Socioemotional

Development in
Early Childhood
 Chapter Outline
• Emotional and personality development
• Families
• Peer relations, play, and media/screen time
Emotional and Personality Development

• Children’s developing minds and social

experiences produce remarkable advances in
the development of:
– The self
– Emotional maturity
– Moral understanding
– Gender awareness
 The Self
• Initiative versus guilt
– Children use their perceptual, motor, cognitive,
and language skills to make things happen
– On their own initiative, then, children at this stage
exuberantly move out into a wider social world
– The great governor of initiative is conscience
– Initiative and enthusiasm may bring guilt, which
lowers self-esteem
 The Self
• Self-understanding and understanding others
– Increased awareness reflects young children’s
expanding psychological sophistication
– Self-understanding: Substance and content of
self-conceptions
– Physical activities are central component of the
self in early childhood
 The Self
• Understanding others
– Children start perceiving others in terms of
psychological traits
– Children begin to develop an understanding for
joint commitments
– Young children are not as egocentric as depicted
in Piaget’s theory
 Emotional Development
• Expressing emotions
– Pride, shame, embarrassment, and guilt are
examples of self-conscious emotions
• During the early childhood years, emotions such as
pride and guilt become more common
– Influenced by parents’ responses to children’s
behavior
 Emotional Development
• Understanding emotions
– Children’s understanding of emotion is linked to
an increase in prosocial behavior
– Children begin to understand that the same event
can elicit different feelings in different people
– By age 5 most children show a growing awareness
of the need to manage emotions according to
social standards
 Emotional Development
• Regulating emotions
– Plays a key role in children’s ability to manage the
demands and conflicts they face in interacting
with others
– Parents can be described as taking an emotion-
coaching or an emotion-dismissing approach
– Ability to modulate emotions benefits children in
their relationships with peers
 Moral Development
• Moral feelings
– Feelings of anxiety and guilt are central to the
account of moral development
– Learning how to identify a wide range of
emotional states in others, and to anticipate what
kinds of action will improve another person’s
emotional state, help to advance children’s moral
development
 Moral Development
• Moral reasoning
– Heteronomous morality: The first stage of moral
development in Piaget’s theory, occurring from
approximately 4 to 7 years of age
• Justice and rules are conceived of as unchangeable
properties of the world, removed from the control of
people
 Moral Development
– Autonomous morality: In Piaget’s theory, older
children (about 10 years of age and older) become
aware that rules and laws are created by people
and that in judging an action one should consider
the actor’s intentions as well as the consequences
Moral Development
 Moral Development
– Immanent justice: Concept that if a rule is broken,
punishment will be meted out immediately
– Parent-child relations, in which parents have the
power and children do not, are less likely to
advance moral reasoning
• Rules are handed down in an authoritarian manner
 Moral Development
• Moral behavior
– Processes of reinforcement, punishment, and
imitation explain the development of moral
behavior
– Situation influences behavior
– Cognitive factors are important in the child’s
development of self-control
 Gender
• Gender identity: The sense of being male or
female, which most children acquire by the
time they are 3 years old
• Gender role: A set of expectations that
prescribes how females or males should think,
act, and feel
 Gender
• Gender typing: Acquisition of a traditional
masculine or feminine role
• Biological influences
– Chromosomes
– Hormones
– Evolution
 Gender
• Social influences
– Social theories of gender
• Social role theory: Gender differences result from the
contrasting roles of women and men
• Psychoanalytic theory: Preschool child develops a
sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent
• Social cognitive theory: Children’s gender
development occurs through observation and imitation
of what other people say and do
 Gender
– Gender molds important aspects of peer relations
• Gender composition of children’s groups
• Group size
• Interaction in same-sex groups
• Cognitive influences
– Gender schema theory: Gender typing emerges as
children gradually develop gender schemas of
what is gender-appropriate and gender-
inappropriate in their culture
 Parenting
• Baumrind’s parenting styles
– Authoritarian parenting is restrictive
– Authoritative parenting encourages children to be
independent
– Neglectful parenting
– Indulgent parenting
 Parenting
• Baumrind’s parenting styles
 Parenting
• Parenting styles in context
– Authoritative parenting conveys the most benefits to the child and to
the family as a whole
• Punishment
– Corporal punishment is linked to lower levels of moral
internalization and mental health
– Handle misbehavior by reasoning with the child, especially
explaining the consequences of the child’s actions for others
• Coparenting
– Support that parents give each other in raising a child
 Child Maltreatment
• Types of child maltreatment
– Physical abuse
– Child neglect
– Sexual abuse
– Emotional abuse
• Context of abuse
– About 1/3 of parents who were abused
themselves when they were young go on to abuse
their own children
 Child Maltreatment
• Developmental consequences of abuse
– Adolescents who experienced abuse or neglect as
children are more likely to engage in violent
behavior and substance abuse
 Sibling Relationships and Birth
Order
• Sibling relationships
– Important characteristics
• Emotional quality of the relationship
• Familiarity and intimacy of the relationship
• Birth order
– Compared with later-born children, firstborn
children have been described as more adult-
oriented, helpful, conforming, and self-controlled
Sibling Relationships and Birth
Order
Changing Family in a Changing Society

• Working parents
– Children of working mothers engage in less
gender stereotyping and have more egalitarian
views of gender than do children of nonworking
mothers
• Children in divorced families
– Children from divorced families show poorer
adjustment than their counterparts in never-
divorced families
Changing Family in a Changing Society

• Gay male and lesbian parents

– Most children from gay or lesbian families have a
heterosexual orientation
• Cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic variations
– There are trends toward greater family mobility,
migration to urban areas
– Ethnic minority parents are less educated and
more likely to live in low-income circumstances
Changing Family in a Changing Society
– Lower-SES parents:
• More concerned that their children conform to
society’s expectations
• Create a home atmosphere in which it is clear that
parents have authority over children, among others
– Higher-SES parents:
• More concerned with developing children’s initiative
and delay of gratification
• Less likely to use physical punishment, among others
Peer Relation, Play, and Television
• Peer relations
– Provide a source of information and comparison
about the world outside the family
– Good peer relations can be necessary for normal
socioemotional development
• Play
– Play therapy is used to allow the child to work off
frustrations and to analyze the child’s conflicts
and ways of coping with them
Peer Relation, Play, and Television
– Important context for the development of
language and communication skills
– Types of Play
• Sensorimotor
• Practice
• Pretense/symbolic
• Social
• Games: Activities that are engaged in for pleasure and
have rules
Peer Relation, Play, and Television
• Television
– Many children spend more time in front of the
television set than they do with their parents
– Extent to which children are exposed to violence
and aggression on television and video games
raises special concerns
– Television can also teach children that it is better
to behave in a positive, prosocial way