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Trauma and Early Adolescent Development: Case Examples from a Trauma-Informed Public Health Middle School Program

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Jason Scott Frydman, Christine Mayor, Trauma and Early Adolescent Development: Case Examples from a Trauma-Informed Public Health Middle School Program, Children & Schools , Volume 39, Issue 4, October 2017, Pages 238–247, https://doi.org/10.1093/cs/cdx017

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Middle-school-age children are faced with a variety of developmental tasks, including the beginning phases of individuation from the family, building peer groups, social and emotional transitions, and cognitive shifts associated with the maturation process. This article summarizes how traumatic events impair and complicate these developmental tasks, which can lead to disruptive behaviors in the school setting. Following the call by Walkley and Cox for more attention to be given to trauma-informed schools, this article provides detailed information about the Animating Learning by Integrating and Validating Experience program: a school-based, trauma-informed intervention for middle school students. This public health model uses psychoeducation, cognitive differentiation, and brief stress reduction counseling sessions to facilitate socioemotional development and academic progress. Case examples from the authors’ clinical work in the New Haven, Connecticut, urban public school system are provided.

Within the U.S. school system there is growing awareness of how traumatic experience negatively affects early adolescent development and functioning ( Chanmugam & Teasley, 2014 ; Perfect, Turley, Carlson, Yohannan, & Gilles, 2016 ; Porche, Costello, & Rosen-Reynoso, 2016 ; Sibinga, Webb, Ghazarian, & Ellen, 2016 ; Turner, Shattuck, Finkelhor, & Hamby, 2017 ; Woodbridge et al., 2016 ). The manifested trauma symptoms of these students have been widely documented and include self-isolation, aggression, and attentional deficit and hyperactivity, producing individual and schoolwide difficulties ( Cook et al., 2005 ; Iachini, Petiwala, & DeHart, 2016 ; Oehlberg, 2008 ; Sajnani, Jewers-Dailley, Brillante, Puglisi, & Johnson, 2014 ). To address this vulnerability, school social workers should be aware of public health models promoting prevention, data-driven investigation, and broad-based trauma interventions ( Chafouleas, Johnson, Overstreet, & Santos, 2016 ; Johnson, 2012 ; Moon, Williford, & Mendenhall, 2017 ; Overstreet & Chafouleas, 2016 ; Overstreet & Matthews, 2011 ). Without comprehensive and effective interventions in the school setting, seminal adolescent developmental tasks are at risk.

This article follows the twofold call by Walkley and Cox (2013) for school social workers to develop a heightened awareness of trauma exposure's impact on childhood development and to highlight trauma-informed practices in the school setting. In reference to the former, this article will not focus on the general impact of toxic stress, or chronic trauma, on early adolescents in the school setting, as this work has been widely documented. Rather, it begins with a synthesis of how exposure to trauma impairs early adolescent developmental tasks. As to the latter, we will outline and discuss the Animating Learning by Integrating and Validating Experience (ALIVE) program, a school-based, trauma-informed intervention that is grounded in a public health framework. The model uses psychoeducation, cognitive differentiation, and brief stress reduction sessions to promote socioemotional development and academic progress. We present two clinical cases as examples of trauma-informed, school-based practice, and then apply their experience working in an urban, public middle school to explicate intervention theory and practice for school social workers.

Impact of Trauma Exposure on Early Adolescent Developmental Tasks

Social development.

Impact of Trauma on Early Adolescent Development

Traumatic experiences may create difficulty with developing and differentiating another person's point of view (that is, mentalization) due to the formation of rigid cognitive schemas that dictate notions of self, others, and the external world ( Frydman & McLellan, 2014 ). For early adolescents, the ability to diversify a single perspective with complexity is central to modulating affective experience. Without the capacity to diversify one's perspective, there is often difficulty differentiating between a nonthreatening current situation that may harbor reminders of the traumatic experience and actual traumatic events. Incumbent on the school social worker is the need to help students understand how these conflicts may trigger a memory of harm, abandonment, or loss and how to differentiate these past memories from the present conflict. This is of particular concern when these reactions are conflated with more common middle school behaviors such as withdrawing, blaming, criticizing, and gossiping ( Card, Stucky, Sawalani, & Little, 2008 ).

Encouraging cognitive discrimination is particularly meaningful given that the second social developmental task for early adolescents is the re-orientation of their primary relationships with family toward peers ( Henderson & Thompson, 2010 ). This shift may become complicated for students facing traumatic stress, resulting in a stunted movement away from familiar connections or a displacement of dysfunctional family relationships onto peers. For example, in the former, a student who has witnessed and intervened to protect his mother from severe domestic violence might believe he needs to sacrifice himself and be available to his mother, forgoing typical peer interactions. In the latter, a student who was beaten when a loud, intoxicated family member came home might become enraged, anxious, or anticipate violence when other students raise their voices.

Cognitive Development and Emotional Regulation

During normative early adolescent development, the prefrontal cortex undergoes maturational shifts in cognitive and emotional functioning, including increased impulse control and affect regulation ( Wigfield, Lutz, & Wagner, 2005 ). However, these developmental tasks can be negatively affected by chronic exposure to traumatic events. Stressful situations often evoke a fear response, which inhibits executive functioning and commonly results in a fight-flight-freeze reaction. If a student does not possess strong anxiety management skills to cope with reminders of the trauma, the student is prone to further emotional dysregulation, lowered frustration tolerance, and increased behavioral problems and depressive symptoms ( Iachini et al., 2016 ; Saltzman, Steinberg, Layne, Aisenberg, & Pynoos, 2001 ).

Typical cognitive development in early adolescence is defined by the ambiguity of a transitional stage between childhood remedial capacity and adult refinement ( Casey & Caudle, 2013 ; Van Duijvenvoorde & Crone, 2013 ). Casey and Caudle (2013) found that although adolescents performed equally as well as, if not better than, adults on a self-control task when no emotional information was present, the introduction of affectively laden social cues resulted in diminished performance. The developmental challenge for the early adolescent then is to facilitate the coordination of this ever-shifting dynamic between cognition and affect. Although early adolescents may display efficient and logically informed behaviors, they may struggle to sustain these behaviors, especially in the presence of emotional stimuli ( Casey & Caudle, 2013 ; Van Duijvenvoorde & Crone, 2013 ). Because trauma often evokes an emotional response ( Johnson & Lubin, 2015 ), these findings insinuate that those early adolescents who are chronically exposed will have ongoing regulation difficulties. Further empirical findings considering the cognitive effects of trauma exposure on the adolescent brain have highlighted detriments in working memory, inhibition, memory, and planning ability ( Moradi, Neshat Doost, Taghavi, Yule, & Dalgleish, 1999 ).

Using a Public Health Framework for School-Based, Trauma-Informed Services

The need for a more informed and comprehensive approach to addressing trauma within the schools has been widely articulated ( Chafouleas et al., 2016 ; Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011 ; Jaycox, Kataoka, Stein, Langley, & Wong, 2012 ; Overstreet & Chafouleas, 2016 ; Perry & Daniels, 2016 ). Overstreet and Matthews (2011) suggested that using a public health model to address trauma in schools will promote prevention, early identification, and data-driven investigation and yield broad-based intervention on a policy and communitywide level. A public health approach focuses on developing interventions that address the underlying causal processes that lead to social, emotional, and cognitive maladjustment. Opening the dialogue to the entire student body, as well as teachers and administrators, promotes inclusion and provides a comprehensive foundation for psychoeducation, assessment, and prevention.

ALIVE: A Comprehensive Public Health Intervention for Middle School Students

Note: ALIVE = Animating Learning by Integrating and Validating Experience.

Psychoeducation

The classroom is a place traditionally dedicated to academic pursuits; however, it also serves as an indicator of trauma's impact on cognitive functioning evidenced by poor grades, behavioral dysregulation, and social turbulence. ALIVE practitioners conduct weekly trauma-focused dialogues in the classroom to normalize conversations addressing trauma, to recruit and rehearse more adaptive cognitive skills, and to engage in an insight-oriented process ( Sajnani et al., 2014 ).

Using a parable as a projective tool for identification and connection, the model helps students tolerate direct discussions about adverse experiences. The ALIVE practitioner begins each academic year by telling the parable of a woman named Miss Kendra, who struggled to cope with the loss of her 10-year-old child. Miss Kendra is able to make meaning out of her loss by providing support for schoolchildren who have encountered adverse experiences, serving as a reminder of the strength it takes to press forward after a traumatic event. The intention of this parable is to establish a metaphor for survival and strength to fortify the coping skills already held by trauma-exposed middle school students. Furthermore, Miss Kendra offers early adolescents an opportunity to project their own needs onto the story, creating a personalized figure who embodies support for socioemotional growth.

Following this parable, the students’ attention is directed toward Miss Kendra's List, a poster that is permanently displayed in the classroom. The list includes a series of statements against adolescent maltreatment, comprehensively identifying various traumatic stressors such as witnessing domestic violence; being physically, verbally, or sexually abused; and losing a loved one to neighborhood violence. The second section of the list identifies what may happen to early adolescents when they experience trauma from emotional, social, and academic perspectives. The practitioner uses this list to provide information about the nature and impact of trauma, while modeling for students and staff the ability to discuss difficult experiences as a way of connecting with one another with a sense of hope and strength.

Furthermore, creating a dialogue about these issues with early adolescents facilitates a culture of acceptance, tolerance, and understanding, engendering empathy and identification among students. This fostering of interpersonal connection provides a reparative and differentiated experience to trauma ( Hartling & Sparks, 2008 ; Henderson & Thompson, 2010 ; Johnson & Lubin, 2015 ) and is particularly important given the peer-focused developmental tasks of early adolescence. The positive feelings evoked through classroom-based conversation are predicated on empathic identification among the students and an accompanying sense of relief in understanding the scope of trauma's impact. Furthermore, the consistent appearance of and engagement by the ALIVE practitioner, and the continual presence of Miss Kendra's list, effectively counters traumatically informed expectations of abandonment and loss while aligning with a public health model that attends to the impact of trauma on a regular, systemwide basis.

Participatory and Somatic Indicators for Informal Assessment during the Psychoeducation Component of the ALIVE Intervention

Notes: ALIVE = Animating Learning by Integrating and Validating Experience. Examples are derived from authors’ clinical experiences.

In addition to behavioral symptoms, the content of conversation is considered. All practitioners in the ALIVE program are mandated reporters, and any content presented that meets criteria for suspicion of child maltreatment is brought to the attention of the school leadership and ALIVE director. According to Johnson (2012) , reports of child maltreatment to the Connecticut Department of Child and Family Services have actually decreased in the schools where the program has been implemented “because [the ALIVE program is] catching problems well before they have risen to the severity that would require reporting” (p. 17).

Case Example 1

The following demonstrates a middle school classroom psychoeducation session and assessment facilitated by an ALIVE practitioner (the first author). All names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect confidentiality.

Ms. Skylar's seventh grade class comprised many students living in low-income housing or in a neighborhood characterized by high poverty and frequent criminal activity. During the second week of school, I introduced myself as a practitioner who was here to speak directly about difficult experiences and how these instances might affect academic functioning and students’ thoughts about themselves, others, and their environment.

After sharing the Miss Kendra parable and list, I invited the students to share their thoughts about Miss Kendra and her journey. Tyreke began the conversation by wondering whether Miss Kendra lost her child to gun violence, exploring the connection between the list and the story and his own frequent exposure to neighborhood shootings. To transition a singular connection to a communal one, I asked the students if this was a shared experience. The majority of students nodded in agreement. I referred the students back to the list and asked them to identify how someone's school functioning or mood may be affected by ongoing neighborhood gun violence. While the students read the list, I actively monitored reactions and scanned for inattention and active avoidance. Performing both active facilitation of discussion and monitoring students’ reactions is critical in accomplishing the goals of providing quality psychoeducation and identifying at-risk students for intervention.

After inspection, Cleo remarked that, contrary to a listed outcome on Miss Kendra's list, neighborhood gun violence does not make him feel lonely; rather, he “doesn't care about it.” Slumped down in his chair, head resting on his crossed arms on the desk in front of him, Cleo's body language suggested a somatized disengagement. I invited other students to share their individual reactions. Tyreke agreed that loneliness is not the identified affective experience; rather, for him, it's feeling “mad or scared.” Immediately, Greg concurred, expressing that “it makes me more mad, and I think about my family.”

Encouraging a variety of viewpoints, I stated, “It sounds like it might make you mad, scared, and may even bring up thoughts about your family. I wonder why people have different reactions?” Doing so moved the conversation into a phase of deeper reflection, simultaneously honoring the students’ voiced experience while encouraging critical thinking. A number of students responded by offering connections to their lives, some indicating they had difficulty identifying feelings. I reflected back, “Sometimes people feel something, but can't really put their finger on it, and sometimes they know exactly how they feel or who it makes them think about.”

I followed with a question: “How do you think it affects your schoolwork or feelings when you're in school?” Greg and Natalia both offered that sometimes difficult or confusing thoughts can consume their whole day, even while in class. Sharon began to offer a related comment when Cleo interrupted by speaking at an elevated volume to his desk partner, Tyreke. The two began to snicker and pull focus. By the time they gained the class's full attention, Cleo was openly laughing and pushing his chair back, stating, “No way! She DID!? That's crazy”; he began to stand up, enlisting Tyreke in the process. While this disruption may be viewed as a challenge to the discussion, it is essential to understand all behavior in context of the session's trauma content. Therefore, Cleo's outburst was interpreted as a potential avenue for further exploration of the topic regarding gun violence and difficulties concentrating. In turn, I posed this question to the class: “Should we talk about this stuff? I wonder if sometimes people have a hard time tolerating it. Can anybody think of why it might be important? Sharon, I think you were saying something about this.” While Sharon continued to share, Cleo and Tyreke gradually shifted their attention back to the conversation. I noted the importance of an individual follow-up with Cleo.

Natalia jumped back in the conversation, stating, “I think we talk about stuff like this so we know about it and can help people with it.” I checked in with the rest of the class about this strategy for coping with the impact of trauma exposure on school functioning: “So it sounds like these thoughts have a pretty big impact on your day. If that's the case, how do you feel less worried or mad or scared?” Marta quickly responded, “You could talk to someone.” I responded, “Part of my job here is to be a person to talk to one-on-one about these things. Hopefully, it will help you feel better to get some of that stuff off your chest.” The students nodded, acknowledging that I would return to discuss other items on the list and that there would be opportunities to check in with me individually if needed.

On reflection, Cleo's disruption in the discussion may be attributed to his personal difficulty emotionally managing intrusive thoughts while in school. This clinical assumption was not explicitly named in the moment, but was noted as information for further individual follow-up. When I met individually with Cleo, Cleo reported that his cousin had been shot a month ago, causing him to feel confused and angry. I continued to work with him individually, which resulted in a reduction of behavioral disruptions in the classroom.

In the preceding case example, the practitioner performed a variety of public health tasks. Foremost was the introduction of how traumatic experience may affect individuals and their relationships with others and their role as a student. Second, the practitioner used Miss Kendra and her list as a foundational mechanism to ground the conversation and serve as a reference point for the students’ experience. Finally, the practitioner actively monitored individual responses to the material as a means of identifying students who may require more support. All three of these processes are supported within the public health framework as a means toward assessment and early intervention for early adolescents who may be exposed to trauma.

Individualized Stress Reduction Intervention

Students are seen for individualized support if they display significant externalizing or internalizing trauma-related behavior. Students are either self-referred; referred by a teacher, administrator, or staff member; or identified by an ALIVE practitioner. Following the principle of immediate engagement based on emergent traumatic material, individual sessions are brief, lasting only 15 to 20 minutes. Using trauma-centered psychotherapy ( Johnson & Lubin, 2015 ), a brief inquiry addressing the current problem is conducted to identify the trauma trigger connected to the original harm, fostering cognitive discrimination. Conversation about the adverse experience proceeds in a calm, direct way focusing on differentiating between intrusive memories and the current situation at school ( Sajnani et al., 2014 ). Once the student exhibits greater emotional regulation, the ALIVE practitioner returns the student to the classroom in a timely manner and may provide either brief follow-up sessions for preventive purposes or, when appropriate, refer the student to more regular, clinical support in or out of the school.

Case Example 2

The following case example is representative of the brief, immediate, and open engagement with traumatic material and encouragement of cognitive discrimination. This intervention was conducted with a sixth grade student, Jacob (name and identifying information changed to ensure confidentiality), by an ALIVE practitioner (the second author).

I found Jacob in the hallway violently shaking a trash can, kicking the classroom door, and slamming his hands into the wall and locker. His teacher was standing at the door, distressed, stating, “Jacob, you need to calm down and go to the office, or I'm calling home!” Jacob yelled, “It's not fair, it was him, not me! I'm gonna fight him!” As I approached, I asked what was making him so angry, but he said, “I don't want to talk about it.” Rather than asking him to calm down or stop slamming objects, I instead approached the potential memory agitating him, stating, “My guess is that you are angry for a very good reason.” Upon this simple connection, he sighed and stopped kicking the trash can and slamming the wall. Jacob continued to demonstrate physical and emotional activation, pacing the hallway and making a fist; however, he was able to recount putting trash in the trash can when a peer pushed him from behind, causing him to yell. Jacob explained that his teacher heard him yelling and scolded him, making him more mad. Jacob stated, “She didn't even know what happened and she blamed me. I was trying to help her by taking out all of our breakfast trash. It's not fair.”

The ALIVE practitioner listens to students’ complaints with two ears, one for the current complaint and one for affect-laden details that may be connected to the original trauma to inquire further into the source of the trigger. Affect-laden details in case example 2 include Jacob's anger about being blamed (rather than toward the student who pushed him), his original intention to help, and his repetition of the phrase “it's not fair.” Having met with Jacob previously, I was aware that his mother suffers from physical and mental health difficulties. When his mother is not doing well, he (as the parentified child) typically takes care of the household, performing tasks like cooking, cleaning, and helping with his two younger siblings and older autistic brother. In the past, Jacob has discussed both idealizing his mother and holding internalized anger that he rarely expresses at home because he worries his anger will “make her sick.”

I know sometimes when you are trying to help mom, there are times she gets upset with you for not doing it exactly right, or when your brothers start something, she will blame you. What just happened sounds familiar—you were trying to help your teacher by taking out the garbage when another student pushed you, and then you were the one who got in trouble.

Jacob nodded his head and explained that he was simply trying to help.

I moved into a more detailed inquiry, to see if there was a more recent stressor I was unaware of. When I asked how his mother was doing this week, Jacob revealed that his mother's health had deteriorated and his aunt had temporarily moved in. Jacob told me that he had been yelled at by both his mother and his aunt that morning, when his younger brother was not ready for school. I asked, “I wonder if when the student pushed you it reminded you of getting into trouble because of something your little brother did this morning?” Jacob nodded. The displacement was clear: He had been reminded of this incident at school and was reacting with anger based on his family dynamic, and worries connected to his mother.

My guess is that you were a mix of both worried and angry by the time you got to school, with what's happening at home. You were trying to help with the garbage like you try to help mom when she isn't doing well, so when you got pushed it was like your brother being late, and then when you got blamed by your teacher it was like your mom and aunt yelling, and it all came flooding back in. The problem is, you let out those feelings here. Even though there are some similar things, it's not totally the same, right? Can you tell me what is different?

Jacob nodded and was able to explain that the other student was probably just playing and did not mean to get him into trouble, and that his teacher did not usually yell at him or make him worried. Highlighting this important differentiation, I replied, “Right—and fighting the student or yelling at the teacher isn't going to solve this, but more importantly, it isn't going to make your mom better or have your family go any easier on you either.” Jacob stated that he knew this was true.

I reassured Jacob that I could help him let out those feelings of worry and anger connected to home so they did not explode out at school and planned to meet again. Jacob confirmed that he was willing to do that. He was able to return to the classroom without incident, with the entire intervention lasting less than 15 minutes.

