1. 1—Introduction Child Development—Yesterday and Today
Developmental Processes and Periods
Developmental Issues
Summary

2. 1—Introduction
Philosophers have speculated at length about the nature of children and how they should be reared.

3. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Historical Views of Childhood
Original sin view
Advocated during the Middle Ages, the belief that children were born into the world as evil beings and were basically bad.
Tabula rasa view
The idea, proposed by John Locke, that children are like a “blank tablet.”

4. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Historical Views (continued)
Innate goodness view
The idea, presented by Swiss-born philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that children are inherently good.
In the past century and a half, our view of children has changed dramatically.
We now conceive of childhood as a highly eventful and unique period of life that lays an important foundation for the adult years.

5. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
The Modern Study of Child Development
Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was prominent in the early part of the twentieth century.
During the 1920’s and 1930s, John Watson’s (1928) theory of behaviorism influenced thinking about children.
Watson argued that children can be shaped into whatever society wishes by examining and changing the environment.

6. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
The Modern Study (continued)
Genetic epistemology
The term James Mark Baldwin gave to The study of how children’s knowledge changes over the course of their development.

7. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children: Some Contemporary Concerns
Health and Well-being
Poverty
The AIDS epidemic
Starvation
Poor-quality health care
Inadequate nutrition and exercise
Alcohol and drug abuse in adolescence
Sexual abuse of children

8. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children: Some Contemporary Concerns
Health and Well-being (continued)
Research on Premature Infants
Tiffany Field’s (2001) research focuses on how massage therapy can facilitate weight gain in premature infants

9. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children (continued)
Families and Parenting
Experts increasingly describe the pressures on contemporary families (Bronstein & Bradley, 2003)
Research on Family and Peer Relations
Education
Like parenting, education is an extremely important dimension in children’s lives (Sadker & Sadker, 2003)
Research on Mentoring

10. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children (continued)
Sociocultural Contexts: Culture, Ethnicity, and Gender
Context
The settings, influenced by historical, economic, social, and cultural factors, in which development occurs.
Culture
The behavior patterns, beliefs, and all other products of a group that are passed on from generation to generation.

11. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children (continued)
Sociocultural Contexts (continued)
Cross-Cultural Studies
Comparison of one culture with one or more other cultures. These provide information about the degree to which children’s development is similar, or universal, across cultures, and to the degree to which it is culture-specific.

12. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children (continued)
Sociocultural Contexts (continued)
Ethnicity
A characteristic based on cultural heritage, nationality characteristics, race, religion, and language.
Ethnic identity
A sense of membership in an ethnic group, based upon shared language, religion, customs, values, history, and race.

13. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Today’s Children
Sociocultural Contexts (continued)
Gender
The psychological and sociocultural dimension of being female of male.
Research on Children’s Ethnicity, Poverty, and Type of Home Environment
The most consistent results involved poverty, which was a more powerful indicator of the type of home environment children experience than ethnicity was.

14. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Home Environments of Infants by Ethnicity and Poverty Status
Refer to Figure 1.3

15. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Social Policy and Children’s Development
Social policy
A national government’s approach to promoting the welfare of its citizens.
Out of concern that policy makers are doing too little to promote the well-being of children, researchers increasingly are undertaking studies that they hope will lead to wise and effective decision making (Maccoby, 2001).

16. Child Development— Yesterday and Today
Characteristics of Resilient Children and Their Contexts
Refer to Figure 1.4

17. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1
Describe the past and the present in the field of child development

18. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1
How has the childhood been discussed through history?
What is the modern study of child development like?
What are some contemporary concerns about today’s children?
What is social policy, and what is its status in regard to America’s children?

19. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 1
Imagine what your development as a child would have been like in a culture that offered fewer or distinctly different choices than your own. How might your development have been different if your family has been significantly richer or poorer than it was?

20. Developmental Processes and Periods
The pattern of change that begins at conception and continues through the life cycle.

21. Developmental Processes and Periods
Biological, Cognitive, and Socioemotional Processes
Biological processes
Changes in an individual’s body.
Cognitive processes
Changes in an individual’s thought, intelligence, and language

22. Developmental Processes and Periods
Biological, Cognitive, and Socioemotional Processes (continued)
Socioemotional processes
Changes in an individual’s relationships with other people, emotions, and personality.

23. Developmental Processes and Periods
Periods of Development
Prenatal period
The time from conception to birth
Infancy
The developmental period that extends from birth to about 18 to 24 months.

24. Developmental Processes and Periods
Periods of Development (continued)
Early childhood
The developmental period that extends from the end of infancy to about 5 to 6 years of age, sometimes called the preschool years.
Middle and late childhood
The developmental period that extends from about 6 to 11 years of age, sometimes called the elementary school years.

25. Developmental Processes and Periods
Periods of Development (continued)
Adolescence
The developmental period of transition from childhood to early adulthood, entered at approximately 10 to 12 years of age and ending at 18 to 22 years of age.

26. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 2
Identify the most important developmental processes and periods.
Review
What are the three key developmental processes?
What are five main developmental periods?
Reflect
At what age did you become an adolescent? Were you physically, cognitively, and socioemotionally different when you became an adolescent? If so, how?

27. Developmental Issues Nature and Nurture Nature-nurture issue
Involves the debate about whether development is primarily influenced by nature or nurture (Rutter, 2002).
Nature refers to an organism’s biological inheritance, nurture to environmental influences. The “nature” proponents claim biological inheritance is the most important influence on development; the “nurture” proponents claim that environmental experiences are the most important.

28. Developmental Issues Continuity and Discontinuity
Continuity-discontinuity issue
The issue regarding whether development involves gradual, cumulative change (continuity) or distinct stages (discontinuity).

29. Developmental Issues Continuity and Discontinuity in Development
Refer to Figure 1.7

30. Developmental Issues Early and Later Experience
Early-later experience issue
The issue of the degree to which early experiences (Especially infancy) or later experiences are the key determinants of the child’s development.

31. Developmental Issues Evaluating the Developmental Issues
Development is not all nature or all nurture, not all continuity or all discontinuity, and not all early or later experiences (Rutter, 2002).

32. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3
Describe three key developmental issues
Review
What is the nature and nurture issue?
What is the continuity and discontinuity issue?
What is the early and later experience issue?
What is a good strategy for evaluation the developmental issues?

33. Review and Reflect: Learning Goal 3
Can you identify an early experience that you believe contributed in important ways to your development? Can you identify a recent or current (alter) experience that you think had (is having) a strong influence on your development.

34. Summary
Prior to the nineteenth century, philosophical views of childhood were prominent, including the notions of original sin, tabula rasa, and innate goodness.
Today, we conceive of childhood as an important time of development.

35. Summary
Four important contemporary concerns in children’s development are health and well-being, families and parenting, education, and the sociocultural contexts of the culture, ethnicity, and gender.
Social policy is a national government’s course of action designed to promote the welfare of its citizens.

36. Summary
Development is the pattern of movement or change that occurs throughout the life span.
Development is commonly divided into the following periods from conception to adolescence: prenatal, infancy, early childhood, middle and late childhood, and adolescence.

37. Summary
The nature-nurture issue focuses on the extent to which development is mainly influenced by nature (biological inheritance) or nurture (experience).
Some developmentalists describe development as continuous (gradual, cumulative change), others describe it as discontinuous (a sequence of abrupt stages).

38. Summary
The early-later experience issue focuses on whether early experiences (especially in infancy) are more important in development than later experiences.
Most developmentalists recognize that extreme positions on the nature-nurture, continuity-discontinuity, and early-later experience issues are unwise.