Grand Theories

In the first half of the twentieth century, two opposing theories—psychoanalytic theory and behaviorism (also called learning theory)—began as general theories of psychology, each with applications in the study of development. By mid-century, cognitive theory had emerged, becoming the dominant seedbed of research hypotheses. All three theories are “grand” in that they are comprehensive, enduring, and widely applied (McAdams & Pals, 2006), although they are not universally accepted (as you will soon read). To understand development we begin with these theories. Be forewarned: Grand theories are less grand than scientists once hoped.

Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud and Erikson

Inner drives, deep motives, and unconscious needs rooted in childhood are the foundation of psychoanalytic theory. These basic underlying forces are thought to influence every aspect of thinking and behavior, from the smallest details of daily life to the crucial choices of a lifetime.

Freud at Work In addition to being the world’s first psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud was a prolific writer. His many papers and case histories, primarily descriptions of his patients’ symptoms and sexual urges, helped make the psychoanalytic perspective a dominant force for much of the twentieth century.

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Psychoanalytic theory originated with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an Austrian physician who treated patients suffering from mental illness. He listened to their accounts of dreams and fantasies and to their uncensored streams of thought, and he constructed an elaborate, multifaceted theory.

According to Freud, development in the first six years of life occurs in three stages, each characterized by sexual interest and pleasure arising from a particular part of the body. His theory of childhood sexuality was one reason psychoanalytic theory was rejected at first, because Victorian sensibilities arose from an opposite theory, that children were innocent, asexual beings, and that even in adulthood sexual passions were shameful.

According to Freud, in infancy the erotic body part is the mouth (the oral stage); in early childhood it is the anus (the anal stage); in the preschool years it is the penis (the phallic stage), a source of pride and fear among boys and a reason for sadness and envy among girls. Then, after a quiet period (latency), the genital stage arrives at puberty, lasting throughout adulthood. (Table 2.1 describes stages in Freud’s theory.)

Freud maintained that sensual satisfaction (from stimulation of the mouth, anus, or penis) is linked to major developmental stages, needs and challenges. During the oral stage, for example, sucking provides not only nourishment but also erotic joy and attachment to the mother. Kissing in adulthood is a vestige of the oral stage. Next, during the anal stage, pleasures arise from self-control (initially with defecation and toilet training) and so on.

Odd or Common? The oddity here is not the biting toddler, but the old leather suitcase, or perhaps Freud’s interpretation of the oral stage. Everyone who knows babies expects them to mouth whatever they can.

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One of Freud’s most influential ideas was that each stage includes its own potential conflicts. Conflict occurs, for instance, when mothers try to wean their babies (oral stage) or when parents try to control the sexual interests of adolescents (genital stage). According to Freud, how people experience and resolve these conflicts determines personality lifelong because “the early stages provide the foundation for adult behavior” (Salkind, 2004, p. 125).

Freud did not believe that new stages occurred after puberty; rather, he believed that adult personalities and habits were influenced by earlier stages. Unconscious conflicts rooted in early life may be evident in adult behavior—for instance, smoking cigarettes (oral) or keeping a clean and orderly house (anal) or falling in love with a much older partner (phallic).

For all of us, psychoanalytic theory contends, that childhood fantasies and memories remain powerful lifelong, particularly as they affect the sex drive (which Freud called the libido). If you have ever wondered why lovers call each other “baby” or why many people refer to their spouse as their “old lady” or “sugar daddy,” then Freud’s theory provides an explanation: The parent–child relationship echoes in all later relationships.

A Legendary Couple In his first 30 years, Erikson never fit into a particular local community, since he frequently changed nations, schools, and professions. Then he met Joan. In their first five decades of marriage, they raised a family and wrote several books. If he had published his theory at age 73 (when this photograph was taken) instead of in his 40s, would he still have described life as a series of crises?

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Many of Freud’s followers became famous theorists themselves. They acknowledged the importance of the unconscious and of early childhood experience, but each of them expanded and modified Freud’s ideas. One of them, Erik Erikson (1902–1994), proposed a comprehensive developmental theory that is still respected.