In case example 2, the practitioner was available for an immediate engagement with disturbing behaviors as they were happening by listening for similarities between the current incident and traumatic stressors; asking for specific details to more effectively help Jacob understand how he was being triggered in school; providing psychoeducation about how these two events had become confused and aiding him in cognitively differentiating between the two; and, last, offering to provide further support to reduce future incidents.

Germane to the practice of school social work is the ability to work flexibly within a public health model to attend to trauma within the school setting. First, we suggest that a primary implication for school social workers is not to wait for explicit problems related to known traumatic experiences to emerge before addressing trauma in the school, but, rather, to follow a model of prevention-assessment-intervention. School social workers are in a unique position within the school system to disseminate trauma-informed material to both students and staff in a preventive capacity. Facilitating this implementation will help to establish a tone and sharpened focus within the school community, norming the process of articulating and engaging with traumatic material. In the aforementioned classroom case example, we have provided a sample of how school social workers might work with entire classrooms on a preventive basis regarding trauma, rather than waiting for individual referrals.

Second, in addition to functional behavior assessments and behavior intervention plans, school social workers maintain a keen eye for qualitative behavioral assessment ( National Association of Social Workers, 2012 ). Using this skill set within a trauma-informed model will help to identify those students in need who may be reluctant or resistant to explicitly ask for help. As called for by Walkley and Cox (2013) , we suggest that using the information presented in Table 1 will help school social workers understand, identify, and assess the impact of trauma on early adolescent developmental tasks. If school social workers engage on a classroom level in trauma psychoeducation and conversations, the information in Table 3 may assist with assessment of children and provide a basis for checking in individually with students as warranted.

Third, school social workers are well positioned to provide individual targeted, trauma-informed interventions based on previous knowledge of individual trauma and through widespread assessment ( Walkley & Cox, 2013 ). The individual case example provides one way of immediately engaging with students who are demonstrating trauma-based behaviors. In this model, school social workers engage in a brief inquiry addressing the current trauma to identify the trauma trigger, discuss the adverse experience in a calm but direct way, and help to differentiate between intrusive memories and the current situation at school. For this latter component, the focus is on cognitive discrimination and emotional regulation so that students can reengage in the classroom within a short time frame.

Fourth, given social work's roots in collaboration and community work, school social workers are encouraged to use a systems-based approach in partnering with allied practitioners and institutions ( D'Agostino, 2013 ), thus supporting the public health tenet of establishing and maintaining a link to the wider community. This may include referring students to regular clinical support in or out of the school. Although the implementation of a trauma-informed program will vary across schools, we suggest that school social workers have the capacity to use a public health school intervention model to ecologically address the psychosocial and behavioral issues stemming from trauma exposure.

As increasing attention is being given to adverse childhood experiences, a tiered approach that uses a public health framework in the schools is necessitated. Nevertheless, there are some limitations to this approach. First, although the interventions outlined here are rooted in prevention and early intervention, there are times when formal, intensive treatment outside of the school setting is warranted. Second, the ALIVE program has primarily been implemented by ALIVE practitioners; the results from piloting this public health framework in other school settings with existing school personnel, such as school social workers, will be necessary before widespread replication.

The public health framework of prevention-assessment-intervention promotes continual engagement with middle school students’ chronic exposure to traumatic stress. There is a need to provide both broad-based and individualized support that seeks to comprehensively ameliorate the social, emotional, and cognitive consequences on early adolescent developmental milestones associated with traumatic experiences. We contend that school social workers are well positioned to address this critical public health issue through proactive and widespread psychoeducation and assessment in the schools, and we have provided case examples to demonstrate one model of doing this work within the school day. We hope that this article inspires future writing about how school social workers individually and systemically address trauma in the school system. In alignment with Walkley and Cox (2013) , we encourage others to highlight their practice in incorporating trauma-informed, school-based programming in an effort to increase awareness of effective interventions.

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Module 13: Disorders of Childhood and Adolescence

Case studies: disorders of childhood and adolescence, learning objectives.

• Identify disorders of childhood and adolescence in case studies

Case Study: Jake

Jake was born at full term and was described as a quiet baby. In the first three months of his life, his mother became worried as he was unresponsive to cuddles and hugs. He also never cried. He has no friends and, on occasions, he has been victimized by bullying at school and in the community. His father is 44 years old and describes having had a difficult childhood; he is characterized by the family as indifferent to the children’s problems and verbally violent towards his wife and son, but less so to his daughters. The mother is 41 years old, and describes herself as having a close relationship with her children and mentioned that she usually covers up for Jake’s difficulties and makes excuses for his violent outbursts. [1]

During his stay (for two and a half months) in the inpatient unit, Jake underwent psychiatric and pediatric assessments plus occupational therapy. He took part in the unit’s psycho-educational activities and was started on risperidone, two mg daily. Risperidone was preferred over an anti-ADHD agent because his behavioral problems prevailed and thus were the main target of treatment. In addition, his behavioral problems had undoubtedly influenced his functionality and mainly his relations with parents, siblings, peers, teachers, and others. Risperidone was also preferred over other atypical antipsychotics for its safe profile and fewer side effects. Family meetings were held regularly, and parental and family support along with psycho-education were the main goals. Jake was aided in recognizing his own emotions and conveying them to others as well as in learning how to recognize the emotions of others and to become aware of the consequences of his actions. Improvement was made in rule setting and boundary adherence. Since his discharge, he received regular psychiatric follow-up and continues with the medication and the occupational therapy. Supportive and advisory work is done with the parents. Marked improvement has been noticed regarding his social behavior and behavior during activity as described by all concerned. Occasional anger outbursts of smaller intensity and frequency have been reported, but seem more manageable by the child with the support of his mother and teachers.

In the case presented here, the history of abuse by the parents, the disrupted family relations, the bullying by his peers, the educational difficulties, and the poor SES could be identified as additional risk factors relating to a bad prognosis. Good prognostic factors would include the ending of the abuse after intervention, the child’s encouragement and support from parents and teachers, and the improvement of parental relations as a result of parent training and family support by mental health professionals. Taken together, it appears that also in the case of psychiatric patients presenting with complex genetic aberrations and additional psychosocial problems, traditional psychiatric and psychological approaches can lead to a decrease of symptoms and improved functioning.

Case Study: Kelli

Kelli may benefit from a course of comprehensive behavioral intervention for her tics in addition to psychotherapy to treat any comorbid depression she experiences from isolation and bullying at school. Psychoeducation and approaches to reduce stigma will also likely be very helpful for both her and her family, as well as bringing awareness to her school and those involved in her education.

• Kolaitis, G., Bouwkamp, C.G., Papakonstantinou, A. et al. A boy with conduct disorder (CD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline intellectual disability, and 47,XXY syndrome in combination with a 7q11.23 duplication, 11p15.5 deletion, and 20q13.33 deletion. Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health 10, 33 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-016-0121-8 ↵
• Case Study: Childhood and Adolescence. Authored by : Chrissy Hicks for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• A boy with conduct disorder (CD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline intellectual disability.... Authored by : Gerasimos Kolaitis, Christian G. Bouwkamp, Alexia Papakonstantinou, Ioanna Otheiti, Maria Belivanaki, Styliani Haritaki, Terpsihori Korpa, Zinovia Albani, Elena Terzioglou, Polyxeni Apostola, Aggeliki Skamnaki, Athena Xaidara, Konstantina Kosma, Sophia Kitsiou-Tzeli, Maria Tzetis . Provided by : Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health. Located at : https://capmh.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13034-016-0121-8 . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Angry boy. Located at : https://www.pxfuel.com/en/free-photo-jojfk . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright
• Frustrated girl. Located at : https://www.pickpik.com/book-bored-college-education-female-girl-1717 . License : Public Domain: No Known Copyright

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Child Growth and Development

(12 reviews)

Jennifer Paris

Antoinette Ricardo

Dawn Rymond

Alexa Johnson

Copyright Year: 2018

Last Update: 2019

Publisher: College of the Canyons

Language: English

Formats Available

Conditions of use.

Learn more about reviews.

Reviewed by Mistie Potts, Assistant Professor, Manchester University on 11/22/22

This text covers some topics with more detail than necessary (e.g., detailing infant urination) yet it lacks comprehensiveness in a few areas that may need revision. For example, the text discusses issues with vaccines and offers a 2018 vaccine... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This text covers some topics with more detail than necessary (e.g., detailing infant urination) yet it lacks comprehensiveness in a few areas that may need revision. For example, the text discusses issues with vaccines and offers a 2018 vaccine schedule for infants. The text brushes over “commonly circulated concerns” regarding vaccines and dispels these with statements about the small number of antigens a body receives through vaccines versus the numerous antigens the body normally encounters. With changes in vaccines currently offered, shifting CDC viewpoints on recommendations, and changing requirements for vaccine regulations among vaccine producers, the authors will need to revisit this information to comprehensively address all recommended vaccines, potential risks, and side effects among other topics in the current zeitgeist of our world.

Content Accuracy rating: 3

At face level, the content shared within this book appears accurate. It would be a great task to individually check each in-text citation and determine relevance, credibility and accuracy. It is notable that many of the citations, although this text was updated in 2019, remain outdated. Authors could update many of the in-text citations for current references. For example, multiple in-text citations refer to the March of Dimes and many are dated from 2012 or 2015. To increase content accuracy, authors should consider revisiting their content and current citations to determine if these continue to be the most relevant sources or if revisions are necessary. Finally, readers could benefit from a reference list in this textbook. With multiple in-text citations throughout the book, it is surprising no reference list is provided.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

This text would be ideal for an introduction to child development course and could possibly be used in a high school dual credit or beginning undergraduate course or certificate program such as a CDA. The outdated citations and formatting in APA 6th edition cry out for updating. Putting those aside, the content provides a solid base for learners interested in pursuing educational domains/careers relevant to child development. Certain issues (i.e., romantic relationships in adolescence, sexual orientation, and vaccination) may need to be revisited and updated, or instructors using this text will need to include supplemental information to provide students with current research findings and changes in these areas.

Clarity rating: 4

The text reads like an encyclopedia entry. It provides bold print headers and brief definitions with a few examples. Sprinkled throughout the text are helpful photographs with captions describing the images. The words chosen in the text are relatable to most high school or undergraduate level readers and do not burden the reader with expert level academic vocabulary. The layout of the text and images is simple and repetitive with photographs complementing the text entries. This allows the reader to focus their concentration on comprehension rather than deciphering a more confusing format. An index where readers could go back and search for certain terms within the textbook would be helpful. Additionally, a glossary of key terms would add clarity to this textbook.

Consistency rating: 5

Chapters appear in a similar layout throughout the textbook. The reader can anticipate the flow of the text and easily identify important terms. Authors utilized familiar headings in each chapter providing consistency to the reader.

Modularity rating: 4

Given the repetitive structure and the layout of the topics by developmental issues (physical, social emotional) the book could be divided into sections or modules. It would be easier if infancy and fetal development were more clearly distinct and stages of infant development more clearly defined, however the book could still be approached in sections or modules.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

The text is organized in a logical way when we consider our own developmental trajectories. For this reason, readers learning about these topics can easily relate to the flow of topics as they are presented throughout the book. However, when attempting to find certain topics, the reader must consider what part of development that topic may inhabit and then turn to the portion of the book aligned with that developmental issue. To ease the organization and improve readability as a reference book, authors could implement an index in the back of the book. With an index by topic, readers could quickly turn to pages covering specific topics of interest. Additionally, the text structure could be improved by providing some guiding questions or reflection prompts for readers. This would provide signals for readers to stop and think about their comprehension of the material and would also benefit instructors using this textbook in classroom settings.

Interface rating: 4

The online interface for this textbook did not hinder readability or comprehension of the text. All information including photographs, charts, and diagrams appeared to be clearly depicted within this interface. To ease reading this text online authors should create a live table of contents with bookmarks to the beginning of chapters. This book does not offer such links and therefore the reader must scroll through the pdf to find each chapter or topic.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

No grammatical errors were found in reviewing this textbook.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

Cultural diversity is represented throughout this text by way of the topics described and the images selected. The authors provide various perspectives that individuals or groups from multiple cultures may resonate with including parenting styles, developmental trajectories, sexuality, approaches to feeding infants, and the social emotional development of children. This text could expand in the realm of cultural diversity by addressing current issues regarding many of the hot topics in our society. Additionally, this textbook could include other types of cultural diversity aside from geographical location (e.g., religion-based or ability-based differences).

While this text lacks some of the features I would appreciate as an instructor (e.g., study guides, review questions, prompts for critical thinking/reflection) and it does not contain an index or glossary, it would be appropriate as an accessible resource for an introduction to child development. Students could easily access this text and find reliable and easily readable information to build basic content knowledge in this domain.

Reviewed by Caroline Taylor, Instructor, Virginia Tech on 12/30/21

Each chapter is comprehensively described and organized by the period of development. Although infancy and toddlerhood are grouped together, they are logically organized and discussed within each chapter. One helpful addition that would largely... read more

Each chapter is comprehensively described and organized by the period of development. Although infancy and toddlerhood are grouped together, they are logically organized and discussed within each chapter. One helpful addition that would largely contribute to the comprehensiveness is a glossary of terms at the end of the text.

From my reading, the content is accurate and unbiased. However, it is difficult to confidently respond due to a lack of references. It is sometimes clear where the information came from, but when I followed one link to a citation the link was to another textbook. There are many citations embedded within the text, but it would be beneficial (and helpful for further reading) to have a list of references at the end of each chapter. The references used within the text are also older, so implementing updated references would also enhance accuracy. If used for a course, instructors will need to supplement the textbook readings with other materials.

This text can be implemented for many semesters to come, though as previously discussed, further readings and updated materials can be used to supplement this text. It provides a good foundation for students to read prior to lectures.

Clarity rating: 5

This text is unique in its writing style for a textbook. It is written in a way that is easily accessible to students and is also engaging. The text doesn't overly use jargon or provide complex, long-winded examples. The examples used are clear and concise. Many key terms are in bold which is helpful to the reader.

For the terms that are in bold, it would be helpful to have a definition of the term listed separately on the page within the side margins, as well as include the definition in a glossary at the end.

Each period of development is consistently described by first addressing physical development, cognitive development, and then social-emotional development.

Modularity rating: 5

This text is easily divisible to assign to students. There were few (if any) large blocks of texts without subheadings, graphs, or images. This feature not only improves modularity but also promotes engagement with the reading.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The organization of the text flows logically. I appreciate the order of the topics, which are clearly described in the first chapter by each period of development. Although infancy and toddlerhood are grouped into one period of development, development is appropriately described for both infants and toddlers. Key theories are discussed for infants and toddlers and clearly presented for the appropriate age.

Interface rating: 5

There were no significant interface issues. No images or charts were distorted.

It would be helpful to the reader if the table of contents included a navigation option, but this doesn't detract from the overall interface.

I did not see any grammatical errors.

This text includes some cultural examples across each area of development, such as differences in first words, parenting styles, personalities, and attachments styles (to list a few). The photos included throughout the text are inclusive of various family styles, races, and ethnicities. This text could implement more cultural components, but does include some cultural examples. Again, instructors can supplement more cultural examples to bolster the reading.

This text is a great introductory text for students. The text is written in a fun, approachable way for students. Though the text is not as interactive (e.g., further reading suggestions, list of references, discussion points at the end of each chapter, etc.), this is a great resource to cover development that is open access.

Reviewed by Charlotte Wilinsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Holyoke Community College on 6/29/21

This text is very thorough in its coverage of child and adolescent development. Important theories and frameworks in developmental psychology are discussed in appropriate depth. There is no glossary of terms at the end of the text, but I do not... read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

This text is very thorough in its coverage of child and adolescent development. Important theories and frameworks in developmental psychology are discussed in appropriate depth. There is no glossary of terms at the end of the text, but I do not think this really hurts its comprehensiveness.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The citations throughout the textbook help to ensure its accuracy. However, the text could benefit from additional references to recent empirical studies in the developmental field.

It seems as if updates to this textbook will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement given how well organized the text is and its numerous sections and subsections. For example, a recent narrative review was published on the effects of corporal punishment (Heilmann et al., 2021). The addition of a reference to this review, and other more recent work on spanking and other forms of corporal punishment, could serve to update the text's section on spanking (pp. 223-224; p. 418).

The text is very clear and easily understandable.

Consistency rating: 4

There do not appear to be any inconsistencies in the text. The lack of a glossary at the end of the text may be a limitation in this area, however, since glossaries can help with consistent use of language or clarify when different terms are used.

This textbook does an excellent job of dividing up and organizing its chapters. For example, chapters start with bulleted objectives and end with a bulleted conclusion section. Within each chapter, there are many headings and subheadings, making it easy for the reader to methodically read through the chapter or quickly identify a section of interest. This would also assist in assigning reading on specific topics. Additionally, the text is broken up by relevant photos, charts, graphs, and diagrams, depending on the topic being discussed.

This textbook takes a chronological approach. The broad developmental stages covered include, in order, birth and the newborn, infancy and toddlerhood, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence. Starting with the infancy and toddlerhood stage, physical, cognitive, and social emotional development are covered.

There are no interface issues with this textbook. It is easily accessible as a PDF file. Images are clear and there is no distortion apparent.

I did not notice any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

This text does a good job of including content relevant to different cultures and backgrounds. One example of this is in the "Cultural Influences on Parenting Styles" subsection (p. 222). Here the authors discuss how socioeconomic status and cultural background can affect parenting styles. Including references to specific studies could further strengthen this section, and, more broadly, additional specific examples grounded in research could help to fortify similar sections focused on cultural differences.

Overall, I think this is a terrific resource for a child and adolescent development course. It is user-friendly and comprehensive.

Reviewed by Lois Pribble, Lecturer, University of Oregon on 6/14/21

This book provides a really thorough overview of the different stages of development, key theories of child development and in-depth information about developmental domains. read more

This book provides a really thorough overview of the different stages of development, key theories of child development and in-depth information about developmental domains.

The book provides accurate information, emphasizes using data based on scientific research, and is stated in a non-biased fashion.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The book is relevant and provides up-to-date information. There are areas where updates will need to be made as research and practices change (e.g., autism information), but it is written in a way where updates should be easy to make as needed.

The book is clear and easy to read. It is well organized.

Good consistency in format and language.

It would be very easy to assign students certain chapters to read based on content such as theory, developmental stages, or developmental domains.

Very well organized.

Clear and easy to follow.

I did not find any grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

General content related to culture was infused throughout the book. The pictures used were of children and families from a variety of cultures.

This book provides a very thorough introduction to child development, emphasizing child development theories, stages of development, and developmental domains.

Reviewed by Nancy Pynchon, Adjunct Faculty, Middlesex Community College on 4/14/21

Overall this textbook is comprehensive of all aspects of children's development. It provided a brief introduction to the different relevant theorists of childhood development . read more

Overall this textbook is comprehensive of all aspects of children's development. It provided a brief introduction to the different relevant theorists of childhood development .

Content Accuracy rating: 4

Most of the information is accurately written, there is some outdated references, for example: Many adults can remember being spanked as a child. This method of discipline continues to be endorsed by the majority of parents (Smith, 2012). It seems as though there may be more current research on parent's methods of discipline as this information is 10 years old. (page 223).

The content was current with the terminology used.

Easy to follow the references made in the chapters.

Each chapter covers the different stages of development and includes the theories of each stage with guided information for each age group.

The formatting of the book makes it reader friendly and easy to follow the content.

Very consistent from chapter to chapter.

Provided a lot of charts and references within each chapter.

Formatted and written concisely.

Included several different references to diversity in the chapters.

There was no glossary at the end of the book and there were no vignettes or reflective thinking scenarios in the chapters. Overall it was a well written book on child development which covered infancy through adolescents.

Reviewed by Deborah Murphy, Full Time Instructor, Rogue Community College on 1/11/21

The text is excellent for its content and presentation. The only criticism is that neither an index nor a glossary are provided. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The text is excellent for its content and presentation. The only criticism is that neither an index nor a glossary are provided.

The material seems very accurate and current. It is well written. It is very professionally done and is accessible to students.

This text addresses topics that will serve this field in positive ways that should be able to address the needs of students and instructors for the next several years.

