SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Young adults face some formidable developmental tasks. Many people at the beginning of this stage are concerned with launching a career. They may be studying to gain the critical qualifications, or training at the entry level of an organization. Some will not be so lucky. In many countries, youth unemployment rates have been very high during the last century and appear set to continue. Studying, employment and unemployment each presents its stresses. At the same time, young adults tend to be finding their way through the world of romance, which can also lead to stress and anguish. All of this happens alongside changes in relationships with parents, and the increasing expectation that the young person will take responsibility for her own life – including, perhaps, a shift to a new home. It would be an unusual person indeed who proceeded through these developmental tasks without at least occasionally wondering who she is, or who she is becoming, and how she is faring compared to her peers. For most people, facing these issues brings a range of emotional reactions. A stage model for personal development Several different theories have been put forward to account for personal development during early adulthood. From a psychoanalytic perspective, Erikson and Erikson (1997) see the dominant focus of this stage as the development of intimacy – the ability to love and trust another person. Levinson (1978) extended some of Erikson’s ideas, but drew also on social psychological theory to explain the relationship between the developing individual and the demands of society. He emphasized the social role requirements at different life stages, and the interaction between personal growth and relationships. He maintained that all normally developing adults progress through the same stages in the same sequence, and at roughly the same pace. Early adulthood begins with the sub-stage of early adult transition (approximately 17–22 years), in which young people are working towards autonomy from their parents and formulating a ‘Dream’ of what they hope to become in life. The Dream is important because it guides their efforts and choices in both the occupational and personal spheres. Do you have your own Dream, or did you have one during this phase of life, and how does/did it relate to your current occupation and plans? The next sub-stage is the period of entering the adult world (22–28), and is organized around forging a pathway at work and attaining a special personal relationship. This is followed by the ‘age 30’ transition (28–33), in which people undergo a moderate degree of self-questioning – reviewing their Dream, the choices they have made and the problems in their lives. [Dream Levinson’s term for an individual’s vision of his life goals, formed around 17 to 22 years of age and contributing to the motivation for subsequent personal development] The rest of this decade (33–40) is the ‘settling down’ period, when people have usually found their niche in life and are striving to consolidate their professional and domestic roles – hey are basically getting their lives in order. Levinson arrived at his account on the basis of a series of intense individual interviews with a group of American men in mid-life. Although they came from a variety of backgrounds and had a range of careers and family histories, similar patterns appeared to emerge. Although Levinson’s original sample was relatively limited, subsequent work has shown that the model fits many American women reasonably well, too (Levinson, 1996; Roberts & Newton, 1987).



[Erik Erikson (1902–94) was born in Germany. His biological father, a Dane, abandoned Erik’s mother before their child was born. When Erik was aged about three she married the family doctor, who happened to be Jewish. Erik was raised as a Jew, but his ethnicity was mixed – like his biological father, he was blond and blue-eyed. With the rise of Nazism in Europe, Erik moved to Boston, where he adopted the surname Erikson and took up a position at the Harvard Medical School. One of his early and most influential books, Childhood and Society (1950), contains an analysis of Adolph Hitler, wide-ranging discussions of America (including Native Americans) and the framework of his version of psychoanalytic theory. This combination of topics encapsulates his interests in the impact of culture on personality development.]



Intimacy – are you secure, anxious or avoidant?
