Chapter 5.PDF

Chapter 5 The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 5.1 Explain theoretical views of the self-system including elements of self and factors that in...

Chapter 5 The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years Learning Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 5.1 Explain theoretical views of the self-system including elements of self and factors that influence a child’s perceptions of self. 5.2 Describe phases on the continuum of early self-system develop- ment in the areas of pre-self, self-recognition, and self-regulation and identify indicators (manifestations) and influencing factors. 5.3 Assess the effects of different parenting styles on a child’s self- development and suggest techniques for improving parenting skills to address targeted behaviors. 5.4 Describe how parenting, child temperament, self-regulation, and internalization shape conscience formation and the beginnings of a moral self. Angie is 4 years old; her sister, Mary, just had her second birthday. Their mother, Jen- nie, and father, Jim, have been somewhat nomadic over the last few years. It started when Jim decided not to re-enlist in the Army and to try for a good paying job in “sales.” He tried large appliance sales, swimming pool sales, lawn service sales, and a few others. Often, when he left a company it was not because he couldn’t hold the job but because he was bored, not making much money, and certain that he was leaving to chase a better opportunity, in a different industry and usually in a different location. Between jobs, his family is essentially homeless. Jennie works as a health care aid. She can usually find work wherever they land, and she faithfully follows Jim on his end- less quest. They often stay with family or friends in between Jim’s jobs, but occasion- ally they live in their car. Angie seems to adapt well to every change. She is quiet but attentive, and she rarely disobeys or is out of sorts. Little Mary is a different story. She was highly active and reactive as an infant, and her parents regard her now as “impossible,” always getting into things, running off, reacting with temper tantrums when she is prevented from having what she wants, and disregarding the admonitions of the stream of differ- ent adults who house the family. The parents manage the two sisters quite differently. They are usually gentle with Angie, showing some warmth and affection, but they tend to just let her play quietly. If she does something “wrong,” such as accidentally breaking a lamp, they react with irritation, but Angie is so cautious that such things rarely happen. The parents are occasionally amused by Mary’s boisterousness, but more often they respond negatively: yelling at her to eat or to stop crying, pulling 172  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 173 her roughly away from what they consider dangerous, often expressing anger or dis- appointment. Their own lives are unpredictable and difficult, and they usually find Mary’s rambunctious impulsiveness a heavy burden. You can probably see the potential for Angie and Mary to develop rather differ- ent ideas about themselves from their different experiences of parenting. Their shared experiences –such as repeated relocations, periods of privation, reactions from people who do (or do not) take them in—are also likely to affect their early self-views. In this chapter, we will describe the earliest roots of self-development. The role of caregivers is of major significance, but the causal influences are multidimensional. As you can see with Angie and Mary, a child’s temperament impacts parents’ typi- cal responses and management strategies. And these interactive processes unfold within and are influenced by the context of the family and the broader culture. Let’s begin our examination of self-development by considering the rather elusive notion of “self” itself. The Self-System 5.1 Explain theoretical views of the self-system including elements of self and factors that influence a child’s perceptions of self. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the real me, after all?” Philosophers, poets, wicked stepmothers, and ordinary human beings have pondered versions of this question ever since the ancient Greeks advised, “Know thyself.” The search for self embodies within it many of the profound questions at the heart of the human condition: What is the nature of self-awareness? Are we the same or different across situations and over time? How do people come to understand and accept who they are? Modern cultures are not the first to express interest in these matters, but critics have raised concerns that the level of attention directed toward the self has increased in recent decades. Note the amount of press devoted to the ideas of self-concept, self-esteem, self-enhancement, and self-actualization, and you might agree that we have become downright self-centered! Those of us in the helping professions are no exception to this trend. Even a cur- sory review of the professional literature in clinical and educational fields reveals an intense interest in topics related to the self. Therapeutic approaches that emphasize self-development are very common. Educational institutions struggle to incorporate self-development into their more traditional academic objectives. Popular magazines are saturated with advice about self-concept and self-esteem. All together, the pieces add up to a crazy quilt: part folklore, part research, part anecdote, and part good inten- tion. Our task in this chapter is to unscramble some of this information and present the self in its developmental context. Helpers need to understand the research findings in this critically important area lest they assume that all of our popular, contemporary notions about self-development are valid. Traditional Conceptions of the Self-System What constitutes a self? To address this question, theorists and researchers have had to account for the fact that selves are multifaceted and possess elements of both sta- bility and change. If you have ever said that you are not the same person that you were some time ago, you can understand this point. Writers often use the term self- system to replace “self,” because the latter seems too unidimensional. The self-system includes such things as self-as-agent, self-recognition, self-concept, self-regulation, and self-esteem. The notion of an independent entity called “self” is such a deeply embedded concept in Western psychology that we tend to take it for granted. It may be surpris- ing to learn that in some cultural views of the psyche, mind and matter are seen as changing continually, and this impermanence is viewed as being influenced by sur- rounding conditions (Bodhi, 1999). In Buddhist psychology, this is the concept of “no self” (anatta). It does not imply that our conventional use of “self” is not helpful or 174 Chapter 5 that you and I are not real in some way. Rather, it emphasizes the transient nature of our phenomenological experience as human beings. The self is constantly being constructed in the moment-to-moment flow of experience. This insight is at the core of recent therapies that offer ways to alleviate the suffering that can come from our human tendency to protect and defend reified concepts about ourselves (Chadha, 2017; Olendzki, 2014). The view of “no-self” is quite different from that of classic Western psychology, which assumes a relatively permanent construct that can be studied over time. We will begin our look at the nature of the self-system within Western psychol- ogy with a brief description of the classic work of James, Cooley, and Mead. William James (1890) made a distinction between the “I” and the “Me,” a distinction that still guides contemporary research about the self (Harter, 2013; Prebble, Addis, & Tippett, 2013). That part of the self called “I” refers to the I-self/self-as-subject, as the active agent, or as the knower. It is that part of the self that experiences a sense of subjective self-awareness. The part called “Me” is that part of the self that is the object of self or others’ observations, or in other words, the part that is known. One might think of the “Me” part of the self (Me-Self) as the Me-self/self-concept. More recently, writers have developed alternative ways of categorizing the clas- sic “I–Me” distinction. Among these are Lewis’s (1994) subjective and objective self- awareness, Case’s (1991) implicit and explicit self, Neisser’s (1993) ecological and remembered self, and Gallagher’s (2000) minimal and narrative self. All the newer contrasts share the original distinction between the self as knower and the self as known. Furthermore, there is consensus between classic and contemporary theorists that the “I” self emerges first. The “I” is the side of the self that experiences continuity over time. Even though we all grow and change, we know we embody core elements of the same “self” throughout our lifetime. The “I” also recognizes the distinctiveness of the self as a per- son compared to other persons. You know where you end and the person sitting next to you begins. Finally, the “I” reflects agency; it is the part of the self that engages in self-directed activity, self-control, and contemplation of the “Me.” The “Me” includes all those attributes that are used to define the self and that make up the self-concept. In James’s typology, these are the “material self,” the “social self,” and the “spiritual self,” ranked in that order of importance from lowest to highest. The material self encompasses a person’s physical characteristics and material possessions. The social self includes her social standing, her reputation, and those personal characteristics that are recognized by others, such as gregariousness or stubbornness. The spiritual self, viewed by James as the most precious, incorporates her qualities of character, beliefs, and personal values. Self-esteem is distinct from self-concept but still part of the “Me.” Whereas self- concept is a person’s knowledge of her personal attributes, self-esteem is her evaluation of these attributes. In other words, she assigns a valence to her characteristics, judging them to be good, bad, or neutral. James believed that self-esteem is more than just the measure of accomplishments. Rather, he believed that it depends upon the number of successes we enjoy