Erikson’s mother, pregnant with him, left her native Denmark alone by train to Germany, where she later married Erikson’s pediatrician. After a traditional German education, in emerging adulthood Erikson left Germany to wander for years in Italy, as did many artistic young adults at that time. When he decided to settle down, he became an art teacher for the children of Freud’s patients, who had traveled to Vienna for psychoanalysis. He met and married a Canadian, fleeing to the United States just before World War II. His temperament, his travel, and his studies of Harvard students, Boston children at play, and child-rearing among the Sioux and Yurok Indians all led Erikson to stress cultural diversity, social change, and psychological crises throughout life (Erikson, 1969).

Erikson described eight developmental stages, each characterized by a particular challenge, or developmental crisis (summarized in Table 2.1). Although Erikson named two polarities at each crisis, he recognized a wide range of outcomes between those opposites. For most people, development at each stage leads to neither extreme but to something in between.

In initiative versus guilt, for example, 3- to 6-year-olds undertake activities that exceed the limits set by their parents and culture. They jump into swimming pools, pull their pants on backwards, make cakes according to their own recipes, and wander off alone. Such efforts to act independently produce feelings of pride or failure, producing lifelong guilt if adults are too critical or if social norms are too strict. Most adults fall somewhere between unbridled initiative and crushing guilt, depending on their early childhood experiences.

As you can see from Table 2.1, Erikson’s first five stages are closely related to Freud’s stages. Erikson, like Freud, believed that problems of adult life echo unresolved childhood conflicts. For example, an adult who has difficulty establishing a secure, mutual relationship with a life partner may never have resolved the first crisis of early infancy, trust versus mistrust. Or perhaps in late adulthood, one older person may be outspoken while another avoids saying anything, because each resolved the initiative-versus-guilt stage in opposite ways. However in two crucial aspects, Erikson’s stages differ significantly from Freud’s:

1. Erikson’s stages emphasize family and culture, not sexual urges.
2. Erikson recognizes adult development, with three stages after adolescence.

Pink or Purple Hair These adolescents think they are nonconformist, and their short skirts, opaque tights, and hairstyles are certainly unlike those of their mothers or grandmothers. But they are similar to adolescents everywhere during each particular historical period—seeking to establish their own distinct identity.

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Behaviorism: Conditioning and Social Learning

An Early Behaviorist John Watson was an early proponent of learning theory. His ideas are still influential and controversial today.

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The second grand theory arose in direct opposition to the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious. John B. Watson (1878–1958) argued that if psychology was to be a true science, psychologists should examine only what they could see and measure: behavior, not irrational thoughts and hidden urges. In his words:

According to Watson, if psychologists focus on behavior, they will realize that everything can be learned. He wrote:

Other psychologists, especially in the United States, agreed. They developed behaviorism to study actual behavior, objectively and scientifically. Behaviorism is also called learning theory because it describes how people learn—by developing habits, bit by bit. For everyone at every age, behaviorists describe laws that describe how simple actions and environmental responses become complex competencies, such as reading a book or securing a new job.

Learning theorists believe that development occurs not in stages but in small increments: A person learns to talk, read, or anything else one tiny step at a time. Behaviorists study the laws of conditioning, the processes by which responses link to particular stimuli. In the first half of the twentieth century, behaviorists described only two types of conditioning: classical and operant.

A century ago, Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), after winning the Nobel Prize for his work on animal digestion, began to examine the link between stimulus and response. While studying salivation, Pavlov noted that his experimental dogs drooled not only at the smell of food but also, eventually, at the footsteps of the people bringing food. This observation led Pavlov to perform a famous experiment: He conditioned dogs to salivate when hearing a particular noise.

Pavlov began by sounding a tone just before presenting food. After a number of repetitions of the tone-then-food sequence, dogs began salivating at the sound even when there was no food. This simple experiment demonstrated classical conditioning (also called respondent conditioning).