Complex concepts are delivered accurately and are still accessible for students . Figures and tables complement the text . Terms are explained and are embedded in the text, not in a glossary. I do think indices and glossaries are helpful tools. Terminology is highlighted with bold fonts to accentuate definitions.

Yes the text is consistent in its format. As this is a text on Child Development it consistently addresses each developmental domain and then repeats the sequence for each age group in childhood. It is very logically presented.

Yes this text is definitely divisible. This text addresses development from conception to adolescents. For the community college course that my department wants to use it is very adaptable. Our course ends at middle school age development; our courses are offered on a quarter system. This text is adaptable for the content and our term time schedule.

This text book flows very clearly from Basic principles to Conception. It then divides each stage of development into Physical, Cognitive and Social Emotional development. Those concepts and information are then repeated for each stage of development. e.g. Infants and Toddler-hood, Early Childhood, and Middle Childhood. It is very clearly presented.

It is very professionally presented. It is quite attractive in its presentation .

I saw no errors

The text appears to be aware of being diverse and inclusive both in its content and its graphics. It discusses culture and represents a variety of family structures representing contemporary society.

It is wonderfully researched. It will serve our students well. It is comprehensive and constructed very well. I have enjoyed getting familiar with this text and am looking forward to using it with my students in this upcoming term. The authors have presented a valuable, well written book that will be an addition to our field. Their scholarly efforts are very apparent. All of this text earns high grades in my evaluation. My only criticism is, as mentioned above, is that there is not a glossary or index provided. All citations are embedded in the text.

Reviewed by Ida Weldon, Adjunct Professor, Bunker Hill Community College on 6/30/20

The overall comprehensiveness was strong. However, I do think some sections should have been discussed with more depth read more

The overall comprehensiveness was strong. However, I do think some sections should have been discussed with more depth

Most of the information was accurate. However, I think more references should have been provided to support some claims made in the text.

The material appeared to be relevant. However, it did not provide guidance for teachers in addressing topics of social justice, equality that most children will ask as they try to make sense of their environment.

The information was presented (use of language) that added to its understand-ability. However, I think more discussions and examples would be helpful.

The text appeared to be consistent. The purpose and intent of the text was understandable throughout.

The text can easily be divided into smaller reading sections or restructured to meet the needs of the professor.

The organization of the text adds to its consistency. However, some sections can be included in others decreasing the length of the text.

Interface issues were not visible.

The text appears to be free of grammatical errors.

While cultural differences are mentioned, more time can be given to helping teachers understand and create a culturally and ethnically focused curriculum.

The textbook provides a comprehensive summary of curriculum planing for preschool age children. However, very few chapters address infant/toddlers.

Reviewed by Veronica Harris, Adjunct Faculty, Northern Essex Community College on 6/28/20

This text explores child development from genetics, prenatal development and birth through adolescence. The text does not contain a glossary. However, the Index is clear. The topics are sequential. The text addresses the domains of physical,... read more

This text explores child development from genetics, prenatal development and birth through adolescence. The text does not contain a glossary. However, the Index is clear. The topics are sequential. The text addresses the domains of physical, cognitive and social emotional development. It is thorough and easy to read. The theories of development are inclusive to give the reader a broader understanding on how the domains of development are intertwined. The content is comprehensive, well - researched and sequential. Each chapter begins with the learning outcomes for the upcoming material and closes with an outline of the topics covered. Furthermore, a look into the next chapter is discussed.

The content is accurate, well - researched and unbiased. An historical context is provided putting content into perspective for the student. It appears to be unbiased.

Updated and accurate research is evidenced in the text. The text is written and organized in such a way that updates can be easily implemented. The author provides theoretical approaches in the psychological domains with examples along with real - life scenarios providing meaningful references invoking understanding by the student.

The text is written with clarity and is easily understood. The topics are sequential, comprehensive and and inclusive to all students. This content is presented in a cohesive, engaging, scholarly manner. The terminology used is appropriate to students studying Developmental Psychology spanning from birth through adolescents.

The book's approach to the content is consistent and well organized. . Theoretical contexts are presented throughout the text.

The text contains subheadings chunking the reading sections which can be assigned at various points throughout the course. The content flows seamlessly from one idea to the next. Written chronologically and subdividing each age span into the domains of psychology provides clarity without overwhelming the reader.

The book begins with an overview of child development. Next, the text is divided logically into chapters which focus on each developmental age span. The domains of each age span are addressed separately in subsequent chapters. Each chapter outlines the chapter objectives and ends with an outline of the topics covered and share an idea of what is to follow.

Pages load clearly and consistently without distortion of text, charts and tables. Navigating through the pages is met with ease.

The text is written with no grammatical or spelling errors.

The text did not present with biases or insensitivity to cultural differences. Photos are inclusive of various cultures.

The thoroughness, clarity and comprehensiveness promote an approach to Developmental Psychology that stands alongside the best of texts in this area. I am confident that this text encompasses all the required elements in this area.

Reviewed by Kathryn Frazier, Assistant Professor, Worcester State University on 6/23/20

This is a highly comprehensive, chronological text that covers genetics and conception through adolescence. All major topics and developmental milestones in each age range are given adequate space and consideration. The authors take care to... read more

This is a highly comprehensive, chronological text that covers genetics and conception through adolescence. All major topics and developmental milestones in each age range are given adequate space and consideration. The authors take care to summarize debates and controversies, when relevant and include a large amount of applied / practical material. For example, beyond infant growth patterns and motor milestone, the infancy/toddler chapters spend several pages on the mechanics of car seat safety, best practices for introducing solid foods (and the rationale), and common concerns like diaper rash. In addition to being generally useful information for students who are parents, or who may go on to be parents, this text takes care to contextualize the psychological research in the lived experiences of children and their parents. This is an approach that I find highly valuable. While the text does not contain an index, the search & find capacity of OER to make an index a deal-breaker for me.

The text includes accurate information that is well-sourced. Relevant debates, controversies and historical context is also provided throughout which results in a rich, balanced text.

This text provides an excellent summary of classic and updated developmental work. While the majority of the text is skewed toward dated, classic work, some updated research is included. Instructors may wish to supplement this text with more recent work, particularly that which includes diverse samples and specifically addresses topics of class, race, gender and sexual orientation (see comment below regarding cultural aspects).

The text is written in highly accessible language, free of jargon. Of particular value are the many author-generated tables which clearly organize and display critical information. The authors have also included many excellent figures, which reinforce and visually organize the information presented.

This text is consistent in its use of terminology. Balanced discussion of multiple theoretical frameworks are included throughout, with adequate space provided to address controversies and debates.

The text is clearly organized and structured. Each chapter is self-contained. In places where the authors do refer to prior or future chapters (something that I find helps students contextualize their reading), a complete discussion of the topic is included. While this may result in repetition for students reading the text from cover to cover, the repetition of some content is not so egregious that it outweighs the benefit of a flexible, modular textbook.

Excellent, clear organization. This text closely follows the organization of published textbooks that I have used in the past for both lifespan and child development. As this text follows a chronological format, a discussion of theory and methods, and genetics and prenatal growth is followed by sections devoted to a specific age range: infancy and toddlerhood, early childhood (preschool), middle childhood and adolescence. Each age range is further split into three chapters that address each developmental domain: physical, cognitive and social emotional development.

All text appears clearly and all images, tables and figures are positioned correctly and free of distortion.

The text contains no spelling or grammatical errors.

While this text provides adequate discussion of gender and cross-cultural influences on development, it is not sufficient. This is not a problem unique to this text, and is indeed a critique I have of all developmental textbooks. In particular, in my view this text does not adequately address the role of race, class or sexual orientation on development.

All in all, this is a comprehensive and well-written textbook that very closely follows the format of standard chronologically-organized child development textbooks. This is a fantastic alternative for those standard texts, with the added benefit of language that is more accessible, and content that is skewed toward practical applications.

Reviewed by Tony Philcox, Professor, Valencia College on 6/4/20

The subject of this book is Child Growth and Development and as such covers all areas and ideas appropriate for this subject. This book has an appropriate index. The author starts out with a comprehensive overview of Child Development in the... read more

The subject of this book is Child Growth and Development and as such covers all areas and ideas appropriate for this subject. This book has an appropriate index. The author starts out with a comprehensive overview of Child Development in the Introduction. The principles of development were delineated and were thoroughly presented in a very understandable way. Nine theories were presented which gave the reader an understanding of the many authors who have contributed to Child Development. A good backdrop to start a conversation. This book discusses the early beginnings starting with Conception, Hereditary and Prenatal stages which provides a foundation for the future developmental stages such as infancy, toddler, early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence. The three domains of developmental psychology – physical, cognitive and social emotional are entertained with each stage of development. This book is thoroughly researched and is written in a way to not overwhelm. Language is concise and easily understood.

This book is a very comprehensive and detailed account of Child Growth and Development. The author leaves no stone unturned. It has the essential elements addressed in each of the developmental stages. Thoroughly researched and well thought out. The content covered was accurate, error-free and unbiased.

The content is very relevant to the subject of Child Growth and Development. It is comprehensive and thoroughly researched. The author has included a number of relevant subjects that highlight the three domains of developmental psychology, physical, cognitive and social emotional. Topics are included that help the student see the relevancy of the theories being discussed. Any necessary updates along the way will be very easy and straightforward to insert.

The text is easily understood. From the very beginning of this book, the author has given the reader a very clear message that does not overwhelm but pulls the reader in for more information. The very first chapter sets a tone for what is to come and entices the reader to learn more. Well organized and jargon appropriate for students in a Developmental Psychology class.

This book has all the ingredients necessary to address Child Growth and Development. Even at the very beginning of the book the backdrop is set for future discussions on the stages of development. Theorists are mentioned and embellished throughout the book. A very consistent and organized approach.

This book has all the features you would want. There are textbooks that try to cover too much in one chapter. In this book the sections are clearly identified and divided into smaller and digestible parts so the reader can easily comprehend the topic under discussion. This book easily flows from one subject to the next. Blocks of information are being built, one brick on top of another as you move through the domains of development and the stages of development.

This book starts out with a comprehensive overview in the introduction to child development. From that point forward it is organized into the various stages of development and flows well. As mentioned previously the information is organized into building blocks as you move from one stage to the next.

The text does not contain any significant interface issued. There are no navigation problems. There is nothing that was detected that would distract or confuse the reader.

There are no grammatical errors that were identified.

This book was not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way.

This book is clearly a very comprehensive approach to Child Growth and Development. It contains all the essential ingredients that you would expect in a discussion on this subject. At the very outset this book went into detail on the principles of development and included all relevant theories. I was never left with wondering why certain topics were left out. This is undoubtedly a well written, organized and systematic approach to the subject.

Reviewed by Eleni Makris, Associate Professor, Northeastern Illinois University on 5/6/20

This book is organized by developmental stages (infancy, toddler, early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence). The book begins with an overview of conception and prenatal human development. An entire chapter is devoted to birth and... read more

This book is organized by developmental stages (infancy, toddler, early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence). The book begins with an overview of conception and prenatal human development. An entire chapter is devoted to birth and expectations of newborns. In addition, there is a consistency to each developmental stage. For infancy, early childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, the textbook covers physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development for each stage. While some textbooks devote entire chapters to themes such as physical development, cognitive development, and social emotional development and write about how children change developmentally in each stage this book focuses on human stages of development. The book is written in clear language and is easy to understand.

There is so much information in this book that it is a very good overview of child development. The content is error-free and unbiased. In some spots it briefly introduces multicultural traditions, beliefs, and attitudes. It is accurate for the citations that have been provided. However, it could benefit from updating to research that has been done recently. I believe that if the instructor supplements this text with current peer-reviewed research and organizations that are implementing what the book explains, this book will serve as a strong source of information.

While the book covers a very broad range of topics, many times the citations have not been updated and are often times dated. The content and information that is provided is correct and accurate, but this text can certainly benefit from having the latest research added. It does, however, include a great many topics that serve to inform students well.

The text is very easy to understand. It is written in a way that first and second year college students will find easy to understand. It also introduces students to current child and adolescent behavior that is important to be understood on an academic level. It does this in a comprehensive and clear manner.

This book is very consistent. The chapters are arranged by developmental stage. Even within each chapter there is a consistency of theorists. For example, each chapter begins with Piaget, then moves to Vygotsky, etc. This allows for great consistency among chapters. If I as the instructor decide to have students write about Piaget and his development theories throughout the life span, students will easily know that they can find this information in the first few pages of each chapter.

Certainly instructors will find the modularity of this book easy. Within each chapter the topics are self-contained and extensive. As I read the textbook, I envisioned myself perhaps not assigning entire chapters but assigning specific topics/modules and pages that students can read. I believe the modules can be used as a strong foundational reading to introduce students to concepts and then have students read supplemental information from primary sources or journals to reinforce what they have read in the chapter.

The organization of the book is clear and flows nicely. From the table of context students understand how the book is organized. The textbook would be even stronger if there was a more detailed table of context which highlights what topics are covered within each of the chapter. There is so much information contained within each chapter that it would be very beneficial to both students and instructor to quickly see what content and topics are covered in each chapter.

The interface is fine and works well.

The text is free from grammatical errors.

While the textbook does introduce some multicultural differences and similarities, it does not delve deeply into multiracial and multiethnic issues within America. It also offers very little comment on differences that occur among urban, rural, and suburban experiences. In addition, while it does talk about maturation and sexuality, LGBTQ issues could be more prominent.

Overall I enjoyed this text and will strongly consider using it in my course. The focus is clearly on human development and has very little emphasis on education. However, I intend to supplement this text with additional readings and videos that will show concrete examples of the concepts which are introduced in the text. It is a strong and worthy alternative to high-priced textbooks.

Reviewed by Mohsin Ahmed Shaikh, Assistant Professor, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania on 9/5/19

The content extensively discusses various aspects of emotional, cognitive, physical and social development. Examples and case studies are really informative. Some of the areas that can be elaborated more are speech-language and hearing... read more

The content extensively discusses various aspects of emotional, cognitive, physical and social development. Examples and case studies are really informative. Some of the areas that can be elaborated more are speech-language and hearing development. Because these components contribute significantly in development of communication abilities and self-image.

Content covered is pretty accurate. I think the details impressive.

The content is relevant and is based on the established knowledge of the field.

Easy to read and follow.

The terminology used is consistent and appropriate.

I think of using various sections of this book in some of undergraduate and graduate classes.

The flow of the book is logical and easy to follow.

There are no interface issues. Images, charts and diagram are clear and easy to understand.

Well written

The text appropriate and do not use any culturally insensitive language.

I really like that this is a book with really good information which is available in open text book library.

Table of Contents

• Chapter 1: Introduction to Child Development
• Chapter 2: Conception, Heredity, & Prenatal Development
• Chapter 3: Birth and the Newborn
• Chapter 4: Physical Development in Infancy & Toddlerhood
• Chapter 5: Cognitive Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
• Chapter 6: Social and Emotional Development in Infancy and Toddlerhood
• Chapter 7: Physical Development in Early Childhood
• Chapter 8: Cognitive Development in Early Childhood
• Chapter 9: Social Emotional Development in Early Childhood
• Chapter 10: Middle Childhood - Physical Development
• Chapter 11: Middle Childhood – Cognitive Development
• Chapter 12: Middle Childhood - Social Emotional Development
• Chapter 13: Adolescence – Physical Development
• Chapter 14: Adolescence – Cognitive Development
• Chapter 15: Adolescence – Social Emotional Development

Ancillary Material

About the book.

Welcome to Child Growth and Development. This text is a presentation of how and why children grow, develop, and learn. We will look at how we change physically over time from conception through adolescence. We examine cognitive change, or how our ability to think and remember changes over the first 20 years or so of life. And we will look at how our emotions, psychological state, and social relationships change throughout childhood and adolescence.

About the Contributors

Contribute to this page.

Children and Families Policy Research Unit

NIHR Children and Families Policy Research Unit

Case Study: Adolescence

Helping young people say 'no': the prevalence of risk-taking behaviour and what works to reduce it.

How many adolescents smoke, drink and take drugs and what kind of interventions work best to stop them?

Adolescent years are a notoriously challenging time, as children go through the biggest changes since their first year of life. It's this life stage that presents the greatest risk to future health, with damaging habits most often picked up between the ages of 11 and 19.

Research under the adolescent theme has examined the trends in health risk behaviours and reviewed interventions designed to prevent them, in order to inform UK health policy for this susceptible group.

Key Points:

• Two studies looked at trends in risky behaviours in adolescents and interventions designed to prevent them
• Smoking, drinking and drug use have individually declined, but a core of young people remain who engage in all three
• School-based interventions designed to empower young people to say 'no' have proved most effective at reducing multiple harmful behaviours

This case study is for the  Adolescence  theme.

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• Helping young people say no
• Cutting the risk
• Mental health in children
• Type 2 diabetes in children
• Family finances and disability
• Stories from data and young people
• Growing up happy in England

Our Case Studies

We have complied a series of publications and case studies to illustrate the type of projects we work on and how we support child health policy-making in England

• The Healthy Child
• Healthcare provision
• Mental health
• Adolescence
• Long-term conditions
• Sociology of health and illness:
• Health economics
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Research on Adolescence in the Twenty-First Century

Robert crosnoe.

1 Department of Sociology and Population Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson

2 Department of Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4020

Recent methodological advances have allowed empirical research on adolescence to do better justice to theoretical models. Organized by a life course framework, this review covers the state of contemporary research on adolescents' physical, psychological, interpersonal, and institutional pathways; how these pathways connect within primary ecological contexts; and how they relate to broader patterns of societal stratification and historical change. Looking forward, it also emphasizes three future challenges/opportunities, including efforts to illuminate biosocial processes, link adolescence to other life stages, and account for the influence of major social changes (e.g., the new media).

Introduction

First coined by Hall (1904) only a century ago, adolescence was “created” by the convergence of multiple trends, including labor and schooling laws, that extended dependency beyond childhood and delayed entry into adult roles ( Modell & Goodman 1990 ). Adolescence as a period of dependency and preparation for adulthood has since been reinforced through more recent social changes, including economic restructuring and changing cultural norms about parenting ( Goldin & Katz 2008 , Settersten et al. 2005 ). Research on adolescence has also changed dramatically. This review discusses recent developments in this literature, being cognizant of their historical underpinnings while focusing on the future. Given our background in the life course tradition, as well as the inherent importance of transitions, trajectories, and context to understanding this life stage, we use a life course framework to organize our review. Owing to space constraints, we focus primarily on American adolescents.

In his 1989 review, Dornbusch wrote that research on adolescence was turning from psychologists studying “individual adolescents carrying out their developmental tasks” (p. 233) to contextual approaches emphasizing transactions between adolescents and their environments. This trend has since intensified, reflecting refinements of theoretical models, including human ecology ( Bronfenbrenner & Morris 1998 ) and the life course paradigm ( Elder 1998 ). A central imagery of the latter, our focus here, is of lives as a tapestry of three threads—developmental trajectories (physical and psychological growth), social pathways (sequences of institutional roles and activities), and social convoys (continuity and change in interpersonal relations)—situated in settings of daily life, larger structures of society, and the broader sweep of history.

Unfortunately, studying this dynamic, multilayered model of adolescence has taxed methodological and data resources ( Elder & Giele 2009 ). Recently, however, data sets on children have aged into adolescence (e.g., Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth), and data sets on adolescents have aged into adulthood (e.g., National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, or Add Health). Data sets are also integrating biological, behavioral, and setting data. At the same time, significant advances in longitudinal and multilevel modeling have allowed researchers to capture individual and population trajectories and to identify person-context effects ( Bollen & Curran 2006 , Bryk et al. 2002 ). Of note is that qualitative and mixed methods research projects are also increasingly emphasizing context, longitudinal change, and the multiple strands of adolescent development ( Giordano et al. 2006 ).

In other words, sociologists are making progress on a more holistic understanding of adolescents in society. In reviewing this progress, we focus on each of the three main strands of the adolescent life course before turning to the ways in which their interweaving is embedded in ecological contexts and both reflects and contributes to population-level inequalities.

