child development theories: Discuss the historical development of child development philosophies. What were the major historical changes that brought about the development of these various theories/philosophies? Who were the major theorists/groups of people associated with these changes in our views on childhood development?
divorce: Discuss the sociological implications of America’s high divorce rate. Should it be harder to get a divorce? If so, why? If not, why not? What are the pros and cons associated with no fault divorce? What do you think are the effects of divorce on American Society?
Child Development
Definition:
Change in the child that occurs over time. Changes follow
an orderly pattern that moves toward greater complexity
and enhances survival.
Periods of development:
Prenatal period: from conception to birth
Infancy and toddlerhood: birth to 2 years
Early childhood: 2-6 years old
Middle childhood: 6-12 years old
Adolescence: 12-19 years old
Domains of Development
Development is described in three domains, but growth
in one domain influences the other domains.
Physical Domain:
body size, body proportions, appearance, brain development, motor
development, perception capacities, physical health.
Cognitive Domain:
thought processes and intellectual abilities including attention, memory, problem
solving, imagination, creativity, academic and everyday knowledge,
metacognition, and language.
Social/Emotional Domain:
self-knowledge (self-esteem, metacognition, sexual identity, ethnic identity),
moral reasoning, understanding and expression of emotions, self-regulation,
temperament, understanding others, interpersonal skills, and friendships.
Theories
What is a theory?
Orderly set of ideas which describe, explain, and predict
behavior.
Why are theories important?
To give meaning to what we observe.
As a basis for action — finding ways to improve the lives and
education of children.
Historical Development of Child Development
Theories
6th – 15th centuries
Medieval period
Preformationism: children seen as little adults.
Childhood is not a unique phase.
Children were cared for until they could begin caring for
themselves, around 7 years old.
Children treated as adults (e.g. their clothing, worked at
adult jobs, could be married, were made into kings, were
imprisoned or hanged as adults.)
16th Century
Reformation period
Puritan religion influenced how children were viewed.
Children were born evil, and must be civilized.
A goal emerged to raise children effectively.
Special books were designed for children.
17th Century
Age of Enlightenment
John Locke believed in tabula rasa
Children develop in response to
nurturing.
Forerunner of behaviorism
www.cooperativeindividualism.org/ locke-john.jpg
18th Century
Age of Reason
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
children were noble savages, born with an innate
sense of morality; the timing of growth should not be
interfered with.
Rousseau used the idea of stages of
development.
Forerunner of maturationist beliefs
19th Century
Industrial Revolution
Charles Darwin
theories of natural selection and survival of the
fittest
Darwin made parallels between
human prenatal growth and other
animals.
Forerunner of ethology
20th Century
Theories about children’s development expanded around
the world.
Childhood was seen as worthy of special attention.
Laws were passed to protect children,
Beliefs focus on the formation of personality. According to this
approach, children move through various stages, confronting
conflicts between biological drives and social expectations.
Sigmund Freud
Psychosexual Theory
Was based on his therapy
with troubled adults.
He emphasized that a
child’s personality is
formed by the ways which
his parents managed his
sexual and aggressive
drives.
Erik Erikson
Psychosocial Theory
Expanded on Freud’s theories.
Believed that development is life-long.
Emphasized that at each stage, the child acquires
attitudes and skills resulting from the successful
negotiation of the psychological conflict.
Identified 8 stages:
Basic trust vs mistrust (birth – 1 year)
Autonomy vs shame and doubt (ages 1-3)
Initiative vs guilt (ages 3-6)
Industry vs inferiority (ages 6-11)
Identity vs identity confusion (adolescence)
Intimacy vs isolation (young adulthood)
Generativity vs stagnation (middle adulthood)
Integrity vs despair (the elderly)
Beliefs that describe the importance of the
environment and nurturing in the growth of a child.
Behaviorism
Developed as a response to psychoanalytical
theories.
Behaviorism became the dominant view from
the 1920’s to 1960’s.
John Watson
Early 20th century, “Father of
www.psych.utah.edu./…/Cards/Watson.html
American Behaviorist theory.”
