Janet Belsky - Experiencing The Lifespan-Worth Publishers (2015)

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Experiencing
the Lifespan
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πππ π π π π π π π π π
π Experiencing ππ
the Lifespan ππ
FOURTH
EDITION
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JA N E T BE LSKY
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Middle Tennessee State University
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π π π π π π π π π π A Macmillan Education Imprint
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New York
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FOR DAVID
A world-class intellectual and the world’s best possible husband
Publisher: Rachel Losh

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015942394
ISBN-13: 978-1-4641-7594-7
ISBN-10: 1-4641-7594-2
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πππππππππππ About the Author
B
orn in New York City, Janet Belsky
always wanted to be a writer but
was also very interested in people. After
receiving her undergraduate degree from
the University of Pennsylvania, she deferred
to her more practical and people-loving
side and got her Ph.D. in clinical
psychology at the University of Chicago.
Steven James
Janet spent her thirties in New York

City teaching at Lehman College, CUNY, and doing clinical work in
hospitals and nursing homes. During this time, she wrote one trade book,
Here Tomorrow, Making the Most of Life After 50, got married, adopted a
child and, with the publication of the first undergraduate textbook in the
psychology of aging, began what turned into a lifelong developmental
science textbook writing career. In 1991, Janet moved to Tennessee
with her family to write and teach undergraduate courses in psychology
at Middle Tennessee State University. After her husband died in 2012,
Janet enrolled in the Master’s Program in Liberal Arts at the University of
Chicago (a beginning graduate student again at the U of C, after 45-plus
years!). Still, she remains committed to her life passion—exciting readers
in the marvelous human lifespan through this book.
v
πππBrief
πContents
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Preface xvii
PART I The Foundation ................................................................. 1
Chapter 1 The People and the Field 3
Chapter 2 Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth 35
PART II Infancy .................................................................................... 71
Chapter 3 Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development 73
Chapter 4 Infancy: Socioemotional Development 107
PART III Childhood .......................................................................... 133
Chapter 5 Physical and Cognitive Development 135
Chapter 6 Socioemotional Development 169
Chapter 7 Settings for Development: Home and School 199
PART IV Adolescence .................................................................... 229
Chapter 8 Physical Development 231
Chapter 9 Cognitive and Socioemotional Development 259
PART V Early and Middle Adulthood ........................... 291
Chapter 10 Constructing an Adult Life 293
Chapter 11 Relationships and Roles 327
Chapter 12 Midlife 357
vi
PART VI Later Life ......................................................................... 387
Chapter 13 Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development 389
Chapter 14 The Physical Challenges of Old Age 417
PART VII Epilogue .......................................................................... 447
Chapter 15 Death and Dying 449
Final Thoughts 475
Glossary G-1
References R-1
Name Index NI-1
Subject Index SI-1
vii
πππππππππππ
Contents
Preface xvii
PART I The Foundation ....................................................................... 1
Chapter 1 The People and the Field ...................................................... 3

Who We Are and What We Study 4
STEPHEN ST. JOHN/National Geographic Creative
Setting the Context 5

The Impact of Cohort 5
The Impact of Socioeconomic Status 9
The Impact of Culture and Ethnicity 10
The Impact of Gender 10
Theories: Lenses for Looking at the Lifespan 12
Behaviorism: The Original Blockbuster “Nurture” Theory 12
Psychoanalytic Theory: Focus on Early Childhood and Unconscious Motivations 14
Attachment Theory: Focus on Nurture, Nature, and Love 15
Evolutionary Psychology: Theorizing About the
“Nature” of Human Similarities 16
Behavioral Genetics: Scientifically Exploring the “Nature” of Human Differences 16
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . that our nature affects our upbringing? 18
Nature and Nurture Combine: Where We Are Today 18
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Environment-Sensitive Genes and Epigenetically
Programmed Pathways 19
Emphasis on Age-Linked Theories 20
The Developmental Systems Perspective 22
Research Methods: The Tools of the Trade 25
Two Standard Research Strategies: Correlations and Experiments 25
Designs for Studying Development: Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Studies 27
Critiquing the Research 29
Emerging Research Trends 29
Some Concluding Introductory Thoughts 30
Chapter 2 Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth ............. 35

The First Step: Fertilization 36
The Reproductive Systems 36
The Process of Fertilization 36
The Genetics of Fertilization 38
viii
Prenatal Development 39
First Two Weeks: The Germinal Stage 39
Week 3 to Week 8: The Embryonic Stage 40
Principles of Prenatal Development 40
Week 9 to Birth: The Fetal Stage 41
Pregnancy 42
Scanning the Trimesters 42
Pregnancy Is Not a Solo Act 44
What About Dads? 45
Threats to the Developing Baby 46
Threats from Outside: Teratogens 46
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: What Is the Impact of Prenatal Stress? 50
Threats from Within: Chromosomal and Genetic Disorders 51
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . about the gene for Huntington’s disease? 54
Interventions 55
Infertility and New Reproductive Technologies 56
INTERVENTIONS: Exploring ART 58
Birth 60
Stage 1: Dilation and Effacement 60
Stage 2: Birth 60
Stage 3: The Expulsion of the Placenta 60
Threats at Birth 61
Birth Options, Past and Present 61
The Newborn 63
Tools of Discovery: Testing Newborns 63
Threats to Development Just After Birth 64
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Marcia’s Story 65
A Few Final Thoughts on Biological Determinism and Biological Parents 66
PART II Infancy ....................................................................................... 71
Chapter 3 Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development ............ 73

The Expanding Brain 74
Neural Pruning and Brain Plasticity 74
© Nicole Hill/RubberBall/Age Fotostock
Basic Newborn States 76

Eating: The Basis of Living 76
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: A Passion to Eradicate Malnutrition:
A Career in Public Health 80
Crying: The First Communication Signal 80
INTERVENTIONS: What Quiets a Young Baby? 81
Sleeping: The Main Newborn State 82
INTERVENTIONS: What Helps a Baby Self-Soothe? 84
ix
x Contents
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: SIDS 86
Sensory and Motor Development 88

What Do Newborns See? 88
Expanding Body Size 90
Mastering Motor Milestones 91
INTERVENTIONS: Baby-Proofing, the First Person–Environment Fit 92
Cognition 93
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage 93
Critiquing Piaget 97
Tackling the Core of What Makes Us Human: Infant Social Cognition 98
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy 99
Nature, Nurture, and the Passion to Learn Language 99
Tracking Emerging Language 100
Chapter 4 Infancy: Socioemotional Development ....................... 107

Attachment: The Basic Life Bond 108
Setting the Context: How Developmentalists (Slowly) Got Attached
to Attachment 108
Exploring the Attachment Response 109
Is Infant Attachment Universal? 113
Does Infant Attachment Predict Later Relationships and Mental Health? 115
Exploring the Genetics of Attachment Stability and Change 115
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Experiencing Early Life’s Worst Deprivation 116
Wrapping Up Attachment 117
Settings for Development 117
The Impact of Poverty in the United States 117
INTERVENTIONS: Giving Disadvantaged Children an Intellectual and Social Boost 120
The Impact of Child Care 120
INTERVENTIONS: Choosing Child Care 123
Toddlerhood: Age of Autonomy and Shame and Doubt 124

Socialization: The Challenge for 2-Year-Olds 125
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . that shy and exuberant children differ dramatically in
self-control? 126
Being Exuberant and Being Shy 126
INTERVENTIONS: Providing The Right Temperament–Socialization Fit 127
PART III Childhood ............................................................................. 133
Chapter 5 Physical and Cognitive Development ........................... 135

Special Mindreading Skills 136
Slow-Growing Frontal Lobes 136
Physical Development 137
DenisNata/Shutterstock
Two Types of Motor Talents 138

Threats to Growth and Motor Skills 139
Childhood Obesity 139
Contents xi
INTERVENTIONS: Limiting Overweight 141
Cognitive Development 142

Piaget’s Preoperational and Concrete Operational Stages 142
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Childhood Fears, Animism, and
the Power of Stephen King 146
INTERVENTIONS: Using Piaget’s Ideas at Home and at Work 147
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development 149
INTERVENTIONS: Becoming an Effective Scaffolder 150
The Information-Processing Perspective 151
INTERVENTIONS: Using Information-Processing Theory at Home and at Work 153
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder 154
INTERVENTIONS: Helping Children with ADHD 155
Wrapping Up Cognition 156
Language 157
Inner Speech 157
Developing Speech 157
Specific Social Cognitive Skills 159
Constructing Our Personal Past 159
Making Sense of Other Minds 160
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Autism Spectrum Disorders 162
Chapter 6 Socioemotional Development .......................................... 169

Setting the Challenge: Emotion Regulation 170
Personality (and the Emerging Self ) 170
Observing the Self 170
INTERVENTIONS: Promoting Realistic Self-Esteem 174
Doing Good: Prosocial Behavior 175
INTERVENTIONS: Socializing Prosocial Children 177
Doing Harm: Aggression 179
Relationships 182
Play 182
Girls’ and Boys’ Play Worlds 185
Friendships 188
Popularity 189
Bullying: A Core Contemporary Childhood Concern 192
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Middle-Aged Reflections on My Middle-Childhood
Victimization 192
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Cyberbullying 193
INTERVENTIONS: Attacking Bullying and Helping Rejected Children 193
Chapter 7 Settings for Development: Home and School ........... 199

Home 200
Parenting Styles 200
How Much Do Parents Matter? 203
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Resilient Children 203
xii Contents
INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for Readers Who Are Parents 205

Spanking 206
Child Abuse 207
INTERVENTIONS: Taking Action Against Child Abuse 209
Divorce 209
School 212
Setting the Context: Unequal at the Starting Gate 212
Intelligence and IQ Tests 213
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: From Dyslexic Child to College Professor Adult 215
INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for Schools 219
Classroom Learning 219
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: The Common Core State Standards 223
PART IV Adolescence ........................................................................ 229
Chapter 8 Physical Development ....................................................... 231

Puberty 232
Setting the Context: Culture, History,
and Puberty 232
The Hormonal Programmers 234
The Physical Changes 235
Indeed/Getty Images
Individual Differences in Puberty Timetables 238

An Insider’s View of Puberty 240
Wrapping Up Puberty 243
INTERVENTIONS: Minimizing Puberty Distress 243
Body Image Issues 244

The Differing Body Concerns of Girls and Boys 244
Eating Disorders 246
INTERVENTIONS: Improving Teenagers’ Body Image 248
Sexuality 248
Exploring Sexual Desire 249
Who Is Having Intercourse? 250
Who Are Teens Having Intercourse With? 251
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Is There Still a Sexual
Double Standard? 252
Wrapping Up Sexuality: Contemporary Trends 253
INTERVENTIONS: Toward Teenager-Friendly Sex Education 253
Chapter 9 Cognitive and Socioemotional Development ............ 259

The Mysterious Teenage Mind 261
Three Classic Theories of Teenage Thinking 261
Studying Three Aspects of Storm and Stress 266
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . that adolescents make riskier decisions when they are
with their peers? 267
Contents xiii
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: A Potential Pubertal Problem, Popularity 272

Different Teenage Pathways 272
Wrapping Things Up: The Blossoming Teenage Brain 274
INTERVENTIONS: Making the World Fit the Teenage Mind 275
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Innocently Imprisoned at 16 276
Another Perspective on the Teenage Mind 278
Teenage Relationships 279
Separating from Parents 279
Connecting in Groups 282
A Note on Adolescence Worldwide 286
PART V Early and Middle Adulthood .................................... 291
Chapter 10 Constructing an Adult Life .............................................. 293

Emerging into Adulthood 294
Setting the Context: Culture and History 295
Beginning and End Points 296
Constructing an Identity 300
© IMAGEMORE/Age Fotostock
Marcia’s Identity Statuses 300

The Identity Statuses in Action 302
Ethnic Identity, a Minority Theme 302
Finding a Career 304
Entering with High (but Often Unrealistic) Career Goals 304
Self-Esteem and Emotional Growth During
College and Beyond 304
Finding Flow 305
Emerging into Adulthood Without a College Degree
(in the United States) 306
INTERVENTIONS: Smoothing the School Path and School-to-Work Transition 308
Being in College 309
INTERVENTIONS: Making College an Inner-Growth Flow Zone 309
Finding Love 311

Setting the Context: Seismic Shifts in Searching for Love 311
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Same-Sex Romance 312
Similarity and Structured Relationship Stages: A Classic Model of Love,
and a Critique 315
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Facebook Romance 317
Love Through the Lens of Attachment Theory 318
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . that a person is securely or insecurely attached? 319
INTERVENTIONS: Evaluating Your Own Relationship 321
Chapter 11 Relationships and Roles .................................................. 327

Marriage 328
Setting the Context: The Changing Landscape of Marriage 328
The Main Marital Pathway: Downhill and Then Up 332
The Triangular Theory Perspective on Happiness 333
xiv Contents
Commitment, Sanctification, and Compassion: The Core Attitudes

in Relationship Success 335
Couple Communications and Happiness 335
INTERVENTIONS: Staying Together Happily for Life 336
Divorce 337
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Marriage the Second or Third
or “X” Time Around 338
Parenthood 340
Setting the Context: More Parenting Possibilities, Fewer Children 340
The Transition to Parenthood 340
Exploring Motherhood 341
Exploring Fatherhood 344
Work 347
Setting the Context: The Changing Landscape of Work 347
Exploring Career Happiness (and Success) 348
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: A Final Status Report on Men,
Women, and Work 350
Chapter 12 Midlife ..................................................................................... 357

Exploring Personality (and Well-Being) 358
Tracking the Big Five 358
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Tracking the Fate of C (Conscientiousness) 359
Generativity: The Key to a Happy Life 362
Wrapping Up Personality (and Well-Being) 367
Exploring Intelligence (and Wisdom) 368
Taking the Traditional Approach: Looking at Standard IQ Tests 368
INTERVENTIONS: Keeping a Fine-Tuned Mind 373
Taking a Nontraditional Approach: Examining Postformal Thought 374
Midlife Roles and Issues 376
Grandparenthood 377
Parent Care 379
Body Image, Sex, and Menopause 381
PART VI Later Life ............................................................................... 387
Chapter 13 Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional

Development ........................................................................ 389
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Ageism Through the Ages 391
The Evolving Self 392

Memory 392
INTERVENTIONS: Keeping Memory Fine-Tuned 396
Fuse/Getty Images
Personal Priorities (and Well-Being) 398

EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Jules: Fully Functioning at 94 401
INTERVENTIONS: Using the Research to Help Older Adults 402
Contents xv
Later-Life Transitions 404

Retirement 404
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: U.S. Retirement Realities 405
Widowhood 409
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Visiting a Widowed Persons’ Support Group 409
Chapter 14 The Physical Challenges of Old Age ............................ 417

Tracing Physical Aging 418
Can We Live to 1,000? 419
Socioeconomic Status, Aging, and Disease 420
Gender, Aging, and Disease 422
INTERVENTIONS: Taking a Holistic Lifespan Disease-Prevention Approach 423
Sensory-Motor Changes 424

Our Windows on the World: Vision 424
INTERVENTIONS: Clarifying Sight 425
Our Bridge to Others: Hearing 426
INTERVENTIONS: Amplifying Hearing 428
Motor Performances 428
INTERVENTIONS: Managing Motor Problems 429
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Driving in Old Age 430
Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs) 432

EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: An Insider Describes His Unraveling Mind 433
The Dimensions of These Disorders 433
Neurocognitive Disorders’ Two Main Causes 434
Targeting the Beginnings: The Quest to Nip Alzheimer’s in the Bud 434
INTERVENTIONS: Dealing with These Devastating Disorders 435
Options and Services for the Frail Elderly 438

Setting the Context: Scanning the Global Elder-Care Scene 438
Alternatives to Institutions in the United States 439
Nursing Home Care 440
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Getting It Together in the Nursing Home 441
A Few Concluding Thoughts 442
PART VII Epilogue ............................................................................... 447
Chapter 15 Death and Dying ................................................................. 449

A Short History of Death 450
Cultural Variations on a Theme 451
The Dying Person 452
Kübler-Ross’s Stages of Dying: Description and Critique 452
Image Source/Alamy
The More Realistic View: Many Different Emotions; Wanting Life to Go On 454
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Hospice Hopes 455
In Search of a Good Death 455
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: Evolving Ideas About Grieving 457
xvi Contents
A Small, Final Note on Mourning a Child 458

The Health-Care System 460
What’s Wrong with Traditional Hospital Care for the Dying? 460
INTERVENTIONS: Providing Superior Palliative Care 462
Unhooking Death from Doctors and Hospitals: Hospice Care 463
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN: Hospice Team 463
The Dying Person: Taking Control of How We Die 466

Giving Instructions: Advance Directives 467
Deciding When to Die: Active Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide 468
A Looming Social Issue: Age-Based Rationing of Care 469
Final Thoughts ........................................................................................ 475
Glossary ..................................................................................................... G-1
References ................................................................................................ R-1
Name Index ............................................................................................. NI-1
Subject Index .......................................................................................... SI-1

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Preface
I spent my thirties and forties writing textbooks on adult development and aging. I spent more
than 15 years writing and revising this book. I’ve spent almost 40 years (virtually all of my
adult life!) joyously teaching this course. My mission in this book is simple: to excite students
in our field.
Because I want to showcase the most cutting-edge research, in this edition of Experiencing
the Lifespan, you will find hundreds of citations dating just from 2013. I’ve added new sections
to every chapter, covering topics as varied as our scientific strides in epigenetics, to the personal
experience of providing hospice care. I’ve constructed dozens of new figures and tables, rewrit-
ten almost every sentence, and given this text a new social media–oriented thrust. But, readers
who have used Experiencing the Lifespan in the past will be comforted to know that this edition
has the same familiar structure and plan. It reflects my commitment to convey the beauty of our
science in the same compelling way. What exactly makes this book compelling? What makes
each chapter special? What makes this edition stand out?
What Makes This Book Compelling?

• Experiencing the Lifespan unfolds like a story. The main feature that makes this book
special is the writing style. Experiencing the Lifespan reads like a conversation rather than
a traditional text. Each chapter begins with a vignette constructed to highlight the material
I will be discussing. I’ve designed my narrative to flow from topic to topic; and I’ve planned
every chapter to interconnect. In this book, the main themes that underlie developmental
science flow throughout the entire book. I want students to have the sense that they are
reading an exciting, ongoing story. Most of all, I want them to feel that they are learning
about a coherent, organized field.
• Experiencing the Lifespan is uniquely organized to highlight development. A second

mission that has driven my writing is to highlight how our lives evolve. What exactly makes
an 8-year-old mentally different from a 4-year-old, or a 60-year-old different from a person
of 85. In order to emphasize how children develop, I decided to cover all of childhood in
a single three-chapter part. This strategy allowed me to fully explore the magic of Piaget’s
preoperational and concrete operational stages and to trace the development of aggression,
childhood friendships, and gender-stereotyped play. It permitted me to show concretely how
the ability to think through their actions changes as children travel from preschool through
elementary school. I decided to put early and middle adulthood in one unit (Part IV) for
similar reasons: It simply made logical sense to discuss important topics that transcend a
single life stage, such as marriage, parenting, and work (Chapter 11) and adult personality
and cognitive development (Chapter 12) together in the same place. In fact, I’ve designed
this whole text to highlight development. I follow the characters in the chapter-opening
vignettes throughout each several-chapter book part. I’ve planned each life-stage segment to
flow in a developmental way. In the first infancy chapter, I begin with a discussion of new-
born states. The second chapter in this sequence (Infancy: Socioemotional Development)
ends with a discussion of toddlerhood. My three-chapter Early and Middle Adulthood book
part starts with an exploration of the challenges of emerging adulthood (Chapter 10), then
tackles marriage, parenthood, and career (Chapter 11), and culminates with a chapter
tracking adult personality and intelligence through midlife, and exploring “older” family
roles such as parent care and grandparenthood (Chapter 12). In Part VI, Later Life, I begin
with a chapter devoted to topics, such as retirement, that typically take place during the
young-old years. Then I focus on physical aging (Chapter 14, The Physical Challenges of
Old Age) because sensory-motor impairments, dementing diseases, and interventions for
xvii
xviii Preface
late-life frailty become crucial concerns mainly in the eighties and beyond.
Yes, this textbook does—for the most part—move through the lifespan stage
by stage. However, it’s targeted to highlight the aspects of development—
such as constructing an adult life in the twenties or physical disabilities in
the eighties—that become salient at particular times of life. I believe that
my textbook captures the best features of the chronological and topical
approaches.
• Experiencing the Lifespan is both shorter and more in-depth. Adopt-

B. Tanaka/Getty
ing this flexible, development-friendly organization makes for a more

manageable, teacher-friendly book. With 15 chapters and at fewer than
475 pages, my textbook really can be mastered in a one-semester course!
For this grandmother, mother, and daughter, getting Not being locked into covering each slice of life in defined bits also gives
dressed up to visit this Shinto family shrine and me the freedom to focus on what is most important in special depth.
pay their respects to their ancestors is an important As you will discover while reading my comprehensive discussions of
ritual. It is one way that the lesson “honor your central topics in our field, such as attachment, parenting, puberty, and
elders” is taught to children living in collectivist
societies such as Japan from an early age. adult personality consistency and change, omitting superficial coverage
of “everything” allows time to explore the core issues in developmental
science in a deeper, more thoughtful way.
• Experiencing the Lifespan actively fosters critical thinking. Guid-

ing students to reflect on what they are reading is actually another
of my writing goals. A great advantage of engaging readers in a
Ariel Skelley/Blend Images/Getty Images
conversation is that I can naturally embed critical thinking into the

actual narrative. For example, as I move from discussing Piaget’s
ideas on cognition to Vygotsky’s theory to the information-processing
approach in Chapter 5, I point out the gaps in each perspective
and highlight why each approach offers a unique contribution to
understanding children’s intellectual growth. On a policy-oriented
level, after discussing day care, teenage storm and stress, or physical
These teens are probably taking great pleasure aging, I ask readers to think critically about how to improve the way
in serving meals to the homeless as part of their our culture cares for young families, treats teenagers, and can make
school community-service project. Was a high school life more user-friendly for the baby boomers now traveling into their
experience, like this one, life changing for you? older years.
• Experiencing the Lifespan has a global orientation. Intrinsic to getting students to

evaluate their own cultural practices is the need to highlight alternate perspectives
on our developing life. Therefore, Experiencing the Lifespan is a firmly international
book. I introduce this global orientation in the first chapter when I spell out the differ-
ences between collectivist and individualistic cultures and between the developed and
developing worlds. In the childhood chapters, when discussing topics from pregnancy
to parenting, I pay special attention to cultural variations. In the adulthood sections,
standard “Setting the Context” heads, preceding the research, offer snapshots of love and
marriage in different nations, discuss retirement around the world, and explore differ-
ent societal practices and attitudes toward death. (In fact, “How do other groups handle
this?” is a question that crops up when I talk about practically every topic in the book!)
AP Photo/Lincoln Journal Star, Krista Niles
• Experiencing the Lifespan highlights the multiple forces that shape

development. Given my emphasis on cultural variations within our universal
human experience, it should come as no surprise that the main theoretical frame-
work I’ve used to organize this book is the developmental systems approach.
Throughout the chapters, I explore the many influences that interact to predict life
milestones—from puberty to physical aging. Erikson’s stages, attachment theory,
behavioral genetics, evolutionary theory, self-efficacy, and, especially, the impor-
As she translates an oath of tance of looking at nature and nurture and providing the best person–environment
naturalization to her non-English- fit—all are concepts that I introduce in the first chapter and continue to stress as
speaking Iraq mom, this daughter is
engaging in a role reversal that can be the book unfolds. Another theme that runs through this text is the impact of socio-
distressing, but can also offer a lifelong economic status on shaping everything from breast-feeding practices to the rate at
sense of empathy and self-efficacy. which we age and die.
Preface xix
• Experiencing the Lifespan is applications-oriented, and focused on how to construct a

satisfying life. Because of my background as a clinical psychologist, my other passion is to
concretely bring home how we can use the scientific findings to improve the quality of life.
So most topics in this text end with “Interventions” sections spelling out practical implica-
tions of the research. With its varied Interventions, such as “How Can You Get Babies to
Sleep Through the Night?” or “Using Piaget’s Theory at Home and at Work,” to its adult-
hood tables, such as “How to Flourish During Adulthood” and sections devoted to “Aging
Optimally,” Experiencing the Lifespan is designed to show how the science of development
can make a difference in people’s lives.
BananaStock/Getty Images Plus

• Experiencing the Lifespan is a person-centered, hands-on textbook. This book is also
designed to bring the experience of the lifespan home in a personal way. Therefore, in
“Experiencing the Lifespan” boxes, I report on interviews I’ve conducted with people
ranging from a 16-year-old (a student of mine) who was charged as an adult with second-
degree murder to a 70-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disease. To entice readers to empa-
thize with the challenges of other life stages, I continually ask students to “imagine you are
a toddler” or “a sleep-deprived mother” or “an 80-year-old struggling with the challenges of This new member of the Efé
driving in later life.” people of central Africa will be
lovingly cared for by the whole
Another strategy I use to make the research vivid and personal are questionnaires (often community, males as well as
based on the chapter content) that get readers to think more deeply about their own lives: the females, from his first minutes of
checklist to identify your parenting priorities in Chapter 7; a scale for “using selective opti- life. Because he sleeps with his
mization with compensation at home and work” in Chapter 12; surveys for “evaluating your mother, however, at the “right”
relationships” in Chapters 10 and 11; true/false quizzes at the beginning of my chapters on age he will develop his primary
attachment to her.
adolescence (Chapter 9), adult roles (Chapter 11), and later life (Chapter 13) that provide a
hands-on preview of the content and entice students into reading the chapter so that they can
assess the scientific accuracy of their ideas.
• Experiencing the Lifespan is designed to get students to

learn the material while they read. The chapter-opening
vignettes, the applications sections with their summary tables,
the hands-on exercises, and the end-of-section questionnaires
(such as “Evaluating Your Own Relationship: A Section
Summary Checklist” in Chapter 10) are part of an overall
© Sean Locke Photography/Shutterstock

pedagogical plan. As I explain in my introductory letter to
students on page 2, I want this to be a textbook you don’t have
to struggle to decode—one that helps you naturally cement
the concepts in mind. The centerpiece of this effort is the
“Tying It All Together” quizzes, which follow each major
section. These mini-tests, involving multiple-choice, essay,
and critical-thinking questions, allow students to test them-
selves on what they have absorbed. I’ve also planned the photo
program in Experiencing the Lifespan to illustrate the major If you can relate to this photo the next time you are tempted to
terms and concepts. As you page through the text, you may text during that not-so-interesting class, keep this message in
notice that the pictures and their captions feel organically con- mind: Divided attention tasks make memory worse!
nected to the writing. They visually bring the main text mes-
sages home. When it’s important for students to learn a series of terms or related concepts,
I provide a summary series of photos. You can see examples in the photographs illustrating
the different infant and adult attachment styles on pages 112 and 319, and in Table 3.7 on
page 95, highlighting Jean Piaget’s infant circular reactions.
As you scan this book, you will see other special features: “How do we know . . . ?” boxes
in some chapters that delve more deeply into particular research programs; “Hot in Develop-
mental Science” sections in each chapter showcasing cutting-edge topics, from prenatal stress
to preteen popularity; timelines that pull everything together at the end of complex sections
(such as the chart summarizing the landmarks of pregnancy and prenatal development on
pages 55–56).
What will make this text a pleasure to teach from? How can I make this book a joy to read?
These are questions I have been grappling with as I’ve been glued to my computer—often seven
days a week—during this decade-and-a-half-long labor of love.
xx Preface
What Makes Each Chapter Special?

Now that I’ve spelled out my general writing missions, here are some highlights of each
chapter, and a preview of exactly what’s new.
PART I: The Foundation

CHAPTER 1: The People and the Field
• Outlines the basic contexts of development: social class, culture, ethnicity, and cohort.
• Traces the evolution of the lifespan over the centuries and explores the classic developmen-
tal science theories that have shaped our understanding of life.
• Spells out the concepts, the perspectives, and the research strategies I will be exploring in
each chapter of the book.
What’s New?
• Introduces epigenetics and emerging research on environment-sensitive genes (to be dis-
cussed in subsequent chapters), and sets readers up for this edition’s focus on social media.
• Describes economic trends since the Great Recession.
• Includes psychoanalytic theory as a major perspective in developmental science.
• Revises items in the Tying It All Together quizzes and updates figures to offer data on recent
demographic trends. (I’ve made similar changes to the quiz items and relevant figures
throughout the book.)
• Provides a new example to teach students about correlational and experimental research.
CHAPTER 2: Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth

• Discusses pregnancy rituals and superstitions around the world.
• Highlights the latest research on fetal brain development.
• Fully explores the experience of pregnancy from both

the mother’s and father’s points of view and discusses
infertility.
• Looks at the experience of birth historically and discusses

policy issues relating to pregnancy and birth in the United
States and around the world.
What’s New
TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images
• Explores the impact of pregnancy stress on the fetus.
• Offers a more thorough look at the emotional effects of

infertility.
• Provides international data on smoking and alcohol use

Imagine being this terrified woman as she surveys the rubble of during pregnancy.
her collapsed house. What is the impact of disasters, like this
Malaysian landslide, on babies in the womb? Fetal programming • Updates material on c-sections and infant mortality worldwide.
research offers fascinating answers.
Preface xxi
PART II: Infancy

CHAPTER 3: Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development
• Covers the latest research on brain development.
• Focuses in depth on basic infant states such as eating, crying, and sleep.
• Explores breast-feeding and scans global undernutrition.
• Provides an in-depth, personal, and practice-oriented look at infant motor development,

Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, and beginning language.
• Explores the cutting-edge findings on infant social cognition.
What’s New?
• Discusses physical hurdles to breast-feeding and explores variations in developed-world
pressures for new mothers to nurse.
• Showcases research demonstrating that kangaroo care is superior to swaddling, at calming

babies.
• Explores how visual pruning during the first year of life may smooth the path to racial
prejudice.
• Amplifies my third-edition discussion of infant social cognition by discussing several recent

studies suggesting that our basic sense of fairness and morality kicks in at a very young age.
• Includes a new figure illustrating the early neural correlates of emerging language.
CHAPTER 4: Infancy: Socioemotional Development

• Provides unusually in-depth coverage of attachment theory.
• Offers an honest, comprehensive look at day care in the United States and discusses early
childhood poverty.
• Highlights exuberant and shy toddler temperaments, explores research on the genetics of
temperament, and stresses the need to promote the right temperament–environment fit for
each child.
What’s New?
• Explores research suggesting plasticity genes may affect how vulnerable infants are to less-
than-optimal attachment environments, influence how much attachment can change, and
predict how young children adapt to day care. Bottom line: Our “genetics” may set us up
to either be more or less reactive to environmental events.
• Updates research exploring the life paths of orphanage-reared babies.
• Introduces the hormones oxytocin and cortisol and discusses the impact of urban and rural
poverty on later academic development.
PART III: Childhood

CHAPTER 5: Physical and Cognitive Development
• Begins by exploring why we have childhood, illustrating what makes human beings
qualitatively different from other species.
• Covers childhood obesity, including its emotional aspects, in depth.

xxii Preface
• Showcases Piaget’s, Vygotsky’s, and the information-processing models of childhood

cognition—with examples that stress the practical implications of these landmark
perspectives for parents and people who work with children.
• Discusses ADHD, autobiographical memory, and theory of mind.
What’s New?
• Explores new findings suggesting that complex fine-motor skills during early childhood
foreshadow later academic performance.
• Offers the latest statistics on child overweight, expands on obesity’s epigenetics, and focuses
directly on strategies to limit later obesity by changing the environment in utero and during
the first months of life.
• Updates the research on ADHD, autobiographical memory, and theory of mind.
• Includes a new section on autism spectrum disorders (accompanied by a figure highlighting

autism’s increasing prevalence).
CHAPTER 6: Socioemotional Development

• Discusses the development of self-understanding, prosocial behavior, aggression, and
fantasy play, and explores friendships and popularity throughout childhood.
• Clearly spells out the developmental pathway to becoming an aggressive child.
• Highlights the challenge of emotion regulation, and focuses on internalizing and externali-
zing disorders.
• Covers the causes and consequences of bullying in older childhood.
What’s New?
• Includes a study showing that praising toddlers for effort enhances later academic self-
efficacy.
• Tackles gender differences in prosocial behavior, in depth.
• Showcases findings that toddlers are naturally prosocial, and emphasizes how important it
is to allow young children to spontaneously share.
• Explores (in the discussion on play) whether pretend play is crucial to development.
• Revises the popularity discussion (accompanied by a new figure and table) by exploring
the impact of relational aggression in promoting high status during elementary school and
discussing how children’s social goals in fifth grade relate to preteen popularity.
• Provides a new section on cyberbullying.
CHAPTER 7: Settings for Development: Home and School

© Rawdon Wyatt/Alamy
• This final childhood chapter shifts from the process of development to the major settings for
development—home and school—and tackles important controversies in the field, such as
the influence of parents versus peers versus genetics in shaping development and the pros
and cons of intelligence testing.
Imagine how you would feel if
this terrifying, anonymous threat
appeared on your screen, and
• Offers extensive discussions of ethnic variations in parenting styles and describes the latest
you will immediately understand research on how to stimulate intrinsic motivation.
why cyberbullying is more
distressing than bullying of the • Showcases schools that beat the odds and targets the core qualities involved in effective
face-to-face kind. teaching.
Preface xxiii
What’s New?
• Expands on the discussion of cultural differences in parenting styles.
• Revises sections on child maltreatment and, especially, divorce; the latter includes an intro-
duction to the concept of parental alienation and more material on custody issues and their
impact on the child (this discussion features a new summary table and figure).
• Describes a newer edition of the WISC and updates the standard IQ diagnostic labels to
reflect the new DSM-5 terminology.
• Presents the Common Core State Standards for education in a new concluding section.
PART IV: Adolescence

CHAPTER 8: Physical Development
• Offers an in-depth look at puberty, including the multiple forces that program
the timing of this life transition, and looks at historical and cultural variations in
puberty timetables.
Image Source/Getty Images

• Explores the emotional experience of puberty (an “insider’s” view) and the
emotional impact of maturing early for girls.
• Provides up-to-date coverage of teenage body image issues, eating disorders, and
emerging sexuality.
Brendan O’Sullivan/Photolibrary/Getty Images

What’s New?
• Offers new findings on pubertal progression rates, discusses the impact of being
an early maturer for boys, and showcases a cross-national study (accompanied
by a figure) suggesting that a nation’s norms determine the tendency for early-
maturing girls to act out as teens.
• Links dieting problems during puberty to in-utero hormones, discusses

binge-eating disorder, and greatly expands the discussion of eating-disorder
treatments. What are teens who avidly scan the photos
on a social-network site likely to do? The
• Explores social-media research related to the sexual double standard, and surprise is that girls may decide to post more
highlights the global need for relationship education versus just sex education. sexually oriented comments than boys.
CHAPTER 9: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development

• Covers the developmental science research on teenage brain development and various
facets of adolescent “storm and stress.”
• Spells out the forces that enable adolescents to thrive and explains what society can do
(and also may not be doing!) to promote optimal development in teens.
• Explores parent–child relationships and discusses teenage peer groups.
What’s New?
• Showcases new fMRI research exploring preteens’ social sensitivities and impulsiveness.
• Offers a more thorough treatment of nonsuicidal self-injury, explores recent studies tracking
adolescent child–parent separation, and pinpoints the issues that are most problematic for
teens and parents in different world regions.
xxiv Preface
PART V: Early and Middle Adulthood

CHAPTER 10: Constructing an Adult Life
• Devotes a whole chapter to the concerns of emerging adulthood.
• Offers extensive coverage of diversity issues during this life stage, such as forming an ethnic
and biracial identity, interracial dating, and issues related to coming out gay.
• Gives students tips for succeeding in college and spells out career issues for non-college
emerging adults.
• Introduces career-relevant topics, such as the concept of “flow,” and provides extensive cove-
rage of the research relating to selecting a mate and adult attachment styles.
• Focuses on current social policy issues such as the impact socioeconomic status makes on
attending and completing college, and discusses “nest residing,” given that so many twenty-
somethings now live at home.
What’s New?
• Includes an expanded leaving-the-nest discussion, focused more specifically on variations
in different European nations.
• Updates the section on identity styles, and introduces a new term, ruminative moratorium.
• Discusses self-esteem changes, specifically during college.
• Presents a completely rewritten “Finding Love” section that features a variety of new topics such
as on-line dating, the tendency for young people to put off having romantic relationships until
later in their twenties, and how Facebook is changing contemporary love relationships. This
section also features a new table entitled “Everything (or Some Interesting Things) You Wanted
to Know About Cyberspace Love Relationships,” in addition to updating the research on same-
sex relationships and offering a more nuanced look at the qualities we look for in a mate.
CHAPTER 11: Relationships and Roles

• Focuses directly on the core issues of adult life: work and family.
• Provides an extensive discussion of the research relating to how to have happy, enduring
relationships, the challenges of parenting, and women’s and men’s work and family roles.
• Looks at marriage, parenthood, and work in their cultural and historical contexts.
• Offers research-based tips for having a satisfying marriage and career.
• Discusses job insecurity in our more fragile economy.