Three Threads in the Life Course Tapestry

Exhaustively reviewing recent research on the three main strands of the life course is impossible. As just one example, the United States has a high teen pregnancy rate that contributes to the overall rate of nonmarital fertility, and early parenthood relates to past and future socioeconomic disadvantages in complex ways ( Mollborn 2007 ). As a result, this topic could fill an entire review article, and in fact has ( Furstenberg 2003 ). Also regrettably left out are issues such as disordered eating and bullying. Consequently, this review should be viewed as an effort to put forward a limited set of illustrative examples of new ways to think about old issues.

Developmental Trajectories

Adolescence is a period of rapid change. This change is dramatically crystallized in the flood of hormonal activity and rapid physiological development that constitutes puberty ( Susman et al. 2003 ). Great psychological and emotional change also occurs during adolescence. In the years following puberty, adolescents are faced with the task of establishing their own identity separate from their parents, which may be stressful ( Kroger 2007 ). At the same time, rates of risky behavior (e.g., substance use, delinquency, sexual activity) also rise markedly, especially among boys ( Bachman et al. 2002 ). A hallmark of adolescence is that maturation can occur at different velocities in different domains of development, so that youth may look or feel like adults in some ways but not in others.

Beginning with puberty, a great deal of attention has been focused on pubertal timing, following earlier work outside the United States ( Stättin & Magnusson 1990 ). Primarily among girls, going through puberty earlier than the norm is associated with a host of adjustment problems, including risky sex and delinquency. Sociologists have elucidated many mechanisms underlying these patterns, which are not entirely hormonal or biological in nature. One concerns premature self- and other-perceptions of early maturers, especially girls, as adults. In other words, they are adult-like physically and, as a result, may engage in actions or put themselves in situations that are ahead of their emotional or cognitive capacities ( Cavanagh 2004 , Haynie 2003 ). Another mechanism is increased distress related to growing size in the context of strict norms about female body weight ( Ge et al. 2001 ). These socioemotional difficulties in early adolescence can then disrupt academic functioning ( Cavanagh et al. 2007 ). Pubertal timing, therefore, represents an intersection of biological, emotional, social, and institutional processes.

Turning to mental health, adolescence marks the emergence of gender differences in depression—with girls higher than boys—that persist for decades ( Hankin et al. 2007 ). Efforts to explain this trend have focused primarily on social psychological phenomena, including gender differences in self-concept, management of daily stressors, experiences of puberty, and the rigidity and enforcement of societal standards of appearance and behavior ( Martin 1996 , Rosenfield et al. 2000 ). A particularly insightful sociological approach to adolescent depression, regardless of gender, concerns how it is interpreted by others. For example, depression can be strongly stigmatized in social groups when it is perceived as mental illness as opposed to a health problem, leading depressed youth to be isolated from others just when they need more support ( Martin et al. 2007 ). Indeed, social responses to adolescent distress influence whether it can have long-term effects on other areas of life, including education ( McLeod & Fettes 2007 ). Thus, socialized perspectives on depression and other psychological constructs reveal insight into the complex dance between self and other that characterizes adolescence.

Identity development is another psychological process that has been studied from a variety of angles. The consensus is that it is a highly social process, with young people slowly integrating the different pieces of themselves that they come to understand through social interactions into a cohesive sense of who they are and where they fit in the world ( Kroger 2007 ). In the past two decades, considerable research has centered on the development of group-based identities. For example, racial identity taps into the significance and meaning attached to race within individuals' overall senses of self. According to work by Sellers and associates (1998) on African American youth, racial identity has four dimensions: ( a ) salience (how much race is part of one's self-concept), ( b ) centrality (whether one defines him or herself through race), ( c ) regard (the degree of positive or negative feelings about one's race), and ( d ) ideology (beliefs about how someone of a certain race should act). Across minority groups, these dimensions tend to increase as adolescence unfolds and are strongly related to mental health ( Mandara et al. 2009 , Umaña-Taylor et al. 2009 ). For the most part, the benefits of racial identity are strongest when minority adolescents have reached the achieved stage of identity development, meaning that they have committed to a particular identity after exploring what it means and what alternative identities might be possible ( Seaton et al. 2006 ). Similar research has been done on sexual identity, tracing the gradual process by which adolescents come to see themselves as homosexual and the role that this process plays in healthy development ( Russell & Sigler-Andrews 2003 ).

As for risky behavior, understanding why adolescents become more reckless even as they develop critical thinking skills has long been a major activity of adolescence researchers. One explanation is that adolescence is a time of heightened sensitivity to social influences and greater propensity toward emotional stimulation. These developmental changes have traditionally been viewed as by-products of identity development, but recent neurological research is shedding new light on this phenomenon ( Dahl & Spear 2004 ). Specifically, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies suggest that increased risky behavior during adolescence reflects different rates of growth in the brain's socioemotional and cognitive control systems. After puberty, dopamine receptors increase rapidly in regions that control sensation-seeking, which encourages behaviors that bring some emotional or sensory reward ( Steinberg 2008 ). Peer approval is one such reward, and ample evidence indicates that engaging in some level of dangerous behavior can elicit peer esteem and popularity ( Allen et al. 2005 , Kreager & Staff 2009 ). Importantly, structural changes of equivalent magnitude do not occur in the prefrontal cortex, which controls cognition, until adolescents approach young adulthood. That enhanced self-regulation skills tend to come after the increased propensity toward sensation-seeking helps to explain the increase in risky behavior that characterizes the years between the end of childhood and the start of adulthood ( Dahl & Spear 2004 , Steinberg 2008 ). Clearly, other factors are also at work, including changing cultural norms about permissible behavior and increasing opportunities for engaging in certain behaviors, but neurological development is certainly a piece of the puzzle.

As is evident even from this very selective discussion, adolescent development crosses many different psychological, physiological, cognitive, and behavioral domains. As a result, understanding one domain often requires consideration of others.

Social Pathways

Beyond the family, two key institutions structure the social pathways of adolescence. Beginning with schools, sociologists have traditionally studied the organization of high schools via academic tracks (e.g., vocational, college preparatory). As formal tracking has been largely dismantled ( Lucas 2001 ), new organizational schemas have been identified, including patterns of course-taking, critical courses (e.g., advanced math), and course trajectories ( Gamoran & Hannigan 2000 , McFarland 2006 , Riegle-Crumb 2006 ). Math is a clear example, as it is highly structured and strongly predicts educational and occupational attainment ( Adelman 2006 , Frank et al. 2008 , Riegle-Crumb 2006 ). Case studies have yielded new insights on the implications of curricular structure. McFarland (2006) , for example, examined student flow across math courses in two high schools, one characterized by five math trajectories with fewer lower-ability courses over time, and the other with a branching tree structure in which students move from a single trunk into four eventual trajectories of increasing differentiation. In each structure, specific courses represent critical junctions between trajectories and in math persistence altogether.

Thus, students' school pathways are far more complex than the traditional view of tracking suggests. Studying these pathways also reveals new insights into gender differences in education. Girls have been surpassing boys in most academic domains in secondary and postsecondary education for some time, especially among African Americans. Research on coursework trajectories suggests that girls have now also closed the gap with boys in math and science in terms of the course credits they accrue in high school. However, despite their advantage in college enrollment and graduation ( Buchman & DiPrete 2006 ), they remain underrepresented in these curricula in college ( Riegle-Crumb 2006 ).

Studies in the past decade have also emphasized the changing role of higher education in adolescents' lives. Expectations to earn four-year and graduate degrees have risen dramatically, faster than actual attainment ( Jacob & Wilder 2010 , Reynolds et al. 2006 ). In line with a “college for all” norm ( Rosenbaum 2001 ), expectations to complete college have become less tied to social class and previous achievement ( Goyette 2008 , Reynolds et al. 2006 , Schneider & Stevenson 1999 ). More than 80% of high school seniors in 2008 reported that they would probably or definitely earn a four-year college degree ( Bachman et al. 2009 ). Some of the least educationally ambitious students may have dropped out of school before senior year and, therefore, would be absent from such statistics, but educational expectations are actually even higher when measured at eighth or tenth grade instead ( Goyette 2008 , Jacob & Wilder 2010 ). The rise in expectations to earn a college degree has been even steeper among girls, who now expect BAs at higher rates than boys, with little difference within gender between blacks and whites ( Jacob & Wilder 2010 ).

Commonly cited explanations for rising educational expectations include ( a ) an increase in the earnings payoff to college (versus high school) graduation; ( b ) expanding higher education options, including online degrees and community colleges; and ( c ) trends in the educational attainment of parents ( Berg 2007 , Goldin & Katz 2008 , Goyette 2008 , Schneider & Stevenson 1999 ). Regarding the latter, the relative risk aversion thesis suggests that adolescents strive for at least as much education as their parents have. As parents' average education levels rise across cohorts, therefore, so do adolescents' educational expectations ( Breen & Goldthorpe 1997 ).

Paid work is another institution shaping adolescence, with nearly all high school students employed during the school year at some point while in high school ( Apel et al. 2007 , Mortimer 2003 , National Research Council 1998 ). Building on foundational studies from the 1980s and 1990s, recent research has elucidated the mix of risks and benefits of paid work for adolescents. Although adolescent work often starts earlier, most studies focus on high school, when employment is more likely to occur in the formal sector and for longer hours. Moreover, school-year employment continues to garner the most attention, despite higher rates of summer employment ( Mortimer 2003 , Perreira et al. 2007 ). These foci reflect concerns about potentially competing demands of school and employment, key institutions that structure the social pathways of adolescence. The question is whether (or under what conditions) employment facilitates educational attainment and builds human capital useful later in the labor market or whether employment, especially working 20 h or more per week, can distract from academic pursuits and foster various problem behaviors, including delinquency and substance use ( Lee & Staff 2007 , McMorris & Uggen 2000 , Mortimer 2003 , Paternoster et al. 2003 ).

In the past two decades, a major activity has been in understanding the variable meaning and consequence of paid work in adolescence. For example, the outcomes linked to work hours depend on the goal of working, including saving for college and supporting the self or family ( Marsh 1991 , Newman 1996 ). Recent evidence indicates that work can promote educational attainment among those with low academic promise ( Staff & Mortimer 2007 ) and among poor and/or minority students ( Entwisle et al. 2005 ). For example, teenagers in Newman's (1999) ethnography of fast food workers often rejected the delinquency of peers in choosing to work, and their jobs brought them coworkers and supervisors that supported and rewarded their educational pursuits. Along these same lines, Lee & Staff (2007) compared adolescents who work intensively and those who do not do so but who share similar preexisting background characteristics. They found no effect on dropout among adolescents with backgrounds indicative of a high propensity to work intensively. These students tended to be from socioeconomically disadvantaged families and have weaker school performance. Additional studies indicate that the association between intensive employment and substance use is largely limited to whites ( Johnson 2004 ) and that intensive employment can actually help curb substance use and delinquency for adolescents with earlier histories of these problem behaviors ( Apel et al. 2007 ).

More effort also has been devoted to promoting causal inference in research on adolescent employment. Both spuriousness and bidirectionality are concerns in studies of work hour effects on adolescent behavior. Longitudinal studies adjusting for known covariates, including lagged measures of the outcome, often indicate that that preexisting differences account for many observed effects ( Schoenhals et al. 1998 , Warren et al. 2000 ). Links to substance use and some academic outcomes, however, persist ( McMorris & Uggen 2000 , Mortimer & Johnson 1998 , Paternoster et al. 2003 , Schoenhals et al. 1998 ). Other techniques, such as fixed and random effects models and propensity score matching, have revealed no evidence of work hour effects on adolescent behavior or effects only on adolescents with low or moderate propensities to work ( Lee & Staff 2007 , Paternoster et al. 2003 ), but they have been applied to a limited set of behavioral dimensions to date.

Thus, research is moving toward a clearer picture of how developmental, educational, human capital, and behavioral outcomes are linked to employment in adolescence. The same can be said of studies on other social pathways of adolescents (e.g., academic pathways).

Social Convoys

Adolescence is a time of both quantitative and qualitative change in the matrix of social relationships. In particular, the push and pull between parents and peers has been a dominant theme of research on adolescence for years.

Over time, the normative break with parents in adolescence has been reconceptualized as a renegotiation of parent and child roles, not disengagement. In other words, adolescents may spend less time with, and seek more autonomy from, parents, but they typically do so in the context of stable strong connections and parental influence ( Larson et al. 1996 ). Similar trends extend to other family relationships (e.g., with siblings and grandparents), which may loosen more in terms of shared time than in emotional bonds ( Crouter et al. 2004 , King et al. 2003 ).

The idea of parent-adolescent renegotiation has led to new ways of thinking about oft-studied issues. One of the best examples concerns parental monitoring. The general consensus has long been that adolescents engage in fewer problem behaviors when their parents keep close track of what they do and with whom they associate, in part because monitoring constrains opportunities to engage in such behaviors and in part because it helps to develop adolescent self-control ( Browning et al. 2005 , Hay 2006 ). Yet, Stättin & Kerr (2000) have argued that the most common indicator of parental monitoring—parental knowledge about adolescents' activities and peers—may be an effect of adolescent behavior more than a cause. In other words, well-behaved adolescents share their lives with their parents, creating the appearance of monitoring being behaviorally protective. More likely, this link is reciprocal—monitoring promoting prosocial behavior that, in turn, increases parent-adolescent relationship quality, adolescents' openness to parental monitoring, and adolescents' willingness to self-disclose to parents ( Fletcher et al. 2004 , Yau et al. 2009 ). This debate has driven home the need to think of adolescents' developmental trajectories and social convoys as intertwined over time.

Along these same lines, adolescents are increasingly viewed as eliciting parenting, not just being shaped by it. For example, changes in U.S. antipoverty policy that emphasize the role of fathers have brought attention to nonresident fathers ( Furstenberg 2007 ). Although the assumption is that having involved fathers is good for adolescents, this link partially reflects the tendency for nonresident fathers to be more involved in the lives of well-adjusted adolescents ( Hawkins et al. 2007 ). As another example, the normative increase in parent-child conflict during adolescence is less pronounced for second- or later-born children, as parents learn what to expect from their first-born children ( Shanahan et al. 2007 ). Another line of research that views both sides of the parent-adolescent relationship concerns the degree to which the characteristics and behaviors of parents and adolescents are aligned. Consider that religious mismatches within the family (e.g., religious mother and nonreligious adolescent, or vice versa) appear to engender adolescent problem behavior ( Pearce & Haynie 2004 ). Approaching parent-adolescent relationships as evolving, two-sided, and mutually influential, therefore, is crucial.

Of course, peers continue to be a primary focus of research on adolescence. Much of this research concerns how friends influence each other and how adolescents select into different kinds of friendships, but more attention is now being paid to the larger peer groupings in which these friendships are embedded. For example, boys are at greater risk for emotional distress when they are members of networks that are large and cohesive, but girls are at greater risk in networks that are large and noncohesive. This gendered pattern reflects differences in the interpersonal styles of girls and boys ( Falci & McNeely 2009 ). As another example, friendships tend to have greater influence on adolescent delinquency when they are embedded in dense networks ( Haynie 2001 ). Many social and institutional settings, such as schools and neighborhoods, can also be thought of as peer contexts, in that they organize the friendship market and serve as a center of youth culture ( Harding 2009 ). Peer relations and dynamics within such contexts may be better characterized by qualitative groupings of youth (e.g., crowds) as opposed to quantitatively measurable collectives (e.g., networks). Indeed, many meaningful peer groups are fluid but matter because they provide common identity and serve as the practical universe of potential friends ( Akerlof & Kranton 2002 , Brown & Klute 2003 ). Barber and associates (2001) , for example, used the archetypal characters from the movie The Breakfast Club (e.g., the jock, the rebel, the princess) as a way of organizing data collection on such peer crowds. Importantly, interpersonal processes that occur within larger bands of peers seem to do as much, if not more, to predict the positive and negative mental health and educational outcomes of adolescents than intimate friendships, especially in the long term.

Historically, scholars studied another key peer relation—romantic relationships—in terms of major developmental tasks (e.g., preparation for adult relationships), leading to a focus on their benefits ( Shulman & Collins 1998 ). Later, risks took the spotlight, including links of girls' dating with depression, stress, and abuse, and more attention was paid to the consequences of stricter norms about appropriate dating (and sexual) behavior for girls ( Hagan & Foster 2001 , Joyner & Udry 2000 , Kreager & Staff 2009 ). Increasingly, however, scholars have recognized that adolescent romance may be developmentally positive or negative depending on the characteristics of the partners, the quality of the relationship, and the context in which it occurs. For example, romantic relationships may foster early sexual activity but also reduce the psychological strain of sex and increase contraceptive use. They may be especially important as buffers against the potential harm of weak bonds with parents or as a stand-ins for close friends ( Giordano et al. 2006 , Manlove et al. 2007 , McCarthy & Casey 2008 ). Importantly, although boys were long thought to be less oriented to and affected by romance, emerging evidence suggests that boys may have equally strong ties to their partners as girls and be more influenced by them. Along with their lower confidence in their romantic skills, these qualities might leave boys vulnerable emotionally to the vicissitudes of adolescent romance ( Giordano et al. 2006 ).

An emerging task is to add a wider variety of extrafamilial and other familial relationships to this traditional focus on parents and peers. Taking such a holistic view of overlapping relationships as they evolve is the best way to capture the concept of social convoys.

The Social Embeddedness of Adolescence

As alluded to throughout the prior discussion, the three main strands of the life course play out—and come together—within social contexts, ranging from small primary and secondary groups (e.g., families) to larger societal institutions (e.g., schools) to macro-level social structures, such as stratification systems based on gender, race, and class. Here, we highlight some recent explorations of this social embeddedness of adolescence.

The Ecological Contexts of Adolescence

Because adolescents have limited mobility, neighborhoods can powerfully structure their lives physically and socially. As a result, studies of neighborhood effects have proliferated in recent years, aided by neighborhood data in specific locales (e.g., Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, L.A. Family and Neighborhood Survey), on the national level (e.g., Add Health), and through demonstration projects moving low-income families to new communities (e.g., the Moving to Opportunity, or MTO, experiment), as well as by qualitative studies of neighborhoods and communities. Most of these studies focus on neighborhood disadvantage and adolescent risk-taking ( Bellair & Roscigno 2000 , Browning et al. 2005 , Dance 2002 , Harding 2003 , Kling et al. 2007 ).

Motivating much of this research is Wilson's (1996) perspective on spatially concentrated disadvantage, which is thought to disrupt networks of social capital that socialize and supervise youth and to hinder the effectiveness of local institutions (e.g., schools, churches) and informal networks in providing social control. Contemporary scholars have sought to identify the mechanisms involved in these processes. For example, Browning and associates (2005) reported that adolescents in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty experienced sexual onset earlier than others but that higher neighborhood collective efficacy delayed sexual onset, at least among adolescents experiencing lower levels of parental monitoring. These findings suggest conditional effects between neighborhood conditions and family functioning, appearing to contradict prior studies downplaying the possibility of multiplicative contextual influences ( Cook et al. 2002 ). Importantly, studies such as another by Browning and associates (2008) raise the issue of rates of risky sex in turn affecting the concentration of STD risk in neighborhoods, with individuals shaping context. Such micro-to-macro examples are rare but need more attention.

As in all examinations of contextual effects, causality has been a concern in neighborhood research. Browning and associates (2005) have argued that findings varying by level of neighborhood exposure suggest true effects. In line with this argument, Harding (2003) reported that neighborhood poverty effects on adolescents persisted when propensity score matching was employed. He also noted that controlling for individual-level factors may obscure real neighborhood effects if they are affected by neighborhood features themselves, a point echoed by Chuang and associates (2005) in arguing that parents may adjust their parenting based on neighborhood conditions. Indeed, instead of isolating neighborhood effects by controlling individual, economic, and family factors, Bellair & Roscigno (2000) have advocated for viewing labor market opportunities as preceding neighborhood disadvantage, family income, and adolescent attachments, all of which affect adolescent behavior. In other words, instead of controlling for family income, family structure, and adolescents' attachments to family, school, and peers to evaluate the link between local labor market conditions and delinquency, they map the effects of local labor market conditions on delinquency through its effects on family income and structure and adolescents' attachments.

