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PART II Disciplinary Perspectives
Psychology forms a recognized discipline, and many of the contributors to this volume are developmental psychologists. However, child development is an interdisciplinary area. The Society for Research in Child Development, based in the United States, has an explicitly interdisciplinary membership base. Traditional disciplines (such as psychology) are really no more than convenient labels or packages for organizing study and research, which run a danger of becoming ossified rather than reflecting the dynamic nature of evolving knowledge. The historical context of how the study of child development evolved as a discipline was summarized in Chapter 1, mainly from a psychological perspective. In this section, we examine six different disciplinary perspectives in the area, ranging from the very biological through to the very social. These perspectives enrich the area and provide vital theoretical perspectives and methodological inputs.
Darya Gaysina introduces the approach of behavioral genetics to understanding social development in childhood. She explains the range of concepts and techniques in this area. Although progress is being made in looking at the effects of particular genes, and also particular environmental factors, it is clear that generally such individual effects are small, and it is combinations of various genes and environmental factors that provide more explanatory power. Moving on from molecular genetics, she describes the traditional family‐studies approaches (twin and adoption studies). She then reviews the various kinds of gene‐environment correlations, and of gene‐environment interactions. Her chapter makes it very clear that behavior geneticists are interested in environmental factors as well as genetic factors, and the complex interplay between them.
Erin Bigler provides a neuropsychological perspective, starting with basic information on the stages of development of the human brain, from gestation onwards. This development embraces size, myelination, and connectivity. From the 1970s onwards, studies of the brain have been revolutionised by techniques of computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance (MR), and these have become increasingly sophisticated, providing novel methods for studying neuroimaging‐identified networks. His chapter discusses how an injury or adverse event at a critical stage of brain development may affect the brain and social behavior. The picture is far from one of biological determinism, as many perceived and/or experienced adverse levels of environmental stress can be hazards for social brain development.
It is now fairly widely accepted that our evolutionary history provides a vital part of understanding who we are and how we function. For some hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors survived in a hunter‐gatherer lifestyle, sometimes referred to as the environment of evolutionary adaptedness, and this is argued to still have relevance for understanding modern humans. Lance Workman, Sandie Taylor, and Jerome Barkow develop such a perspective on social development, drawing from evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology and life history theory—perspectives that feed into evolutionary developmental psychology. They describe the work of earlier theorists in the area, notably Darwin, Hall, Bowlby, and Ainsworth, moving on to more recent theorists including Belsky, Harris, del Guidice, Tomasello, Geary, and Bjorklund. They consider the idea of developmental switch points, including one proposed for the juvenile period around 6–8 years; this can be related to the increasing importance of peers, and the ideas of group socialization theory. Also discussed is the development of social cognition; and three types of developmental adaptations: ontogenetic, deferred, and conditional. They conclude with a discussion of “cultural editing” and how this is changing in contemporary society.
Evolutionary processes operate over thousands of years. Historical processes operate over shorter time spans. Willem Koops illustrates how children and childhood have been viewed in modern Europe and western thinking, from the 18th century Enlightenment and the works of Kant and Rousseau onwards. Rousseau’s book Emile influenced later educators, such as Pestalozzi, and psychologists such as Piaget. In the second half of his chapter, Koops especially considers the perspectives of historians of childhood, such as Aries. Aries argued that childhood was a modern invention. Although many psychologists have dismissed Aries’ approach, Koops argues that it cannot be totally discarded; and he debates too the arguments about how the advent of the mass media have changed childhood so that it is perhaps “disappearing.” Certainly the internet is radically changing the experiences of children and young people, in ways that we cannot fully foresee (see also Part X).
There is an important sociological literature on child development, which takes fuller account of the wider societal factors in the ecological model (see also Chapter 8). In her chapter, Dimitra Hartas discusses what she calls the neoliberal restructuring of society (the growth of unregulated markets) and how the resulting inequality impacts on children, and on parents and teachers as main agents of socialization. Family policy directives tend to privatize social problems by locating them within the family, but families have different levels of access to various forms of capital and resources. Good parenting has become a key to upward social mobility, with more middle‐class parents engaging in intensive parenting, to some extent taking over academic aspects of socialization; while teachers are now expected to deal with issues of well‐being, traditionally assigned to parents. The privatization of public spaces also impacts directly on children, for example on opportunities to play (see also Chapter 28). Inequality can impact well‐being and mental health by stressful social comparisons and by the erosion of social trust and cohesion.
Hartas’ analysis mainly focusses on western countries and the “global north.” Anthropologists have long studied childhood in a full range of societies, including the work of pioneers such as Mead (who did in fact have a master’s degree in child psychology, before developing a career as an anthropologist). In her chapter, Heather Montgomery delineates two different “anthropologies of childhood.” The more traditional view described childrearing practices, providing cross‐cultural perspectives on insights often drawn from psychology on how children learn and develop. Work by the Whitings on the Six Cultures
