Chapter 13 Introduction

Middle Childhood: Psychosocial Development

  • The Nature of the Child
    • Industry and Inferiority
    • Self-Concept
    • Culture and Self-Esteem
    • Resilience and Stress
  • Families and Children
    • Shared and Nonshared Environments
    • A VIEW FROM SCIENCE: “I Always Dressed One in Blue Stuff…”
    • Family Function and Family Structure
    • Connecting Family Structure and Function
    • A CASE TO STUDY: How Hard Is It to Be a Kid?
    • Family Trouble
    • A VIEW FROM SCIENCE: Divorce
  • The Peer Group
    • The Culture of Children
    • Friendships
    • Popular and Unpopular Children
    • Bullies and Victims
  • Children’s Moral Values
    • Moral Reasoning
    • What Children Value

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WHAT WILL YOU KNOW?

  1. What helps some children thrive in difficult family or neighborhood conditions?

    The social context, especially supportive adults who do not blame the child, is crucial. In general, a child’s interpretation of a family situation determines how it affects him or her. Religious faith can be crucial in helping children cope because it provides hope and meaning.

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

    The legal status of the parents is not the most important factor. Instead, it is the stability that parents can provide that is critical. Marriage should be entered into slowly and carefully, and couples need to work to keep their relationship strong. If a divorce is the only solution to a troubled marriage, parents need to minimize transitions and strive to maintain the child’s relationship with each parent.

  3. What can be done to stop a bully?

    Most victimized children find ways to halt ongoing bullying, by ignoring, retaliating, defusing, or avoiding. Friends can defend each other and restore self-esteem. The school community as a whole needs to change. When the school climate encourages learning and cooperation, children with high self-esteem are unlikely to become bullies. If peers within a school are encouraged to notice bullying and to empathize with the victim and learn to stop admiring the bully, this aggression decreases.

  4. When would children lie to adults to protect a friend?

    When child culture conflicts with adult morality, children often align themselves with peers. Peer values may outweigh adult values. There are three moral imperatives in middle childhood: Protect your friends; don’t tell adults what is happening; conform to peer standards of dress, talk, and behavior.

“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 psychosocial development in middle childhood, explained in this chapter. All children want to do what the bigger children do, and all parents seek to protect their children, sometimes ineffectively. Throughout middle childhood, issues of parents and peers, fairness and justice, inclusion and exclusion are pervasive. Morality is the final topic of this chapter, but even the first topic, the nature of the child, raises ethical as well as psychosocial questions.