3.3: Influences on Child Rearing Practices

Child Rearing Practices

There are many theorists/researchers who have compiled a plethora of ideas about child rearing that have influenced our thinking about children and how to raise them. While some of these theories/ideas may be a bit out of date, it is important for us to explore them to provide the context of how these ideas have infiltrated our thinking and why some of them still exist even in light of the new information that we have available. It is important in supporting all children and families, that we are aware of the multiple ways in which children are raised in their diverse households. There is not one right way to raise a child, but many different strategies that work best for the children and the families that they are being raised in. The following ideas are offered to enable you to investigate the nature by which ideas continue to permeate our social constructs. When we know where something comes from, we are better able to understand and adapt to what makes the most sense in our current society.

Autocratic Parenting and Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, contributed to the era of autocratic parenting due to his views regarding human motivation, Psychological Egoism, and the social contract. According to Hobbes, humans are extremely self-interested and born with original sin. Hence, adults had to use control and discipline because children were born “evil” and had to be saved. Further, as a result of adults’ own self-interests, Hobbes believed that absolute authority was a necessity in politics, in dealing with others, and in the home.
During this era, many believed that children learned obedience to God via their parents’ use of harsh discipline and strict parenting. Children were typically viewed as being “willful” and were used as household servants.

Key takeaways

• Babies were born with original sin and were very egocentric.
• Parents were to direct children away from their evil tendencies.
• Similar to the current authoritarian approach.
• Recommended that rigid and strict rules be used to shape children into well-behaved, successful adults.

Jacques Rousseau and Childlike Innocence

During the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s views started to change parenting practices. Rousseau contended that children were inherently innocent (not sinful, as Hobbes believed), weak, and easily tempted. He believed that humans were born pure until one’s interactions with the environment caused negative effects on one’s development. Rousseau also believed that children needed protection from child labor and negative influences within civilization. Rousseau’s work is credited as being the first developmental account of childhood via his emphasis on maturation and stages of development:

• Childhood (0 to 12 years): children are guided by simple impulses and simply react to their surroundings.
• Pre-Adolescence (12 to 16 years): children begin to develop reason and are able to comprehend more abstract ideas.
• Puberty and Adulthood (16 years and onward): children develop into adults that can navigate society and its moral issues.

These stages elicited guidelines outlining “developmentally-appropriate” practices in parenting and education. Rousseau’s work also emphasized the importance of play and teaching within the early years of childhood education:

“When the child flies a kite he is training eye and hand to accuracy; when he whips a top, he is increasing his strength by using it, but without learning anything. I have sometimes asked why children are not given the same games of skill as men; tennis, mall, billiards, archery, football, and musical instruments. I was told that some of these are beyond their strength, that the child’s senses are not sufficiently developed for others. These do not strike me as valid reasons; a child is not as tall as a man, but he wears the same sort of coat; I do not want him to play with our cues at a billiard-table three feet high; I do not want him knocking about among our games, nor carrying one of our racquets in his little hand; but let him play in a room whose windows have been protected; at first let him only use soft balls, let his first racquets be of wood, then of parchment, and lastly of gut, according to his progress.”

Key takeaways

• Children were born innocent and exposure to certain circumstances resulted in them acting negatively.
• Parents were to shelter children from negative circumstances and interactions.
• Children mature over time throughout three stages–childhood, pre-adolescence, puberty, and adulthood.
• Maturation and development worked alongside each other.

G. Stanley Hall and Pedagogy

Hall was one of the first scientific psychologists who gained notoriety as an educational expert; his work was often geared toward parents and educators in addition to psychologists. Hall presented public lectures to educators on the psychology underlying childhood and how to “best” teach children (otherwise known as “pedagogy”). This work made significant contributions to the study of, and improvements within, parenting and educational practices. Hall believed that a child’s nature should guide educational practices so children could become healthy, productive members of society. Overall, Hall’s in-person presentations started the movement for the U.S. to integrate psychological and scientific studies within educational endeavors.

Key takeaways

• One of the first psychologists to be known as an educational expert.
• Developed “pedagogy” (how to “best” teach for optimal learning).
• A child’s nature should guide educational practices in order to become a healthy, productive member of society.

Watson: Behaviorism

John B. Watson was an influential American psychologist whose most famous work occurred during the early 20th century at Johns Hopkins University. Watson conducted research on animal behavior, child-rearing, and advertising. Along with this research, he conducted the controversial “Little Albert” study, Watson believed that an objective analysis of the mind was impossible; therefore, he preferred to focus directly on observable behavior and attempted to modify it. Watson was a major proponent in shifting the focus of psychology from the mind to behavior, and this approach of observing and controlling behavior came to be known as behaviorism. A major object of study by behaviorists was learned behavior and its interaction with the inborn qualities of the organism.

Behaviorism commonly used animals in experiments under the assumption that what was learned using animal models could, to some degree, be applied to human behavior. This famous quote from Watson explains his contentions:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors. I am going beyond my facts and I admit it, but so have the advocates of the contrary and they have been doing it for many thousands of years.”
Watson believed that children should be treated as young adults. In his book, he warned against the inevitable dangers of a mother providing too much love and affection. Watson’s slogan was ‘not more babies but better brought up babies’. Watson argued for the nurture side of the nature-nurture debate and contended that everything is built into a child through their interactions with their environment.

Thus, according to Watson, parents and caregivers hold complete responsibility for their children’s actions since they choose the environment into which their child is reared.
Based on the results from his “Little Albert” study, Watson concluded that caregivers can shape a child’s behavior and development simply by taking control of all stimulus-response associations.

Watson’s advice to treat children with respect, but with relative emotional detachment, has been strongly criticized. However, behaviorism is still evident today and is largely responsible for establishing psychology as a scientific discipline through its objective methods and experimentation. It is currently used in behavioral and cognitive-behavioral therapies, in classroom settings, and in child-rearing.