Jamie Grill/Iconica/Getty Images
What’s New?
• Includes a rewritten demographics of marriage discussion that explores marriage in India and
Iran, current cohabitation trends in the United States, varying attitudes toward cohabitation,
and having babies outside of marriage, in different nations (accompanied by two new figures).
• Offers a new section (“Marriage the Second or Third or ‘X’ Time Around”) that discusses
Having the flexibility to work remarriage, as well as generally updating the research on what makes for happy marriages.
at home is definitely a double-
edged sword. Not only are you • Includes a revised parenthood section and features a new summary table entitled
tempted to work on assignments
when you should be paying
“Research Forces that Erode the Quality of the Day-to-Day Motherhood Experience.”
attention to your child, but you
are probably working far longer • Includes a new section in the Work discussion, entitled “A Final Status Report on Men,
hours than if you had gone to the Women, and Work” (accompanied by a figure tracking parental leave in Sweden for
office. women and men). This section also introduces the concept of career as a calling.
Preface xxv
CHAPTER 12: Midlife

• Describes the complexities of measuring adult personality development.
• Anchors the research on adult intellectual change (the fluid and crystallized distinctions)
to lifespan changes in creativity and careers.
• Offers thorough coverage of the research on generativity and adult well-being.
• Provides research-based advice for constructing a fulfilling adult life.
• Covers age-related changes in sexuality, menopause, grandparenthood, and parent care.
What’s New?
• Tracks the lifespan impact of conscientiousness in a new Hot in Developmental Science
feature.
• Provides (in the section on Personality) additional data suggesting we get happier into later
life and that adult stress can sometimes promote emotional growth. (To make these points,
I’ve included several new figures as well as a new research summary table.)
• Introduces the concept of allostatic load (in the discussion on intelligence), and explores
how this global index of physical functioning predicts midlife intellectual change.
• Includes a study of on-line relationships between grandparents and grandchildren, and elabo-
rates on the forces that make for closeness or more distance in this core family relationship.
• Features a new section that specifically discusses research demonstrating that sex continues
to be highly fulfilling in old age.
PART VI: Later Life

CHAPTER 13: Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development
• Offers an extensive discussion of Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory.
• Helps decode our contradictory stereotypes about later-life emotional states, the core qualities
that make for a happy or unsatisfying old age, and offers a section on “aging optimally.”
• Describes the research on aging memory, retirement, and widowhood.
• Discusses salient social issues such as age discrimination in hiring and intergenerational equity.
• Looks at later life developmentally by tracing changes from the young-old to the old-old years.
What’s New?
Ronnie Kaufman/Getty Images
• Provides an enhanced discussion of old-age perceptions and includes a new key term, ageism.
• Explores new neuroscience research on late-life memory and offers evidence that evoking
age stereotypes impairs older people’s laboratory performance on memory tests.
• Includes a new term, age paradox (in the section on Personality), and showcases research
revealing that happiness is high well into later life. Although his main goal is to
greet this woman in a warm,
• Includes a new Hot in Developmental Science feature exploring current retirement personal way, in order to
remember his new friend’s name,
realities in the United States (and other developed nations).
this elderly man might want to
step back and use the mnemonic
• Offers a rewritten widowhood section showcasing the latest research on spousal mourning, strategy of forming a mental im-
and highlights the importance, specifically, of friends in determining how well older age, thinking, “I’ll remember it’s
women cope with this life event. Mrs. Silver because of her hair.”
xxvi Preface
CHAPTER 14: The Physical Challenges of Old Age

• Offers a clear developmental look at how normal aging shades into chronic disease and ADL
impairments and looks at the impact of gender and socioeconomic forces on physical aging.
• Focuses on how to change the environment to compensate for sensorimotor declines.
• Provides an in-depth look at neurocognitive disorders, accompanied by compelling first-

hand descriptions of their inner experience by people with Alzheimer’s disease.
• Explores alternatives to institutionalization and provides a full description of nursing home care.
• Strives to provide a realistic, honest, and yet action-oriented and uplifting portrait of the
physical frailties of advanced old age.
What’s New?
• Includes a new head (Can we live to 1,000?) that summarizes the biological life-extension
research and offers reasons why extending our human maximum lifespan, in the near
future, is an unrealistic dream.
• Ties the socioeconomic health gap directly to biology, by looking at telo-

meres and allostatic load; explores the impact specifically of education
on longevity; and introduces a new key term, healthy-life years.
• Expands the gender discussion by offering an E.U. nation-by-nation chart,

graphically showing that women spend more time than men living frailer.
© Stuart Monk/Alamy
• Updates sections on vision and hearing, and also provides new data on
late-life falling and driving (the latter in a new Hot in Developmental
Science feature).
The huge domed ceilings are awe-inspiring, but • Revises the diagnostic labels for serious aging pathologies such as
combined with bare floors and the clatter of Alzheimer’s disease and neurocognitive disorder (dementia) to conform with
commuters they make New York City’s Grand Central DSM-5, as well as exploring the latest findings relating to these conditions.
Station an acoustic nightmare. However, thanks
to the miracle of the hearing loop, people can now • Discussion in the section on options for the frail elderly section includes
bypass that background noise via loudspeaker train
research on “social issues” related to moving to continuing care.
announcements beamed directly to their hearing aids.
• Includes updates in the nursing home discussion.
PART VII: Epilogue

CHAPTER 15: Death and Dying
• Explores cross-cultural variations in dying and offers an historical look at death practices
from the Middle Ages to today.
• Discusses the pros and cons of the hospice movement, with its focus on dying at home.
• Offers a look at the pros and cons of different types of advance directives and explores con-
troversial topics such as physician-assisted suicide.
What’s New?
• Includes a new Hot in Developmental Science feature devoted to mourning, accompanied
by a table summarizing the research on children’s bereavement, and introduces new key
terms, complex bereavement-related disorder and prolonged grief.
• Includes a new section devoted to the concerns caregivers face in providing home hospice
care. (In this edition, I also discuss my experience caring for my husband in hospice—in a
new Experiencing the Lifespan interview.)
Preface xxvii
• Offers data on how euthanasia attitudes vary in different European nations, how older people
feel about physician-assisted suicide, and generally updates the findings on advance directives.
Final Thoughts
This wrap-up section summarizes my new four top-pick research trends since the previous
edition of Experiencing the Lifespan.
What Media and Supplements Come with

This Book?
When you decide to use this book, you’re adopting far more than just this text. You have access
to an incredible learning system—everything from tests to video clips that bring the material to
life. The Worth team and several dozen dedicated instructors have worked to provide an array
of supplements to my text to foster student learning and make this course memorable: Video
clips convey the magic of prenatal development, clarify Piaget’s tasks, highlight child under-
nutrition, and showcase the life stories of active and healthy people in their ninth and tenth
decades of life. Lecture slides and clicker questions make class sessions more visual and inter-
active. My publisher has amassed a rich archive of developmental science materials. For addi-
tional information, please contact your Worth Publishers sales consultant or look at the Worth
Web site at http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/product/experiencingthelifespan-
fourthedition-belsky. Here are descriptions of the supplements:
A comprehensive Web resource for teaching and learning, Worth Publishers’ online course
space offers:
• Prebuilt units for each chapter, curated by experienced educators, with relevant media
organized and ready to be assigned or customized to suit your course
• One location for all online resources, including an interactive e-Book, LearningCurve’s
adaptive quizzing (see below), videos, activities, and more
• Intuitive and useful analytics, with a gradebook that

lets you track how students in the class are performing
individually and as a whole
• A streamlined and intuitive interface that lets you build

an entire course in minutes
The LaunchPad can be previewed at
www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpad/
LearningCurve
The LearningCurve quizzing system reflects the latest find-
ings from learning and memory research. LearningCurve’s
adaptive and formative quizzing provides an effective way to
get students involved in the coursework. It combines:
• A unique learning path for each student, with quizzes

shaped by each individual’s correct and incorrect answers
• A personalized study plan to guide students’ prepara-

tion for class and for exams
• Feedback for each question with live links to relevant

e-Book pages, guiding students to the resources they
need to improve their areas of weakness
xxviii Preface
The LearningCurve system combines adaptive question selection, immediate feedback,

and an interactive interface to engage students in a learning experience that is unique to
them. Each LearningCurve quiz is fully integrated with other resources in LaunchPad, so
students will be able to review using Worth’s extensive library of videos and activities. And
state-of-the-art question-analysis reports allow instructors to track the progress of individual
students as well as their class as a whole.
You’ll find the following in our LaunchPad:
Human Development Videos

In collaboration with dozens of instructors and researchers, Worth has developed an exten-
sive archive of video clips. This collection covers the full range of the course, from classic
experiments (like the Strange Situation and Piaget’s conservation tasks) to investigations
of children’s play, to adolescent risk taking. Instructors can assign these videos to students
through LaunchPad or choose one of 50 popular video activities that combine videos with
short-answer and multiple-choice questions. For presentation purposes, our videos are avail-
able in a variety of formats to suit your needs, and highlights of the series appear periodically
in the text’s margin.
Interactive Presentation Slides

A new extraordinary series of “next generation” interactive presentation lectures give instruc-
tors a dynamic, yet easy-to-use, new way to engage students during classroom presentations of
core developmental psychology topics. Each lecture provides opportunities for discussion and
interaction and enlivens the psychology classroom with an unprecedented number of embed-
ded video clips and animations.
Lecture Slides
There are two slide sets for each chapter of Experiencing the Lifespan (one featuring a full
chapter lecture, the other featuring all chapter art and illustrations).
Instructor’s Resources in Launchpad

Now fully integrated with LaunchPad, this collection of resources has been hailed as a rich
collection of instructor’s resources in developmental psychology. The resources include learn-
ing objectives, springboard topics for discussion and debate, handouts for student projects,
course-planning suggestions, ideas for term projects, and a guide to audiovisual and online
materials.
Assessment
• LearningCurve: Formative Quizzing Engine. Developed by a team of psychology instruc-
tors with extensive backgrounds in course design and online education, LearningCurve
combines adaptive question selection, personalized study plans, and state-of-the-art ques-
tion analysis reports. LearningCurve is based on the simple yet powerful concept of testing-
to-learn, with gamelike quizzing activities that keep students engaged in the material while
helping them learn key concepts. A team of dedicated instructors have worked closely
to develop more than 3,000 quizzing questions developed specifically for this edition of
Experiencing the Lifespan.
• Downloadable Diploma Computerized Test Bank (for Windows and Macintosh). This
Test Bank offers an easy-to-use test-generation system that guides you through the process
of creating tests. The Diploma software allows you to add an unlimited number of ques-
tions, edit questions, format a test, scramble questions, and include pictures, equations, or
Preface xxix
multimedia links. The Diploma software will also allow you to export into a variety of for-
mats that are compatible with many Internet-based testing products. For more information
on Diploma, visit: www.brownstone.net/publishers/products/dip6.asp.
Course Management
Worth Publishers supports multiple Course Management Systems with enhanced cartridges
for upload into Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Sakai, Canvas, and Moodle. Cartridges are pro-
vided free upon adoption of Experiencing the Lifespan and can be downloaded from Worth’s
online catalog at www.macmillanhighered.com. Deep integration is also available between
LaunchPad products and Blackboard, Brightspace by D2L, and Canvas. These deep integra-
tions offer educators single sign-on and gradebook sync now with autorefresh.
Who Made This Book Possible?

This book was a completely collaborative endeavor engineered by the finest publishing
company in the world: Worth (and not many authors can make that statement)! Firstly,
again heartfelt thanks go to Elaine Epstein. Elaine, who I have been fortunate to have as my
“developmental editor” for several editions of this book, has been working more than full time
on this edition for over a year. She meticulously pored over every sentence of this manuscript
multiple times, helped prepare all the figures and tables, skillfully guided everything into pro-
duction, and is guiding this book into print as we speak. Elaine, as usual, is my real, unseen,
full partner on this book.
The other genuine collaborator on this book is my masterful hands-on acquisitions editor
Chris Cardone. After decades spent working with publishers, I can honestly say that in terms
of attentiveness to authors, sensitivity to their needs, reliability, and genuine good smarts, Chris
ranks in the top 1 percent. (Kudos also go to my editors for previous editions of this book, Cath-
erine Woods and Jessica Bayne.)
Then there are the talented people who transformed this manuscript into print. Thanks
go to Julio Espin, my hardworking Project Editor, for coordinating this intricate process, to
Catherine Michaelsen, Assistant Editor, and to Sarah Segal, my Production Manager, for help-
ing ensure everything fit together and pushing everyone to get things out on time. It’s been my
great fortune to rely on the advice of Worth’s accomplished Director of Content Management
Enhancement Tracey Kuehn, and to have Deb Heimann, my eagle-eyed copy editor check
the manuscript for accuracy. Sheena Goldstein had the heroic task of helping select photos
that embodied my thoughts. At the final stage of this process, Christine Hastings meticulously
picked through the manuscript to place my commas correctly and make sure each sentence
made grammatical sense.
Then there are the talented people who make Experiencing the Lifespan look like a breath-
taking work of art. As you delight in looking at these fabulous pictures, you can thank Sheena
Goldstein for coordinating the photo program. The Art Director, Diana Blume, along with
Designer Blake Logan are responsible for planning this book’s gorgeous design.
Thanks to Laura Burden my Media Editor, and to the supplements and media authors.
Without good marketing, no one would read this book. And, as usual, this arm of the
Worth team gets my A+ rating. Kate Nurre, our Executive Marketing Manager, and Lindsay
Johnson, Senior Marketing Manager, do an outstanding job. They go to many conferences
and spend countless hours in the field advocating for my work. Although I may not meet many
of you personally, I want take this chance to thank all the sales reps for working so hard to get
“Belsky” out in the real world.
I am grateful for those student readers who took the time to personally e-mail and tell
me, “You did a good job,” or, “Dr. Belsky, I like it; but here’s where you went wrong.” These
kinds of comments really make an author’s day! This book has benefited from the insights of
an incredible number of reviewers over the years. Here are the lifespan instructors who helped
improve each edition of Experiencing the Lifespan:
xxx Preface
Heather Adams, Ball State University Sabrina Brinson, Missouri State University Antonio Cutolo-Ring, Kansas City (KS)
Community College
Daisuke Akiba, Queens College Adam Brown, St. Bonaventure University
Ken Damstrom, Valley Forge Christian
Cecilia Alvarez, San Antonio College Kimberly D. Brown, Ball State University
College
Andrea S. Anastasiou, Mary Baldwin Donna Browning, Mississippi State
Leslie Daniels, Florida State College at
College University
Jacksonville
Emilie Aubert, Marquette University Janine Buckner, Seton Hall University
Nancy Darling, Bard College
Pamela Auburn, University of Houston Ted Bulling, Nebraska Wesleyan University
Paul Dawson, Weber State University
Downtown
Holly Bunje, University of Minnesota, Twin
Janet B. Dean, Asbury University
Tracy Babcock, Montana State University Cities
Lynda DeDee, University of Wisconsin,
Harriet Bachner, Northeastern State Melinda Burgess, Southwestern Oklahoma
Oshkosh
University State University
David C. Devonis, Graceland University
Carol Bailey, Rochester Community and Barbara Burns, University of Louisville
Technical College Charles Dickel, Creighton University
Marilyn Burns, Modesto Junior College
Thomas Bailey, University of Baltimore Darryl Dietrich, College of St. Scholastica
Joni Caldwell, Spalding University
Shelly Ball, Western Kentucky University Stephanie Ding, Del Mar College
Norma Caltagirone, Hillsborough Commu-
Mary Ballard, Appalachian State University nity College, Ybor City Lugenia Dixon, Bainbridge College
Lacy Barnes-Mileham, Reedley College Lanthan Camblin, University of Cincinnati Benjamin Dobrin, Virginia Wesleyan College
Kay Bartosz, Eastern Kentucky University Debb Campbell, College of Sequoias Delores Doench, Southwestern Community
College
Laura Barwegen, Wheaton College Lee H. Campbell, Edison Community
College Melanie Domenech Rodriguez, Utah
Jonathan Bates, Hunter College, CUNY
State University
Robin Campbell, Brevard Community
Don Beach, Tarleton State University
College Sundi Donovan, Liberty University
Lori Beasley, University of Central
Kathryn A. Canter, Penn State Fayette Lana Dryden, Sir Sanford Fleming College
Oklahoma
Peter Carson, South Florida Community Gwenden Dueker, Grand Valley State
Martha-Ann Bell, Virginia Tech
College University
Daniel Bellack, Trident Technical College
Michael Casey, College of Wooster Bryan Duke, University of Central Oklahoma
Jennifer Bellingtier, University of Northern
Kimberly Chapman, Blue River Community Trisha M. Dunkel, Loyola University,
Iowa
College Chicago
Karen Bendersky, Georgia College and
Tom Chiaromonte, Fullerton College Robin Eliason, Piedmont Virginia Commu-
State University
nity College
Yiling Chow, North Island College, Port
Keisha Bentley, University of La Verne
Albernia Traci Elliot, Alvin Community College
Robert Billingham, Indiana University
Toni Christopherson, California State Frank Ellis, University of Maine, Augusta
Kathi J. Bivens, Asheville-Buncombe University, Dominguez Hills
Kelley Eltzroth, Mid Michigan Community
Technical Community College
Wanda Clark, South Plains College College
Jim Blonsky, University of Tulsa
Judy Collmer, Cedar Valley College Marya Endriga, California State University,
Cheryl Bluestone, Queensborough Commu- Stanislaus
David Conner, Truman State University
nity College, CUNY
Lena Ericksen, Western Washington
Deborah Conway, University of Virginia
Greg Bonanno, Teachers College, Columbia University
University Diana Cooper, Purdue University
Kathryn Fagan, California Baptist University
Aviva Bower, College of St. Rose Ellen Cotter, Georgia Southwestern State
Daniel Fasko, Bowling Green State University
University
Marlys Bratteli, North Dakota State
Nancy Feehan, University of San Francisco
University Deborah M. Cox, Madisonville Community
College Meredyth C. Fellows, West Chester
Bonnie Breitmayer, University of Illinois,
University of Pennsylvania
Chicago Kim B. Cragin, Snow College
Gary Felt, City University of New York
Jennifer Brennom, Kirkwood Community Charles P. Cummings, Asheville-Buncombe
College Technical Community College Martha Fewell, Barat College
Tom Brian, University of Tulsa Karen Curran, Mt. San Antonio College Mark A. Fine, University of Missouri
Preface xxxi
Roseanne L. Flores, Hunter College, CUNY Margaret Hellie Huyck, Illinois Institute Jeff Kellogg, Marian College
of Technology
John Foley, Hagerstown Community College Colleen Kennedy, Roosevelt University
Janice L. Hendrix, Missouri State University
James Foster, George Fox University Sarah Kern, The College of New Jersey
Gertrude Henry, Hampton University
Geri Fox, University of Illinois, Chicago Marcia Killien, University of Washington
Rod Hetzel, Baylor University
Thomas Francigetto, Northampton Kenyon Knapp, Troy State University
Community College Heather Hill, University of Texas, San
Cynthia Koenig, Mt. St. Mary’s College of
Antonio
James Francis, San Jacinto College Maryland
Elaine Hogan, University of North
Doug Friedrich, University of West Florida Steve Kohn, Valdosta State University
Carolina, Wilmington
Lynn Garrioch, Colby-Sawyer College Holly Krogh, Mississippi University for Women
Judith Holland, Hawaii Pacific University
Bill Garris, Cumberland College Debra Hollister, Valencia Community College Martha Kuehn, Central Lakes College
Caroline Gee, Palomar College Heather Holmes-Lonergan, Metropolitan Alvin Kuest, Great Lakes Christian College
C. Ray Gentry, Lenoir-Rhyne College State College of Denver Rich Lanthier, George Washington University
Carol George, Mills College Rosemary Hornak, Meredith College Peggy Lauria, Central Connecticut State
Suzy Horton, Mesa Community College University
Elizabeth Gersten, Victor Valley College
Rebecca Hoss, College of Saint Mary Melisa Layne, Danville Community College
Linde Getahun, Bethel University
Cynthia Hudley, University of California, John LeChapitaine, University of
Afshin Gharib, California State University,
Santa Barbara Wisconsin, River Falls
East Bay
Alycia Hund, Illinois State University Barbara Lehmann, Augsburg College
Nada Glick, Yeshiva University
David P. Hurford, Pittsburgh State University Rhinehart Lintonen, Gateway Technical
Andrea Goldstein, Kaplan University
College
Arthur Gonchar, University of La Verne Elaine Ironsmith, East Carolina University
Nancy Lobb, Alvin Community College
Helen Gore-Laird, University of Houston, Jessica Jablonski, Richard Stockton College
Martha V. Low, Winston-Salem State
University Park Sabra Jacobs, Big Sandy Community and University
Tyhesha N. Goss, University of Pennsylvania Technical College
Carol Ludders, University of St. Francis
Dan Grangaard, Austin Community David Johnson, John Brown University
Dunja Lund Trunk, Bloomfield College
College, Rio Grande Emilie Johnson, Lindenwood University
Vickie Luttrell, Drury University
Julie Graul, St. Louis Community College, Mary Johnson, Loras College
Florissant Valley Nina Lyon Jenkins, University of Maryland,
Mike Johnson, Hawaii Pacific University Eastern Shore
Elizabeth Gray, North Park University
Peggy Jordan, Oklahoma City Community Christine Malecki, Northern Illinois
Stefanie Gray Greiner, Mississippi Univer- College University
sity for Women
Lisa Judd, Western Wisconsin Technical Marlowe Manger, Stanly Community College
Erinn L. Green, Wilmington College College
Pamela Manners, Troy State University
Dale D. Grubb, Baldwin-Wallace College Tracy R. Juliao, University of Michigan Flint
Kathy Manuel, Bossier Parish Community
Laura Gruntmeir, Redlands Community Elaine Justice, Old Dominion University College
College
Steve Kaatz, Bethel University Howard Markowitz, Hawaii Pacific
Lisa Hager, Spring Hill College
Jyotsna M. Kalavar, Penn State New University
Michael Hall, Iowa Western Community Kensington Jayne D. B. Marsh, University of Southern
College
Chi-Ming Kam, City College of New York, Maine, Lewiston-Auburn College
Andre Halliburton, Prairie State College CUNY Esther Martin, California State University,
Laura Hanish, Arizona State University Richard Kandus, Mt. San Jacinto College Dominguez Hills
Robert Hansson, University of Tulsa Skip Keith, Delaware Technical and Jan Mast, Miami Dade College, North
Community College Campus
Richard Harland, West Texas A&M
University Michelle L. Kelley, Old Dominion University Pan Maxson, Duke University
Gregory Harris, Polk Community College Richie Kelley, Baptist Bible College and Nancy Mazurek, Long Beach City College
Seminary
Virginia Harvey, University of Massa- Christine McCormick, Eastern Illinois
chusetts, Boston Robert Kelley, Mira Costa College University
xxxii Preface
Jim McDonald, California State University, Heidi Pasek, Montana State University Dawn Ella Rust, Stephen F. Austin State
Fresno University
Margaret Patton, University of North
Clark McKinney, Southwest Tennessee Carolina, Charlotte Tara Saathoff-Wells, Central Michigan
Community College University
Julie Hicks Patrick, West Virginia
George Meyer, Suffolk County Community University Traci Sachteleben, Southwestern Illinois
College College
Evelyn Payne, Albany State University
Barbara J. Miller, Pasadena City College Douglas Sauber, Arcadia University
Ian E. Payton, Bethune-Cookman University
Christy Miller, Coker College Chris Saxild, Wisconsin Indianhead
Carole Penner-Faje, Molloy College
Technical College
Mary Beth Miller, Fresno City College
Michelle L. Pilati, Rio Hondo College
Barbara Schaudt, California State
Al Montgomery, Our Lady of Holy Cross
Meril Posy, Touro College, Brooklyn University, Bakersfield
College
Shannon M. Pruden, Temple University Daniela E. Schreier, Chicago School of
Robin Montvilo, Rhode Island College
Ellery Pullman, Briarcrest Bible College Professional Psychology
Peggy Moody, St. Louis Community
College Samuel Putnam, Bowdoin College Pamela Schuetze, SUNY College at Buffalo
Michelle Moriarty, Johnson County Jeanne Quarles, Oregon Coast Community Donna Seagle, Chattanooga State
Community College College Technical Community College
Wendy Bianchini Morrison, Montana Mark Rafter, College of the Canyons Bonnie Seegmiller, Hunter College, CUNY
State University-Bozeman Chris Seifert, Montana State University
Cynthia Rand-Johnson, Albany State
Ken Mumm, University of Nebraska, Kearney University Marianne Shablousky, Community College
Joyce Munsch, Texas Tech University Janet Rangel, Palo Alto College of Allegheny County
Jeannette Murphey, Meridian Community Jean Raniseski, Alvin Community College Susan Shapiro, Indiana University, East
College Elliot Sharpe, Maryville University
Frances Raphael-Howell, Montgomery
Lori Myers, Louisiana Tech University College Lawrence Shelton, University of Vermont
Lana Nenide, University of Wisconsin, Celinda Reese, Oklahoma State University Shamani Shikwambi, University of Northern
Madison Iowa
Ethan Remmel, Western Washington
Margaret Nettles, Alliant University University Denise Simonsen, Fort Lewis College
Gregory Newton, Diablo Valley College Paul Rhoads, Williams Baptist College Penny Skemp, Mira Costa College
Barbara Nicoll, University of La Verne Kerri A. Riggs, Lourdes College Peggy Skinner, South Plains College
Nancy Nolan, Nashville State Community Mark Rittman, Cuyahoga Community Barbara Smith, Westminster College
College College
Valerie Smith, Collin County Community
Harriett Nordstrom, University of Jeanne Rivers, Finger Lakes Community College
Michigan, Flint College
Edward Sofranko, University of Rio Grande
Wendy North-Ollendorf, Northwestern Wendy Robertson, Western Michigan
Connecticut Community College University Joan Spiegel, West Los Angeles College
Elizabeth O’Connor, St. Mary’s College Richard Robins, University of California, Jason S. Spiegelman, Community College
Davis of Baltimore County
Susan O’Donnell, George Fox University
Millie Roqueta, Miami Dade College Carolyn I. Spies, Bloomfield College
Jane Ogden, East Texas Baptist University
June Rosenberg, Lyndon State College Scott Stein, Southern Vermont College
Shirley Ogletree, Texas State University
Christopher Rosnick, University of South Stephanie Stein, Central Washington
Claudius Oni, South Piedmont Community
Florida University
College
Trisha Rossi, Adelphi University Sheila Steiner, Jamestown College
Randall E. Osborne, Texas State University,
San Marcos Rodger Rossman, College of the Albemarle Jacqueline Stewart, Seminole State College
John Otey, Southern Arkansas University Lisa Routh, Pikes Peak Community College Robert Stewart, Jr., Oakland University
Carol Ott, University of Wisconsin, Stephanie Rowley, University of Michigan, Cynthia Suarez, Wofford College
Milwaukee Ann Arbor
Joshua Susskind, University of Northern
Patti Owen-Smith, Oxford College Randall Russac, University of North Florida Iowa
Preface xxxiii
Josephine Swalloway, Curry College Mary Vandendorpe, Lewis University Nancy A. Wilson, Haywood Community
College
Emily Sweitzer, California University of Janice Vidic, University of Rio Grande
Pennsylvania Steffen Wilson, Eastern Kentucky
Steven Voss, Moberly Area Community
University
Chuck Talor, Valdosta State University College
Bernadette Wise, Iowa Lakes Community
Jamie Tanner, South Georgia College William Walkup, Southwest Baptist
College
Norma Tedder, Edison Community College University
Steve Wisecarver, Lord Fairfax Community
George Thatcher, Texas Tech University Anne Weiher, Metropolitan State College
College
of Denver
Shannon Thomas, Wallace Community Alex Wiseman, University of Tulsa
College Robert Weis, University of Wisconsin, Stevens
Point Rebecca Witt Stoffel, West Liberty State
Donna Thompson, Midland College College
Lori Werdenschlag, Lyndon State College
Vicki Tinsley, Brescia University Nanci Woods, Austin Peay State University
Noel Wescombe, Whitworth College
Eugene Tootle, Barry University Chrysalis L. Wright, University of Central
Andrea White, Ithaca College
David Tracer, University of Colorado, Florida
Denver Meade Whorton, Louisiana Delta Commu-
Stephanie Wright, Georgetown University
nity College
Stephen Truhon, Austin Peay Centre, Fort
David Yarbrough, Texas State University
Campbell Wanda A. Willard, Monroe Community
College Nikki Yonts, Lyon College
Dana Van Abbema, St. Mary’s College of
Maryland Joylynne Wills, Howard University Ling-Yi Zhou, University of St. Francis
On the home front, I am indebted to my colleagues at Middle Tennessee State University

and to my students over the years. As any teacher will tell you, I learn as much—or more—from
you each semester as you do from me. I want to thank my incredibly competent reference
checker, Jac Mitchell, for performing the difficult task of ferreting out the full source of every
new citation in this book. I’m grateful to my baby, Thomas, for being born, and giving my life
such meaning, and to Shelly for brightening my life since I moved to Chicago this past year.
But the real credit for this book still belongs to my late husband David, for putting this book
and my happiness center stage and for giving me the best possible life.
Janet Belsky
August 25, 2015
STEPHEN ST. JOHN/National Geographic Creative
The Foundation
This two-chapter part offers you the foundations for understanding the lifespan
journey.
Chapter 1–The People and the Field introduces all the major concepts and
themes in this course. In this chapter, I’ll describe our discipline’s basic termi-
nology, provide a bird’s-eye view of the evolving lifespan, offer a framework for
how to think about world cultures, and highlight some new twenty-first-century
life stages. Most important, in this chapter you will learn about the themes,
theories, and research strategies that have shaped our field. Bottom line:
Chapter 1 gives you the tools you will need for understanding this book.
Chapter 2–Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth lays the foundation

for our developing lives. Here, you will learn about how a baby develops from a
PART I
tiny clump of cells, and get insights into the experience of pregnancy from the
point of view of mothers and fathers. This chapter describes pregnancy rituals
in different cultures, discusses the impact of prenatal issues such as stress and
infertility, and offers an in-depth look at the miracle of birth.
1
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Dear Students,
Who We Are and What
Petrol/Westen61/Getty Images; PhotoAlto/Anne-Sophie Bost/Getty Images; © Corbis RF/Age Fotostock; Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Getty Images; PNC/Digital Vision/Getty Images; Rick Gomez/Radius Images/Getty Images;
We Study Welcome to lifespa

Fabrice LEROUGE/ONOKY/Getty Images; Stockbyte/Getty Images; Dimitri Otis/Getty Images; Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images; Johnny Greig/E+/Getty Images; Antony Nagelmann/The Image Bank/Getty Images
n development! Th
and grandparents, is course is about
friends and colleag your parents
Setting the Context or expect to have. ues, the children
If you plan to work yo u have
The Impact of Cohort elderly, this course with children, adul
will give you a good ts, or the
The Impact of Socioeconomic Most important, th foundation for your
is course is all abou career.
Status semester, starting t your own evolving
with the first minut life. This
The Impact of Culture and motion picture of es in the womb, I’l
development in th l provide a
Ethnicity e flesh.
As we travel throug
The Impact of Gender h the lifespan, I ur
wider world. While ge you to look outw
reading the infanc ard to the
baby. In the chapte y sections, visit a re
Theories: Lenses for Looking at rs on childhood an lative with a
boys and girls at sc d adolescence, pa
the Lifespan hool, spend an afte y attention to
preteens at the mal rn oon with a 4-year-o
Behaviorism l. Then, interview ld, watch
a middle-aged rela a twenty-something
Psychoanalytic Theory tive. Talk to a 65-y friend or
80-year-old coping ear-old about to re
with the physical tire or an
Attachment Theory pose of this class is challenges of old
to widen your horiz ag e. The pur-
Evolutionary Psychology each stage of life in ons, to enable you
a more empathic to look at
Behavioral Genetics way.
How can you fully
enjoy the scenery
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . still get a great grad on this semester-lon
e in this course? Fo g trip and
That Our Nature Affects Our ing happens when llow the principle
Upbringing? we are emotionally th at learn-
make it personal; engaged: Make it
see the concepts co re le vant;
Nature and Nurture Combine: help you, I’ve begu me alive in the wo
Where We Are Today n each chapter wi rld. To
the vignette. I’ve co th a fictional life sto
nstructed it to aler ry. Enjoy
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL themes. Look at ea t you to some maj
ch photo and char or chapter
SCIENCE: Environment-Sensitive end summary tabl t. Concentrate on
Genes and Epigenetically es. Complete the the section-
other checklists. I’v Ty ing It All Together
Programmed Pathways e planned these ha quizzes and
self-underst anding nds-on activities to
Emphasis on Age-Linked , plus help you effo enrich your
goal in writing this rtlessly learn the m
Theories book is simple: I wa aterial. My
the marvelous hum nt you to share my
The Developmental Systems an lifespan and to passion for
want to prove that think more deeply
Perspective textbooks can be sc ab out life. I
holarly and a joy to
Now that you know read!
Research Methods: The Tools my main agendas
scholarly ones late (st ay tuned for mor
r), let’s get started. e about the
of the Trade basic themes in th In this chapter I’ll
e course. Let’s begi introduce the
Two Standard Research will be meeting in n by introducing th
the introductory vi e people you
Strategies gnettes.
Designs for Studying
Development
Critiquing the Research
Emerging Research Trends
Some Concluding Introductory
Thoughts
The People and the Field
Susan is having a party to celebrate Carl’s wonderful life. Losing her husband was
tough, but Susan takes comfort in the fact that during their 50-plus-year-long mar-
riage, she and her husband amassed so many friends—people of every age, ethnicity,
and social group. After Carl’s death, everyone flooded Susan’s Facebook page with
expressions of love. But, being from a different era, Susan craves having her friends
physically close, to hug and reminisce about Carl.
First to arrive on Saturday were Maria and baby Josiah, whom Susan and Carl met on a
cross-country trip to Las Vegas five years ago. Then, Mathew and Jamila, the lovely couple
who were on last year’s Alaskan cruise, knocked on the door. For Susan, bonding with her
new 40-something friends on that 10-day trip through the Glaciers offered a lesson in how
the world has changed. Susan and Carl married at age 21—at a time when middle-class
women often stopped working after getting married, and gender roles were clearly defined.
Jamila waited until she got her career in order at age 35 to get married, met Matt on-line, and
even selected a husband of a different race. How, despite juggling step-kids and full-time
jobs, have Matt and Jamila mastered the secret of staying in love for more than 10 years?
Finally, Kim, her husband Jeff, and baby Elissa drove up. Although Susan was
devastated when this close neighborhood couple moved across the country 9 months
ago, she has been thrilled to witness Elissa’s transformations through the miracles
of Skype. Now, it’s time to (finally) envelope that precious 1-year-old in her arms and
hear, in person, about everyone else’s lives!
As they sit down to dinner, Kim reports that since Elissa began walking, she
doesn’t slow down for a minute. Actually, it’s kind of depressing. Elissa used to go to
Susan with a smile. Now, all she wants is Mom. The transformation in Josiah is even
more astonishing. Now that he is 8, that precious child can talk to you like an adult!
Over the next hour, the talk turns to deeper issues: Kim shares her anxieties about
putting Elissa in day care. Matt talks about the trials and joys of step-fatherhood. Maria
opens up about the challenges of being a single parent, an immigrant, and ethnic
minority in the United States. Jamila informs the group that she wants to make a differ-
ence. She is returning to school for a Ph.D. But can she make it academically at age 53?
Susan tells the group not to worry. The sixties and early seventies (until Carl’s massive
stroke) were the happiest time of their lives. Now, with her slowness, her progressing vision
problems, and especially that frightening fall she took at Kroger’s last week, the future
looks bleaker. Susan knows that life is precious. She treasures every moment she has left.
But the eighties won’t be like the seventies. What will happen when she really gets old?
I
s Susan right that the sixties and early seventies are make children at age 8, such as Josiah, seem so grown
life’s happiest stage? If you met Susan at age 30 or up? How has the social media revolution affected how
50, would she be the same upbeat person as today? we relate?
Are Jamila’s worries about her mental abilities realistic, Developmentalists, also called developmental
and what are some secrets for staying passionately in love scientists—researchers who study the lifespan—are
with your spouse? Why do 1-year-olds such as Elissa get about to answer these questions and hundreds of others
clingy just as they begin walking, and what mental leaps about our unfolding life.
3
4 PART I The Foundation
developmentalists
Researchers and
practitioners whose
Who We Are and What We Study
professional interest lies Lifespan development, the scientific study of human growth throughout life, is
in the study of the human a latecomer to psychology. Its roots lie in child development, the study of child-
lifespan. hood and the teenage years. Child development traces its origins back more than a
lifespan development century. In 1877, Charles Darwin published an article based on notes he had made
The scientific study of about his baby during the first years of life. In the 1890s, a pioneering psychologist
development through life. named G. Stanley Hall established the first institute in the United States devoted to
child development The research on the child. Child development began to take off between World Wars I
scientific study of and II (Lerner, 1998). It remains the passion of thousands of developmental scientists
development from birth
through adolescence. working in every corner of the globe.
Gerontology, the scientific study of aging—the other core discipline in lifespan
gerontology The scientific
study of the aging process development—had a slower start. Researchers began to really study the aging process
and older adults. only after World War II (Birren & Birren, 1990). Gerontology and its related field,
adult development The adult development, underwent their phenomenal growth spurt during the final third
scientific study of the adult of the twentieth century.
part of life. Lifespan development puts it all together. It synthesizes what researchers know
normative transitions about our unfolding life. Who works in this huge mega-discipline, and what passions
Predictable life changes that drive developmentalists?
occur during development.
• Lifespan development is multidisciplinary. It draws on fields as different as neu-
non-normative transitions
Unpredictable or atypical life roscience, nursing, psychology, and social policy to understand human develop-
changes that occur during ment. A biologically oriented developmentalist might examine toddlers’ output of
development. salivary cortisol (a stress hormone) when they arrive at day care. An anthropologist
might look at cultural values shaping the day-care choice. A social policy expert
might explore the impact of offering universal government-funded day care in
Finland and France. A biochemist who studies Alzheimer’s disease might decode
what produces the plaques and tangles that ravage the brain. A nurse might head
an innovative Alzheimer’s unit. A research-oriented psychologist might construct a
scale to measure the impairments produced by this devastating disease.
• Lifespan development explores the predictable milestones on
our human journey, from walking to working, to Elissa’s sudden
shyness and attachment to her mother. Are people right to worry
about their learning abilities in their fifties? What is physical
aging, or puberty, or menopause all about? Are there specific
emotions we feel as we approach that final universal milestone,
Colin Cuthbert/Science Source
death?
• Lifespan development focuses on the individual differences that
give spice to human life. Can we really see the person we will be at
age 73, by age 50, or 30? How much does personality or intelligence
change as we travel through life? Developmentalists want to under-
This researcher is among the stand what causes the striking differences between people in temper-
thousands of developmental ament, talents, and traits. They are interested in exploring individual differences in the
scientists whose mission is timing of developmental milestones, too; examining, for instance, why people reach
to decode the causes of that
later life scourge, Alzheimer’s
puberty earlier or later or age more quickly or slowly than their peers.
disease. • Lifespan development explores the impact of life transitions and practices. It
deals with normative, or predictable, transitions, such as retirement, becoming
parents, or beginning middle school. It focuses on non-normative, or atypical,
transitions, such as divorce, the death of a child, or how declines in the economy
affect how we approach the world. It explores life practices, such as smoking,
spanking, or sleeping in the same bed with your child.
Developmentalists realize that life transitions that we consider normative, such
as retiring or starting middle school, are products of living in a particular time in
CHAPTER 1 The People and the Field 5
history. They understand that practices such as smoking or sleeping in bed

with a child vary, depending on our social class and cultural background.
They know that several basic markers, or overall conditions of life, affect our
development.
Now it’s time to introduce some contexts of development, or broad gen-
eral influences, which I will be continually discussing throughout this book.
Setting the Context

How does being born in a particular historical time affect our lifespan jour-
ney? What about our social class, cultural background, or that basic biologi-
cal difference, being female or male?
The Impact of Cohort
© Leonid Plotkin/Alamy
Cohort refers to our birth group, the age group with whom we travel
through life. In the vignette, you can immediately see the heavy role our
cohort plays in influencing adult life. Susan reached adult life in 1960,
when women married in their early twenties and typically stayed married
for life. Jamila came of age during the final decade of the twentieth century,
when women began to feel they needed to get their careers together before Our cultural background affects
every aspect of development.
finding a mate. As an interracial couple, Matt and Jamila are taking a life path unusual So, culturally oriented develop-
even for today! Because they are in their late forties, this couple is at an interesting mentalists might study how this
cutting point. They are traveling through life after that huge bulge in the population coming-of-age ritual expresses
called the baby boom. this society’s messages about
adult life.
The baby boom cohort, defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, has made
a huge impact on the Western world as it moves through society. The reason lies in
size. When soldiers returned from World War II and got married, the average family
size ballooned to almost four children. When this huge group was growing up during
the 1950s, families were traditional, with the two-parent, stay-at-home-mother family
being our national ideal. Then, as rebellious adolescents during the 1960s and 1970s,
the baby boomers helped usher in a radical transformation in these attitudes and roles
(more about this lifestyle revolution soon). Society, as we know, is now experiencing
an old-age explosion as the baby boom cohort floods into later life.
The cohorts living in the early twenty-first century are part of an endless march
of cohorts stretching back thousands of years. Let’s now take a brief historical tour to
get a sense of the dramatic changes in childhood, old age, and adulthood during just
the past few centuries, and pinpoint what our lifespan looks like today.
Changing Conceptions of Childhood

At age ten he began his work life helping . . . manufacture candles and soap. He . . .
wanted to go to sea, but his father refused and apprenticed him to a master printer. At
age 17 he ran away from Boston to Philadelphia to search for work.
contexts of development
His father died when he was 11, and he left school. At 17 he was appointed official Fundamental markers,
surveyor for Culpepper County in Virginia. By age 20 he was in charge of managing including cohort,
his family’s plantation. socioeconomic status,
(Mintz, 2004) culture, and gender, that
shape how we develop
Who were these boys? Their names were Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. throughout the lifespan.
Imagine being born in Colonial times. In addition to reaching adulthood at a
cohort The age group with
much younger age, your chance of having any lifespan would have been far from whom we travel through life.
secure. In seventeenth-century Paris, roughly 1 in every 3 babies died in early infancy
baby boom cohort The huge
(Ariès, 1962; Hrdy, 1999). As late as 1900, almost 3 of every 10 U.S. children did not age group born between
live beyond age 5 (Konner, 2010; Mintz, 2004). 1946 and 1964.
The incredible childhood mortality rates, plus poverty, may have partly explained
why child-rearing practices that we would label as abusive used to be routine. Chil-
dren were often beaten and, at their parents’ whim, might be abandoned at birth
(Konner, 2010; Pinker, 2011). In the early 1800s in Paris, about one in five newborns
was “exposed”—placed in the doorways of churches, or simply left outside to die. In
cities such as St. Petersburg, Russia, the statistic might have been as high as one in
two (Ariès, 1962; Hrdy, 1999).
In addition, for most of history, people did not have our feeling that childhood
is a special life stage (Ariès, 1962; Mintz, 2004). Children, as you saw above, began
to work at a young age. During the early industrial revolution, poor
boys and girls made up more than a third of the labor force in British
mills (Mintz, 2004).
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enlightenment phi-
losophers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau spelled out a
sion, National Child Labor Committee Collection
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Divi-
strikingly different vision of childhood and human life (Pinker, 2011).