In classical conditioning, a person or animal learns to associate a neutral stimulus with a meaningful stimulus, gradually responding to the neutral stimulus in the same way as to the meaningful one. In Pavlov’s original experiment, the dog associated the tone (the neutral stimulus) with food (the meaningful stimulus) and eventually responded to the tone as if it were the food itself. The conditioned response to the tone (no longer neutral but now a conditioned stimulus) was evidence that learning had occurred.

A Contemporary of Freud Ivan Pavlov was a physiologist who received the Nobel Prize in 1904 for his research on digestive processes. It was this line of study that led to his discovery of classical conditioning, when his research on dog saliva led to insight about learning.

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Behaviorists see dozens of examples of classical conditioning in life-span development. Infants learn to smile at their parents because they associate them with food and play; toddlers become afraid of busy streets if the noise of traffic repeatedly frightens them; college students enjoy—or fear—sitting in class, depending on past schooling; adults are relieved or terrified upon entering a hospital because of earlier associations with that experience.

One specific example of classical conditioning is called the white coat syndrome, when past experiences with medical professionals have conditioned someone to feel anxious. For that reason, when someone dressed in white takes their blood pressure, it is higher than it would be under normal circumstances. White coat syndrome is apparent in about half of the United States population over age 80 (Bulpitt et al., 2013). Many nurses now wear colorful blouses and many doctors wear street clothes to prevent conditioned anxiety in patients.

The most influential North American proponent of behaviorism was B. F. Skinner (1904–1990). Skinner agreed that psychology should focus on the science of behavior. His famous contribution was to recognize another type of conditioning—operant conditioning (also called instrumental conditioning)—in which animals (including people) act and then something follows that action. If the consequence that follows is enjoyable, the animal tends to repeat the behavior; if the consequence is unpleasant, the animal might not. Usually, learning occurs only after several repetitions with consequences.

Pleasant consequences are sometimes called rewards, but behaviorists do not call them that because what some other people call “punishment” may actually be a pleasant consequence and vice versa. For example, parents think they punish their children by withholding dessert, by spanking them, by not letting them play, by speaking harshly to them, and so on. But a particular child might dislike the dessert, so being deprived of it is no punishment. Or a child might not mind a spanking, especially if that is the only time the child gets parental attention. Thus, an intended punishment becomes a reward.

Rats, Pigeons, and People B. F. Skinner is best known for his experiments with rats and pigeons, but he also applied his knowledge to human behavior. For his daughter, he designed a glass-enclosed crib in which temperature, humidity, and perceptual stimulation could be controlled to make her time in the crib enjoyable and educational. He encouraged her first attempts to talk by smiling and responding with words, affection, or other positive reinforcement.

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Similarly, teachers sometimes send misbehaving children out of the classroom and principals suspend them from school. However, if a child hates the teacher, leaving class is rewarding. In fact, research on school discipline finds that some measures, including school suspension, increase later misbehavior (Osher et al., 2010). In order to stop misbehavior, it is more effective to encourage good behavior, to “catch them being good.” The true test is the effect a consequence has on the individual’s future actions, not whether it is intended to be a reward or a punishment. A child, or an adult, who repeats an offense may have been reinforced, not punished, for the first infraction.

Consequences that increase the frequency or strength of a particular action are called reinforcers, in a process called reinforcement (Skinner, 1953). Almost all of our daily behavior, from saying “Good morning” to earning a paycheck, can be understood as the result of past reinforcement, according to behaviorism, although the laws are hard to pin down.

Still Social Learning Even in his 80s, Albert Bandura is on the faculty at Stanford University. One reason, of course, it that he is esteemed by his peers, and another reason is that, as a proponent of social learning, he believes he can still influence many others. Social interaction is central to social learning theory.

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The problem is that research on conditioning has discovered that individuals vary in their responses, as already noted with spanking. In another example, a longitudinal study of children’s physical activity (playing sports, exercising, and so on) found that, for boys, the father’s praise was especially important. For girls, the father’s reinforcement helped, but the mother’s own physical activity was the more powerful influence (Cleland et al., 2011).