Key takeaways

• Objective analysis of the mind was impossible, therefore Watson coined “behaviorism” where the focus of psychology is to observe and control behavior.
• Individuals can be trained to behave in certain ways as a result of their environment and the types of stimuli applied.
• The Little Albert experiment—emotional responses can be conditioned in humans.

Vygotsky: Sociocultural Theory

Lev Vygotsky believed that a person has both a set of abilities and a set of potential abilities that can be reached if given the proper guidance from others. His Sociocultural Theory emphasizes the importance of culture and interaction in the development of cognitive abilities. Vygotsky concentrated more on children’s immediate social and cultural environment and their interactions with adults and peers. He saw a child as more of an apprentice, learning through a social environment with others who had more experience and were sensitive to the child’s needs and abilities.

Vygotsky theorized that through guided participation with a teacher or a more capable person, also known as scaffolding, a child can learn cognitive skills within a certain range known as the zone of proximal development. According to Vygotsky, development occurs first through children’s immediate social interactions and then moves to the individual level as they began to internalize their learning.

Have you ever taught children how to perform a task? Maybe it was brushing their teeth or tying their shoestrings. Chances are you spoke to them and described what you were doing while you demonstrated the skill and let them work along with you throughout the process. You provided them assistance when they seemed to need it, but once they knew what to do, you stood back and let them perform the task alone. This is an example of scaffolding.

Examples of scaffolding, the temporary support that parents, peers or teachers give a child to perform a task, can be seen throughout the world in an unlimited number of situations. Vygotsky’s theory contends that instead of assessing what people are doing, people should be understood in terms of what they are capable of doing with the proper guidance. This approach to teaching has also been adopted by educators.

Key takeaways

• Culture and interactions are key to the development of cognitive abilities.
• Scaffolding—a process of teaching by explaining a process, demonstrating the process, and performing the process.
• Zone of proximal development—the distance between a person’s potential to learn and their actual learning.

Freud and Psychodynamic Theories of Personality: The Role of the Unconscious

One of the most important psychological approaches to understanding personality is based on the theorizing of the Austrian physician and psychologist Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), who founded what is known today as the psychodynamic approach to understanding personality. Many people know about Freud because his work has had a long-standing impact on our everyday thinking about psychology and the psychodynamic approach is one of the most important approaches to psychological therapy.

Freud is probably the best known psychologist, in part because of his impressive observation and analyses of personality (there are 24 volumes of his writings). As is true of all theories, many of Freud’s ingenious ideas have turned out to be at least partially incorrect, but yet other aspects of his theories are still influencing psychology.

Freud used the observations that he and French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–1893) made to develop his theory regarding the sources of personality and behavior, and his insights are central to the fundamental themes of psychology. In terms of free will, Freud did not believe that we are able to control our own behaviors. Rather, he believed that all behaviors are predetermined by motivations that lie outside our awareness, in the unconscious. These forces show themselves in our dreams, in neurotic symptoms such as obsessions, while we are under hypnosis, and in Freudian “slips of the tongue” in which people reveal their unconscious desires in language. Freud argued that we rarely understand why we do what we do, although we can make up explanations for our behaviors after the fact. For Freud the mind was like an iceberg – many motivations of the unconscious being much larger, but out of sight, in comparison to the consciousness of which we are aware.

Freud proposed that the mind is divided into three components: the id, ego, and superego, and that the interactions and conflicts among the components create a personality.
According to Freudian theory, the id is the component of personality that forms the basis of our most primitive impulses. The id is entirely unconscious, and it drives our most important motivations, including the sexual drive (libido) and the aggressive or destructive drive (Thanatos).

According to Freud, the id is driven by the pleasure principle—the desire for immediate gratification of our sexual and aggressive urges. The id is why we smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, view pornography, tell mean jokes about people, and engage in other fun or harmful behaviors, often at the cost of doing more productive activities. The function of the ego is based on the reality principle—the idea that we must delay gratification of our basic motivations until the appropriate time with the appropriate outlet. The ego is the largely conscious controller or decision-maker of personality. The ego serves as the intermediary between the desires of the id and the constraints of society contained in the superego. We may wish to scream, yell, or hit, and yet our ego normally tells us to wait, reflect, and choose a more appropriate response. In stark contrast to the id, the superego represents our sense of morality and doing what is “right”. The superego tells us all the things that we shouldn’t do, or the duties and obligations of society. The superego strives for perfection, and when we fail to live up to its demands we feel guilty.

Freud's Stages of Development

Stage of Development	Age	Brief description	Current implications for caregivers
Oral	birth to 18 months	The infant uses their mouths to explore their environment as this is where their initial pleasure lies. Sucking/drinking	Make sure that the learning environment is safe for this type of exploration
Anal	18 months to 3 years	Children are focused on toileting and controlling their bladder and bowels. Toilet training too lenient or too harsh	Make sure that the environment is supportive to encourage children to feel safety in learning how to use the toilet as they gain more control of their bladders and bowels.
Phallic	3 to 6 years	Children are interested in their body parts, the genitals are a part of the body in which they feel a pleasurable sensation.	Make sure that children are not shamed when they touch the various parts of their bodies, that they are given loving supportive guidance.
Latency	6 to 12 years	Children are interested in developing friendships with their peers.	Make sure that children are supported in developing healthy relationships supported by loving, guiding adults.
Genital	Puberty and older	The bodies physical changes occur during this time which influences their social and emotional development. They begin to develop interests beyond friendships with other they may be physically attracted to. This used to be referred to as opposite sex attraction, but this development is the same for humans that have same sex attraction. Mature romantic relationships	Make sure that the adults in a child's environment have a deep understanding and knowledge base in regards to sexual development and sexual orientation, so the child make positive connections during this period of development.

