13.3 The Peer Group

Peers become increasingly important in middle childhood. School-age children are painfully aware of their classmates’ opinions, judgments, and accomplishments.

The Culture of Children

Peer relationships, unlike adult–child relationships, involve partners who negotiate, compromise, share, and defend themselves as equals. Consequently, children learn social lessons from one another that grown-ups cannot teach (Rubin et al., 2013). Adults sometimes command obedience, sometimes are subservient, but they are always much older and bigger, with their own values and experiences, which are not the child’s.

No Toys Boys in middle childhood are happiest playing outside with equipment designed for work. This wheelbarrow is perfect, especially because at any moment the pusher might tip it.

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Child culture includes the customs, rules, and rituals that are passed down to younger children from slightly older ones. Jump-rope rhymes, insults, and superstitions are often part of peer society. Even nursery games echo child culture. For instance, “Ring around the rosy/Pocketful of posy/Ashes, ashes/We all fall down,” may have originated as children coped with the Black Death, which killed half the population of Europe in the fourteenth century (Kastenbaum, 2006). (Rosy may be short for rosary.)

Throughout the world, child culture encourages independence from adults. Many children reject clothes that parents buy as too loose, too tight, too long, too short, or wrong in color, style, brand, decoration, or some other aspect that adults might not notice.

Appearance is important for child culture, but more important are relationships with adults. Classmates pity those (especially boys) whose parents kiss them (“mama’s boy”), tease children who please the teachers (“teacher’s pet,” “suck-up”), and despise those who betray children to adults (“tattletale,” “grasser,” “snitch,” “rat”). Keeping secrets from parents and teachers is a moral mandate (Gillis, 2008).

The culture of children is not always benign. For example, because communication with peers is vital, children learn the necessary languages. Parents proudly note how well their bilingual children speak a second language, but parents are distressed when their children spout their peers’ curses, accents, and slang. Seeking independence from parents, children find friends who defy authority, sometimes harmlessly (passing a note in class), sometimes not (shoplifting, smoking).

Friendships

Teachers may try to separate friends, but most developmentalists realize that friends help each other learn both academic and social skills (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2012). Friends affect attitudes as well as behavior. It is mistake to assume that friends are a distraction, or a source of trouble, although obviously each relationship is distinct. Aggressive friends are sought out by other aggressive children, and then they both are mean to outsiders, but they may learn loyalty via the friendship (Rubin et al., 2013).

Remember Yolanda and Paul from Chapter 12? Their friends guided them:

Yolanda went to college; Paul went to jail.

Children want to be liked; consequently they learn faster and feel happier when they have friends. If they had to choose between being friendless but popular (looked up to by many peers) or having close friends but being unpopular (ignored by peers), most would choose to have friends (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2012). A wise choice.

Friendships become more intense and intimate over the years of middle childhood, as social cognition and effortful control advance. Six-year-olds may be friends with anyone of the same sex and age who is willing to play with them cooperatively. By age 10, children demand more of their friends. They share secrets, change friends less often, become more upset when a friendship breaks up, and find it harder to make new friends.

Older children tend to choose friends whose interests, values, and backgrounds are similar to their own. By the end of middle childhood, close friendships are almost always between children of the same sex, age, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (Rubin et al., 2013). This occurs not because children naturally become more prejudiced over the course of middle childhood (they do not) but because they seek friends who understand and agree with them.

Gender differences persist in activities (girls converse more whereas boys play more active games), but both boys and girls want best friends and usually find them. Having no close friends at age 11 predicts depression at age 13 (Brendgen et al., 2010).

Popular and Unpopular Children

In North American culture, shy children are not popular, but a 1990 survey in Shanghai found that shy children were liked and respected (X. Chen et al., 1992). Twelve years later, assertiveness became more valued in China: A survey from the same schools found shy children less popular than their shy predecessors had been (X. Chen et al., 2005). A few years later, a third study in rural China found shyness still valued; it predicted adult adjustment (X. Chen et al., 2009). Obviously, cohort and context matter.

