PSYCHOSOCIAL

DEVELOPMENT IN
MIDDLE
CHILDHOOD
 THE DEVELOPING SELF

• The cognitive growth that

takes place during middle
childhood enables children
to develop more complex
concepts of themselves and
to gain in emotional
understanding and control.
 01
SELF-CONCEPT
DEVELOPMENT:
REPRESENTATIONAL
SYSTEM
 INDUSTRY VERSUS
INFERIORITY
• According to Erikson (1982), a
major determinant of self-esteem is
children’s view of their capacity for
productive work, which develops in
his fourth stage of psychosocial
development: industry versus
inferiority.
Developing a sense of industry, by
contrast, involves learning how to
work hard to achieve goals.
 EMOTIONAL GROWTH AND
PROSOCIAL BEHAVIOR
 As children grow older, they are more
aware of their own and other people’s
feelings. They can better regulate or control
their emotions and can respond to others’
emotional distress.

children are aware of their culture’s rules for

acceptable emotional expression.

Children learn what makes them angry,

fearful, or sad and how other people react
to displays of these emotions, and they
learn to behave accordingly.
 02
The Child in the
Family
• School-age children spend more
time away from home visiting and
socializing with peers than when
they were younger. They also
spend more time at school and on
studies and less time at family
meals than children did a
generation ago. Still, home and the
people who live there remain an
important part of most children’s
lives.
 03
FAMILY
ATMOSPHERE
• Family atmosphere is a key influence on
development. One key factor is whether or
not conflict is present in the home.
Exposure to violence and conflict is harmful
to children, both with the respect to direct
exposure via parental discord and via
indirect influences such as low family
cohesion and anger regulation strategies.

Children exposed to family conflict show a

variety of responses that can include
externalizing or internalizing behaviors.
 Internalizing behaviors
• anxiety, fearfulness, and
01 depression-anger turned inward

Externalizing behaviors
• include aggression, fighting,
02 disobedience, and hostility-anger
turned outward
 Parenting Issues:
From Control to Coregulation
● Babies don’t have a lot of say in what happens to them; they are exposed to
what their parents choose to expose them to and experience what their
parents decide they should experience.
● COREGULATION - stage that can include strategies in which parents exercise
oversight but children enjoy moment-to-moment self-regulation.
○ affected by the overall relationship between parent and child. Children
are more apt to follow their parents’ wishes when they believe the parents
are fair and concerned about the child’s welfare and that they may “know
better” because of experience. This is particularly true when parents take
pains to acknowledge children’s maturing judgment and take strong
stands only on important issues.
EFFECTS OF PARENTS’ WORK

• Most studies of the impact of parents’ work on

children’s well-being have focused on
employed mothers. In general, the more
satisfied a mother is with her employment
status, the more effective she is likely to be as
a parent. However, the impact of mothers
work depend on many other factors, including
the child’s age, sex, temperament, and
personality; whether the mother works full-
time or part-time; why she is working ;
whether she has a supportive or unsupportive
partner, or none: the family’s socioeconomic
status; and the type of care the child receives
before and/or after school.
POVERTY AND PARENTING

• Children living with single mothers were nearly

5 times more likely to be poor than children
living with married couples.
• Poor children are more likely than other
children to have emotional or behavioral
problems. In addition, there cognitive potential
and school performance suffers even more.
Poverty can harm children’s development
through its impact on parents’ emotional state
and parenting practices and on the home
environment they create.
POVERTY AND PARENTING