Locke believed that human beings are born a tabula rasa, a blank
slate on which anything could be written, and that the way we treat
children shapes their adult lives. Rousseau argued that babies enter
life totally innocent; he felt we should shower these dependent crea-
tures with love. However, this message could fully penetrate society
only when the advances of the early twentieth century dramatically
improved living standards, and we entered our modern age.
In the nineteenth century, if you One force producing this kinder, gentler view of childhood was
visited factories such as this
cannery, you would see many
universal education. During the late nineteenth century in Western Europe and
young children at work— much of the United States, attendance at primary school became mandatory (Ariès,
showing how far we have come 1962). School kept children from working and insulated these years as a protected,
in just a bit more than a century dependent life phase. Still, as late as 1915, only 1 in 10 U.S. children attended high
in our attitudes about childhood.
school; most people entered their work lives after seventh or eighth grade (Mintz,
2004).
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the developmentalist G. Stanley Hall
(1904/1969) identified a stage of “storm and stress,” located between childhood and
adulthood, which he named adolescence. However, it was during the Great Depres-
sion of the 1930s, when President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill making high school
attendance mandatory, that adolescence became a standard U.S. life stage (Mintz,
2004). Our famous teenage culture has existed for only 70 or 80 years!
In recent decades, with many of us going to college and graduate school, we have
delayed the beginning of adulthood to an older age. Developmentalists (see Tanner
& Arnett, 2010) have identified a new in-between stage of life in affluent countries.
Emerging adulthood, lasting from age 18 to roughly the late twenties, is devoted to
exploring our place in the world. One reason that we feel comfortable postponing
marriage or settling down to a career is that we can expect to live an amazingly long
time.
Changing Conceptions of Later Life

In every culture, a few people always lived to “old age.” However, for most of his-
tory, largely due to the high rates of infant and childhood mortality, average life
emerging adulthood The expectancy, our fifty-fifty chance at birth of living to a given age, was shockingly low.
phase of life that begins In Maryland during Colonial times, average life expectancy was only age 20, for both
after high school, tapers off masters and their slaves (Fischer, 1977).
toward the late twenties, and Toward the end of the nineteenth century, life expectancy in the United States
is devoted to constructing an
adult life. rapidly improved. By 1900, it was 46. Then, in the next century, it shot up to 76.7.
During the twentieth century, life expectancy in North America and Western Europe
average life expectancy A
person’s fifty-fifty chance at increased by almost 30 years! (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC],
birth of living to a given age. Health United States, 2007.)
The twentieth-century life expectancy revolution may be the most important twentieth-century life
milestone in human history. The most dramatic increases in longevity occurred expectancy revolution The
dramatic increase in average
about 100 years ago, when public health improvements and medical advances, such life expectancy that occurred
as antibiotics, wiped out deaths from many infectious diseases. Since these illnesses, during the first half of the
such as diphtheria, killed both the young and old, their conquest allowed us to live twentieth century in the
past midlife. In the last 50 years, our progress has been slower because the illnesses we developed world.
now die from, called chronic diseases—such as heart disease, cancer, and stroke—are maximum lifespan The
tied to the aging process itself. biological limit of human life
(about 105 years).
As you can see in Figure 1.1, the outcome is that today, life expectancies have
zoomed into the upper seventies in North America, Western Europe, New Zealand, young-old People in their
sixties and seventies.
Israel, and Japan. A baby born in affluent parts of the world, especially if that child
is female, now has a good chance of making it close to our maximum lifespan, the old-old People in their late
seventies and older.
biological limit of human life (about age 105).
This extension of the lifespan has changed how we think about every life stage.
It has moved grandparenthood, once a sign of being “old,” down into middle age. If
you become a grandparent in your forties, expect to be called grandma or grandpa
for half of your life! Women can start new careers in their early fifties, given that U.S.
females at that age can expect to live on average for roughly 32 more years (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2012). Most important, we have moved the beginning of old age
beyond age 65.
Today, people in their sixties and even early seventies are often active and relatively
healthy. But in our eighties, our chance of being disabled by disease increases dramati-
cally. Because of this, developmentalists make a distinction between two groups of older
adults. The young-old, defined as people in their sixties and early seventies, often look
and feel middle-aged. They reject the idea that they are old
(Lachman, 2004). The old-old, people in their late seven-
ties and beyond, seem in a different class. Since they are Japan
more likely to have physical and mental disabilities, they Israel
are more prone to fit the stereotype of the frail, dependent Spain
older adult. In sum, Susan in the vignette was right: Today New Zealand
the eighties are a different stage of life!
Denmark
United States
Iran
Changing Conceptions of Adult Life
India
If health-care strides during the early twentieth century
Afghanistan Female
allowed us to survive to old age, during the last third of Male
the twentieth century, a revolution in lifestyles changed South Africa
the way we live our adult lives. This transformation, in the 0 20 40 60 80 100
West, which has now spread around the globe, began when
the baby boomers entered their teenage years. figure 1.1: Average life
The 1960s “Decade of Protest” included the civil rights and women’s move- expectancy of men and
women in some selected
ments, the sexual revolution, and the “counterculture” movement that emphasized nations, 2013: Notice the gap
liberation in every area of life (Bengtson, 1989). People could have sex without being in life expectancy between
married. Women could fulfill themselves in a career. We encouraged husbands to the developed and developing
share the housework and child care equally with their wives. Divorce became an worlds. Notice also the astonish-
ingly high life expectancy for
acceptable alternative to living in an unfulfilling marriage. To have a baby, women women in Spain, New Zealand,
no longer needed to be married at all. Israel, and Japan. Women today
Today, with women making up more than half the U.S. labor force, only a can expect to live close to the
minority of couples fit the traditional 1950s roles of breadwinner husband and maximum lifespan in these
developed countries. (As of
homemaker wife (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). With roughly one out 2007, the United States ranked
of two U.S. marriages ending in divorce, we can no longer be confident of staying forty-ninth globally in average
together for life. While divorce rates are now declining, the Western trend toward life expectancy.)
having children without being married continues to rise. As of 2013, almost 48 per- Data from: http://www.worldlifeex-
pectancy.com/ retrieved September 3,
cent of U.S. babies were born to single moms (Hymowitz and others, 2013). 2014.
The healthy, active couple in

their sixties (left) have little
in common with the disabled
90-year-old man living in a
nursing home (right)—showing
why developmentalists divide
the elderly into the young-old
and the old-old.
Myrleen Ferguson Cate/Photo Edit

George Shellye/Masterfile
The timeline at the bottom of this page illustrates the twentieth-century shifts
in life expectancy and family life, as well as charting the passage of the mammoth
baby boom as it moves through life. In later chapters, I’ll pay special attention to the
late-twentieth-century lifestyle revolution—highlighting single parenthood, the trend
toward having stepchildren, exploring gay and bisexual relationships, and shedding
light on the changing family roles of women and men. While this text does divide
development into its standard categories (infancy, childhood, adolescence, adult-
hood, and later life), I’ll also devote a chapter to emerging adulthood—that life stage
many of you are in right now. In the later-life section, I’ll continually emphasize the
distinction between the young-old and old-old (being 60 is miles different physically
and mentally from being 80 or 95) and focus on the issues we face as the baby boom-
ers flood into their older years.
But, as history is always advancing, let’s end this section by touching on two
twenty-first-century transformations: The first is a permanent change in how we
relate; the second temporarily affects the economic path we take as adults.
From Relating in the Real World to Residing

in Cyberspace: On-line Relationships
Meet the Alvin family. . . . Sandra, a former journalist . . . has over 800 followers on
twitter and keeps an elaborate . . . blog; their 16-year-old daughter Zara is a fanatic
Facebook user—464 friends right now—and she also uses Pinterest for “pinning and
sharing photos”. . . .
(quoted in Van Dijck, 2013, p 3)
Julia, . . . a Sophomore at a . . . public high school turns texting into a kind of polling.
After Julia sends out a text, she is uncomfortable until she gets one back: “I’m always
looking for a text that says, “Oh I’m sorry” or “Oh that’s great.” Without this feedback,
she says, “It’s hard to calm down.” Julia describes how painful it is to text about her feel-
ings and get no response: “If . . . they don’t answer me . . . I’ll text them again “are you
mad? . . . Is everything Ok?”
(adapted from Turkle, 2011, p. 175)
How many of you feel the urge to check Facebook or your cell phone as you are
reading these lines? Perhaps, like Sandra, you have followers on Twitter or keep a
T I M E LI N E Selected Twentieth-Century Milestones and the Progress of the Huge Baby Boom
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030
major societal Life Expectancy Takes Off Lifestyle Revolution
change Deaths shift from infectious Women’s movement/rise in divorce and single
to chronic diseases parenthood/more lifestyle freedom
baby boom Born Teenagers Young-
Young- Old-
Old-
cohort oldold old
old
personal blog, or can relate to Julia’s anxiety when you text and don’t get an
immediate response.
Cell phones and texting instituted what one expert (Van Dijck, 2013) has
labeled our twenty-first century “culture of connectivity,” by tethering us to our
significant others every moment of the day. Then that early-twentieth-century
advance in technology, called Web 2.0, accelerated this revolution, by allowing
us to interact 24/7 with strangers around the globe (Van Dijck, 2013). In particu-
lar, Web 2.0 fostered the development of social networking sites, such as Face-
book, that permit us to broadcast every feeling to an expanding array of “friends.”
How has Facebook transformed romantic relationships? Does bullying on-
line differ from real-life bullying, and can texting (or sexting) reveal our inner
lives? Stay tuned for subsequent chapters when I showcase studies delving into
the impact of the on-line revolution on how we relate.
© Doug Steley C/Alamy

From Living in an Expanding Economy, to Facing Financial
Hardship: The Great Recession
I was laid off from my job on April 1st. I’ve used up all my retirement funds and
This consequence of the
savings. I have never seen anything this bad in this country. social-media revolution is all too
(Sandra K, Cleveland Heights, Ohio) familiar. In Chapter 6, you will
learn what forces might make
Welcome to the Great Recession of 2008, which began with the bursting of an cyberbullying more distressing
8-trillion-dollar-housing bubble, producing sharp cutbacks in U.S. consumer spend- than bullying of the face-to-face
ing, followed by a loss of 8.4 million jobs within the following two years (Economic kind.
Policy Institute [EPI], 2011). The Great Recession has caused us to rethink standard
adult markers, from retirement to leaving home for college (see Chapters 10 and 13).
It has weakened our historic American faith in constructing a secure middle-class life.
As this storm rolled in, it uncovered a festering problem called income inequality—
the widening gap between the superrich and everyone else (EPI, 2011; Wilkinson &
Pickett, 2009).
As I’m writing this chapter (in early 2015), the economy has improved in the
social networking sites
United States and many European nations. Will the economic landscape turn truly Internet sites whose
sunny as you are reading these pages? Whatever the answer, our economic situation goal is to forge personal
has an important impact on our journey through life. How exactly does being affluent connections between users.
or poor affect how we develop and behave? Great Recession of 2008
Dramatic loss of jobs (and
consumer spending) that
The Impact of Socioeconomic Status began with the bursting of
the U.S. housing bubble in
This question brings up the role of socioeconomic status (SES)—a term referring late 2007.
to our education and income—on our unfolding lives. As you will see throughout
income inequality The gap
this book, living in poverty makes people vulnerable to a cascade of problems—from between the rich and poor
being born less healthy, to attending lower-quality schools; from living in more dan- within a nation. Specifically,
gerous neighborhoods, to dying at a younger age. Not only do developmentalists rank when income inequality is
individuals by socioeconomic status, but they rank nations, too. wide, a nation has a few
very affluent residents and
Developed-world nations are defined by their wealth, or high median per-person a mass of disadvantaged
incomes. In these countries, life expectancy is high (Central Intelligence Agency citizens.
[CIA], 2007). Technology is advanced. People have widespread access to education socioeconomic status (SES)
and medical care. Traditionally, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, A basic marker referring to
and Japan, as well as every Western European nation, have been classified in this status on the educational
“most affluent” category, although its ranks may be expanding as the economies of and—especially—income
rungs.
nations such as China and India explode.
Developing-world countries stand in sharp contrast to these most affluent world developed world The most
affluent countries in the
regions. Here people may not have indoor plumbing, clean running water, or access to world.
education. They even may die at a young age from “curable” infectious disease. Babies
developing world The more
born in the poorest regions of the globe face a twenty-first-century lifespan that has impoverished countries of
striking similarities to the one developed-world children faced more than a century ago. the world.
collectivist cultures Societies

that prize social harmony,
The Impact of Culture and Ethnicity
obedience, and close Residents of developing nations often have shorter, more difficult lives. Still, if you
family connectedness over visited these places, you might be struck by a sense of community you might not find
individual achievement. in the West. Can we categorize societies according to their basic values, apart from
individualistic cultures their wealth? Developmentalists who study culture answer yes.
Societies that prize Collectivist cultures place a premium on social harmony. The family genera-
independence, competition,
and personal success. tions expect to live together, even as adults. Children are taught to obey their elders,
to suppress their feelings, to value being respectful, and to subordinate
their needs to the good of the wider group.
Individualistic cultures emphasize independence, competition,
and personal success. Children are encouraged to openly express their
emotions, to believe in their own personal power, to leave their parents,
to stand on their own as self-sufficient and independent adults. Tradition-
ally, Western nations score high on indices of individualism. Nations
in Asia, Africa, and South America rank higher on collectivism scales
B. Tanaka/Getty Images
(Hofstede, 1981, 2001; Triandis, 1995).

Imagine how your perspective on life might differ if becoming inde-
pendent from your parents or honestly sharing your feelings was viewed
as an inappropriate way to behave. How would you treat your children,
For this grandmother, mother, choose a career, or select a spouse? What concerns would you have as you were fac-
and daughter, getting dressed ing death?
up to visit this Shinto family
shrine and pay their respects to
As we scan development around the world, I will regularly distinguish between
their ancestors is an important collectivist and more individualistic societies. I’ll highlight the issues families face
ritual. It is one way that the when they move from these traditional cultures to the West, and explore research
lesson “honor your elders” is relating to the major U.S. ethnic groups listed in Figure 1.2.
taught to children living in col-
lectivist societies such as Japan
As you read this information, keep in mind that what unites us as people
from an early age. outweighs any distinctions based on culture, ethnicity, or race. Moreover, making
diversity generalizations is hazardous because of the diversity that exists within
each nation and ethnic group. In the most individualistic country (no surprise,
that’s the United States), people have a mix of collectivist and individualistic
worldviews. Due to globalization, traditionally
collectivistic cultures, such as China and Japan,
White now have developed more individualistic, Western
2013
Hispanic or Latino 2042 worldviews.
Black or African If the census labels you as “Hispanic Ameri-
American can,” you also are probably aware that this label
Asian masks more than it reveals. As a third-generation
Mixed race
Cuban American, do you really have much in
common with a recent immigrant from Mexico
American Indian
and Alaska Native or Belize? Given that people arrive in Western
Hawaiian and nations from hundreds of culturally different
Pacific Islander
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 countries, does it make sense to lump people into
Percent of population a small number of ethnic groups? There is, how-
ever, one distinction that we can agree on—being
female or male.
figure 1.2: The major ethnic
groups in the United States,
their percentages in 2013, and
a few mid-twenty-first-century
The Impact of Gender
projections: By 2042, more than Obviously, our culture’s values shape our development as males and females. Are
half of the U.S. population is you living in a society or at a time in history when men are encouraged to be
projected to be ethnic minorities.
Notice, in particular, the huge
househusbands and women to be corporate CEOs? Biology is crucial in driving at
increase in the fraction of least one fundamental difference in the pathways of women and men: Throughout
Hispanic Americans. the world, females outlive males by at least two years (World Life Expectancy, 2011).
Data from: http://quickfacts.census.
gov/qfd/states/00000.html, Retrieved
Because they must survive childbearing and carry an extra X chromosome, women
September 3, 2014. are the physiologically hardier sex.
Table 1.1: Is It Males or Females?

1. Who are more likely to survive the hazards of prenatal development, male or female fetuses?
(You will find the answer in Chapter 2.)
2. Who are more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, girls or boys? (You will find the answer in
Chapter 5.)
3. Who are more aggressive, boys or girls? (You will find the answer in Chapter 6.)
4. Who are more likely to be diagnosed with learning disabilities in school, boys or girls?
5. Who, when they reach puberty at an earlier-than-typical age, are more at risk of developing
problems, boys or girls? (You will find the answer in Chapter 8.)
6. Who are likely to stay in the “nest” (at home) longer during the emerging-adult years, men
or women? (You will find the answer in Chapter 10.)
7. Who tend to earn more today, women or men? (You will find the answer in Chapter 11.)
8. Who are more at risk of having emotional problems after being widowed, men or women?
9. Who are apt to live longer, sicker men or women? (You will find the answer in Chapter 14.)
10. Who care more about being closely attached, males or females—or both sexes? (You will
find the answer throughout this book.)
Are boys more aggressive than girls? When we see male/female differences in
caregiving, career interests, and childhood play styles, are these differences mainly
due to the environment (societal pressures or the way we are brought up) or to inborn,
biological forces? Throughout this book, I’ll examine these questions as we explore
the scientific truth of our gender stereotypes and spell out other fascinating facts about
sex differences. To introduce this conversation, you might want to take the “Is It Males
or Females?” quiz in Table 1.1. Keep a copy. As we travel through the lifespan, you
can check the accuracy of your ideas.
Now that you understand that our lifespan is a continuing work in progress that
varies across cultures and historical times, let’s get to the science. After you complete
this section’s Tying It All Together review quiz below, I will introduce the main theo-
ries, research methods, concepts, and scientific terms in this book.
Tying It All Together
1. Imagine you were born in the eighteenth century. Which statement would be least
true of your life?
a. You would have a good chance of dying during childhood.
b. You might be severely beaten by your parents.
c. You would start working right after high school.
d. You would not have an adolescence.
2. Rosa is 80. Ramona is 65. In a sentence, describe the major statistical difference
between these two women, and then label each person’s life stage.
3. Carlos was in his twenties during the 1980s; his grandfather reached adulthood in 1945. In
comparing their lives, plug in the statistically correct items: Carlos was more/less likely to
have divorced; Carlos entered the workforce at an older/younger age and got married later/
earlier than his grandfather. Carlos had more/fewer years of education than his grandfather.
4. Pablo says, “I would never think of leaving my parents or living far from my brothers
and sisters. A person must take care of his extended family before satisfying his own
needs.” Peter says, “My primary commitment is to my wife and children. A person
needs, above all, to make an independent life.” Pablo has a(n) ________ worldview,
while Peter’s worldview is more ________.
5. List and (possibly discuss with the class) the merits and downsides of Facebook.
Answers to the Tying It All Together questions can be found at the end of this chapter.
theory Any perspective

explaining why people act
the way they do. Theories
Theories: Lenses for Looking
allow us to predict behavior
and also suggest how
at the Lifespan
to intervene to improve During her twenties, Jamila was probably searching for her identity. Susan’s sunny,
behavior. people-oriented personality is genetic. If Elissa’s mother gives her a lot of love during her
nature Biological or genetic first years of life, she will grow up to be a loving, secure adult. If any of these thoughts
causes of development. entered your mind while reading about the people in the opening chapter vignette, you
nurture Environmental causes were using a major theory that developmentalists use to understand human life.
of development. Theories attempt to explain what causes us to act as we do. They may allow us to
traditional behaviorism The predict the future. Ideally, they give us information about how to improve the quality
original behavioral worldview of life. Theories in developmental science may offer broad explanations of behavior
that focused on charting and
modifying only “objective,”
that apply to people at every age, or describe changes that occur at particular ages.
visible behaviors. This section provides a preview of both kinds of theories.
operant conditioning
Let’s begin by outlining some theories (one is actually a research discipline)
According to the traditional that offer general explanations of behavior. I’ve organized these theories somewhat
behavioral perspective, chronologically—based on when they appeared during the twentieth century—but
the law of learning that mainly according to their position on that core issue: Is it the environment, or the
determines any voluntary
response. Specifically, we act
wider world, that determines how we develop? Are our personalities, talents, and traits
the way we do because we shaped mainly by biological or genetic forces? This is the famous nature (biology)
are reinforced for acting in versus nurture (environment) question.
that way.
Behaviorism: The Original Blockbuster

“Nurture” Theory
Give me a dozen healthy infants . . . and I’ll guarantee to take any one
at random and train him to be any specialist I might select—doctor,
lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar man and thief.
(Watson, 1930, p. 104)
So proclaimed the early-twentieth-century psychologist John

Watson as he spelled out the nurture-is-all-important position of
traditional behaviorism. Intoxicated by the scientific advances that
B.F. Skinner Foundation
were transforming society, Watson and his fellow behaviorist B. F.

Skinner (1960, 1974) dreamed of a science of human behavior
that would be as rigorous as physics. These theorists believed that
we could not study feelings and thoughts because inner experi-
This photo shows B. F. Skinner
ences could not be observed. It was vital to chart only measurable,
with his favorite research observable responses. Moreover, according to these traditional behaviorists, a few
subject for exploring operant general laws of learning explain behavior in every situation at every time of life.
conditioning—the pigeon. By
charting how often pigeons
pecked to get reinforced by Exploring Reinforcement
food and varying the patterns According to Skinner, the general law of learning that causes each voluntary action,
of reinforcement, this famous from forming our first words to mastering higher math, is operant conditioning.
behaviorist was able to tell
us a good deal about how
Responses that we reward, or reinforce, are learned. Responses that are not reinforced
humans act. go away or are extinguished. So what accounts for Watson’s beggar men and thieves,
the out-of-control kids, all of the marriages that start out so loving and then fall apart?
According to Skinner, the reinforcements are operating as they should. The problem
is that instead of reinforcing positive behavior, we often reinforce the wrong things.
One excellent place to see Skinner’s point is to take a trip to your local Walmart
or restaurant. Notice how when children act up at the store parents often buy them a
toy to quiet them down. At dinner, as long as a toddler is playing quietly, adults ignore
her. When she starts to hurl objects off the table, they pick her up, kiss her, and take
her outside. Then, they complain about their child’s difficult personality, not realizing
that their own reinforcements have produced these responses!
One of Skinner’s most interesting concepts, derived from his

work with pigeons, relates to variable reinforcement schedules.
This is the type of reinforcement that typically occurs in daily
life: We get reinforced unpredictably, so we keep responding,
realizing that if we continue, at some point we will be reinforced.
Readers with children will understand how difficult it is to follow
the basic behavioral principle to be consistent or not let a negative
© UpperCut Images/Alamy
variable schedule emerge. At Walmart, even though you vow, “I
won’t give in to bad behavior!” as your toddler’s tantrums escalate,
you cave in, simply to avoid other shoppers’ disapproving stares
(“What an out-of-control mother and bratty kid!”). Unfortunately,
your child has learned, “If I keep whining, eventually I’ll get what
I want.” Imagine wheeling this whining
Reinforcement (and its opposite process, extinction) is a powerful force for both toddler through your Walmart
good and bad. It explains why, if a child starts out succeeding early in elementary grocery aisle. Wouldn’t you
be tempted to reinforce this
school (being reinforced by receiving A’s), he is apt to study more. If a kindergartner unpleasant behavior by silencing
begins failing socially (does not get positive reinforcement from her peers), she is at the child with an enticing object
risk for becoming incredibly shy or highly aggressive in third or fourth grade (see on the shelf?
Chapter 6). If you were not being reinforced by people, wouldn’t you withdraw or act
in socially inappropriate ways?
Behaviorism makes sense of why, after starting out loving, marriages can end in
divorce. As newlyweds, couples are continually reinforcing each other with expres-
sions of love. Then, over time, husbands and wives tend to ignore the good parts of
their partner and pay attention when there is something wrong.
The theory even offers an optimistic environmental explanation for the physical
and mental impairments of old age. If you were in a nursing home and weren’t being
reinforced for remembering or walking, wouldn’t your memory or physical abilities
decline? The key to producing well-behaved children, enduring, loving marriages,
and fewer old-age disabilities is simple. According to traditional behaviorists, we need
to reinforce the right things.
However, things are not that simple. Human beings do think and reason. People
do not need to be personally reinforced to learn.
Taking a Different Perspective: Exploring Cognitions

Enter cognitive behaviorism (social learning theory), launched by Albert Bandura
(1977; 1986) and his colleagues in the 1970s, in studies demonstrating the power of
modeling, or learning by watching and imitating what other people do.
Because we are a social species, modeling (both imitating other people, and
others reciprocally imitating us) is endemic in daily life. Given that we are always
modeling everything from the latest hairstyle on, who are we most likely to generally
model as children and adults?
Bandura (1986) finds that that we tend to model people who are nurturing, or reinforcement Behavioral term
relate to us in a caring way. (The good news here is that being a loving, hands-on for reward.
parent is the best way to naturally embed your values and ideas.) We model people cognitive behaviorism
whom we categorize as being like us. At age 2, you probably modeled anything from (social learning theory) A
the vacuum cleaner to the behavior of the family dog. As we grow older, we tailor our behavioral worldview that
modeling selectively, based on our understanding of who we are. emphasizes that people
learn by watching others
Modeling similar people partly explains why, after children understand their and that our thoughts about
gender label (girl or boy) at about age 2 1/2, they separate into sex-segregated play the reinforcers determine
groups and prefer to play with their “own group” (see Chapter 6). It makes sense our behavior. Cognitive
of why at-risk teenagers gravitate to the druggies group at school, and then model behaviorists focus on
charting and modifying
the leader who most embodies the group norms (see Chapter 9). While I will use people’s thoughts.
modeling to explain behavior at several points in this book, another concept—
modeling Learning by
also devised by Bandura—will be a genuine foundation in the chapters to come: watching and imitating
self-efficacy. others.
self-efficacy According to Self-efficacy refers to our belief in our competence, our sense that we can be
cognitive behaviorism, successful at a given task. According to Bandura (1989, 1992, 1997), efficacy feelings
an internal belief in our
competence that predicts
determine the goals we set. They predict which activities we engage in as we travel
whether we initiate activities through life. When self-efficacy is low, we decide not to tackle that difficult math
or persist in the face of problem. We choose not to ask a beautiful stranger for a date. When self-efficacy
failures, and predicts the is high, we not only take action, but also continue to act long after the traditional
goals we set.
behavioral approach suggests that extinction should occur.
Let’s imagine that your goal is to be a nurse, but you get an F on your first
test in this course. If your academic self-efficacy is low, you might conclude:
“I’m basically not smart.” You might not put forth any effort on the next exam.
You might even drop out of school. But if you have high self-efficacy, you will
think: “I just need to work harder. I can do it. I’m going to get a good grade
in this class!”
How do children develop low or high self-efficacy? Can efficacy feelings predict
success decades later in life? What role does self-efficacy play in happiness at any
age? These are the kinds of questions we will explore in examining efficacy feelings
throughout life.
By now, you may be impressed with behaviorism’s simple, action-oriented
concepts. Be consistent. Don’t reinforce negative behavior. Reinforce positive
things (from traditional behaviorism). Draw on the principles of modeling and
aastock/Shutterstock
stimulate efficacy feelings to help children and adults succeed (from cognitive
behaviorism).
Still, many developmentalists, even people who believe that nurture
(or the environment) is important, find behaviorism unsatisfying. Aren’t we
This man is clearly upbeat and more than just efficacy feelings or reinforced responses? Isn’t there a basic core
ebullient. In Chapter 13, you to personality, and aren’t the lessons we learn in childhood vital in shaping
will learn what health benefits adult life? Notice that behaviorism doesn’t address that core question: What
result from having his efficacious really motivates us as people? To address these gaps, developmental scientists,
sense of purpose in life.
particularly in the past, turned to the insights of that world-class genius, Sig-
mund Freud.
Psychoanalytic Theory: Focus on Early

Childhood and Unconscious Motivations
Freud’s ideas are currently not in vogue in developmental science. However,
no one can dispute the fact that Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) transformed the
way we think about human beings. Anytime you say, “I must have done that
unconsciously” or “My problems are due to my childhood,” you are quoting
Freudian thought.
Freud, a Viennese Jewish physician, wrote more than 40 books and
monographs in a burst of brilliance during the early twentieth century. His
ideas revolutionized everything from anthropology to the arts, in addition to
jump-starting the modern field of mental health. Freud’s mission, however,
was simple: to decode why his patients were in emotional pain.
MAISANT Ludovic/© Hemis/Alamy
Freud’s theory is called psychoanalytic because it analyzes the psyche or

our inner life. By listening to his patients, Freud became convinced that our
actions are dominated by feelings of which we are not aware. The roots of
emotional problems lay in repressed (made unconscious) feelings from early
childhood. Moreover, “mothering,” during the first five years of life, deter-
mines adult mental health.
Freud, pictured here in his robust Specifically, Freud posited three hypothetical structures. The id, present at birth,
middle age, alerted us to the
is the mass of instincts, needs, and feelings we have when we arrive in the world.
power of childhood experiences
and unconscious motivations in During early childhood, the conscious, rational part of our personality—called the
shaping human life. ego—emerges. Ego functions involve thinking, reasoning, planning, and fulfilling our
id desires in realistic ways. Finally, a structure called the superego—the moral arm of attachment theory Theory
our personality—exists in opposition to the id’s desires. formulated by John Bowlby
centering on the crucial
According to Freud and his followers, if our parents are excellent caregivers, we importance to our species’
will develop a strong ego, which sets us up to master the challenges of life. If they survival of being closely
are insensitive or their caregiving is impaired, our behavior will be id driven, and our connected with a caregiver
lives will be out of control. The purpose of his therapy, called psychoanalysis, was during early childhood
and being attached to a
to enable his patients to become aware of the repressed early childhood experiences significant other during all
causing their symptoms and liberate them from the tyranny of the unconscious to of life.
live rational, productive lives. (As Freud famously put it, where id there was, ego
there will be.)
In sum, according to Freud: (1) Human beings are basically irrational; (2) life-
long mental health depends on our parents’ caregiving during early life; and (3) self-
understanding is the key to living a fulfilling adult life.
By now many of you might be on a similar page as Freud. Where you are
apt to part serious company with the theory relates to Freud’s stages of sexual-
ity. Freud argued that sexual feelings (which he called libido) are the motiva-
tion driving human life, and he put forth the shocking idea—especially in that
time—that babies are sexual human beings. As the infant develops, he argued,
sexual feelings are centered on specific areas of the body called erogenous zones.
During the first year of life, the erogenous zone is the mouth (the famous oral
stage). Around age 2, with toilet training, sexual feelings center on elimination
(the anal stage). Finally, around ages 3 and 4, sexual feelings shift to the genitals
(the phallic stage). During this time, the child develops sexual fantasies relating
to the parent of the opposite sex (the Oedipus complex), and the same-sex parent
becomes a rival. Then, sexuality is repressed, the child identifies with that parent,
the superego is formed, and we enter latency—an asexual stage that lasts through
elementary school.
Partly because his sexual stages seem so foreign to our thinking, we tend
to reject psychoanalytic theory as outdated—an artifact of a distant era. A
deeper look suggests we might be wrong. Like Freud, contemporary devel-
opmentalists believe that self-understanding—being able to reflect on and
regulate our emotions—is the defining quality of being mature. Like Freud,
developmental scientists are passionate to trace the roots of lifelong develop-
ment to what happens in our earliest months and years of life. As you read
through this book, perhaps you will agree with me, that—despite its different
terminology and approaches—our field owes a great philosophical debt to
Freud. Moreover, psychoanalytic theory gave birth to that important modern
perspective called attachment theory.
Picture Quest/Image Source/Getty Images

Attachment Theory: Focus on Nurture,
Nature, and Love
British psychiatrist John Bowlby formulated attachment theory during the
mid-twentieth century. Bowlby, like Freud, believed that our early experi-
ences with caregivers shape our adult ability to love, but he focused on what
he called the attachment response.
In observing young children separated from their mothers, Bowlby noticed that
Bowlby believes that the
babies need to be physically close to a caregiver during the time when they are intense, loving bond between
beginning to walk (Bowlby, 1969, 1973; Karen, 1998). Disruptions in this biologi- this father and infant son will
cally programmed attachment response, he argued, if prolonged, might cause serious set the baby up for a fulfilling
problems later in life. Moreover, our impulse to be close to a “significant other” is a life. In Chapter 4, I will describe
exactly how the attachment
basic human need during every stage of life. bond unfolds, and whether this
How does the attachment response develop? Are Bowlby and Freud right that our core principle of Bowlby’s theory
early attachments determine adult mental health? How can we draw on attachment is correct.
evolutionary psychology theory to understand everything from adult love relationships to our concerns as we
Theory or worldview approach death? Stay tuned for answers as we explore this influential theory through-
highlighting the role that
inborn, species-specific out this book.
behaviors play in human Why did Bowlby’s ideas eclipse psychoanalytic theory? A main reason was
development and life. that Bowlby agreed with a late-twentieth-century shift in the way developmen-
behavioral genetics Field talists understood human motivations. Yes, Bowlby did believe in the power of
devoted to scientifically caregiving (nurture), but he firmly anchored his theory in nature (genetics).
determining the role that Bowlby (1969, 1973, 1980) argued that the attachment response is genetically
hereditary forces play in
determining individual programmed into our species to promote survival. Bowlby was an early evolution-
differences in behavior. ary psychologist.
twin study Behavioral genetic
research strategy, designed Evolutionary Psychology: Theorizing About the
to determine the genetic
contribution of a given trait, “Nature” of Human Similarities
that involves comparing Evolutionary psychologists are the mirror image of behaviorists. They look to nature,
identical twins with fraternal
twins (or with other people). or inborn biological forces that have evolved to promote survival, to explain how we
behave. Why do pregnant women develop morning sickness just as the fetal organs
are being formed, and why do newborns prefer to look at attractive faces rather than
ugly ones? (That’s actually true!) According to evolutionary psychologists, these reac-
tions cannot be changed by modifying the reinforcers. They are based in the human
genetic code that we all share.
Evolutionary psychology lacks the practical, action-oriented approach of behav-
iorism, although it does alert us to the fact that we need to pay close attention to basic
human needs. Still, as we look at how far flung topics—from the timing of puberty
(Chapter 8), to the purpose of grandparents (Chapter 12)—are being viewed through
an evolutionary psychology lens, you will realize just how influential this “look to the
human genome” perspective has become in our field. What first convinced develop-
mentalists that genetics is important in determining the person we become? A simple
set of research techniques.
Behavioral Genetics: Scientifically Exploring the

“Nature” of Human Differences
Behavioral genetics is the name for research strategies devoted to examining the
genetic contribution to the differences we see between human beings. How genetic is
the tendency to bite our nails, develop bipolar disorders, have specific attitudes about
life? To answer these kinds of questions, scientists typically use twin and adoption
studies.
How “genetic” are these

children’s friendly personalities?
To answer this question,
researchers compare identical
twins, such as these two girls
(left), with fraternal twins, like
this girl and boy (right). If the
© Heide Benser/Grace/ Zefa /Corbis
John-Francis Bourke/Getty Images
identicals (who share exactly

the same DNA) are much
more similar to each other
than the fraternals in their
scores on friendliness tests,
friendliness is defined as a
highly heritable trait.
In twin studies, researchers typically compare identical (monozygotic) twins and adoption study Behavioral
fraternal (dizygotic) twins on the trait they are interested in (playing the oboe, obesity, genetic research strategy,
designed to determine the
and so on). Identical twins develop from the same fertilized egg (it splits soon after genetic contribution to a
the one-cell stage) and are genetic clones. Fraternal twins, like any brother or sister, given trait, that involves
develop from separate conceptions and so, on average, share 50 percent of their genes. comparing adopted children
The idea is that if a given trait is highly influenced by genetics, identical twins should with their biological and
adoptive parents.
be much more alike in that quality than fraternal twins. Specifically, behavioral
geneticists use a statistic called heritability (which ranges from 1 = totally genetic, to twin/adoption study
Behavioral genetic research
0 = no genetic contribution) to summarize the extent to which a given behavior is strategy that involves
shaped by genetic forces. comparing the similarities of
For instance, to conduct a twin study to determine the heritability of friendliness, identical twin pairs adopted
you would select a large group of identical and fraternal twins. You would give both into different families,
to determine the genetic
sets of twins tests measuring outgoing attitudes, and then compare the strength of contribution to a given trait.
the relationships you found for each twin group. Let’s say the identical twins’ scores
were incredibly similar—almost like the same person taking the tests twice—and
the fraternal twins’ test scores varied a great deal from one another. Your heritability
statistic would be high, and you could conclude: “Friendliness is a mainly genetically
determined trait.”
In adoption studies, researchers compare adopted children with their biologi-
cal and adoptive parents. Here, too, they evaluate the impact of heredity on a trait
by looking at how closely these children resemble their birth parents (with whom
they share only genes) and their adoptive parents (with whom they share only
environments).
Twin studies of children growing up in the same family and adoption stud-
ies are fairly easy to carry out. The most powerful evidence for genetics comes
from the rare twin/adoption studies, in which identical twins are separated in
childhood and reunited in adult life. If Joe and James, who have exactly the same
DNA, have similar abilities, traits, and personalities, even though they grow up in
different families, this would be strong evidence that genetics plays a crucial role
in who we are.
Consider, for instance, the Swedish Twin/Adoption Study of Aging. Researchers
combed national registries to find identical and fraternal twins adopted into different
families in that country—where birth records of every adoptee are kept. Then they
reunited these children in late middle age and gave the twins a battery of tests (Finkel
& Pedersen, 2004; Kato & Pedersen, 2005).
While specific qualities varied in their heritabilities, you might be surprised to
know that the most genetically determined quality was IQ (Pedersen, 1996). In fact,
if one twin took the standard intelligence test, statistically speaking we could predict
that the other twin would have an almost identical IQ despite living apart for almost
an entire lifetime!
Behavioral genetic studies such as these have opened our eyes to the role of
nature in shaping who we are (Turkheimer, 2004). Our tendencies to be religious,
vote for conservative Republicans (Bouchard and others, 2004), drink to excess
(Agrawal & Lynskey, 2008), or get divorced—qualities we thought must be due to
how our parents raised us—are all somewhat shaped by genetic forces (Plomin and
others, 2003).
These studies have given us tantalizing insights into nurture too. It’s tempting to
assume that children growing up in the same family share the same nurture, or envi-
ronment. But as you can see in the How Do We Know research box on page 18, that
assumption is wrong. We inhabit different life spaces than our brothers and sisters,
even when we eat at the same dinner table and share the same room—environments
that are influenced by our genes (Rowe, 2003).
evocative forces The nature-

interacts-with-nurture HOW DO WE KNOW. . .
principle that our genetic
temperamental tendencies that our nature affects our upbringing?
and predispositions For much of the twentieth century, developmentalists assumed that parents treated all
evoke, or produce, certain
of their children the same way. We could classify mothers as either nurturing or reject-
responses from other
people. ing, caring or cold. The Swedish Twin/Adoption Study turned these basic parenting
assumptions upside down (Plomin & Bergeman, 1991).
bidirectionality The crucial
principle that people Researchers asked middle-aged identical twins who had been adopted into different
affect one another, or that families as babies to rate their parents along dimensions such as caring, acceptance,
interpersonal influences flow and discipline styles. They were astonished to find similarities in the ratings, even
in both directions.
though the twins were evaluating different families!
active forces The nature-
interacts-with-nurture What was happening? The answer, the researchers concluded, was that the genetic
principle that our genetic similarities in the twins’ personalities created similar family environments. If Joe and
temperamental tendencies Jim were both easy, kind, and caring, they evoked more loving parenting. If they were
and predispositions cause temperamentally difficult, they caused their adoptive parents to react in more reject-
us to actively choose to
ing, less nurturant ways.
put ourselves into specific
environments. I vividly saw this evocative, child-shapes-parenting relationship in my own life. Because
my adopted son has dyslexia and is very physically active, in our house we ended up
doing active things like sports. As Thomas didn’t like to sit still for story time, I probably
would have been described as a “less than optimally stimulating” parent had some
psychologist come into my home to rate how much I read to my child.
And now, the plot thickens. When I met Thomas’s biological mother, I found out that
she also has dyslexia. She’s energetic and peppy. It’s one thing to see the impact of
nature in my son, as his mother revealed. But I can’t help wondering. . . . Maureen is
a very different person than I am (although we have a terrific time together—traveling
and doing active things). Would Thomas have had the same kind of upbringing (at least
partly) that I gave my son if he had grown up with his biological mom?
The bottom line is that there is no such thing as nature or nurture. To understand
human development, scientists need to explore how nature and nurture combine.
Nature and Nurture Combine: Where We Are Today

Let’s now lay out two basic nature-plus-nurture principles, and then introduce cutting-
edge developmental science research relating to how nature and nurture interact.
Principle One: Our Nature (Genetic Tendencies)