relative to our aspirations, or, in his terminology, pretensions. Pretensions are goals that we choose to meet for ourselves because of their personal importance. For example, if it is highly important to you to be popular and socially active, the lack of a date for an important New Year’s Eve party can be a real blow to your self-esteem. However, if you really care more about earning enough money to become rich at an early age, you might consider working overtime on New Year’s Eve to be highly congruent with your aspirations. Your dateless condition is less damaging to your self-esteem. Failures or even successes in areas that are relatively unimportant to us may be discounted and will have less effect on self-esteem. James’s ideas about the structure of the self are usually part of contemporary theo- rizing (e.g., Verschoor & Hommel, 2017). Another early theorist whose ideas suffuse modern work is Charles Cooley (1902). He introduced a developmental perspective that describes how interactions with others help construct the self-system. Using his now-famous metaphor of the “looking-glass self,” Cooley described the process of self-development as one that originates from observing the reflected appraisals of  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 175 others, primarily attachment figures. Cooley hypothesized that this process consists of three steps. As we interact with others, we first imagine how we must appear to the other person on a certain dimension, such as intelligence. Then, we interpret or imagine how that other person evaluates us on that certain dimension. Finally, we experience some emotional response to that perceived evaluation. The resulting inter- pretation and its affective valence are building blocks for constructing self-knowledge. Our self-representations are shaped and given affective valences by the significant people in our life. Let’s consider a simplified example of a young child’s display of affection for a parent. Imagine that Angie or Mary approaches her father to give him a hug. The father, preoccupied with searching the web for new job opportunities, looks annoyed by the interruption. He gives her a quick hug and returns to his search. If this type of sequence is repeated on a regular basis across various situations, the child may come to develop a “self-idea” that she is bothersome and not important enough to interrupt her father. She may begin to construct a vague impression of herself as unappealing or possibly too emotionally expressive or dependent. Because the child perceives the emotion and interprets her father’s response as impatient and irritated, her view of the event includes a self-appraisal—presumably that she is irritating—that is incorpo- rated into her self-system. With repeated experience, the youngster comes to regard herself in certain ways by looking at the mirror of her parent’s view of her, warped though that mirror might be. The emotional valence associated with this aspect of the child’s self-image can be unpleasant or uncomfortable. This self-representation may serve as a standard for her behavior in social interactions (e.g., in her willingness to express her need for attention and affection from others) and inform her sense of right and wrong. Now imagine this same little girl in another family. She interrupts her father to give him a hug, and he beams, expressing evident satisfaction in his daughter’s affec- tionate nature. This child’s self-concept is likely to include a positively valenced sense of being emotionally expressive. The same child and the same behavior could lead to different social responses in different families, setting the child’s developing sense of self, relationships, and morality on a different pathway. Thus early attachment and parenting interactions of many sorts have been viewed as instrumental in the develop- ment of individual differences in self-concept (Sroufe, 2016). Although the development of the self is obviously influenced by many factors and is extraordinarily complex, Cooley believed that it was largely the product of social influences. Recent researchers have investigated the possibility that the sequence Cooley proposed can also operate in reverse order, namely that a positive appraisal of oneself can generate positive interpretations of others’ appraisals. George Herbert Mead (1934) expanded on Cooley’s work, enlarging the scope of social influence to include the role of language and society in shaping the self-system. He held that children adopt descriptive information about the self, based on what is emphasized in their cultural milieu. They also incorporate those standards, rules, and goals that their family and their culture have determined to be appropriate ways of behaving and thinking. The “ingredients” of people’s self-concepts across cultures can be rather different as a result. In a classic study, for example, Markus and Kitayama (1991) found that Japanese participants were more likely to describe themselves by emphasizing their affiliations, such as family membership, whereas Americans used self-descriptors that emphasized their individuality. These classic formulations of the self as multidimensional, as influenced by the MyLab Education reflected appraisals of significant others and as shaped by the cultural milieu, pro- Video Example 5.1 vide a foundation for current Western thinking about the self-system. As you will find As you observe children and in this and subsequent chapters, conceptions of self and of morality overlap in these teacher interacting during lunch, models. Damon and Hart (1992) noted: think about social influences that shape the self-system. Recall the Children cannot know themselves without some sense of the other. Nor can they forge statement by Damon and Hart their self-identities without an awareness of their own values. Moreover, at all devel- (1992). “Children cannot know opmental periods, social activities derive from—and in turn shape—judgments about themselves without some sense of the self, other, and morality. In these and many other ways, self-understanding, social the other.” 176 Chapter 5 interaction, and morality are intertwined in a developing psychological system that grows and changes throughout the life span. (p. 421) Self-understanding is one of the key building blocks of personality, social, and moral development. How does this mysterious “self” begin? In the next section, we will review the earliest stages of developing self-awareness. MyLab Education Self-Check 5.1 The Early Development of the Self-System 5.2 Describe phases on the continuum of early self-system development in the areas of pre-self, self-recognition, and self-regulation and identify indicators (manifestations) and influencing factors. The Beginnings of the “I” and the “Me” You learned in Chapter 3 that studying a young infant’s ability to think and to under- stand the world is very challenging. Learning about the infant’s developing self-system is equally challenging. A child cannot describe herself as “smart” or “funny” until sev- eral years after birth. Does this mean there is no sense of self until then? To find out, we have to look for nonverbal indicators of what an infant is experiencing. As you have seen, when behavior has to be interpreted, researchers can disagree about what those behaviors mean. But on the whole, developmental scientists tend to agree that the self- system gradually unfolds, beginning at birth and continuing throughout life. (Discus- sions of self-development are part of many of the later chapters in this text.) What are the competencies of the infant that make self-development possible? How do these competencies interact with the social relationships that ultimately give birth to the self? PRECURSORS OF SELF-AWARENESS IN INFANCY—THE “PRE-SELF” AND THE “I-SELF” The newborn’s capacities for rudimentary information processing and social bonding provide the building material out of which the self is born. For example, one early competency is the infant’s ability to imitate. As you saw in Chapter 3, babies can imi- tate the facial and hand gestures of adults within their first few months of life. When a baby imitates an adult who is clapping his hands, she is detecting, at least at a behav- ioral level, similarity between herself and the adult model. She probably does not yet have a sense of herself as separate from the other person, but noticing these parallels may help her start the process of building that sense. There are many other experiences and abilities that should help with that process as well. For example, when the baby acts, she feels the bodily states that go with that action; when another person acts, she does not have the same experience. As Meltzoff (2007, p. 28) suggests, “these first-person experiences contribute to a detailed... map linking internal states and behavior,” and they support the process of separating the self from others. MyLab Education As you saw in Chapter 4, sensitive caregivers respond to their infants’ signals. Video Example 5.2 They establish predictable, reliable interactive routines as they meet their babies’ A sensitive caregiver responds to needs and help them to manage their emotions. The regularity and reliability of care- this infant’s signals, allowing the child to take control of the meal. giver–infant interactions may help babies begin to extract notions of “self-invariance” This type of behavior encourages and “other invariance,” which precede self-awareness. development of a strong sense of an Overall, in the first half year we might say that the infant comes to possess a pre- autonomous self. self, composed of early inklings that she has a body, that it is separate from others, and  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 177 that her actions affect events. Gradually, over the second half year, the infant appears to gain more control over when and how she signals the caregiver to provide for her needs. Imagine the lesson learned by an infant who, when she coos and babbles, reg- ularly attracts the smiles and responsive vocalizations of her caregivers. This baby’s world, in some small way, begins to come under her control. She might encode the mes- sage, “When I am upset or need attention, my parent responds and takes care of me.” Clearly, young infants do not represent these ideas linguistically, but rather encode these kinds