• Effective parenting can buffer children from

the effects of poverty. Family interventions
that reduce the family conflict and anger and
increase cohesion and warmth are especially
beneficial. Parents, who can turn to relatives
or to community resources for emotional
support, help with child care, and child-rearing
information often can parent their children
more effectively.
 04
FAMILY
STRUCTURE
● Other things being equal, children tend to do
better in families with two continuously married
parents that in cohabiting, divorced, single-parent,
or stepfamilies, or when the child is born outside
marriage.
● The distinction is even stronger for children
growing up with two happily married parents. This
suggest that the parents’ relationship, the quality
of their parenting, and their ability to create a
favorable family atmosphere may affect children’s
adjustment more than their marital status does.
● A father’s frequent and positive involvement with
his child is directly related to the child’s well-being
and physical, cognitive, and social development.
 LIVING IN A ONE-PARENT
FAMILY
• One-parent family’s result from divorce are
separation, unwed parenthood, or death.
• Children in single-parent families do fairly well
overall but tend to lag socially and
educationally behind peers in two-parent
families.
• Children living with married parents tend to
have more daily interaction with their parents,
are read to more often, progress more
steadily in school, and participate more in
extracurricular activities than children living
with a single parent.
LIVING IN A STEPFAMILY
• Most divorced parents eventually
remarry, and many unwed mothers
marry men who were not the father of
their children, forming step-, or blended,
families.
• Adjusting to a new stepparent may be
stressful. A child’s loyalty to an absent or
dead parent may interfere with forming
ties to a stepparent.
 LIVING WITH GAY OR LESBIAN
PARENT
• Some gays and lesbians are raising children born
previous heterosexual relationship. Others conceive
by artificial means, use surrogate mothers, or adopt
children.
• There is no consistent difference between
homosexual and heterosexual parents in emotional
health or parenting skills or attitudes; and when
there are differences, they tend to favor gay and
lesbian parents.
• Gay or lesbian parents usually have positive
relationships with their children, and the children
are no more likely than children raised by
heterosexual parents to have emotional, social,
academic, or psychological problems.
ADOPTIVE FAMILIES
• Adaption is found in all cultures throughout
history. It is not only for infertile people;
single people, older people, gay and
lesbian couples, and people who already
have biological children have become
adoptive parents.
• Adoptions usually take place through public
or private agencies. Agency adoptions are
intended to be confidential, with no contact
between the birth mother and the adoptive
parents.
 05
SIBLING
RELATIONSHIP
• The number of siblings in a family
and their spacing, birth order, and
gender often determine roles and
relationships. The larger number of
siblings is nonindustrialized societies
help the families carry on its work
and provide aging members.

- Sibling influences each other, not

only directly, through their
interactions with each other, but also
indirectly, through their impact on
each other’s relationship with their
parents.
 06
THE CHILD IN THE
PEER GROUP
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS
OF PEER RELATIONS
• Children benefit from doing things with
peers. They develop skills needed for
sociability and intimacy, and they gain a
sense of belonging. They are motivated to
achieve, and they attain a sense of identity.
They learn leadership and communication
skills, cooperation, roles, and rules.
• As children begin to move away from
parental influence, the peer group opens
new perspectives. In comparing
themselves with others their age, children
can gauge their abilities more realistically
and gain a clearer sense of self-efficacy.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS
OF PEER RELATIONS
• The peer group helps children learn how to
get along in society – how to adjust their
needs and desires to those of others, when
to yield and when to stand firm. The peer
group offers emotional security. It is
reassuring for children to find out that they
are not alone in harboring thoughts that
might offend an adult.
• Same-sex peer groups may help children
learn gender-appropriate behaviors and
incorporate gender roles into their self-
concept.
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE EFFECTS
OF PEER RELATIONS
• On the negative side, peer groups
may reinforce prejudice: unfavorable
attitudes toward outsiders, especially
members or certain racial or ethnic
groups. Children tend to be biased
toward children of the same sex,
diminish with age and cognitive
development.
POPULARITY
• Sociometrically, popular children
receive many positive nominations
and few negative nominations. They
generally have good cognitive
abilities, are high achievers, are good
at solving social problems, are kind
and help other children, and are
assertive being with them.
POPULARITY
• Children can be unpopular in one or
two ways. Some children are rejected,
and they receive a large number of
negative nominations. Other children
are neglected and receive few
nominations of any kind. Some
unpopular children are aggressive;
others are hyperactive, inattentive, or
withdrawn. Unpopular children are
often insensitive to other children’s
feelings and do not adapt well to new
situations.
POPULARITY
• Other children can be average in their
ratings and do not receive an unusual
number of either positive or negative
nominations.
• It is often in the family that children acquire
behaviors that affect popularity. Children of
authoritarian parents who punish and
threaten are likely to threaten or act mean
with other children. They are less popular
that children whose authoritative parents
reason with them and try to help them
understand how another person might feel.
FRIENDSHIP
• Children look for friends who are like them
in age, sex, and interests. The strongest
friendships involve equal commitment and
mutual give-and-take. Though children
tend to choose friends with similar ethnic
background, cross-racial/ethnic friendships
are associated with positive developmental
outcomes.
• Having friends is important because peer
rejection and friendlessness in middle
childhood may have long-term negative
effects.
THANK YOU!