Key takeaways

• Stages of sexual and emotional development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital.
• Human personality contains the id, ego, and superego.
• Individuals have unconscious drives and should be allowed to follow their own instincts.

Benjamin Spock: A Child-Centered Approach

Benjamin Spock was the first American pediatrician to study psychoanalysis in an attempt to understand children’s needs and family dynamics. His ideas about childcare significantly changed overall attitudes toward the rearing of infants and children via his book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care (1946), one of the best selling volumes in history. The book’s premises to parents are that “you know more than you think you do,” and if you “feel like comforting the child, do it.”

He encouraged parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children and to treat them as individuals. Spock’s first edition advised mothers to indulge their own impulses and as well as their children’s, assuring them on the basis of the latest scientific studies that it was safe to do so. In the process, the book changed child-rearing advice from the previous generation and authorized mothers to express their “natural” feelings toward their children. However, his theories were criticized by colleagues for relying too heavily on anecdotal evidence rather than academic research.

Spock recommended spontaneity, warmth, and a fair amount of fun for parents and children. In subsequent editions of his book, Spock also included fathers in the contexts of childcare and child-rearing, acknowledged gender roles, and addressed divorce and single parenting.

Overall, Spock’s advice encouraged caregivers to help children fit into the current needs of society and become contributing members of that society. He highly advocated for caregivers to instill values of cooperativeness and congeniality and help their child be likable. Spock was one of the most notable American authors of child-rearing advice during the twentieth century due to publications. In subsequent editions of his book, Spock also included fathers in the contexts of childcare and child-rearing, acknowledged gender roles, and addressed divorce and single parenting.

Overall, Spock’s advice encouraged caregivers to help children fit into the current needs of society and become contributing members of that society. He highly advocated for caregivers to instill values of cooperativeness and congeniality and help their child be likable. Spock was one of the most notable American authors of child-rearing advice during the twentieth century due to publications in contemporary, mainstream magazines.

Key takeaways

• Parents should be adaptable, loving and encourage individuality within each child.
• Parents should have balanced relationships with their children composed of spontaneity, warmth, and fun.
• Parents should help children become contributing members of society by teaching cooperativeness and congeniality.
• The first American pediatrician to study psychoanalysis to understand children’s needs and family dynamics.

B.F. Skinner: Operant Conditioning

Psychologist B.F. Skinner saw that classical conditioning is limited to existing behaviors that are reflexively elicited, and doesn’t account for new behaviors such as riding a bike.
He proposed a theory about how such behaviors come about. Skinner believed that behavior is motivated by the consequences we receive for the behavior: reinforcements and punishments. His idea that learning is the result of consequences is based on the law of effect, which was first proposed by psychologist Edward Thorndike. According to the law of effect, behaviors that are followed by consequences that are satisfying to the organism are more likely to be repeated, and behaviors that are followed by unpleasant consequences are less likely to be repeated.

Essentially, if an organism does something that brings about a desired result, the organism is more likely to do it again. If an organism does something that does not bring about the desired result, the organism is less likely to do it again. An example of the law of effect is employment. One of the reasons (and often the main reason) we show up for work is because we get paid to do so. If we stop getting paid, we will likely stop showing up—even if we love our job.

In discussing operant conditioning, we use several everyday words—positive, negative, reinforcement, and punishment—in a specialized manner. In operant conditioning, positive and negative do not mean good and bad. Instead, positive means you are adding something, and negative means you are taking something away. Reinforcement means you are increasing a behavior, and punishment means you are decreasing a behavior. Reinforcement can be positive or negative, and punishment can also be positive or negative. All reinforcers (positive or negative) increase the likelihood of a behavioral response. All punishers (positive or negative) decrease the likelihood of a behavioral response.

The most effective way to teach a person or animal a new behavior is with positive reinforcement. In positive reinforcement, a desirable stimulus is added to increase a behavior. For example, let’s say you tell your five-year-old son, Jerome, that if he cleans his room, he will get a toy. Jerome quickly cleans his room because he wants a new art set. Some people might say, “Why should I reward my child for doing what is expected?” However, we are constantly and consistently rewarded in our lives. Our paychecks are rewards, as are high grades or acceptance into our preferred schools. Being praised for doing a good job or for passing a driver’s test are also rewards. Positive reinforcement as a learning tool is extremely effective.

In negative reinforcement, an undesirable stimulus is removed to increase a behavior. For example, car manufacturers use the principles of negative reinforcement in their seatbelt systems, which go “beep, beep, beep” until you fasten your seatbelt. The annoying sound stops when you exhibit the desired behavior, increasing the likelihood that you will buckle up in the future. Negative reinforcement is also used frequently in horse training. Riders apply pressure—by pulling the reins or squeezing their legs—and then remove the pressure when the horse performs the desired behavior, such as turning or speeding up. The pressure is the negative stimulus that the horse wants to remove.

Many people confuse negative reinforcement with punishment in operant conditioning, but they are two very different concepts. Remember that reinforcement, even when it is negative, always increases a behavior. In contrast, punishment always decreases a behavior. In positive punishment, you add an undesirable stimulus to decrease a behavior. An example of positive punishment is reprimanding a student to get the student to stop texting in class. In this case, a stimulus (the reprimand) is added in order to decrease the behavior (texting in class). In negative punishment, you remove a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior, such as something the child enjoys (e.g., a toy or a scheduled outing). Time-outs are a very common form of negative punishment — they momentarily take away children’s access to something they enjoy.

Punishment, especially when it is immediate, is one way to decrease undesirable behavior. For example, imagine your four-year-old son, Brandon, runs into a busy street to get his ball. You give him a time-out (positive punishment) and tell him never to go into the street again. Chances are he will not repeat this behavior. While strategies like time-outs are common today, in the past children were often subject to physical punishment, such as spanking. It’s important to be aware of some of the drawbacks of using physical punishment on children. Within the context of parenting, it is important to note that the term “punishment” doesn’t mean that the consequence should be harmful.
In fact, experts caution that punishments like spanking can cause more harm than good.

