example, educators, social workers, counsellors, probation officers – who have had training in the behavioral sciences and retain an active interest in the implications of research for their professional practice.
As in the first and second editions, we attempted – and feel we have succeeded – to get a very good geographical coverage of contributors. Much of the work in our domain does come from North America, and it is appropriate that the largest single country contributing authors is the United States. However, it is also appropriate that we have contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, Costa Rica, England, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Rumania, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and Wales. This reflects the now very international community of child development researchers, and is an even broader spread than we had in 2002 and in 2011.
Regardless of their origin, we asked our contributors to be clear and succinct, but also interesting and where appropriate, challenging. In our letters of invitation we asked authors to “provide authoritative reviews of focused areas in social development, which both summarize existing knowledge, and highlight areas of debate and growing points in the discipline.” We worked with authors, sometimes intensively, to try to ensure that this was achieved.
For this new edition, while we retained some contributors from the second edition, well over half are new contributors. In all cases we pointed out that this new edition was being designed to capture emerging trends in the study of childhood social development as well as to provide updated insights on traditional topics covered in the first and second editions. We have several extra chapters; 42, compared to 34 in the second edition and 30 in the first edition, and two extra Parts making 11 in all.
Notable new features include a chapter on conflict, war, and famine as they affect children’s social development; a chapter on the impact of the climate crisis; and a chapter on the impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic, still an active concern at the time of writing. We have an extra chapter on acculturation and children’s social development; a new chapter on social development of youth in sport; and one on the impact of faith and religion. Another new topic covered is lies and deception in relation to social development; plus, we now have two chapters dedicated to the influence of the media and social networking sites.
We have 11 Parts in this new Handbook. Part I is a single chapter, as before, providing an historical overview of psychological research in social development; because of the foundational importance of this topic, this is effectively a double‐length chapter. Part II (six chapters) covers different disciplinary perspectives – from behavior genetics, brain development, evolution, history, sociology and anthropology. Part III (five chapters) is on ecological contexts for social development, the physical environment, conflict, war, and famine, the climate crisis, and the Covid‐19 pandemic. Part IV (three chapters) is on culture and immigration, including a focus on Asian and Latinx children in the United States, and studies in Europe. Part V (three chapters) is on child characteristics – temperament, gender, and ethnicity. Part VI (four chapters) is on contextual factors – child care experience, interpersonal skills in school, sport, and religion. Part VII (three chapters) is on parents, siblings, and the interplay between families and peers. Part VIII (seven chapters) focuses on forms of peer interaction including friendships, shyness, social competence, play, cooperation and competition, aggression, and bullying. Part IX (four chapters) covers social cognition, emotions, prosocial behavior, and lies and deception. Part X (two chapters) is on children and the media generally, and social networking sites specifically. Finally Part XI (four chapters) covers interventions in relation to social development, generally and for children with autism, children with disabilities, and finally for children in low‐and middle income countries. In short introductions to each Part we highlight particular areas of debate or contrasting perspectives among the chapters.
We have enjoyed working with the authors, and with our publishers. A thank you to Kathy McQuinn, for invaluable secretarial assistance. We hope that you will also enjoy the end product, and find it a useful and rewarding resource, whether for study, teaching, research, or professional practice.
PART I Historical Overview
This section has only one chapter, but it sets the stage for the rest of the volume. Gary W. Ladd is in an excellent position to provide a historical perspective. He has been a leading figure in developmental psychology for the past four decades, with an extensive scholarly publication record focusing on children’s friendships, peer group relations, and social competence. His research extends across the breadth of many social development topics covered in this volume, including child, family, and schooling factors that predict children’s success and difficulties in peer relationships. In his editorial roles with prestigious scientific journals, Ladd has witnessed much of the progress that has been made in this broad interdisciplinary field that covers the “modern era,” much of which emerged in the 1960s and blossomed in the 1970s and beyond with increasing sophistication that was evident by the 2021 bookend for this chapter.
The chapter builds upon the historical summary presented by Andrew Collins in the first and second editions of this Handbook that traces the developmental underpinnings of the modern era back to the 1800s. After briefly reviewing late 19th and earlier 20th century ideological forces, theory and scholarship that paved the way for modern era thinking and research on children’s social/emotional development, Ladd embarks on a journey through the empirical knowledge base on children’s social development that has emerged over the past half century. Guided by four overarching aims, Ladd takes us through some illustrative research emphases and findings that have contributed to our understanding of multiply determined social developmental phenomena across early and middle childhood.
Aim one focuses readers on how childrearing and socialization processes facilitate children’s social development. Research is reviewed that focuses on children’s relationships with caregivers, including the study of attachment processes, parenting characteristics and behaviors, family processes, moral socialization, culture, and dyadic features involving child and parenting effects as they play out in child social cognitive and social developmental outcomes. Recent decades of scholarly inquiry into children’s peer interactions, relationships, and groups are also explored that includes: seminal work on peer group dynamics and behavior and the contexts in which they occur; the associated relationship processes that are linked to friendships and peer group adjustment and difficulties; and the social cognitive, behavioral competencies and social skill deficits that drive them. Ladd concludes this section with an overview of the extensive research on the effects of childcare, schooling contexts, and media influences on children’s social development.
Aim two delineates the biological foundations, mechanisms, and processes that influence the course of children’s social development. Ladd begins with a brief survey of the behavioral genetics discipline that emerged in the 1960s and discusses how genetic influence on social characteristics has been ascertained indirectly by studying adopted children and twins. Scientific and theoretical advances led to a greater understanding of how environmental and genetic influences work together to influence behavior, along with ensuing controversies about the interplay between nature and nurture. He then addresses more direct approaches to studying genes that stem from genomic and molecular genetics disciplinary approaches that are facilitated
