Chapter 9 Outline: Child Socialization and Personality

A.  Introduction

1. 1. The concept of the life cycle first emerged in the twentieth century
   2. The rapid increase in industrial productivity and medical technology increased the human life span
   3. Average life expectancy in the U.S increased from 47.3 years to 74.9 in 1988
   4. The concept of “childhood” did not emerge in Europe until the 17^th and 18^th centuries
   5. In medieval societies, schools only existed for the privileged but most children had to work as early as seven years old
   6. The word “child” was used to signify blood relationships rather than status of age
   7. Charolotte Bühler was the earliest pioneer to explore personality development from infancy to old age
      1. She divided human life span into 5 periods: childhood, youth, adulthood, adulthood II, and aging
   8. Age is not a predictor of behavior unless we look at the sociocultural context
      1. Example: a 14-year-old girl can be going to school in the U.S. but in a rural village she may already be a mother

B.   Parental Behavior and Child Personality

1. 1. 1. 1. “Parents” are referred to the traditional concept of parents, legal/consanguine, and primary caregivers who function as surrogate parents
         2. Ronald P. Rohner, Director of the Center for the Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection at the University of Connecticut, states that parental warmth and parental control are two major dimensions of parenting in all human societies
         3. Schaefer formulated the earliest conceptual framework for the study of parental behavior and child personality
            1. Through factor analysis constructed hypothetical model for maternal behavior
            2. Example: love versus hostility and control versus autonomy
         4. Becker modified Schaefer’s model by adding a third dimension (calm-detachment versus anxious-emotional involvement)
            1. replaced “love” with “warmth”
            2. replaced “permissiveness” with “autonomy”
            3. replaced “control” with “restrictiveness”
         5. Warm and permissive parents facilitate living environment for children which results in active, creative, independent, and sociable children
         6. Warm but restrictive parents raise submissive, dependent, obedient and less creative children
         7. Parental hostility with permissiveness produce delinquent, aggressive, non-compliant children
         8. Parental hostility with restiveness produce children with serious neurotic problems, social withdrawal, self-aggression, and antisocial behaviors
         9. Intervening Variables:
            1. gender and birth order
            2. inconsistency in parental behavior
            3. cultural differences in gender roles and parenting
         10. Bronfenbrenner’s study 1961- too much parental discipline impeded development of responsibility; needed moderate level of authority instead
             1. optimal level of authority was higher for boys than for girls
         11. Becker 1964 states that inconsistent parent behavior reduces the predictability of the child’s environment, hence child is confused and behavior becomes unstable
             1. Example: Authoritarian father and democratic mother
         12. Rohner and Rohner 1981 examined 4 major classes of parent behavior variables:
             1. level of warmth/affection
             2. degree of hostile/aggressiveness
             3. extent of indifferent/neglectful
             4. extent of permissiveness/ autonomy
         13. Findings: parental warmth is negatively correlated with parental neglect and parental hostility; parental hostility is positively correlated with parental neglect; parental hostility is positively correlated with parental control
         14. Healthy psychological development of children is promoted most effectively by love with least moderate parental control

C.  Parental Absence and Child Personality

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Early studies indicated that father-absent children can have problems such as sex-role socialization, psychiatric disorder, impairment of intellectual growth, delinquency and homosexuality
            2. Variables looked at:
               1. Duration of absence
               2. Reason for absence
               3. Age, sex and temperament of child
               4. Parental surrogates
               5. Previous circumstances in family
               6. Previous parent-child relationship
            3. Simple causal relationship is impossible because of the many variables
            4. Father Absence and Child Personality
               1. Effects of father absence in males- masculine identification problems in young boys, greater psychopathology the longer the absence, problems with moral development, decrease in mathematical skills in boys, has a greater effect on boys academic performance than girls,
               2. Effects of father absence in females- alcoholism, suicide attempts, depression, greater aggression than father-present girls, early exposure to sexual experiences and
            5. Stevenson and Black conducted a review on past literature and found that the reasons/circumstances of father absence appear to be more important than the actual absence per se
            6. Mother Absence and Child Personality
               1. John Bowlby suggested that prolonged separation from mother and child can have serious effects on the child’s mental health and personality development
               2. Margret Mead disagreed with Bowlby and argued that the mother-deprivation theory was an attempt by men to confine women to the home with their children
               3. Ainsworth states that maternal deprivation occurs under three differing conditions: insufficiency, discontinuity, and distortion
               4. Michael Rutter is highly critical of past studies on the effect of maternal deprivation. Most controversial arguments include:
                  1. Emphasis on deleterious effects of separation were incorrect
                  2. Evidence did not support the notion that the child’s main bond with the mother differed in kind and in quality from all other bonds
                  3. Recent development in maternal deprivation research has been the emphasis on individual differences in children’s response to deprivation; all investigations had shown that many children are not damaged by deprivation
                  4. Term “maternal deprivation” is too heterogeneous and its effects are too varied for it to continue to have much use.