Shapes Our Nurture (Life Experiences)
Jesse Kunerth/Hemera/Getty Images
Developmentalists understand that nature and nurture are not independent entities.
Our genetic tendencies shape our wider-world experiences in two ways.
Evocative forces refer to the fact that our inborn talents and temperamental
tendencies evoke, or produce, certain responses from the world. A joyous child
elicits smiles from everyone. A child who is temperamentally irritable, hard to
handle, or has trouble sitting still is unfortunately set up to get the kind of harsh
Because this musically talented
parenting she least needs to succeed. Human relationships are bidirectional. Just as
girl is choosing to spend hours you get grumpy when with a grumpy person, fight with your difficult neighbor, or
playing the piano, she is likely shy away from your colleague who is paralyzingly shy, who we are as people causes
to become even more talented other people to react to us in specific ways, driving our development for the good
as she gets older, illustrating the
fact that we actively shape our
and the bad.
environment to fit our genetic Active forces refer to the fact that we actively select our environments based
tendencies and talents. on our genetic tendencies. A child who is talented at reading gravitates toward
devouring books and so becomes a better reader over time. His brother, who is well person–environment fit
coordinated, may play baseball three hours a day and become a star athlete in his The extent to which
the environment is
teenage years. Because we choose activities to fit our biologically based interests tailored to our biological
and skills, what start out as minor differences between people in early childhood tendencies and talents. In
snowball—ultimately producing huge gaps in talents and traits. The high herita- developmental science,
bilities for IQ in the Swedish Twin/Adoption Study are lower in similar behavioral fostering this fit between our
talents and the wider world
genetic studies conducted during childhood (Plomin & Spinath, 2004). The reason is an important goal.
is that, like heat-seeking missiles, our nature causes us to gravitate toward specific
life experiences, so we literally become more like ourselves genetically as we travel
into adult life (Scarr, 1997).
Principle 2: We Need the Right Nurture (Life Experiences)

to Fully Express Our Nature (Genetic Talents)
Developmentalists understand that even if a quality is mainly genetic, its expression
can be 100 percent dependent on the outside world. Let’s illustrate by returning to
the high heritabilities for intelligence. If you lived in an impoverished developing
country, were malnourished, and worked as a laborer in a field, having a genius-
level IQ would be irrelevant, as there would be no chance to demonstrate your
hereditary gifts.
The most fascinating example that a high-quality environment can bring our
human genetic potential relates specifically to IQ. As you will see in Chapter 7,
over the past century, scores on the standard intelligence test have been rising.
The same correct items a twenty-first-century teenager needed to be ranked as
“average” in intelligence would have boosted that same child into the top third
of the population in l950. A century ago, having the identical number of items
correct would get that child labeled as gifted, in the top 2 percent of his peers
(Pinker, 2011)!
What is causing this upward shift? Obviously, our “genetic,” intellectual capaci-
ties can’t have changed. It’s just that as human beings have become better nourished,
more educated, and more technologically adept, they perform better, especially on
the kinds of abstract-reasoning items on the IQ test (see Flynn, 2007; Pinker, 2011).
So even when individual differences in IQ are “genetic,” the environment makes a
dramatic difference in how people perform.
My discussion brings home the fact that to promote our human potential, we
need to provide the best possible environment. This is why a core goal of develop-
mental science is to foster the correct person–environment fit—making the wider
world bring out our human “best.”
Hot in Developmental Science: Environment-Sensitive Genes

and Epigenetically Programmed Pathways
It’s a no brainer that we need to provide a superior environment for every child (and adult).
But why does one child sail through traumas, such as poor parenting, while another breaks
down under the smallest stress? What causes that same “genetically fragile” boy or girl to
excel in a nurturing setting, such as high-quality day care, while his hardier peer seems
immune to the gifts this exceptional environment provides? These questions are driving
the hunt for genes that make people either more or less reactive to life events (see Belsky
and others, 2014). In the childhood chapters, I’ll be outlining findings suggesting some of
us are like cactuses, set up biologically to survive in less than nourishing environments;
others seem similar to fragile orchids, capable of providing gorgeous flowers but only with
special care. I’ll also showcase exciting findings suggesting our genetics may be altered by
early life events.
epigenetics Research field Epigenetics refers to the study of how our environment—often, but not exclusively,
exploring how early life intrauterine and early childhood experiences—alters the outer cover of our DNA,
events alter the outer cover
of our DNA, producing
causing effects that last throughout life. Can obesity, our tendency to develop
lifelong changes in health gender atypical behavior, or even our predisposition to die at a younger age be partly
and behavior. programmed by events in the womb? Stay tuned for fascinating epigenetic hints in
Erikson’s psychosocial tasks the chapters to come.
In Erik Erikson’s theory, each
challenge that we face as
we travel through the eight Emphasis on Age-Linked Theories
stages of the lifespan.
Now that I’ve highlighted this book’s basic nature combines with nurture message,
it’s time to explore the ideas of two psychologists who view human development as
occurring in defined stages. Let’s start with Erik Erikson.
Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Tasks

Erikson, born in Germany in 1904, was an analyst who, like Bowlby, adhered to
most tenets of psychoanalytic theory; but rather than emphasizing sexuality, Erikson
MEDICAL RF.COM/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Science Source
(1963) saw becoming an independent self and relating to others as our basic motiva-
tions (which explains why Erikson’s theory is called psychosocial to distinguish it from
Freud’s psychosexual stages). Erikson, however, is often labeled the father of lifespan
development because, unlike Freud, he believed development occurs throughout
life. He spelled out unique challenges we face at each life stage.
You can see these psychosocial tasks, or challenges, listed in Table 1.2. Each task,
Erikson argued, builds on another because we cannot master the issue of a later stage
unless we have accomplished the developmental milestones of the previous ones.
Notice how parents take incredible joy in satisfying their baby’s needs and you
will understand why Erikson believed that basic trust (the belief that the human
As you will learn in Chapter 8, world is caring) is our fundamental life task in the first year of life. Erikson’s second
due to an epigenetic process, psychosocial task, autonomy, makes sense of the infamous “no stage” and “terrible
this female fraternal twin fetus twos.” It tells us that we need to celebrate this not-so-pleasant toddler behavior as the
may be more insulated from
developing an eating disorder by
blossoming of a separate self! Think back to elementary school, and you may real-
being exposed to the circulating ize why Erikson used the term industry, or learning to work—at friendships, sports,
testosterone her brother’s body academics—as our challenge from age 6 to 12. Erikson’s adolescent task, the search
is giving off. for identity, has now become a household word.
How have developmentalists expanded on Erikson’s ideas about identity? Is Erik-
son right that nurturing the next generation, or generativity, is the key to a fulfilling
adult life? These are just two questions I’ll be addressing as we draw on Erikson’s
theory to help us think more deeply about the challenges we face at each life stage.
Erikson offered a general emotional roadmap for our developing lives. But—in
brilliance and transformational thinking—there is only one human development
rival to Freud: Jean Piaget.
Ted Streshinsky/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
Table 1.2: Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages

Life Stage Primary Task
Infancy (birth to 1 year) Basic trust versus mistrust
Toddlerhood (1 to 2 years) Autonomy versus shame and doubt
Early childhood (3 to 6 years) Initiative versus guilt
Middle childhood (6 years to puberty) Industry versus inferiority
Adolescence (teens into twenties) Identity versus role confusion
With his powerful writings on
identity and, especially, his con- Young adulthood (twenties to early forties) Intimacy versus isolation
cept of age-related psychosocial
Middle adulthood (forties to sixties) Generativity versus stagnation
tasks, Erik Erikson (shown here
with his wife, Joan) has become Late adulthood (late sixties and beyond) Integrity versus despair
a father of our field.
Piaget’s Cognitive Developmental Theory

A 3-year-old tells you “Mr. Sun goes to bed because it’s time for me to go to
sleep.” A toddler is obsessed with flushing different-sized wads of paper down
the toilet and can’t resist touching everything she sees. Do you ever wish
you could get into the heads of young children and understand how they
view the world? If so, you share the passion of our foremost genius in child
development: Piaget.
Piaget, born in 1894 in Switzerland, was a child prodigy himself. As
the teenaged author of several dozen articles on mollusks, he was already
becoming well known in that field (Flavell, 1963; Wadsworth, 1996). Piaget’s
interests shifted to studying children when he worked in the laboratory of a
psychologist named Binet, who was devising the original intelligence test.
Rather than ranking children according to how much they knew, Piaget
became fascinated by children’s incorrect responses. He spent the next 60
years meticulously devising tasks to map the minds of these mysterious crea-
Bill Anderson/Science Source

tures in our midst.
Piaget believed—in his cognitive developmental theory—that from
birth through adolescence, children progress through qualitatively different
stages of cognitive growth (see Table 1.3). The term qualitative means that
rather than simply knowing less or more (on the kind of scale we can rank
from 1 to 10), infants, preschoolers, elementary-school-age children, and Jean Piaget, in his masterful
teenagers think about the world in completely different ways. However, Piaget also studies spanning much of the
believed that at every life stage human beings share a hunger to learn and mentally twentieth century, transformed
the way we think about chil-
grow. Mental growth occurs through assimilation: We fit the world to our capacities dren’s thinking.
or existing cognitive structures (which Piaget calls schemas). And then accommoda-
tion occurs. We change our thinking to fit the world (Piaget, 1971).
Let’s illustrate by reflecting on your own thinking while you were reading the
previous section. Before reading this chapter, you probably had certain ideas about
heredity and environment. In Piaget’s terminology, let’s call them your “heredity/
environment schemas.” Perhaps you felt that if a trait is highly genetic, changing
the environment doesn’t matter; or you may have believed that genetics and envi-
ronment were totally separate. While fitting (assimilating) your reading into these
existing ideas, you entered a state of disequilibrium—“Hey, this contradicts what
I’ve always believed”—and were forced to accommodate. The result was that your
nature/nurture schemas became more complex and you developed a more advanced
Table 1.3: Piaget’s Stages of Development

Age Name of Stage Description
0–2 Sensorimotor The baby manipulates objects to pin down the basics of physical
reality. This stage, ending with the development of language, will be Piaget’s cognitive
described in Chapter 3. developmental theory Jean
Piaget’s principle that from
2–7 Preoperations Children’s perceptions are captured by their immediate appearances. infancy to adolescence,
“What they see is what is real.” They believe, among other things, children progress through
that inanimate objects are really alive and that if the appearance four qualitatively different
of a quantity of liquid changes (for instance, if it is poured from a stages of intellectual growth.
short, wide glass into a tall, thin one), the amount actually becomes
assimilation In Jean
different. You will learn about all of these perceptions in Chapter 5.
Piaget’s theory, the first
8–12 Concrete Children have a realistic understanding of the world. Their thinking step promoting mental
operations is really on the same wavelength as adults’. While they can reason growth, involving fitting
conceptually about concrete objects, however, they cannot think environmental input to our
abstractly in a scientific way. existing mental capacities.
12+ Formal operations Reasoning is at its pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible, fully accommodation In Piaget’s
adult. The person’s full cognitive human potential has been reached. theory, enlarging our mental
We will explore this stage in Chapter 9. capacities to fit input from
the wider world.
Table 1.4: Summary of the Major Current Theories in Lifespan Development

Nature vs. Nurture Representative Questions
Emphasis and
Ages of Interest
Behaviorism Nurture (all ages) What reinforcers are shaping this behavior? Who
is this person modeling? How can I stimulate
self-efficacy?
Psychoanalytic theory Nurture What unconscious motives, stemming from early
childhood, are motivating this person?
Attachment theory Nature and nurture How does the attachment response unfold in
(infancy but also all infancy? What conditions evoke this biologically
ages) programmed response at every life stage?
Evolutionary theory Nature (all ages) How might this behavior be built into the human
genetic code?
Behavioral genetics Nature (all ages) To what degree are the differences I see in
people due to genetics?
Erikson’s theory (all ages) Is this baby experiencing basic trust? Where
is this teenager in terms of identity? Has this
middle-aged person reached generativity?
Piaget’s theory Children How does this child understand the world? What
is his thinking like?
(intelligent) way of perceiving the world! Like a newborn who assimilates every
new object to her small sucking schema, or a neuroscientist who incorporates each
new finding into her huge knowledge-base, while assimilating each object or fact to
what we already know, we must accommodate, and so—inch by inch—cognitively
advance.
Piaget was a great advocate of hands-on experiences. He felt that we learn by act-
ing in the world. Rather than using an adult-centered framework, he had the revolu-
tionary idea that we need to understand how children experience life from their point
of view. As we explore the science of lifespan development, I hope you will adopt this
hands-on, person-centered perspective to understand the human experience from the
perspective of 1-year-olds to people aged 101.
By now, you may be overwhelmed by theories and terms. But take heart. You have
the basic concepts you need for understanding this semester well in hand! Now, let’s
conclude by exploring a worldview that says, “Let’s embrace all of these influences
on development and explore how they interact.” (For a summary of the theories, see
Table 1.4.)
The Developmental Systems Perspective

An influential child psychologist named Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) was among
the earliest lifespan theorists to highlight the principle that real-world behavior has
many different causes. Bronfenbrenner, as you can see in Figure 1.3, viewed each
of us at the center of an expanding circle of environmental influences. At the inner
circle, development is shaped by the relationships between the child and people he
relates to in his immediate setting, such as family, church, peers, and school. The
next wider circles, that indirectly feed back to affect the child, lie in overarching
influences such as his community, the media environment, the health-care com-
munity, and the school system itself. At the broadest levels, as you saw earlier in the
chapter, our culture, economic trends, and cohort crucially shape behavior, too.
Bronfenbrenner’s plea to examine the total ecology, or life situation, of the child
School System
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ic
Pat
tern
y
s
Family Classroom
unit
Comm
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al Institutions
edia
ss M
Religious Peer
Class Group
Ma
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es
alu
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alV
i ti
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Cu
figure 1.3: Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model: This set of imbedded circles spells out the
multiple forces that Bronfenbrenner believed shape development. First and foremost, there are the
places that form the core of the child’s daily life: family, church, peers, classroom (orange). What is
the child’s family, school, and religious life like? Who are his friends? How does the child interact
with his siblings, his parents, his teacher, and his peers? Although its influence is more indirect,
development also depends on the broader milieu—the media, the school system, the community
where the boy or girl lives (see blue circle). At the most macro—or broadest—level, we also need
to consider that child’s culture, the prevailing economic and social conditions of his society (green
circle), and, his cohort or the time in history in which he lives. Bottom line: Human behavior
depends on multiple complex forces!
forms the heart of a contemporary perspective called the developmental systems

approach (Ford & Lerner, 1992; Lerner, 1998; Lerner, Dowling, & Roth, 2003).
Specifically:
• Developmental systems theorists stress the need to use many different
approaches. There are many valid ways of looking at behavior. Our actions
do have many causes. To fully understand development, we need to draw on
the principles of behaviorism, attachment theory, evolutionary psychology, and
Piaget. At the widest societal level, to explain our actions, we need to look out-
ward to our culture and cohort. At the molecular level, we need to look inward
to our genes. We have to embrace the input of everyone, from nurses to neu- developmental systems
roscientists from anthropologists to molecular biologists, to make sense of each perspective An all-
encompassing outlook on
individual life. development that stresses
the need to embrace a
• Developmental systems theorists emphasize the need to look at how processes variety of theories, and the
interact. Bronfenbrenner pointed out that our genetic tendencies influence the idea that all systems and
cultures we construct; the cultures we live in affect the expression of our genes. processes interrelate.
In the same way that our body systems and processes are in constant communi-
cation, continual back-and-forth influences are what human development is all
about (see Diamond, 2009).
For example, let’s consider that basic marker: poverty. Growing up in poverty
might affect your attachment relationships. You are less likely to get attention from
your parents because they are under stress. You might not get adequate nutrition.
Your neighborhood could be a frightening place. Each stress might overload your
body, activating negative genetic tendencies and setting you up physiologically for
emotional problems down the road.
But some children, because of their genetics, their cultural background, or their
cohort, might be insulated from the negative effects of growing up poor. Others might
thrive. In a classic study tracing the lives of children growing up during the Great
Depression, researchers discovered that if this event occurred at the right time in the
life cycle (adolescence, when the young person could take action to help support the
family), it produced an enduring sense of self-efficacy (Elder & Caspi, 1988). During
adulthood, as you will learn, we even need life traumas to become fully mature! In
sum, development occurs in surprising directions for good and for bad. Diversity of
change processes and individual differences are the spice of human life.
1. Ricardo, a third grader, is having trouble sitting still and paying attention in class, so
Ricardo’s parents consult developmentalists about their son’s problem. Pick which
comments might be made by: (1) a traditional behaviorist; (2) a cognitive behaviorist;
(3) a Freudian theorist; (4) an evolutionary psychologist; (5) a behavioral geneticist;
(6) an Eriksonian; (7) an advocate of developmental systems theory.
a. Ricardo has low academic self-efficacy. Let’s improve his sense of competence at
school.
b. Ricardo, like other boys, is biologically programmed to run around. If the class had
regular gym time, Ricardo’s ability to focus in class would improve.
c. Ricardo is being reinforced for this behavior by getting attention from the teacher
and his classmates. Let’s reward appropriate classroom behavior.
d. Did you or your husband have trouble focusing in school? Perhaps your son’s dif-
ficulties are hereditary.
e. Ricardo’s behavior may have many causes, from genetics, to the reinforcers at
school, to growing up in our twenty-first-century Internet age. Let’s use a variety of
different approaches to help him.
f. Ricardo is having trouble mastering the developmental task of industry. How can
we promote the ability to work that is so important at this age?
g. By refusing to pay attention in class, Ricardo may be unconsciously acting out his
anger at the birth of his baby sister Heloise.
2. In the above question, which suggestion involves providing the right person–environment
fit?
3. Dr. Kaplan, a scientist, wants to determine how being born premature might alter our
genetic propensity to develop chronic disease.The field Dr. Kaplan is working in is
called (pick one): outergenetics/epigenetics.
4. Billy, a 1-year-old, mouths everything—pencils, his favorite toy, DVDs—changing his
mouthing to fit the object that he is “sampling.” According to Piaget, the act of mouth-
ing everything refers to ________, while changing the mouthing behavior to fit the
different objects refers to ________.
5. Samantha, a behaviorist, is arguing for her worldview, while Sally is pointing up
behaviorism’s flaws. First, take Samantha’s position, arguing for the virtues of behavior-
ism, and then discuss some limitations of the theory.
Research Methods: The Tools correlational study A

research strategy that
involves relating two or more
of the Trade variables.
representative sample A
Theories give us lenses for interpreting behavior. Research allows us to find the sci- group that reflects the
entific truth. I already touched on the research technique designed to determine the characteristics of the overall
genetic contributions to behavior. Now let’s sketch out the general research strategies population.
that developmental scientists use. naturalistic observation A
measurement strategy that
involves directly watching
Two Standard Research Strategies: and coding behaviors.
Correlations and Experiments self-report strategy A
What impact does poverty have on relationships, personality, or physical health? measurement having people
report on their feelings
What forces cause children to model certain people? Does a particular intervention and activities through
to help improve self-efficacy really work? To answer any question about the impact questionnaires.
one condition or entity (called a variable) has on another, developmentalists use two
basic research designs: correlational studies and true experiments.
In a correlational study, researchers chart the relationships between the dimen-
sions they are interested in exploring as they naturally occur. Let’s say you want to test
the hypothesis that parents who behave more lovingly have first graders with superior
social skills. Your game plan is simple: Select a group of children by going to a class.
Relate their interpersonal skills to the nurturing that parents provide.
Immediately, you will be faced with decisions related to choosing your par-
ticipants. Are you going to explore the practices of mothers and fathers or mothers
alone, confine yourself to a middle-class group, consider two- versus one-parent
families, look at a mix of ethnicities or not? You would need to get permission from
the school system. You would need to get the parents to volunteer. Are you choosing
a representative sample—a group that reflects the characteristics of the population
about whom you want to generalize?
Then you would face your most important challenge—accurately measuring
your variables. Just as a broken thermometer can’t tell us if we have a fever, if we
don’t have adequate indices of the concepts we are measuring, we can’t conclude
anything at all.
With regard to the parent dimension, one possibility might be to visit parents and
children and observe how they relate. This technique, called naturalistic observation,
is appealing because you are seeing the behavior as it occurs in “nature,” or real life.
However, this approach presents a huge practical challenge: the need to travel to each
home to observe each family on many occasions. Plus, when we watch parent–child
interactions, or any socially desirable activity, people try to act their best. Wouldn’t you
make an effort to act especially loving if a psychologist arrived at your house?
The most cost-effective strategy would be to give the parents a questionnaire with
items such as: “Do you make an effort to kiss, hug, and praise your daughter? Is it
important to avoid yelling at your child?” This self-report strategy, in which people
evaluate their behavior anonymously, is the main approach researchers use with
adults. Still, it has its own biases. Do you think that people can report accurately on
their activities? Is there a natural human tendency to magnify our positive behaviors
and minimize our negative ones?
Now, turning to the child side of your question, one reasonable way to assess
social skills would be to have teachers evaluate each student via a questionnaire:
“Does this child make friends easily?”; “Does he relate to his peers in a mature way?”
Or, we could ask children to rank their classmates by showing photos: “Does Calista
or Cory get a smiley face?”; “Pick your three best friends.” Evaluations from expert
observers, such as teachers, and even peers, are often used to assess concepts such as
popularity and personality during the childhood years.
Table 1.5: Common Strategies Developmentalists Use to Measure Specific Variables

(Behaviors or Concepts of Interest)
Type Strategy Commonly Used Ages Pluses and Problems
Naturalistic Observes behavior directly; codes Typically during childhood, but also Pluses: Offers a direct, unfiltered record
observation actions, often by rating the behavior used with impaired adults of behavior
as either present or absent (either Problems: Very time intensive; people
in real life or the lab) behave differently when watched
Self-reports Questionnaires in which people Adults and older children Pluses: Easy to administer; quickly
report on their feelings, interests, provides data
attitudes, and thoughts Problems: Subject to bias if the person
is reporting on undesirable activities
and behaviors
Observer reports Knowledgeable person such as a Typically during childhood; also Pluses: Offers a structured look at the
parent, teacher, or trained observer used during adulthood if the person person’s behavior
completes scales evaluating the is mentally or physically impaired Problems: Observers—in particular
person. Sometimes peers rank the teachers and parents—have their own
children in their class biases
Table 1.5 spells out the uses, and the pluses and minuses, of these frequently
used ways of measuring concepts: naturalistic observation, self-reports, and observer
evaluations. Now, returning to our study, suppose you found a relationship, that is,
a correlation, between having nurturing parents and children’s interpersonal skills.
Could you infer that a loving home environment causes children to socially flower?
The answer is no!
• With correlations, we may be mixing up the result with the cause. Given that
parent–child relationships are bidirectional, does loving parenting really cause
superior social skills, or do socially skilled children provoke parents to act in loving
ways? (“My son is such an endearing person. You want to just love him up.”) This
evocative chicken-or-egg argument applies to far more than child–parent interac-
tions. Does exercising promote health in later life, or are some older adults likely
to become physically active because they are already in good health?
• With correlations, there may be another variable that explains the results. In
view of our discussion of heritability, with regard to the social skills study, the
immediate third force that comes to mind is genetics. Wouldn’t parents who are
genetically blessed with superior social skills provide a more caring home envi-
ronment and genetically pass down these same positive personality traits to their
sons and daughters? Wouldn’t older adults who go to the gym or ski regularly
also be likely to watch their diet and generally take better care of their health?
Given that these other activities should naturally be associated with keeping
physically fit, can we conclude that exercise alone accounts for the association
we find?
To rule out these confounding forces, the solution is to conduct a true
experiment (see Figure 1.4). Researchers isolate their variable of interest by manipu-
lating that condition (called the independent variable), and then randomly assign
people to either receive that treatment or another, control intervention. If we ran-
true experiment The only
domly assign people to different groups (say, like tossing a coin), there can’t be any
research strategy that can preexisting differences between our participants that would bias our results. If the
determine that something group does differ in the way we predict, we have to say that our intervention caused
causes something else; the particular result.
involves randomly assigning
people to different
The problem is that we could never assign children to different kinds of par-
treatments and then looking ents! If, as Figure 1.4 suggests, developmentalists trained one group of mothers to
at the outcome. relate in more caring ways and withheld this “intervention” from another group, the
Participants
Group of first graders
Random assignment to different conditions
Experimental group Control group

Train parents in providing No special treatment
a more nurturing home
environment
Limit yelling; increase
praise; encourage loving
physical contact
SolStock/Getty Images
Compare groups on outcome measure
Teacher evaluation of each child’s social skills;
Peer ratings of each child’s likeability
figure 1.4: How an experiment looks: By randomly assigning children to different groups and
then giving an intervention (this is called the independent variable), we know that our treatment
(nurturing parents) caused better social skills (this outcome is called the dependent variable).
researchers would run into ethical problems. Would it be fair to deprive the con-
trol group of that treatment? In the name of science, can we take the risk of doing
people harm? Experiments are ideal for determining what
causes behavior. But to tackle the most compelling questions
about human development, we have to conduct correlational
research—and control as best we can for competing explana-
tions that might bias our results.
Benevolence beliefs
Designs for Studying Development:

Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Studies
Experiments and correlational studies are standard, all-
purpose research strategies. In studying development, how-
ever, we have a special interest: How do people change with
age? To answer this question, scientists also use two research
designs—cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. 18–24 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65–74 75+
Age (in years)
Cross-Sectional Studies: Getting

a One-Shot Snapshot of Groups figure 1.5: “Benevolence
Because cross-sectional research is relatively easy to carry out, developmentalists typi- beliefs,” or faith in humanity
cally use this strategy to explore changes over long periods of life (Hertzog, 1996). In across different age groups
a cross-sectional study, researchers compare different age groups at the same time on in a study of U.S. adults:
Notice that, while young people
the trait or characteristic they are interested in, be it political attitudes, personality, or feel worst about human nature,
physical health. Consider a study that (among other questions) explored this interest- the elderly have the most posi-
ing issue: “How do our feelings about human nature change with age?” tive feelings about their fellow
human beings.
Researchers gave 2,138 U.S. adults a questionnaire measuring their beliefs in
Data from: Poulin & Silver, 2008.
a benevolent world (Poulin & Silver, 2008). Presented with items such as “Human
nature is basically good,” people ranging in age from 18 to 101 ranked each statement
on a scale from “agree strongly” to “disagree.” As you scan the findings in Figure 1.5, cross-sectional study A
developmental research
notice that the youngest age group has the most negative perceptions about humanity. strategy that involves testing
The elderly feel most optimistic about people and the world. If you are in your early different age groups at the
twenties, does this mean you can expect to grow less cynical as you age? same time.
Not necessarily. Perhaps your cohort has special reasons to feel sus-
picious about human motivations. After all, today the media delights in
exposing the cheating and lying of authority figures, from senators to school
principals. Previous cohorts of young people were never exposed to this
drumbeat of messages highlighting human nature at its worst. In fact, if we
conducted this same poll during the 1950s (in the Eisenhower era of Leave
It to Beaver and Father Knows Best) we might find the opposite pattern:
Positive feelings about human nature were highest among the young and
declined with age!
Walter Sanders/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
The bottom line is that cross-sectional studies give us a current snapshot

of differences among cohorts (or age groups); but they don’t necessarily tell
us about real changes that occur as we grow old.
Cross-sectional studies have a more basic problem. Because they mea-
sure only group differences, they can’t reveal anything about the individual
differences that give spice to life. If you are a real pessimist, will your world-
view stay the same as you age? What influences might make people feel
better about humanity during adulthood, and what experiences might make
people feel worse? To answer these questions about how individuals develop,
Don’t you think that these
innocent 1950s-era twenty-
as well as to look at what makes for specific changes, it’s best to be on the scene to
somethings would have a more measure what is going on. This means doing longitudinal research.
optimistic view of human nature
than young people today? So Longitudinal Studies: The Gold-Standard Developmental
could we really conclude from a
cross-sectional study comparing
Science Research Design
these now elderly people with In longitudinal studies, researchers typically select a group of a particular age and
the young that “faith in human- periodically test those people over years (the relevant word here is long). Consider
ity” grows with age? the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study: An international
team of researchers descended on Dunedin, a city in New Zealand, to follow more
than 1,000 children born between April 1972 and March 1973, examining them
at two-year intervals during childhood and roughly every three years after that. At
each evaluation, they examined participants’ personalities and looked at parenting
practices and life events. The scientists are now tracking these babies as they move
into middle age (Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research
Unit, 2014).
The outcome has been an incredible array of findings related to personality and
psychological problems. Can we predict adult emotional difficulties as early as age
3? Do chronic anxiety and depression produce cellular damage as we travel through
adolescence and early adult life (Shalev and others, 2014)? As you will learn in
Chapter 12, scientists have discovered that a personality trait called conscientiousness,
measured during emerging adulthood, powerfully predicts following good health
habits—from not smoking, to exercising, and to watching one’s diet as participants
travel into middle age (Israel and others, 2014).
Moreover, because they are using cutting-edge DNA technology, this landmark
research was the first to identify candidate genes that may make us more or less
responsive to wider world stress. Plus, like other longitudinal research, the Dunedin
Study offers a crystal ball into those questions at the heart of our field: How will I
change as I get older? When should we worry about children, and when should we
not be concerned?
Longitudinal studies are exciting, but they have their own problems. They involve
a tremendous amount of time, effort, and expense. Imagine the resources involved
longitudinal study A in planning this particular study. Think of the hassles involved in searching out
developmental research
strategy that involves testing the participants and getting them to return again and again to take the tests. The
an age group repeatedly researchers must fly the overseas Dunedin volunteers back for each evaluation. They
over many years. need to reimburse people for their time and lost wages. These logistical and financial
problems become more serious the longer a study continues. For this reason, we have quantitative research
hundreds of studies covering infancy, childhood, or defined segments of adult life, Standard developmental
science data-collection
such as the old-old years. Only a precious handful trace development from childhood strategy that involves
to later life. testing groups of people and
The difficulty with getting people to return for testing leads to an important bias using numerical scales and
in itself. People who stay in longitudinal studies, particularly during adulthood, tend statistics.
to be highly motivated. Think of which classmates are going to attend your high qualitative research
school reunion. Aren’t they apt to be the people who are successful, versus those who Occasional developmental
science data-collection
have made a mess of their lives? Participants in longitudinal research are typically strategy that involves
elite, better than average groups. While they offer us unparalleled information, these interviewing people to
gold-standard studies have their biases, too. obtain information that
cannot be quantified on a
numerical scale.
Critiquing the Research
So to summarize, when you are scanning the findings in our field, keep these con-
cerns in mind:
• Consider the study’s participants. How were they selected? Ask yourself, “Can I
generalize from this particular group to the wider world?”
• Examine the study’s measures. Are they accurate? What biases might they have?
• In looking at the many correlational studies in this book, be attuned to the fact that
their findings might be due to other forces. What competing interpretations can
you come up with to explain this researcher’s results?
• With cross-sectional findings, beware of making assumptions that this is the way
people really change with age.
• Look for longitudinal studies and welcome their insights. However, understand
that—especially during adult life—these investigations are probably tracing the
lives of the best and brightest people rather than the average adult.
Emerging Research Trends

Developmental scientists are attuned to these issues. In conducting correlational stud-
ies, they typically try to control for other influences that might explain their findings.
They are apt to use several measures, such as teacher ratings, formal questionnaires,
and peer input, as well as direct observations, to make sure they are measuring their
concepts accurately. As you will see throughout this book, current developmental
research has an international flavor, with researchers from nations as different as Iran
and Ireland or China and Cameroon offering country-by-country insights on core
topics in our field. Still, in addition to becoming more global, our research is getting
up close and personal, too.
Quantitative research techniques—the strategies I have been describing, using
groups of people and statistical tests—are the main approaches that researchers use to
study human behavior. In order to make general predictions about people, we need
to examine the behavior of different individuals. We need to pin down our concepts
by using scales or ratings with numerical values that can be tallied and compared.
Developmentalists who conduct qualitative research are not interested in making
numerical comparisons. They want to understand the unique lives of people by con-
ducting in-depth interviews. In this book, I will be focusing mainly on quantitative
research because that is how we find out the scientific “truth.” But I also will highlight
the increasing number of qualitative interview studies to put a human face on our
developing life.
Some Concluding Introductory Thoughts

This discussion brings me back to the letter on page 2 and my promise to let you in
on my other agendas in writing this text. Because I want to teach you to critically
evaluate research, in the following pages I’ll be analyzing individual studies and—in
the How Do We Know features that appear in some chapters—focusing on research-
related issues in more depth. To bring home the personal experience of the lifespan,
I’ve filled the chapters with quotations, and—in the Experiencing the Lifespan
boxes—occasionally interviewed people myself. To bring home the principle that
our lifespan is a work in progress, I’ll be starting many chapters by setting the histori-
cal and cultural context. To emphasize the power of research to improve lives, I’ll
conclude most sections by spelling out interventions that improve the quality of life.
This book is designed to be read like a story with each chapter building on con-
cepts and terms mentioned in the previous ones. It’s planned to emphasize how our
insights about earlier life stages relate to older ages. I will be discussing three major
aspects of development—physical development, cognitive development, and person-
ality and social relationships (socioemotional development)—separately. However, I’ll
be continually stressing how these aspects of development connect. After all, we are
not just bodies, minds, and personalities, but whole human beings!
While I want you to share my excitement in the research, please don’t read this
book as “the final word.” Science—like the lifespan—is always evolving. Moreover,
with any research finding, take the phrase “it’s all statistical” to heart. Yes, develop-
mentalists are passionate to make general predictions about life; but, because human
beings are incredibly complex, at bottom, each person’s lifespan journey is a beautiful
surprise.
Now, beginning with prenatal development and infancy (Chapters 2, 3, and 4);
then moving on to childhood (Chapters 5, 6, and 7); adolescence (Chapters 8 and 9);
early and middle adulthood (Chapters 10, 11, and 12); later life (Chapters 13 and
14); and, finally, that last milestone, death (Chapter 15), welcome to the lifespan and
to the rest of this book!
1. Four developmentalists are studying whether eating excessive sugar has detrimental
effects on the body and mind: Alicia relates the amount of sugar elementary schoolers
eat at breakfast to aggression, by going to a playground and counting the frequency
of hitting on selected days. Betty randomly assigns students in a high school class
into two groups, tells one group to eat a healthy diet and another to eat candy bars,
and compares their grades on tests. Calista measures the sugar consumption of teens
and then retests them periodically into their fifties. David constructs a questionnaire
exploring sugar consumption and gives it to adults of different ages. For each question
below, link the appropriate person’s name to the correct study.
a. Who is conducting a cross-sectional study?
b. Who is using naturalistic observation?
c. Who is conducting a correlational study?
d. Who can prove that eating a lot of sugar causes problems—but is doing an unethi-
cal study?
e. Who is going to have a huge problem with dropouts?
f. Who can tell you that if you are a sugar junkie in your twenties, you might still be
eating an incredible amount of sugar (compared to everyone else) as you age?
2. Plan a longitudinal study to test a developmental science question. Describe how you
would select your participants, how your study would proceed, what measures you
would use, and what problems and biases your study would have.
SUMMARY
Who We Are and What We Study all-important. Traditional behaviorists, in particular B. F. Skinner,
believe operant conditioning and reinforcement determine all
Lifespan development is a mega-discipline encompassing child voluntary behaviors. According to cognitive behaviorism/social
development, gerontology, and adult development. Develop- learning theory, modeling and self-efficacy—our internal sense
mental scientists, or developmentalists, chart universal changes that we can competently perform given tasks—predict how we act.
from birth to old age, explore individual differences in devel-
opment, study the impact of normative and non-normative life Sigmund Freud, in his psychoanalytic theory, believed our adult
transitions, and explore every other topic relevant to our unfold- personality is shaped by the way our parents treated us during
ing lives. the first five years of life. Freud also felt human beings are domi-
nated by unconscious drives, mental health depends on self-
Several major contexts of development shape our lives. The first awareness, and sexuality (different erogenous zones) motivates
is our cohort, or the time in history in which we live. The huge behavior during the early childhood years. John Bowlby’s attach-
baby boom cohort, born in the years following World War II, has ment theory draws on the psychoanalytic principle that parenting
changed society as it passes through the lifespan. Cohorts of during early life (or our attachment relationships) determines
babies born before the twentieth century faced a shorter, harsher later mental health, but he believes that the attachment response
childhood, and many did not survive. As life got easier and edu- is genetically built in to our species to promote survival. Evo-
cation got longer, we first extended the growing-up phase of life lutionary psychologists adopt this nature perspective, seeing
to include adolescence and, in recent years, with a new life stage actions and traits as programmed into our DNA. Behavioral
called emerging adulthood, have put off the starting date of full genetic research—in particular, twin studies, adoption studies,
adulthood to our late twenties. and occasionally twin/adoption studies—convinced develop-
The early-twentieth-century life expectancy revolution, with its mental scientists of the power of nature, revealing genetic con-
dramatic advances in curing infectious disease and shift to deaths tributions to almost any way we differ from each other as human
from chronic illnesses, allowed us to survive to later life. Average beings.
life expectancy is now within striking distance of the maximum Developmental scientists today, are exploring how nature and
lifespan in affluent nations, and we distinguish between the nurture combine. Due to evocative and active forces, we shape
healthy young-old (people in their sixties and seventies) and our environments to go along with our genetic tendencies, and
the frail old-old (people in and over their eighties). The second human relationships are bidirectional—our temperamental
major twentieth-century change occurred in the 1960s with the qualities and actions influence the others, just as their actions
lifestyle revolution, which has given us freedom to engineer our influence us. A basic developmental science challenge is to fos-
own adult path. Today, the Internet and social networking sites ter an appropriate person–environment fit. We need to match
have transformed relationships, while the lingering effects of the our genetically based talents and abilities to the right environ-
Great Recession of 2008 and widening income inequalities are ment. New research suggests that people differ genetically in
still clouding the economic landscape of twenty-first century life. how responsive they are to environmental events, and that early
Socioeconomic status (SES) greatly affects our lifespan—with life environments may alter our genome, producing long-lasting
poor people in each nation facing a harsher, more stressful, and epigenetic effects.
shorter life. The gaps between developed world countries and Erik Erikson spelled out eight psychosocial tasks that we
developing world countries are even more dramatic, with the must master as we travel from birth to old age. According to
least-developed countries lagging well behind in terms of health, Jean Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory, children prog-
wealth, and technology. ress through four qualitatively different stages of intellectual
Our cultural and ethnic background also determines how we development, and all learning occurs through assimilation and
develop. Scientists distinguish between collectivist cultures (typ- accommodation.
ically non-Western), which stress social harmony and extended- Most developmental scientists today adopt the developmental
family relationships, and individualistic cultures (often Western), systems perspective. They welcome input from every theory and
which value independence and personal achievement. We need realize that many interacting influences shape who we are. They
to be aware, however, that residents living in all nations have a understand that diversity among people and change processes is
mix of individualistic and collectivist worldviews; the practice of the essence of development.
lumping people into broad ethnic labels masks diversity within
each group. Finally, our gender influences our travels through
life. Women outlive men by at least two years in the developed
Research Methods: The Tools
world. of the Trade
The two main research strategies scientists use are correlational
Theories: Lenses for Looking studies, which relate naturally occurring variations among peo-
ple, and true experiments, in which researchers manipulate a
at the Lifespan variable (or give a specific treatment) and randomly assign peo-
Theories offer explanations about what causes people to act the ple to receive that intervention or not. With correlational studies,
way they do. The main theories in developmental science offer- there are always competing possibilities for the relationships we
ing general explanations of behavior vary in their position on the find. While experiments do allow us to prove causes, they are
nature versus nurture question. Behaviorists believe nurture is often unethical and impractical. In conducting research, it’s best
to strive for a representative sample, and it’s essential to have Longitudinal studies can answer vital questions about how peo-
accurate measures. Naturalistic observation, self-reports, and ple develop. However, they involve following people over years
observer evaluations are three common measurement strategies and may sample atypical, elite groups.
developmental scientists use.
Quantitative research—studies involving groups of partici-
The two major designs for studying development are longitudi- pants, and using statistical tests—is still the standard way we
nal and cross-sectional research. Cross-sectional studies, which learn the scientific truth. But developmentalists are now occa-
involve testing people of different age groups at the same time, sionally conducting qualitative research—interviewing people
are very easy to carry out. However, they may confuse differences in depth. Our research is generally getting more global and
between age groups with true changes that occur as people age, sophisticated, too.
and they can’t tell us about individual differences in development.
KEY TERMS
developmentalists old-old, p. 7 modeling, p. 13 Piaget’s cognitive

(developmental social networking sites, p. 9 self-efficacy, p. 14 developmental
scientists), p. 3 theory, p. 21
Great Recession of 2008, p. 9 attachment theory, p. 15
lifespan development, p. 4 assimilation, p. 21
income inequality, p. 9 evolutionary
child development, p. 4 psychology, p. 16 accommodation, p. 21
socioeconomic status (SES),
gerontology, p. 4 p. 9 behavioral genetics, developmental systems
adult development, p. 4 p. 16 approach, p. 21
developed world, p. 9
normative transitions, p. 4 twin study, p. 16 correlational study,
developing world, p. 9
p. 25
non-normative transitions, collectivist cultures, p. 10 adoption study, p. 17
p. 4 representative sample,
individualistic cultures, p. 10 twin/adoption study,
p. 25
contexts of development, p. 5 p. 17
theory, p. 12 naturalistic
cohort, p. 5 evocative forces, p. 18
nature, p. 12 observation, p. 25
baby boom cohort, p. 5 bidirectionality, p. 18
nurture, p. 12 self-report strategy, p. 25
emerging adulthood, p. 6 active forces, p. 18
traditional behaviorism, p. 12 true experiment, p. 26
average life expectancy, p. 6 person–environment
operant conditioning, p. 12 cross-sectional study, p. 27
twentieth-century life fit, p. 19
reinforcement, p. 13 longitudinal study, p. 28
expectancy revolution, p. 7 epigenetics, p. 20
cognitive behaviorism (social quantitative research, p. 29
maximum lifespan, p. 7 Erikson’s psychosocial
learning theory), p. 13 qualitative research, p. 29
young-old, p. 7 tasks, p. 20
Amos Morgan/Photodisc/Getty Images
ANSWERS TO Tying It All Together QUIZZES
Setting the Context efficacy feelings—can make dramatic improvements in the