The importance of the father and mother in our last example provides another insight. At first, behaviorists thought all behavior arose from a chain of learned responses, the result of either the association between one stimulus and another (classical conditioning) or of past reinforcement (operant conditioning). Both of those processes—classical conditioning and operant conditioning—occur, as demonstrated by many studies. However, humans are social and active, not just reactive. Instead of responding merely to their own direct experiences, “people act on the environment. They create it, preserve it, transform it, and even destroy it … in a socially embedded interplay” (Bandura, 2006, p. 167).

That social interplay is the foundation of social learning theory (see Table 2.2), which holds that humans sometimes learn without personal reinforcement. This learning often occurs through modeling, when people copy what they see others do (also called observational learning). Modeling is not simple imitation; not every role model is equal. Instead, people model only some actions, of some individuals, in some contexts.

As an example of social learning, you may know adults who, as children, saw their parents hit each other. Some such adults abuse their own partners, while others scrupulously avoid marital conflict. These two responses seem opposite, but both are the result of social learning produced by childhood observation, with one observing the benefits of abuse, the other noting the suffering. Still other adults seem unaffected by their parents’ past fights: Differential susceptibility (explained in Chapter 1) may be the reason.

Generally, modeling is most likely when the observer is uncertain or inexperienced (which explains why modeling is especially powerful in childhood) and when the model is admired, powerful, nurturing, or similar to the observer (Bandura, 1986, 1997).

Social learning is common in adulthood as well. If your speech, hairstyle, or choice of shoes is similar to those of a celebrity, ask yourself why? Admiration? Similarity? Fads and fashions are most evident in adolescence and emerging adulthood because teenagers want to distinguish themselves from their parents, but they are uncertain as to how to dress or behave.

Cognitive Theory: Piaget and Information Processing

Social scientists sometimes write about the “cognitive revolution,” which occurred in about 1980 when psychoanalytic and behaviorist research and therapy were overtaken by a focus on cognition. According to cognitive theory, thoughts and expectations profoundly affect attitudes, beliefs, values, assumptions, and actions.

This revolution was the result of increasing awareness of the power of cognition, a term that refers to thinking. Ideas, education, and language are considered part of cognition. Cognitive theory dominated psychology for decades, becoming a grand theory.

Would You Talk to This Man? Children loved talking to Jean Piaget, and he learned by listening carefully—especially to their incorrect explanations, which no one had paid much attention to before. All his life, Piaget was absorbed with studying the way children think. He called himself a “genetic epistemologist”—one who studies how children gain knowledge about the world as they grow.

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The first major cognitive theorist was the Swiss scientist Jean Piaget (1896–1980), whose academic training was in biology, with a focus on shellfish—a background that taught him to look very closely at small details. He became interested in human thought when he was hired to standardize an IQ test by noting at what age children answered each question correctly.

However, the children’s wrong answers caught his attention. How children think is much more revealing, Piaget concluded, than what they know.

How to Think About Flowers A person’s stage of cognitive growth influences how he or she thinks about everything, including flowers. (a) To an infant, in the sensorimotor stage, flowers are “known” through pulling, smelling, and even biting. (b) At the concrete operational stage, children become more logical. This boy can understand that flowers need sunlight, water, and time to grow. (c) At the adult’s formal operational stage, flowers can be part of a larger, logical scheme—for instance, to earn money while cultivating beauty. As illustrated by all three photos, thinking is an active process from the beginning of life until the end.

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In the 1920s, most scientists believed that babies could not yet think. Then Piaget used scientific observation with his own three infants, finding them curious and thoughtful. Later he studied hundreds of schoolchildren. From this work Piaget formed the central thesis of cognitive theory: How children think changes with time and experience, and their thought processes affect their behavior. According to cognitive theory, to understand humans one must understand thinking.

Piaget maintained that cognitive development occurs in four age-related periods, or stages: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational (see Table 2.3). Each period fosters certain cognitive processes; for instance, infants think via their senses, and abstract logic is absent in middle childhood but possible at puberty (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958; Piaget, 1952b).