First, punishment may teach fear. Brandon may become fearful of the street, but he also may become fearful of the person who delivered the punishment—you, his parent. Similarly, children who are punished by teachers may start to fear the teacher and try to avoid school. Consequently, most schools in the United States have banned corporal punishment.

Second, punishment may cause children to become more aggressive and prone to antisocial behavior and delinquency. They see their parents resort to spanking when they become angry and frustrated, so, in turn, they may act out this same behavior when they become angry and frustrated. For example, because you spank Brenda when you are angry with her for her misbehavior, she might start hitting her friends when they will not share their toys.

While positive punishment can be effective in some cases, Skinner suggested that the use of punishment should be weighed against the possible negative effects. Today’s psychologists and parenting experts favor reinforcement over punishment—they recommend that you catch your child doing something good and reward her for it.

In his operant conditioning experiments, Skinner often used an approach called shaping. Instead of rewarding only the target behavior, in shaping, we reward successive approximations of a target behavior. For instance, parents can break a task into smaller more “attainable” steps. These smaller steps should be in sequence of completing the entire desired task. As children start a step, or show improvements on a step, they should be praised and rewarded. As children master each step, they should again be praised and rewarded and then encouraged to the next step. This process of successive approximations is followed until a child masters the entire task. This takes time, but it is a proven method of shaping a child’s behavior via rewarding and praising ongoing improvements.

Why is shaping needed? Remember that in order for reinforcement to work, the organism must first display the behavior. Shaping is needed because it is extremely unlikely that an organism will display anything but the simplest of behaviors spontaneously. In shaping, behaviors are broken down into many small, achievable steps. The specific steps used in the process are the following:

1.Reinforce any response that resembles the desired behavior.
2.Then reinforce the response that more closely resembles the desired behavior. You will no longer reinforce the previously reinforced response.
3.Next, begin to reinforce the response that even more closely resembles the desired behavior.
4.Continue to reinforce closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior.
5.Finally, only reinforce the desired behavior.

Shaping is often used to teach a complex behavior or chain of behaviors. Skinner used shaping to teach pigeons not only relatively simple behaviors such as pecking a disk in a Skinner box, but also many unusual and entertaining behaviors, such as turning in circles, walking in figure eights, and even playing ping pong; this technique is commonly used by animal trainers today. An important part of shaping is stimulus discrimination. Recall Pavlov’s dogs—he trained them to respond to the tone of a bell, and not to similar tones or sounds. This discrimination is also important in operant conditioning and in shaping behavior.

It is easy to see how shaping is effective in teaching behaviors to animals, but how does shaping work with humans? Let us consider parents whose goal is to have their child learn to clean his room. They use shaping to help him master steps toward the goal. Instead of performing the entire task, they set up these steps and reinforce each one. First, he cleans up one toy. Second, he cleans up five toys. Third, he chooses whether to pick up ten toys or put his books and clothes away. Fourth, he cleans up everything except two toys. Finally, he cleans his entire room.

Rewards such as stickers, praise, money, toys, and more can be used to reinforce learning. Let us go back to Skinner’s rats again. How did the rats learn to press the lever in the Skinner box? They were rewarded with food each time they pressed the lever. For animals, food would be an obvious reinforcer.
What would be a good reinforcer for humans? For your daughter Sydney, it was the promise of a toy if she cleaned her room. How about Joaquin, the soccer player? If you gave Joaquin a piece of candy every time he made a goal, you would be using a primary reinforcer. Primary reinforcers are reinforcers that have innate reinforcing qualities. These kinds of reinforcers are not learned. Water, food, sleep, shelter, sex, and touch, among others, are primary reinforcers. Pleasure is also a primary reinforcer. Organisms do not lose their drive for these things. For most people, jumping in a cool lake on a very hot day would be reinforcing and the cool lake would be innately reinforcing—the water would cool the person off (a physical need), as well as provide pleasure.

A secondary reinforcer has no inherent value and only has reinforcing qualities when linked with a primary reinforcer. Praise, linked to affection, is one example of a secondary reinforcer, such as when you called out “Great shot!” every time Joaquin made a goal. Another example, money, is only worth something when you can use it to buy other things—either things that satisfy basic needs (food, water, shelter—all primary reinforcers) or other secondary reinforcers. If you were on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you had stacks of money, the money would not be useful if you could not spend it. What about the stickers on the behavior chart? They also are secondary reinforcers.
Sometimes, instead of stickers on a sticker chart, a token is used. Tokens, which are also secondary reinforcers, can then be traded in for rewards and prizes. Entire behavior management systems, known as token economies, are built around the use of these kinds of token reinforcers. Token economies have been found to be very effective at modifying behavior in a variety of settings such as schools, prisons, and mental hospitals.

Key takeaways

• Behavior is motivated by the consequences of that behavior.
• Behaviors with satisfying consequences are often repeated, while behaviors with unpleasant consequences are often avoided.
• Conditioning can be done through positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
• Reinforcement increases a behavior; punishment decreases a behavior.
• Shaping is slowly reinforcing behaviors that are more and more similar to the ideal goal behavior.

Attachment Theory (Harlow, Bowlby and Ainsworth)

Psychosocial development occurs as children form relationships, interact with others, and understand and manage their feelings. In social and emotional development, forming healthy attachments is very important and is the major social milestone of infancy. Attachment is a long-standing connection or bond with others. Developmental psychologists are interested in how infants reach this milestone. They ask questions such questions as: How do parent and infant attachment bonds form? How does neglect affect these bonds? What accounts for children’s attachment differences?