1. C. There was no real high school in the eighteenth century. quality of life. Also, because behaviorism doesn’t blame the
person but locates problems in the learning environment,
2. Rosa is more likely to be physically disabled than Ramona. it has special appeal. Sally might argue that behaviorism’s
Rosa is old-old; Ramona is young-old. premise that nurture is all-important neglects the powerful
3. Carlos was more likely to have divorced, probably entered impact genetic forces have in determining who we are. So the
the workforce at an older age, and got married later than his theory is far too limited—offering a wrongheaded view about
grandfather. Carlos probably had more years of education development. We need the insights of attachment theory,
than his grandpa. evolutionary psychology, behavioral genetics, plus Piaget’s
4. Pablo has a collectivist worldview, while Peter’s worldview is and Erikson’s theories to fully understand what motivates
individualistic. human beings.
5. Your answers here will all vary. Research Methods: The Tools of the Trade
Theories: Lenses for Looking at the Lifespan 1. a. David; b. Alicia; c. Alicia; d. Betty; e. Calista; f. David
1. (1) c; (2) a; (3) g; (4) b; (5) d; (6) f ; (7) e 2. After coming up with your hypothesis, you would need to
adequately measure your concepts—choosing the appropri-
2. b. As Ricardo and other children need to run around, regular
ate tests. Your next step would be to solicit a large repre-
gym time would help to foster the best person–environment
sentative sample of a particular age group, give them these
fit.
measures, and retest these people at regular intervals over
3. Dr. Kaplan is working in a field called epigenetics. an extended period of time. In addition to the investment
4. assimilation; accommodation of time and money, it would be hard to keep track of your
5. Samantha might argue that behaviorism is an ideal approach sample and entice participants to undergo subsequent evalu-
to human development because it is simple, effective, and ations. Because the most motivated fraction of your original
easy to carry out. Behaviorism’s easily mastered, action- group will probably continue, your results will tend to reflect
oriented concepts—be consistent, reinforce positive how the “best people” behave and change over time (not the
behavior, draw on principles of modeling, and stimulate typical person).
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
The First Step: Fertilization
The Reproductive Systems
The Process of Fertilization
The Genetics of Fertilization
Prenatal Development
First Two Weeks
Week 3 to Week 8
Principles of Prenatal
Development
Week 9 to Birth
Pregnancy
Scanning the Trimesters
Pregnancy Is Not a Solo Act
What About Dads?
Threats to the Developing Baby

Threats from Outside
HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL
SCIENCE: What Is the Impact of
Prenatal Stress?
Threats from Within
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . About
the Gene for Huntington’s
Disease?
Interventions
Infertility and New Reproductive
Technologies
INTERVENTIONS: Exploring ART
Birth
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Threats at Birth
Birth Options, Past and Present
Petrol/Westend61/Getty Images
The Newborn
Tools of Discovery
Threats to Development Just
After Birth
EXPERIENCING THE LIFESPAN:
Marcia’s Story
A Few Final Thoughts on
Biological Determinism and
Biological Parents
Prenatal Development,
Pregnancy, and Birth
It’s hard to explain, Kim told me. You are two people now. When you wake up, shop, or
plan meals, this other person is always with you. You are always thinking, “What will
be good for the baby? What will be best for the two of us?”
Feeling the first kick—like little feathers brushing inside me—was amazing. At
first I felt like I could never explain this to my husband. But Jeff is wonderful. I think he
gets it. So I feel lucky. I can’t imagine what this experience would be like if I was going
through nine months completely alone.
Now that it’s the thirtieth week and my little girl can survive, there is another shift.
I’m focused on the moment she will arrive: What will it be like to hold my baby? Will
she be born healthy?
The downside is the fear that she will be born with some problem. Being an older
mom, it took me two years to get pregnant. Now that I’ve gone through those exhaust-
ing procedures and they worked (hooray!), I’d never risk having an invasive genetic
test. So, you eat right and never take a drink; but there are concerns. I worry about
the stress I’ve been undergoing, since my mom died right before I conceived. And, of
course, I worry about labor and delivery. Suppose I have some problem during birth,
or my baby has a serious genetic disease?
Another downside is that, until recently, I still felt tired. Some days, I could barely
make it to work. (Everything they told you about morning sickness only lasting through
the first trimester is wrong—at least for me!)
But nothing equals the thrill of having my little girl inside—fantasizing about her
future, watching her grow into a marvelous adult. I also adore what happens when I’m
at the mall. People light up and grin, wish me good luck, or give me advice. It’s like
the world is watching out for me, rooting for me, cherishing me.
35
Setting the Context

The joy and fear Kim is experiencing seem built into our humanity.
Throughout history, societies have seen pregnancy as an exciting and
frightening time of life. Cultures used to make heroic efforts to keep preg-
nant women calm and happy. They might use good luck charms to keep
evil spirits away—a pregnancy girdle in medieval England, a garlic-filled
sack in Guatemala (Aldred, 1997; Von Raffler-Engel, 1994), a cotton preg-
nancy sash in Japan (Ito & Sharts-Hopko, 2002).
In the past, societies celebrated pregnancy milestones, too. In Bulgaria,
the first kick was the signal for a woman to bake bread and take it to the
church. In Bali, at the seventh month, a prayer ceremony took place to
recognize that there was now, finally, a person inside whom the spirits
should protect from harm (Kitzinger, 2000; Von Raffler-Engel, 1994). This
chapter draws on the miracle of twenty-first century science to explore each
pregnancy concern as I chart the marvelous milestones of prenatal develop-
ment, pregnancy, and birth.
AP Photo/Matt York
The First Step: Fertilization

In this traditional southern Before embarking on this journey let’s focus on the starting point. What
Indian ceremony performed at
structures are involved in reproduction? What physiological process is involved in
the sixth or eighth month of
pregnancy, family members and conceiving a child? What happens at the genetic level when a sperm and an egg unite
friends gather around to protect to form a human being?
the woman and fetus from “the
evil eyes.” Rituals such as this
one are common around the
world and embody our fears
The Reproductive Systems
about this special time of life. The female and male reproductive systems are shown in Figure 2.1. Notice that the
female system has several basic parts:
uterus The pear-shaped
muscular organ in a woman’s • Center stage is the uterus, the pear-shaped muscular organ that carries the
abdomen that houses the baby to term. The uterus is lined with a velvety tissue, the endometrium, which
developing baby. thickens in preparation for pregnancy and, if that event does not occur, sheds
cervix The neck, or narrow during menstruation.
lower portion, of the uterus.
• The lower section of the uterus is the cervix. During pregnancy, this thick uterine
fallopian tube One of a pair of
slim, pipelike structures that neck must perform an amazing feat: Be strong enough to resist the pressure of the
connect the ovaries with the expanding uterus; be flexible enough to open fully at birth.
uterus.
• Branching from the upper ends of the uterus are the fallopian tubes. These slim,
ovary One of a pair of almond-
shaped organs that contain a
pipelike structures serve as conduits to the uterus.
woman’s ova, or eggs. • The feathery ends of the fallopian tubes surround the ovaries, the almond-shaped
ovum An egg cell containing organs where the ova, the mother’s egg cells, reside.
the genetic material
contributed by the mother to
the baby.
fertilization The union of The Process of Fertilization
sperm and egg. The pathway that results in fertilization—the union of sperm and egg—begins at
ovulation The moment during ovulation. This is the moment, typically around day 14 of a woman’s cycle, when
a woman’s monthly cycle a mature ovum erupts from the ovary wall. Hormones—chemical substances that
when an ovum is expelled
from the ovary.
target certain tissues and body processes and cause them to change—orchestrate
ovulation as well as the other events that program pregnancy.
hormones Chemical
substances released in the
At ovulation, a fallopian tube suctions the ovum in, and the tube begins
bloodstream that target and vigorous contractions that propel the ovum on its three-day journey toward the
change organs and tissues. uterus.
CHAPTER 2 Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth 37
Fallopian tube
Ovary Uterus
Cervix
Testis
Penis
figure 2.1: The female and male reproductive systems
Now the male’s contribution to forming a new life arrives. In contrast to females,
whose ova are all mainly formed at birth, the testes—male structures comparable testes Male organs that
to the ovaries—are continually manufacturing sperm. An adult male typically pro- manufacture sperm.
duces several hundred million sperm a day. During sexual intercourse these cells are
expelled into the vagina, where a small proportion enter the uterus and wend their
way up the fallopian tubes.
To promote pregnancy, it’s best to have intercourse around ovulation. The ovum
is receptive for about 24 hours while in the tube’s outer part. Sperm take a few hours
to journey from the cervix to the tube. However, sperm can live almost a week in the
uterus, which means that intercourse several days prior to ovulation may also result
in fertilization (Marieb, 2004).
Although the ovum emits chemical signals as to its location, the tiny tadpole-
shaped travelers cannot easily make the perilous journey upward into the tubes. So,
of the estimated several hundred million sperm expelled at ejaculation, only 200 to
300 reach their destination, find their target, and burrow in.
What happens now is a team assault. The sperm drill into the ovum, pen-
etrating toward the center. Suddenly, one reaches the innermost part. Then the
chemical composition of the ovum wall changes, shutting out the other sperm.
David M. Phillips/Science Source
David M. Phillips/Science Source
Claude Cortier/Science Source
The sperm surround the ovum. One sperm burrows in (notice the The nuclei of the two cells fuse. The watershed
large head). event called fertilization has occurred.
chromosome A threadlike The nuclei of the male and female cells move slowly together. When they meld into
strand of DNA located in one cell, the landmark event called fertilization has occurred. What is happening
the nucleus of every cell
that carries the genes,
genetically when the sperm and egg combine?
which transmit hereditary
information.
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) The Genetics of Fertilization
The material that makes
up genes, which bear our
The answer lies in looking at chromosomes, ropy structures composed of ladder-like
hereditary characteristics. strands of the genetic material DNA. Arrayed along each chromosome are segments
gene A segment of DNA
of DNA called genes, which serve as templates for creating the proteins responsible
that contains a chemical for carrying out the physical processes of life (see Figure 2.2). Every cell in our body
blueprint for manufacturing contains 46 chromosomes—except the sperm and ova, which have half this number,
a particular protein. or 23. When the nuclei of these two cells, called gametes, combine at fertilization,
their chromosomes align in pairs to again comprise 46. So nature has a marvelous
mechanism to ensure that each human life has an identical number of chromosomes
and every human being gets half of its genetic heritage from the
parent of each sex.
You can see the 46 paired male chromosomes in Figure 2.3.
Chromosome Notice that each chromosome pair (one from our mother and
one from our father) is a match, except for the sex chromosomes.
Cell The X is longer and heavier than the Y. Because each ovum car-
ries an X chromosome, our father’s contribution determines our
sex. If a lighter, faster-swimming, Y-carrying sperm fertilizes the
Gene ovum, we get a boy (XY). If the victor is a more resilient, slower-
moving X, we get a girl (XX).
In the race to fertilization, the Y’s are statistically more suc-
cessful; scientists estimate that 20 percent more male than female
babies are conceived. But the prenatal period is particularly hard
on males. If a family member learns that she is pregnant, the
odds still favor her having a boy; but because more males die in
the uterus, only 5 percent more boys than girls make it to birth
Nucleus (Werth & Tsiaras, 2002). And throughout life, males continue to
be the less hardy sex, dying off at higher rates at every age. Recall
from Chapter 1 that, throughout the developed world, women
figure 2.2: The human building blocks: The outlive men by at least two years.
nucleus of every human cell contains chromosomes,
each of which is made up of two strands of DNA
connected in a double helix.
Biophoto Associates/Science Source
figure 2.3: A map of human chromosomes: This magnified grid, called a karyotype, shows
the 46 chromosomes in their matched pairs. The final pair, with its X and Y, shows that this person
is a male. Also, notice the huge size of the X chromosome compared to the Y.
1. In order, list the structures involved in “getting pregnant.” Choose from the following:
uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries. Then, name the structure in which fertilization occurs.
2. The __________ house the female’s genetic material, while the _________ contain
the sperm. (Identify the correct names)
3. Tiffany feels certain that if she has intercourse at the right time, she will get pregnant—but
asks you, “What is the right time?” Give Tiffany your answer, referring to the text discussion.
4. If a fetus has the XX chromosomal configuration he/she is more/less apt to survive
the prenatal journey (and live longer) and is more/less apt to be conceived.
Prenatal Development
Andy Walker, Midland Fertility Services/Science Source

Now that we understand the starting point, let’s chart prenatal development,
tracing how the microscopic, fertilized ovum divides millions of times and
differentiates into a living child. This miraculous transformation takes place
in three stages.
First Two Weeks: The Germinal Stage

The first approximately two weeks after fertilization—when the cell mass
has not fully attached to the uterine wall—is called the germinal stage (see
Figure 2.4). Within 36 hours, the fertilized ovum, now a single cell called This is a photo of the blastocyst,
the roughly 100-cell ball, soon to
the zygote, makes its first cell division. Then the tiny cluster of cells divides every
attach itself to the uterine wall.
12 to 15 hours as it wends its way down the fallopian tube. When the cells enter the When implantation occurs, this
uterine cavity, they differentiate into layers—some destined to form the pregnancy event will signal the end of the
support structures, others the child-to-be. Now called a blastocyst, this ball of roughly germinal phase.
100 cells faces the challenge called implantation—embedding into the uterine wall.
Fertilization
germinal stage The first
Cell division
14 days of prenatal
development, from
fertilization to full
Blastocyst implantation.
zygote A fertilized ovum.
blastocyst The hollow sphere
of cells formed during
the germinal stage in
preparation for implantation.
implantation The process in
Uterine wall Implantation which a blastocyst becomes
embedded in the uterine
wall.
Ovulation
Uterus
Inner cell mass figure 2.4: The events of the
(becomes the germinal stage: The fertilized ovum
embryo) divides on its trip to the uterus,
Maternal blood vessels then becomes a hollow ball called a
blastocyst, and finally fully implants
in the wall of the uterus at about 14
days after fertilization.
The blastocyst seeks a landing site on the upper uterus. Its outer layer develops
Neural tube
projections and burrows in. From this landing zone, blood vessels proliferate to form the
placenta, the lifeline that passes nutrients from the mother to the developing baby. Then,
the next stage of prenatal development begins: the all-important embryonic phase.
Week 3 to Week 8: The Embryonic Stage

Although the embryonic stage lasts roughly only six weeks, it is the most fast-paced
period of development. During this time, all the major organs are constructed. By the
end of this stage, what began as a clump of cells looks like a recognizable human being!
One early task is to construct the conduit responsible for all development. After
the baby hooks up to the maternal bloodstream—which will nourish its growth—
figure 2.5: The neural nutrients must reach each rapidly differentiating cell. So by the third week after
tube: This structure is one of the fertilization, the circulatory system (our body’s transport system) forms, and its pump,
first to form after implantation.
The brain and spinal cord will
the heart, starts to beat.
develop from it. At the same time, the rudiments of the nervous system appear. Between 20 and 24
days after fertilization, an indentation forms along the back of the embryo and closes
up to form the neural tube (see Figure 2.5). The upper part of this cylinder becomes
placenta The structure the brain. Its lower part forms the spinal cord. Although it is possible to “grow” new
projecting from the wall
of the uterus during
brain cells throughout life, almost all of those remarkable branching structures, called
pregnancy through which neurons, which cause us to think, respond, and process information, originated in
the developing baby absorbs neural tube cells formed during our first months in the womb.
nutrients. Meanwhile, the body is developing at an astounding rate. At day 26, arm buds
embryonic stage The form; by day 28, leg swellings erupt. At day 37, rudimentary feet start to develop. By
second stage of prenatal day 41, elbows, wrist curves, and the precursors of fingers can be seen. Several days
development, lasting from
week 3 through week 8.
later, raylike structures that will become toes emerge. By about week 8, the internal
organs are in place. What started out looking like a curved stalk, then an outer-space
neural tube A cylindrical
structure that forms along
alien, now appears like a human being.
the back of the embryo and
develops into the brain and
spinal cord. Principles of Prenatal Development
neuron A nerve cell. In scanning the photographs of the developing embryo below, can you spell out three
proximodistal sequence The guiding principles related to the sequence of development I just described?
developmental principle that
growth occurs from the most
• Notice that from a cylindrical shape, the arms and legs grow outward and then (not
interior parts of the body unexpectedly) the fingers and toes protrude. So growth follows the proximodistal
outward. sequence, from the most interior (proximal) part of the body to the outer (distal) sides.
Steve Allen/The Image Bank/Getty Images
Steve Allen/The Image Bank/Getty Images

Lennart Nilsson, Scanpix
At about week 3, the embryo At week 4, you can see the inden- At week 9, the baby-to-be has fingers, toes, and ears.
(the upside-down U across the tations for eyes and the arms and All the major organs have developed, and the fetal
top) looks like a curved stalk. legs beginning to sprout. stage has begun!
• Notice that from a huge swelling that makes the embryo look like a mammoth
head, the arms emerge and the legs sprout. So, development takes place according
to the cephalocaudal sequence, meaning from top (cephalo = head) to bottom
(caudal = tail).
• Finally, just as in constructing a sculpture, nature starts with the basic building blocks
and then fills in details. A head forms before eyes and ears; legs are constructed before
feet and toes. So the mass-to-specific sequence, or gross (large, simple) structures
before smaller (complex) refinements, is the third principle of body growth.
Keep these principles in mind. As you will see in the next chapters, the same
patterns apply to growth and motor skills after the baby leaves the womb.
Week 9 to Birth: The Fetal Stage

During the embryonic stage, body structures literally sprout. In the fetal stage,
development occurs at a more leisurely pace. From the eyebrows, fingernails, and
hair follicles that develop from weeks 9 to 12, to the cushion of fat that accumulates figure 2.6: Forming a brain:
during the final weeks, it takes seven months to transform the embryo into a resilient climbing neurons: During the
baby ready to embrace life. earlier part of the fetal period,
Why does our species need this long refining period? One reason is to allow the neurons destined to make
up the brain ascend these
ample time for that masterpiece organ—the human brain—to form. Let’s now look ladder-like filaments to reach
at this process of making a brain. the uppermost part of what had
During the late embryonic stage, a mass of cells accumulates within the neural been the neural tube.
tube that will eventually produce the more than 100 billion neurons composing our Data from: Huttenlocher, 2002.
brain (Stiles & Jernigan, 2010). From this zone, the neurons migrate to a region just
under the top of the differentiating tube (see Figure 2.6). When the cells assemble cephalocaudal sequence The
in their “staging area,” by the middle of the fetal period, they lengthen, develop developmental principle that
branches, and interlink. This interconnecting process—responsible for every human growth occurs in a sequence
thought and action—continues until almost our final day of life. from head to toe.
Figure 2.7 shows the mushrooming brain. Notice that the brain almost doubles mass-to-specific sequence
in size from month 4 to month 7. By now, the brain has the wrinkled structure of The developmental principle
that large structures (and
an adult. movements) precede
This massive growth has a profound effect. At around month 6, the fetus can hear increasingly detailed
(Crade & Lovett, 1988). By month 7, the fetus is probably able to see (Del Giudice, refinements.
2011). And by this time, with high-quality medical care, a few babies can survive. fetal stage The final period of
prenatal development, lasting
seven months, characterized
by physical refinements,
massive growth, and the
development of the brain.
4 months
7 months
9 months
figure 2.7: The expanding brain: The brain grows dramatically month by month during the
fetal period. During the final months, it develops its characteristic folds.
Today, the age of viability, or earliest date at which we can be

Amniotic sac Uterus
born and possibly live, has dropped to 22 to 23 weeks—almost
halving the 38 weeks the fetus normally spends in the womb. By
week 25, in affluent nations, the odds of survival are more than
fifty-fifty (Lawn and others, 2011).
However, it is vitally important that the fetus stay in the
uterus as long as possible. As I will describe later, being born too
early (and too small) can make a lifelong impact in health.
Figure 2.8 shows the fetus during the final month of preg-
nancy, when its prenatal nest is cramped and birth looms on
the horizon. Notice the baby’s support structures: the placenta,
Placenta projecting from the uterine wall, which supplies nutrients from
the mother to the fetus; the umbilical cord, protruding from
what will be the baby’s bellybutton, the conduit through which
Umbilical cord nutrients flow; the amniotic sac, the fluid-filled chamber within
which the baby floats. This encasing membrane provides insula-
Cervix tion from infection and harm.
Vagina At this stage, parents may be running around, buying the crib
or shopping for baby clothes. Middle-class women may be mar-
veling at the items their precious son or daughter “must have”: a
pacifier, a receiving blanket, a bassinet . . . and what else! What
is happening during all nine months from the mother’s—and
figure 2.8: Poised to be father’s—point of view?
born: This diagram shows the
fetus inside the woman’s uterus
late in pregnancy. Notice the
placenta, amniotic sac, and Tying It All Together
umbilical cord.
1. In order, name the three stages of prenatal development. Then, identify the stage in
which the organs are formed.
2. A pregnant friend asks you, “How does my baby’s brain develop?” Describe the process
of neural migration—when it occurs, and when it is complete.
3. Match the following in utero descriptions to the correct names. (Choose from cepha-
locaudal/proximodistal/mass-to-specific.)
(a) The fingers form before the fingernails; (b) The head forms first and the feet last;
(c) the neural tube develops and then the arms.
4. You are horrified to learn that your friend went into premature labor yesterday.
Pick the minimum pregnancy age that she might be able to have a live birth: around
12 weeks; around 22–23 weeks; around 30 weeks.
age of viability The earliest
point at which a baby can
survive outside the womb.
umbilical cord The structure
that attaches the placenta Pregnancy
to the fetus, through which The 266- to 277-day gestation period (or pregnancy) is divided into three segments
nutrients are passed and called trimesters, each comprising roughly three months. (Because it is difficult to
fetal wastes are removed.
know exactly when fertilization occurs, health-care professionals date the pregnancy
amniotic sac A bag-shaped, from the woman’s last menstrual period.)
fluid-filled membrane that
contains and insulates the Pregnancy differs, however, from the universally patterned process of prenatal devel-
fetus. opment. Despite having classic symptoms, here individual differences are the norm.
gestation The period of
pregnancy.
Scanning the Trimesters
trimester One of the 3-month-
long segments into which With the strong caution that the following symptoms vary—from person to person (and
pregnancy is divided. pregnancy to pregnancy)— let’s now offer an in-the-flesh sense of how each trimester feels.
First Trimester: Often Feeling Tired and Ill

After the blastocyst implants in the uterus—a few days before the woman first misses
her period—pregnancy often signals its presence through unpleasant symptoms.
Many women feel faint. (Yes, fainting can be a sign of pregnancy!) They may
get headaches or have to urinate frequently. Like Kim in the introductory chapter
vignette, they may feel incredibly tired. Their breasts become tender, painful to the
touch. So, many women do not need that tip-off—a missed menstrual period—to
realize they are carrying a child.
Hormones trigger these symptoms. After implantation, the production of proges-
terone (literally pro, or “for,” gestation)—the hormone responsible for maintaining
the pregnancy—surges. The placenta produces its own unique hormone, human
chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), thought to prevent the woman’s body from rejecting
the “foreign” embryo.
Given this hormonal onslaught, the body changes, and the fact that the blood
supply is being diverted to the uterus, the tiredness, dizziness, and headaches make
sense. What about that other early pregnancy sign—morning sickness?
Morning sickness—nausea and sometimes vomiting—affects at least two out of
every three women during the first trimester (Beckmann and others, 2002). This
well-known symptom is not confined to the morning. Many women feel queasy all
day. A few cannot keep any food down. And men sometimes develop morning sick-
ness along with their wives! This phenomenon has its own special name: couvade
(Munroe, 2010).
But morning sickness seems senseless: Doesn’t the embryo need all the nourish-
ment it can get? Why, during the first months of pregnancy, might it be “good” to
stop eating particular foods?
Consider these clues: The queasiness is at its height when the organs are form-
ing, and, like magic, toward the end of the first trimester, usually (but not always)
disappears. Munching on bread products helps. Strong odors make many women
gag. Evolutionary psychologists theorize that, before refrigeration, morning sickness
prevented the mother from eating spoiled meat or toxic plants, which could be espe-
cially dangerous during the embryo phase (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). If you have
a friend struggling with morning sickness, you can give her this heartening informa-
tion: Some research suggests that women with morning sickness are more likely to
carry their babies to term.
This brings up that upsetting event: miscarriage. Roughly 1 in 10 pregnancies miscarriage The naturally
end in a first trimester fetal loss. For women in their late thirties, the chance of mis- occurring loss of a pregnancy
and death of the fetus.
carrying during these weeks escalates to 1 in 5. Many miscarriages are inevitable—
caused by genetic problems in the embryo that are incompatible with life. quickening A pregnant
woman’s first feeling of the
fetus moving inside her
Second Trimester: Feeling Much Better body.
and Connecting Emotionally
Morning sickness, the other unpleasant symptoms, and the relatively high chance of
miscarrying make the first trimester less than an unmitigated joy. During the second
trimester, the magic kicks in.
By week 14, the uterus dramatically grows, often creating a need to shop for
maternity clothes. The wider world may notice the woman’s expanding body: “Are
you pregnant?” “How wonderful!” “Take my seat.” Around week 18, an event called
quickening—a sensation like bubbles that signals the baby kicking in the womb—
appears. The woman feels viscerally connected to a growing human being.
Another landmark event that alters the emotional experience of pregnancy
occurs at the beginning of the third trimester, when the woman can give birth
to a living child. This important late-pregnancy marker explains why some soci-
eties build in celebrations at month 6 or 7 to welcome the baby to the human
community.
Third Trimester: Getting Very Large and Waiting for Birth

Look at a pregnant woman struggling up the stairs and you’ll get a sense
of her feelings during this final trimester: backaches (think of carrying a
bowling ball); leg cramps; numbness and tingling as the uterus presses
against the nerves of the lower limbs; heartburn, insomnia, and anxious
anticipation as focus shifts to the birth (“When will this baby arrive?!”);
uterine contractions occurring irregularly as the baby sinks into the birth
canal and delivery draws very near.
Although women often do work up to the day of delivery, health-care
© Robin Sachs/Photo Edit
workers advise taking time off to rest and relying on caring loved ones to
help cook and clean during the final months. Actually, having caring loved
ones is vital during all nine months!
Imagine what this woman is

feeling while watching her
Pregnancy Is Not a Solo Act
husband paint the newborn’s I don’t know what it’s like for you and your partner to hear the baby’s heartbeat, or see
nursery during her final months the ultrasound together, or feel the first kick. I lived through nine months of pregnancy
of pregnancy. “Not only is my alone. I thought this was supposed to be the happiest time of your life. I found myself
spouse a full partner in building losing weight instead of gaining and being depressed most of the time.
our family nest, he is physically
showing me his love.” When I told my husband I was pregnant, he got furious, said he couldn’t afford the baby
and moved out. So now what do I do—I’ve been laid off from my job. I’m frightened
about how I can cope.
As these quotations reveal, pregnancy has a different emotional flavor depending on
the wider world. What forces turn this joyous time of life into nine months of distress?
One influence, as suggested above, lies in economic concerns. Studies routinely
show that low socioeconomic status puts pregnant women at risk of feeling demoral-
ized and depressed (see, for instance, Guardino & Schetter, 2014). Imagine coping
with the stresses associated with being poor—worrying about making ends meet,
perhaps not getting adequate prenatal care—and you will understand why pregnancy
is more likely to be one of life’s great joys when an expectant mother is comfortably
middle class.
The main force, however, that predicts having a joyous pregnancy applies to both
affluent and economically deprived women alike—feeling loved by one’s mate (Rah-
Because she is being cherished man, Iqbal, & Harrington, 2003; Savage and others, 2007). From dealing with prob-
and pampered by loving friends, lems on the pregnancy pathway, to handling birth and the new baby, having a caring
this single mom is likely to find
the pregnancy journey very
partner is critically important in how women cope (Guardino & Schetter, 2014).
fulfilling. Does this mean going through pregnancy
without a mate is a terrible thing? The
answer is no. What matters is whether a
woman feels generally cared about and loved
(Abdou and others, 2010). Listen to this
comment of an impoverished single woman
whom researchers ranked as “thriving” dur-
ing this time of life: “We’ve always been a
close-knit family, and they were there to get
me through. . . . They called me every night
to make sure I was eating right” (Savage and
others, 2007, p. 219).
Suppose, like the woman quoted at
bikeriderlondon/Shutterstock
beginning of this section, you were mar-

ried, but your spouse was hostile to your
pregnancy. Wouldn’t you rather be going
through this journey with a loving family or
good friends?
What About Dads?

This brings up the emotions of the standard pregnancy partner: dads. Given the atten-
tion we lavish on pregnant women, it should come as no surprise that fathers have
been relatively ignored in the research exploring this transition of life. But fathers
are also bonded to their babies-to-be (Vreeswijk and others, 2014). They can feel just
as devastated when a pregnancy doesn’t work out. Here are some comments about
miscarriage from the male point of view:
Richard anguished,
I keep thinking that my wife is still pregnant. Where is my little girl? I was so ready to
spoil her and treat her like a princess . . . but now she is gone. I don’t think I’ll ever be
the same again.
(quoted in Jaffe & Diamond, 2011, p. 218)
And another grieving dad reported,
I had to be strong for Kate. I had to let her cry on me and then I would . . . drive up
into the hills and cry to myself. I was trying to support her even though I felt my whole
life had just caved in. . . .
(quoted in McCreight, 2004, p. 337)
As you saw in the quotation above, in coping with this trauma, men have a double
burden. They may feel compelled to put aside their feelings to focus on their wives
(Jaffe & Diamond, 2011; Rinehart & Kiselica, 2010). Plus, because the loss of a baby
is typically seen as a “woman’s issue,” the wider world tends to marginalize their pain.
These examples remind us that husbands are “pregnant” in spirit along with their
wives. We should never thrust their feelings aside.
So, by returning to the beginning of the chapter, we now know that the cultural
practice of pampering pregnant women makes excellent psychological sense—for
both the mother and her child. But we also need to realize that expectant fathers
need cherishing, too!
Table 2.1 summarizes these points in a brief “stress during pregnancy” questionnaire.
Now, let’s return to the baby and tackle that common fear: “Will my child be healthy?”
Table 2.1: Measuring Stress in Mothers-to-Be: A Short Section Summary

Questionnaire
1. Does this woman have serious financial troubles, or is she living in poverty?
2. Is this woman having marital problems, and does her husband want this baby?
3. Is the woman a single mother? If so, does she have a supportive network of friends and family?
4. If the woman is living in poverty, does she feel connected to others in loving, positive ways?
1. Samantha just entered her second trimester. Explain how she is likely to feel for
the next few months. What symptoms was Samantha apt to describe during the first
trimester, after learning she was pregnant?
2. You just learned your cousin is pregnant. What two forces might best predict her
emotional state?
3. As a clinic director, you are concerned that men are often left out of the pregnancy
experience. Design a few innovative interventions to make your clinic responsive to
the needs of fathers-to-be.
birth defect A physical or

neurological problem that
occurs prenatally or at birth.
Threats to the Developing Baby
In this section, we’ll explore the prenatal reasons for birth defects, or health problems
teratogen A substance that at birth. I’ll also discuss new research exploring how wider-world events while “in the
crosses the placenta and
harms the fetus. womb” can potentially affect a fetus’s lifelong health. In reading this catalogue of
“things that can go wrong,” keep these thoughts in mind: The vast majority of babies
sensitive period The time
when a body structure is are born healthy. Many birth defects don’t seriously impair a baby’s ability to have a
most vulnerable to damage fulfilling life. Often birth defects result from a complex nature-plus-nurture interac-
by a teratogen, typically tion. Fetal genetic vulnerabilities combine with environmental hazards in the womb.
when that organ or process However, this section separates these conditions into two categories: toxins that flow
is rapidly developing or
coming “on line.” through the placenta to impair development and genetic diseases.
Threats from Outside: Teratogens

The universal fears about the growing baby are expressed in cultural prohibitions:
“Don’t use scissors or your baby will have cut lips” (a cleft palate) Afghanistan; “Avoid
looking at monkeys [Indonesia] or gossiping [China] or your baby will be deformed.”
If you think these practices are strange, consider the standard mid-twentieth-
This Honduran baby is a century medical advice. Physicians put women in the United States on a strict diet if
testament to the horrible they gained over 15 pounds. They encouraged mothers-to-be to smoke and drink to
damage teratogens can relax (Von Raffler-Engel, 1994; Wertz & Wertz, 1989). Today, these pronouncements
potentially cause during the
embryonic period, as his
might qualify as fetal abuse! What can hurt the developing baby? When is damage
condition was believed to be most apt to occur?
due to his mother’s exposure A teratogen (from the Greek word teras, “monster,” and gen, “creating”) is the
to pesticides during early name for any substance that crosses the placenta to harm the fetus. A teratogen may
pregnancy.
be an infectious disease; a medication; a recreational drug;
environmental hazards, such as radiation or pollution; or
as you will see later, the hormones produced by a pregnant
woman who is under extreme stress. Table 2.2 describes
potential teratogens in various categories.
Basic Teratogenic Principles

Teratogens typically exert their damage during the sensitive
period—the timeframe when a particular organ or system is
coming “on line.” For example, the infectious disease called
Taylor Jones/Palm Beach Post
rubella (German measles) often damaged a baby’s heart or

ears, depending on the week during the first trimester when
a mother contracted the disease. The sedative Thalidomide,
prescribed in Europe during the late 1950s to prevent morn-
ing sickness, impaired limb formation, depending on which
day after fertilization the drug was imbibed. In general, with regard to teratogens, the
following principles apply:
1. Teratogens are most likely to cause major structural damage during the
embryonic stage. Before implantation, teratogens have an all-or-nothing
impact. They either inhibit implantation and cause death, or they leave the not-
yet-attached blastocyst unscathed. It is during organ formation (after implanta-
tion through week 8) that major body structures are most likely to be affected.
This is why—unless expectant mothers have a chronic disease that demands
continuing—physicians advise forgoing any medications during the first trimes-
ter (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], Committee on Drugs, 2000).
2. Teratogens can affect the developing brain throughout pregnancy. As you saw
earlier, because the brain is forming during the second and third trimesters, the
potential for neurological damage extends for all nine months. Typically, during
Table 2.2: Examples of Known Teratogens and the Damage They Can Do
Teratogen Consequences of Exposure
Infectious Diseases
Rubella (German measles) If a pregnant woman contracts rubella during the embryonic stage, the consequence is, not infrequently,
intellectual disability, blindness, or eye, ear, and heart abnormalities in the baby—depending on the
week the virus enters the bloodstream. Luckily, women of childbearing age are now routinely immunized
for this otherwise minor adult disease.
Cytomegalovirus About 25% of babies infected with this virus develop vision or hearing loss; 10% develop neurological
problems.
AIDS HIV-infected women can transmit the virus to their babies prenatally through the placenta, during
delivery (when blood is exchanged between the mother and child), or after birth (through breast milk).
Rates of transmission are much lower if infected mothers take the anti-AIDS drug AZT or if newborns are
given a new drug that blocks the transmission of HIV at birth. If a mother takes these precautions, does
not breastfeed, and delivers her baby by c-section, the infection rate falls to less than 1%. While mother-
to-child transmission of HIV has declined dramatically in the developed world, it remains a devastating
problem in sub-Saharan Africa and other impoverished regions of the globe (AVERT, 2005).
Herpes This familiar sexually transmitted disease can cause miscarriage, growth retardation, and eye
abnormalities in affected fetuses. Doctors recommend that pregnant women with active genital herpes
undergo c-sections to avoid infecting their babies during delivery.
Toxoplasmosis This disease, caused by a parasite found in raw meat and cat feces, can lead to blindness, deafness, and
intellectual disability in infants. Pregnant women should avoid handling raw meat and cat litter.
Medications
Antibiotics Streptomycin has been linked to hearing loss; tetracycline to stained infant tooth enamel.
Thalidomide This drug, prescribed in the late 1950s in Europe to prevent nausea during the first trimester, prevented
the baby’s arms and legs from developing if taken during the embryonic period.
Anti-seizure drugs These medications have been linked to developmental delays during infancy.
Anti-psychotic drugs These drugs may slightly raise the risk of giving birth to a baby with heart problems.
Antidepressants Although typically safe, third-trimester exposure to selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and tricyclic
antidepressants has been linked to temporary jitteriness and excessive crying and to eating and sleeping
difficulties in newborns. Rarely, these drugs can produce a serious syndrome involving seizures and
dehydration, as well as higher rates of miscarriage.
Recreational Drugs
Cocaine This drug is linked to miscarriage, growth retardation, and learning and behavior problems.
Methamphetamine This drug may cause miscarriage and growth retardation.
Environmental Toxins
Radiation Japanese children exposed to radiation from the atomic bomb during the second trimester had extremely
high rates of severe intellectual disability. Miscarriages were virtually universal among pregnant women
living within 5 miles of the blast. Pregnant women are also advised to avoid clinical doses of radiation
such as those used in X-rays (and especially cancer treatment radiation).
Lead Babies with high levels of lead in the umbilical cord may show impairments in cognitive functioning
(Bellinger and others, 1987). Maternal exposure to lead is associated with miscarriage.
Mercury and PCBs These pollutants are linked to learning and behavior problems.
VItamin Deficiencies In addition to eating a balanced diet, every woman of childbearing age should take folic acid
supplements. This vitamin, part of the B complex, protects against the incomplete closure of the neural
tube during the first month of development—an event that may produce spina bifida (paralysis in the
body below the region of the spine that has not completely closed) or anencephaly (failure of the brain to
develop—and certain death) if the gap occurs toward the top of the developing tube.
Data from: Huttenlocher, 2002, and the references in this chapter.

the second and third trimesters, exposure to teratogens increases the risk of
developmental disorders developmental disorders. This term refers to any condition that compromises
Learning impairments and normal development—from delays in reaching basic milestones, such as walk-
behavioral problems during
infancy and childhood.
ing or talking, to learning problems and hyperactivity.
3. Teratogens have a threshold level above which damage occurs. For instance,
women who drink more than four cups of coffee a day throughout pregnancy
have a slightly higher risk of miscarriage; but having an occasional Diet Coke
is fine (Gilbert-Barness, 2000).
4. Teratogens exert their damage unpredictably, depending on fetal and mater-
nal vulnerabilities. Still, mothers-to-be metabolize toxins differently, and babies
differ genetically in susceptibility. So the damaging effects of a particular terato-
gen can vary. On the plus side, you may know a child in your local school’s
gifted program whose mother drank heavily during pregnancy. On the negative
side, we do not know where the teratogenic threshold lies in any particular case.
Therefore, during pregnancy, it’s best to err on the side of caution.
Although the damaging impact of a teratogen may show up during infancy, it
can also manifest itself years later. An unfortunate example of this teratogenic time
bomb took place in my own life. My mother was given a drug called diethylstilbestrol
(DES) while she was pregnant with me. (DES was prescribed routinely in the 1950s
and 1960s to prevent miscarriage.) During my early twenties, I developed cancerous
cells in my cervix—and, after surgery, had three miscarriages before being blessed by
adopting my son.
The Teratogenic Impact of Medicines and Recreational Drugs

The fact that some medications are teratogenic presents dilemmas for women. Do
you stop taking your anti-epilepsy drugs and risk having a seizure? In one survey,
many women with this condition didn’t understand their medicines could effect the
babies’ developing brain (McGrath and others, 2014). Or, suppose you are among
the millions of people taking antidepressant drugs. You may be aware of the research
suggesting your medicine slightly raises the risk of premature birth (Huang and
others, 2014; Deligiannidis, Byatt, & Freeman, 2014; Jensen and others, 2013). But
you worry that stopping will cause excessive anxiety which—as we will see soon—also
may compromise your baby’s health.
As these comments illustrate, with medications and pregnancy, it can be a balanc-
ing act. Sometimes there are no perfect choices.
With recreational drugs, the choice is clear. Each substance is potentially terato-
genic. So it’s best to just say no!
Because tobacco and alcohol are woven into the fabric of daily life, let’s now
focus on these widely used teratogens. What can happen to the baby when pregnant
women smoke and drink?
SMOKING Each time she reads the information on a cigarette pack, a pregnant
woman gets a reminder that she may be doing her baby harm. Still, with polls showing
that anywhere from 1 in 12 people (in the Netherlands) and 1 in 3 pregnant women
(in Spain) smoke, tobacco use during this time is far from rare (De Wilde and others,
2013). Because this practice is such a “no, no,” these surveys almost certainly under-
estimate the fraction of smoking mothers-to-be. When scientists in a national U.S.
study measured blood levels of cotinine (a biological indicator of tobacco use), they
discovered that roughly 1 in 4 pregnant smokers had earlier falsely reported: “Oh yes,
I definitely quit!” (See Dietz and others, 2011.)
The main danger with smoking is giving birth to a smaller-than-normal baby
(Krstev and others, 2013). Nicotine constricts the mother’s blood vessels, reducing
blood flow to the fetus and so not allowing a full complement of nutrients to reach
the child. In particular, smoking—and giving birth to a small child—raises the
risk of developmental problems like hyperactivity (Keyes, Smith, & Susser, 2014),
and makes newborns less able to regulate their sleep (Hernandez-Martinez and
others, 2012).
The good news is that the many U.S. pregnant smokers who take the difficult step
of quitting for the health of their babies (see Chisolm, Cheng, & Terplan, 2014) feel
more efficacious and less depressed (De Wilde and others, 2013). The bad news is
that women still get ammunition—even from health-care professionals—for continu-
ing to smoke: “My doctor told me stopping would put stress on the baby” . . . “I’ve
seen . . . many people do it and had healthy babies” (quoted in Naughton, Eborall,
& Sutton, 2013, pp. 27 and 28). Plus, unfortunately, many former smokers resume
using tobacco after giving birth (Xu and others, 2013; De Wilde and others, 2013).
ALCOHOL As you saw earlier, it used to be standard to encourage pregnant women
to have a nightcap to relieve stress. In Italy, drinking red wine during pregnancy
was supposed to produce a healthy, rosy-cheeked child! (See Von Raffler-Engel,
1994.) During the 1970s, as evidence mounted for a disorder called fetal alcohol fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
syndrome (FAS), these prescriptions were quickly revised. Whenever you hear the A cluster of birth defects
caused by the mother’s
word syndrome, it is a signal that the condition has a constellation of features that alcohol consumption during
are present to varying degrees. The defining qualities of fetal alcohol syndrome pregnancy.
include a smaller-than-normal birth weight and brain; facial abnormalities (such
as a flattened face); and developmental disorders ranging from serious intellectual
disability to seizures and hyperactivity (Dean & Davis, 2007; Roussotte, Soderberg,
& Sowell, 2010).
Women who binge-drink (have more than four drinks at
a sitting), or pregnant women who regularly consume several
drinks nightly, are at highest risk of giving birth to a baby
with fetal alcohol syndrome. Their children, at a minimum,
may be born with a less severe syndrome called fetal alco-
hol spectrum disorders, characterized by deficits in learning
and impaired mental health (Wedding and others, 2007). As
alcohol crosses the placenta, it causes genetic changes that
impair neural growth (Hashimoto-Torii and others, 2011).
Faced with these warnings, New Zealand researchers
found about half of women in a national poll reported stop-
© mark follon/Alamy
ping drinking after learning they were pregnant (Parackal
Parackal, & Harraway, 2013). Ironically, however, trying to
conceive has no influence on alcohol use (Terplan, Cheng,
& Chisolm, 2014). Pregnant women who drink regularly
tend to be anxious or depressed (Beijers and others, 2014). Surprisingly, however, one As this woman downed her many
study in the Netherlands showed well-educated, expectant moms were more likely to drinks, she put her baby at risk
of fetal alcohol syndrome—
report still using alcohol or restarting at some point (Pfinder and others, 2014)!
explaining why patrons at a bar
This unexpected finding may reflect cultural norms. Every U.S. public health who saw this scenario would get
organization recommends no alcohol during pregnancy. In Europe, having a cocktail very upset!
or glass of wine is an expected practice during meals. This may explain why European
physicians disagree with their U.S. counterparts: “One drink per day can’t possibly
do the fetus harm” (Paul, 2010; Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists
[RCOG], 1999).
Measurement Issues
Why is there any debate about a safe amount of alcohol to drink? For answers, imag-
ine the challenges you would face as a researcher exploring the impact of tobacco or
alcohol on the developing child: The need to ask thousands of pregnant women to
estimate how often they indulged in these “unacceptable” behaviors and then track
the children for decades, looking for problems that might appear as late as adult
life. Plus, because your study is correlational, the difficulties you find might be due
to other confounding causes. Pregnant women who drink are more likely to smoke
(Mallard, Connor, & Houghton, 2013). As I’ve implied, these people may be gener-
ally stressed out. Could you isolate the child’s symptoms to just tobacco or alcohol?
Wouldn’t simply feeling overly anxious damage the developing child?
Hot in Developmental Science: What Is the Impact of