D.  Effects of Television on Child Personality

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Television has become a socialization agent for many American children
                     2. Some researchers explored the positive impact of TV such as prosocial behavior, imaginative activity, moral messages, and learning languages
                     3. Some focused on the negative impacts of TV such as aggressive behavior, facilitation of gender and race stereotyping, reduction of interaction, inhibition of reading skills, etc.
                     4. The most extensively studied is the effect of television violence on later aggressive behavior
                     5. Bandura’s modeling theory talks about learning through imitation, therefore children learn to behave aggressively by watching people on TV being rewarded for violent acts.
                     6. The desensitization theory deals with children developing an emotional tolerance to violence
                     7. The phenomenon of misanthropy which is a distrust of others has also been found among those who watch heavy TV violence

E.  Birth Order and Intelligence

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. A controversial topic in the area of child socialization and personality
                  2. Popular assumptions:
                     1. First born is more intelligent
                     2. First born has higher sense of responsibility
                     3. First born is more conservative, cooperative, and capable of leading
                     4. Later born is more extroverted, sociable, empathetic, and risk-taking
                  3. However, empirical findings on these issues are inconsistent and not conclusive
                  4. Zajonc (1983) was persistent in validating his birth-order theory and proposed the confluence model which relates the child’s intelligence with his/her intellectual environment
                     1. Intelligence declines with family size and birth order
                  5. Belmot and Marolla also researched the effects of birth order and sibship size on intelligence and found that men’s intelligence was significantly related to birth order and family size
                  6. Steelman and Mercy (1980) found that socioeconomic background and family structure are more powerful predictors of the child’s intellectual development than the birth order effect and sibship size

F.  Minority Children’s Socialization and Personality

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. In a sociological sense, a minority group is known as the subordinate group and has less power than the dominant/ majority group
                  2. Black families below the poverty line are consistently 3 times higher than white families
                  3. Hispanic families below the poverty line are consistently 2.7 times higher than whites
                  4. Asian Americans are considered to be doing the best out of other minority groups
                     1. Often called the “model minority”
                  5. Minority children are caught between two different cultures/ races and may experience a sense of “marginality”
                  6. Robert Park’s concept of the “marginal man” talks about the man of mixed blood who lives in two worlds and is more or less a stranger in both worlds.
                  7. Kerckhoff and McCormick borrowed from Park’s concept of the marginal man to test their theoretical construct of “marginal personality characteristics
                     1. Findings: identification with the white group was greatest among minority children with white appearances
                     2. Findings: marginal personality traits were more evident in minority children who identified as part of the white/ dominant group however were not accepted because of their minority characteristics
                  8. Hurh’s findings showed that social marginality derives from multiple stigma-labeling factors
                  9. Rotherman and Phinney, authors of a book on children’s ethnic socialization (the developmental process by which children come to see themselves and others as members of particular ethnic groups) have 4 unifying themes:
                     1. Ethnic group differences in appearances, attitudes, values and behaviors have an impact on development
                     2. Impact of ethnicity varies with age
                     3. Ethnic socialization has different implications depending on group to which children belong
                     4. Role of ethnic development is affected by environment and sociocultural/historical context
                  10. Children’s growing awareness of ethnic differences and biculturalism creates stress on them due to conflicting values

G.  Bilingualism and Personality

• 1. Biculturalism may create conflict for minority children but it can also provide “a double opportunity”
  2. Past studies tended to stress the potential negative effects of bilingualism on the cognitive and emotional development of the child
  3. Recent studies have indicated more positive effects of bilingualism
  4. Pinter and Keller (1922), Saer (1923), and Diebold (1968) reported detrimental effects like “linguistic handicap”, “mental confusion”, and “emotional disorders”
  5. Reviewers of past studies found methodological shortcomings
  6. Lambert and Tucker’s 7-year longitudinal study on bilingualism found that there were no signs on negative effects on cognitive development, and in subjects like math and science the level of performance for bilingual children was similar if not higher than children who were not
  7. Hamers and Blanc (1983) found that the relationship between bilingualism and personality is dependent on the sociocultural context;
  8. If bilingualism is positively valued in a given community, then it can provide a double cultural opportunity therefore enhancing personality and growth