How Are Peer Relations, Play, and Television Involved in Young Children’s Development? Types of Play

49. How Are Peer Relations, Play, and Television Involved in Young Children’s Development? Television And Its Effects • Child – more time with TV than parents • Negative and positive influences • Violence and aggression • Altered states of ‘rational’ thought • Program types linked to academic achievement • Creates passive learner

50. 2.9 2.8 2.82 2.7 2.6 2.5 2.53 Mean high school overall GPA 2.48 2.4 2.37 2.3 2.2 2.1 2.0 Quartiles of child informative viewing at age 5 Educational TV Viewing and Boys’ GPA Amount and patterns of preschool TV viewing have a later impact on boys’ high school GPA Fig. 10.10