Prenatal Stress?
I introduced this chapter by emphasizing that anxiety is normal during pregnancy.
Will my baby be all right? I discussed how throughout history people intuitively
believed that stress could harm the fetus, so societies went to heroic lengths to
keep mothers calm. What does the research suggest
about the impact of pregnancy stress?
2.0
One concern is that excessive anxiety may
1.8 cause premature labor, causing women to miscarry
1.6 or have an unhealthy infant (Guardino & Schetter,
1.4 2014). High levels of the stress hormone cortisol,
Odds ratio
1.2 as it turns out, are transmitted to the fetus via the

1.0
amniotic fluid, making babies irritable during the
first months of life (Baibazarova and others, 2013).
0.8
Now—as with teratogens in general—let’s list two
0.6 forces that increase these risks:
Conception
0.4
18–13 Months 12–7 Months 6–0 Months 0 Months–Birth • The intensity, quality, and timing of the stress
(Preconception) (Prenatal) may matter. Does the person have an over-
Stress exposure period
load of problems, few social supports, or is she
experiencing a difficult (perhaps unwanted)
figure 2.9: Odds of infant pregnancy? Anxieties about fetal health, not unexpectedly, are more common in
mortality following mater- older moms (Bayrampour and others, 2013). One study showed excessive stress in
nal stress (defined as the the latter part of pregnancy increased the chance of premature labor (Cole-Lewis
woman’s having experienced and others, 2014). Then, ironically—as if women didn’t have enough to worry
the death of a first degree
relative) at varying times about—notice from Figure 2.9, that other researchers discovered traumatic events
before conception and during prior to getting pregnant compromised the baby’s health (Class and others, 2013)!
pregnancy: In this remarkable
study tracking the more than • The person’s personality and coping style matters most. In thoughtfully review-
3 million Swedish babies born ing these confusing findings, developmentalists concluded that the critical vari-
between 1973 and 2008, notice able relates to the way women handle stress (Guardino & Schetter, 2014). Does the
that the risk of a baby’s dying person behave proactively, taking constructive steps to confront problems, or bury
soon after birth rose only when
the mom experienced this life her difficulties by using avoidant strategies? Denying distress, or passively breaking
stressor within 6 months of down, and, of course, resorting to binge drinking or smoking to cope, raises the risk
conception—suggesting that, of giving birth early and having a frail child.
strangely, distress immediately
prior to getting pregnant may But suppose the trauma is so overwhelming that it’s impossible to constructively
weigh most heavily in deter- cope. Imagine that while a woman is pregnant a disaster occurs—a war or an earth-
mining the baby’s health. After
reading the information on fetal quake—or a person is so poor she doesn’t have enough to eat. Can these experiences
programming below this section, have a lifelong impact on her child?
can you think of some possible
reasons why this might be so?
Data from: Class and others, 2013.
Is Pregnancy a Programmer of Old Age?
The answer may be yes. For instance, during World War II, in l944, the Germans
cut off the food supply to Holland, putting that nation in a semi-starvation condition
for a few months. As you might imagine, miscarriages and stillbirths were far more
frequent during this “Hunger Winter.” But even the surviving babies had enduring
scars. Midlife heart disease rates were higher if a baby had been in the womb specifi-
cally during the Hunger Winter (Paul, 2010). Another landmark study had a similar
result: Babies born in the most impoverished sections of England and Wales were
more susceptible to dying from cardiovascular disease at a young age (Paul, 2010).
Why might deprivation in the womb be linked to

premature, age-related disease? Speculations again cen-
ter on being born too small. When fetuses are deprived
of nutrients and/or exposed to intense maternal stress,
researchers hypothesize, the resulting impaired growth
primes the baby to enter the world expecting “a state of
deprivation” and to eat excessively or store fat. But while
TEH ENG KOON/AFP/Getty Images

this strategy promotes survival when nutrition is scarce,
it boomerangs—promoting obesity and a potentially
shorter life—when a child arrives in the world in today’s
era of overabundant food.
Is obesity (and adult chronic disease) caused just by
personal lifestyle choices or partly promoted by a poor
body-environment fit at birth? These tantalizing ques- Imagine being this terrified
tions are driving fetal programming research—studies exploring how intrauterine woman as she surveys the
events may epigenetically change our genetic code (Belsky & Pluess, 2011). rubble of her collapsed house.
What is the impact of disasters,
Freud revolutionized the twentieth century by arguing that childhood experi- like this Malaysian landslide,
ences shape personality. Will twenty-first-century scientists trace the roots of human on babies in the womb? Fetal
development to experiences in the womb? programming research offers
Fetal programming research is action oriented. Ideally, we can take steps before fascinating answers.
birth to influence a child’s fate. With these next conditions, the problems are often
more serious. They are frequently diagnosed at birth. This is because the child’s con-
dition is “genetic.” It was sealed at conception with the union of an egg and sperm. fetal programming research
New research discipline
exploring the impact of
Threats from Within: Chromosomal and Genetic Disorders traumatic pregnancy events
and intense stress on
When a birth defect is classified as “genetic,” there are two main causes. The child producing low birth weight,
might have an unusual number of chromosomes, or a faulty gene (or set of genes) obesity, and long-term
might be the problem. physical problems.
Down syndrome The most
Chromosomal Problems common chromosomal
As we know, the normal human chromosomal complement is 46. However, some- abnormality, causing
intellectual disability,
times a baby with a missing or extra chromosome is conceived. The vast majority of susceptibility to heart
these fertilizations end in first-trimester miscarriages, as the cells cannot differentiate disease, and other health
much past the blastocyst stage. problems; and distinctive
Still, babies can be born with an abnormal number of sex chromosomes (such physical characteristics, such
as slanted eyes and stocky
as an extra X or two, an extra Y, or a single X) and survive. In this case, although the build.
symptoms vary, the result is often learning impairments and sometimes infertility.
Survival is also possible when a child is born with an extra chromosome on a
specific other pair. The most common example—happening in roughly 1 in every
700 births (National Down Syndrome Society [NDSS], n.d.)—produces a baby with
Down syndrome.
Down syndrome typically occurs because a cell-division error, called nondisjunc-
tion, in the egg or sperm causes an extra chromosome or piece of that copy to adhere
to chromosome pair 21. (Figure 2.3, on page 38, shows this is the smallest matching
set, so the reason extra material adhering to chromosome 21 is not uniformly lethal
is that this pair generally contains the fewest genes.) The child is born with 47 chro-
mosomes instead of the normal 46.
This extra chromosome produces familiar physical features: a flat facial profile,
an upward slant to the eyes, a stocky appearance, and an enlarged tongue. Babies born
with Down syndrome are at high risk for having heart defects and childhood leuke-
mia. Here, too, there is a lifespan time-bomb impact. During midlife, many adults
with Down syndrome develop Alzheimer’s disease. The most well-known problem
with this familiar condition, however, is mild to moderate intellectual disability.
A century ago, Down syndrome children rarely lived to adulthood. They were
shunted to institutions to live severely shortened lives. In the United States today,
due to medical advances, these

babies have an average life
expectancy of 60 years (NDSS,
retrieved 2014). Ironically, this
longevity gain can be a double-
edged sword. Elderly parent
caregivers may worry what will
happen to their middle-aged
child when they die or become
physically impaired (Gath,
Lauren Shear/Science Source
1993).
This is not to say that every
Down syndrome baby is depen-
dent on a caregiver’s help.
These children can sometimes
learn to read and write. They
Knowing a Down syndrome
child has a powerful effect on
can live independently, hold down jobs, marry and have children, construct fulfilling
every person. Will this older girl lives. Do you know a child with Down syndrome like the toddler in this photo who
become a more caring, sensitive is the light of her loving family and friends’ lives?
adult through having played Although women of any age can give birth to Down syndrome babies, the risk
with this much loved younger
friend?
rises exponentially among older mothers. Over age 40, the chance of having a Down
syndrome birth is 1 in 100; over age 45, it is 1 in 30 (NDSS, n.d.). The reason is that,
with more time “in storage,” older ova are more apt to develop chromosomal faults.
Down syndrome is typically caused by a spontaneous genetic mistake. Now let’s
look at a different category of genetic disorders—those passed down in the parents’
DNA to potentially affect every child.
Genetic Disorders
Most illnesses—from cancer to heart disease to schizophrenia—are caused by com-
plex nature-plus-nurture interactions. Several, often unknown, genes act in con-
junction with murky environmental forces. A single, known gene causes these next
disorders that often appear at birth.
Single-gene disorders are passed down according to three modes of inheritance:
They may be dominant, recessive, or sex-linked. To understand these patterns, you
might want to look back again at the paired arrangement of the chromosomes in
Figure 2.3 (page 38) and remember that we get one copy of each gene from our
mother and one from our father. Also, in understanding these illnesses, it is impor-
single-gene disorder An tant to know that one member of each gene pair can be dominant. This means that
illness caused by a single
gene.
the quality will always show up in real life. If both members of the gene pair are not
dominant (that is, if they are recessive), the illness will manifest itself only if the child
dominant disorder An illness
that a child gets by inheriting
inherits two of the faulty genes.
one copy of the abnormal Dominant disorders are in the first category. In this case, if one parent harbors
gene that causes the the problem gene (and so has the illness), each child the couple gives birth to has a
disorder. fifty-fifty chance of also getting ill.
recessive disorder An illness Recessive disorders are in the second category. Unless a person gets two copies
that a child gets by inheriting of the gene, one from the father and one from the mother, that child is disease free.
two copies of the abnormal
gene that causes the
In this case, the odds of a baby born to two carriers—that is, parents who each have
disorder. one copy of that gene—having the illness are 1 in 4.
sex-linked single-gene
The mode of transmission for sex-linked single-gene disorders is more compli-
disorder An illness, cated. Most often, the woman is carrying a recessive (non-expressed in real life) gene
carried on the mother’s X for the illness on one of her two X chromosomes. Since her daughters have another
chromosome, that typically X from their father (who doesn’t carry the illness), the female side of the family is
leaves the female offspring
unaffected but has a fifty-
typically disease free. Her sons, however—with just one X chromosome that might
fifty chance of striking each code for the disorder—have a fifty-fifty chance of getting ill, depending on whether
male child. they get the normal or abnormal version of their mother’s X.
Because their single X leaves them vulnerable, sex-linked disorders typically affect
males. But as an intellectual exercise, you might want to figure out when females can
get this condition. If you guessed that it’s when the mother is a carrier (having one
faulty X) and the dad has the disorder (having the gene on his single X), you are right!
Table 2.3 visually decodes these modes of inheritance and describes a few of the
best-known single-gene diseases. In scanning the first illness on the chart, Huntington’s
Table 2.3: Some Examples of Dominant, Recessive, and Sex-Linked Single-Gene Disorders
Dominant Disorders
• Huntington’s disease (HD) This fatal nervous system Father Mother
(has illness) (unaffected)
disorder is characterized by uncontrollable jerky
movements and irreversible intellectual impairment
(dementia). Symptoms usually appear around age 35,
although the illness can occasionally erupt in childhood
and in old age. There is no treatment for this disease.
Recessive Disorders
• Cystic fibrosis (CF) This most common single-gene disorder
in the United States is typically identified at birth by the
salty character of the sweat. The child’s body produces Child 1 Child 2 Child 3 Child 4
mucus that clogs the lungs and pancreas, interfering with (has illness) (has illness) (unaffected) (unaffected)
breathing and digestion and causing repeated medical Here, the gene is dominant, and there is a 1-in-2
crises. As the hairlike cells in the lungs are destroyed, these chance that each child of an affected parent will
vital organs degenerate and eventually cause premature have the disease.
death. Advances in treatment have extended the average
life expectancy for people with CF to the late twenties. One
in 28 U.S. Caucasians is a carrier for this disease.* Father Mother
(carrier) (carrier)
• Sickle cell anemia This blood disorder takes its name from
the characteristic sickle shape of the red blood cells. The
blood cells collapse and clump together, causing oxygen
deprivation and organ damage. The symptoms of sickle
cell anemia are fatigue, pain, growth retardation, ulcers,
stroke, and, ultimately, a shortened life. Treatments include
transfusions and medications for infection and pain. One in
10 African Americans is a carrier of this disease.*
• Tay-Sachs disease In this universally fatal infant nervous Child 1 Child 2 Child 3 Child 4
system disorder, the child appears healthy at birth, but (carrier) (unaffected) (has illness) (carrier)
then fatty material accumulates in the neurons and, at
6 months, symptoms such as blindness, intellectual Here, both parents are carriers, and each child has a
disability, and paralysis occur and the baby dies. 1-in-4 chance of having the disease.
Tay-Sachs is found most often among Jewish people of
Eastern European ancestry. An estimated 1 in 25 U.S. Jews Father Mother
is a carrier.† (unaffected) (carrier)
Sex-Linked Disorders
• Hemophilia These blood-clotting disorders typically affect XY XX
males. The most serious forms of hemophilia (A and B)
produce severe episodes of uncontrolled joint bleeding and
pain. In the past, these episodes often resulted in death
during childhood. Today, with transfusions of the missing
clotting factors, affected children can have a fairly normal
life expectancy.
*
XY XY XX XX
Sickle cell anemia may have remained in the population because having
Son Son Daughter Daughter
the trait (one copy of the gene) conferred an evolutionary advantage:
It protected against malaria in Africa. Scientists also speculate that the (unaffected) (has illness) (unaffected) (carrier)
cystic fibrosis trait may have conferred immunity to typhoid fever.
†
Here, the mother has the faulty gene on her X chro-
Due to a vigorous public awareness program in the Jewish community,
potential carriers are routinely screened and the rate of Tay-Sachs
mosome, so the daughters are typically disease-
disease has declined dramatically. free, but each son has a 1-in-2 chance of getting ill.
disease, imagine your emotional burden as a genetically at-risk child. People with
Huntington’s develop an incurable dementia in the prime of life. As a child you
would probably have watched a beloved parent lose his memory and bodily functions,
and then die. You would know that your odds of suffering the same fate are 1 in 2.
(Although babies born with lethal dominant genetic disorders typically die before they
can have children, Huntington’s disease remained in the population because it, too,
operates as an internal time bomb, showing up during the prime reproductive years.)
With the other illnesses in the table—programmed by recessive genes—the fears
relate to bearing a child. If both you and your partner have the Tay-Sachs carrier gene,
you may have seen a beloved baby die in infancy. With cystic fibrosis, your affected
child would be subject to recurrent medical crises as his lungs filled up with fluid,
and he would face a dramatically shortened life. Would you want to take the 1-in-4
chance of having this experience again?
The good news, as the table shows, is that the prognoses for some routinely fatal
childhood single-gene disorders are no longer as dire. With hemophilia, the life-
threatening episodes of bleeding can be avoided by supplying the missing blood factor
through transfusions. While surviving to the teens with cystic fibrosis used to be rare,
today these children can expect on average to live to their twenties and sometimes
beyond (CysticFibrosis.com, n.d.). Still, with Tay-Sachs or Huntington’s disease,
there is nothing medically that can be done.
HOW DO WE KNOW . . .
about the gene for Huntington’s disease?
Nancy Wexler and her sister got the devastating news from their physician father,
Milton: “Your mother has Huntington’s disease. She will die of dementia in a horrible
way. As a dominant single gene disorder, your chance of getting ill is fifty-fifty. There
is nothing we can do. (See Table 2.3.) But that doesn’t mean we are going to give up.”
In 1969, Milton Wexler established the Hereditary Disease Foundation, surrounded
himself with scientists, and put his young daughter, Nancy, a clinical psychologist, in
charge. The hunt was on for the Huntington’s gene.
A breakthrough came in 1979, when Nancy learned that the world’s largest group of
people with Huntington’s lived in a small, inbred community in Venezuela—descendants
of a woman who harbored the gene mutation that caused the disease. After build-
ing a pedigree of 18,000 family members, collecting blood samples from thousands
more, and carefully analyzing
the DNA for differences, the
researchers hit pay dirt. They
isolated the Huntington’s
Acey Harper/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images
gene.
Having this diagnostic marker
is the first step to eventually
finding a cure. So far the cure
is elusive, but the hunt contin-
ues. Nancy still serves as the
head of the foundation, vigor-
ously agitating for research
on the illness that killed her
mother. She works as a pro-
fessor in Columbia University’s Neurology and Psychiatry Department. But every year,
she comes back to the village in Venezuela to counsel and just visit with her families—
her relatives in blood.
In sum, the answer to the question “Can single-gene disorders be treated and cured?” genetic testing A blood test to
is “It depends.” Although people still have the faulty gene—and so are not “cured” in the determine whether a person
carries the gene for a given
traditional sense—through advances in nurture (or changing the environment), we have genetic disorder.
made remarkable progress in treating what used to be uniformly fatal diseases.
genetic counselor A
Our most dramatic progress, however, lies in genetic testing. Through a simple professional who counsels
blood test, people can find out whether they carry the gene for these (and other) illnesses. parents-to-be about their
These diagnostic breakthroughs bring up difficult issues. Would you really want own or their children’s
to know whether you have the gene for Huntington’s disease? The inspiring story risk of developing genetic
disorders, as well as about
of Nancy Wexler, the psychologist who helped discover the Huntington’s gene and available treatments.
whose mother died of the disease, is instructive here (see the How Do We Know box).
ultrasound In pregnancy, an
While Nancy will not say whether she has been tested, her sister Alice refused to be image of the fetus in the
screened because she felt not knowing was better emotionally than the anguish of womb that helps to date
living with a positive result. the pregnancy, assess the
fetus’s growth, and identify
abnormalities.
Interventions chorionic villus sampling
The advantages of genetic testing are clearer when the issue relates to having a child. (CVS) A relatively risky first-
trimester pregnancy test for
Let’s imagine for instance that you and your spouse know you are carriers of the cystic fetal genetic disorders.
fibrosis gene. If you are contemplating having children, what should you do?
Sorting Out the Options: Genetic Counseling

Your first step would be to consult a genetic counselor, a professional skilled in both
genetics and counseling, to help you think through your choices. In addition to lay-
ing out the odds of having an affected child, genetic counselors describe advances
in treatment. For example, they inform couples who are carriers for cystic fibrosis
about biological strategies on the horizon, such as gene therapy. They also highlight
the interpersonal and economic costs of having a child with this disease. But they
are trained never to offer advice. Their goal is to permit couples to make a mutual
decision on their own.
Now, suppose that armed with this information, you and
your partner go ahead and conceive. Let’s scan the major
tests that are available to every woman carrying a child.
Tools of Discovery: Prenatal Tests

Blood tests performed during the first trimester can detect
(with reasonable accuracy) various chromosomal condi-
tions, such as Down syndrome. Brain scans (MRIs) offer
a vivid prenatal window on the developing brain (Jokhi &
Dr. Najeeb Layyous/Science Source

Whitby, 2011). The standard fetal diagnostic test has been a
staple for over 40 years: the ultrasound.
Ultrasounds, which now provide a clear image of fetus
(see the accompanying photo), are used to date the pregnancy
and assess in utero growth, in addition to revealing physical
abnormalities. By making the baby visually real, ultrasound
visits have become emotional landmarks on the pregnancy journey itself (Paul, 2010). Due to the miracles of 3D ultra-
Imagine the thrill of getting this vivid photo of your baby months before she is born! sound technology, when women
visit their health-care provider,
Pregnant women embrace ultrasound technology and noninvasive genetic tests they can have the thrill of clearly
(Verweij and others, 2013). They tend to be more wary of the next procedures, seeing their baby’s face. As they
because those require entering the womb. peer through this “window on
During the first trimester, chorionic villus sampling (CVS) can diagnose a vari- the womb,” doctors can get vital
information about the health of
ety of chromosomal and genetic conditions. A physician inserts a catheter into the this 26-week-old fetus, too.
woman’s abdomen or vagina and withdraws a piece of the developing placenta for
analysis. The advantage of CVS, is knowing early on about problems; however, this
test can be slightly dangerous, as it carries a risk of miscarriage and limb impairments
(Karni, Leshno, & Rapaport, 2014).
TIMELINE Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, Prenatal Threats, Tools of Discovery

Germinal stage Embryonic stage Fetal stage
(weeks 1 and 2) (weeks 3–8) (weeks 9–38)
PRENATAL All major organs and structures Massive growth
DEVELOPMENT form. and refinements;
Zygote brain develops;
live birth is
blastocyst, possible at
22–24 weeks.
which implants in uterus.
THREATS At fertilization: chromosomal and Teratogens can cause basic Teratogens can impair growth,
single-gene diseases. structural abnormalities. affect the brain, and so cause
developmental disorders. They
can also produce miscarriage or
premature labor.
amniocentesis A second- During the second trimester, a safer test, called amniocentesis, can determine
trimester procedure that the fetus’s fate. The doctor inserts a syringe into the woman’s uterus and extracts a
involves inserting a syringe
into a woman’s uterus to
sample of amniotic fluid. The cells can reveal a host of genetic and chromosomal
extract a sample of amniotic conditions, as well as the fetus’s sex.
fluid, which is tested for Amniocentesis is planned for a gestational age (typically week 14) when there
a variety of genetic and is enough fluid to safely siphon out and time to decide whether or not to carry the
chromosomal conditions.
baby to term. However, it, too, carries a small chance of infection and miscarriage,
depending on the skill of the doctor performing the test (Karni, Lescho & Rapaport,
2014). Moreover by the time the results of the “amnio” arrive, quickening may have
occurred. The woman must endure the trauma of labor should she decide to termi-
nate the pregnancy at this late stage.
Because their risk of having a child with chromosomal disorders is higher, many
doctors suggest that patients over age 35 have these procedures. But, not unexpect-
edly, more women in their forties agree to tested; and, because it is safer, more people
undergo amniocentesis than CVS (Godino and others, 2013).
When these couples receive a diagnosis of serious chromosomal problems, most do
terminate the pregnancy—roughly 8 in 10 in one study at a U.S. hospital (Hawkins and
others, 2013). Still, some people who would never consider abortion undergo testing to
ease their anxieties or to prepare in advance if their baby does have a genetic disease. While
a diagnosis of serious fetal problems is devastating to both moms and dads, for women spe-
cifically—perhaps because they are carrying the child inside—it may be more traumatic
to get this news during pregnancy than at birth (Fonseca, Nazare, & Canavarro, 2014).
The summary timeline spanning these pages shows these procedures and charts
the landmark events of prenatal development and pregnancy. I cannot emphasize
strongly enough that giving birth to a baby with serious birth defects is rare. That is
not true of the topic I turn to now—problems in conceiving a child.
Infertility and New Reproductive Technologies

I’ll never forget the comment my sister made . . . when I was about 13. I said, “I’m a
woman because I have my period” . . . . And she said, “You are not a woman until you
have a baby” (from a woman who after years of infertility adopted a child).
(quoted in Loftus & Androit, 2012, p. 23)
According to Psalm 127:3, “Children are a heritage unto the Lord and the fruit of his
womb is His Reward.” So why didn’t I get this gift? I asked myself over and over if I was
being punished.
(quoted in Ferland and Caron, 2013, p. 183)
These quotations have an ageless quality. Since biblical times, humanity has equated
womanhood with bearing a child. The message that “being barren” is a terrible,
First trimester Second trimester Third trimester

(month 1–month 3) (month 4–month 6) (month 7–month 9)
PREGNANCY Morning sickness, tiredness, and Woman looks pregnant. Quickening Woman gets very large and
other unpleasant symptoms may occurs (around week 18). Mother can anxiously waits for birth.
occur; miscarriage is a worry. feel intensely bonded to baby.
TOOLS OF Ultrasound Ultrasound Ultrasound

DISCOVERY Blood tests Amniocentesis (around week 15)
Chorionic villus sampling (CVS)
around week 10
female fate is an underlying message beginning in Genesis. When his beloved wife
Sarah couldn’t get pregnant, the Biblical patriarch Abraham felt compelled to “pro-
create” with a substitute wife.
Infertility—the inability to conceive a child after a year of unprotected inter- infertility The inability to
course—is far from rare. In affluent nations, it affects an estimated 1 in 6 couples. conceive after a year of
unprotected sex. (Includes
In poor countries, the statistics may be as high as 1 in 4. Moreover, infertility rates the inability to carry a child
have been rising over the past half-century, due to sexually transmitted diseases in the to term.)
developing world and the fact that so many developed world women today are delay-
ing childbearing to their thirties and beyond (Petraglia, Serour, & Chapron, 2013).
While infertility can affect women (and men) of every age, just as with miscar-
riage and Down syndrome—as we know from the standard phrase, “the ticking of the
biological clock”—getting pregnant is far more difficult at older ages. Within the first
six months of trying, roughly 3 out of 4 women in their twenties conceives. At age 40,
only 1 out of 5 achieves that goal (Turkington & Alper, 2001). Because of their more
complicated anatomy, many of us assume infertility is usually a “female” problem.
Not so! Male issues—which can vary from low sperm motility to varicose veins in the
testicles—are equally likely to be involved (Turkington & Alper, 2001).
Infertility puts stress on both partners. Still, as the quotes at the beginning of
this section suggest, this life trauma is apt to hit women hardest (Teskereci & Oncel,
2013). Although they are more immune from feelings of having personally failed
(Herrera, 2013), males have pressures to prove their manhood by fathering a child.
In one Danish questionnaire study, almost 1 in 3 patients at a male fertility clinic
confessed that their condition affected their sense of masculinity and self-esteem
(Mikkelsen, Madsen, & Humaidan, 2013).
The impact varies in intensity, depending on one’s culture. In places like Iran,
where not being able to bear a child is sometimes an accepted reason for divorce
(more about this in Chapter 11), infertility can leave a woman shunned by family and
friends (Behboodi-Moghamdam and others, 2013). There may be a feeling of being
socially isolated, even in the liberal West. Imagine going to dinner parties and needing
to listen quietly as everyone at the table bonds around the joys and trials of having kids.
And, when you are in these situations, do you discuss your situation, or clam
up? Revealing your problem to parents—especially those who are anxious for a
grandchild—demands planning: As one woman reported: “They (my husband’s par-
ents) live over 3 hours away and we didn’t want to start the conversation over the
phone. And so we went to visit” (quoted in Bute, 2013 p. 172).
Does telling people help? If, and only if, you have a caring, social-support system,
you may feel relieved by being upfront: “Yes, I’m trying to get pregnant but it’s not
working, Mom” (Martins and others, 2013). But, the bottom-line message is that,
in coping with infertility, having a supportive partner matters most (Darwiche and
others, 2013). Read this lovely comment taken from another interview study con-
ducted with long-time infertile women:
When I told him (my second husband) when we were dating that I could not have
children, he said, “If god wanted me to have kids, he would have made me fall in love
with a woman who could have them.”
(quoted in Ferland & Caron, 2013, p. 186)
Just as with the Biblical patriarch Abraham, whose decision to stay with Sarah is an
ageless model for marital love, infertility can offer a chance to demonstrate a person’s
loving commitment to a mate.
Today, communicating collaboratively around fertility issues is essential, as sci-
ence offers couples so many options to help fulfill the quest to have a (partly) biologi-
cal child.
INTERVENTIONS: Exploring ART

For females, there are treatments to attack every problem on the reproductive chain
(see the illustration in Figure 2.10)—from fertility drugs to stimulate ovulation, to
hormonal supplements to foster implantation; from surgery to help clean out the
uterus and the fallopian tubes, to artificial insemination (inserting the sperm into the
woman’s uterus through a syringe). Males may take medications or undergo surgery to
increase the quality and motility of the sperm. Then there is that ultimate approach:
assisted reproductive assisted reproductive technology (ART).
technology (ART) Any Assisted reproductive technology refers to any strategy in which the egg is fertil-
infertility treatment in which
the egg is fertilized outside
ized outside the womb. The most widely used ART procedure is in vitro fertilization
the womb. (IVF). After the woman is given fertility drugs (which stimulate multiple ovulations),
in vitro fertilization An
her eggs are harvested and put in a laboratory dish, along with the partner’s sperm, to
infertility treatment in which be fertilized. A few days later, the fertilized eggs are inserted into the uterus. Then,
conception occurs outside the couple anxiously waits to find out if the cells have implanted in the uterine wall.
the womb; the developing In vitro fertilization, initially developed to bypass blocked fallopian tubes, has
cell mass is then inserted
into the woman’s uterus so
spawned amazing variations. A sperm may be injected directly into the ovum if it
that pregnancy can occur. cannot penetrate the surface on its own. The woman may use a donor egg—one from
another woman— in order to conceive. Or, she may go to a sperm bank to utilize a
donor sperm. The fertilized eggs may be inserted into a “carrier womb”—a surrogate
mother, who carries the couple’s genetic offspring to term.
Imagine the emotions that can arise when another person is carrying your
baby, or if the child you are carrying has another woman’s (or man’s) genes. And,
Fallopian tubes are blocked No ovulation
figure 2.10: Some possible

missteps on the path to
reproduction: In this diagram,
you can see some problems that Implantation is difficult
may cause infertility in women. Implantation is to maintain because the
You can also use it to review difficult because of levels of pregnancy
the ovulation-to-implantation uterine scarring hormones are too low
sequence.
consider the expense of these added “pregnancy players.” As the cost of soliciting
a donor egg can be as high as $30,000, and fees to the donor vary from $5,000
to $15,000, an ART investment can top $40,000—and that’s before each roughly
$12,000 round of treatments even begins (See Jaffe & Diamond, 2011.)!
Now, imagine enduring the invasive techniques used to harvest and insert the
eggs, and managing your monthly anguish if a pregnancy doesn’t occur. According to
2012 U.S. data, the odds of a woman under age 35 getting pregnant after a round of in
vitro treatments was less than fifty/fifty. Over age 42, success rates per cycle slid down
to less than 1 in 10 (Society for Assisted Reproductive Technologies, retrieved 2014).
Critics emphasize the headaches (and heartaches) involved in ART; the pain,
expense, and the chance of miscarrying if many eggs take (often to counter this risk, doc-
tors engage in a procedure gently named “fetal reduction”); the virtual certainty of hav-
ing fragile, small babies when several conceptions come to term (Gentile, 2014; Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), retrieved 2014); or the issues attached to
third-party arrangements: (“Should I meet my egg or sperm donor?” “Do I tell my child
this person exists?”) (Johnson, 2013). In nations such as Israel—which has the highest
ART rates in the world—people argue about whether the government should fund this
procedure for women “simply” for wanting a second or third child (Gooldin, 2013).
These complaints ignore the gift ART provides. This landmark technology has
given thousands of infertile couples their only chance to have a biological child:
“I could never have accomplished all of this myself,” gushed one grateful Taiwanese
woman. Another said: “I no longer felt pitiful. . . . My child represents the continua-
tion of my life” (quoted in Lin, Tsai, and Lai, 2013, p. 194).

1. Teratogen A caused limb malformations. Teratogen B caused developmental disorders.
Teratogen A wreaked its damage during the___________ stage of prenatal develop-
ment and was taken during the____________ trimester of pregnancy, while teratogen
B probably did its damage during the ___________stage and was taken during the
__________ trimester.
2. Seto and Brandon’s mothers contracted rubella (German measles) during different
weeks in their first trimester of pregnancy. Seto has heart problems; Brandon has hear-
ing problems. Which teratogenic principle is illustrated here?
3. Monique is planning to become pregnant and asks her physician if it will be okay for
her to have a glass of wine with dinner each night. What would her doctor answer if
Monique lived in the United States? What might the doctor say if Monique lived in
France?
4. Imagine that in 2016, a tornado hits Nashville, Tennessee. Based on the fetal program-
ming research, which two predictions might you make about babies who were in-utero
during that time?
a. They might be at higher risk of being born small.
b. They might be at higher risk of developing premature heart disease.
c. They might be at higher risk of being very thin throughout life.
5. Latasha gives birth to a child with Down syndrome, while Jennifer gives birth to
a child with cystic fibrosis. Which woman should be more worried about having
another child with that condition, and why?
6. To a friend who is thinking of choosing between chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and
amniocentesis, mention the advantages and disadvantages of each procedure.
7. Jennifer and Brad are considering ART, after years of unsuccessful fertility treatments.
First describe some pros and cons of this procedure. According to the text, what force
is most critical in determining how well Jennifer has been coping with her troubles
getting pregnant?
Now let’s look at what happens when these wished-for

Dilation pregnancies—or any pregnancies—reach the final step:
exploring the miracle of birth.
Birth
During the last weeks of pregnancy, the fetus’s head drops
lower into the uterus. On their weekly visits to the health-
care provider, women, such as Kim in the opening chapter
vignette, may be told, “It should be any minute now.” The
uterus begins to contract as it prepares for birth. The cervix
thins out and softens under the weight of the child. Anticipa-
Crowning tion builds . . . and then—she waits!
I am 39 weeks and desperate for some sign that labor is
near, but so far NOTHING—no softening of the cervix, no
contractions, and the baby has not dropped—the idea of
two more weeks makes me want to SCREAM!!!
What sets off labor? One hypothesis is that the trigger is
a hormonal signal that the fetus sends to the mother’s brain.
Once it’s officially under way, labor proceeds through three
stages.
Birth Stage 1: Dilation and Effacement

This first stage of labor is the most arduous. The thick cer-
vix, which has held in the expanding fetus for so long, has
finished its job. Now it must efface, or thin out, and dilate,
or widen from a tiny gap about the size of a dime to the
width of a coffee mug or a medium-sized bowl of soup. This
transformation is accomplished by contractions—muscular,
wavelike batterings against the uterine floor. The uterus is
far stronger than a boxer’s biceps. Even at the beginning of
labor, the contractions put about 30 pounds of pressure on
the cervix to expand to its cuplike shape.
The contractions start out slowly, perhaps 20 to 30 min-
utes apart. They become more frequent and painful as the
figure 2.11: Labor and cervix more rapidly opens up. Sweating, nausea, and intense pain can accompany
childbirth: In the first stage of
labor, the cervix dilates; then, the final phase—as the closely spaced contractions reach a crescendo, and the baby
in the second stage, the baby’s is poised for the miracle of birth (see Figure 2.11).
head emerges and the baby is
born.
Stage 2: Birth
The fetus descends through the uterus and enters the vagina, or birth canal. Then,
as the baby’s scalp appears (an event called crowning), parents get their first exciting
glimpse of this new life. The shoulders rotate; the baby slowly slithers out, to be cap-
tured and cradled as it enters the world. The prenatal journey has ended; the journey
of life is about to begin.
Stage 3: The Expulsion of the Placenta

In the ecstasy of the birth, the final event is almost unnoticed. The placenta and other
supporting structures must be pushed out. Fully expelling these materials is essential
to avoid infection and to help the uterus return to its pre-pregnant state.
Threats at Birth
Just as with pregnancy, a variety of missteps may happen during this landmark passage
into life: problems with the contraction mechanism; the inability of the cervix to fully
dilate; deviations from the normal head-down position as the fetus descends and posi-
tions itself for birth (this atypical positioning, with feet, buttocks, or knees first, is called
a breech birth); difficulties stemming from the position of the placenta or the umbili-
cal cord as the baby makes its way into the world. Today, these in-transit troubles are
easily surmounted through obstetrical techniques. This was not true in the past.
Birth Options, Past and Present

For most of human history, pregnancy was a grim nine-month march to an uncertain
end (Kitzinger, 2000; Wertz & Wertz, 1989). The eighteenth-century New England
preacher Cotton Mather captured the emotions of his era when, on learning that a
parish woman was pregnant, he thundered, “Your death has entered into you!” Not
only were there the hazards involved in getting the baby to emerge, but a raging
infection called childbed fever could also set in and kill a new mother (and her child)
within days.
Women had only one another or lay midwives to rely on during this frighten-
ing time. So birth was a social event. Friends and relatives flocked around, perhaps
Public Domain. Maygrier, Jacques Pierre, 1771-1835, author.

traveling miles to offer comfort when the woman’s due date drew near. Doctors were
of little help, because they could not view the female anatomy directly. In fact, due
to their clumsiness (using primitive forceps to yank the baby out) and their tendency
to spread childbed fever by failing to wash their hands, eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century doctors often made the situation worse (Wertz & Wertz, 1989).
Techniques gradually improved toward the end of the nineteenth century, but
few wealthy women dared enter hospitals to deliver, as these institutions were hot-
beds of contagious disease. Then, with the early-twentieth-century conquest of many
infectious diseases, it became fashionable for affluent middle-class women to have a
“modern” hospital birth. By the late 1930s, the science of obstetrics gained the upper
hand, fetal mortality plummeted, and birth became genuinely safe (Leavitt, 1986). By This classic nineteenth-century
the turn of this century, in the developed world, this conquest was virtually complete. illustration shows just why early
doctors were clueless about how
In 1997, there were only 329 pregnancy-related maternal deaths in the United States
to help pregnant women. They
(Miniño and others, 2002). could not view the relevant body
This watershed medical victory was accompanied by discontent. The natural parts!
process of birth had become an impersonal event. Women protested the assembly-
line hospital procedures; the fact that they were strapped down and sedated in order
to give birth. They eagerly devoured books describing the new Lamaze technique,
which taught controlled breathing, allowed partner involvement, and promised
undrugged births. During the women’s movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, the
natural-childbirth movement arrived.
Natural Childbirth
Natural childbirth, a vague label for returning the birth experience to its “true” natural
state, is now embedded in the labor and birth choices available to women today. To avoid
the hospital experience, some women choose to deliver in homelike birthing centers.
They may use certified midwives rather than doctors, and draw on the help of a doula, a
nonmedical pregnancy and labor coach. Women who are committed to the most natural
experience may give birth in their own homes. (Table 2.4 on page 62 describes some
natural birth options, as well as some commonly used medical procedures.)
natural childbirth A
At the medical end of the spectrum, as Table 2.4 shows, lies the arsenal of phy- general term for labor
sician interventions designed to promote a less painful and safer birth. Let’s now and birth without medical
pause for a minute to look at the last procedure in the table: the cesarean section. interventions.
Table 2.4: The Major Players and Interventions in Labor and Birth
Natural-Birth Providers and Options

Certified midwife: Certified by the American College of Nurse Midwives, this health-care professional is trained to handle low-risk
deliveries, with obstetrical backup should complications arise.
• Plus: Offers a birth experience with fewer medical interventions and more humanistic care.
• Minus: If the delivery suddenly becomes high risk, an obstetrician may be needed on the scene.
Doula: Mirroring the “old-style” female experience, this person provides loving emotional and physical support during labor, offering
massage and help in breathing and relaxation, but not performing actual health-care tasks, such as vaginal exams. (Doulas have no
medical training.)
• Plus: Provides caring support from an advocate.
• Minus: Drives up the birth expense.
Lamaze method: Developed by the French physician Ferdinand Lamaze, this popular method prepares women for childbirth by teaching
pain management through relaxation and breathing exercises.
• Plus: Offers a shared experience with a partner (who acts as the coach) and the sense of approaching the birth experience with
greater control.
• Minus: Doesn’t necessarily work for pain control “as advertised”!
Bradley method: Developed by Robert Bradley in the 1940s, this technique is designed for women interested in having a completely
natural, nonmedicated birth. It stresses good diet and exercise, partner coaching, and deep relaxation.
• Plus: Tailored for women firmly committed to forgoing any medical interventions.
• Minus: May set women up for disappointment if things don’t go as planned and they need those interventions.
Medical Interventions
Episiotomy: The cutting of the perineum or vagina to widen that opening and allow the fetus to emerge (not recommended unless there
is a problem delivery).*
• Plus: May prevent a fistula, a vaginal tear into the rectal opening, which produces chronic incontinence and pain.
• Minus: May increase the risk of infection after delivery and hinder healing.
Epidural: This most popular type of anesthesia used during labor involves injecting a painkilling medication into a small space outside
the spinal cord to numb the woman’s body below the waist. Epidurals are now used during the active stage of labor—effectively
dulling much of the pain—and during c-sections, so that the woman is awake to see her child during the first moments after birth.
• Plus: Combines optimum pain control with awareness; because the dose can be varied, the woman can see everything, and she has
enough feeling to push during vaginal deliveries.
• Minus: Can slow the progress of labor in vaginal deliveries, can result in headaches, and is subject to errors if the needle is
improperly inserted. Concerns also center on the fact that the newborn may emerge “groggy.”
Electronic fetal monitor: This device is used to monitor the fetus’s heart rate and alert the doctor to distress. With an external monitor,
the woman wears two belts around her abdomen. With an internal monitor, an electrode is inserted through the cervix to record the
heart rate through the fetal scalp.
• Plus: Shown to be useful in high-risk pregnancies.
• Minus: Can give false readings, leading to a premature c-section. Also, its superiority over the lower-tech method of listening to the
baby’s heartbeat with a stethoscope has not been demonstrated.
C-section: The doctor makes an incision in the abdominal wall and the uterus and removes the fetus manually.
• Plus: Is life-saving to the mother and baby when a vaginal delivery cannot occur (as when the baby is too big to emerge or the
placenta is obstructing the cervix). Also is needed when the mother has certain health problems or when the fetus is in serious
distress.
• Minus: As a surgical procedure, it is more expensive than vaginal delivery and can lead to more discomfort after birth.
*Late-twentieth-century research has suggested that the once-common U.S. practice of routinely performing episiotomies had no advantages and actually
hindered recovery from birth. Therefore, in recent decades, the episiotomy rate in the United States has declined.
The Cesarean Section

cesarean section (c-section) A cesarean section (or c-section), in which a surgeon makes incisions in the woman’s
A method of delivering a abdominal wall and enters the uterus to remove the baby, is the lifesaving final solu-
baby surgically by extracting
the baby through incisions in
tion for labor and delivery problems. This operation exploded in popularity during
the woman’s abdominal wall the 1970s. By the turn of this century, c-sections accounted for an astonishing 1 in 3
and in the uterus. U.S. deliveries (Martin and others, 2005).
Some c-sections are planned to occur before labor because the physician knows
in advance that there are dangers in a vaginal birth. If the woman is affluent, she can
sometimes choose to have a c-section rather than go through labor on her own. As
one South African woman graphically explained, “I don’t want to push and sweat and
moan and tear . . . I don’t want to lie and pooh in front of everyone” (Chadwick &
Foster, 2013).
Most c-sections, however, occur when there are

difficulties once labor has begun. To what degree
are these procedures unnecessary, due to health care
workers fears of legal liability (“I might get sued unless
I get this baby out”)? We don’t know. What we do
know is that the best-laid birth plans may not work
out, and some women can feel upset if they had been
counting on having a child “the natural way”:
Mary Gascho/Getty Images

“I sort of feel like I failed in the birthing arena,” said
one Australian woman . . . “Logically I knew that the
c-section was necessary, but somehow I think if I was
slim . . . and had not eaten as much ice cream that
would not have happened.”
(quoted in Malacrida & Boulton, 2014, p. 18)
Today, women have a variety of
Finally, while affluent women may bemoan their c-sections, the real tragedy is the birth choices in the developed
horrifying lack of access to high-quality medical interventions in the least-developed world. The woman in this photo
regions of the world. In 2010, an estimated 287,000 people died of pregnancy-related is having a water birth.
causes, typically postpartum hemorrhage, infections, or pregnancy blood-pressure com-
plications that would prompt an immediate c-section in the developed world (Souza
and others, 2013; Buttenheim & Asch, 2013). While some relatively poor nations—for
instance Iran, Honduras, Thailand, and most central European countries—have made
great progress in reducing maternal mortality, others have lost ground. Perhaps due to
its chronic wars, child marriage, and the prevalence of HIV (Raj & Boehmer, 2013),
sub-Saharan Africa had worse maternal death statistics in 2010 than in 1990 (Lawson &
Keirse, 2013)! So let’s keep in mind that billions of developing world mothers-to-be still
approach birth with a more basic concern than their Western counterparts. Their wor-
ries are not, “Should I choose a c-section?” It’s not, “What birth method should I use?”
Unfortunately, all too often, it’s still: “Will I survive my baby’s birth?” (Lester, Benfield,
& Fathalla, 2010; Potts, Prata, & Sahin-Hodoglugil, 2010).

