Lesson 10: Middle Childhood (Psychosocial Devt)

• Representational Systems


  Characterized by broad, inclusive self-concepts that integrate various aspects of the self; when children become more conscious, realistic, balanced, and comprehensive
• Children's self-concept


  • Can understand they can be "smart" in certain subjects and "dumb" in others
  • Can compare their real self from with their ideal self, and judge how they measure up to social standards
  • These changes contribute to the development of self-esteem, her assessment of her global self-worth ("I still like myself as a person, no matter what")
• Erikson's Industry versus Inferiority

  A major determinant of self-esteem is children's view of their capacity for productive work, which develops in his fourth stage of psychosocial development
• If children feel inadequate compared with their peers

  They may retreat to the protective embrace of the family and not venture farther away from home
• Developing a sense of industry


  Involves learning how to work hard to achieve goals (virtue: competence)
• Emotional growth in older children

  • Can better regulate or control their emotions
  • Can respond to other's emotional distress
  • Can start to understand conflicting emotions
  • By age 7 or 8, are aware of feeling shame and pride, and have a clearer idea of the difference between guilt and shame
• Parental recognition of emotions in others, labelling emotions, and allowing children to express emotions

  Helps child understand and recognize emotions better
• As children approach early adolescence, parental intolerance of negative emotions

  May heighten parent-child conflict
• Emotional regulation


  Effortful (voluntary) control of emotions, attention, and behavior
• Children who have difficulty with identifying and understanding emotions

  Can have social and behavioral issues
• Parenting issues: from control to Coregulation

  Transitional stage in the control of behavior in which parents exercise general supervision and children exercise moment-to-moment self-regulation; children share power
• The amount of autonomy parents provide


  Affects how their children feel about them
• Children exposed to high levels of family conflict

  • More likely to show internalizing behaviors (emotional problems turned inward, e.g. anxiety, fearfulness, depression)
  • More likely to show externalizing behaviors (acting out emotional difficulties, e.g. aggression, fighting, disobedience, hostility)
• Maternal employment


  The more satisfied a mother is with her employment status, the more effective she is likely to be as a parent
• Quality of child care programs

  • Structural features (such as physical facilities and staff characteristics)
  • Process features (such as the activities available for children and the overall culture of the program)
• When children are enrolled in quality child care programs

  They show positive changes in academic outcomes, their attachment to their school, peer relationships, and self-confidence, and show declines in problem behaviors and drug use
• Poverty


  Can harm children's development through a multitude of pathways, because parents become anxious, depressed, and irritable and thus, may become less affectionate with and responsive to their children
• Effective family interventions

  Promote positive parent-child interactions (e.g., parents who praise their children while also helping them develop reasonable rules and limits) and provide social support for parents
• Divorce


  • Stressful situation for children
  • Negatively affects the quality of parenting
  • Family conflict is a risk factor for children
• Children who are younger when their parents divorce

  Tend to suffer from more behavioral problems
• Older children whose parents divorce

  Are at higher risk with respect to academic and social outcomes
• Maternal Custody


  An arrangement whereby only the mother has physical and legal custody of a child while the father has visitation rights
• Paternal Custody


  An arrangement where the father has the legal custody while the mother has visitation rights
• Joint Custody


  Both parents share joint authority and responsibility for making major decisions regarding health, education, and welfare of the child
• Children do better after divorce


  If the custodial parent is warm, supportive, and authoritative; monitors the child's activities; and holds age-appropriate expectations
• Co-parenting


  A parenting relationship in which two people work together in a cooperative fashion to raise a child
• Children who experience their parent's divorce

  Are more likely to develop internalizing or externalizing problems, to have emotional issues, to initiate sexual activity early, to be at risk for depression and suicidal thoughts and, in adolescence, to be at risk for antisocial behavior and difficulties with authority figures
• The anxiety connected with parental divorce


  May surface as children enter adulthood and form intimate relationships
• Adults whose parents divorced when they were children and who endured multiple or prolonged separation from a parent

  Later may show compromised parenting themselves (e.g., lower sensitivity and warmth, more parent-child conflict, physical punishment)
• Children in single-parent families

  Do fairly well overall but tend to lag socially and educationally behind peers in two-parent families
• Family stability


  Whether or not children grow up with the same parent(s) that were present at birth
• Income


  An important factor for children in single-parent families, because single parents often lack resources, potential risks to children in these families can be reduced through increased access to economic, social, educational, and parenting support
• Cohabiting Couple


  Unmarried partners that lives together in an intimate and committed relationship
• Couples from higher social classes

  Take a step to marriage
• Couples from lower socioeconomic classes

  Tend to end their cohabiting relationship
• Adjusting to a new stepparent

  • May be stressful
  • Child's loyalties to an absent or dead parent may interfere with forming new ties
  • Children and parents have to navigate shifting relationships, adapt to a new power structure in the family, and adjust to household changes
• The legalization of same-sex marriage and a decrease in social stigma

  Have resulted in many LGBT people coming out an earlier age
• Same-sex couples


  Are more likely to be raising children that are the product of reproductive technologies such as artificial insemination or adoption
• Gay or lesbian parents usually have positive relationships with their children, and the children are no more likely than children raised by heterosexual parents to have emotional, social, academic, or psychological problems
• Adoption


  Refers to the act where an adult formally becomes the guardian of a child and incurs parent's rights and obligations