of organized sequences as procedural models or patterns of the self-in-rela- tionship. Affective responses, such as feelings of love and relief, also become associated with these sensorimotor patterns. The infant’s self-system is under construction. By 8 to 12 months, several cognitive and social developments you have learned about in previous chapters indicate that the I-self is emerging. Babies engage in inten- tional, planned behavior. To obtain an out-of-reach toy, for example, a baby might first set aside a barrier, or she might vocalize to get a parent’s attention, then reach or point toward the toy. Intentional action is considered a hallmark of feelings of agency (e.g., Prinz, 2012; Verschoor & Hommel, 2017). Doing things on purpose, making choices and plans, requires an I-self. At about the same time, babies show other signs of an increasing sense of self as separate from others. They begin to display separation anxiety, signaling the forma- tion of an attachment to the primary caregiver. For example, they might show distress even at an impending separation from an attachment figure, perhaps by looking anx- iously at the door when the babysitter arrives. Many babies cry and cling to a depart- ing caregiver. These behaviors demonstrate the infant’s recognition that the caregiver is separate from herself. As you learned in Chapter 4, attachment theorists like Bowlby assume that the attachment between infant and caregiver gives rise to a sense of security and optimism in an infant, what Erikson described as a burgeoning trust in others and an early sense of self-worth. From this perspective, when the 1-year-old begins to use the caregiver as a secure base from which to explore the environment, we are seeing the emergence of a kind of preliminary sense of self-worth. Once again, the infant’s self-development evolves from her experience in relationships. We also saw in the last chapter that late in the first year, caregivers’ facial expres- sions influence infants’ reactions to situations. Suppose, for example, that Mom opens the door to a stranger. Imagine how differently her 1-year-old might react if she sees her mother smile happily versus if Mom looks frightened and wary. Such social ref- erencing not only implies recognition of the separateness of the other person, but it also provides the baby with a context in which she is sorting out experiences of the self from experiences of the other and from the combined experiences of the “we” (Emde & Buchsbaum, 1990). Social referencing demonstrates how transactional the self-development process really is. The child uses the caregiver’s emotions to discern meaning in events and to regulate her own feelings in different situations. Suppose now that the mother reliably responds to the approach of a stranger in one way: either with smiles or with wariness. When caregivers communicate consis- tent emotional signals about environmental events, infants are also likely to develop certain pervasive emotional dispositions. These emotional dispositions often are inte- gral to a family’s or even a culture’s “value system,” and they can affect how infants learn to approach questions such as “Can I trust other people?” “Is it safe to take risks?” Furthermore, caregivers’ emotional signals may affect the process of emotion regulation and emotional self-knowledge well beyond infancy. For example, suppose a family tends to be unsympathetic to indications of incompetence in other people, MyLab Education often expressing anger or blame. When the child herself struggles with a task and fails Video Example 5.3 to complete it despite her effort, she is likely to conclude that she should feel guilty or Note the difference between the ashamed (Campos, Frankel, & Camras, 2004). response of the 12-month-old and the response of the 19-month-old THE EMERGENCE OF SELF-AWARENESS AND SELF-CONCEPT as each faces self in a mirror. The At 18- to 24-months-old, toddlers show signs of a benchmark achievement in self- 12-month-old does not recognize development: They pass the “mirror test” (Lewis & Michalson, 1983). This classic himself, but the 19-month-old test of self-recognition involves surreptitiously marking a child’s nose, say with red shows self-awareness. 178 Chapter 5 rouge, and then watching what she does as she looks at herself in a mirror. Children younger than 18 months usually touch the mirror where they see the mark, or they might look behind the mirror. But at about 18 months or soon after, most children reach up to touch their own noses, demonstrating that they understand that their own body is reflected in the mirror. Another measure of self-recognition—seeing oneself as an object in the world—is called the “body-as-obstacle test.” It is based on an observation that Piaget reported (1952). His 18-month-old daughter, Jacqueline, was trying to pick up a cloth without success, because she was standing on it. Apparently she figured out that her body was the obstacle, stepped off the cloth, and successfully retrieved it. In a modern version of the body-as-obstacle test, a mother encourages her infant to push a toy shopping cart toward her (Moore, Mealiea, Garon, & Povinelli, 2007). But the infant has been placed on a mat that is attached to the shopping cart, so that the cart will not move. The child has to recognize that her body is creating the problem and step off the mat. Chil- dren typically succeed on this task at about the same time that they pass the mirror test. And, once they begin to pass self-recognition tests, they show other signs of self- awareness. For example, they begin to display self-conscious emotions (see Chapter 4), such as pride and embarrassment, that indicate judgments about the self. The timing of self-awareness seems to be about the same across cultures, but the culture’s preferred approach to defining self, reflected in how infants are reared, seems to affect which measure is easier for children. The mirror-test seems to require recog- nizing the self in a completely individualistic setting, whereas the body-as-obstacle test is more a test of recognizing the self as it relates to context. Ross and colleagues (2017) predicted and found that babies in an individualistic Western culture, Scotland, usually passed the mirror test before they passed the body-as-obstacle test. When Scot- tish parents were observed caring for their infants, they tended to encourage auton- omy, engaging in lots of face-to-face and other “distal” interactions, such as talking with their babies. On the other hand, Ross and colleagues predicted and found that in Zambia, where the culture defines self as embedded in relationships, babies were better at the body-as-obstacle test. Consistent with their culture, the Zambian parents were observed using more “proximal” infant-care strategies, such as keeping their babies close. These parents rarely engaged in face-to-face games or conversational style interactions. For children whose development is delayed, as in the case of children with Down syndrome, self-recognition usually begins when they achieve a developmental level of approximately 2 years (Reddy, Williams, Constantini, & Lang, 2010). Comparison studies of maltreated and non-maltreated children show no differences in the timing of self-recognition (see Cicchetti, 2016). These studies also suggest that self-evaluation, or self-esteem, begins to emerge along with self-recognition. Maltreated children show considerably more negative or neutral affect when seeing their faces in the mirror than do non-maltreated children, who display more positive affect. Self-recognition is a clear signal that a child has begun to formulate a conscious concept of self. Roughly after the child’s second birthday, an increase in language skills makes possible further elaboration of the self-concept or Me-self. Children begin to describe themselves as “a boy” or “a girl” or as “big” or “little,” and they begin to use appropriate personal pronouns to refer to themselves (e.g., Lewis & Ramsay, 2004). These achievements mark a watershed in the development of the self-concept, and caregivers make important contributions by virtue of the labels they apply to children. Parental statements such as “You are a big girl” can now be stored in memory as part of a child’s self-knowledge (e.g., Nelson, 1993). Caregivers’ descriptions can be neutral and objective (such as the child’s name or personal pronoun) or evaluative and subjective (such as “pretty” or “good”). Toddlers appear to believe both objective and subjective claims about themselves, apparently because the claims come from an authoritative source. In other words, young children cannot discount the negative part of the parental evaluation “bad girl” as due to paren- tal bias or temporary bad mood. When self-description begins, maltreated children tell more negative stories about themselves than other children do (Toth et al., 2013). Such findings imply poor self-esteem, and they show the influence of caregivers’ words and  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 179 deeds on children’s earliest self-evaluations. In fact, maltreatment generally seems to blunt the development of self-awareness, especially children’s awareness of their inner thoughts and feelings (Harter, 2006). As toddlers become preschoolers, their self-concepts become more and more dif- ferentiated and complex. Consistent with their level of cognitive development, pre- schoolers generally describe themselves in concrete, physical terms, such as “little” or “strong,” whereas older children and adolescents use more abstract words. They also become more skilled at identifying specific aspects of themselves. For example, a 7-year-old might describe herself as helpful, funny, a good soccer player, and smart in reading but not in math. As we shall see in a later chapter, the self-concept continues to become more differentiated with age. In summary, the self-system begins to develop in earliest infancy. There are many precursors to a conscious concept of self in the first year, a kind of procedural knowl- edge of the self in action and interaction, or “pre-self.” An I-self, a sense of agency, is in place by the end of the first year, but clear awareness of self as a distinct entity, the Me-self, begins with self-recognition in the second year and is followed by explicit self- description in the third year. Self-evaluation