With an experimental design, MTO revealed compelling findings about the implications of switching from low-income to middle-income neighborhoods for adolescents. Interestingly, the benefits of such moves were limited to girls, including improvements in mental health and decreases in delinquency. The qualitative components of the experiment suggested several mechanisms underlying these gendered effects, including girls' greater freedom from sexual fears, boys' (especially minority boys') greater difficulty integrating into new peer networks, and boys' continued strong ties to peers from their former communities ( Clampet-Lundquist et al. 2006 , Kling et al. 2007 ). Outside MTO, other qualitative studies of minority youth have detailed the gendered dilemma of youth adaptation to neighborhood disadvantage, especially crime. Girls must live up to feminized social expectations of them while trying to survive often violent conditions, and boys must develop fearsome personae that protect them on the streets but may disadvantage them in other contexts ( Dance 2002 , Jones 2010 ).

Another major ecological setting of adolescence is the school, where young people spend a large proportion of their waking hours. Scholars continue to decipher the effects of the organizational structure of schools (e.g., size, sector, and racial and socioeconomic composition) on student outcomes (see Arum 2000 for a recent review). Yet, the past decade has witnessed considerably more interest in the normative and social climate of schools, as captured by the rates of behaviors and social characteristics in the student body as a whole. These aggregated aspects of the student body tap into the value systems and opportunity structures to which adolescents are exposed on a daily basis, socializing them as well as affecting their ability to act on or against their own proclivities ( Crosnoe 2011 ). For example, adolescents attending schools in which a high proportion of their fellow students come from single-parent homes transition to first sex earlier than others, as this feature of the student body indicates reduced parental supervision of adolescents and their peers and also speaks to normative understandings of sexual relationships and families among students ( Harris et al. 2002 ). As another example, the average body size of students in a school sets the standard of comparison for adolescents' self-evaluations, affecting whether their own body size has implications for their socioemotional functioning ( Crosnoe 2011 ). As a final example, behavioral patterns in the student body as a whole can constrain or strengthen close friends' similarities on substance use ( Cleveland & Wiebe 2003 ). The peer culture of the school, therefore, provides opportunities that condition selection and socialization processes. Importantly, schools do not just expose students to a student body, they also organize peer subsets within the student body through activity and curricular offerings. Consider that the aforementioned Breakfast Club groups ( Barber et al. 2001 ) often arise from extracurricular activities. Moreover, Frank and associates (2008) used school transcripts to identify adolescents sharing the same social and academic space in school, peer groups that were significantly related to student outcomes.

As for the connection between neighborhoods and schools, ethnographic work has been especially insightful. For example, several studies have illuminated the unique challenges faced by working class and low-income African American youth, especially boys, as they simultaneously navigate their neighborhoods and their schools with very different sets of racialized expectations for youth. For such boys, the tough and seemingly defiant posture that they develop among peers in their neighborhoods is often misconstrued and viewed negatively by the middle-class personnel in their schools, leading to academic marginalization and fueling pernicious ideas about the oppositional culture of minority youth ( Dance 2002 , Carter 2006 ).

The point of this neighborhood and school research is that ecological settings create social networks and contexts in which the powerful peer and family processes of adolescence operate. Thus, going beyond structural dimensions of such settings to capture social processes is important.

Adolescence and Social Stratification

The adolescent population is quite diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, social class, and other markers of social location. Especially among sociologists, such diversity has motivated a great deal of research concerning the ways that adolescents' experiences are both a product of and contributor to major systems of social stratification ( Morgan 2005 ).

In part because adolescence is a relatively healthy period in the life course, major health disparities are less common and consistent during this stage compared with others ( Crockett & Peterson 1993 ). Indeed, adolescents from historically disadvantaged minority groups often are similar to or lower than whites in rates of many risky health behaviors, such as drinking ( Harris et al. 2006 ). Yet, the recent rise in obesity has also been problematic from a long-term health perspective, particularly for African American and Latino/a youth ( Ogden et al. 2010 ). Thus, adolescence may play a positive and negative role in race/ethnic disparities across the life course.

On a structural level, school segregation continues to be an issue of great interest ( Rothstein 2004 ). Studies of school composition suggest that racial desegregation has academic benefits for both white and non-white students by exposing them to different ways of thinking and by leading to greater equity in school resources. Yet, students may also feel lowered senses of belonging and perceive more discrimination in diverse schools ( Goldsmith 2004 , Johnson et al. 2001 , Rumberger & Palardy 2005 ). Progress in school desegregation has also often come with increased within-school segregation ( Mickelson 2001 ). Recently, Parents Involved , in which the Supreme Court curtailed use of race in school assignment, has shifted attention from race to socioeconomic status. Efforts to socioeconomically desegregate schools, however, also demonstrate a mixture of benefits and risks, with research suggesting that academic gains might be accompanied by psychosocial problems and that socioeconomically integrating schools would not alter levels of racial segregation ( Crosnoe 2009 , Reardon et al. 2006 ).

On an interpersonal level, Ogbu's (1997) oppositional culture thesis—which, among other things, argues that African American and Latino/a peers de-emphasize achievement and equate it with acting white—has continued to generate debate. Quantitative examinations have provided little evidence of this phenomenon ( Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey 1998 , Harris 2006 ). Mixed methods examinations have suggested that it does occur occasionally but with some important caveats: ( a ) It is rooted in schools' long-term misunderstanding of minority group culture, and ( b ) it is not racialized but instead happens in youth culture more generally, in ways that are manifested differently by race and class ( Carter 2006 , Tyson et al. 2005 ). In total, research on oppositional culture has probably done less to unpack race/ethnic achievement gaps than it has to illuminate the nexus of youth culture and schooling.

For the most part, research on socioeconomic disparities has continued to focus on socioeconomic disadvantage (e.g., poverty), especially after the contentious public debate about welfare reform ( Gennetian et al. 2008 ). Much of this research suggests that poverty is clearly detrimental to adolescents but perhaps less so than it is for children ( Duncan et al. 1998 ). At the same time, the past decade has also witnessed significant advances in our understanding of socioeconomic advantage. Lareau's (2004) work has been enormously influential. This research has demonstrated that middle-class parents tend to follow an approach to parenting, concerted cultivation, that prioritizes providing children cognitively and socially stimulating activities at home and in formal organizations that develop skills, enhance their senses of entitlement, and teach them how to work institutional systems. Such parenting is so well aligned with the American educational system that it gives their children a competitive edge in school. Initially, Lareau focused on elementary school, but her basic insights have been replicated in studies of adolescence ( Crosnoe & Huston 2007 , Kim & Schneider 2005 ). Moreover, Lareau's recent follow-up of her sample in young adulthood revealed that parenting-related socioeconomic advantages persisted into adolescence and beyond.

Turning to immigration, traditional assimilation perspectives posited improved outcomes for the descendants of immigrants compared with immigrants themselves. Yet, newer research suggests that the foreign- and U.S.-born children of immigrants outperform third-plus-generation youth, despite higher levels of socioeconomic disadvantage among immigrants. Evidence of this immigrant paradox is more consistent among adolescents than children ( Glick & Hohmann-Marriott 2007 , Kao 1999 , Portes & Rumbaut 2001 , Suarez-Orozco et al. 2009 ). This age difference could reflect adolescents' greater time to adapt to American schools and culture. It could also reflect biases in high school data sets, as immigrants from many regions are more likely to drop out of or bypass school ( Oropesa & Landale 2009 ). Perhaps more importantly, evidence of the immigrant paradox varies widely according to national origin, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. For example, adolescents whose parents emigrated from Asia best illustrate the immigrant paradox, at least in the academic realm. Asia is a region in which migration is positively selective on education and income, but, beyond socioeconomic status, Asian immigrant parents tend to have high standards of academic success, go to great lengths to secure educational opportunities for adolescents, and are highly planful (especially financially) about education ( Kao 2004 , Zhou 2009 ). This diversity in immigrant outcomes has supported theoretical reconceptualizations, such as segmented assimilation ( Portes & Zhou 1993 ), contending that the outcomes of assimilation depend on the context in which it occurs.

Of course, the adolescent population is stratified by factors beyond race and family background that also shape trajectories into adulthood. Two examples are obesity and homosexuality. Because of the stigma of obesity in American culture, obese youth are at heightened risk for psychosocial difficulties, which appear to disrupt their educational trajectories ( Crosnoe 2011 ). Similarly, same-sex-attracted youth often face strong social sanctions during high school that can filter into multiple domains, including academic progress ( Pearson et al. 2007 , Russell & Joyner 2001 ). In both cases, adolescents' characteristics position them on a social hierarchy to create short-term problems with long-term consequences. These stratifying processes are similar to gender, race, class, and immigration in that their significance in adolescence may create and reinforce unequal life chances.

New Directions for Research on Adolescence

Attempts by sociologists and other scholars over the past two decades to answer many of the tough questions about adolescence have raised additional questions. Having looked back, therefore, we now look forward. Given the space allowed, we have decided to focus on three specific future directions that touch on particularly provocative and timely debates and discussions in the field.

Biosocial Processes

In recent years, the integration of biomarkers with psychological and social data has helped empirical activity catch up with developmental theory. The sociological value of this activity is not in establishing genetic effects on adolescent behavior but instead in understanding the interplay of genes and environment at work in adolescent behavior ( Guo et al. 2008 ).

Understanding latent genetic influences has been aided by the creation of sibling samples, which allow assessments of sibling similarity in behavioral or other outcomes across sibling pairs of different degrees of genetic relatedness. Analyses of data from one such sample, the Nonshared Environment in Adolescent Development project, have elucidated the ways in which genetic traits select adolescents into different relationships and elicit different kinds of parenting. They have also demonstrated how the experiences that siblings have outside the home differentiate them on developmental outcomes, despite their genetic relatedness ( Reiss et al. 2000 ). Research on Add Health's diverse sibling pairs subsample has been particularly insightful about variability in shared environment and observed heritability of behaviors across social settings ( Boardman et al. 2008 ). For example, adolescent aggression is genetically influenced in both socioeconomically advantaged and disadvantaged communities, but the effects of shared environments (e.g., social influences experienced by both siblings) are significantly stronger in disadvantaged communities ( Cleveland 2003 ).

Turning to specific genetic influences, the collection of genetic data in behavioral studies has encouraged deeper exploration of gene-environment interactions. For example, Caspi and associates (2003) , drawing on biological and psychosocial data from New Zealand, reported that stressful life events had a larger impact on depression among youth with short alleles of the 5-HTT promoter polymorphism, which reduces efficiency of serotonin reuptake in the brain. Research by Guo and associates (2008) with the genetic data in Add Health demonstrated that the significance for delinquency of DRD2 alleles, which reduce efficiencies in the dopaminergetic system, is weaker in families with well-organized routines. Such studies push for a transactional view of biology, development, and environment.

Particularly important are genetically informed studies comparing adolescence with other life stages. For example, Dick and associates (2006) , working with genetic and psychosocial data from the United States, reported that the presence of a gene-regulating neurotransmitters, GABRA2, was associated with conduct disorder in adolescence and then with alcohol use in young adulthood. Thus, a genetic predisposition toward risky behavior is manifested differently across stages. A sociological interpretation is that entry into new settings across the transition from adolescence to adulthood might account for such changes.

As for other biomarkers, cortisol is a central hormone in stress response. Because cortisol levels tend to decline over the day, flatter diurnal patterns may signal health risks through the overactivation of physiological stress response ( Susman 2006 ). Efforts to integrate saliva samples and time diaries have revealed that minority youth report higher levels of chronic stress and demonstrate flatter cortisol patterns across the day than whites. Thus, identifying biological mechanisms underlying links between environmental stress and adolescent health may shed light on the role of adolescence in health disparities ( DeSantis et al. 2007 ). Similarly, immunological processes provide a window into environmental effects on youth. For example, McDade (2001) has combined samples of Epstein-Barr virus antibodies with lifestyle data. This work indicates that the stress that adolescents feel from modernization in developing countries is manifested in reduced immune functioning. Like neuroscience, this biomarker research is more common outside sociology, but it touches on core sociological questions, such as the effects of social integration on life chances, thereby representing a growth area for sociologists.

The nature versus nurture debate, therefore, seems to be dying. Indeed, research on adolescence is turning to the synergistic interplay between nature and nurture. Sociologists interested in adolescence have a significant role to play in uncovering the complexities of this interplay moving forward.

Linking Life Stages

Adolescence is better understood when it is viewed within the full life course, and we are now well poised to theorize and empirically evaluate linkages between adolescence and other life stages ( Johnson et al. 2011 ). As noted in the opening section of this review, advances in longitudinal sampling and modeling have facilitated asking and answering questions that involve processes unfolding over time and across contexts. At least in some domains (e.g., education, work), scholars of adolescence are accustomed to thinking about how adolescent experiences affect adult life. Both looking back to childhood and looking forward to adulthood, however, will enable us to elucidate the role of adolescence in the life course.

For example, initial curricular placements and academic achievement in high school are recognized as important to concurrent and future well-being. Yet, the past decade has also witnessed greater emphasis on understanding proximate and distal factors involved in producing varying levels of high school achievement. By following Baltimore schoolchildren from first grade into early adulthood, Alexander and associates (2007) were able to capture the full educational career and, in the process, identify critical periods. Socioeconomic disparities in academic progress at the start of high school were traced back to corresponding disparities in place at the start of first grade and to summer learning differences by socioeconomic status during the elementary school years. These ninth grade differences were then linked to curricular track, high school completion, and college attendance. Their interpretation emphasized how foundational the skills are that are learned in the early years of schooling and the ways in which the in-school and out-of-school settings and experiences that stratify early learning can have lasting, even accumulating, consequences for the life course. Exclusive focus on the adolescent years, and particularly the high school years, misses these processes set in motion much earlier and likely obscures the best points of intervention ( Heckman 2006 ).

As another example, pubertal timing may be a conduit in the connection between disadvantage in childhood and adulthood. Consider that family adversity is among the myriad biological and environmental factors accelerating pubertal timing ( Belsky et al. 2007 ). Cavanagh and associates (2007) have reported that early pubertal timing during middle school is linked to lower grades and the likelihood of course failure at the start of high school, and that as a result, high school completion and the grades of those who graduate are also affected. By stepping back to view longer-term processes, we see additional mechanisms through which family disadvantage impacts children's success in adolescence and adulthood, operating via biological and social processes, as well as their complex interactions.

Finally, charting individual trajectories over time provides important context for understanding what is observed in adolescence. The influential differentiation between life course persistence and adolescence desistance in criminal behavior is one example ( Moffitt 1993 ). Another concerns adolescent substance use, which is embedded within a variety of long-term trajectories that have distinct meaning and consequence. Following cohorts of adolescents in the Monitoring the Future Surveys into adulthood, Schulenberg and associates (2005) linked different patterns of substance use to the pathways through which adolescents transition into adulthood. Levels of substance use in adolescence anticipated the configuration of role transitions young people experienced in the years immediately following, but were also shaped by them. Young people who worked and did not attend school during these years binge drank more frequently during high school. Those who moved away from home for college were less frequent binge drinkers in high school but quickly caught up. These patterns suggest the varied settings and conditions that different adult statuses bring but also the potential for psychosocial preparation for these statuses during adolescence.

The life course paradigm emphasizes that development is lifelong and that no life stage can be understood in isolation. These examples highlight the advances that can be made if we rise to the challenge posed in this life course principle.

Social Change

Of course, linkages among life stages are also shaped by broader changes in the structure of society. Economic restructuring, for example, is dramatically affecting education and employment in young adulthood and beyond, and we need to better understand what this means for adolescents. Changes in the relative size of the manufacturing and service sectors have occurred in such a way as to reduce the availability of jobs with benefits, increase the income premium of higher education, and create greater fluidity between jobs ( Goldin & Katz 2008 ). Furthermore, Fullerton & Wallace (2007) characterized a set of interrelated changes occurring since the 1970s, including declining unionization, downsizing, growing use of contingent labor, and organizational restructuring as a “flexible turn in U.S. labor relations (p. 201),” which has eroded workers' perceptions of job security. Such changes are increasing the importance of adolescents' educational experiences in the status attainment process, thereby magnifying the significance of all of the factors discussed in this review that matter to these experiences.

In this context, the process of becoming adult has clearly changed, with scholars suggesting that adolescence has been extended to older ages or even that a new life stage should be recognized ( Settersten et al. 2005 ). Demands for and returns to education have risen, and relatedly, the period of dependency and semi-autonomy has lengthened. We know young people are staying in school longer, more often combining employment with higher education, and marrying later ( Bernhardt et al. 2001 , Fitzpatrick & Turner 2007 , U.S. Census Bureau 2006 ). Although race/ethnic and socioeconomic variability in these patterns has long been recognized ( Settersten et al. 2005 ), we are only just beginning to address a number of other important questions related to these broad social changes, including what they mean for the achievement of social and financial autonomy and relationships with others, including parents, and what we need to equip adolescents with in order for them to successfully navigate the transition to adulthood.

Two major collaborative efforts have laid an important foundation for understanding the implications of these social changes for adolescence. The first is the MacArthur Research Network on Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy ( Settersten et al. 2005 ). It has reported, among other things, that parents, especially those with more resources, increasingly support their children through the transition to adulthood financially and otherwise. About one-third of 18–34 year olds in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics received cash support from their parents, at an average of just over $3,400 per year ( Schoeni & Ross 2005 ). This and other forms of ongoing material assistance (e.g., support of higher education pursuits, allowing children to remain in the home, assistance in establishing independent households, providing childcare) may be yet another way in which parents' level of education and income can affect the status attainment of their children. The second effort is the Society for Research on Adolescence's Study Group on Adolescence in the Twenty-First Century ( Larson et al. 2002 ). One of its reports has argued that changes in family size, structure, and relationships; increased participation in school and after-school activities; and the advent of the Internet have created new opportunities for adolescents to develop more flexible social skills and capacities to move between diverse social worlds. It also notes, however, that those from families in poverty and those in elite families are more deprived when it comes to the social experience that builds these skills.

Another major social change concerns the transformation of social interaction though new media and technologies. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has reported that, in 2009, 75% of 12–17 year olds had cell phones and 93% went online ( Lenhart et al. 2010 ). The report also indicated that 76% of families with adolescents now had broadband access at home. Adolescents also go online via cell phones and portable gaming devices, in addition to computers at home. These technologies offer new opportunities for leisure, shopping, and staying in touch with others, as well as broader access to information and support. Roughly one-third of adolescents in the Pew study who went online used the Internet to gather information on health, dieting, or physical fitness, and 17% looked online for information about sensitive health topics, such as those related to drug use, mental health, and sex ( Lenhart et al. 2010 ).

Importantly, the Internet can also be thought of as a new kind of peer context. A recent study of 800 American youth revealed that, for most youth, new media technologies are used primarily to maintain and extend friendship networks ( Ito et al. 2010 ). Moreover, the Internet provides opportunities for socially isolated youth to connect with others in meaningful ways while also enabling the peer cultures of high school—including negative dimensions, such as bullying and gossiping—to follow young people home ( Crosnoe 2011 , Raskauskas & Stoltz 2007 ). Thus, new media represent a potential context of resource and risk related to peers.

Other potential risks ranging from driving accidents related to texting or talking on cell phones to exposure to questionable online content or social interactions (e.g., pornography, gambling, sexual solicitation) have concerned parents, educators, and lawmakers. Debates continue over whether risks can also accrue from the potentially sensitive or identifying information, including pictures and videos, adolescents post online about themselves and one another, or whether this is a healthy part of adolescents' self-expression and identity exploration. Nearly three-quarters of online youth use a social networking Web site such as Facebook or MySpace ( Lenhart et al. 2010 ). A recent content analysis of teenagers' MySpace pages indicated that 40% of adolescent users restricted access to their pages to identified friends. Yet, 10% of adolescent users who did not restrict access posted their full name, and many more listed their hometowns and the name of their schools, which could be used to identify them ( Hinduja & Patchin 2008 ).