According to developmental models such as Erikson’s and Levinson’s, young adults are developing a sense of personal identity along with a need for closeness to others. They have also progressed through the biological developments of adolescence, and are now fully matured sexual beings. Not surprisingly, finding and developing relationships with an intimate partner, or series of partners, becomes a priority for many young adults. Interestingly, there are strong similarities in the ways people develop early relationships with caregivers during infancy and intimate adult relationships later on. This would not surprise John Bowlby (1988), who saw the initial attachment relationship as providing the crucial foundation of much later development. Clearly, as adults we form attachments to other people and, just as in infancy, these relationships are intensely emotional. Just as in infancy, our adult attachments motivate us to seek proximity to the person we feel we need, to engage in extensive eye contact, to hold – end, just as in infancy, we tend to become distressed at separation. Some social psychologists (Mickelson, Kessler & Shaver, 1997; Shaver & Clark, 1996) have gone further, to argue that the types of attachments we form as adults can be classified using the framework Ainsworth and others developed to account for infant attachments – namely, ‘secure’, ‘anxious/ ambivalent’ and ‘avoidant’. ‘Securely’ attached lovers find intimate relationships comfortable and rewarding. They trust their partner and feel confident of his or her commitment. ‘Anxious/ambivalent’ lovers experience uncertainty in their relationships. Sometimes, they fret that their partner does not love them enough and might leave, and they may respond to this anxiety by putting pressure on the partner, running the risk of causing the very outcome they fear. ‘Avoidant’ lovers find getting close to others uncomfortable, find it difficult to trust others, and are reluctant to commit themselves fully to a relationship. Shaver and colleagues found that the proportions of adults who fall into these types is very similar to those of infant attachments, with (approximately) 59 per cent secure, 11 per cent anxious/ambivalent and 25 per cent avoidant (Mickelson et al., 1997). Other research indicates that adults who fall into these different categories recall their childhood relationships with their parents in ways that are consistent with these patterns. So, ‘secure’ individuals report relaxed and loving parents, ‘anxious/ ambivalent’ people feel their parents were over-controlling, and the ‘avoidant’ adults reported lower levels of communication and emotional support from their parents (Rothbard & Shaver, 1994). Students make for interesting participants in attachment research, because many are dealing with the issues of finding and maintaining relationships at the time the study takes place. In an Australian study, Feeney, Noller and Patty (1993) investigated the romantic relationships of heterosexual students of different attachment types. They found that the relationships of ‘secure’ individuals tended to be more stable and loving, while those of ‘anxious/ambivalent’ people were less enduring and more numerous. ‘Avoidant’ individuals tended to be more accepting of casual sex, presumably because they are less interested in maintaining commitments to others.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The family is the primary social environment for children during the preschool years, but it is also the base from which they venture into new social contexts. The family is influential in several ways, particularly in the kinds of social behaviour it fosters, and with respect to the kinds of social contacts it offers for the preschooler (Dunn, Creps & Brown, 1996; Schaffer, 1996). Making friends Many researchers believe that the patterns of behaviour predominant in the preschooler’s home influence the behaviour the child manifests outside the home (Barth & Parke, 1993; Rubin et al., 1998). A good illustration of this principle is Russell and Finnie’s (1990) study of Australian preschoolers and their mothers in situations where the child had to join unfamiliar peers. The researchers found that the mothers guided their children towards strategies that affected the child’s acceptance. Mothers of popular children suggested ways in which they might join in with peers’ current activity, while mothers of children neglected by their peers were more likely to guide them to focus on the materials to hand. There is also evidence that children with a Type B (securely attached) attachment relationship in infancy tend to score higher on measures of social participation with peers at preschool (LaFreniere & Sroufe, 1985). In other words, aspects of the relationship with the primary caregiver are reflected subtly but influentially in how the preschooler begins his peer relations. Peer relations among preschoolers show continuity with early relations: they are selective. Although children of this age will play with a wide array of peers if given the opportunity, they do demonstrate clear preferences (Hartup, 1999). Individuals identify others with whom they play more frequently; they seek out each other’s company and they become friends (Hartup, 1999). These early friendships serve a number of important functions, including fostering the growth of social competence and providing sources of emotional support (Asher & Parker, 1989; Erwin, 1993). The value of these relationships is made clearer by the problems suffered by children who lack them. Unfortunately, some children do not establish friendships and are either neglected or rejected by their peers. Children who experience difficulties like this in the preschool years are at risk of continuing problems in peer relations and personal adjustment throughout childhood and even into adulthood (Coie et al., 1995). Learning about gender One of the major areas of social development during the preschool years is learning about gender. Even in the preschool years, children tend to segregate by gender and to show different behavioural preferences. Boys tend to be more physical and active in their play, while girls often like