Piaget found that intellectual advancement occurs because humans at every age seek cognitive equilibrium—a state of mental balance. The easiest way to achieve this balance is to interpret new experiences through the lens of preexisting ideas. For example, infants grab new objects in the same way that they grasp familiar objects, children interpret their parents’ behavior by assuming that adults think in the same way that children do, and adults do the same when interpreting children.

Achieving equilibrium is not always easy, however. Sometimes a new experience or question is jarring or incomprehensible. Then the individual experiences cognitive disequilibrium, an imbalance that creates confusion. As Figure 2.1 illustrates, disequilibrium can cause cognitive growth if people adapt their thinking. Piaget describes two types of cognitive adaptation:

• assimilation The reinterpretation of new experiences to fit into old ideas.

  Assimilation: New experiences are reinterpreted to fit into, or assimilate old ideas.
  

• accommodation The restructuring of old ideas to include new experiences.

  Accommodation: Old ideas are restructured to include, or accommodate, new experiences.
  

Challenge Me Most of us, most of the time, prefer the comfort of our conventional conclusions. According to Piaget, however, when new ideas disturb our thinking, we have an opportunity to expand our cognition with a broader and deeper understanding.

Accommodation is more difficult to achieve than assimilation, but it produces intellectual advancement. For example, if a friend’s questions reveal inconsistencies in your own opinions, or if your favorite chess strategy puts you in checkmate, or if your mother says something completely unexpected, disequilibrium occurs. In the last example, you might assimilate by deciding your mother didn’t mean what you heard. You might tell yourself that she was repeating something she had read or that you misheard her. However, intellectual growth would occur if, instead, you changed your view of your mother to accommodate a new, expanded understanding.

Ideally, when two people disagree, or when they surprise each other by what they say, adaptation is mutual. For example, when parents are startled by their children’s opinions, the parents may revise their concepts of their children and even of reality, accommodating to new perceptions. If an honest discussion occurs, the children, too, might accommodate. Cognitive growth is an active process, dependent on clashing concepts that require new thought.

Piaget is credited with discovering that people’s assumptions and perceptions affect their development, an idea now accepted by most social scientists. However, many think Piaget’s theories were limited. Neuroscience, cross-cultural studies, and step-by-step understanding of cognition have revealed the limitations of Piaget’s theory.

As one admirer explains, Piaget’s “claims were too narrow and too broad” (Hopkins, 2011, p. 35). The narrowness comes from his focus on understanding the material world, ignoring the fact that people can be advanced in physics, biology, and math but not in other aspects of thought. The excessive broadness is reflected in his description of stages, ignoring the ongoing variability in thought. Contrary to Piaget’s ideas, “intelligence is now viewed more as a modular system than as a unified system of general intelligence” (Hopkins, 2011, p. 35).

Here we introduce one newer version of cognitive theory, information-processing theory, inspired by the input, programming, memory, and output of a sophisticated computer. When conceptualized in that way, thinking is affected by changes throughout adulthood, as this theory describes.

Information processing is “a framework characterizing a large number of research programs” (Miller, 2011, p. 266). Instead of merely interpreting responses by infants and children, as Piaget did, this cognitive theory focuses on the processes of thought—that is, how minds work before a response and then the many ways a response might occur. The underlying theoretical basis of information processing is that the details of process shed light on the specifics of outcome.

For information-processing scientists, cognition begins with input picked up by the five senses, proceeds to brain reactions, connections, and stored memories, and concludes with some form of output. For infants, output consists of moving a hand, making a sound, or staring a split second longer at one stimulus than at another. In adults, not only words but also hesitations, neuronal activity, and bodily reactions (heartbeat, blood pressure, and the like) are studied. With the aid of sensitive technology, information-processing research has overturned some of Piaget’s findings, as explained in later chapters.

However, the basic tenet of cognitive theory is true for information processing and for Piaget: Ideas matter. For instance, an information-processing study of adults who compulsively keep things that should be discarded (old papers, plastic bags, etc.) finds that they are indecisive, impulsive, and losing memory. In contrast, neuropsychological tests find that their decisiveness, impulsivity, and memory are normal (Fitch & Cougle, 2013). This is in accord with cognitive theory: A person’s self-concept is crucial because it affects behavior, with cognition more influential than basic brain functions.