Researchers Harry Harlow, John Bowlby, and Mary Ainsworth conducted studies designed to answer these questions. In the 1950s, Harlow conducted a series of experiments on monkeys. He separated newborn monkeys from their mothers. Each monkey was presented with two surrogate mothers. One surrogate monkey was made out of wire mesh, and she could dispense milk. The other monkey was softer and made from cloth, but did not dispense milk. The findings showed that the monkeys preferred the soft, cuddly cloth monkey, even though she did not provide any nourishment. The baby monkeys spent their time clinging to the cloth monkey and only went to the wire monkey when they needed to be fed. Prior to this study, the medical and scientific communities generally thought that babies become attached to the people who provide their nourishment. However, Harlow concluded that there was more to the mother-child bond than nourishment.

Feelings of comfort and security are the critical components of maternal-infant bonding, which leads to healthy psychosocial development. Building on the work of Harlow and others, John Bowlby developed the concept of attachment theory. He defined attachment as the affectional bond or tie that infants form with their mother. An infant must form this bond with a primary caregiver in order to have normal social and emotional development. In addition, Bowlby proposed that this attachment bond is very powerful and continues throughout life. He used the concept of a secure base to define a healthy attachment between parent and child.

A secure base is a parental presence that gives the child a sense of safety as he explores his surroundings. Bowlby said that two things are needed for a healthy attachment: the caregiver must be responsive to the child’s physical, social, and emotional needs, and the caregiver and child must engage in mutually enjoyable interactions.

While Bowlby believed that attachment was an all-or-nothing process, Mary Ainsworth’s research showed otherwise. Mary identified the existence of what she calls “attachment behaviors,” which are examples of behaviors demonstrated by insecure children in hopes of establishing or re-establishing an attachment to a presently absent caregiver. ‘Since this behavior occurs uniformly in children, it is a compelling argument for the existence of “innate” or instinctual behaviors in human beings’.

Ainsworth wanted to know if children differ in the ways they bond, and if so, why. To find the answers to these questions, she used the Strange Situation procedure to study attachment between mothers and their infants in 1970. In the Strange Situation, the mother (or primary caregiver) and the infant (age 12-18 months) are placed in a room together. There are toys in the room, and the caregiver and child spend some time alone in the room. After the child has had time to explore one’s surroundings, a stranger enters the room. The primary caregiver then leaves the baby with the stranger. After a few minutes, the caregiver returns to comfort the child. Based on how the infants/toddlers responded to the separation and reunion, Ainsworth identified three types of parent-child attachments: secure, avoidant, and resistant. A fourth style, known as disorganized attachment, was later described.

The most common type of attachment—also considered the healthiest—is called secure attachment. In this type of attachment, the toddler prefers their parent over a stranger. The attachment figure is used by the child as a secure base to explore their environment and is sought out in times of stress. Securely attached children were distressed when their caregivers left the room in the Strange Situation experiment, but when their caregivers returned, the securely attached children were happy to see them. Securely attached children have caregivers who are sensitive and responsive to their needs.

With avoidant attachment (sometimes called insecure or anxious-avoidant), the child is unresponsive to the parent, does not use the parent as a secure base, and does not care if the parent leaves. The toddler reacts to the parent the same way she reacts to a stranger. When the parent does return, the child is slow to show a positive reaction. Ainsworth theorized that these children were most likely to have a caregiver who was insensitive and inattentive to their needs.

In cases of resistant attachment (also called ambivalent or anxious-ambivalent/resistant), children tend to show clingy behavior, but then reject the attachment figure’s attempts to interact with them. These children do not explore the toys in the room, as they are too fearful. During separation in the Strange Situation, they became extremely disturbed and angry with the parent. When the parent returns, the children are upset and difficult to comfort. Resistant attachment is the result of the caregivers’ inconsistent level of response to their child.

Finally, children with disorganized attachment behave oddly in the Strange Situation. They freeze, run around the room in an erratic manner, or try to run away when the caregiver returns. This type of attachment is seen most often in children who have been abused. Research has shown that abuse disrupts a child’s ability to regulate their emotions.

While Ainsworth’s research has found support in subsequent studies, it has also met criticism. Some researchers have pointed out that a child’s temperament may have a strong influence on attachment, and others have noted that attachment varies from culture to culture, a factor not accounted for in Ainsworth’s research.

Key takeaways

• Harlow: Contact comfort research concerning wire and cloth monkeys.
• Bowlby: Human attachment theory derived from Harlow’s research.
• Attachment: The connection formed between two individuals over time.
• Secure base: A primary caregiver a child views as “home base” who provides the child with security to actively explore one’s environment.
• Ainsworth: Strange Situation research which led to identifying types of attachment: secure, avoidant, disorganized, and resistant attachment.

Jean Piaget - Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget studied how children and youth gradually become able to think logically and scientifically, resulting in his Cognitive Development Theory. Cognition refers to thinking and memory processes, and cognitive development refers to long-term changes in these processes. He was one of the first to recognize and map out the ways in which children’s thought differs from that of adults. His interest in this area began when he was asked to test the IQ of children and began to notice that there was a pattern in their wrong answers.

Piaget believed that children’s intellectual skills change over time based on biological predispositions and their own individual interactions with the world. He was very critical of teacher-directed instruction, believing that teachers or caregivers who take control of the child’s learning place the child into a passive role. According to Piaget, children of differing ages interpret the world differently; therefore, he divided this learning into four stages. His stages assumed a sequence of thinking patterns with these key features:

1.They always happen in the same order.
2.No stage is ever skipped.
3.Each stage is a significant transformation from the stage before it.
4.Each later stage builds upon and incorporates the earlier stages.