or self-esteem is evident as soon as tod- dlers show signs of self-recognition. See Table 5.1 for a summary of the early phases of self-development. Throughout infancy and beyond, the self-system is a joint construction of child, caregiver, and cultural and family milieu. We have described some ways in which ­caregiver–infant interactions seem to contribute to the development of the self. Later in this chapter, we will discuss in greater detail how parenting in the toddler and preschool years contributes to child outcomes, including the development of the self-system. Roots of Self-Regulation Up to now, we have described the emerging “I” and “Me.” Now we turn our atten- tion to another important dimension of the developing self-system, self-regulation. You were introduced to self-regulation in Chapter 3. It is an executive function that helps us to inhibit some impulses and behaviors and to perform other less preferred behav- iors in order to achieve our goals. It involves not only controlling our behavior but also managing our emotions. A child who can pull her hand back from the cookie jar when she remembers, “No cookies before dinner,” and who forces herself to try some unap- pealing vegetable dish at dinner because “It’s good for you,” is clearly engaged in self- regulation. She is controlling her behavior, but she is also finding ways to moderate her excitement (about the cookies) and her disgust (about the vegetables). As children grow, self-regulation becomes more complex. Children begin to be able to manage their emotional reactions and their actions in adjustment to the particular and some- times subtle variations in their physical and social environment. What is appropriate and effective to say or do varies depending on whether a child is with Grandma at a movie or with a friend at the park. Self-regulation is a critical ingredient for success in all aspects of life, from getting along with others to learning in school or achieving in any arena. TABLE 5.1 Phases of Self-Development AGE DEVELOPING ASPECTS OF SELF MANIFESTATIONS 0–6 months Pre-Self Beginnings of “self-invariance” and “other invariance” embedded in infant–caregiver interactions 8–12 months Intentional or Agentic Self or “I” Intentional signaling of caregiver; social referencing; shared referents; beginning self-efficacy; using caregiver as secure base (beginning self- worth and trust) 15–24 months Objective Self or “Me” Self-recognition; early self-control; early self-esteem (feelings of auton- omy); self-conscious emotions 24–60 months Self-Monitoring Self Self-description; self-regulation 180 Chapter 5 Professionals regularly deal with problems involving self-regulation in one form or another. The preschooler who throws tantrums in school, the rebellious adolescent who runs away from home, the young adult who repeatedly loses jobs because she fails to show up on time––all may be examples of individuals who have difficulties in this area. Many other factors contribute to such adjustment problems; however, they all reflect some lack of compliance with specific requests or rules. Obviously, achieving self-regulation is a rather formidable task for a mischievous toddler or even for a sophisticated high schooler. Even though this may sound like the accomplishment that many parents of tempestuous 2-year-olds long for, it is not real- istic to expect a child to be able to master her behavior and emotions in every circum- stance. The movement from dyadic emotion regulation to self-regulation of behavior and emotion, permitting harmonious interchange with the social environment, is a painstaking, complex, and long-term process (Thompson, 2014). Historically, self-regulation has been studied under several headings: as a tem- perament trait (usually called “effortful control”); as a capacity to delay gratification (usually called “will power”); and as an executive function (usually called “inhibitory control”). Each line of research has focused to different degrees on emotional versus cognitive processes and on automatic versus intentional processes. But researchers are beginning to merge their findings and to learn how the whole complex self-regulatory system develops and works together (e.g., Blair, 2016; Duckworth & Steinberg, 2015; Gagne, 2017). THE IMPORTANCE OF EMOTION REGULATION It is absolutely essential to recognize that emotion regulation underlies any ability to control behaviors (Gagne, 2017). In fact, the earliest developmental task of infancy is to establish physiological balance, or control over fluctuating levels of arousal. The affective tension that the infant experiences when her homeostatic “set point” has been altered through hunger, pain, or too much stimulation motivates her to return to a more balanced state. You learned in Chapter 4 that the infant, unable to man- age this on her own, signals the caregiver, whose soothing attentions function as criti- cal ingredients in the development of the affect-regulation system. When the toddler or preschooler experiences periods of high arousal or distress, the sensitive caregiver steps in once again to help the child regain some affective control. As we emphasized in Chapter 4, good caregiving in infancy and beyond involves scaffolding the child’s developing ability to regulate both emotional and behavioral expression. THE EARLY PROGRESS OF BEHAVIOR REGULATION How does behavior regulation come into being? It depends on two major cognitive and emotional advances that emerge in tandem with objective self-awareness or self- recognition: first, representational thought and associated abilities, and second, emo- tional response to wrongdoing. Recall from Chapter 3 that by 9 or 10 months, babies show some capacity for rep- resentational thought, such as deferred imitation and separation anxiety. By 18 months their representational thought is progressing rapidly, supporting the toddler’s ability to understand and produce language. Language is important for self-regulation (Blair, 2016). Toddlers begin to decipher and store parents’ requests such as “Don’t jump on the furniture,” which might be a manifestation of a broader value that property should not be damaged, or “Share your candy with your sister,” a version of “Do unto oth- ers.” These standards or rules might differ somewhat according to the child’s family and culture, but every cultural group maintains them (Lewis, 2016b). Along with the growth of mental representation and language, many other cog- nitive skills are strengthening, such as the ability to focus attention, to comprehend the caregiver’s requests, and to generalize rules to new situations. As these abilities sharpen in the second year, toddlers begin to show signs of governing their own behavior by some rules. Obviously, an infant cannot comply with social conventions precisely because she has no comprehension of them. But a 2-year-old who has the requisite level of cognitive maturity to understand and remember some rules, as well as the motivation to comply, begins to show signs of inhibiting her own behavior in  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 181 such situations. Over the next several years, the many cognitive skills that support self-regulation advance rapidly. You can see the effects in how children manage tests of inhibitory control, for example, such as the “head-toes-knees-shoulders” test described in Chapter 3. Most children show dramatic improvement from ages 3 to 7 (Montroy, Bowles, Skibbe, McClelland, & Morrison, 2016). The growth of emotions often linked to violations of standards for everyday behavior appears to begin late in the second year. These are the self-conscious emo- tions that we mentioned earlier as appearing when children show self-recognition: embarrassment, shame, guilt, and pride. These emotions are different from the emotions of infancy, because they require the ability to consider the self as sepa- rate from others and as the subject of others’ judgments. Children have to be able to “think... about others thinking about them” (Lewis, 2016b, p. 793). Between the ages of 2 and 3, young children often display emotional responses to their wrongdoing and mistakes, suggesting that they have begun to evaluate themselves in ways that they expect to be evaluated by others. At 18 months, a child might take notice of her rule violation but without any discernable emotional response. Consider, for example, the toddler who spills milk on the floor. She may say “Uh oh!” and giggle or point to the spill without much concern. Later, rule breaking becomes associated with some negative affect. This same youngster at 3 may experience a sense of embarrassment, evaluate herself as “bad,” and try to hide the evidence (Saarni, Campos, Camras, & Witherington, 2006). The capacity for emotional response to wrongdoing is an important first step in moral development, which we will examine more closely later in this chapter. For now, we will consider how two emotions connected to wrongdoing, guilt and shame, differ. They do not have equally positive moral effects. As a means of making sense of transgression, children and adults who experience guilt might reason “I did a bad thing” whereas the inner script for those who experience shame might be “I am a bad person.” Although guilt is often characterized as problematic, even “crip- pling,” it is usually less intense than shame and can have adaptive consequences. Feelings of guilt have been associated with increases in other-directed empathy, positive reparative action, constructive problem solving, and low defensiveness and anger. Shame, on the other hand, is often more intense and painful, and a person feeling ashamed wants to hide or disappear. It is linked to elevated levels of cortisol and proinflammatory cytokines. Children may cope with the bad feeling by deny- ing wrongdoing and/or blaming other people or situations. Shame is associated with displaced aggression, externalizing behavior, low self-esteem, and a range of psychiatric disorders (see Lewis, 2016b and Tangney, Stuewig, & Mashek, 2007 for reviews). MyLab Education Self-Check 5.2 Early Socialization: Parenting and the Development of the Self-System 5.3 Assess the effects of different parenting styles on a child’s self-development and suggest techniques for improving parenting skills to address targeted behaviors. Theorists from Cooley (1902) to Bowlby (e.g., 