We Try Harder Details of brain scans require interpretation from neurologists, but even the novice can see that adults who have been diagnosed with ADHD (second line of images) reacted differently in this experiment when they were required to push a button only if certain letters appeared on a screen. Sustained attention to this task required more brain power (the lit areas) for those with ADHD. Notice also that certain parts of the brain were activated by the healthy adults and not by the ADHD ones. Apparently adults who had problems paying attention when they were children have learned to focus when they need to, but they do it in their own way and with more effort.

A REVIEW OF FRONTO-STRIATAL AND FRONTO-CORTICAL BRAIN ABNORMALITIES IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS WITH ATTENTION DEFICIT HYPERACTIVITY DISORDER (ADHD) AND NEW EVIDENCE FOR DYSFUNCTION IN ADULTS WITH ADHD DURING MOTIVATION AND ATTENTION BY CUBILLO ET AL, CORTEX 48 (2012) 194 E2 15, FIG. 2. WITH PERMISSION FROM ELSEVIER.

This approach to understanding cognition has many other applications. For example, it has long been recognized that children with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) tend to have difficulty learning in school, obeying their parents, and making friends (whether or not they are excessively active). Information processing has led to the discovery that certain brain circuits (called fronto-striatal systems) do not function normally in children with ADHD. Consequently, it is harder for them to read facial expressions and voice tone in order to understand emotions (Uekermann et al., 2009).

This means that children with ADHD may not know whether their father’s “Come here” is an angry command or a loving suggestion, or when a classmate is hostile or friendly. Information processing helps in remediation: If a specific brain function can be improved, children may learn more, obey more, and gain friends.

Comparing Grand Theories

The grand theories have endured because they were innovative, comprehensive, and surprising. Until these theories were developed, few imagined that childhood experiences or the unconscious exert such power (psychoanalytic) or that adult behavior arises from prior reinforcement (behaviorist) or that children have quite different ways of thinking—not just less knowledge—than adults (cognitive).

These grand theories have also been soundly criticized, with many psychologists rejecting psychoanalytic theory as unscientific (Mills, 2004), behaviorism as demeaning of human potential (Chein, 1972/2008), and cognitive theory as disconnected from the social context that affects behavior. All three theories may emphasize past experiences and thoughts instead of future possibilities (Seligman et al., 2013). And, of course, they all reflect historical and cultural influences of their time (see Visualizing Development 2, p. 49).

The methods of these grand theories also differ.

• Freud and Erikson thought unconscious drives and early experiences formed the basis for later personality and behavior, so they listened to people’s dreams and memories, and incorporated themes from past myths and history.
• Behaviorists instead stressed actual experiences in each individual’s life, focusing on learning by association, by reinforcement, and by observation. For that reason they collected experimental data on animals of all kinds, believing that laws of behavior apply to all creatures, including humans.
• Cognitive theory held that to understand a person one must learn how that person thinks. Accordingly, Piaget gave children intellectual tasks and listened to their answers.

VISUALIZING DEVELOPMENT

Highlights from Developmental Psychology over the Centuries

Despite all their differences, like all good theories these three grand theories are provocative, each leading to newer theories (as shown here by Erikson, Bandura, and information processing), to hypotheses tested in thousands of experiments, and to countless applications. Here is one example.

OPPOSING PERSPECTIVES

Toilet Training—How and When?

What to Do? Books on infant care give contradictory advice. Even in this photo one can see that these modern mothers follow divergent parenting practices. One is breast-feeding a one-year-old, another has toilet, trained her toddler, one sits cross-legged so her baby can be on her lap, which would be impossible for another—and so on.

ANDREA MOHIN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX PICTURES

Remember that theories are practical. For example, parents hear opposite advice about when to respond to an infant’s cry. Some experts tell them that ignoring the cry will affect the infant’s future happiness (psychoanalytic—advocating attachment parenting), while others tell them that responding to every cry will teach the child to be demanding and spoiled (behaviorist—advocating strong character). Neither theory directly predicts such dire results, but each underlies one side or the other of this debate.