to play with dolls (Maccoby, 2000). One theory is that these differences reflect biological pre-programming. We know that the young of other species – such as tadpoles – are pre-programmed to develop particular patterns of behaviour according to their gender, and these behaviours underpin later social and reproductive activities, such as patterns of aggressiveness or how they call out to attract mates (Emerson & Boyd, 1999; Summers, 2000). It has been argued that, in a similar way, evolution has designed human males and females for different functions (‘males as providers’, ‘females as caregivers’), and children’s play behaviours are early emerging signs of this ‘biological imperative’ (Hutt, 1978). An alternative view is that children are ‘shaped’ by the surrounding culture. Unlike tadpoles, human young receive a lot of direct and indirect advice from their parents about gender expectations. This could serve to reinforce some behaviours and extinguish others (e.g. by dressing daughters in pink or telling sons not to cry). Children themselves try to influence each other’s gender behaviour, too. Even preschoolers develop strong opinions about how boys and girls should behave. For example, boys might intervene to stop a peer playing with ‘girls’ toys’ (Bussey & Bandura, 1992). Finally, children also receive many stereotyped messages from the larger community and the mass media about gender role expectations (Durkin, 1985). But some developmentalists have argued that both of these explanations (biology versus environment) overlook a still more basic question: how does a child know that he or she is a male or female in the first place? This brings us to another aspect of gender role development – cognition, or the child’s active search for and interpretation of information about what is expected of males and females (Kohlberg, 1966). Unlike tadpoles, by the end of infancy most children know whether they are a boy or girl and can distinguish men from women (Thompson, 1975). During the next few years, they begin to appreciate how fundamental this distinction is. For example, preschoolers discover an interesting fact about gender that is not apparent to the infant: whichever gender one belongs to, it is going to be a lifelong commitment. While this seems obvious to an adult, it is not understood instantaneously by toddlers. Children learn the labels for male and female and begin to apply these during their third year of life (Fagot & Leinbach, 1993). Over the next couple of years, they build up an increasing amount of knowledge about what it means to be a male or a female (Martin, 2000), and this learning appears to be linked to broader cognitive development (Szkrybalo & Ruble, 1999). Rather than simply absorbing messages from parents or the mass media, by age four or five children can predict accurately the gender of a person stereotypically associated with a particular activity (such as fixing a car or doing the sewing) before they have actually seen the person (Durkin & Nugent, 1998). It is clear that, even at this early age, gender is a fundamental category around which the social world is organized, and that children are active in determining their own social experiences.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Human beings are social creatures. Connecting to the social world is all the more crucial for the infant, because without the attention and care of others, she would not survive. Fortunately, others (particularly parents) tend to be strongly motivated to involve children in the social world, and to attend to their needs. Just as importantly, the infant is well equipped to participate in the social world from the beginnings of life. Perceptual abilities are closely implicated in the infant’s early social experiences. For example, we noted earlier that infants reveal a very early interest in the human face. This is an interesting perceptual preference, but it is still more important as a social characteristic. After all, faces are one of the best means of differentiating between people, and a valuable source of information about how others are reacting to us or the environment. There is evidence that infants can gather information about faces remarkably swiftly. Researchers using visual preference techniques or measurements of sucking rates have shown that newborns only days or even hours old prefer their mother’s face to that of a female stranger (Bushnell, Sai & Mullin, 1989; Walton, Bower & Bower, 1992). The other senses are exploited similarly. For example, infants as young as one or two weeks of age can discriminate the smell of their own mother’s breasts from those of other breastfeeding women (Porter et al., 1992).