Corporal punishment is the application of physical force to the body for the purposes of discipline. Corporal punishment of children, especially in schools, is declining in acceptability and use. Advocates, such as the Family Research Council, make careful distinctions between physical punishment and physical violence or abuse, and often cite the Bible in support of corporal punishment. Recommende…
The Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) program is a nationwide program that trains adults to be advocates for children who are in the judicial system. After a training period, which includes an overview of topics such as juvenile law, child development, and social work, adults interact with their children in and out of court and work with the children to ensure that their rights are being pro…
The concept of critical/sensitive periods is of interest in discussions of the influence of biological and experiential factors during periods of developmental change. A critical or sensitive period is defined as a period when certain experiences are particularly important because they have a significant influence on later development. Let us begin our consideration of this concept with a case exa…
Crying is a phenomenon that has puzzled people throughout the ages. People cry when they are sad, afraid, angry, in pain, or depressed, and yet people also cry when they are happy. Crying occurs in all emotions—it even contributes to the physiological well-being of an individual from birth to death. It is this versatility that makes crying so difficult to understand. Furthermore, tears are …
Dating works to meet the needs of both identity achievement and the development of intimacy (both of which are chief tasks of adolescence), in that as one gradually becomes closer to another, one becomes more self-aware. In coming to know the self, adolescents begin to move away from the known world of family relationships and toward the world of peers. In doing so, adolescents become aware of dif…
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1998, a record 59 percent of the 3.7 million mothers of infants were in the labor force (36% were working full-time); a total of 73 percent of the 31.3 million mothers of children older than one year were in the labor force (52% were working full-time). Although some working mothers cared for their children while they worked, most relied on some type of nonm…
The American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay once said, "Childhood is the kingdom where no one ever dies." This can be read in two ways: either children never encounter death or they never die. Many Americans rigidly adhere to such mythologies, as childhood death is now a relatively rare event, so that the probability of an infant surviving to age fifteen is close to 99 percent and life…
Defense mechanisms are unconscious strategies used to cope with conflict, anxiety, and disturbing emotions, as well as to maintain social and emotional well-being. The theory of defense mechanisms originated from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical work. Children can adaptively employ these defenses to help resolve conflicts that arise at the stages of psychosexual development—the oral,…
Delinquent behavior, according to legal definitions, includes such acts as robbery, assault, property damage, drug possession, and other similar crimes committed by youth. Delinquency also includes what are known as status offenses, which are acts considered to be rule violations because individuals who commit them are not of legal age. Examples of typical status offenses include drinking alcohol,…
Development is the process of change over time as a result of the interaction between environmental and genetic forces. It involves progressive, cumulative changes in structure, function, behavior, or organization. For example, development can refer to change in physical size or shape, mental function, perceptual capacity, or behavior. Development involves changes that persist over time, rather th…
The term "developmental disabilities" includes all mental and physical impairments or combination of mental and physical impairments that (1) occur before a person is twenty-two years old; (2) are expected to continue indefinitely; (3) result in limitations in one or more areas of development such as physical, cognitive, behavioral, emotional, or social development; and (4) reflect a…
Developmental norms are defined as standards by which the progress of a child's development can be measured. For example, the average age at which a child walks, learns to talk, or reaches puberty would be such a standard and would be used to judge whether the child is progressing normally. Norms have also been used as a basis for the "ages and stages" approach to understandin…
John Dewey was born in Burlington, Vermont, to Archibald Sprague and Lucina Rich Dewey. He graduated from the University of Vermont in 1879 and then worked for three years as a high school teacher, focusing primarily in the areas of the classics, the sciences, and algebra. Dewey was also an assistant principal and principal before becoming a graduate student in philosophy at Johns Hopkins Universi…
John Dewey sought to provide educators with strategies for reaching students that would honor each child's individual strengths and interests. (Columbiana Collection, Columbia University Libraries) Dialectical analysis originated with the theories of the philosopher Georg Hegel (1770-1831), who posited that conflict and change are the fundamentals of human life. Hegel's theori…
Discipline is the practice of guiding children's behavior toward an acceptable direction as judged by parents, teachers, and society. Discipline can take many different forms, including corporal punishment, which is characterized by physical contact between the parent (or teacher or some other adult) and the child; time-out, where the child is removed from the setting in which the misbehavi…
Changing economic and social conditions at the beginning of the twentieth century created public concern about family breakdown and ushered in the scientific study of marriage and the family. Central to this emerging science was the identification of the causes, correlates, and consequences of marital dissolution. Increased divorce rates over the course of the century ensured continued focus on th…
In general, the term "domestic violence" refers to violence that occurs in the home. Although violence in the home can be directed toward children, the elderly, or other household members, most often this term is used to represent violence between adolescents and/or adults who are currently or were previously involved in a romantic or intimate relationship. Domestic violence occurs b…