Relevant empirical evidence about these concerns, however, is rare, and the topic is notably absent from the top sociological publishing outlets. Yet, sociologists have much to contribute, as adolescents' use of new media raises important questions about social networks, personal relationships, and identity development. What are the implications of cell phone use or online communication for parental monitoring and peer interactions? Do electronic interactions replace or complement face-to-face interactions? Do online venues provide a safe or dangerous place for identity work? As an example highlighting the potential work to be done, Blais and associates (2008) reported that Internet activity was related to changes in the quality of best friendships and romantic relationships over the course of a year among Canadian adolescents. Specifically, use of instant messaging, which occurs with known others, enhanced these relationships, but visits to chat rooms, which primarily involve communicating with strangers, were associated with worsening relationship quality over time. As these findings suggest, we will need to be specific about the types of media being used when we attempt to understand their implications for today's adolescents.

As is evident from this review, the rich sociological tradition of research on adolescence has continued into the new century. Still, the sociology of adolescence may be at something of a crossroads. The mapping of the human genome and the increasing sophistication of brain imaging are reshaping the scientific agenda in ways that, at first glance, do not tap into the traditional strengths of sociologists. At the same time, the renewed interest in childhood as a critical period—generated by findings that early interventions bring greater long-term returns to investments than those targeting adolescence ( Heckman 2006 )—has shifted attention to earlier stages. Another way of looking at these developments, however, is that they are opportunities. Indeed, sociologists are well-positioned to demonstrate how biological processes cannot be understood absent a firm sociological understanding of the environment in which they play out over time, explain how the long reach of childhood is channeled through adolescence, and identify ways in which adolescence produces turning points and deflections in the life course.

Summary Points

• Research on adolescence has moved in a sociological direction by emphasizing the role of context in shaping adolescents' lives and the link between adolescent development and societal inequality, fueled in part by recent advances in data collection and methodology.
• Early childhood experiences are very important to long-term health, educational, and behavioral trajectories, but adolescent experiences play key roles in this process by magnifying or deflecting children's trajectories.
• Many of the major developmental trajectories of adolescence, including those related to puberty, risky behavior, academic achievement, health, and identity development, reflect a complex interplay of biology, personal agency, and environment.
• Adolescents' navigation of institutional systems, such as school and work, have become increasingly complex and interrelated, with high school coursework more consequential to long-term outcomes in the globalized economy and paid work during adolescence becoming more common and potentially either risky or beneficial for educational attainment depending on motivation, background, and academic competence.
• Adolescents tend to spend less time with parents and other relatives and seek more autonomy while becoming more immersed in expanding peer networks, including romantic networks, but they typically do so while maintaining strong emotional ties to their families.
• Although much of the research on school and neighborhood effects on adolescent behavior has focused on the structural features of these contexts, more attention is being paid to the ways in which they organize peer groups that differ widely in terms of norms, values, and behavioral opportunities, as well as the ways families affect and respond within them.
• Gender, race, social class, and immigration stratify adolescents' lives, with poor and/or minority youth particularly vulnerable in the educational system, through a variety of structural inequalities and interpersonal processes, but immigrant youth often demonstrate a high level of resilience in the face of similar risks.

Acknowledgments

Support for R.C. came from a faculty scholar award from the William T. Grant Foundation, as well as a center grant to the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R24 HD042849; PI: Mark Hayward). The authors thank Anna Thornton for her help with this review.

Disclosure Statement : The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.

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Psychosocial Development Research in Adolescence: a Scoping Review

• Original Article
• Published: 01 February 2022
• Volume 30 , pages 640–669, ( 2022 )

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• Nuno Archer de Carvalho   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6620-0804 1 , 2 &
• Feliciano Henriques Veiga   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-2977-6238 1 , 2  

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Erikson’s psychosocial development is a well-known and sound framework for adolescent development. However, despite its importance in scientific literature, the scarcity of literature reviews on Erikson’s theory on adolescence calls for an up-to-date systematization. Therefore, this study’s objectives are to understand the extent and nature of published research on Erikson’s psychosocial development in adolescence (10–19 years) in the last decade (2011–2020) and identify directions for meaningful research and intervention. A scoping review was conducted following Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, PRISMA-ScR guidelines, and a previous protocol, including a comprehensive search in eight databases. From 932 initial studies, 58 studies were selected. These studies highlighted the burgeoning research on Erikson’s approach, with a more significant representation of North American and European studies. The focus of most studies was on identity formation, presenting cross-cultural evidence of its importance in psychosocial development. Most of the studies used quantitative designs presenting a high number of different measures. Regarding topics and variables, studies emphasized the critical role of identity in adolescents’ development and well-being and the relevance of supporting settings in psychosocial development. However, shortcomings were found regarding the study of online and school as privileged developmental settings for adolescents. Suggestions included the need to consider the process of identity formation in the context of lifespan development and invest in supporting adolescents’ identity formation. Overall, conclusions point out Erikson’s relevance in understanding adolescents’ current challenges while offering valuable research and intervention directions to enhance adolescent growth potential.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Conceição Martins and Filomena Covas for their help in assessing methodological options and text revision and Rita Fonseca and Sandra Torres for their advice regarding English accuracy.

This work was supported by the FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, IP, within the scope of the UIDEF — Unidade de Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Educação e Formação, under the reference UID/CED/04107/2020.

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NC and FV worked on the protocol and methodological design of the review. NC carried out the research, analyzed the studies, and presented the initial text for the results and their discussion. FV oversaw the conceptualization, research, and analysis of the studies. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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de Carvalho, N.A., Veiga, F.H. Psychosocial Development Research in Adolescence: a Scoping Review. Trends in Psychol. 30 , 640–669 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-022-00143-0

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s43076-022-00143-0

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1 Chapter 1: Introduction to Child Development

Chapter objectives.

After this chapter, you should be able to:

• Describe the principles that underlie development.
• Differentiate periods of human development.
• Evaluate issues in development.
• Distinguish the different methods of research.
• Explain what a theory is.
• Compare and contrast different theories of child development.

Introduction

Welcome to Child Growth and Development. This text is a presentation of how and why children grow, develop, and learn.

We will look at how we change physically over time from conception through adolescence. We examine cognitive change, or how our ability to think and remember changes over the first 20 years or so of life. And we will look at how our emotions, psychological state, and social relationships change throughout childhood and adolescence. 1

Principles of Development

There are several underlying principles of development to keep in mind:

• Development is lifelong and change is apparent across the lifespan (although this text ends with adolescence). And early experiences affect later development.
• Development is multidirectional. We show gains in some areas of development, while showing loss in other areas.
• Development is multidimensional. We change across three general domains/dimensions; physical, cognitive, and social and emotional.
• The physical domain includes changes in height and weight, changes in gross and fine motor skills, sensory capabilities, the nervous system, as well as the propensity for disease and illness.
• The cognitive domain encompasses the changes in intelligence, wisdom, perception, problem-solving, memory, and language.
• The social and emotional domain (also referred to as psychosocial) focuses on changes in emotion, self-perception, and interpersonal relationships with families, peers, and friends.

All three domains influence each other. It is also important to note that a change in one domain may cascade and prompt changes in the other domains.

• Development is characterized by plasticity, which is our ability to change and that many of our characteristics are malleable. Early experiences are important, but children are remarkably resilient (able to overcome adversity).
• Development is multicontextual. 2 We are influenced by both nature (genetics) and nurture (the environment) – when and where we live and our actions, beliefs, and values are a response to circumstances surrounding us.  The key here is to understand that behaviors, motivations, emotions, and choices are all part of a bigger picture. 3

Now let’s look at a framework for examining development.

Periods of Development

Think about what periods of development that you think a course on Child Development would address. How many stages are on your list? Perhaps you have three: infancy, childhood, and teenagers. Developmentalists (those that study development) break this part of the life span into these five stages as follows:

• Prenatal Development (conception through birth)
• Infancy and Toddlerhood (birth through two years)
• Early Childhood (3 to 5 years)
• Middle Childhood (6 to 11 years)
• Adolescence (12 years to adulthood)

This list reflects unique aspects of the various stages of childhood and adolescence that will be explored in this book. So while both an 8 month old and an 8 year old are considered children, they have very different motor abilities, social relationships, and cognitive skills. Their nutritional needs are different and their primary psychological concerns are also distinctive.

Prenatal Development

Conception occurs and development begins. All of the major structures of the body are forming and the health of the mother is of primary concern. Understanding nutrition, teratogens (or environmental factors that can lead to birth defects), and labor and delivery are primary concerns.

Figure 1.1 – A tiny embryo depicting some development of arms and legs, as well as facial features that are starting to show. 4

Infancy and Toddlerhood

The two years of life are ones of dramatic growth and change. A newborn, with a keen sense of hearing but very poor vision is transformed into a walking, talking toddler within a relatively short period of time. Caregivers are also transformed from someone who manages feeding and sleep schedules to a constantly moving guide and safety inspector for a mobile, energetic child.

Figure 1.2 – A swaddled newborn. 5

Early Childhood

Early childhood is also referred to as the preschool years and consists of the years which follow toddlerhood and precede formal schooling. As a three to five-year-old, the child is busy learning language, is gaining a sense of self and greater independence, and is beginning to learn the workings of the physical world. This knowledge does not come quickly, however, and preschoolers may initially have interesting conceptions of size, time, space and distance such as fearing that they may go down the drain if they sit at the front of the bathtub or by demonstrating how long something will take by holding out their two index fingers several inches apart. A toddler’s fierce determination to do something may give way to a four-year-old’s sense of guilt for action that brings the disapproval of others.

Figure 1.3 – Two young children playing in the Singapore Botanic Gardens 6

Middle Childhood

The ages of six through eleven comprise middle childhood and much of what children experience at this age is connected to their involvement in the early grades of school. Now the world becomes one of learning and testing new academic skills and by assessing one’s abilities and accomplishments by making comparisons between self and others. Schools compare students and make these comparisons public through team sports, test scores, and other forms of recognition. Growth rates slow down and children are able to refine their motor skills at this point in life. And children begin to learn about social relationships beyond the family through interaction with friends and fellow students.

Figure 1.4 – Two children running down the street in Carenage, Trinidad and Tobago 7

Adolescence

Adolescence is a period of dramatic physical change marked by an overall physical growth spurt and sexual maturation, known as puberty. It is also a time of cognitive change as the adolescent begins to think of new possibilities and to consider abstract concepts such as love, fear, and freedom. Ironically, adolescents have a sense of invincibility that puts them at greater risk of dying from accidents or contracting sexually transmitted infections that can have lifelong consequences. 8

Figure 1.5 – Two smiling teenage women. 9

There are some aspects of development that have been hotly debated. Let’s explore these.

Issues in Development

Nature and nurture.

Why are people the way they are? Are features such as height, weight, personality, being diabetic, etc. the result of heredity or environmental factors-or both? For decades, scholars have carried on the “nature/nurture” debate. For any particular feature, those on the side of Nature would argue that heredity plays the most important role in bringing about that feature. Those on the side of Nurture would argue that one’s environment is most significant in shaping the way we are. This debate continues in all aspects of human development, and most scholars agree that there is a constant interplay between the two forces. It is difficult to isolate the root of any single behavior as a result solely of nature or nurture.

Continuity versus Discontinuity

Is human development best characterized as a slow, gradual process, or is it best viewed as one of more abrupt change? The answer to that question often depends on which developmental theorist you ask and what topic is being studied. The theories of Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and Kohlberg are called stage theories. Stage theories or discontinuous development assume that developmental change often occurs in distinct stages that are qualitatively different from each other, and in a set, universal sequence. At each stage of development, children and adults have different qualities and characteristics. Thus, stage theorists assume development is more discontinuous. Others, such as the behaviorists, Vygotsky, and information processing theorists, assume development is a more slow and gradual process known as continuous development. For instance, they would see the adult as not possessing new skills, but more advanced skills that were already present in some form in the child. Brain development and environmental experiences contribute to the acquisition of more developed skills.

Figure 1.6 – The graph to the left shows three stages in the continuous growth of a tree. The graph to the right shows four distinct stages of development in the life cycle of a ladybug. 10

Active versus Passive

How much do you play a role in your own developmental path? Are you at the whim of your genetic inheritance or the environment that surrounds you? Some theorists see humans as playing a much more active role in their own development. Piaget, for instance believed that children actively explore their world and construct new ways of thinking to explain the things they experience. In contrast, many behaviorists view humans as being more passive in the developmental process. 11

How do we know so much about how we grow, develop, and learn? Let’s look at how that data is gathered through research

Research Methods

An important part of learning any science is having a basic knowledge of the techniques used in gathering information. The hallmark of scientific investigation is that of following a set of procedures designed to keep questioning or skepticism alive while describing, explaining, or testing any phenomenon. Some people are hesitant to trust academicians or researchers because they always seem to change their story. That, however, is exactly what science is all about; it involves continuously renewing our understanding of the subjects in question and an ongoing investigation of how and why events occur. Science is a vehicle for going on a never-ending journey. In the area of development, we have seen changes in recommendations for nutrition, in explanations of psychological states as people age, and in parenting advice. So think of learning about human development as a lifelong endeavor.

Take a moment to write down two things that you know about childhood. Now, how do you know? Chances are you know these things based on your own history (experiential reality) or based on what others have told you or cultural ideas (agreement reality) (Seccombe and Warner, 2004). There are several problems with personal inquiry. Read the following sentence aloud:

Paris in the

Are you sure that is what it said? Read it again:

If you read it differently the second time (adding the second “the”) you just experienced one of the problems with personal inquiry; that is, the tendency to see what we believe. Our assumptions very often guide our perceptions, consequently, when we believe something, we tend to see it even if it is not there. This problem may just be a result of cognitive ‘blinders’ or it may be part of a more conscious attempt to support our own views. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for evidence that we are right and in so doing, we ignore contradictory evidence. Popper suggests that the distinction between that which is scientific and that which is unscientific is that science is falsifiable; scientific inquiry involves attempts to reject or refute a theory or set of assumptions (Thornton, 2005). Theory that cannot be falsified is not scientific. And much of what we do in personal inquiry involves drawing conclusions based on what we have personally experienced or validating our own experience by discussing what we think is true with others who share the same views.

Science offers a more systematic way to make comparisons guard against bias.

Scientific Methods

One method of scientific investigation involves the following steps:

• Determining a research question
• Reviewing previous studies addressing the topic in question (known as a literature review)
• Determining a method of gathering information
• Conducting the study
• Interpreting results
• Drawing conclusions; stating limitations of the study and suggestions for future research
• Making your findings available to others (both to share information and to have your work scrutinized by others)

Your findings can then be used by others as they explore the area of interest and through this process a literature or knowledge base is established. This model of scientific investigation presents research as a linear process guided by a specific research question. And it typically involves quantifying or using statistics to understand and report what has been studied. Many academic journals publish reports on studies conducted in this manner.

Another model of research referred to as qualitative research may involve steps such as these:

• Begin with a broad area of interest
• Gain entrance into a group to be researched
• Gather field notes about the setting, the people, the structure, the activities or other areas of interest
• Ask open ended, broad “grand tour” types of questions when interviewing subjects
• Modify research questions as study continues
• Note patterns or consistencies
• Explore new areas deemed important by the people being observed
• Report findings

In this type of research, theoretical ideas are “grounded” in the experiences of the participants. The researcher is the student and the people in the setting are the teachers as they inform the researcher of their world (Glazer & Strauss, 1967). Researchers are to be aware of their own biases and assumptions, acknowledge them and bracket them in efforts to keep them from limiting accuracy in reporting. Sometimes qualitative studies are used initially to explore a topic and more quantitative studies are used to test or explain what was first described.

Let’s look more closely at some techniques, or research methods, used to describe, explain, or evaluate. Each of these designs has strengths and weaknesses and is sometimes used in combination with other designs within a single study.

Observational Studies

Observational studies involve watching and recording the actions of participants. This may take place in the natural setting, such as observing children at play at a park, or behind a one-way glass while children are at play in a laboratory playroom. The researcher may follow a checklist and record the frequency and duration of events (perhaps how many conflicts occur among 2-year-olds) or may observe and record as much as possible about an event (such as observing children in a classroom and capturing the details about the room design and what the children and teachers are doing and saying). In general, observational studies have the strength of allowing the researcher to see how people behave rather than relying on self-report. What people do and what they say they do are often very different. A major weakness of observational studies is that they do not allow the researcher to explain causal relationships. Yet, observational studies are useful and widely used when studying children. Children tend to change their behavior when they know they are being watched (known as the Hawthorne effect) and may not survey well.

Experiments

Experiments are designed to test hypotheses (or specific statements about the relationship between variables) in a controlled setting in efforts to explain how certain factors or events produce outcomes. A variable is anything that changes in value. Concepts are operationalized or transformed into variables in research, which means that the researcher must specify exactly what is going to be measured in the study.

Three conditions must be met in order to establish cause and effect. Experimental designs are useful in meeting these conditions.

The independent and dependent variables must be related. In other words, when one is altered, the other changes in response. (The independent variable is something altered or introduced by the researcher. The dependent variable is the outcome or the factor affected by the introduction of the independent variable. For example, if we are looking at the impact of exercise on stress levels, the independent variable would be exercise; the dependent variable would be stress.)

The cause must come before the effect. Experiments involve measuring subjects on the dependent variable before exposing them to the independent variable (establishing a baseline). So we would measure the subjects’ level of stress before introducing exercise and then again after the exercise to see if there has been a change in stress levels. (Observational and survey research does not always allow us to look at the timing of these events, which makes understanding causality problematic with these designs.)

The cause must be isolated. The researcher must ensure that no outside, perhaps unknown variables are actually causing the effect we see. The experimental design helps make this possible. In an experiment, we would make sure that our subjects’ diets were held constant throughout the exercise program. Otherwise, diet might really be creating the change in stress level rather than exercise.

A basic experimental design involves beginning with a sample (or subset of a population) and randomly assigning subjects to one of two groups: the experimental group or the control group. The experimental group is the group that is going to be exposed to an independent variable or condition the researcher is introducing as a potential cause of an event. The control group is going to be used for comparison and is going to have the same experience as the experimental group but will not be exposed to the independent variable. After exposing the experimental group to the independent variable, the two groups are measured again to see if a change has occurred. If so, we are in a better position to suggest that the independent variable caused the change in the dependent variable.

The major advantage of the experimental design is that of helping to establish cause and effect relationships. A disadvantage of this design is the difficulty of translating much of what happens in a laboratory setting into real life.

Case Studies

Case studies involve exploring a single case or situation in great detail. Information may be gathered with the use of observation, interviews, testing, or other methods to uncover as much as possible about a person or situation. Case studies are helpful when investigating unusual situations such as brain trauma or children reared in isolation. And they are often used by clinicians who conduct case studies as part of their normal practice when gathering information about a client or patient coming in for treatment. Case studies can be used to explore areas about which little is known and can provide rich detail about situations or conditions. However, the findings from case studies cannot be generalized or applied to larger populations; this is because cases are not randomly selected and no control group is used for comparison.

Figure 1.7 – Illustrated poster from a classroom describing a case study. 12

Surveys are familiar to most people because they are so widely used. Surveys enhance accessibility to subjects because they can be conducted in person, over the phone, through the mail, or online. A survey involves asking a standard set of questions to a group of subjects. In a highly structured survey, subjects are forced to choose from a response set such as “strongly disagree, disagree, undecided, agree, strongly agree”; or “0, 1-5, 6-10, etc.” This is known as Likert Scale . Surveys are commonly used by sociologists, marketing researchers, political scientists, therapists, and others to gather information on many independent and dependent variables in a relatively short period of time. Surveys typically yield surface information on a wide variety of factors, but may not allow for in-depth understanding of human behavior.