Based his work on Pavlov’s
experiments on the digestive system
of dogs.
Researched classical conditioning
Children are passive beings who can
be molded by controlling the
stimulus-response associations.
B. F. Skinner
Proposed that children “operate” on their environment,
operational conditioning.
Believed that learning could be broken down into smaller
tasks, and that offering immediate rewards for
accomplishments would stimulate further learning.
Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura
Stressed how children learn by observation and imitation.
Believed that children gradually become more selective in
what they imitate.
Belief that heredity and innate biological processes govern
growth.
Maturationists: G. Stanley Hall
and Arnold Gesell
Believed there is a predetermined biological timetable.
Hall and Gesell were proponents of the normative
approach to child study: using age-related averages of
children’s growth and behaviors to define what is normal.
Ethology
Examines how behavior is determined by a
species’ need for survival.
Has its roots in Charles Darwin’s research.
Describes a “critical period” or “sensitive
period,” for learning
Konrad Lorenz
Ethologist, known
for his research
on imprinting.
Attachment Theory
John Bowlby applied ethological principles to
his theory of attachment.
Attachment between an infant and her
caregiver can insure the infant’s survival.
Beliefs that describe how children learn
Jean Piaget
Cognitive development
theory
Children “construct” their
understanding of the world through
their active involvement and
interactions.
Studied his 3 children to focus not on
what they knew but how they knew it.
Described children’s understanding as
their “schemas” and how they use:
assimilation
accommodation.
Piaget’s Cognitive
Development Stages
Sensori-motor
Ages birth – 2: the infant uses his senses and motor abilities
to understand the world
Preoperation
Ages 2-7: the child uses metal representations of objects
and is able to use symbolic thought and language
Concrete operations
Ages 7-11; the child uses logical operations or principles
when solving problems
Formal operations
Ages 12 up; the use of logical operations in a systematic
fashion and with the ability to use abstractions
Lev Vygotsky
Socio-Cultural Theory
Agreed that children are active
learners, but their knowledge is
socially constructed.
Cultural values and customs dictate
what is important to learn.
Children learn from more expert
members of the society.
Vygotsky described the “zone of
proximal development”, where
learning occurs.
ced.ncsc.edu/hyy/devtheories.htm
Information Processing Theory
Uses the model of the computer to describe how the
brain works.
Focuses on how information is perceived, how
information is stored in memory, how memories are
retrieved and then used to solve problems.
The belief that development can’t be explained by a single
concept, but rather by a complex system.
Urie Bronfenbrenner
Ecological Systems Theory
The varied systems of the
environment and the
interrelationships among the systems
shape a child’s development.
Both the environment and biology
influence the child’s development.
The environment affects the child and
the child influences the environment.
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Model
The microsystem – activities and
interactions in the child’s immediate
surroundings: parents, school, friends,
etc.
The mesosystem – relationships among
the entities involved in the child’s
microsystem: parents’ interactions with
teachers, a school’s interactions with the
daycare provider
The exosystem – social institutions which
affect children indirectly: the parents’
work settings and policies, extended
family networks, mass media, community
resources
The macrosystem – broader cultural
values, laws and governmental resources
The chronosystem – changes which occur
during a child’s life, both personally, like
the birth of a sibling and culturally, like
the Iraqi war.
Outline of 20th Century Theories
Psychoanalytical Theories
Psychosexual: Sigmund Freud
Psychosocial: Erik Erikson
Behavioral & Social Learning Theories
Behaviorism: Classical Conditioning – John Watson & Operant
Conditioning – B.F. Skinner
Social Learning – Albert Bandera
Biological Theories
Maturationism: G. Stanley Hall & Arnold Gesell
Ethology: Konrad Lorenz
Attachment: John Bowlby
Outline of 20th Century Theories
Cognitive Theories
Cognitive Development: Jean Piaget
Socio-cultural: Lev Vygotsky
Information Processing
Systems Theories
Ecological Systems: Urie Bronfenbrenner
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE PROCESS OF DIVORCE
DIVORCE IN THE UNITED STATES
• Divorce is a common occurrence in the United States. About one-third of people
who have ever been married have also been divorced.