1969/1982) and Erikson (1950/1963) have assumed that many parts of the self-system grow out of our social interactions. As we saw in the last chapter, the available data do suggest that our earliest relation- ships create a trajectory for the development of self-concept and self-esteem. For exam- ple, when babies are securely attached to their mothers, they tend to be appropriately 182 Chapter 5 independent as 4-year-olds and to be self-confident and socially skilled as 10-year-olds (e.g., Sroufe, Egeland, Carlson, & Collins, 2005; see Thompson, 2015, for a review). To briefly review: We know that early caregiving quality can make an important contribution to the quality of babies’ attachments. Infants are likely to become securely attached to caregivers who respond promptly and consistently to crying; who react appropriately to babies’ facial expressions, eye contact, and other signals; who handle their infants sensitively, and who hold them often during the first year, providing the contact comfort that helps infants modulate their emotions. Such caregiving requires patience and a child-centered approach that can be difficult for any parent sometimes, but is especially challenging if the baby has a difficult temperament or other special needs or if the parent is stressed or depressed. But the effort and self-sacrifice required for parents to create a “good fit,” as Thomas and Chess (1977) described it, between their caregiving and a baby’s needs does appear to contribute to attachment quality and to the direction that self-knowledge and self-evaluation will take. This process continues after infancy, as the description of self-development in the last section indi- cates. In this section, we will take a close look at parent–child relationships in the toddler and preschool years. We will focus especially on the characteristics of parent- ing that may be most conducive to helping young children to develop positive self- esteem and adaptive self-regulatory mechanisms. One way to think about parents is to consider them as having a basic set of caregiving responsibilities or tasks, beyond meeting their children’s physical requirements for food, clothing, shelter, health care, and so on. We just summarized the caregiving responsibilities parents have toward their infants, and these are captured by the first three parenting tasks listed in Table 5.2. You can see in the table that as the infant becomes a toddler, gaining cognitive, communi- cative, and motor skills, the list of parenting tasks expands. There are new challenges for parents who are trying to be sensitive and responsive and seeking to create a good fit between their care and the child’s needs. First, caregivers are faced with the need to grant more autonomy to the child. As toddlers become capable of doing more on their own, they are motivated to practice and expand their growing competencies. The strong dependency that characterizes young babies is gradually replaced by a capacity and need for independent action and mastery. Erikson theorized that toddlers’ emerg- ing feelings of worth are benefited when they can use their growing skills to function at least somewhat autonomously, whether it is by feeding themselves or by button- ing their own buttons, or more subtly, by saying “NO!”—that is, refusing to do what someone else requires (see Table 1.2 in Chapter 1). Thus, although the earliest feelings of worth grow out of an infant’s trust in others to meet all her needs, those feelings of worth grow in the toddler years when the child begins to experience self-sufficiency, or autonomy, a sense that “I can do it myself.” TABLE 5.2 Parents’ Caregiving Tasks WHEN IT BEGINS PARENTING TASK (CHILD STAGE) Regulating emotional arousal Infancy Engaging in appropriate stimulation/reciprocal interaction Infancy Providing secure base and safe haven Infancy Accepting child’s growing autonomy Toddlerhood Supporting mastery/scaffolding problem solving Toddlerhood Socializing expression/containment of emotions Toddlerhood Socializing behavior/providing clear rules/setting limits Toddlerhood Providing opportunities for broader social contacts Toddlerhood SOURCE: Based on Sroufe, L. A. (2016). The place of attachment in development. In J. Cassidy & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Handbook of attachment: Theory research and clinical applications (3rd ed., pp. 997–1011). NY: Guilford Press.  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 183 Second, also because the child’s behavioral and cognitive skills are growing, the caregiver must begin to socialize the child, that is, to prepare the child to be a compe- tent member of society, from providing opportunities to interact with people beyond the family to imposing discipline. Discipline involves limiting some behaviors and demanding others, so that the child will be safe (“Don’t climb on the counter”) and so that she will behave in ways that are conventionally acceptable (“You must wear clothes”). Parents generally impose more discipline on the child as they perceive her to be more and more capable of self-control. When parents tell a child to do, or not to MyLab Education do, something, they are depending on the child’s ability to initiate or to stop her own Video Example 5.4 actions. The only way to make a young infant do, or not do, something is to rely on Many parts of the self-system grow physically moving or restraining the child. Parents do a lot of that with infants, but they out of our social interactions. As rely more and more on controlling by request or command during early childhood, as you observe the play setting in this video, consider how the self-system the requisite abilities (such as representational and comprehension skills) develop. is influenced by the interactions and Thus, caregiver–child relationships are reorganized in the post-infancy period, opportunities for expression. with the additions of children’s autonomy seeking, on one hand, and parents’ impo- sition of discipline, on the other hand. What are the important features of this more complex relationship between parent and child? What role does the parent–child rela- tionship play in the child’s developing self-system? Let’s begin by examining what research indicates are the most important dimensions or features of a parent’s behav- ior in this relationship. The Dimensions of Parenting Style Studies of parenting after infancy have a long history and have produced many com- plicated findings. Remarkably, researchers from very different theoretical traditions have repeatedly identified two major dimensions or aspects of parents’ behavior that seem to characterize the quality of parenting. These can be thought of as the primary contributors to what is called parenting style (for reviews see Baumrind, 1989, 1993; Bornstein, 2015; Maccoby & Martin, 1983; Pinquart, 2017). THE WARMTH DIMENSION—PARENTAL RESPONSIVENESS In the post-infancy period, parents continue to create an emotional climate for their children. Contributing to a positive climate is the warmth dimension (parental responsiveness): listening to the child, being involved and interested in the child’s activities, accepting the child, making positive attributions toward the child, being “tuned in” and supportive (e.g., Baumrind, 1989; Bornstein, 2015). In essence, high levels of warmth with toddlers and older children are comparable to high levels of responsive, sensitive care with infants. But some of the child’s needs have changed. With toddlers, as we have seen, autonomy needs begin to be important, and responsive parents accept these needs, acquiescing when possible to their children’s reasonable demands for autonomy (Baumrind, 1993). So, when 25-month-old Amanda begins to insist that she can dress herself, her mother tries to accommodate her by setting aside extra time for the morning dressing ritual. She also ignores the inconvenience and the sometimes strange-looking results and gives Amanda positive messages about the process: “You’re getting to be such a big girl to put on your own clothes!” Her attitude is child centered, sidelining parental needs (for time, convenience, and coordinated outfits) when possible to meet Amanda’s developmental needs. Some parents create a more negative emotional climate. Their behavior is often parent centered: They show little responsiveness to their children’s concerns and are unlikely to do things just to meet those concerns. They may even make hostile attribu- tions when children’s needs are out of line with their own. When 20-month-old Jessie wants to feed herself her morning cereal, for example, at first her mother ignores her. When Jessie insists, her mother attends to her demands by making negative attribu- tions, such as “You’ll just make a mess” and “Why do you always make things so hard in the morning?” When Jessie accidentally spills the milk, her mother responds in frus- tration, “I told you that you couldn’t do it yourself!” We have seen that sensitive, responsive parental care in infancy promotes secure attachments. Likewise, parents’ warmth and responsiveness with their toddlers and 184 Chapter 5 preschoolers help maintain secure attachments and increase the likelihood that chil- dren will be cooperative when parents place demands on them (Thompson, 2016). In a series of classic studies, for example, toddlers’ compliance with their mothers’ requests was observed in toy cleanup tasks and in a situation where mothers designated some attractive toys as “off limits.” The most enthusiastically compliant toddlers were those who were securely attached to their mothers (according to a separate assessment), and whose mothers maintained a warm, positive emotional climate throughout the ses- sions (Kochanska, 1995; Kochanska, Aksan, & Koenig, 1995). What happens when a parent of a securely attached infant becomes a less sen- sitive caregiver as the child moves into the toddler and preschool years? First, it is worth noting that this is most likely to happen when the parent faces an increase in negative life events (such as a job loss, separation from spouse, homelessness, violence in the home or neighborhood, and so on). Second, if a toddler begins with a secure attachment, she tends to weather insensitive parenting better than if she starts with an insecure attachment. However, even for children with a history of secure attachment, insensitive care in