1. Melissa says that her contractions are coming every 10 minutes now. Sonia has just
seen her baby’s scalp emerge. In which stages of labor are Melissa and Sonia?
2. To a friend interested in having the most natural birth possible, spell out some of these
options.
3. C-sections may sometimes be over-/under used in the developed world; but life-saving
medical interventions are underutilized/overutilized in poor areas of the globe.
The Newborn
Now that we have examined how the baby arrives in the world, let’s focus on that tiny
arrival. What happens after the baby is born? What dangers do babies face after birth?
Tools of Discovery: Testing Newborns

The first step after the newborn enters the world is to evaluate its health in the deliv-
ery room with a checklist called the Apgar scale. The child’s heart rate, muscle tone, Apgar scale A quick test
respiration, reflex response, and color are rated on a scale of 0 to 2 at one minute and used to assess a just-
delivered baby’s condition by
then again at five minutes after birth. Newborns with five-minute Apgar scores over 7 measuring heart rate, muscle
are usually in excellent shape. However, if the score stays below 7, the child must be tone, respiration, reflex
monitored or resuscitated and kept in the hospital for a while. response, and color.
Threats to Development Just After Birth

After their babies have been checked out medically, most mothers and fathers eagerly
take their robust, full-term baby home. But other parents hover at the hospital and
anxiously wait. The reason, most often, is that their child has arrived in the world too
small and/or too soon.
low birth weight (LBW) A

Born Too Small and Too Soon
body weight at birth of less In 2010, about 15 million babies were born preterm, or premature—they entered the
than 5 1/2 pounds. world more than three weeks early (Chang and others, 2013). In the United States,
very low birth weight (VLBW) about 1 in every 11 babies are categorized as low birth weight. They arrive in the world
A body weight at birth of less weighing less than 5 1/2 pounds. Babies can be designated low birth weight because
than 3 1/4 pounds. they either arrived before their due date or did not grow sufficiently in the womb.
neonatal intensive care unit Earlier in this chapter, I highlighted smoking and maternal stress as risk factors
(NICU) A special hospital for going into labor early and/or having a low birth weight baby. But, uncontrollable
unit that treats at-risk
newborns, such as low-birth- influences—such as an infection that prematurely ruptures the amniotic sac, or a cer-
weight and very-low-birth- vix that cannot withstand the pressure of the growing fetus’s weight—also can cause
weight babies. this too-early or excessively small arrival into life.
You might assume that prematurity has declined in tandem
with our pregnancy medical advances. Not so! Ironically, the same
cutting-edge procedures discussed earlier, such as c-sections on
demand and ART, boost the probability of a baby leaving the
© Syracuse Newspapers/Michelle Gabel/The Image Works
womb early and being more frail (Chang and others, 2013).
Many early arrivals are fine. The vulnerable newborns are the 1.4
percent classified as very low birth weight, babies weighing less than 3
1/4 pounds. When these infants are delivered, often very prematurely,
they are immediately rushed to a major medical center to enter a spe-
cial hospital unit for frail newborns—the neonatal intensive care unit.
At 24 weeks my water broke, and I was put in the hospital
and given drugs. I hung on, and then, at week 26, gave birth.
Peter was sent by ambulance to Children’s Hospital. When
I first saw my son, he had needles in every point of his body
This baby has an excellent Apgar score. Notice his and was wrapped in plastic to keep his skin from drying out.
healthy, robust appearance.
Peter’s intestines had a hole in them, and the doctor had
to perform an emergency operation. But Peter made it! . . .
Now it’s four months later, and my husband and I are about to
bring our miracle baby home.
Peter was lucky. He escaped the fate of the more than 1 million
babies who die each year as a consequence of being very premature
(Chang and others, 2013). Is this survival story purchased at the price
of a life of pain? Enduring health problems are a serious risk with
newborns such as Peter, born too soon and excessively small. Study
after study suggests low birth weight can compromise brain develop-
ment (Rose and others, 2014; Yang and others, 2014). It may impair
© epa/Corbis
preschoolers’ growth and motor abilities (Raz and others, 2014). It

can limit intellectual and social skills throughout childhood (Murray
and others, 2014) and the adolescent years (Healy and others, 2013;
This baby weighing less than Yang and others, 2014)—in addition, as you know, to possibly promoting overweight and
one pound was incredibly lucky early age-related disease. And what about the costs? Astronomical sums are required to
to make it out of the womb
keep frail babies such as Peter alive—expenses that can bankrupt families and are often
alive—but she is at high risk for
having enduring problems as borne by society as a whole (Caplan, Blank, & Merrick, 1992).
she travels through life. When a child is born at the cusp of viability—at around 22 weeks—doctors,
not infrequently, refuse to vigorously intervene (Duffy & Reynolds, 2011; Ramsay &
Santella, 2011). But survival rates vary, depending on the individual baby—and very
important—that child’s access to high-quality care (Sjörs, 2010). Plus, due to dra-
matic neonatal advances occurring during the l980s, many more small babies are now
living to adulthood unimpaired (Baron & Rey-

Casserly, 2010). I have vividly seen these statistics Afghanistan
in operation when, in recent years, a student Niger
proudly informed our class: “I weighed less than Haiti
2 pounds at birth” or “I was born at the twenty- United States
sixth week of life.” Canada
Even when they do have disabilities, these United Kingdom
tiny babies can have a full life. Listen to my Australia
former student Marcia, whose 15-ounce body Israel
at birth would have easily fit in the palm of
Netherlands
your hand—and whom no doctor believed was
Spain
capable of surviving. Marcia, as the Experienc-
Norway
ing the Lifespan box describes, is partially deaf,
blind in one eye, and suffers from the disorder Japan
cerebral palsy. But rarely have I met someone so 0 10 25 40 55 70 85 100 115 130 145 160
Infant mortality rate
upbeat, joyous, and fully engaged in the world. (deaths per 1,000 live births)
The Unthinkable: Infant Mortality

In the developed world, prematurity is the figure 2.12: Deaths of infants under one year of age per 1,000 live
primary cause of infant mortality—the term births in selected countries (estimated data for 2014): Infant mortal-
for deaths occurring within the first year of ity rates vary tremendously around the globe. Notice the huge disparities
life. The good news is that in affluent nations, between affluent and least-developed countries. Also notice that the United
States has more than twice the infant mortality rate of Norway and Japan.
infant mortality is at an historic low (see Figure Data from: World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, Retrieved August 7, 2014.
2.12). The bad news is the dismal standing of
the United States compared to many other industrialized countries. Why does the infant mortality Death during
United States rank a humiliating forty-sixth in this basic marker of a society’s health? the first year of life.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Marcia’s Story
The service elevator at Peck Hall takes forever to get there, I’m not sure exactly what week I was born, but it wasn’t
then moves in extra-slow motion up to the third floor. If, as really all that early; maybe two months at the most. My
sometimes happens, it’s out of service, you are out of luck. problem was being incredibly small. They think my mom
It’s about a 30-minute drive from my dorm in the motorized might have gotten an infection that made me born less
than one pound. The doctors were sure I’d never make it.
wheelchair, including the ramps. When it rains, there’s the
But I proved everyone wrong. Once I got out of the ICU
muck—slowing you up—keeping you wet. So I try to leave and, at about eight months, went into convulsions, and
at least an hour to get to class. then had a stroke, everyone thought that would be the
My goal is to be at least five minutes early so I don’t end again. They were wrong. I want to keep proving them
disrupt everything as I move the chair, back and forth, wrong as long as I live.
back and forth, to be positioned right in front. Because
I’ve had tons of physical therapy, and a few surgeries; so
my bad eye wanders to the side, you may not think I can I can get up from a chair and walk around a room. But it
read the board. That’s no problem, although it takes me took me until about age five to begin to speak or take
weeks to get through a chapter in your book! The CP my first step. The worst time of my life was elementary
[cerebral palsy], as you know, affects my vocal cords, school—the kids who make fun of you; call you a freak.
making it hard to get a sentence out. But I won’t be In high school, and especially here at MTSU, things are
ashamed. I am determined to participate in class. I have much better. I’ve made close friends, both in the disabil-
my note-taker. I have my hearing amplifier turned up to ity community and outside. Actually, I’m a well-known
figure, especially since I’ve been here so long! Everyone
catch every sound. My mind is on full alert. I’m set to go.
on campus greets me with a smile as I scoot around.
I usually can take about two courses each semester—
sometimes one. I’m careful to screen my teachers to In my future? I’d love to get married and adopt a kid. OK,
make sure they will work with me. I’m almost 30 and still I know that’s going to be hard. Because of my speech
only a junior, but I’m determined to get my degree. I’d problem, I know you’re thinking it’s going to be hard to
like to be a counselor and work with CP kids. I know all be a counselor, too. But I’m determined to keep trying,
about it—the troubles, the physical pain, what people and take every day as a blessing. Life is very special. I’ve
are like. always been living on borrowed time.
(Central Intelligence Agency [CIA], 2014.) The main cause lies in income inequal-
ities, stress, poor health practices, and limited access to high-quality prenatal care.
The socioeconomic link to pregnancy and birth problems is particularly troubling.
In every affluent nation—but especially the United States—poverty puts women at
higher risk of delivering prematurely or having their baby die before age 1. So, sadly,
I must end this chapter on a downbeat note. At this moment in history, our wealthiest
nations are falling short of “cherishing” each woman during this landmark journey
of life.
A Few Final Thoughts on Biological

Determinism and Biological Parents
But I also can’t leave you with the downbeat impres-
sion that what happens during pregnancy is destiny. Yes,
researchers now believe events “in-utero” play a role in
how we develop. But a basic message of this book is that
human beings are resilient. A quality environment matters
greatly in shaping our life path (and even can change our
AP Photo/Watertown Daily Times, John Hart
biology) well into old age.

Now that we are on the topic of biology, I feel com-
pelled to highlight a personal point, as an adoptive mom.
In this chapter, you learned about the feelings of attach-
ment (or mother-child bond) that often begin before birth.
But I can assure you that to bond with a baby, you don’t
need to personally carry that child inside or share the same
Families come in many forms,
set of genes. So, just a reminder for later chapters when we
and the love you have for all scan the beautiful mosaic of families on our landscape today: The bottom-line bless-
your adopted children is no ing is being a parent, not being pregnant. Parenting is far different from personally
different than if you personally giving birth!
gave birth. Take it from me as an
adoptive mom!
The next two chapters turn directly to the joys of babyhood, as we catch up with
Kim and her daughter Elissa, and track development during the first two years of life.

1. Baby David gets a two-minute Apgar score of 8; at five minutes, his score is 9. What
does this mean?
2. Rates of premature births have risen/declined due to ART and low birth weight always
causes serious problems/can produce problems/has no effects on later development.
3. Bill says, “Pregnancy and birth are very safe today.” George says, “Hey, you are very
wrong!” Who is right?
a. Bill, because worldwide maternal mortality is now very low.
b. George, because birth is still unsafe around the world.
c. Both are partly correct: Birth is typically very safe in the developed world, but
maternal and infant mortality remains unacceptably high in the poorest regions of
the globe.
4. Sally brags about the U.S. infant mortality rate, while Samantha is horrified by it. First
make Sally’s case and then Samantha’s, referring to the chapter points.
5. You want to set up a program to reduce prematurity and neonatal mortality among
low-income women. List some steps that you might take.
SUMMARY
The First Step: Fertilization In general, the embryonic stage is the time of greatest
vulnerability, although toxins can affect the developing brain
Every culture cherishes pregnant women. Some build in rituals during the second and third trimesters also, producing devel-
to announce the baby after a certain point during pregnancy, opmental disorders. While there is typically a threshold level
and many use charms to ward off fetal harm. Pregnancy is a time beyond which damage can occur, teratogens have unpredictable
of intense mixed emotions—joyous expectations coupled with effects. Damage may not show up until decades later.
uneasy fears.
Any recreational drug is potentially teratogenic. Smoking dur-
The female reproductive system includes the uterus and its neck, ing pregnancy is a risk factor for having a smaller-than-optimal-
the cervix; the fallopian tubes; and the ovaries, housing the size baby. Drinking excessively during pregnancy can produce
ova. To promote fertilization, the optimum time for intercourse fetal alcohol syndrome, or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. If
is when the egg is released. Hormones program ovulation and the woman has poor coping abilities, stress during pregnancy
all of the events of pregnancy. At intercourse, hundreds of mil- can produce premature labor. Fetal programming research sug-
lions of sperm, produced in the testes, are ejaculated, but only a gests that societal upheavals experienced during pregnancy can
small fraction make their way to the fallopian tubes to reach the have enduring effects, by producing small babies and promoting
ovum. When the single victorious sperm penetrates the ovum, weight gain and premature, age-related chronic diseases.
the two 23 chromosome pairs (composed of DNA, segmented
into genes) unite to regain the normal complement of 46 that The second major cause of prenatal problems is genuinely
form our body’s cells. “genetic”—chromosomal problems and single-gene diseases.
Down syndrome is one of the few disorders in which babies born
Prenatal Development with an abnormal number of chromosomes survive. Although
Down syndrome, caused by having an extra chromosome on pair
During the first stage of pregnancy, the two-week-long germinal
21, produces intellectual disability and other health problems,
phase, the rapidly dividing zygote travels to the uterus, becomes
people with this condition do live fulfilling lives.
a blastocyst, and faces the next challenge—implantation. The
second stage of pregnancy, the embryonic stage, begins after With single-gene disorders, a specific gene passed down from
implantation and ends around week 8. During this intense six- one’s parents, causes the disease. In dominant disorders, a per-
week period, the neural tube forms and all the major body son who harbors a single copy of the gene gets ill, and each child
structures are constructed—according to the proximodistal, born to this couple (one of whom has the disease) has a fifty-fifty
cephalocaudal, and mass-to-specific principles of development. chance of developing the condition. If the disorder is recessive,
both parents carry a single copy of the “problem gene” that is
During the third stage of pregnancy, the fetal stage, development
not expressed in real life, but they have a 1-in-4 chance of giving
is slower paced. The hallmarks of this stage are enormous body
birth to a child with that disease (that is, a son or daughter with
growth and construction of the brain as the neurons migrate to
two copies of the gene). With sex-linked disorders, the problem
the top of the tube and differentiate. Another defining landmark
gene is recessive and lies on the X chromosome. If a mother car-
of this seven-month phase occurs around week 22, when the
ries a single copy of the gene, her daughters are spared (because
fetus can possibly be viable, that is, survive outside the womb
they have two Xs), but each male baby has a fifty-fifty risk of get-
if born.
ting the disease. Through advances in genetic testing, couples
(and individuals) can find out if they harbor the genes for many
Pregnancy diseases. Genetic testing poses difficult issues with regard to
The nine months of gestation, or pregnancy, are divided into whether people want to find out if they have incurable adult-
trimesters. The first trimester is often characterized by unpleas- onset diseases.
ant symptoms, such as morning sickness, and a relatively high
Couples at high risk for having a baby with a single-gene disor-
risk of miscarriage. The landmarks of the second trimester are
der (or any couple) may undergo genetic counseling to decide
looking clearly pregnant, experiencing quickening, and often
whether they should try to have a child. During pregnancy, tests,
feeling intensely emotionally connected to the child. During the
including the ultrasound, and more invasive procedures such
third trimester, the woman’s uterus gets very large, and she anx-
as chorionic villus sampling (during the first trimester) and
iously awaits the birth.
amniocentesis (during the second trimester) allow us to deter-
The emotional experience of being pregnant varies, depending mine the baby’s genetic fate.
on socioeconomic status and, most importantly, social support.
Infertility can be emotionally traumatic and socially isolating,
To really enjoy her pregnancy, a woman needs to feel cared about
especially for women because of their historic imperative to bear
and loved. Fathers, the neglected pregnancy partners, also feel
children. Problems getting pregnant are far from rare today, espe-
bonded to their babies too.
cially at older ages. The most radical intervention, assisted repro-
ductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), in
Threats to the Developing Baby which the egg is fertilized outside of the womb, is emotionally and
Rarely babies are born with a birth defect. One cause is terato- physically demanding, costly, and offers no guarantee of having
gens, toxins from the outside that exert their damage during the a baby. However, this landmark procedure has given couples who
sensitive period for the development of a particular body part. could never have conceived the chance to have a biological child.
Birth The Newborn

Labor and birth consist of three stages. During the first stage After birth, the Apgar scale and other tests are used to assess the
of labor, contractions cause the cervix to efface and fully baby’s health. While most babies are healthy, low birth weight
dilate. During the second stage, birth, the baby emerges. Dur- can compromise development. Very-low-birth-weight infants are
ing the third stage, the placenta and supporting structures most apt to have enduring problems and need careful monitor-
are expelled. ing in the neonatal intensive care unit during their early weeks
or months of life.
For most of history, childbirth was life-threatening to both the
mother and the child. During the first third of the twentieth Infant mortality is a serious concern in the developing world.
century, birth became much safer. This victory set the stage for While rates of infant mortality are generally very low in devel-
the later-twentieth-century natural childbirth movement. Today oped world countries, the United States has a comparatively dis-
women in the developed world can choose from a variety of birth mal standing compared to other affluent countries on this basic
options, including cesarean sections. Impoverished, developing- health parameter. Even though the environment in the womb
world women do not have this kind of access or luxury of choices. (stress during pregnancy) can affect the baby, providing a high-
Their main concern is surviving the baby’s birth. quality environment shapes development at every life stage.
KEY TERMS
uterus, p. 36 placenta, p. 40 teratogen, p. 46 chorionic villus sampling

cervix, p. 36 embryonic stage, p. 40 sensitive period, p. 46 (CVS), p. 55
fallopian tube, neural tube, p. 40 developmental disorders, amniocentesis, p. 56
p. 36 neuron, p. 40 p. 48 infertility, p. 57
ovary, p. 36 proximodistal sequence, p. 40 fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), assisted reproductive
ovum, p. 36 p. 49 technology (ART), p. 58
cephalocaudal sequence,
fertilization, p. 36 p. 41 fetal programming research, in vitro fertilization (IVF),
p. 51 p. 58
ovulation, p. 36 mass-to-specific sequence,
p. 41 Down syndrome, p. 51 natural childbirth, p. 61
hormones, p. 36
fetal stage, p. 41 single-gene disorder, cesarean section (c-section),
testes, p. 37
p. 52 p. 62
chromosome, p. 38 age of viability, p. 42
dominant disorder, Apgar scale, p. 63
DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), umbilical cord, p. 42
p. 52
p. 38 amniotic sac, p. 42 low birth weight (LBW),
recessive disorder, p. 52 p. 64
gene, p. 38 gestation, p. 42
sex-linked single-gene very low birth weight (VLBW),
germinal stage, p. 39 trimester, p. 42 disorder, p. 52 p. 64
zygote, p. 39 miscarriage, p. 43 genetic testing, p. 55 neonatal intensive care unit
blastocyst, p. 39 quickening, p. 43 genetic counselor, p. 55 (NICU), p. 64
implantation, p. 39 birth defect, p. 46 ultrasound, p. 55 infant mortality, p. 65
ANSWERS TO Tying It All Together QUIZES
The First Step: Fertilization 3. Tell Tiffany that the best time to have intercourse is around
1. ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus; fertilization occurs in the the time of ovulation, as fertilization typically occurs when
fallopian tubes the ovum is in the upper part of the fallopian tube.
2. ovaries for female; testes for male 4. she is more apt to survive and less apt to be conceived.
Prenatal Development Amniocentesis is much safer and can show a fuller comple-
1. germinal; embryonic; fetal. Organs are formed during the ment of genetic disorders but must be performed in the sec-
embryonic stage. ond trimester—meaning she will have to undergo the trauma
of a full labor should she decide to end the pregnancy.
2. From the neural tube, a mass of cells differentiates during the
late embryonic phase. During the next few months, the cells 7. Cons: ART can be expensive, demands effort and time, has
ascend to the top of the neural tube, completing their migra- unpleasant physical symptoms, and the chance of actually
tion by week 25. In the final months of pregnancy, the neurons getting pregnant per cycle is small—especially for older
elongate and begin to assume their mature structure. women. Pros: ART gives women (and men) who could never
otherwise have a biological child a chance to have a baby
3. (a) mass to specific (b) cephalocaudal (c) proximodistal who is genetically theirs! The best predictor of Jennifer’s
4. Around 22–23 weeks coping well is having a supportive spouse.
Pregnancy Birth
1. In this second trimester, she will feel better physically and 1. Melissa is in stage 1, effacement and dilation of the cervix.
perhaps experience an intense sense of emotional con- Sonia is in stage 2, birth.
nectedness when she feels the baby move. During the first
2. “You might want to forgo any labor medications, and/or give
trimester she may have been very tired, perhaps felt faint,
birth in a birthing center under a midwife’s (and doula’s) care.
and had morning sickness.
Look into new options such as water births, and, if you are
2. Does she feel as though she is supported and loved? Does especially daring, consider giving birth at home.”
she have economic problems?
3. C-sections may sometimes be overused in the developed
3. You may come up with a host of interesting possibilities. world. But they are seriously underutilized in poor areas of
Here are a few of mine: Include fathers in all pregnancy and the globe.
birth educational materials the clinic provides; strongly
encourage men to be present during prenatal exams; alert The Newborn
female patients about the need to be sensitive to their 1. Baby David is in excellent health.
partners; set up a clinic-sponsored support group for
fathers-to-be. 2. Rates of premature births have risen due to ART; and low
birth weight can produce problems in later development.
Threats to the Developing Baby 3. c. While birth is very safe in the developed world, maternal
1. Teratogen A most likely caused damage during the embry- and infant mortality remain serious problems in the least-
onic stage of development and was taken during the first developed countries.
trimester of pregnancy. Teratogen B probably did its damage 4. Sally: The United States—like other developed countries—
during the fetal stage and was taken during the second or has made tremendous strides in conquering infant mortality.
third trimesters. Samantha: The fact that the United States has higher infant
2. Teratogens exert damage during the sensitive period for the mortality rates than many other developed countries is
development of a particular organ. incredibly distressing.
3. A doctor in the United States would advocate no alcohol, 5. You can come up with your own suggestions. Here are a few
while a physician in France might say a glass of wine is fine. of mine: Increase the number of nurse-practitioners and
obstetrician-gynecologists in poor urban and rural areas.
4. a & b. They might be at higher risk of being born small and of
Provide special monetary incentives to health-care providers
developing premature heart disease.
to treat low-income women. Offer special “healthy baby” ed-
5. Jennifer. Down syndrome is typically caused by an unlikely, ucational programs at schools, community centers, and local
random event. With cystic fibrosis, that single-gene recessive churches in low-income neighborhoods targeted for female
disorder, the mom (in this case, Jennifer) has a 1-in-4 chance teens. Make it easier for low-wage workers to actually see a
of giving birth to another child with that disease. health-care provider by providing incentives to employers.
6. Tell your friend that the plus of chorionic villus sampling Set up volunteer programs to visit isolated pregnant single
is finding out a child’s genetic fate in the first trimester. moms and provide social support. Target nutrition programs
However, this procedure is more dangerous, carrying a slight to low-income mothers-to-be (actually, this is the goal of the
risk of limb malformations and, possibly, miscarriage. WIC program, described in the next chapter).
© Nicole Hill/RubberBall/Age Fotostock
Infancy
This two-chapter part is devoted to infancy and toddlerhood (the period from
birth through age 2). How does a helpless newborn become a walking, talking,
loving child?
Chapter 3–Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development starts by offering

an overview of brain development, then explores those basic newborn states:
feeding, crying, and sleeping. Next, I chart sensory and motor development:
What do babies see? How do newborns develop from lying helplessly to being
able to walk? What can caregivers do to keep babies safe as they travel into the
world? Finally, I’ll offer an overview of infants’ evolving cognition and their first
PART II
steps toward language, the capacity that allows us to really enter the human
community.
Chapter 4–Infancy: Socioemotional Development looks at what makes

us human: our relationships. First, I’ll explore the attachment relationship
between caregiver and child, then examine poverty and day care. The final part
of this chapter focuses on toddlerhood—roughly from age 1 to 2 1/2. Toddlers
are intensely attached to their caregivers and passionate to be independent.
During this watershed age, when we are walking and beginning to talk, we first
learn the rules of the human world.
71
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
The Expanding Brain
Neural Pruning and Brain
Plasticity
Basic Newborn States

Eating
A Passion to Eradicate
Malnutrition: A Career in
Public Health
Crying
INTERVENTIONS: What Quiets a
Young Baby?
Sleeping
INTERVENTIONS: What Helps a
Baby Self-Soothe?
SCIENCE: SIDS
Sensory and Motor

Development
What Do Newborns See?
Expanding Body Size
Mastering Motor Milestones
INTERVENTIONS:
Baby-Proofing, the First
Person–Environment Fit
Cognition
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage
Critiquing Piaget
Tackling the Core of What
Makes Us Human: Infant
Social Cognition
Language: The Endpoint of

Infancy
Nature, Nurture, and the
Passion to Learn Language
Tracking Emerging Language
PhotoAlto/Anne-Sophie Bost/Getty Images

Infancy: Physical and
Cognitive Development
In Chapter 2 I talked to Kim at the beginning of the third trimester, anxiously waiting
for her child’s birth. Now, let’s pay her a visit and meet Elissa, her baby girl.
She’s been here for 5 months and 10 days, and I feel like she’s been here forever.
For me, it was love at first sight and, of course, the same for Jeff. But the real thrill is
watching a wonderful person emerge day by day. Take what’s happening now. At first,
she couldn’t care less, but about a month ago, it was like, “Wow, there’s a world out
there!” See that baby seat? Elissa can make the colored buttons flash by moving her
legs. When I put her in it, she bats her legs like crazy. She can’t get enough of those
lights and sounds. Now that she is finally able to reach, notice her hunger to grab
for everything and the way she looks at your face—like she can get into your soul.
Sometimes, I think she understands what I’m feeling . . . but I know she must be way
too young for this.
Elissa doesn’t cry much—nothing like other babies during the first three months.
Actually, I was worried. I asked the doctor whether there was something wrong. Cry-
ing is vital to communicating what you need! The same is true of sleeping. I’m almost
embarrassed to tell you that I have the only baby in history who has been regularly
giving her mom a good night’s sleep since she was 2 months old.
Breast-feeding is indescribable. It feels like I am literally making her grow. But,
here I also was concerned. Could I do this? What helped me persevere through the
painful first weeks was my supportive husband—and most important, the fact that
Jeff makes enough money to let me take off work for five months. I feel so sad for my
friend, Nora, who had to abandon this incredible experience when she needed to go
back to her job right after her son’s birth.
Pick her up. Feel what it’s like to hold her—how she melts into you. But notice how
she squirms to get away. It’s as if she is saying, “Mom, my agenda is to get moving into
the world.” I plan to YouTube every step now that she’s traveling into life.
A
t five months of age, Elissa has program development. Then, returning
reached a milestone. She is to infancy, I’ll chart those basic new-
poised to physically encounter born states—eating, crying, and sleep-
life. This chapter charts the transforma- ing—and track babies’ emerging vision
tion from lying helplessly to moving into and motor skills. The final sections of
the world and the other amazing physical this chapter tour cognition and emerg-
and cognitive changes that occur during ing language, the capacity that makes
infancy—that magic first two years of life. our species unique.
To set the context, I’ll first spell out
some brain changes (and principles) that
73
74 PART II Infancy
Setting the Context

What causes the remarkable changes—from seeing to walking to speaking—that
unfold during infancy? Answers come from scanning development in that master-
piece structure—the human brain.
The Expanding Brain

The cerebral cortex, the outer, furrowed mantle of the brain, is the site of every
conscious perception, action, and thought. With a surface area 10 times larger than
the monkey’s and 1,000 times larger than the rat’s, our cortex is what makes human
Peter Correz/Getty Images
beings different from any other species on earth.

Because of our immense cortex, humans are also unique in the amount of brain
growth that occurs outside of our womb. During the first four years of life, brain
volume quadruples (Stiles & Jernigan, 2010). It takes more than two decades for the
brain to fully mature. Actually, the cortex only starts taking over our behavior a few
What does this young baby months after birth.
see and understand about the
tremendous loving object he is
Recall from Chapter 2 that by the middle of the fetal period the cells that com-
facing? That is the mystery we pose the brain have migrated to the top of the neural tube. During the final months
will be exploring in this chapter. of pregnancy, and the first year of life, they differentiate into their mature form. The
cells form long axons—fibers that conduct impulses away from the cell body. They
sprout dendrites—treelike, branching ends. As the dendrites proliferate at junctions,
or synapses, the axons and dendrites interconnect (see Figure 3.1).
Synapses Synaptogenesis, the process of making myriad connections, programs every
skill—from Elissa’s vigorous push-ups to composing symphonies or solving problems
Axon from
another
in math. Another critical transformation is called myelination: The axons form a fatty
neuron layer around their core. Just as a stream of water prevents us from painfully bumping
down a water park slide, the myelin sheath is the lubricant that permits the neural
impulses to speedily flow. This insulating layer may also determine which cells thrive
(Stiles & Jernigan, 2010).
Cell body Synaptogenesis and myelination occur at different rates in specific brain regions
(Dean and others, 2014). In the visual cortex, the part of the brain responsible for
Nucleus
interpreting visual stimuli, the axons are myelinated by about age 1. In the frontal
lobes, the brain region involved in reasoning, the myelin sheath is still forming into
Dendrites our twenties.
Axon This makes sense. Seeing is a skill we need soon after birth. Visual abilities, as you
will learn in this chapter, develop rapidly during our first year of life. But we won’t
Myelin need the skills to compose symphonies, do higher math, or competently make our
sheath way in the world until we become adults. So there are parallels between our unfolding
abilities and the way our brain matures.
Synapse
Neural Pruning and Brain Plasticity

So far, you might imagine that more neural connections equal superior skills. Not so!
Neural loss is critical to development, too. Following a phase of lavishly producing
Dendrites from synapses, each cortical region undergoes synaptic pruning and neural death. This
neighboring neurons shedding timetable also reflects our expanding abilities. It begins around age 1 in the
visual cortex. It starts during late childhood in the frontal lobes. Just as weeding is
figure 3.1: The neuron and critical to sculpting a beautiful garden, we need to get rid of the unnecessary neurons
synapses: Here is an illustration
to permit the essential cells to flower.
of the remarkable structure
that programs every developing Why does the brain undergo this frantic overproduction, followed by cutting
skill, perception, and thought. back? Clues come from research suggesting that during infancy, synaptic connections
Notice the dendrites receiving progressively strengthen in more distant areas of the brain (Damaraju and others,
information at the synapses and
2014). Perhaps, having an oversupply of connections allows us to “recruit” from
how impulses flow down the
long axon to connect up with the this wider pool and redirect these extra neurons to perform other functions, should
dendrites of the adjoining cells. we have a major sensory deficit or brain insult early in life (Fox, Levitt, & Nelson,
CHAPTER 3 Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development 75
2010; Stiles & Jernigan, 2010). Actually, our cortex is malleable or plastic (able to be cerebral cortex The outer,
changed), particularly during infancy and the childhood years. folded mantle of the brain,
responsible for thinking,
Using the fMRI, which measures the brain’s energy consumption, researchers reasoning, perceiving, and
find that among people blind from birth, activity in the visual cortex is intense while all conscious responses.
reading Braille and localizing sounds in space. This suggests that, without environ- axon A long nerve fiber that
mental stimulation from the eye, the neurons programmed for vision are captured, or usually conducts impulses
taken over, to strengthen hearing and touch (Collignon and others, 2011; Fox, Levitt, away from the cell body of a
& Nelson, 2010). neuron.
A similar process occurs with language, normally represented in the left hemi- dendrite A branching fiber that
sphere of the brain. If an infant has a left-hemisphere stroke, with intense verbal receives information and
conducts impulses toward
stimulation, the right hemisphere takes over, and language develops normally (Rowe the cell body of a neuron.
and others, 2009). Compare this to what happens when an older person has a left-
synapse The gap between the
hemisphere stroke after language is located firmly in its appropriate places. The result dendrites of one neuron and
can be devastating—a permanent loss in understanding speech or forming words. the axon of another, over
So, brain plasticity highlights the basic nature-combines-with-nurture principle which impulses flow.
that governs human life. Yes, the blueprint for our cortex is laid out at conception. synaptogenesis Forming of
But, environmental stimulation is vital in strengthening specific neural networks connections between neu-
and determining which connections will be pruned (Fox, Levitt, & Nelson, 2010). rons at the synapses. This
process, responsible for all
Before the pruning phase, our brain is particularly malleable—permitting us to grow perceptions, actions, and
a somewhat different garden should disaster strike. Still, as synaptogenesis is a lifelong thoughts, is most intense
process, we continue to grow, to learn, to develop intellectually, from age 1 to age 101. during infancy and childhood
Table 3.1 on page 76 offers additional fascinating facts about neurons, synapto- but continues throughout
life.
genesis, and the pruning phase. Notice from the last item that, in the same way as
the houses in your subdivision look different—although they may have had the same myelination Formation of
a fatty layer encasing the
original plan (as each owner took charge of decorating his personal space)—scientists axons of neurons. This
find remarkable variability in the brains of normally developing girls and boys (Giedd process, which speeds
and others, 2010). Actually, why should these variations be a surprise, given the diver- the transmission of neural
sity of interests and talents we develop in life! impulses, continues from
birth to early adulthood.
plastic Malleable, or capable
of being changed (used to
refer to neural or cognitive
development).
Susan Watts/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images
This resilient baby has survived major surgeries in which large sections of his brain had to be
removed. Remarkably—because the cortex is so plastic at this age—he is expected to be left with
few, if any, impairments.
76 PART II Infancy
Table 3.1: Brain-Busting Facts to Wrap Your Head Around
• Our adult brain is composed of more than 1 billion neurons and, via synaptogenesis, makes
roughly 60 trillion neural connections.
• As preschoolers, we have roughly double the number of synapses we have as adults—
because, as our brain develops, roughly 40 percent of our synapses are ultimately pruned
(see the text). So, ironically, the overall cortical thinning during elementary school and
adolescence is a symptom of brain maturation.
• Specific abilities such as language, that scientists had believed were localized in one part of
the cortex, are dependent on many brain regions. Moreover, the cortical indicators of “being
advanced” in an ability shift in puzzling ways as a child gets older. For instance, while
rapid myelination in the left frontal lobe predicts language abilities at age 1, by age 4 this
relationship reverses, with linguistically advanced preschoolers showing more myelin in the
right frontal lobe. Although when a given child shows rapid IQ declines there is a steeper-
than-normal loss in cortical thickness, boys and girls whose intelligence scores rise show no
special cortical changes.
• Boys’ brains, on average, are 10 percent larger than girls’ brains, even during childhood,
when both sexes are roughly the same size, body-wise.
• The most amazing finding relates to the surprising, dramatic variability in brain size from
child to child. Two normal 10-year-old boys might have a twofold difference in brain volume,
without showing any difference in intellectual abilities!
Information from: Giedd and others, 2010; Stiles & Jernigan, 2010; Muircheartaigh and others, 2013; Burgaleta
and others, 2014.
Now keeping in mind the basic brain principles—(1) development unfolds “in its
own neurological time” (you can’t teach a baby to do something before the relevant
part of the brain comes on-line); (2) stimulation sculpts neurons (our wider-world
experiences physically change our brain); and (3) the brain is still “under construc-
tion” (and shaped by those same experiences) for as long as we live—let’s explore how
the expanding cortex works magic during the first two years of life.