Piaget's Developmental Stages

Piaget's Stages of Development

Stages	Age	Brief description	Current implications for caregivers
Sensorimotor	Infancy	The infants intelligence is based on direct, physical contact via the use of their senses, infants taste, feel, pound, push, hear, and move in order to experience the world	Making sure to have lots of sensory materials available for infants to explore
Preoperational	Early Childhood	children learn to use language and to think of the world symbolically, they are egocentric in how they think that everyone sees things in the same way as them	Understanding that children see things from their perspective and gently helping them to develop perspective taking with patience.
Concrete Operational	Middle Childhood	characterized by the development of organized and rational thinking, can apply logic to physical and "concrete" objects; they gain the ability to understand conservation (number, area, volume, orientation) and understand that when concrete objects change in appearance, they still contain the same volume, are, number, and orientation and can return to their original state (reversibility); affords children with the ability to solve problems more systematically	Introducing more opportunities for learning experiences that are exploratory. Allowing for children to make inferences and to encourage deductive reasoning.
Formal Operational	Adolescence	are able to understand abstract principles, no longer limited by what can be directly seen or heard; contemplate constructs such as beauty, love, freedom, and morality, they demonstrate hypothetical-deductive reasoning which is developing hypotheses based on what might logically occur, able to think about all the possibilities	Allowing for children of this age to grapple with concepts and ideas; providing opportunities for them to have agency.

Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory
Critics have discovered a considerable variation in what children are able to do at various ages in different parts of the world and in different cultures. Further, many contend that Piaget may have underestimated what children are capable of given the right circumstances. For instance, he believed that learning peaked around the age of 12 years, designated by his last stage—formal operational stage.

Key takeaways

• Children develop cognitively through stages—sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational.
• Each stage must be mastered before moving on to the next stage.
• Children’s intellectual skills change based on their direct experiences with the environment.

Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

Erik Erikson suggested that our relationships and society’s expectations motivate much of our behavior in his theory of psychosocial development. Unlike Freud, Erikson believed that we are not driven by unconscious urges. He is considered the father of developmental psychology because his model gives us a guideline for the entire life span and suggests certain primary psychological and social concerns throughout life. Erikson expanded on Freud’s theory by emphasizing the importance of culture in parenting practices and motivations. He also added three stages of social and emotional domains regarding adult development. He believed that we are aware of what motivates us throughout life and that the ego has greater importance in guiding our actions than the id does. We make conscious choices in life and these choices focus on meeting certain social and cultural needs rather than purely biological ones. Humans are motivated, for instance, by the need to feel that the world is a trustworthy place, that we are capable individuals, that we can make a contribution to society, and that we have lived a meaningful life. These are all psychosocial issues.

Erikson divided the lifespan into eight stages. In each stage, we have a major psychosocial task to accomplish or crisis to overcome. Successful completion of each developmental task results in a sense of competence and a healthy personality. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy. Erikson believed that our personality continues to take shape throughout our lifespan as we face these challenges in living. These eight stages form a foundation for discussions on emotional and social development during the life span. However, these stages or crises can occur more than once and can occur at different ages. For instance, a person may struggle with a lack of trust beyond infancy under certain circumstances. Erikson’s theory has been criticized for focusing so heavily on stages and assuming that the completion of one stage is a prerequisite for the next development crisis. His theory also focuses on the social expectations that are found in some cultures, but not in others. For instance, the idea that adolescence is a time of searching for identity might translate well in the middle-class culture of the United States, but not as well in cultures where the transition into adulthood coincides with puberty through rites of passage and where adult roles offer fewer choices.

Erikson's Stages of Development

Stage	Age	Brief Description	Current implications for caregivers
Trust vs. Mistrust	0 - 1 year	Infant must have basic needs met in a consistent way in order to feel that the world is a trustworthy place From birth to 12 months of age, infants must learn that adults can be trusted. This occurs when adults meet a child’s basic needs for survival. Infants are dependent upon their caregivers, so caregivers who are consistently and appropriately responsive and sensitive to their infant’s needs help their baby to develop a sense of trust; their baby will see the world as a safe, predictable place. Unresponsive or inconsistent caregivers who do not meet their baby’s needs can elicit feelings of anxiety, fear, and mistrust; their baby may see the world as unpredictable and unsafe. If infants are treated cruelly or their needs are not met appropriately, they will likely grow up with a sense of mistrust for people in the world.	Ensuring that children's needs are met in primary caregiving experiences.
Autonomy vs. shame and doubt	1 - 3 years	mobile toddlers have newfound freedom that they like to exercise and by being allowed to do so, they learn some basic independence	Providing opportunities for children to explore and to do things in their way and time.
Initiative vs. guilt	3 - 5 years	preschoolers like to initiate activities and emphasize doing things "all by myself"	Listening to and scaffolding what children are capable of doing.
Industry vs. inferiority	5 - 11 years	focus on accomplishments and making comparisons between themselves and their classmates (social media plays a big part in this today)	Help them to see that each person is an individual with differing skills and talents.
Identity vs. role confusion	Adolescence	trying to gain a sense of identity as they experiment with various roles, beliefs, and ideas	Providing opportunities for them to think about the possibilities that exist.
Intimacy vs. Isolation	Young adulthood	make some of our first long-term commitments in intimate relationships
Generativity vs. stagnation	Middle adulthood	focus is on being productive at work and home and are motivated by waiting to feel that they've made a contribution to society
Integrity vs. despair	Late adulthood	become reflective, look back and take stock and hope that we have lived well and have a sense of integrity because we lived according to our beliefs

Key takeaways

• Erikson was a student of Freud but focused on conscious thought.
• His stages of psychosocial development address the entire lifespan and suggest a primary psychosocial crisis in some cultures that adults can use to understand how to support children’s social and emotional development.
• Certain cultures may need to resolve the stages in different ways based upon their cultural and survival needs.
• During each of Erikson’s eight development stages, two conflicting ideas must be resolved successfully in order for a person to become a confident, contributing member of society. Failure to master these tasks leads to feelings of inadequacy.
• The stages include: trust vs. mistrust, autonomy vs. shame and doubt, initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. role confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. stagnation, and integrity vs. despair.

Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory and Observational Learning

Observational learning is a component of Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, which asserts that individuals can learn new responses via observation of key others’ behaviors. Observational learning does not necessarily require reinforcement, but instead hinges on the presence of others, referred to as social models. Social models typically possess a higher status or authority compared to the observer, examples of which include parents, teachers, or police officers. Bandura theorized that the observational learning process consists of four parts. The first is attention-one must pay attention to what one is observing in order to learn. The second part is retention. To learn, one must be able to retain the observed behavior into one’s memory. The third part of observational learning, initiation, acknowledges that the learner must be able to execute, or initiate the learned behavior. Lastly, the observer must possess the motivation to engage in observational learning.

Imagine a child walking up to a group of children playing a game on the playground. The game looks fun, but it is new and unfamiliar. Rather than joining the game immediately, the child opts to sit back and watch the other children play a round or two. While observing the others, the child takes note of the ways in which they behave while playing the game. By watching the behavior of the other kids, the child can figure out the rules of the game and even some strategies for performing well at the game. This is called observational learning.

In the example here, the child must want to learn how to play the game in order to properly engage in observational learning. The children who already know how to play the game could be thought of as being authorities—and are therefore social models—even though they are the same age as the observer. By observing how the social models behave, an individual is able to learn how to act in a certain situation. Other examples of observational learning might include a child learning to place her napkin in her lap by watching her parents at the dinner table, or a child learning how to use a pair of scissors after watching another child successfully use a pair of scissors.

Bandura developed his theory by conducting research using a Bobo Doll. There were several groups of children who were exposed to different experiences with the Bobo Doll. One group of children watched while the adult interacted aggressively with Bobo; punching it, kicking it, throwing it, and even hitting it in the face with a toy mallet. Another group of children watched the adult interact with other toys, displaying no aggression toward Bobo. In both instances, the adult left and the children were allowed to interact with Bobo on their own.

Bandura found that children exposed to the aggressive social model were significantly more likely to behave aggressively toward Bobo, hitting and kicking him, compared to those exposed to the non-aggressive model. The researchers concluded that the children in the aggressive group used their observations of the adult social model’s behavior to determine that aggressive behavior toward Bobo was acceptable. One word of caution, the children were randomly assigned to these groups. There wasn't a pre-questionnaire determining if the child was exposed to violence beyond this experiment. It is important to understand the context of research in order to make sense of what it is saying and not saying.

While reinforcement was not required to elicit the children’s behavior in Bandura’s first experiment, it is important to acknowledge that consequences do play a role within observational learning. A future adaptation of this study demonstrated that children in the aggression group showed less aggressive behavior if they witnessed the adult model receive punishment for aggressing against Bobo. Bandura referred to this process as vicarious reinforcement, as the children did not experience the reinforcement or punishment directly, yet were still influenced by observing it.

Key takeaways

• Individuals learn through observing others.
• Bobo doll experiment—children were more aggressive toward the Bobo doll if they witnessed models being aggressive.

Rudolf Dreikurs

Rudolf Dreikurs was an American psychiatrist and educator who developed Alfred Adler’s system of individual psychology into a pragmatic method for understanding the purposes of misbehavior in children and stimulating cooperative behavior without punishment or reward. His primary focus was on pre-adolescents, and he reasoned that their problematic behavior resulted from feelings of lack of significance in their social group. He described four “mistaken goals” that such children would resort to, and outlined the most effective ways that teachers and parents could respond.

He saw the family as the first social setting in which education takes place, with the school environment as an extension of the family. Thus, his techniques for preventing misbehavior and encouraging appropriate behavior could be applied equally in both settings. Dreikurs’ work continues through the training centers he and his colleagues established to train counselors in addressing the social problems of youth.

Adler and Dreikurs firmly believed that encouragement was essential to the improvement of behavior and human relationships. Their basic assumption was that human behavior is not predetermined by genetics, or merely the result of outside forces beyond one’s control. They argued that behavior is a result of a search for significance within a social setting. Dreikurs said “anticipation influences outcome—the fear of making a mistake leads to mistakes. Anyone who can alter the expectations of people can change their behavior.”

Accordingly, encouragement and positive support have a direct correlation with improved behavior in others. Adlerian Parent Education aims to give children the skills to meet life challenges in a constructive, positive way and the courage to circumvent the many pitfalls and dangers that confront children in society. It supports parents by providing them with tools to ease and handle the stress of being a parent and to raise children with courage and compassion.

Dreikurs believed that all behavior has a purpose. He constructed what is often considered the most effective tool in helping to understand children’s behavior: The Four Goals of Misbehavior and the techniques of effectively revealing these to a misbehaving child. The development of the system of natural and logical consequences and the application of these techniques may well be Dreikurs’ finest contribution to the betterment of human society.

Dreikurs suggested that human misbehavior is the result of not having one’s basic needs of belonging to, and contributing to, a social group met. The child then resorts to one of four mistaken goals: attention, power, revenge, or avoidance of failure. Dreikurs’ main theory dealt with the misbehavior of pre-adolescents. He reasoned that these students will “act out” based on these four, principled “mistaken goals.”

The first reason for their misbehavior is that they desire attention. If they do not receive the attention they crave through their actions (good or bad, e.g., doing well on a paper or throwing a tantrum), they move onto seeking power (e.g., they may refuse to complete a paper). If their power struggle is thwarted, they seek revenge. If even revenge does not achieve the desired response, they begin to feel inadequate.

His books list many ways to combat these behaviors. The first step is for teachers to identify the mistaken goal while also noting their own response to the misbehavior, and observe the students’ reactions. Second, a teacher should confront the mistaken goal by providing an explanation of it along with a discussion of the faulty logic involved. By doing so, students are given an opportunity to examine and change their behavior. Third, Dreikurs emphasized the importance of avoiding power struggles with students. One way is simply by withdrawing as an authority figure; teachers can also redirect students’ ambitions for power by having them participate in making decisions or giving directions. This is called “democratic teaching.”

