CHAPTER 8- MIDDLE CHILDHOOD

Erikson’s insights

Industry versus inferiority
• Attempt to master culturally valued skills and develop sense of themselves

Parental reactions

– Shift from care to engagement
– Fostering independence
– Decrease in time with parents; increase in time alone and with peers

Self-concept

Development of more specific and logical ideas about personal intelligence, personality abilities, gender, and ethnic background

Social comparison

Measurement of self to others in relation to own abilities, social status, and other attributes

Adjustment-erosion model

Formulation of a more reality-grounded view of self; rise in self-criticism and self-consciousness

Pride and prejudice

Children who affirm pride in their gender and ethnicity are likely to develop healthy self- esteem.
• Sense of pride important buffer to prejudice.

Culture and self-esteem

– Cultures and families differ in values.
– Emerging self-perception benefits academic and social competence.
– Praise for process.
– Materialism increases.

Resilience

Capacity to adapt well to significant adversity and to overcome serious stress

Important components of Resilience

- Dynamic
– Positive adaptation.
– Significant adversity

Cumulative stress

– Stress accumulates over time.
– Daily hassles vs. major events
– Social context is imperative.
• Child soldiers
• Homeless children
• Separation
• Family as a buffer

Cognitive coping

– Factors contributing to resilience
• Child's interpretation of events and family situation
• Support of family and community
• Personal strengths, especially problem-solving
• Avoidance of parentification

Shared and nonshared environments

– Basic values and traits are more influenced by genes and nonshared environment.
– Not all genes
– Differential susceptibility
adds to variation.

Family structure

– Legal and genetic connections among relatives living in the same home, includes nuclear family, extended family, stepfamily, and others

Interpreting research findings

Children with two married, heterosexual parents
have average higher grades and school attendance and lower rates of physical and motor disorders compared with children in other family structures.

Extended families

Social context matters; culture is influential.
– Often in North American extended families:
• Are beneficial in infancy.
• Reduce stability that 6- to 11-year-olds need;
temporary solution.
• May function better for immigrant families in the
United States.

Three factors increase the likelihood of family
dysfunction

• Frequent changes
• Poverty
• Conflict

Stability and change

– Instability increases children’s problems

Poverty: Family-stress model

– Any risk factor damages a family only if it increases the stress on that family.
– Adults’ stressful reaction to poverty is crucial in
determining the effect on the children.

Wealth

– Generally, higher income - better family functioning.
– Score gap in US is income based
– (Parental) Reaction to wealth may cause difficulty

Conflict

– Family conflict harms children, especially child rearing fights
– Fights in stepfamilies, divorced families, and extended families
– Although genes have some effect, conflict itself is often the main influence on the child's well-being

Child Culture

– Customs, rules, and
rituals
– Appearance
– Independence from adults
• Social constructions

Friendship

– School-age children value personal friendship more than peer acceptance.
– Characteristics of friendship by the end of middle
childhood

Popular and unpopular children

– Particular qualities that make a child liked or disliked.

Popular children in the United States

– Friendly and cooperative
– Aggressive

Unpopular children in the United States

– Neglected, not rejected children
– Aggressive-rejected children
– Withdrawn-rejected children

Bullying

– Repeated, systematic efforts to
inflict harm on a weaker person

Types of bullying

– Physical
– Verbal
– Relational
– Cyberbullying

Victims of bullying

– Victims of bullying endure repeated shameful experiences with no defense.
• Cautious, sensitive, quiet, and
friendless.

Bullies

– Popular, proud, and socially dominant
– Boys typically attack smaller, weaker boys; girls use words and relational aggression to demean shyer girls.

Causes of bullying

– Problems in early childhood
– Middle childhood power playy

Consequences of bullying on victims

– Serious psychological disorders by age 18
– Impaired social understanding, lower school achievement, relationship difficulties, and higher adult mental illness rates

Successful efforts to eliminate bullying

– Helping parents understand how to break bully-victim connection
– Involving the whole school, not just the identified bullies (Convivencia)
– Engaging bystanders
– Encouraging multicultural sensitivity and appreciating individual differences

Children's morality

– Children show a variety of skills
• Making moral judgments.
• Differentiating universal principles from conventional norms.

Influences on moral development in middle childhood

• Peer culture
• Personal experience
• Empathy

Kohlberg's levels of moral thought

– Stages of morality stem from three levels of moral reasoning with two stages at each level
• Preconventional moral reasoning
• Conventional moral reasoning
• Postconventional moral reasoning

Preconventional Moral Reasoning

the earliest period of moral development. It lasts until around the age of 9. At this age, children's decisions are primarily shaped by the expectations of adults and the consequences of breaking the rules.

Conventional moral reasoning

a level of moral development in which people make decisions based on society's norms and expectations. It's the middle level of moral development, and is most common in adolescents and adults. 

Postconventional moral reasoning

the highest level of moral reasoning where individuals base their ethical decisions on universal principles like justice, human rights, and abstract ethics, often going beyond societal norms and laws to act according to their own internal moral compass; essentially, they prioritize their own ethical principles over external rules and expectations. 

Three moral imperatives of child culture in middle
childhood

– Defend your friends.
– Don’t tell adults about children’s misbehavior.
– Conform to peer standards of dress, talk, and behavior.

Empathy

– Empathy is an understanding of basic humanity of other people.
– Influenced by hidden curriculum or adult values.

Maturation and morality

– Both maturation and culture matter.
– Understanding intentions and actions; psychological and physical harm.

Advancing morality

– Moral equity
– When children discuss moral issues with other children, they develop more thoughtful answers to moral questions.