• How Common Is Divorce? It Depends on How We Measure It
• The crude divorce rate (the number of divorces per 1,000 people in the population) is
a better way to understand divorce than a perceived measure.
• However, the crude divorce rate is problematic. Many people are not married, so
why should they be included in the divorce statistics? It makes more sense to focus on
how many married people get divorced. Therefore, another method of measuring the
frequency of divorce is the refined divorce rate, or the number of divorces that occur
per 1,000 married women ages 15 and older.
• The refined divorce rate provides a one-year snapshot of how many married women
divorce. What is unknown is just how high chances of future divorce are.
HiHistorical Trends
• Historical Trends
• Although legal divorce was rare and difficult to obtain before 1850, married couples in troubled
relationships separated or deserted one another.
• An early study of marriage and divorce conducted in the mid-1800s, examined 29 cases of divorce on
the grounds of “cruelty.” In almost every case, the wife committed the “cruelty” by attempting to
break out of her traditional subordinate role in one way or another.
• By the mid-19th century, the divorce rate began to rise as it became easier for women to initiate and
obtain a divorce. During the five years from 1872 to 1876, 63 percent of all divorces initiated and
granted to women were on grounds of cruelty, desertion, drunkenness, and neglect.
• The divorce rate rose steadily between 1860 and 1940, though it dropped somewhat during the Great
Depression of the 1930s.
• After the Depression and World War II the divorce rate rose quickly, and by 1946 it peaked at nearly 18
divorces per 1,000 married women, higher than today’s rate.
• After the rush of divorces following World War II, the divorce rate dropped
considerably to around 9 per 1,000 married women during the 1950s. In the late
1960s and 1970s, the divorce rate began to rise again, peaking at nearly 23 divorces
per 1,000 married women around 1980. Since then, the divorce rate declined to 17.9
in 2009, but appears to have increased in recent years to 20.9 in 2011. However,
methods of calculating the divorce rate have changed
WHY DO PEOPLE DIVORCE?
• Micro-Level Factors
• Parental Divorce. People whose parents have divorced are also more likely to divorce themselves. This
pattern is known as intergenerational transmission of divorce.
• Age at Marriage. Couples who marry at a young age are in one of the highest risk categories for divorce.
• Parental Status. Couples who have children—particularly young children—or who have many children are less
likely to get divorced.
• Nonmarital Childbearing. Couples that bear or conceive children prior to marriage have higher divorce rates
than do other couples.
• Sex of Children. Couples who have sons are less likely to divorce than are couples who have daughters.
• Race and Ethnicity. Different racial or ethnic groups vary in their tendency to divorce, with Hispanic and Asian
groups least likely to divorce and Blacks most likely to do so.
• Education. On average, people with lower levels of education are more likely to divorce than those with
higher levels of education.
• Income. Divorce is more common among people with lower incomes than those with higher incomes.
• Degree of Similarity between Spouses. Spouses are less likely to divorce when they share characteristics such
as age, religion, race, or ethnicity and are more likely to divorce when these characteristics differ.
• The Couple’s Ages. The likelihood of a couple divorcing rises during adulthood and then declines as the
couple ages.
MACRO-STRUCTURAL FACTORS
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Read the Document: A Comparison of Civilian and Enlisted Divorce Rates During the Early All Volunteer Force Era on MySocLab.
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If we want to know why divorce occurs, instead of looking only at micro-level factors of the individual, we should also pay
attention to cultural macro-level factors such as (1) the level of socioeconomic development; (2) the dominant religion practiced;
(3) the divorce laws; (4) the status of women, including their employment situation; and (5) the general attitudes towards divorce.
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Level of Socioeconomic Development. Generally, less developed countries in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, and the Middle East have
significantly lower divorce rates than do developed counties in North America and Europe. Most people cannot support themselves on their own in less
developed countries, and families are of the utmost importance.
Religion. A second factor that influences the rate of divorce in a country is the level of religiosity and the most widely practiced religion of its citizens.