Dreikurs also recommended taking positive steps against revenge-seeking behavior. The teacher is instructed to set up situations where the students can exhibit talents and strengths and ultimately experience acceptance. Lastly, teachers should encourage students who display inadequacy by offering these students encouragement and support for even minimal efforts. His overall goal was that students would learn to cooperate reasonably, without being penalized or rewarded, because they would feel that they are valuable contributors to the classroom.

Dreikurs described two types of consequences: logical and natural. Logical consequences refer to “reasonable results that follow behavior either desirable or non-desirable.” They typically require students to make right of what they have done wrong. For example, if students do not complete their work during class, they are required to do it for homework. In a democratic classroom, the students would know in advance the consequences of their misbehavior because as part of the classroom they helped formulate the consequences.

Natural consequences differ from logical consequences in that the results following the behavior occur naturally. For example, if a student tips his chair backward and falls, leaving him hurt or embarrassed, this would be a natural consequence, because the hurt and embarrassment alone is a sufficient consequence for his misbehavior.
Dreikurs did not consider punishment an effective method of discipline. He viewed punishment as an action taken by the teacher as an act of revenge to show the students who is in charge. He believed that punishment was humiliating and offensive to students.

Dreikurs believed in prevention, and his main focus was on constructive behavior rather than coercive discipline. He recommended that teachers have a democratic classroom and teaching style to help students gain a sense of belonging which is the genuine goal. In this manner, students would have a social interest: a condition in which students would realize themselves that it is to their advantage to contribute to the welfare of a group. Therefore, to understand children, they must be observed in a social setting and in relationship to others, to discover the reasons for their behavior.

Key takeaways

• Children who do not feel the basic need of belonging to a social group turn to attention, power, revenge, and avoidance of failure.
• Misbehavior can be modified without punishment through implementing natural and logical consequences.
• Dreikurs focused on pre-adolescents’ reasons for their problematic behaviors and how teachers and parents can respond to it.
• Humans have a basic need for unconditional positive regard and acceptance.

Bioecological Systems Theory - Urie Bronfenbrenner

Urie Bronfenbrenner was one of the first psychologists to adopt a holistic perspective on human development via his Bioecological Systems Theory, which had a widespread influence on the way psychologists and other social scientists approach the study of human beings and their environments. Bronfenbrenner emphasized the importance of the social environments in which children are raised, and saw the breakdown of the family as the leading cause of the ever-growing rates of alienation, apathy, rebellion, delinquency, and violence among American youth. His work led to new directions in research and the design of programs and policies affecting the well-being of children and families. Bronfenbrenner’s primary theoretical contribution was his Bioecological Systems Theory, in which he identified four types of nested systems.

Bronfenbrenner recognized that is it necessary to understand how not only the family or school influences human development, but how broader influences do as well.
The four systems are (with a fifth system being added later)

•Microsystem: Immediate environments such as family, school, peer group, neighborhood, and childcare environments.
•Mesosystem: A system comprised of connections between immediate environments (i.e., a child’s home and school).
•Exosystem: External environmental settings which only indirectly affect development, such as parent’s workplace.
•Macrosystem: The larger cultural context (Eastern vs. Western culture, national economy, political culture, subculture).
•Chronosystem: The patterning of environmental events and transitions over the course of life. (this was added later)

Each system contains roles, norms, and rules that can powerfully shape development. As this theory is discussed comprehensively in Chapter 1, it is important to note that while theories inform our practices, they also shape our thinking. Theory lives in many places, especially in social science disciplines. Reducing children's behavior to being one directional, we miss the opportunity to look at how the systems that Bronfenbrenner discovered are bi-directional in that these systems impact each other.

This example provides a clear explanation for you to consider. In order to understand the issues a learner is having with math, we can’t simply look at that individual and what challenges they face directly with the subject. We have to look at the interactions that occur between the teacher and the child. Perhaps the teacher needs to make modifications as well. The teacher may be responding to regulations made by the school, such as new expectations for students in math or constraints on time that interferes with the teacher’s ability to instruct. These new demands may be a response to national efforts to promote math and science deemed important by political leaders in response to relations with other countries at a particular time in history. Can you think of an example from your personal experience, that would help you to integrate this theory more meaningfully?

It has been said that before Bronfenbrenner, child psychologists studied the child, sociologists examined the family, anthropologists the society, economists the economic framework of the times, and political scientists the political structure. As a result of Bronfenbrenner’s groundbreaking work in human ecology, these environments, from the family to economic and political structures, have come to be viewed as part of the life course from childhood through adulthood. The “bioecological” approach to human development broke down barriers among the social sciences and built bridges between the disciplines that have allowed findings to emerge about which key elements in the larger social structure, and across societies, are vital for optimal human development.

Key takeaways

• Bioecological Systems Theory—the study of how individual development can be shaped by one’s interactions with the various systems and how an individual can impact the nested systems.
• Five nested systems: Microsystem, Mesosystem, Exosystem, Macrosystem, and Chronosystem.
• Each system contains roles, norms, and rules that can impact human development.

Pause to reflect

As you can see there are so many things to consider when it comes to our role as early learning professionals. We must have core knowledge that will enable us to be most up to date with current thinking about how to help families with the complicated tasks of parenting. As has been mentioned, there is no one right way. There are many ways to support children in learning and growing. We will explore more contemporary parenting programs that are an integration of many of these thoughts and ideas that have been shared. It's not that ideas go away, we just make improvements as we go along. As Maya Angelou says, "We do the best we can until we know better. When we know better we do better."

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"Parenting and Family Diversity" by Diana Lang is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0