of scaffolding. Many other scientists contributed to this paradigmatic shift and readers are encouraged to consult more detailed accounts of the intellectual currents and contributors that foreshadowed the modern era (e.g., Collins, 2011; Parke et al., 1994; Sears, 1975).
These early forerunners and their intellectual and empirical contributions created a foundation for social development as a discipline. Considered next are the theoretical and empirical elaborations and innovations that were erected upon this foundation during the following half‐century, or the modern era.
Dominant Research Aims and Foci
Social developmental phenomena are complex and multiply determined and, as a result, empirically based knowledge has been built around circumscribed phenomena. Nevertheless, four overarching aims can be identified that capture the thrust and scope of empirical inquiry during the discipline’s recent history. In the sections that follow, each of these broader objectives is profiled and a few illustrative trends, findings, and citations are highlighted from research on early and middle childhood.
Aim 1: Elucidate childrearing and socialization processes and their contributions to child and adolescent development
Socialization has been defined as the process(es) through which youth are prepared to participate successfully in contexts, interactions, practices, and relationships that comprise their culture. Understanding how children are socialized to become successful members of their culture has been a priority in research on social development. Principal investigative venues have included primary socialization contexts such as the family, and secondary socialization contexts such as the neighborhood, peer group, school, and larger community.
The family context
Relationships within the family garnered considerable attention, particularly the child’s relationships with caregivers. At the forefront was research on attachment, driven principally by Bowlby’s theory and elaborations crafted by contemporary investigators (Cassidy & Shaver, 2008). Progress included the further explication of attachment processes (e.g., parents’ and child’s contributions), types of attachment relationships (e.g., secure vs. insecure typologies), and consequences of attachment. Longitudinal studies, for example, revealed that secure attachment anteceded a plethora of favorable socialization outcomes during childhood and adolescence, including social and emotional competencies, self‐esteem, and mental health (Groh et al., 2017).
Research on parenting styles begun in the 1960s (Baumrind, 1967) expanded thereafter and offered new insights about the determinants of parent’s approaches to childrearing, child outcomes, and cultural variations. To illustrate, findings shed light on the antecedents of particular childrearing styles, including parent and child determinants (e.g., parents’ personalities, education; children’s temperament, behavior; e.g., Kelley et al., 1992). Longitudinal studies further explicated child outcomes. In one such study, early authoritative parenting (i.e., with preschoolers) was compared to other rearing styles (e.g., authoritarian, permissive) and found to predict favorable adolescent outcomes (e.g., social competence; Baumrind et al., 2010). Other findings revealed that parenting styles were construed differently across ethnic groups and cultures and were associated with culture‐specific child outcomes (Pinquart & Kauser, 2018).
Parenting characteristics, behaviors, and interactions. Concern that parenting styles were not as robust as originally conceptualized (Maccoby, 2015) precipitated a movement away from static typologies toward models that emphasized dynamic features, such as parenting behaviors and interactions. Some researchers studied features that were implied within parenting typologies (e.g., warmth) whereas others focused on attributes drawn from other theoretical perspectives, including dyadic constructs (e.g., connectedness, synchrony, autonomy support). Both avenues proved productive. For example, components of authoritative parenting were found to predict children’s social competence from infancy into adolescence (Valiente et al. 2009). Conversely, authoritarian parenting was linked with children’s aggressive and disruptive behaviors (Pascual‐Sagastizabal et al., 2014). Likewise, studies of parent–child interactions revealed that dyadic features such as connectedness and synchrony were similarly or more strongly linked with child competence (Mize & Pettit, 1997).
Other trends included the study of child effects and bidirectional parent–child influences. Studies of child effects supported the notion that children’s actions evoke different forms of parenting (Newton et al., 2014) and that parenting influences are moderated by children’s temperaments (Kochanska & Kim, 2013). Research on bidirectional patterns of influence corroborated the premise that early child behaviors and emotions shape later parenting (e.g., punitiveness; warmth), and vice versa (Lengua & Kovacs, 2005).
Parental discipline and moral socialization were examined with multiple dimensions of children’s social development. Prominent objectives included evaluating parent–child interaction and disciplinary practices that were hypothesized to render particular socialization outcomes (e.g., higher levels of moral reasoning; responsible behavior). Key findings suggested that everyday parent–child discussions encompassing moral themes (e.g., rules, issues, conflicts) promoted growth in children’s moral reasoning (Dunn, 2006) and that positive parent–child relations fostered growth in children’s conscience and moral behavior (Kochanska et al., 2010). Investigation of the relative merits of inductive as opposed to assertive or hostile discipline revealed that, whereas induction forecasted children’s prosocial‐moral beliefs and behavior (Hart et al. 2003), assertive and hostile discipline predicted antithetical outcomes (Baumrind et al., 2010).
Cultural contrasts. Researchers also compared Western socialization practices to those found in other cultures. In cross‐national comparisons, for example, differences were found in parent’s perceptions of their children’s temperamental and behavioral characteristics (Russell et al., 2003), but similarities were reported for the consequences of particular parenting styles (e.g., authoritarian parenting and child aggression; Nelson et al., 2014). Other findings showed that parenting effects varied depending on the family’s ethnicity and cultural context. To illustrate, researchers found that, when compared to White or Hispanic youth, African‐American adolescents were less likely to participate in gangs or gang‐related delinquency if their parents abstained from lax discipline and wielded greater control over children’s behavior (Walker‐Barnes & Mason, 2001).
The peer context
After a period of dormancy following World War II, research on children’s peer relations reemerged in the 1970s and expanded thereafter (Ladd, 2005). A key impetus was the premise that peer socialization prepared children to succeed in multiple spheres of life, including romantic and workplace relations.
Focal areas of inquiry included children’s peer interactions, relationships, and groups. Seminal work described the character of peer interactions and behavior (e.g., prosocial, aggressive, withdrawn) in varying social contexts (e.g., classrooms, playgrounds), explicated relationship processes and consequences (e.g., friendship formation, maintenance, termination, e.g., Parker & Seal, 1996; bully–victim dynamics, Veenstra et al., 2007), and probed the process by which children access and acquire status in peer groups (e.g., peer group entry, acceptance, rejection; Bukowski et al., 2018).
Evidence linking children’s behavior with the quality of their peer relationships led investigators to search for the origins of social “competencies” and skill “deficits” (Ladd, 2005). Among the determinants examined were the social‐cognitive underpinnings (Gifford‐Smith & Rabiner, 2004) and the parenting and family processes associated with children’s behavior amongst peers (Ladd & Kochenderfer‐Ladd, 2019).
Another