the toddler and preschool period seems especially problematic, as though “the continuing harmony of the parent-child relationship... constitute(s) a bridge between a secure attachment in infancy and the development of later personal- ity and working models of relationships” (Thompson, 2016, p. 334). THE CONTROL DIMENSION—PARENTAL DEMANDINGNESS The second major dimension of parenting style is the control dimension (parental demandingness). If parental responsiveness means that parents sometimes acquiesce to their children’s demands, parental demandingness leads parents to impose disci- pline. Demanding parents exercise behavioral control. They communicate to their children expectations for appropriate behavior that are suitable to each child’s level of maturity (sometimes called maturity demands). Demanding parents impose clear and consistent standards and rules of behavior, and they enforce them. Interestingly, this dimension of parenting can be either child centered or parent centered. If the par- ent’s concern is the development of self-control necessary for children to feel secure, to behave in ways that gain social acceptance, and to become skillful at social give and take, then discipline has a child focus. If the parents’ concerns—for example, for quiet, or convenience, or orderliness, and so on—are primary, then discipline has a parent focus. Of course, parents’ disciplinary motives may sometimes combine both kinds of concerns, and the same parents may shift their focus depending on the given situation. For example, Hastings and Grusec (1998) found that parents expressed more parent-centered concerns (such as wanting to be in control) when disciplining their children in public, but parents expressed more child-centered concerns (such as teach- ing a child not to give up easily) in private interactions. The control dimension refers to parents’ behavioral control, which is an important element of responsible parenting. This must be distinguished from psychological con- trol, which refers to a kind of intrusiveness and interference on the part of parents (e.g., Barber, Stolz, & Olsen, 2005; Doan et al., 2017). The latter often involves criticiz- ing and/or derogating the child. It is called psychological control because the parent seems to be trying to manipulate the child’s emotional experiences by promoting feel- ings of guilt or shame to pressure the child (e.g., “You ruined my day” or “You should be ashamed of yourself”), and/or by making love conditional on the child’s behavior (e.g., “I don’t like you right now,” or “I can’t stand the sight of you”). Psychological control has more to do with the emotional climate a parent creates (the warmth dimen- MyLab Education sion) than it does with demandingness. Video Example 5.5 This caregiver shows both warmth and demandingness as she guides Four Parenting Styles the children through the resolu- We can describe four basic parenting styles, or constellations of parenting characteris- tion of a dispute. The guidelines tics, as shown in Table 5.3, by combining and crossing the positive and negative poles she provides for sharing will help of parental responsiveness and demandingness (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). As you will the children develop their own see, these styles are often predictive of child characteristics (Baumrind, 1989, 1993; self-control. ­Pinquart, 2017).  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 185 TABLE 5.3 Parenting Dimensions and Parenting Styles PARENTAL WARMTH ACCEPTING, RESPONSIVE, REJECTING, UNRESPONSIVE, PARENTAL DEMANDINGNESS CHILD-CENTERED PARENT-CENTERED Exercises Behavioral Control, Makes Increasing Maturity Authoritative Style Authoritarian Style Demands Does NOT Exercise Behavioral Control, Makes Few Permissive Style Neglecting–Uninvolved Style Demands SOURCE: Based on Maccoby, E. E., & Martin, J. A. (1983). Socialization in the context of the family. In P. H. Mussin & E. M. Hetherington, Handbook of child ­psychology vol. 4 (4th ed., pp. 1–101). THE AUTHORITATIVE STYLE Parents with an authoritative style are both highly responsive and highly demanding. So, they create a positive emotional climate for their children, promoting autonomy and supporting assertiveness and individuality. At the same time these parents accept responsibility for socializing their children by expecting mature behavior and by set- ting and consistently enforcing clear standards. Other qualities also tend to be part of this constellation. These parents are often openly affectionate; they encourage two-way communication with their children (that is, they genuinely listen and pay attention as well as talking themselves). Their communications about expectations and standards are usually clear and come with explanations that go beyond “You do it because I said so” to statements that help children make sense of their parents’ demands. Thus, they are strong on behavioral control, but do not use psychological control. THE AUTHORITARIAN STYLE Parents with an authoritarian style are low on responsiveness, but highly demanding. Thus, they do not create a positive emotional climate nor do they encourage children’s individualistic strivings or assertiveness, but they do tend to exercise considerable control, making maturity demands and requiring conformity to rules. A few other qualities tend to be characteristic of authoritarian parents. First, authoritarian parents usually communicate less effectively with their children than authoritative parents. Their communications are more one sided (“I say what will happen; you listen”). They express less affection. And their control tends to be more restrictive, meaning that they often restrict their children’s emotional expressiveness and other self-assertive behav- iors. In other words, they are likely to exercise not just behavioral but also psychologi- cal control. They also are more likely to enforce control by using harsh techniques (see the section on parenting practices below) and are less likely to provide explanations that go beyond “Because I said so.” THE PERMISSIVE STYLE Parents with a permissive style are moderately to highly responsive, but low on demandingness. Thus, they exercise less behavioral control of their children than other parents, making fewer maturity demands. They may be especially “laissez-faire” about restricting aggressive behavior. They are more nurturing and affectionate than authoritarian parents, but usually not as nurturing as authoritative parents. THE NEGLECTING–UNINVOLVED STYLE Some parents are both low on responsiveness and low on demandingness, so that they actually invest little time or attention in a child and are largely parent centered in their concerns. Like permissive parents, those with a neglecting–uninvolved style seem to neglect their responsibility to socialize the child, but they also express less affection and are not likely to be responsive to their children’s needs, perhaps even expressing hostility or making negative attributions to their children. When they do impose limits on their children, they tend to use harsh techniques and little explanation. 186 Chapter 5 Parenting Style and Child Outcomes Through the long history of research on parenting, small but significant correlations have been found between parenting style, on one hand, and children’s typical behav- iors, on the other. Briefly, authoritative parenting has been associated with many posi- tive outcomes in young children: adaptability, competence and achievement, good social skills and peer acceptance, and low levels of antisocial or aggressive behavior. Of particular interest to us in this chapter, authoritative parenting seems to promote posi- tive self-development, especially high self-esteem and the capacity for self-regulation. The children of authoritarian parents are more likely to be irritable and conflicted, showing signs of both anxiety and anger. They are conforming (self-controlled) with authority figures, but are not likely to be socially skillful, and they are susceptible to being bullied and/or to becoming bullies (Ladd & Ladd, 1998; Pinquart, 2017). They tend to have low self-esteem, and although they exhibit self-control with authorities, they may lack self-regulation when they believe that authorities are not monitoring them (Bornstein, 2015). Permissive parents are more likely to have children who exhibit uncontrolled, impulsive behavior and low levels of self-reliance. They are low on cognitive compe- tence and social agency, and are likely to be aggressive, especially in family interac- tions. In some studies they have had high self-esteem, apparently when parents are very warm, but many studies suggest that warmth combined with demandingness is more certain to be associated with self-esteem (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Finally, the children of neglecting/uninvolved parents are likely to be impulsive, to show high levels of both externalizing problems (e.g., aggressiveness) and inter- nalizing problems (e.g., depression), and to have low self-esteem. Be cautious in interpreting these relationships between parenting style and child outcomes. The strength of the associations is modest, cueing us that many factors interact with parenting and modify its effects. Researchers have begun to identify a multiplicity of interacting factors, which we will discuss in a later section of this chap- ter (see Bornstein, 2015; Pinquart, 2017). Parenting Practices: Methods of Control Thus far, we have looked at parenting style—parents’ combined responsiveness and demandingness—as a source of children’s behavior and self-development. Another aspect of parenting concerns the methods of control parents choose. These are the strategies parents use to enforce their demands. Parents’ control methods mostly fall into three categories: power assertion, psychological control (which includes love withdrawal), and induction. Power assertion can involve corporal (physical) punish- ment or the threat of corporal punishment, ranging from spanking on the buttocks to harsh beating with objects. Or, it can involve withdrawal of privileges, from mild forms (such as time-out procedures with toddlers, see Box 5.1), to severe denial (e.g., withholding meals). Power assertion of both types is usually effective for the immedi- ate control of behavior. Children often change their behavior while they feel threat- ened. But there can be unwanted side effects. Harsh or severe power assertion has been linked to high levels of anger and anxiety in children, and children whose parents use harsh, punitive practices tend to be more aggressive than other children (Baumrind, 2001; ­Bornstein, 2015; Pinquart, 2017). New research on the effects of “milder” forms of corporal punishment (e.g., spanking) will be reviewed later in this chapter. If a child is accustomed to power assertive control methods, what happens when the threat is removed (e.g., Mom or Dad is not present or unlikely to find out)? Does the child engage in self-regulation? In other words, will she regulate her own behavior because she is committed to an internalized set of standards? There are conflicting data on this issue. On the whole, power assertion does not seem to be particularly effective in promoting self-regulation. Interestingly, milder forms of power assertion are more effective than harsher forms, especially when they do not involve corporal punishment. But the picture is complex and cannot be fully understood without con- sidering other factors, such as child temperament, culture, and overall parenting style. We will return to this issue later.  