Recently in the United States, two types of popular children and three types of unpopular children have become apparent in middle childhood. First, at every age, children who are “kind, trustworthy, cooperative” are well liked. By the end of middle childhood, the second type of popularity begins: children who are “athletic, cool, dominant, arrogant, and…aggressive” (Cillessen & Mayeux, 2004a, p. 147; Rodkin & Roisman, 2010).

As for the three types of unpopular children, some are neglected, not rejected; they are ignored, but not shunned. The other two types are actively rejected, either aggressive-rejected, disliked because they are antagonistic and confrontational, or withdrawn-rejected, disliked because they are timid and anxious. Rejected children of both types often misinterpret social situations, lack emotional regulation, and are mistreated by their parents. They may become bullies and victims.

Bullies and Victims

Bullying is defined as repeated, systematic attacks intended to harm those who are unable or unlikely to defend themselves. It occurs in every nation, in every community, and in every kind of school (religious or secular, public or private, progressive or traditional, large or small) and perhaps in every child. As one girl said, “There’s a little bit of bully in everyone” (Guerra et al., 2011, p. 303).

Bullying may be of four types:

• Physical (hitting, pinching, shoving, or kicking)
• Verbal (teasing, taunting, or name-calling)
• Relational (destroying peer acceptance)
• Cyberbullying (using electronic means to harm another)

Who Suffers More? The 12-year-old girl and the 10-year-old boy both seem to be bullying younger children, but their attacks differ. Some developmentalists think a verbal assault is more painful than a physical one because it lingers for years.

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HENRY KING/GETTY IMAGES. LICENSED MATERIAL IS BEING USED FOR ILLUSTRATIVE PURPOSES ONLY; PERSON DEPICTED IN THE LICENSED MATERIAL IS A MODEL.

The first three types are common in primary school and begin even earlier, in preschool. Cyberbullying is more common later on. [Lifespan Link: Cyberbullying is discussed in Chapter 15.]

A key word in the definition of bullying is repeated. Almost every child experiences an isolated attack or is called a derogatory name at some point. Victims of bullying, however, endure shameful experiences again and again—being forced to hand over lunch money, laugh at insults, drink milk mixed with detergent, and so on—with no one defending them. Victims tend to be “cautious, sensitive, quiet…lonely and abandoned at school. As a rule, they do not have a single good friend in their class” (Olweus et al., 1999, p. 15).

Although it is often thought that victims are particularly ugly or odd, this is not usually the case. Victims are chosen because of their emotional vulnerability and social isolation, not their appearance. Children who are new to a school, or children whose background and therefore home culture are unlike that of their peers, are especially vulnerable.

As one boy said,

Remember the three types of unpopular children? Neglected children are not victimized; they are ignored, “under the radar.” If their family relationships are good, they suffer less even if they are bullied (which they usually are not) Bowes et al., 2010).

Withdrawn-rejected children are often victims; they are isolated, feel depressed, and are friendless. Aggressive-rejected children are called bully-victims (or provocative victims), with neither friends nor sympathizers. They suffer the most, because they strike back ineffectively, which increases the bullying (Dukes et al., 2009).

Unlike bully-victims, most bullies are not rejected. Although some have low self-esteem, others are proud; they are pleased with themselves, they have friends who admire them and classmates who fear them (Guerra et al., 2011). Often they are socially perceptive, picking victims who are rejected by most classmates (Veenstra et al., 2010). Over the years of middle childhood, they become skilled at avoiding adult awareness, attacking victims who will not resist or tell.

Boys bully more than girls, usually physically attacking smaller, weaker boys. Girl bullies usually use words to attack shyer, more soft-spoken girls. Young boys can sometimes bully girls, but by puberty (about age 11), boys who bully girls are not admired (Veenstra et al., 2010), although sexual teasing is. Especially in the final years of middle childhood, boys who are thought to be gay become targets, with suicide attempts one consequence (Hong et al., 2012).