Meanwhile, cognitive theory seeks to understand the reason for the cry. Is it a reflexive wail of hurt and hunger, or is it an expression of social pain? According to this theory, when the meaning of an action is understood, people can respond effectively. Thus all three theories have led to advise for parents—although in conflicting ways.

Another practical example is toilet training. In the nineteenth century, many parents believed that, to distinguish humans from lower animals, bodily functions should be controlled as soon as possible. Consequently, they began toilet training in the first months of life (Accardo, 2006). Then psychoanalytic theory pegged the first year as the oral stage (Freud) or the time when trust was crucial (Erikson), before the toddler’s anal stage (Freud) or autonomy needs(Erikson).

Consequently, applying psychoanalytic theory led to postponing toilet training to avoid serious personality problems later on. Soon this was part of many manuals on child rearing. For example, a leading pediatrician, Barry Brazelton, wrote a popular book for parents advising that toilet training should not begin until the child is cognitively, emotionally, and biologically ready—around age 2 for daytime training and age 3 for nighttime dryness.

As a society, we are far too concerned about pushing children to be toilet trained early. I don’t even like the phrase “toilet training.” It really should be toilet learning.

[Brazelton & Sparrow, 2006, p. 193]

By the middle of the twentieth century, many U.S. psychologists had rejected psychoanalytic theory and become behaviorists. Since they believed that learning depends primarily on conditioning, some suggested that toilet training occur whenever the parent wished, not at a particular age. In one application of behaviorism, children drank quantities of their favorite juice, sat on the potty with a parent nearby to keep them entertained, and then, when the inevitable occurred, the parent praised and rewarded them—a powerful reinforcement. Children were conditioned (in one day, according to some behaviorists) to head for the potty whenever the need arose (Azrin & Foxx, 1974).

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Rejecting both of these theories, some Western parents prefer to start potty training very early. One U.S. mother began training her baby just 33 days after birth. She noticed when her son was about to defecate, held him above the toilet, and had trained him by 6 months (Sun & Rugolotto, 2004). Such early training is criticized by all of the grand theories, although each theory has a particular perspective, as now explained.

Behaviorists would say that the mother was trained, not the son. She taught herself to be sensitive to his body; she was reinforced when she read his clues correctly. Psychoanalysts would wonder what made her such an anal person, with a need for cleanliness and order that did not consider the child’s needs. Cognitive theory would wonder what the mother was thinking, particularly if she had an odd fear of normal body functions.

What is best? Dueling theories and diverse parental practices have led the authors of an article for pediatricians to conclude that “despite families and physicians having addressed this issue for generations, there still is no consensus regarding the best method or even a standard definition of toilet training” (Howell et al., 2011, p. 262). One comparison study of toilet-training methods found that the behaviorist approach was best for older children with serious disabilities but that almost every method succeeded with the average young child. No method seemed to result in marked negative emotional consequences (Klassen et al., 2006). Many sources explain that because each child is different, there is no “right” way, “the best strategy for implementing training is still unknown” (Colaco et al., 2013, p. 49).

That conclusion arises from cognitive theory, which holds that each person’s assumptions and ideas determine their actions. Therefore, since North American parents are from many cultures with diverse assumptions, marked variation is evident in beliefs regarding toilet training. Contemporary child-rearing advice also considers the child’s own cognitive development. If the child is at the sensorimotor stage, then body sensations and reflexive actions are central to training. Later on, when language has been added to the mix, the child’s intellectual awareness (evidenced in “big boy” underpants and so on) is crucial.

What values are embedded in each practice? Psychoanalytic theory focuses on later personality, behaviorism stresses conditioning of body impulses, and cognitive theory considers variation in the child’s intellectual capacity and in adult values. Even the idea that each child is different, making no one method best, is the outgrowth of a theory. There is no easy answer, but many parents are firm believers in one approach or another. That confirms the statement at the beginning of this chapter, that we all have theories, sometimes strongly held, whether we know it or not.