Divorce Laws. Divorce laws certainly help predict the likelihood of divorce and they are quite different through the world.
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In many parts of the Middle East, men can divorce their wives for almost any reason, often by simply declaring “I divorce thee.”
The U.S. divorce laws have shifted from “at fault” to “no fault” in the 1960s, which means that a divorcing couple can go before a judge without one party having to
blame the other.
Women’s Status and Employment. Divorce laws tend to be more restrictive in patriarchal societies where women have fewer legal rights or economic
opportunities. In many countries, laws regarding child custody and spousal support are designed to perpetuate patriarchy.
Attitudes toward Divorce. In many parts of the world today, women who divorce are stigmatized. Until recently in the United States, in fact, the term
“divorcée,” which applied to women only, had sexually suggestive connotations.
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Over the past 50 years, divorce has become less stigmatized. Unhappy couples now consider it an appropriate way to end their relationship.
Interestingly, more people now oppose divorce and believe that it should be more difficult to obtain than in the previous generation.
It is younger adults, rather than older adults, who want divorce to be more restrictive, perhaps because many of them experienced divorce as children.
An intriguing change has occurred in attitudes towards divorce among women. In the past, researchers found that the more education women had, the more likely
they were to support easier divorce. In recent years, however, women with college degrees are the most likely to say that divorce should be more difficult to
obtain, while women with less than a high school diploma hold the least restrictive views about divorce. This trend is referred to as the “education crossover.”
If women are unsure about the economic prospects of their partners, they will probably want to keep divorce as an option. In contract, women who have more
education (and presumably higher incomes and jobs with more prestige) can be more selective about whom they marry.
EXPERIENCING DIVORCE
• Divorce is a process. This process may include a separation to provide the emotional
distance needed to work on resolving marital problems—sometimes followed by
reconciliation, but perhaps finally ending in a divorce.
• The phases of separation
• In the first phase of a marital separation, preseparation, one or both partners begin to think
about the benefits of a separation.
• During the early separation phase, couples face a series of issues as they separate. Who
will be the one to move out?
• In the mid-separation phase, the realities of daily living set in, such as maintaining two
households, arranging visitation for children, and living on a reduced income.
• Finally, during the late separation phase, a couple must learn to live as two single people.
Not all separated couples divorce; many continue to work on the problems they faced as
a married couple and then successfully reconcile.
• They may file for a legal separation, a binding agreement signed by both spouses that
provides details about child support.
The Stations of Divorce
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The Emotional Divorce. Ending a marriage is extremely stressful. Divorced individuals, compared with those who are
married, have more health problems, experience more depression and anxiety, and have a greater risk of mortality.
Men and women often have different challenges following divorce.
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Women are more likely than men to have financial problems after a divorce.
In contrast, men often have a more difficult time emotionally after a divorce. One reason for this is that men tend to have a weaker
network of supportive relationships. Men are also more dependent upon a marriage, and those who have been in more traditional
marriages may find routine household tasks such as cooking, cleaning, and shopping to be daunting.
Legal Divorce. A legal divorce terminates the marriage contract by a court order of the state. Partners are then legally
free to conduct separate lives and to remarry.
Economic Divorce
• Read the Document: Characteristics of Women with Children Who Divorce in Midlife Compared to
Those Who Remain Married on MySocLab.
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What happens to the financial well-being of men, women, and children after a divorce? During the divorce year, women and
children’s income declines significantly, whereas men experience only slight declines on average. 1 in 5 women become
impoverished, as compared to only 1 in 13 men.
After a divorce, fathers become single, and mothers become single parents. This generally results in a significant income difference
between fathers and mothers.
Women who leave the workforce to raise children may have difficulty reentering the work force.
Some spouses may request alimony, a (generally temporary) payment by one partner to the other, usually a husband to wife.
Alimony is designed to support the more dependent spouse for a period of time.
Alimony is not commonly awarded. Female-headed households in the United States would fare quite differently in many other
developed nations, including most Western Europe, where the government intervenes ands assists divorced families to a greater
extent than in the United States.
