Chapter Introduction

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

Self-Concept

Culture and Self-Esteem

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES: Protect or Puncture Self-Esteem?

Resilience and Stress

Shared and Nonshared Environments

A VIEW FROM SCIENCE: “I Always Dressed One in Blue Stuff . . .”

Family Structure and Family Function

Connecting Structure and Function

A CASE TO STUDY: How Hard Is It to Be a Kid?

Family Trouble

The Culture of Children

Moral Reasoning

What Children Value

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CHAPTER 8

Middle Childhood

The Social World

WHAT WILL YOU KNOW?

  • What helps some children thrive in a difficult family, school, or neighborhood?

  • Should parents marry, risking divorce, or not marry, and thus avoid divorce?

  • What can be done to stop a bully?

  • Why would children lie to adults to protect a friend?

Video: Middle Childhood Psychsocial Development: A Brief Overview

“But Dad, that’s not fair! Why does Keaton get to kill zombies and I can’t?”

“Well, because you are too young to kill zombies. Your cousin Keaton is older than you, so that’s why he can do it. You’ll get nightmares.”

“That’s soooo not fair.”

“Next year, after your birthday, I’ll let you kill zombies.”

[adapted from Asma, 2013]

This conversation between a professor and his 8-year-old illustrates social development in middle childhood, explained in this chapter. Every child wants to do what the bigger children do; parents seek to protect their children, sometimes ineffectively. Throughout middle childhood, issues of parents and peers, fairness and justice, inclusion and exclusion are pervasive. Age takes on new importance, because concrete operational thinking makes chronology more salient, and age-based cutoffs are used by schools, camps, and athletic leagues to decide whether a child is “ready.”

I still remember who was the youngest, and the oldest, child in my fourth-grade class—even though we all were born within the same 12 months. In the excerpt above, the professor hoped his son would no longer want to kill zombies when he was 9, but a child’s sense of fairness often differs from an adult’s. If Keaton is still killing zombies in a year, this boy is likely to remember his father’s promise.