Down syndrome, named after the physician Langdon Down, is the most common genetic form of mental retardation, occurring in 1 to 1.5 of every 1,000 live births. In approximately 95 percent of cases, Down syndrome results from an extra chromosome on the twenty-first of the twenty-three pairs of human chromosomes. Exactly what causes the addition of the extra chromosomal material associated with Down…
Otitis media, commonly called an ear infection, is the most frequent illness of early childhood except for the common cold. Otitis media is an inflammation of the middle ear. There are two types: (1) acute otitis media, an infection of the middle ear with accompanying fluid; and (2) otitis media with effusion, in which the middle ear fluid is not infected. Fluid in the middle ear can persist for s…
According to Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, egocentrism is the tendency of children to cognize their environment only in terms of their own point of view. Piaget theorized that the degree of egocentrism is directly related to the child's level of cognitive development. In the infant stage (birth to age two) children are just learning to recognize and interact with the environ…
In his journal of the early years of his daughter's life, reporter Bob Greene depicted the important roles that emotions ply in children's development. He noted the impact that his daughter' first smile had on him, washing away the worry and fatigue of early parenting. He also revealed the belief that emotions make us human and contribute significantly to the meaning of relati…
Empathy is the ability to share another's emotional experience. It is a prosocial behavior that underlies altruism. Empathy, along with affection, gratitude, sympathy, and compassion, are complex social emotions that contribute to the moral behavior that cements society. Since empathy is an internal affective reaction, it has been inferred through various behaviors including emotional expre…
Youth employment is worthy of notice because the number of young workers is increasing in both developed and developing countries. Youth employment encompasses youths between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four working part-time or full-time for money, outside their family. Youths younger than fifteen working for money are regarded as child laborers; such labor is prohibited in many regions. Youth…
Erik Erikson was born in Frankfurt, Germany, on June 15, 1902. At the age of twenty-five he accepted an invitation to educate children whose parents were studying with Sigmund Freud in Vienna. While in Vienna Erikson underwent psychoanalysis with Freud's daughter Anna Freud and was trained in the psychoanalytic tradition. Because of the rise of fascism in Europe, he immigrated to the United…
Both the American Psychological Association and the Society for Research in Child Development have outlined standards for performing ethical research with children. The most important principle for both organizations is that children must be protected from harm during research investigations. Researchers must use the least stressful procedures possible; minimize deception about the goals of the re…
Facilitated communication is a controversial technique for assisting individuals with autism and related language impairments to communicate. It typically involves an adult facilitator who physically guides the individual's hand to select letters or symbols from a communication device, such as an alphabet board. When facilitated, many individuals with autism have supposedly shown unexpected…
Children who fail to grow properly have always existed. In earlier times when many children did not survive the first few years, small or sickly children were a fact of life. More recently, medicine has increasingly turned its attention to the unique problems of children, among them the problems of growth failure and most interestingly to the problem of malnutrition and growth failure in children …
Family size is a variable of great interest to those who study children. Empirical studies consistently have found a negative association between family size and children's mental ability, intelligence, and educational attainment. Two theoretical explanations have been posited to explain these negative relationships. Dilution theory suggests that as the number of siblings increases, fewer r…
In the 1990s, researchers and social commentators began to document recent social and cultural shifts in how men see themselves in their role as fathers and how families, policies, and others conceptualize them in these roles. For example, increased women's labor force participation has reconfigured child-care environments for children, giving fathers the opportunity to play a more active r…
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), caused by exposure of the fetus to alcohol, is diagnosed on the basis of three types of birth defects: growth retardation, physical anomalies, and central nervous system dysfunction. The amount of alcohol necessary to cause FAS is unknown, but is thought to be related to timing and duration of exposure. The best intervention is prevention. Encouraging women to abstain…
Many people believe that firstborn children, because of their privileged position in the family, behave differently than later-born children. Although parents, siblings, and nonparents probably overemphasize the influence of birth order, evidence suggests that the experiences of individuals are related to their ordinal position in the family. Psychologists have studied the distinctive personality …
Fragile X syndrome is an inherited disorder caused by a trinucleotide repeat expansion of DNA on the X chromosome. This expansion results in the absence or severe deficiency of the FMR1 protein (FMRP), which is known to be essential for normal brain function. FMRP appears to have an RNA-binding activity and may play an important role in synaptic maturation. Approximately 1 per 4,000 males and 1 pe…
Sigmund Freud was born Sigismund Schlomo Freud on May 6, 1856, in Freiburg, Moravia, which later became the Czech Republic. As the founder of modern psychoanalysis, Freud was to change the conceptions of human mental life by showing that many seemingly illogical, unconscious psychological processes ignored by contemporary conventional science are powerful influences shaping human beings across the…
Openly gay and lesbian people are choosing to have children in increasing numbers, although the largest group of lesbian- and gay-headed families is still comprised of those parenting children from prior heterosexual relationships. Methods for creating "intentional" families include adoption, foster parenting, alternative insemination, and surrogacy. Laws regarding adoption and foste…