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 187 Box 5.1: Time-Out: Getting It Right In many Dennis the Menace cartoons, Dennis sits in a pint-sized Don’t expect everything to go smoothly right from the start. chair, hugging his teddy bear, facing into a corner, banished for At first a child may refuse to stay in time-out, or she may repeat some infraction. Dennis’s parents use time-out as a disciplin- the offending behavior just to test your resolve. If the child won’t ary procedure: During a short span of time, Dennis is required stay in time-out, make it very brief—just a moment—and gently to discontinue his involvement in ongoing activities to quietly sit hold her from behind to create the condition of no attention. Then somewhere apart. The technique involves mild power assertion quickly make eye contact and praise the child for staying in time- and is suitable for use with toddlers and preschoolers. There is out, even though it was only for a moment. Stick it out—it will no pain involved, but time-out gets the attention of young chil- pay off. Time-out needs only to be long enough to get the point dren. Requiring a child to sit in a corner is one approach, but you across. The younger the child, the less time is appropriate. One can choose any place that separates the child from the action, rule of thumb is 1 or 2 minutes for each year of age, so that the while keeping her in a safe place that is within easy reach of maximum time-out for a 2-year-old would be 4 minutes. Longer the caregiver. Do not choose a spot where the child might be times are likely to become so aversive that they could defeat the overwhelmed by feelings of isolation. The purpose of time-out is purpose of simply getting the child’s attention and creating an to eliminate the rewards of misbehavior, not to frighten a child. opportunity for her to think over her behavior. Indeed, it will work even if the “place apart” is in the midst of At the end of a time-out episode, assurances of your affec- things. For example, in one day care center, the time-out chair tion are appropriate. This also may be a good time to assist the is in the middle of a busy classroom so that the child is safely in child with emotion regulation, helping the child to identify her view of the teachers. For the children, just being confined to the emotions and to consider ways of managing them. chair, unable to participate in the ongoing activities of the class, is Time-out, like most effective discipline, requires putting aside sufficiently aversive to be effective. what you are doing to attend to the misbehavior when it hap- It seems simple, but it is actually somewhat complex, and pens. It can be inconvenient, but immediacy is important to help parents often fail to fully understand what they need to do to young children make the right connection between their behavior make it work (Drayton et al., 2017). First, to minimize the child’s and its consequences. Similarly, consistency is essential. When anxious arousal, stay calm. Remember that nearly all young chil- a parent’s responses are unreliable, it is difficult for a child to dren misbehave sometimes, and more exuberant children may learn what the rules are. Just how consistent can a parent be? do so more often. For example, many preschoolers occasionally There are going to be times when you simply cannot follow up engage in instrumental aggression, such as grabbing toys away on an act of misbehavior. But most times you can, if you make from other children (Hay, 2017). You may be frustrated, but your it a priority and if you are careful to use time-out for just a few child is usually just being a child. It should be clear that your important behaviors. Suppose, for example, that you are teach- negative assessment is restricted to the offending behavior; your ing your 4-year-old, Jenny, not to hit her baby brother. In the affection for your child is intact. middle of your grocery shopping, sure enough, Jenny hauls off To start, it helps to choose just two or three specific, target and whacks him. Immediately, tell Jenny what’s wrong with this behaviors that need to be changed. For very young children, picture: “Jenny, you know that hitting is not okay. It hurts and it reserve time-out for behaviors that are important to control makes people cry, and we don’t hit in our family, ever! You have because of safety, such as climbing on the kitchen counter, or to go to time-out for that.” Pick up the baby, take Jenny’s hand, because they are antisocial and hurtful, such as hitting or biting. leave the cart, and head for the car. In the car, put Jenny in the Explain to the child which behaviors will lead to time-out, why back seat and sit in the front with the baby. Say clearly, “You are they are unacceptable, and what alternative behaviors would be in time-out,” and face forward for the designated time. At the acceptable. It works best if children know the rules in advance end, explain the rule again, tell Jenny that time-out is over, and so that what will lead to time-out is clear. (Don’t forget to provide head back to the shopping cart. In other words, if at all possible, some positive attention for those more acceptable behaviors.) improvise. (No car? Stand silently on the sidewalk for the time- Don’t use time-out for behaviors that have not been previously out period.) There are bound to be situations that make immedi- identified as inappropriate, and when the time-out is over, follow ate and full follow-through impossible. You could have been in up with a reminder of your reasons for restricting this behavior. the middle of checking out your groceries, for example. But if As you will see in this chapter, mild power assertion combined your usual response is swift and sure, your efforts will pay off with induction can be very effective. Although Dennis the Menace (see Drayton et al., 2017; Hecker & Sori, 2016; and the Applica- is allowed to have a teddy bear in time-out, it is more consistent tions section for more detailed pointers on effective discipline and to eliminate access to toys, television, and attention from others. intervention for parents). Psychological control, as you have seen, is a set of strategies that tend to go together, including inducing guilt or shame and withdrawing love. Love withdrawal might include a parent’s withdrawing attention or affection, expressing disappointment or dis- illusionment with a child, turning away from a child, cutting off verbal or emotional con- tact, or enforcing separations from the parent. Psychological control is rarely used alone 188 Chapter 5 by parents, but when it is used, it seems to generate high anxiety and is more effective in eliciting immediate compliance than any other method (Doan et al., 2017). As with power assertion, the compliance that psychological control generates is usually short term (Gru- sec, Danyliuk, Kil, & O’Neill, 2017). Induction refers to parents’ use of explanation: giving reasons for rules (“If every- body touched the paintings they would soon be very dirty from fingerprints”) and appealing to children’s desires to be grown-up (“Big girls don’t take toys away from babies”). “Other-oriented” explanations seem to be especially powerful in promoting empathy (“When you hit people, it hurts them and makes them sad”). But explanations need to be appropriate to the situation. Suppose a parent is trying to explain to a pre- schooler why her teacher wants the children to raise their hands during group time. An “other oriented” explanation is not likely to work as well as pointing out how confusing things get when everyone talks at once (Grusec et al., 2017). Using induction seems to be the most effective way to promote the internalization of rules. When a child has internalized a rule, she has made it a guiding principle for herself. She will usually then employ that rule to regulate her own behavior regardless of whether authorities are present and whether immediate consequences are likely. For example, Laible and Thompson (2002) observed mothers with their 30-month-olds in contexts where conflicts were likely to arise. These were a clean-up task and a “frus- tration task” where children had only a too-difficult puzzle to play with while their mothers were busy and while other more interesting toys were off limits. Mothers who used more inductive control strategies, like justification (“We can’t touch those toys because they might break”), and fewer punitive or aggravating control strategies, like threats, teasing, and harsh commands, had children who were more likely than other children to exercise self-control in a resistance-to-temptation task 6 months later. Often, the same parents will use one practice on some occasions and another in other situations, and sometimes parents use multiple practices in the same disciplin- ary episode (Bornstein, 2015; Fung, Li, & Lam, 2017). Most parents tend to favor using one type of practice more than the others, and when they do, their primary practice is somewhat predictive of certain child outcomes. But, much as we found with rearing practices in infancy, such as breast versus bottle feeding, particular practices