Of course, surveys can be designed in a number of ways. They may include forced choice questions and semi-structured questions in which the researcher allows the respondent to describe or give details about certain events. One of the most difficult aspects of designing a good survey is wording questions in an unbiased way and asking the right questions so that respondents can give a clear response rather than choosing “undecided” each time. Knowing that 30% of respondents are undecided is of little use! So a lot of time and effort should be placed on the construction of survey items. One of the benefits of having forced choice items is that each response is coded so that the results can be quickly entered and analyzed using statistical software. Analysis takes much longer when respondents give lengthy responses that must be analyzed in a different way. Surveys are useful in examining stated values, attitudes, opinions, and reporting on practices. However, they are based on self-report or what people say they do rather than on observation and this can limit accuracy.

Developmental Designs

Developmental designs are techniques used in developmental research (and other areas as well). These techniques try to examine how age, cohort, gender, and social class impact development.

Longitudinal Research

Longitudinal research involves beginning with a group of people who may be of the same age and background, and measuring them repeatedly over a long period of time. One of the benefits of this type of research is that people can be followed through time and be compared with them when they were younger.

Figure 1.8 – A longitudinal research design. 13

A problem with this type of research is that it is very expensive and subjects may drop out over time. The Perry Preschool Project which began in 1962 is an example of a longitudinal study that continues to provide data on children’s development.

Cross-sectional Research

Cross-sectional research involves beginning with a sample that represents a cross-section of the population. Respondents who vary in age, gender, ethnicity, and social class might be asked to complete a survey about television program preferences or attitudes toward the use of the Internet. The attitudes of males and females could then be compared, as could attitudes based on age. In cross-sectional research, respondents are measured only once.

Figure 1.9 – A cross-sectional research design. 14

This method is much less expensive than longitudinal research but does not allow the researcher to distinguish between the impact of age and the cohort effect. Different attitudes about the use of technology, for example, might not be altered by a person’s biological age as much as their life experiences as members of a cohort.

Sequential Research

Sequential research involves combining aspects of the previous two techniques; beginning with a cross-sectional sample and measuring them through time.

Figure 1.10 – A sequential research design. 15

This is the perfect model for looking at age, gender, social class, and ethnicity. But the drawbacks of high costs and attrition are here as well. 16

Table 1 .1 – Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Research Designs 17

Consent and Ethics in Research

Research should, as much as possible, be based on participants’ freely volunteered informed consent. For minors, this also requires consent from their legal guardians. This implies a responsibility to explain fully and meaningfully to both the child and their guardians what the research is about and how it will be disseminated. Participants and their legal guardians should be aware of the research purpose and procedures, their right to refuse to participate; the extent to which confidentiality will be maintained; the potential uses to which the data might be put; the foreseeable risks and expected benefits; and that participants have the right to discontinue at any time.

But consent alone does not absolve the responsibility of researchers to anticipate and guard against potential harmful consequences for participants. 18 It is critical that researchers protect all rights of the participants including confidentiality.

Child development is a fascinating field of study – but care must be taken to ensure that researchers use appropriate methods to examine infant and child behavior, use the correct experimental design to answer their questions, and be aware of the special challenges that are part-and-parcel of developmental research. Hopefully, this information helped you develop an understanding of these various issues and to be ready to think more critically about research questions that interest you. There are so many interesting questions that remain to be examined by future generations of developmental scientists – maybe you will make one of the next big discoveries! 19

Another really important framework to use when trying to understand children’s development are theories of development. Let’s explore what theories are and introduce you to some major theories in child development.

Developmental Theories

What is a theory.

Students sometimes feel intimidated by theory; even the phrase, “Now we are going to look at some theories…” is met with blank stares and other indications that the audience is now lost. But theories are valuable tools for understanding human behavior; in fact they are proposed explanations for the “how” and “whys” of development. Have you ever wondered, “Why is my 3 year old so inquisitive?” or “Why are some fifth graders rejected by their classmates?” Theories can help explain these and other occurrences. Developmental theories offer explanations about how we develop, why we change over time and the kinds of influences that impact development.

A theory guides and helps us interpret research findings as well. It provides the researcher with a blueprint or model to be used to help piece together various studies. Think of theories as guidelines much like directions that come with an appliance or other object that requires assembly. The instructions can help one piece together smaller parts more easily than if trial and error are used.

Theories can be developed using induction in which a number of single cases are observed and after patterns or similarities are noted, the theorist develops ideas based on these examples. Established theories are then tested through research; however, not all theories are equally suited to scientific investigation.  Some theories are difficult to test but are still useful in stimulating debate or providing concepts that have practical application. Keep in mind that theories are not facts; they are guidelines for investigation and practice, and they gain credibility through research that fails to disprove them. 20

Let’s take a look at some key theories in Child Development.

Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Theory

We begin with the often controversial figure, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud has been a very influential figure in the area of development; his view of development and psychopathology dominated the field of psychiatry until the growth of behaviorism in the 1950s. His assumptions that personality forms during the first few years of life and that the ways in which parents or other caregivers interact with children have a long-lasting impact on children’s emotional states have guided parents, educators, clinicians, and policy-makers for many years. We have only recently begun to recognize that early childhood experiences do not always result in certain personality traits or emotional states. There is a growing body of literature addressing resilience in children who come from harsh backgrounds and yet develop without damaging emotional scars (O’Grady and Metz, 1987). Freud has stimulated an enormous amount of research and generated many ideas. Agreeing with Freud’s theory in its entirety is hardly necessary for appreciating the contribution he has made to the field of development.

Figure 1.11 – Sigmund Freud. 21

Freud’s theory of self suggests that there are three parts of the self.

The id is the part of the self that is inborn. It responds to biological urges without pause and is guided by the principle of pleasure: if it feels good, it is the thing to do. A newborn is all id. The newborn cries when hungry, defecates when the urge strikes.

The ego develops through interaction with others and is guided by logic or the reality principle. It has the ability to delay gratification. It knows that urges have to be managed. It mediates between the id and superego using logic and reality to calm the other parts of the self.

The superego represents society’s demands for its members. It is guided by a sense of guilt. Values, morals, and the conscience are all part of the superego.

The personality is thought to develop in response to the child’s ability to learn to manage biological urges. Parenting is important here. If the parent is either overly punitive or lax, the child may not progress to the next stage. Here is a brief introduction to Freud’s stages.

Table 1. 2 – Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Theory

Strengths and Weaknesses of Freud’s Theory

Freud’s theory has been heavily criticized for several reasons. One is that it is very difficult to test scientifically. How can parenting in infancy be traced to personality in adulthood? Are there other variables that might better explain development? The theory is also considered to be sexist in suggesting that women who do not accept an inferior position in society are somehow psychologically flawed. Freud focuses on the darker side of human nature and suggests that much of what determines our actions is unknown to us. So why do we study Freud? As mentioned above, despite the criticisms, Freud’s assumptions about the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping our psychological selves have found their way into child development, education, and parenting practices. Freud’s theory has heuristic value in providing a framework from which to elaborate and modify subsequent theories of development. Many later theories, particularly behaviorism and humanism, were challenges to Freud’s views. 22

Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

Now, let’s turn to a less controversial theorist, Erik Erikson. Erikson (1902-1994) suggested that our relationships and society’s expectations motivate much of our behavior in his theory of psychosocial development. Erikson was a student of Freud’s but emphasized the importance of the ego, or conscious thought, in determining our actions. In other words, he believed that we are not driven by unconscious urges. We know what motivates us and we consciously think about how to achieve our goals. 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.

Figure 1.12 – Erik Erikson. 23

Erikson expanded on his Freud’s by emphasizing the importance of culture in parenting practices and motivations and adding three stages of adult development (Erikson, 1950; 1968). He believed that we are aware of what motivates us throughout life and the ego has greater importance in guiding our actions than does the id. 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 problems.

Erikson divided the lifespan into eight stages. In each stage, we have a major psychosocial task to accomplish or crisis to overcome.  Erikson believed that our personality continues to take shape throughout our lifespan as we face these challenges in living. Here is a brief overview of the eight stages:

Table 1. 3 – Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory

These eight stages form a foundation for discussions on emotional and social development during the life span. Keep in mind, however, that these stages or crises can occur more than once. 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 prerequisite for the next crisis of development. His theory also focuses on the social expectations that are found in certain cultures, but not in all. 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. 24

Behaviorism

While Freud and Erikson looked at what was going on in the mind, behaviorism rejected any reference to mind and viewed overt and observable behavior as the proper subject matter of psychology. Through the scientific study of behavior, it was hoped that laws of learning could be derived that would promote the prediction and control of behavior. 25

Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov (1880-1937) was a Russian physiologist interested in studying digestion. As he recorded the amount of salivation his laboratory dogs produced as they ate, he noticed that they actually began to salivate before the food arrived as the researcher walked down the hall and toward the cage. “This,” he thought, “is not natural!” One would expect a dog to automatically salivate when food hit their palate, but BEFORE the food comes? Of course, what had happened was . . . you tell me. That’s right! The dogs knew that the food was coming because they had learned to associate the footsteps with the food. The key word here is “learned”. A learned response is called a “conditioned” response.

Figure 1.13 – Ivan Pavlov. 26

Pavlov began to experiment with this concept of classical conditioning . He began to ring a bell, for instance, prior to introducing the food. Sure enough, after making this connection several times, the dogs could be made to salivate to the sound of a bell. Once the bell had become an event to which the dogs had learned to salivate, it was called a conditioned stimulus . The act of salivating to a bell was a response that had also been learned, now termed in Pavlov’s jargon, a conditioned response. Notice that the response, salivation, is the same whether it is conditioned or unconditioned (unlearned or natural). What changed is the stimulus to which the dog salivates. One is natural (unconditioned) and one is learned (conditioned).

Let’s think about how classical conditioning is used on us. One of the most widespread applications of classical conditioning principles was brought to us by the psychologist, John B. Watson.

John B. Watson

John B. Watson (1878-1958) believed that most of our fears and other emotional responses are classically conditioned. He had gained a good deal of popularity in the 1920s with his expert advice on parenting offered to the public.

Figure 1.14 – John B. Watson. 27

He tried to demonstrate the power of classical conditioning with his famous experiment with an 18 month old boy named “Little Albert”. Watson sat Albert down and introduced a variety of seemingly scary objects to him: a burning piece of newspaper, a white rat, etc. But Albert remained curious and reached for all of these things. Watson knew that one of our only inborn fears is the fear of loud noises so he proceeded to make a loud noise each time he introduced one of Albert’s favorites, a white rat. After hearing the loud noise several times paired with the rat, Albert soon came to fear the rat and began to cry when it was introduced. Watson filmed this experiment for posterity and used it to demonstrate that he could help parents achieve any outcomes they desired, if they would only follow his advice. Watson wrote columns in newspapers and in magazines and gained a lot of popularity among parents eager to apply science to household order.

Operant conditioning, on the other hand, looks at the way the consequences of a behavior increase or decrease the likelihood of a behavior occurring again. So let’s look at this a bit more.

B.F. Skinner and Operant Conditioning

B. F. Skinner (1904-1990), who brought us the principles of operant conditioning, suggested that reinforcement is a more effective means of encouraging a behavior than is criticism or punishment. By focusing on strengthening desirable behavior, we have a greater impact than if we emphasize what is undesirable. Reinforcement is anything that an organism desires and is motivated to obtain.

Figure 1.15 – B. F. Skinner. 28

A reinforcer is something that encourages or promotes a behavior. Some things are natural rewards. They are considered intrinsic or primary because their value is easily understood. Think of what kinds of things babies or animals such as puppies find rewarding.

Extrinsic or secondary reinforcers are things that have a value not immediately understood. Their value is indirect. They can be traded in for what is ultimately desired.

The use of positive reinforcement involves adding something to a situation in order to encourage a behavior. For example, if I give a child a cookie for cleaning a room, the addition of the cookie makes cleaning more likely in the future. Think of ways in which you positively reinforce others.

Negative reinforcement occurs when taking something unpleasant away from a situation encourages behavior. For example, I have an alarm clock that makes a very unpleasant, loud sound when it goes off in the morning. As a result, I get up and turn it off. By removing the noise, I am reinforced for getting up. How do you negatively reinforce others?

Punishment is an effort to stop a behavior. It means to follow an action with something unpleasant or painful. Punishment is often less effective than reinforcement for several reasons. It doesn’t indicate the desired behavior, it may result in suppressing rather than stopping a behavior, (in other words, the person may not do what is being punished when you’re around, but may do it often when you leave), and a focus on punishment can result in not noticing when the person does well.

Not all behaviors are learned through association or reinforcement. Many of the things we do are learned by watching others. This is addressed in social learning theory.

Social Learning Theory

Albert Bandura (1925-) is a leading contributor to social learning theory. He calls our attention to the ways in which many of our actions are not learned through conditioning; rather, they are learned by watching others (1977). Young children frequently learn behaviors through imitation

Figure 1.16 – Albert Bandura. 29

Sometimes, particularly when we do not know what else to do, we learn by modeling or copying the behavior of others. A kindergartner on his or her first day of school might eagerly look at how others are acting and try to act the same way to fit in more quickly. Adolescents struggling with their identity rely heavily on their peers to act as role-models. Sometimes we do things because we’ve seen it pay off for someone else. They were operantly conditioned, but we engage in the behavior because we hope it will pay off for us as well. This is referred to as vicarious reinforcement (Bandura, Ross and Ross, 1963).

Bandura (1986) suggests that there is interplay between the environment and the individual. We are not just the product of our surroundings, rather we influence our surroundings. Parents not only influence their child’s environment, perhaps intentionally through the use of reinforcement, etc., but children influence parents as well. Parents may respond differently with their first child than with their fourth. Perhaps they try to be the perfect parents with their firstborn, but by the time their last child comes along they have very different expectations both of themselves and their child. Our environment creates us and we create our environment. 30

Theories also explore cognitive development and how mental processes change over time.

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) is one of the most influential cognitive theorists. Piaget was inspired to explore children’s ability to think and reason by watching his own children’s development. 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. He believed that children’s intellectual skills change over time through maturation. Children of differing ages interpret the world differently.

Figure 1.17 – Jean Piaget. 32

Piaget believed our desire to understand the world comes from a need for cognitive equilibrium . This is an agreement or balance between what we sense in the outside world and what we know in our minds. If we experience something that we cannot understand, we try to restore the balance by either changing our thoughts or by altering the experience to fit into what we do understand. Perhaps you meet someone who is very different from anyone you know. How do you make sense of this person? You might use them to establish a new category of people in your mind or you might think about how they are similar to someone else.

A schema or schemes are categories of knowledge. They are like mental boxes of concepts. A child has to learn many concepts. They may have a scheme for “under” and “soft” or “running” and “sour”. All of these are schema. Our efforts to understand the world around us lead us to develop new schema and to modify old ones.

One way to make sense of new experiences is to focus on how they are similar to what we already know. This is assimilation . So the person we meet who is very different may be understood as being “sort of like my brother” or “his voice sounds a lot like yours.” Or a new food may be assimilated when we determine that it tastes like chicken!

Another way to make sense of the world is to change our mind. We can make a cognitive accommodation to this new experience by adding new schema. This food is unlike anything I’ve tasted before. I now have a new category of foods that are bitter-sweet in flavor, for instance. This is  accommodation . Do you accommodate or assimilate more frequently? Children accommodate more frequently as they build new schema. Adults tend to look for similarity in their experience and assimilate. They may be less inclined to think “outside the box.”

Piaget suggested different ways of understanding that are associated with maturation. He divided this into four stages:

Table 1.4 – Jean Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development

Criticisms of Piaget’s Theory

Piaget has been criticized for overemphasizing the role that physical maturation plays in cognitive development and in underestimating the role that culture and interaction (or experience) plays in cognitive development. Looking across cultures reveals considerable variation in what children are able to do at various ages. Piaget may have underestimated what children are capable of given the right circumstances. 33

Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) was a Russian psychologist who wrote in the early 1900s but whose work was discovered in the United States in the 1960s but became more widely known in the 1980s. Vygotsky differed with Piaget in that he believed that a person not only has a set of abilities, but also a set of potential abilities that can be realized if given the proper guidance from others. His sociocultural theory emphasizes the importance of culture and interaction in the development of cognitive abilities. He believed that through guided participation known as scaffolding, with a teacher or capable peer, a child can learn cognitive skills within a certain range known as the zone of proximal development . 34 His belief was that development occurred first through children’s immediate social interactions, and then moved to the individual level as they began to internalize their learning. 35

Figure 1.18- Lev Vygotsky. 36

Have you ever taught a child to perform a task? Maybe it was brushing their teeth or preparing food. Chances are you spoke to them and described what you were doing while you demonstrated the skill and let them work along with you all through the process. You gave them assistance when they seemed to need it, but once they knew what to do-you stood back and let them go. This is scaffolding and can be seen demonstrated throughout the world. This approach to teaching has also been adopted by educators. Rather than assessing students on what they are doing, they should be understood in terms of what they are capable of doing with the proper guidance. You can see how Vygotsky would be very popular with modern day educators. 37

Comparing Piaget and Vygotsky

Vygotsky concentrated more on the child’s immediate social and cultural environment and his or her interactions with adults and peers. While Piaget saw the child as actively discovering the world through individual interactions with it, Vygotsky saw the child as more of an apprentice, learning through a social environment of others who had more experience and were sensitive to the child’s needs and abilities. 38

Like Vygotsky’s, Bronfenbrenner looked at the social influences on learning and development.

Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model

Urie Bronfenbrenner (1917-2005) offers us one of the most comprehensive theories of human development. Bronfenbrenner studied Freud, Erikson, Piaget, and learning theorists and believed that all of those theories could be enhanced by adding the dimension of context. What is being taught and how society interprets situations depends on who is involved in the life of a child and on when and where a child lives.

Figure 1.19 – Urie Bronfenbrenner. 39

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model explains the direct and indirect influences on an individual’s development.

Table 1.5 – Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Model

For example, in order to understand a student in 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 teacher and 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 interfere 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.

Figure 1.20 – Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. 40

Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model challenges us to go beyond the individual if we want to understand human development and promote improvements. 41

In this chapter we looked at:

underlying principles of development

the five periods of development

three issues in development

Various methods of research

important theories that help us understand development

Next, we are going to be examining where we all started with conception, heredity, and prenatal development.

Child Growth and Development Copyright © by Jean Zaar is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Children's mental health case studies
• Food, health and nutrition
• Mental wellbeing
• Mental health

Explore the experiences of children and families with these interdisciplinary case studies. Designed to help professionals and students explore the strengths and needs of children and their families, each case presents a detailed situation, related research, problem-solving questions and feedback for the user. Use these cases on your own or in classes and training events

Each case study:

• Explores the experiences of a child and family over time.
• Introduces theories, research and practice ideas about children's mental health.
• Shows the needs of a child at specific stages of development.
• Invites users to “try on the hat” of different specific professionals.

By completing a case study participants will:

• Examine the needs of children from an interdisciplinary perspective.
• Recognize the importance of prevention/early intervention in children’s mental health.
• Apply ecological and developmental perspectives to children’s mental health.
• Predict probable outcomes for children based on services they receive.

Case studies prompt users to practice making decisions that are:

• Research-based.
• Practice-based.
• Best to meet a child and family's needs in that moment.

Children’s mental health service delivery systems often face significant challenges.

• Services can be disconnected and hard to access.
• Stigma can prevent people from seeking help.
• Parents, teachers and other direct providers can become overwhelmed with piecing together a system of care that meets the needs of an individual child.
• Professionals can be unaware of the theories and perspectives under which others serving the same family work
• Professionals may face challenges doing interdisciplinary work.
• Limited funding promotes competition between organizations trying to serve families.

These case studies help explore life-like mental health situations and decision-making. Case studies introduce characters with history, relationships and real-life problems. They offer users the opportunity to:

• Examine all these details, as well as pertinent research.
• Make informed decisions about intervention based on the available information.

The case study also allows users to see how preventive decisions can change outcomes later on. At every step, the case content and learning format encourages users to review the research to inform their decisions.

Each case study emphasizes the need to consider a growing child within ecological, developmental, and interdisciplinary frameworks.

• Ecological approaches consider all the levels of influence on a child.
• Developmental approaches recognize that children are constantly growing and developing. They may learn some things before other things.
• Interdisciplinary perspectives recognize that the needs of children will not be met within the perspectives and theories of a single discipline.