Divorce and Children: Child Support
• Noncustodial parents have a legal responsibility to support their children. For much of
U.S. history, these payments were arranged privately between former spouses; the
noncustodial parent (usually the father) negotiated a child support order with the
mother, a legal document delineating the amount and circumstances of the financial
support of noncustodial children.
• Enforcement was minimal; usually the burden of attempting to collect overdue
payments was left to the mother.
• More recently, there have been efforts to improve the collection of child support
payments. Congress passed laws to increase the proportion of children who were
eligible for child support, to increase and standardize child support orders, and to
improve collection rates.
• Unfortunately, governmental efforts have sown little success. Only about half of
custodial parents have a court order or some type of agreement to receive child
support. Among custodial parents with an agreement in 2009, 29 percent received no
child support payment, and another 30 percent only received a partial payment.
WHAT ARE THE EFFECTS OF DIVORCE
ON CHILDREN?
• Watch the Video: Kathleen Gerson: Family Stability on MySocLab.
• Short-Term Effects
• One study found that, on average, children whose parents divorced had poorer academic
performance and lower levels of psychological well-being, both before and after divorce.
• In the crisis period, children generally face a number of situations that they must learn to cope with,
including: parental conflict; (2) loss of a parent; (3) living with a reduced standard of living; and (4)
adjusting to many transitions, possibly including a new home and a new school, or even a new
stepfamily.
• Parental Conflict. During and after a break-up, children have fewer health, emotional, and behavioral
problems if their parents can cooperate or at least minimize overt conflict in front of them.
• Loss of a Parent. During a separation and after a divorce, children most often live with their mothers
and many children see their fathers only sporadically, if at all. Many fathers choose to ignore their
children, but the residential parent (generally the mother) is a gatekeeper and she may also interfere
with the relationship between father and children.
• A Reduced Standard of Living. Given the severely limited budgets of most divorced families,
consumption patterns must change drastically. Teenagers may need to work at after-school jobs to
provide basic necessities for the family.
• Adjusting to Transitions. A divorced brings many transitions into the lives of children and their parents.
Sometimes the family home is sold, which may require moving to a neighborhood, attending a new
school, and making new friends, leaving the familiar behind.
Longer-Term Effects
• Often, children continue to feel the effects of their parents’ divorce for years after the
actual divorce.
• Children whose parents divorce are more likely to become pregnant or impregnate
others prior to marriage, drop out of school, use alcohol or drugs, and be idle or
unemployed. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, experience
depression, and have overall poorer health.
• Age and Sex of the Child: Divorce may be most difficult for school-age children, who may
experience a greater number of transitions with schools and friendships. Research about
sex differences is inconclusive. Boys are more likely to do poorly in school after a divorce,
but the effect on girls may manifest later, during adolescence or adulthood.
• Which Is Worse for Children, Divorce or Marital Conflict? The answer to this is not
easy because many factors are involved, including the severity of the conflict.
Children do not fare well when the conflict is severe. This is true regardless of
whether the parents divorce or remain married.
SHOULD DIVORCE BE MORE DIFFICULT
TO OBTAIN?
• “Would I Be Happier?”
• People who divorce do so because they believe they will be happier afterward. But this
belief is not necessarily valid. Linda Waite’s research on divorce and happiness found that
the divorced were no happier than those who remained married. First, divorce did not
reduce or eliminate depression, raise self-esteem, or increase a sense of mastery.
• While divorce eliminates some stresses, it creates new ones that can have negative
consequences. These include the reactions of children; potential disappointments and
aggravations in custody, child support, and visitation orders; new financial stress; or health
problems.
• Covenant Marriage
• There is a growing marriage movement designed to promote and protect traditional
marriage. Although much of this movement is rooted in religious communities, it has also
produced political change.
• In three states—Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana—a covenant marriage is now legal. This
type of marriage demands premarital counseling, and an oath of lifelong commitment,
and makes divorce more difficult to obtain by requiring counseling and offering only
limited grounds for divorce, such as adultery, addiction, or imprisonment. While many
people support these ideals in principle, only about 2 percent of new marriages in LA and
fewer in AZ and AR, are covenant marriages.