may be less important than the overall quality of the parent–child relationship. For toddlers and older children, the meaning that the child attributes to parents’ practices is likely to be important and appears to be tied to the emotional climate established by parent- ing style. In particular, when parents are warm and responsive, their children are more likely to comply with parental demands (Grusec et al., 2017). Parenting style, then, affects how effective a parenting practice will be with a child. As it happens, certain practices tend to be combined with certain parenting styles. Authoritative parents, for example, are often characterized by extensive use of induction, regardless of what other practices they might sometimes use. The children of authoritative parents are likely to show higher levels of competence, self-esteem, and self-regulation than children exposed to other parenting styles. But what might happen if parents who show most of the qualities of an authoritative style—especially high responsiveness and high demandingness—were to use primarily power assertion to enforce their demands? In the next section, we will consider how parenting style interacts with practice for different children and in different cultural contexts, focus- ing on how these factors interact in the early phases of self-development, during the toddler and early preschool years. We will revisit these issues in later chapters when we describe self-regulatory and moral development in older children and adolescents. Moderators of Parenting and Parenting Effectiveness Authoritative parents seem to get the best results from their children, but are their behaviors really having any influence? Both developmentalists (e.g., Scarr, 1993) and popular writers (e.g., Harris, 1998) have asked whether we are wrong to assume that correlations between parenting and child outcomes imply that parenting style and practice are actually causing children’s behavior. Several other possibilities exist. First, the shared biological inheritance of parents and children might account for both the  The Emerging Self and Socialization in the Early Years 189 parental and the child characteristics measured in these studies (Scarr, 1993, 1997). For example, the same genetic endowment that makes parents affectionate and responsive might produce children who are cooperative and good-natured. Second, children’s pre- dispositions and temperaments may actually cause parents’ behaviors rather than vice versa. For example, perhaps children who are “naturally” mild-mannered and compli- ant, like Angie, usually elicit authoritative parenting, but active, impulsive, negative children, like Mary, usually elicit more authoritarian or neglectful parenting behaviors. Overall, although some controversy persists on these issues, an accumulation of evidence supports a multidimensional approach to the question of direction of effects in children’s social development (Bornstein, 2015). That means that multiple causes are interacting, mutually modifying one another. As in Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, proximal processes—reciprocal interactions between the child and the people and things that surround the child—as well as distal processes, such as genes and cul- ture, are all playing a role (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). In this section, we will consider two important factors in the multidimensional mix: the child’s temperament and the broader cultural environment. THE CHILD’S TEMPERAMENT, PARENTING, AND CHILD OUTCOMES Recall that during a child’s infancy, both parents and infants contribute to the quality of the caregiving relationship. It is harder for mothers to be sensitive and responsive to a baby with a difficult temperament, for example. But when mothers are highly responsive during infancy, the good fit they create between their caregiving and the baby’s needs supports the development of a secure attachment even for babies with difficult temperaments. When mothers are not able to create a good fit, the type of insecure attachment that emerges often seems to be at least partly influenced by the baby’s temperament (Vaughn & Bost, 2016). With toddlers and preschoolers, temperament and other child characteristics con- tinue to contribute to the quality of the parent–child relationship. Children’s typical behaviors can affect both parenting style and the particular disciplinary practices that parents are most likely to use. In a classic paper, Bell and Chapman (1986) reviewed 14 studies that demon- strated the influence of children on parents. Many of these studies were at least partly experimental, with adults (usually parents) reacting to, or interacting with, children who were not their own, in situations created by the researchers. The studies exam- ined adults’ responses to children’s dependence versus independence behaviors, their tendencies to be aggressive or to withdraw, and their responsiveness to adults (e.g., tendencies to smile, chat, imitate, and so on). For example, in one of these studies, Marcus (1975, 1976) showed parents videotapes of a child actor solving a puzzle. The child in the film behaved either dependently (e.g., seeking help, like, “Would this piece go better here or here?”) or independently. The adults’ reactions were more directive with the dependent than with the independent child. Stevens-Long (1973) examined parents’ reactions to unrelated children’s aggressive, uncooperative behavior or to anxious, withdrawn behavior. The adults were more likely to command or ignore the more aggressive children, but to verbally help or reward the more depressive chil- dren. A number of newer longitudinal studies have corroborated these early findings. For example, child characteristics at one age (e.g., children’s low levels of affectionate behavior) have been found to predict changes in parents’ behaviors over time (e.g., decreases in parental warmth; Waller et al., 2014). When Hallers-Haalboom and col- leagues (2017) studied families with two children, they found mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity was sometimes different with each child. When it was, the children’s spe- cific characteristics seemed to be important, as we saw with Angie and Mary. Studies such as these paint a picture of a multilayered, complex interactive system between parent and child. The child’s characteristics are likely to affect the parent’s behavior, and the parent’s style and practices affect the child’s behavior. But other factors also modify parents’ and children’s effects on each other. The degree to which the child affects the parent’s practices and beliefs depends in part on the parent’s initial attitudes toward children and child rearing, as well as the parent’s emotional state and ability to manage stress (Bornstein, 2015). For example, parents who have child-centered rather 190 Chapter 5 than adult-centered concerns are able to be more supportive and responsive to their youngsters. Parents’ emotional states influence how child centered they are likely to be. Depressive mothers report fewer child-oriented positive emotions and concerns than mothers who are not depressed (Dix, Gershoff, Maunier, & Miller, 2004). Simi- larly, as we saw in the last chapter, parents’ own relationship histories and their work- ing models of attachment are likely to influence how they respond to their children and how well they adapt to their children’s characteristics. CHILDREN’S DIFFERENTIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY TO PARENTING STRATEGIES One illustration of the interactive complexities we have been describing is that chil- dren show differential susceptibility to different rearing approaches, depending on their early temperament characteristics (e.g., Belsky & Pluess, 2013). As you saw in Chapter 4, difficult, negatively reactive infants are often more affected by both sensitive and insensitive parenting than infants with easy temperaments. We see similar inter- active patterns as children get older. Let’s consider the tendency to display aggres- sive behavior. Children who have difficult temperaments are more likely than children with easy temperaments to show inappropriate levels of aggression with peers and/or adults (Streit, Carlo, Ispa, & Palermo, 2017). But how aggressive they become is more closely linked to parents’ disciplinary and interactive style than it is for children with easy temperaments. For youngsters with difficult temperaments, insensitive, negative parent behaviors (e.g., frowning, criticizing, yelling, being physically intrusive) appear to increase their proneness to aggression, whereas sensitive, positive discipline (e.g., being affectionate, praising, using distraction) decreases their proneness to aggression. For youngsters with easy temperaments, even those who seem prone to aggression, parenting differences do not have as much effect as they do for children with difficult temperaments. That is, aggressive tendencies are not moderated substantially by par- enting practices (Slagt, Dubas, Deković, & van Aken, 2016). THE CULTURAL CONTEXT, PARENTING, AND CHILD OUTCOMES Just as children’s characteristics can affect parenting and outcomes, cultural factors, such as the race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status of the family, can moderate par- enting practices and may even alter their effects. The preceding sections have made a strong case for the benefits of authoritative parenting, but most of the supportive research findings have come from U.S. majority samples. Does parenting differ in other parts of the world, or in other ethnic or SES groups, and are these styles effec- tive for other populations? No doubt about it, culture affects parenting. At its core, culture dynamically shapes values, self-regulation, and behavior, and cultures could not continue to exist without some means of transmitting their values and worldviews to younger members. Through socialization, cultures transmit methods of coping with and adapting to specific challenges, a process that fosters resilience in children and youth (Garcia Coll, 1990). Studying the effects of culture on parenting is a task that is nothing less than daunting. Remember that what we call “culture” is essentially embedded within the environment at every level of the ecological system, from the immediate family to the larger society and it