Bullying may originate with a genetic predisposition or a brain abnormality, but when a toddler is aggressive, parents, teachers, and peers usually teach emotional regulation and effortful control. If home life is stressful, discipline is ineffectual, siblings are hostile, or attachment is insecure, those lessons are not learned. Instead, young children develop externalizing and internalizing problems, becoming bullies or victims (Turner et al., 2013).

Peers are crucial. Some peer groups approve of relational bullying, and then children entertain their classmates by mocking and insulting each other (N. E. Werner & Hill, 2010). On the other hand, when students themselves disapprove of bullying, its incidence is reduced (Guerra & Williams, 2010). Age is also an important factor. For most of childhood, bullies are disliked, but a switch occurs at about age 11, when bullying becomes a way to gain social status (Caravita & Cillessen, 2012).

The consequences of bullying can echo for years, worsening with age. Many victims become depressed; many bullies become increasingly cruel. However, bullies and victims can be identified in first grade and get “active guidance and remediation” before their behavior becomes truly destructive (Leadbeater & Hoglund, 2009, p. 857).

Unless bullies are deterred, they and their victims risk impaired social understanding, lower school achievement, and relationship difficulties. Decades later they have higher rates of mental illness (Copeland et al., 2013; Ma et al., 2009; Pepler et al., 2004). Compared to other adults the same age, former bullies are more likely to die young, be jailed, or have destructive marriages. Bystanders suffer, too, learning less when bullying is common (Monks & Coyne, 2011; Nishina & Juvonen, 2005; Rivers et al., 2009).

Most victimized children find ways to halt ongoing bullying—by ignoring, retaliating, defusing, or avoiding. Friends defend each other and restore self-esteem (Bagwell & Schmidt, 2012). Friendships help individual victims, but what can be done to halt a culture of bullying?

We know what does not work: simply increasing students’ awareness of bullying, instituting zero tolerance for fighting, or putting bullies together in a therapy group or a classroom (Baldry & Farrington, 2007; Monks, & Coyne, 2011). This last measure tends to make daily life easier for some teachers, but it increases aggression. Since one cause of bullying is poor parent–child interaction, talking to the bully’s or victim’s parents may “create even more problems for the child, for the parents, and for their relationship” (Rubin et al., 2013, p. 267).

The school community as a whole—teachers and bystanders, parents and aides, bullies and victims—needs to change. In fact, the entire school can either increase the rate of bullying or decrease it. For example, a Colorado study found that, when the overall school climate encouraged learning and cooperation, children with high self-esteem were unlikely to be bullies; when the school climate was hostile, those with high self-esteem were often bullies (Gendron et al., 2011).

Peers are crucial: If they simply notice bullying, becoming aware without doing anything that provides no help. In fact, some bystanders feel morally disengaged from the victims, which increases bullying. Others are sympathetic but feel powerless (Thornberg & Jungert, 2013). However, if they empathize with victims, feel effective (high in effortful control), and refuse to admire bullies, classroom aggression is reduced (Salmivalli, 2010).

Efforts to change the entire school—bystanders, teachers, and aides—are credited with recent successful efforts to decrease bullying in 29 schools in England (Cross et al., 2011), throughout Norway, in Finland (Kärnä et al., 2011), and often in the United States (Allen, 2010; Limber, 2011).

A review of ways to halt bullying (Berger, 2007) finds that:

• Everyone in the school must change, not just the identified bullies.
• Intervention is more effective in the earlier grades.
• Evaluation is critical: Programs that seem good might be harmful.

This final point merits emphasis. Longitudinal research on whole-school efforts finds that some programs make a difference and some do not, with variations depending on the age of the children and the indicators (peer report of bullying or victimization, teacher report of incidents reported, and so on). Objective follow-up efforts suggest that bullying can be reduced but not eliminated.