There are currently two different case students available. Each case study reflects a set of themes that the child and family experience.

The About Steven case study addresses:

• Adolescent depression.
• School mental health.
• Rural mental health services.
• Social/emotional development.

The Brianna and Tanya case study reflects themes of:

• Infant and early childhood mental health.
• Educational disparities.
• Trauma and toxic stress.
• Financial insecurity.
• Intergenerational issues.

The case studies are designed with many audiences in mind:

Practitioners from a variety of fields. This includes social work, education, nursing, public health, mental health, and others.

Professionals in training, including those attending graduate or undergraduate classes.

The broader community.

Each case is based on the research, theories, practices and perspectives of people in all these areas. The case studies emphasize the importance of considering an interdisciplinary framework. Children’s needs cannot be met within the perspective of a single discipline.

The complex problems children face need solutions that integrate many and diverse ways of knowing. The case studies also help everyone better understand the mental health needs of children. We all have a role to play.

These case has been piloted within:

Graduate and undergraduate courses.

Discipline-specific and interdisciplinary settings.

Professional organizations.

Currently, the case studies are being offered to instructors and their staff and students in graduate and undergraduate level courses. They are designed to supplement existing course curricula.

Instructors have used the case study effectively by:

• Assigning the entire case at one time as homework. This is followed by in-class discussion or a reflective writing assignment relevant to a course.
• Assigning sections of the case throughout the course. Instructors then require students to prepare for in-class discussion pertinent to that section.
• Creating writing, research or presentation assignments based on specific sections of course content.
• Focusing on a specific theme present in the case that is pertinent to the course. Instructors use this as a launching point for deeper study.
• Constructing other in-class creative experiences with the case.
• Collaborating with other instructors to hold interdisciplinary discussions about the case.

To get started with a particular case, visit the related web page and follow the instructions to register. Once you register as an instructor, you will receive information for your co-instructors, teaching assistants and students. Get more information on the following web pages.

• Brianna and Tanya: A case study about infant and early childhood mental health
• About Steven: A children’s mental health case study about depression

Cari Michaels, Extension educator

Reviewed in 2023

© 2024 Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved. The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.

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Chapter 11: Development of Self and Identity

Identity Development Theory

A well-developed identity is comprised of goals, values, and beliefs to which a person is committed. It is the awareness of the consistency in self over time, the recognition of this consistency by others (Erikson, 1980). The process of identity development is both an individual and social phenomenon (Adams & Marshall, 1996). Much of this process is assumed during adolescence when cognitive development allows for an individual to construct a ‘theory of self’ (Elkind, 1998) based on exposure to role models and identity options (Erikson, 1980).  Erikson (1968) believed this period of development to be an ‘identity crisis,’ a crucial turning point in which an individual must develop in one way or another, ushering the adolescent toward growth and differentiation.  Identity is formed through a process of exploring options or choices and committing to an option based upon the outcome of their exploration. Failure to establish a well-developed sense of identity can result in identity confusion. Those experiencing identity confusion do not have a clear sense of who they are or their role in society.

Identity development is vital to a person’s understanding of self and participation in their social systems. Adams and Marshall (1996) established that identity formation provides five functions: a structure and order to self-knowledge; a sense of consistency and coherence to beliefs, goals, and self-knowledge; a sense of continuity for one’s history and future; goals and direction; a sense of personal control of their choices and outcomes.

Freud’s Theory 

We begin with the often controversial figure, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Freud has been a very influential figure in the area of development; his view of development and psychopathology dominated the field of psychiatry until the growth of behaviorism in the 1950s. His assumptions that personality forms during the first few years of life and that the ways in which parents or other caregivers interact with children have a long-lasting impact on children’s emotional states have guided parents, educators, clinicians, and policy-makers for many years. We have only recently begun to recognize that early childhood experiences do not always result in certain personality traits or emotional states. There is a growing body of literature addressing resilience in children who come from harsh backgrounds and yet develop without damaging emotional scars (O’Grady and Metz, 1987). Freud has stimulated an enormous amount of research and generated many ideas. Agreeing with Freud’s theory in its entirety is hardly necessary for appreciating the contribution he has made to the field of development.

Freud’s theory has been heavily criticized for several reasons. One is that it is very difficult to test the unconscious mind scientifically. How can parenting in infancy be traced to personality in adulthood? Are there other variables that might better explain development? The theory is also considered to be sexist in suggesting that women who do not accept an inferior position in society are somehow psychologically flawed. Freud focuses on the darker side of human nature and suggests that much of what determines our actions are unknown to us. So why do we study Freud? Despite the criticisms, Freud’s assumptions about the importance of early childhood experiences in shaping our psychological selves have found their way into child development, education, and parenting practices. Freud’s theory has heuristic value in providing a framework from which to elaborate and modify subsequent theories of development. Many later theories, particularly behaviorism and humanism, were challenges to

Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development

Figure 11.1  Erik Erikson

Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development emphasizes the social nature of our development. His theory proposed that our psychosocial development takes place throughout our lifespan. Erikson suggested that how we interact with others is what affects our sense of self, or what he called the ego identity. He also believed that we are motivated by a need to achieve competence in certain areas of our lives.

According to psychosocial theory, we experience eight stages of development over our lifespan (Table 11.2), from infancy through late adulthood. At each stage, there is a conflict, or task, that we need to resolve. 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.

Table 11.2  Erikson’s psychosocial Stages of Development

Video 11.6 Erikson’s Psychosocial Development explains all stages of this theory.

Trust vs. mistrust

Erikson maintained that the first year to year and a half of life involves the establishment of a sense of trust. Infants are dependent and must rely on others to meet their basic physical needs as well as their needs for stimulation and comfort. A caregiver who consistently meets these needs instills a sense of trust or the belief that the world is a safe and trustworthy place. The caregiver should not worry about overindulging a child’s need for comfort, contact, or stimulation.

Consider the implications for establishing trust if a caregiver is unavailable or is upset and ill-prepared to care for a child, or if a child is born prematurely, is unwanted, or has physical problems that could make them less desirable to a parent. However, keep in mind that children can also exhibit strong resiliency to harsh circumstances. Resiliency can be attributed to certain personality factors, such as an easy-going temperament and receiving support from others. A positive and strong support group can help a parent and child build a strong foundation by offering assistance and positive attitudes toward the newborn and parent.

Autonomy vs. shame and doubt

As the child begins to walk and talk, an interest in independence or autonomy replaces their concern for trust. The toddler tests the limits of what can be touched, said, and explored. Erikson believed that toddlers should be allowed to explore their environment as freely as safety allows and, in doing so, will develop a sense of independence that will later grow to self-esteem, initiative, and overall confidence. If a caregiver is overly anxious about the toddler’s actions for fear that the child will get hurt or violate others’ expectations, the caregiver can give the child the message that they should be ashamed of their behavior and instill a sense of doubt in their abilities. Parenting advice based on these ideas would be to keep your toddler safe, but let them learn by doing. A sense of pride seems to rely on doing rather than being told how capable one is (Berger, 2005).

Initiative vs. Guilt

While Erik Erikson was very influenced by Freud, he believed that the relationships that people have, not psychosexual stages, are what influence personality development. At the beginning of early childhood, the child is still in the autonomy versus shame and doubt stage (stage 2).

By age three, the child begins stage 3: initiative versus guilt. The trust and autonomy of previous stages develop into a desire to take initiative or to think of ideas and initiate action. Children are curious at this age and start to ask questions so that they can learn about the world. Parents should try to answer those questions without making the child feel like a burden or implying that the child’s question is not worth asking.

These children are also beginning to use their imagination (remember what we learned when we discussed Piaget!). Children may want to build a fort with cushions from the living room couch, open a lemonade stand in the driveway, or make a zoo with their stuffed animals and issue tickets to those who want to come. Another way that children may express autonomy is in wanting to get themselves ready for bed without any assistance. To reinforce taking initiative, caregivers should offer praise for the child’s efforts and avoid being overly critical of messes or mistakes. Soggy washrags and toothpaste left in the sink pale in comparison to the smiling face of a five-year-old emerging from the bathroom with clean teeth and pajamas!

That said, it is important that the parent does their best to kindly guide the child to the right actions. If the child does leave those soggy washrags in the sink, have the child help clean them up. It is possible that the child will not be happy with helping to clean, and the child may even become aggressive or angry, but it is important to remember that the child is still learning how to navigate their world. They are trying to build a sense of autonomy, and they may not react well when they are asked to do something that they had not planned. Parents should be aware of this, and try to be understanding, but also firm. Guilt for a situation where a child did not do their best allows a child to understand their responsibilities and helps the child learn to exercise self-control (remember the marshmallow test). The goal is to find a balance between initiative and guilt, not a free-for-all where the parent allows the child to do anything they want to. The parent must guide the child if they are to have a successful resolution in this stage.

Video 11.7  Movies, television, and media, in general, provide many examples of psychosocial development. The movie clips in this video demonstrate Erikson’s third stage of development, initiative versus guilt. What other examples can you think of to demonstrate young children developing a sense of autonomy?

 Industry vs. Inferiority

Erikson believes that children’s greatest source of personality development comes from their social relationships. So far, we have seen 3 psychosocial stages: trust versus mistrust (ages birth – 18 months), autonomy versus shame and doubt (ages 18 months – 3 years), and initiative versus guilt (ages 3 years – around 6 years).

According to Erikson, children in middle childhood are very busy or industrious. They are constantly doing, planning, playing, getting together with friends, and achieving. This is a very active time and a time when they are gaining a sense of how they measure up when compared with friends. Erikson believed that if these industrious children view themselves as successful in their endeavors, they will get a sense of competence for future challenges. If instead, a child feels that they are not measuring up to their peers, feelings of inferiority and self-doubt will develop. These feelings of inferiority can, according to Erikson, lead to an inferiority complex that lasts into adulthood.

To help children have a successful resolution in this stage, they should be encouraged to explore their abilities. They should be given authentic feedback as well. Failure is not necessarily a horrible thing according to Erikson. Indeed, failure is a type of feedback that may help a child form a sense of modesty. A balance of competence and modesty is ideal for creating a sense of competence in the child.

Identity vs. Role Confusion

Erik Erikson believed that the primary psychosocial task of adolescence was establishing an identity. Erikson referred to life’s fifth psychosocial task as one of identity versus role confusion when adolescents must work through the complexities of finding one’s own identity.  This stage includes questions regarding their appearance, vocational choices and career aspirations, education, relationships, sexuality, political and social views, personality, and interests. Erikson saw this as a period of confusion and experimentation regarding identity and one’s life path. During adolescence, many individuals experience a psychological moratorium , where teens put a on hold commitment to an identity while exploring the options.

Individual identity development is influenced by how they resolved all of the previous childhood psychosocial crises, and this adolescent stage is a bridge between the past and the future, childhood, and adulthood. Thus, in Erikson’s view, an adolescent’s central questions are, “Who am I?” and “Who do I want to be?” Identity formation was highlighted as the primary indicator of successful development during adolescence (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of not successfully meeting the task of adolescence). This crisis is resolved positively with identity achievement, when adolescents have reconsidered the goals and values of their parents and culture. Some adolescents adopt the values and roles that their parents expect for them. Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their parents but align with a peer group. This change is common as peer relationships become a central focus in adolescents’ lives.

The culmination of this exploration is a more coherent view of oneself. Those who are unsuccessful at resolving this stage may withdraw further into social isolation or become lost in the crowd. However, more recent research suggests that few leave this age period with identity achievement and that most identity formation occurs during young adulthood (Côtè, 2006).

Marcia’s Identity Statuses

Expanding on Erikson’s theory, Marcia (1966) described identity formation during adolescence as involving both exploration and commitment with respect to ideologies and occupations (e.g., religion, politics, career, relationships, gender roles). Identity development begins when individuals identify with role models who provide them with options to explore for whom they can become. As identity development progresses, adolescents are expected to make choices and commit to options within the confines of their social contexts. In some cases, options are not provided or are limited, and the individual will fail to commit or will commit without the opportunity to explore various options (Marcia, 1980).

Video 11.8 Macia’s Stages of Adolescent Identity Development summarizes the various identity statuses and how an individual may move through them.

Figure 11.2  Marcia’s identity statuses. Adapted from Discovering the Lifespan, by R. S. Feldman, 2009.

The least mature status, and one common in many children, is identity diffusion. Identity diffusion is a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options nor made a commitment to an identity. Marcia (1980) proposed that when individuals enter the identity formation process, they have little awareness or experience with identity exploration or the expectation to commit to an identity. This period of identity diffusion is typical of children and young adolescents, but adolescents are expected to move out of this stage as they are exposed to role models and experiences that present them with identity possibilities. Those who persist in this identity may drift aimlessly with little connection to those around them or have little sense of purpose in life. Characteristics associated with prolonged diffusion include having low self-esteem, being easily influenced by peers, lacking of meaningful friendships, having little commitment, or fortitude in activities or relationships, and being self-absorbed and self-indulgent.

Those in identity foreclosure have committed to an identity without having explored the options. Often, younger adolescence will enter a phase of foreclosure where they may, at least preliminarily, commit to an identity without an investment in the exploration process. This commitment is often a response to anxiety about uncertainty or change during adolescence or pressure from parents, social groups, or cultural expectations. It is expected that most adolescents will progress beyond the foreclosure phase as they can think independently, and we multiple identity options. However, sometimes foreclosure will persist into late adolescence or even adulthood.

In some cases, parents may make decisions for their children and do not grant the teen the opportunity to make choices. In other instances, teens may strongly identify with parents and others in their life and wish to follow in their footsteps. Characteristics associated with prolonged foreclosure include being well-behaved and obedient children with a high need for approval, having parents with an authoritarian parenting style, having low levels of tolerance or acceptance of change, having high levels of conformity, and being a conventional thinker.

During high school and college years, teens and young adults move from identity diffusion and foreclosure toward moratorium and achievement. The most significant gains in the development of identity are in college, as college students are exposed to a greater variety of career choices, lifestyles, and beliefs. This experience is likely to spur on questions regarding identity. A great deal of the identity work we do in adolescence and young adulthood is about values and goals, as we strive to articulate a personal vision or dream for what we hope to accomplish in the future (McAdams, 2013).

Identity moratorium is a status that describes those who are actively exploring in an attempt to establish identity but have yet to have made any commitment. This time can be an anxious and emotionally tense period as the adolescent experiments with different roles and explores various beliefs. Nothing is guaranteed, and there are many questions, but few answers. This moratorium phase is the precursor to identity achievement. During the moratorium period, it is normal for adolescents to be rebellious and uncooperative, avoid dealing with problems, procrastinate, experience low self-esteem, and feel anxious and uncertain about decisions.

Identity achievement refers to those who, after exploration, have committed. Identity achievement is a long process and is not often realized by the end of adolescence. Individuals that do reach identity achievement feel self-acceptance, stable self-definition, and are committed to their identity.

While Marcia’s statuses help us understand the process of developing identity, there are several criticisms of this theory. First, identity status may not be global; different aspects of your identity may be in different statuses. An individual may be in multiple identity statuses at the same time for different aspects of identity. For example, one could be in foreclosure for their religious identity, but in moratorium for career identity, and achievement for gender identity.

Further, identity statuses do no always develop in the sequence described above, although it is the most common progression. Not all people will reach identity achievement in all aspects of their identity, and not all may remain in identity achievement. There may be a third aspect of identity development, beyond exploration and commitment, and that is the reconsideration of commitment. This addition would create a fifth status, searching moratorium . This status is a re-exploring after a commitment has been made (Meesus et al., 2012). It is not usual that commitments to aspects of our identity may change as we gain experiences, and more options become available to explore. This searching moratorium may continue well into adulthood.

Supporting Identity Development

As the process of identity development can be a confusing and challenging period, how can adults support adolescents through this process? First, affirm that the anxiety, doubts, and confusion are reasonable and that most teens do not complete identity achievement before graduating high school. Exposing adolescents to various role models can help them imagine different roles or options for their future selves. Role models can come from within the family, schools, or community. Adults should talk with adolescents about their values, goals, and identities to help build awareness. They may be interested to know how others made decisions while developing their own identities. Finally, support the commitments that adolescents have made. Identity commitments can help someone feel grounded and less confused while they engage in identity exploration.

teens put a on hold commitment to an identity while exploring the options

a status that characterizes those who have neither explored the options nor made a commitment to an identity

individuals who have committed to an identity without having explored the options

status that describes those who are actively exploring in an attempt to establish identity but have yet to have made any commitment

refers to those who, after exploration, have committed

re-exploring after a commitment has been made

Child and Adolescent Development Copyright © 2023 by Krisztina Jakobsen and Paige Fischer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Case Studies in Child and Adolescent Development for Teachers Paperback – January 1, 2007

• Print length 106 pages
• Language English
• Publisher McGraw-Hill Humanities Social
• Publication date January 1, 2007
• Dimensions 6.5 x 0.25 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 0073525855
• ISBN-13 978-0073525853
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ McGraw-Hill Humanities Social; 1st edition (January 1, 2007)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 106 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0073525855
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0073525853
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.9 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.25 x 9 inches
• #1,020 in Medical Adolescent Psychology
• #1,501 in Popular Adolescent Psychology
• #4,377 in Educational Psychology (Books)

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• Understanding Infant and Caregiver…

Understanding Infant and Caregiver Mental Health: What is the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Systemic Racism?

Date posted:.

Mental Health Awareness Month offers an opportunity to reflect on the importance of our health and well-being—including for the littlest amongst us. The first five years of life are a critically important period of physical, social, cultural, and emotional development in the lives of children and their families that sets the foundation for young children’s future health, development, and well-being. Importantly, all events that occur in the child’s life at this early stage are likely to have a significant impact as they develop.

Over the last several decades, we have learned that social determinants of health—including where children and families live, work, and play—are crucial in understanding how contexts impact health, and in the case of incredibly young children, their development.

Additionally, the well-being of young children depends heavily on the mental and physical health of their parents and caregivers. Thus, it is crucial to prioritize the mental well-being of these adults and the environments in which children are nurtured to address the challenges impacting infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Amid this landscape of supports and challenges for families with young children, the past 4 years have been particularly difficult for many families with the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and simultaneous increasing national awareness and discussion of long-standing racial inequities. Racism is a known social determinant of health which affects the mental health and well-being of families, particularly pregnant and postpartum individuals and their children.

As we have continued to wrestle with the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been increased efforts to better understand the impacts of this global event with racialized components on communities that have historically lacked access, services, and care. Our team’s Prenatal to Preschool (P2P) study , described below, is one such example of a project that originated during the pandemic with the explicit goal to better understand how this global crisis differentially impacted the mental health of families in our Philadelphia community.

Prenatal to Preschool (P2P): How are we understanding the mental health of very young children and their families?

P2P evaluates the simultaneous effects of the pandemic, stressors, and multiple forms of racism on mothers and their developing children, providing important insight into risk and resilience factors in early development and the peripartum period.

In the context of a major U.S. city, Philadelphia, like many others, is marked by pronounced neighborhood disparities, such that our group found it imperative for public health and policy efforts to better understand how known inequities impact the mental well-being of the city's thousands of very young children and their families. We are doing this by examining cross-cultural differences and experiences faced by Black and non-Latinx White families.

Our team began talking to families participating in the study when they were pregnant at the very beginning of the pandemic when the world shut down in April 2020. Over the last four years, as our global and local experiences of the pandemic changed, caregivers have answered questions about their health and well-being, as well as that of their growing child’s, and their partners in child-rearing. Questions have covered topics including depression, anxiety, parenting stress, social supports, experiences of multiple forms of racism, their child’s development, and COVID-related worries.

Our initial findings underscore the importance of supporting families with very young children in a variety of ways and amongst unprecedented challenges.

We hope that this project will set the foundation for future work to continue fostering diversity and equity in research, along with promoting the well-being of children and families impacted by the pandemic.

As the P2P families continue to participate as their children turn four, we will be able to look at the past four years with an additional goal to create individualized, culturally informed preventative interventions for all families. We aim to ensure that the work we are doing joins the work of so many others in achieving mental health equity for all young children and their families in our region and across the nation.

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