1. Cortez and Ashley are arguing about what makes our brain unique. Cortez says it’s the
immense size of our cortex. Ashley says it’s the fact that we “grow” most of our brain
after birth and that the cortex continues to mature for at least two decades. Who is
right—Cortez, Ashley, or both students?
2. Latisha tells you that the myelin sheath speeds neural impulses and the more synaptic
connections, the higher the level of development. Is Latisha totally correct? If not,
describe how she is wrong?
3. When babies have a stroke, they may end up (choose one) more/less impaired than
they would be as adults, due to a phenomenon called brain (choose one) myelination/
plasticity.
4. Which neural process is occurring right now in your mom and your elderly grandma?
(Choose one) myelination/synaptogenesis
Basic Newborn States

Visit a newborn and you will see simple activities: She eats, she cries, she sleeps. In
this section, I’ll spotlight each state.
Eating: The Basis of Living

Eating undergoes amazing changes during infancy. Let’s scan these transformations
and then discuss nutritional topics that loom large in the first years of life.
Developmental Changes: From Newborn Reflexes

to Two-Year-Olds’ Food Cautions
Newborns seem to be eating even when they are sleeping—a fact vividly brought
home to me by the loud smacking that rhythmically erupted from my son’s bassinet.
The reason is that babies are born with a powerful sucking reflex—they suck virtually sucking reflex The automatic,
all the time. Newborns also are born with a rooting reflex. If anything touches their spontaneous sucking
movements newborns
cheek, they turn their head in that direction and suck. produce, especially when
Reflexes are automatic activities. Because they do not depend on the cortex, they anything touches their lips.
are not under conscious control. It is easy to see why the sucking and rooting reflexes rooting reflex Newborns’
are vital to surviving after we exit the womb. If newborns had to learn to suck, they automatic response to a
might starve before mastering that skill. Without the rooting reflex, babies would have touch on the cheek, involving
trouble finding the breast. turning toward that location
and beginning to suck.
Sucking and rooting have clear functions. What about the other infant reflexes
shown in Figure 3.2? Do you think the grasping reflex may have helped newborns reflex A response or action
that is automatic and
survive during hunter-gatherer times? Can you think of why newborns, when stood programmed by noncortical
on a table, take little steps (the stepping reflex)? Whatever their value, these reflexes, brain centers.
and a few others, must be present at birth. They must disappear as the cortex grows.
As the cortex matures, voluntary processes replace these special newborn reflexes. By
month four or five, babies no longer suck continually. Their sucking is governed by oper-
ant conditioning. When the breast draws near, they suck in anticipation of that delicious
reinforcer: “Mealtime has arrived!” Still, Sigmund Freud named infancy the oral stage
for good reason: During the first years of life, the theme is “Everything in the mouth.”
This impulse to taste everything leads to scary moments as children crawl and
walk. There is nothing like the sickening sensation of seeing a baby put a forgotten pin
in his mouth or taste your possibly poisonous plant. My personal heart-stopping experi-
ence occurred when my son was almost 2. I’ll never forget the frantic race to the emer-
gency room after Thomas toddled in to joyously share a treasure, an open vial of pills!
Luckily, a mechanism may protect toddlers from sampling every potentially lethal
substance during their first travels into the world. Between ages 1 1/2 and 2, children
can revert to eating a few familiar foods, such as peanut butter sandwiches and apple
juice. Evolutionary psychologists believe that, like morning sickness, this behav-
ior is adaptive. Sticking to foods they know reduces the risk of children poisoning
themselves when they begin to walk (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002). Because this
2-year-old food caution gives caregivers headaches, we need to reassure frantic parents:
Picky eating can be normal during the second year of life (as long as your child eats
a reasonable amount of food).
© Cathy Melloan Resources/PhotoEdit
Simon Fraser/Science Source
Ariel Skelley/Getty Images
Rooting: Whenever something touches Sucking: Newborns are programmed Grasping: Newborns automatically
their cheek, newborns turn their head in that to suck, especially when something vigorously grasp anything that touches
direction and make sucking movements. enters their mouth. the palm of their hand.
figure 3.2: Some newborn reflexes: If the baby’s brain is developing normally, each of these
reflexes is present at birth and gradually disappears after the first few months of life. In addition
to the reflexes illustrated here, other newborn reflexes include the Babinski reflex (stroke a baby’s
foot and her toes turn outward), the stepping reflex (place a baby’s feet on a hard surface and she
takes small steps), and the swimming reflex (if placed under water, newborns can hold their breath
and make swimming motions).
78 PART II Infancy
What is the best diet during a baby’s first months? When is not having enough
food a widespread problem? These questions bring up breast-feeding and global
malnutrition.
Breast Milk: Nature’s First Food

During the late nineteenth century, U.S. babies faced perils after birth. A major threat
was diarrhea, which caused a spike in infant mortality in the teeming city tenements.
The newborns of immigrant Eastern European Jews, however, were less likely to
develop diarrhea and other infectious diseases, because Jewish tradition dictated that
mothers breast-feed their daughters and sons (Preston, 1991).
In the past, because it protected babies against impure milk, breast-feeding was a
life-saving act. That choice has an impact today. Breast milk provides immunities to
middle ear infections and gastrointestinal problems. It makes toddlers more resistant to
colds and the flu (McNiel, Labbok, & Abrahams, 2010). Breast-fed babies show acceler-
ated myelin formation (Deoni and others, 2013). They get higher scores on intelligence
tests (Karns, 2001; Mortensen and others, 2002; Bernard, 2013). At age 1, they seem
less physiologically reactive to stress (Beijers, Riksen-Walraven, & De Weerth, 2013).
Still, these findings involve correlations. And, as we know, just because there is a
relationship between two variables does not mean one causes the other. The research
exploring breast milk’s benefits rarely controls for that important “third variable”—
social class. Caucasian women, who breast-feed for months, tend to be older, well
educated, and affluent (Dennis and others, 2013). They spend more time in hands-
on infant care (Smith & Ellwood, 2011). Women who nurse for months, one study
showed, are less prone to becoming depressed as their baby travels into the stressful
toddler years (Hahn-Holbrook and others, 2013). Is it really breast milk that promotes
health, or the extra nurturing that goes along with providing this natural food?
As with pregnancy advice (recall Chapter 2), breast-feeding pronouncements
have undergone fascinating historical shifts. During the l950s, doctors pushed formula
as the “scientific” best food. Since research revealed nursing’s benefits, health care
organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics (2005) and UNICEF
(2009) campaigned for exclusive breast-feeding during the first six months of life.
Contemporary women listened. Today, three out of four new U.S. mothers start
out determined to breast-feed. But only a small percentage persists to the five- or
six-month mark (Foss, 2010). Why?
Breast-feeding challenges
One cause has to do with the need to work (Flower and others, 2008; Vaughn, 2010).
Although U.S. employers must permit new mothers to pump their milk, imagine your
problems following the six-month recommendation as a server or supermarket clerk
who had to return to work soon after delivery (Guendelman and others, 2009). Women
complain that breast-feeding is not practical. They are embarrassed to nurse their
babies in public, especially if men are around (Vaaler and others, 2010; Vaughn, 2010).
Interesting nation-to-nation nursing-rate differences in the West reveal the impact
that “other people” (in this case, society) make on breast-feeding. In Ireland, where people
view formula as fine, most women bottle-feed soon after birth (Tarrant and others, 2013).
In Canada and especially Norway, where breast-feeding is the only socially acceptable
option, mothers try valiantly to nurse for the full six months (Andrews and Knaak, 2013).
This pressure to live up to the image of the ideal breast-feeding mom presents prob-
lems. Not only can nursing be inconvenient, but it can also be physically hard. As one
U.S. mother reported: “I never realized . . . that I would be reduced to tears every time
I fed” (Sheehan Schmied, & Barclay, 2013, p. 23). A Canadian woman, forced to aban-
don the breast, reported: “I felt so horrible . . . that I couldn’t do this for my child . . . You
feel like less of a mother, less of a person (quoted in Andrews and Knaak, 2013, p. 95).
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that some Western moms are rebelling against
breast-feeding “police” (Williams and others, 2013; Leeming and others, 2013; Regan
and Ball, 2013). As Chloe, a U.S mother forced to give up the breast, rationalized:
“I remember reading that . . . even just getting the first two weeks . . . is apparently
really worthwhile . . . .” (quoted in Williams, Donaghue, & Kurz, 2013, p. 37). One
British woman even took the step of viewing breast-feeding as narcissistic, when she
argued, “I like . . . bottles because it gives her a chance to bond with my partner . . .
and her grandma . . . .” (Leeming and others, 2013).
These quotes suggest we need to rethink the health-care message that automati-
cally equates nursing with ideal motherhood. Many women (such as your author)
cannot breast-feed. Millions of children (including your author) born during the
mid-twentieth century, when bottle-feeding was standard, grew up to live successful
© Christina Kennedy/Alamy
lives. Rather than your milk delivery method, what’s really important is the way you
love and bond with your child!
Malnutrition: A Serious Developing-World Concern

Breast-feeding allows every newborn a chance to thrive. However, there comes a
time—at around 6 months of age—when babies need solid food. Then, the horrifying This breast-feeding mom is
inequalities in global nutrition hit (Caulfield and others, 2006). probably thrilled to provide her
How many young children suffer from undernutrition, having a serious lack of baby with the best first start;
adequate food? For answers, epidemiologists measure stunting, the percentage of but, unfortunately, her choice
might be more difficult than
children under age 5 who in a given region rank below the fifth percentile in height, experts have led her to believe.
according to the norms for their age. This very short stature is a symptom of chronic
inadequate nutrition, which compromises every aspect of development and activity
undernutrition A chronic lack
of life (Abubakar and others, 2010; UNICEF, 2009). of adequate food.
The good news is that in recent decades, stunting rates declined in poor
stunting Excessively short
regions of the world (UNICEF, 2002a). The tragedy, as Figure 3.3 shows, is that stature in a child, caused
this sign of serious malnutrition still affects an alarming 209 million children, by chronic lack of adequate
roughly two in five developing-world girls and boys (UNICEF, 2000). In Africa nutrition.
and South Asia, micronutrient deficiencies—inadequate levels of nutrients such micronutrient deficiency
as iron or zinc or Vitamin A—are rampant. Disorders, such as Kwashiorkor Chronically inadequate
(described in the Experiencing the Lifespan box on page 80), can even strike when level of a specific nutrient
important to development
there is ample food. and disease prevention, such
as Vitamin A, zinc, and/or
iron.
Percentage of stunted children under age 5
4%
9%
12% Total in
44% developing
world:
Sub-Saharan Africa 209 million
Middle East and North Africa
40%
Americas
Central Asia
East/South Asia and Pacific
figure 3.3: Percentage of stunted children under age 5 in the developing world: This
upsetting chart shows that stunting is common in much of the developed world—affecting
many millions of young children, especially in East and South Asia and the Pacific regions and
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Adapted from: UNICEF, 2000.
80 PART II Infancy
Experiencing the Lifespan: A Passion to Eradicate Malnutrition: A Career in Public Health
What is it like to battle malnutrition in the developing mom with two or three kids is going to drop out of the
world? Listen to Richard Douglass describe his career: program as soon as the child starts to look healthy.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago—my radius was Because of male urban migration, the African family is in
maybe 4 or 5 blocks in either direction. Then, I spent my peril. If a family has a grandmother or great-auntie, the
junior year in college in Ethiopia, and it changed my life. child can make it because this woman can take care of the
I lived across the street from the hospital, and every morn- children. So the presence of a grandma saves kids’ lives.
ing I saw a flood of people standing in line. They would Most malnutrition shows up after wars. In Ghana there is
wait all day . . . , and eventually a cart would come and take tons of food. So it’s a problem of ignorance, not poverty.
away the dead. When I saw the lack of doctors, I realized The issue is partly cultural. First, among some groups,
I needed to get my Master’s and Ph.D. in public health. the men eat, then women, then older children, then the
In public health we focus on primary prevention, how to babies get what is left. So the meat is gone, the fish is
prevent diseases and save thousands of people from get- gone, and then you just have that porridge. We have
ting ill. My interest was in helping to eradicate Kwashi- been trying to impose a cultural norm that everyone sits
orkor in Ghana. What the name literally means is “the around the dining table for meals, thereby ensuring that
disease that happens when the second child is born.” all the children get to eat. The other issue is just pure
The first child is taken off the breast too soon and given public health education—teaching families “just because
a porridge that doesn’t have amino acids, and so the your child looks fat doesn’t mean that he is healthy.”
musculature and the diaphragm break down. You get a I feel better on African soil than anywhere else. With poor
bloated look (swollen stomach), and then you die. If a people in the developing world who are used to being
child does survive, he ends up stunted, and so looks exploited, they are willing to write you off in a heartbeat if
maybe 5 years younger. you give them a reason; but if you make a promise and fol-
Once someone gets the disease, you can save their life. low through, then you are part of their lives. I keep going
But it’s a 36-month rehabilitation that requires taking back to my college experience in Ethiopia . . . watching
that child to the clinic for treatment every week. In Ghana those people standing at the hospital, waiting to die.
it can mean traveling a dozen miles by foot. So a single Making a difference for them is the reason why I was born.
How many young children are stunted or chronically hungry in the United
States? According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2012 roughly one in
six U.S. households with children was designated as food insecure. This means that
people reported sometimes not affording to provide a balanced diet, or being worried
that their money for food might run out. About one in 20 families reported severe food
insecurity. They sometimes went hungry due to lack of funds (Coleman-Jensen and
others, 2013). However, because the United States provides nutrition-related entitle-
ment programs described in Table 3.2, in our nation and other developed countries,
poor children are spared the ongoing hunger that limits the life chances of so many
boys and girls around the globe.
Crying: The First Communication Signal

At 2 months, when Jason cried, I was clueless. I picked him up, rocked him, and kept a
pacifier glued to his mouth; I called my mother, the doctor, even my local pharmacist,
for advice. Since it put Jason to sleep, my husband and I took car rides at three in the
food insecurity According morning—the only people on the road were teenagers and other new parents like us.
to U.S. Department of Now that my little love is 10 months old, I know why he is crying, and those lonely
Agriculture surveys, the countryside tours are long gone.
number of households that
report needing to serve Crying, that vital way we communicate our feelings, reaches its lifetime peak at
unbalanced meals, worrying around one month after birth (St. James-Roberts, 2007). However, a distinctive
about not having enough change in crying occurs at about month 4. As the cortex blossoms, crying rates
food at the end of the month,
decline, and babies use this communication to express their needs.
or having to go hungry due
to lack of money (latter is It’s tempting to think of crying as a negative state. However, because crying is as
severe food insecurity). vital to survival as sucking, when babies cry too little, this can signal a neurological
Table 3.2: Major U.S. Federal Nutrition Programs Serving Young Children
Food Stamp Program (Now called SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program): This
mainstay federal nutrition program provides electronic cards that participants can use like
a debit card to buy food. To qualify, a family must have no more than $2,000 in resources,
such as a bank account, or $3,250 in resources if one person is disabled or age 60 and over.
Families with young children make up the majority of food stamp recipients.*
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): This federally
funded grant program is specifically for low-income pregnant women and mothers with
children under age 5. To be eligible, a family must be judged nutritionally at risk by a health-
care professional and earn below 185 percent of the poverty line. WIC offers a monthly
package of supplements tailored to the family’s unique nutritional needs (such as infant
formula and baby cereals) plus nutrition education and breast-feeding support.*
Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP): This program reimburses child-care facilities, day-
care providers, after-school programs, and providers of various adult services for the cost of
serving high-quality meals. Surveys show that children in participating programs have higher
intakes of key nutrients and eat fewer servings of fats and sweets than do children who
attend child-care facilities that do not participate.
Information from: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service, accessed September 10, 2014,
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program
*As of 2012, about 42 million households received Food Stamps (over 50 million were eligible). Participation rates
in WIC are lower, with slightly more than half eligible U.S. families getting this aid.
problem (Zeskind & Lester, 2001). When babies cry, we pick them up, rock them,
and give them loving care. So, up to a certain point, crying helps cement the
infant–parent bond.
Still, there is a limit. When a baby cries continually, she may have that bane of
early infancy—colic. Despite what some “friends” (unhelpfully) tell new mothers,
it’s a myth that inept parents produce colicky babies. Colic is caused by an immature
nervous system. After they exit the cozy womb, some babies get unusually distressed
when bombarded by stimuli, such as being handled or fed (St. James-Roberts, 2007).
So, we need to back off from blaming stressed-out moms and dads for this biological
problem of early infant life.
The good news is that colic is short-lived. Most parents find that around month 4,
their baby suddenly becomes a new, pleasant person overnight. For this reason, there
is only cause for concern when a baby cries excessively after this age (Schmid and
others, 2010).
Imagine having a baby with colic. You feel helpless. You cannot do anything to
quiet the baby down. There are few things more damaging to parental self-efficacy
than an infant’s out-of-control crying (Keefe and others, 2006).
INTERVENTIONS: What Quiets a Young Baby?

WHAT SOOTHES A CRYING BABY? One strategy is to hold and rock the baby and pro- colic A baby’s frantic, continual
crying during the first three
vide a pacifier, a breast, a bottle, or anything that satisfies the need to suck. Another months of life; caused by an
traditional approach is swaddling (wrapping) a newborn tight. immature nervous system.
Interestingly, because it distances the baby from the mom’s body, swaddling swaddling The standard
has the downside of limiting skin-to-skin contact between caregiver and child Western infant calming
(Kelmanson, 2013; Dumas and others, 2013). Continuous human touch is most technique of wrapping a
effective at calming crying during the first days of life (Cecchini and others, 2013). baby tightly in a blanket or
other garment.
The best example comes from the !Kung San hunter-gatherers of Botswana. In this
collectivist culture, where mothers strap infants to their bodies and feed them on kangaroo care Carrying a
young baby in a sling close
demand, the frequency of colic is dramatically reduced. to the caregiver’s body. This
Kangaroo care, or using a baby sling, can even help premature infants grow technique is most useful for
(World Health Organization [WHO], 2003b). In one experiment, developmentalists soothing an infant.
82 PART II Infancy
had mothers with babies in an intensive care unit carry their infants in baby slings for
one hour each day. Then, they compared these children’s development with that of a
comparable group given standard care. At 6 months of age, the kangaroo-care babies
scored higher on developmental tests. Their parents were rated as providing a more
nurturing home environment, too (Feldman & Eidelman, 2003).
Imagine having your baby whisked away at birth to spend weeks with strangers.
Now, think of being able to caress his tiny body, the sense of self-efficacy that would
flow from helping him thrive. So it makes sense that any cuddling intervention can
have an impact on the baby and the parent–child bond.
Another baby-calming strategy is infant massage. From helping premature infants
gain weight, to treating toddler (and adult) sleep problems, to reducing old-age pain,
Burger/Phanie/Science Source
massage enhances well-being from the beginning to the end of life (Field, Diego, &
Hernandez-Reif, 2007, 2011).
We all know the power of a cuddle or a relaxing massage to soothe our troubles.
Can holding and stroking in early infancy generally insulate us against stress? Con-
sider this study with rats.
Kangaroo care, because Because rodent mothers (like humans) differ in the “hands-on” contact they
it promotes this intense give their babies, researchers classified rats who had just given birth into high licking
skin-to-skin bonding, is and grooming, average licking and grooming, and low licking and grooming groups.
superior to swaddling—the
As adults, the lavishly licked and groomed rats reacted in a more placid way when
standard Western baby-calming
technique. exposed to stress (Menard & Hakvoort, 2007). We need to be cautious about general-
izing this finding to humans. Advocating for the !Kung San approach to caregiving
might be asking too much of modern moms. Still, the implication is clear: During
the first months of life (or, for as long as you can), keep touching and loving ’em up!
Cuddles calm us from day 1 to age 101. However, crying also undergoes fascinat-
ing developmental changes. The long car ride that magically quieted a 2-month-old
evokes agony in a toddler who cannot stand to be confined. First, it’s swaddling, then
watching a mobile, then seeing Mom enter the room that has the power to soothe. In
preschool, it’s monsters that cause wailing; during elementary school and teenager-
hood, it’s failing or being rejected by our social group. As emerging adults, we weep
for lost love. Finally, among mature adults and old folks (as we reach Erikson’s stage
of generativity), we stop crying for ourselves and cry when our loved ones are in pain.
Our crying shows where we are developmentally
throughout our lives!
Alert awake Nonalert awake Drowsiness,
7% 3% sleep–wake
transition Sleeping: The Main Newborn State
Fussing, crying 7%
3%
If crying is a crucial baby (and adult) communica-
tion signal, sleep is the quintessential newborn state.
Visit a relative who has recently given birth. Will
her baby be crying or eating? No, she is almost cer-
Active sleep Quiet sleep
tain to be asleep. Full-term newborns typically sleep
(REM sleep, (slow, regular for 18 hours out of a 24-hour day. As Figure 3.4
uneven breathing, breathing) shows, although they cycle through different stages,
smiling, grimacing) 30% newborns are in the sleeping/drowsy phase about
50%
90 percent of the time (Thoman & Whitney, 1990).
And there is a reason for the saying, “She sleeps like
a baby.” Perhaps because it mirrors the whooshing
figure 3.4: Newborns sound in the womb, noise helps newborns zone out. The problem for parents is that
sleep most of the time: During
each 24-hour period, newborns babies wake up and start wailing, like clockwork, every 3 to 4 hours.
cycle through various states of
arousal. Notice, however, that Developmental Changes: From Signaling, to Self-Soothing,
babies spend the vast majority to Shifts in REM Sleep
of their time either sleeping or in
the getting-to-sleep phase. During the first year of life, infant sleep patterns adapt to the human world. Night-
Adapted from: Thoman & Whitney, 1990. time awakenings become less frequent. Then, by about 6 months of age, there is a
(A) Brain-wave patterns during sleep (B) Time spent sleeping, by age
Hours 24
Awake
Stage 1
Waking
16
Stage 2
12
Stage 3 10 REM sleep

8
Stage 4
NREM sleep
REM
0
1 10 30 60 90
Age (years)
figure 3.5: Sleep brain waves and lifespan changes in sleep and wakefulness: In
chart A, you can see the EEG patterns associated with the four stages of sleep that first appear
during adolescence. After we fall asleep, our brain waves get progressively slower (these are the
four stages of non-REM sleep) and then we enter the REM phase during which dreaming is intense.
Now, notice in chart B the time young babies spend in REM. As REM sleep helps consolidate
memory, is the incredible time babies spend in this phase crucial to absorbing the overwhelming
amount of information that must be mastered during the first years of life?
Adapted from: Roffwarg, Muzio, & Dement, 1966.
milestone. The typical baby sleeps for 6 hours a night. At age 1, the typical pattern
is roughly 12 hours of sleep a night, with an additional morning and afternoon
nap. During year 2, the caretaker’s morning respite to do housework or rest is
regretfully lost, as children give up the morning nap. Finally, by late preschool,
sleep often (although not always) occurs only at night (Anders, Goodlin-Jones, &
Zelenko, 1998).
In addition to its length and on-again-off-again pattern, infant sleep differs
physiologically from our adult pattern. When we fall asleep, we descend through
four stages, involving progressively slower brain-wave frequencies, and then cycle
back to REM sleep—a phase of rapid eye movement, when dreaming is intense
and our brain-wave frequencies look virtually identical to when we are in the light-
est sleep stage (see Figure 3.5). When infants fall asleep, they immediately enter
REM and spend most of their time in this state. It is not until adolescence that
we have the adult sleep cycle, with four distinct stages (Anders, Goodlin-Jones, &
Zelenko, 1998).
Although parents are thrilled to say, “My child is sleeping though the night,” this
statement is false. Babies never sleep continuously through the night. However, by
about 6 months of age, many have the skill to become self-soothing. They put them-
selves back to sleep when they wake up (Goodlin-Jones and others, 2001).
Imagine being a new parent. Your first challenge is to get your baby to develop
the skill of nighttime self-soothing. Around age 1, because your child is now put into REM sleep The phase of
the crib while still awake, there may be issues getting your baby to go to sleep. During sleep involving rapid eye
movements, when the EEG
preschool and elementary school, the sleep problem shifts again. Now, it’s concerns looks almost like it does
about getting the child into bed: “Mommy, can’t I stay up later? Do I have to turn during waking. REM sleep
off the lights?” decreases as infants mature.
Although it may make them cranky, parents expect to be sleep-deprived with a self-soothing Children’s
young baby; but once a child has passed the 5- or 6-month milestone, they get agi- ability, usually beginning at
tated if the infant has never permitted them a full night’s sleep. Parents expect sleep about 6 months of age, to
put themselves back to sleep
problems when their child is ill or under stress, but not the zombielike irritability when they wake up during
that comes from being chronically sleep-deprived for years. There is a poisonous the night.
84 PART II Infancy
bidirectional effect here: Children with chronic sleep problems produce irritable,
stressed-out parents. Irritable, stressed-out parents produce childhood problems with
sleep (Goldberg and others, 2013).
Infant sleep can be affected by everything from the mother’s mental state, to her
relationship with her mate (Kim and Teti, 2014), to the stress of living in poverty
(Sheridan and others, 2013). Moreover, a mother’s mental state may skew her per-
ceptions about her infant’s sleep. In one survey, depressed moms were apt to label
their babies as having serious sleep problems even when they did not (Goldberg and
others, 2013).
So again, in understanding sleep during infancy, we need to look at the wider
context—adopting the developmental systems approach. Moreover, we sometimes
might take complaints about “a baby’s serious sleep issues” with a grain of salt. Child
problems can be seen through the eye of the beholder—and that’s another theme I’ll
be returning to in later chapters.
INTERVENTIONS: What Helps a Baby Self-Soothe?

What should parents do when their baby signals (cries out) from the crib? At one end
of the continuum stand the behaviorists: “Don’t reinforce crying by responding—and
be consistent. Never go in and comfort the baby lest you let a variable reinforcement
schedule unfold, and the child will cry longer.” At the other, we have John Bowlby
with his emphasis on the attachment bond, or Erik Erikson with his concept of basic
trust (see Table 3.3). During the first year of life, both Bowlby and Erikson imply that
caregivers should sensitively respond when an infant cries. These contrasting points
of view evoke passions among parents, too:
I feel the basic lesson parents need to teach children is how to be independent, not to
let your child rule your life, give him time to figure things out on his own, and not be
attended to with every whimper.
I am going with my instincts and trying to be a good, caring mommy. Putting a baby in
his crib to “cry it out” seems cruel. There is no such thing as spoiling an infant!
Where do you stand on this “Teach ’em” versus “Give unconditional love” contro-
versy? Given that in a young baby the cortex has not fully come on-line, the behavioral
“teach ‘em not to cry” doesn’t work during early infancy (Douglas and Hill, 2013;
Stremler and others, 2013). But, by about month 7 or 8, it may be better to hang back,

Late childhood (6 years to puberty) Industry versus inferiority
Young adulthood (twenties to early forties) Intimacy versus isolation
Late adulthood (late sixties and beyond) Integrity versus despair
According to Erikson, in the first year of life, our mission is to feel confident that the human world will lovingly
satisfy our needs. Basic trust is the foundation for the challenges we face at every other life stage.
as babies who are quickly picked up may have

more trouble learning to self-soothe (St. James-
Roberts, 2007). So, if parents care vitally about
getting a good night’s sleep, it’s best not to react
to every nighttime whimper—but only when
an infant approaches age 1 and can “learn” to
get to sleep on her own.
Vigorous “settling activities”—carrying a
child around at bedtime, making a big deal
of an infant’s getting to sleep—are correlated
with sleep difficulties at age 5 (Sheridan and
others, 2013). Therefore, new parents might
Rolf Bruderer/Getty Images

metaphorically err on the side of letting sleep-
ing dogs lie, meaning not make excessive
efforts to quiet the child. Still, this doesn’t
mean don’t get involved!
When researchers videoed the bedtime By lovingly preparing his baby
behavior of mothers with infants, they found that women who responded sensitively for bed, this man is helping
to their babies around bedtime (those who used gentle, loving, pre-bed soothing ensure a better night’s sleep for
routines) had children with fewer sleep problems (Teti and others, 2010). So, apart both father and child. He also
may be fostering basic trust—
from any specific strategy, the real key to promoting infant sleep is to put a baby to according to Erikson, the core
bed with love. foundation for having a good
This makes sense. Notice that when you feel disconnected from loved ones and life.
anxious, you have trouble sleeping. To sleep soundly at any age, we need to feel
cushioned by love.
The same principles—listen to the research, but act with love—apply to having
a baby sleep in your bed.
To Co-sleep or Not to Co-sleep: A Cultural and Personal Choice

It was a standard nighttime routine in our house—one by one we’d wander in and say,
“Mommy I’m afraid of witches and ghosts,” and soon all four of us would be happily
nestled in our parents’ huge king-sized bed. I never realized that—in the l950s, in
our uptight, middle-class New York suburb—this family bed-sharing qualified as a
radical act.
How do you feel about co-sleeping or sharing a bed with a child? If you live in the co-sleeping The standard
United States and feel queasy about my parents’ decision, you are not alone. Until custom, in collectivist
recently, experts in our individualistic society cautioned parents against co-sleeping cultures, of having a child
and parent share a bed.
(see Ferber, 1985). Behaviorists warned that sharing a bed with a child could produce
“excessive dependency.” Freudian theorists implied that bed-sharing might place a
child at risk for sexual abuse.
In collectivist cultures, people would laugh at these ideas (Latz, Wolf, & Lozoff,
1999; Yang & Hahn, 2002). Japanese parents, for instance, often separate to give each
child a sleeping partner, because they believe co-sleeping is crucial to babies develop-
ing into caring, loving adults (Kitahara, 1989).
Today, in the West, co-sleeping has come out of the closet. Surveys show that,
yes, like my parents, many people do it (Ball, 2007; Germo and others, 2007). But,
because some mothers and fathers are still reluctant to admit that fact, Table 3.4 on
page 86 provides three typical anti-bed-sharing stereotypes and some relevant research
so you can decide which choice works best for you.
In this next section, we’ll explore the topic raised by the third stereotype in the
table: What causes a baby to die while sleeping, or succumb to sudden infant death
syndrome (SIDS)?
86 PART II Infancy
Table 3.4: Classic Co-sleeping Stereotypes and Some Relevant Research

1. Stereotype: Co-sleeping makes a child less independent and mature.
Relevant research: Among parents of preschoolers, researchers looked at three groups: (1) people
who decided to co-sleep; (2) “reactive co-sleepers,” who reluctantly brought a child into their bed
because of sleep troubles; and (3) solitary sleepers—those who slept apart from their babies (Keller
& Goldberg, 2004). The preschoolers whose parents had decided to co-sleep were more self-reliant
(for example, able to dress themselves) and socially independent (for example, more able to make
friends by themselves) compared to the other two groups. In a more recent study, co-sleeping early
in life had calming effects. The more time a child spent bed-sharing from birth to 6 months of age,
the lower a baby’s cortisol production (a stress hormone) after being exposed to a stressor at age 1
(Beijars, Riksen-Walraven, & De Weerth, 2013). Therefore, if we look simply at parents who choose
to co-sleep, bed-sharing may promote greater resilience and maturity, not less!
2. Stereotype: Co-sleeping disrupts parents’ and children’s sleep.
Relevant research: Co-sleeping infants do awaken more often at night than solitary sleepers.
However, co-sleeping babies get back to sleep in a shorter time (Latz, Wolf, & Lozoff, 1999; Mao
and others, 2004). With regard to adults, one EEG sleep study found that parents who shared a
bed with their infant spent a bit less time in the deepest sleep stages. However, because they did
not have to go into the child’s room, these parents did not spend fewer hours sleeping than the
non-bed-sharing moms and dads (Mosko, Richard, & McKenna, 1997). Bottom line: Co-sleeping is
not detrimental to sleep.
3. Stereotype: Co-sleeping is dangerous because it can cause a baby to be smothered.
Relevant research: Here, there may be a few concerns. While some authors argue that co-sleeping
helps regulate babies’ breathing and so may help prevent suffocating at night (see St. James-
Roberts, 2007), bed-sharing infants spend a good fraction of their sleep time face down (Mao and
others, 2004). This sleep position, as you can see in the Hot in Developmental Science feature
does not offer the best protection against the ultimate smothering tragedy, SIDS.
Hot in Developmental Science: SIDS

sudden infant death Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) refers to the unexplained death of an appar-
syndrome (SIDS) The ently healthy infant, often while sleeping, during the first months of life. Although
unexplained death of an
apparently healthy infant,
it strikes only about 1 in 1,000 U.S. babies, SIDS is a top-ranking cause of infant
often while sleeping, during mortality in the developed world (Karns, 2001).
the first year of life. What causes SIDS? In autopsying infants who died during the peak risk zone for
SIDS (about 1 to 10 months), researchers targeted abnormalities in a particular region of
the brain. Specifically, SIDS infants had either too many or too few neurons in a section
of the brain stem involved in coordinating tongue movements and maintaining the air-
way when we inhale (Lavezzi and others, 2010). SIDS has been linked to pathologies in
the part of the brain stem producing cerebrospinal fluid, too (Lavezzi and others, 2013).
But even if SIDS is caused by biological pre-birth problems, this tragedy can have
post-birth environmental causes. In particular, SIDS is linked to infants being inadvertently
smothered, by being placed face down in a “fluffy” crib. During the early l990s, this evi-
dence prompted the American Academy of Pediatrics to urge parents to put infants to sleep
on their backs. The “Back to Sleep” campaign worked, because from 1992 to 1997, there
was a 43 percent reduction in SIDS deaths in the United States (Gore & DuBois, 1998).
Still, because placing babies on their backs can demand infants’ sleep separately
in a crib, the “Back to Sleep” public health message contradicts the strong pro co-
studiomoment/iStock/Getty Images
sleeping culture among non-Western groups. To circumvent this barrier, New Zealand
scientists devised a strategy to permit Maori mothers to follow their traditional sleeping
style and minimize the SIDS risk. They encouraged these women to return to another
old-style practice—weaving a baby sleeping-basket. By placing this basket on parents’
beds, co-sleeping has now become scientifically “correct” (Ball & Volpe, 2013)!
This portable sleeping basket is
user friendly around the world,
Table 3.5 offers a section summary in the form of practical tips for caregivers
but in the Maori culture, it dealing with infants’ eating, crying, and sleeping. Now it’s time to move on to sensory
qualifies as culture friendly, too. development and moving into the world.
Table 3.5: Infants’ Basic States: Summary Tips for Caregivers (and Others)
Eating
• Don’t worry about continual newborn sucking and rooting. These are normal reflexes, and they
disappear after the first months of life.
• As the baby becomes mobile, be alert to the child’s tendency to put everything into the mouth
and baby-proof the home (see the next section’s discussion).
• Try to breast-feed, but if nursing becomes too difficult, don’t berate yourself. The benefits
breast-fed babies show may mainly result from having more loving “bonding time.”
• Employers should make efforts to support breast-feeding in the workplace. Society should
celebrate women who nurse in public. However, people should not criticize women for “failing”
at this task.
• After the child is weaned, provide a balanced diet. But don’t get frantic if a toddler limits
her intake to a few “favorite foods” at around age 1 1/2—this pickiness is normal and
temporary.
Crying
• Appreciate that crying is crucial—it’s the way babies communicate their needs—and realize
that this behavior is at its peak during the first months of life. The frequency of crying declines
and the reasons why the child is crying become far clearer after early infancy.
• If a baby has colic, hang in there. This condition typically ends at month 4. Moreover,
understand that colic has nothing to do with insensitive mothering.
• During the day, carry a young infant around in a “baby sling” as much as possible. In addition,
employ infant massage to soothe the baby.
Sleeping
• Expect to be sleep-deprived for the first few months, until the typical infant learns to self-
soothe; meanwhile, try to take regular naps. After that, expect periodic sleep problems and
understand that children will give up their daytime nap at around age 2.
• After about 6 to 8 months of age, to promote self-soothing, don’t go to the infant at the first
whimper. But the choice is really up to you—as the best way to promote sleep is to put your
baby to bed with love.
• Co-sleeping—having a child sleep in your bed—is a personal decision. Although most of the
stereotypes about co-sleeping are wrong, this practice may not be completely safe with young
infants, as bed-sharing may slightly increase the risk of SIDS.

1. You’re a nurse in the obstetrics ward, and new parents often ask you why their babies
turn their heads toward anything that touches their cheek and then suck. You say
(pick two): This is called the rooting reflex; This behavior is programmed by the lower
brain centers to automatically occur at birth and disappear as the brain matures; This is
a sign of early intelligence.
2. Elaine tells you that breast-feeding is more difficult than medical authorities suggest.
Make her argument, drawing on the points in this section.
3. Your sister and her husband are under enormous stress because of their 1-month-old’s
crying. Based on this section, give your relatives advice for soothing their child. What
standard child-soothing strategy mentioned in the text would you not recommend?
4. Jorge tells you that he’s thrilled because last night his 6-month-old finally slept through
the night. Is Jorge’s child ahead of schedule, behind, or on time for this milestone?
Is Jorge right in saying, “My child is sleeping through the night”?
5. Take a poll of your classmates, asking them if they believe in co-sleeping and whether
they would immediately go in to quiet a crying infant. Do you find any differences in
their answers by ethnicity, by gender, or by age?
88 PART II Infancy
Sensory and Motor Development

Sleeping, eating, and crying are easy to observe; but suppose you could time-travel
back to your first days of life. What would you experience through your senses?
One sense is definitely operational before we leave the womb. Using ultra-
sound, researchers can see startle reactions in fetuses in response to noise, showing
that rudimentary hearing capacities exist before birth. Recall from the previous
chapter that the basics of vision may also be in place by about the seventh month
of fetal life.
Table 3.6 lists other interesting facts about newborn senses. Now, let’s focus on
vision because the research in this area is so extensive, the findings are so astonishing,
and the studies devised to get into babies’ heads are so brilliantly planned.
What Do Newborns See?

Imagine you are a researcher who wants to figure out what a newborn can see. What
do you do? As might be logical, you put the baby into an apparatus, present images,
and watch her eyes move. Specifically, researchers use the preferential-looking para-
preferential-looking digm—the principle that human beings are attracted to novelty and look selectively
paradigm A research
technique to explore early
at new things. They also draw on a process called habituation—the fact that we
infant sensory capacities naturally lose interest in a new object after some time.
and cognition, drawing on You can notice preferential looking and habituation in operation right now in
the principle that we are your life. If you see or hear something new, you look up with interest. After a minute,
attracted to novelty and
prefer to look at new things.
you habituate and return to reading this book.
By showing newborns small- and large-striped patterns and measuring preferen-
habituation The predictable
loss of interest that develops
tial looking, researchers have found that at birth our ability to see clearly at distances is
once a stimulus becomes very poor. With a visual acuity score of roughly 20/400 (versus our ideal adult 20/20),
familiar; used to explore a newborn would qualify as legally blind in many states (Kellman & Banks, 1998).
infant sensory capacities and Because the visual cortex matures quickly, vision improves rapidly, and by about
thinking.
age 1, infants see just like adults.
face-perception studies What visual capacities do we have at birth? A century ago, the first American
Research using preferential
looking and habituation to
psychologist, William James, described the inner life of the newborn as “one buzzing,
explore what very young blooming confusion.” Studies exploring face perception (making sense of human
babies know about faces. faces) offer scientific data about the truth of James’ ideas.
Table 3.6: Some Interesting Facts About Other Newborn Senses
Hearing: Fetuses can discriminate different tones in the womb (Lecanuet and others, 2000).
Newborns prefer women’s voices, as they are selectively sensitive to higher-pitched
tones. At less than 1 week of age, babies recognize their mother’s voice (DeCasper & Fifer,
1980). By 1 month of age, they tune in to infant-directed speech (described on page 101)
communications tailored to them.
Smell: Newborns prefer the odor of breast milk to that of amniotic fluid (Marlier, Schaal, &
Soussignan, 1998). The smell of breast milk, unlike formula, increases blood flow in newborn’s
frontal lobes—which may be another benefit of nursing for 6 months (Aoyama and others, 2010).
Plus, smelling breast milk has a soothing effect; newborns cry more vigorously when facing a
scentless breast (one covered with a transparent film) (Doucet and others, 2007).
Taste: Newborns are sensitive to basic tastes. When they taste a bitter, sour, or salty
substance, they stop sucking and wrinkle their faces. They will suck more avidly on a
sweet solution, although they will stop if the substance grows too sweet. Having babies
suck a sweet solution before a painful experience, such as a heel stick, reduces agitation
and so can be used as a pain-management technique (Fernandez and others, 2003; Gibbins &
Stevens, 2001).
Focusing on Faces
Actually, when we emerge from the womb, we are primed to selectively attend to
the social world. When presented with the paired stimuli in Figure 3.6, newborns
spend more time looking at the face pattern than at the scrambled pattern. They
follow that facelike stimulus longer when it is moved from side to side (Farroni,
Massaccesi, & Simion, 2002; Slater and others, 2010).
The story gets more interesting. Newborns can make amazing distinctions. Face Scrambled
During their first week of life, they prefer to look at a photo of their mother com-
pared to one of a stranger (Bushnell, 1998). Newborns prefer attractive-looking figure 3.6: Babies prefer
people too! faces: When shown these
Researchers selected photos of attractive and unattractive women, then took illustrations, newborns looked
infants from the maternity ward and measured preferential looking. The attrac- most at the facelike drawing.
Might the fact that infants are
tive faces got looked at significantly longer—61 percent of the time (Slater and biologically programmed to
others, 2010). By 3 to 6 months of age, babies preferentially look at good-looking selectively look at faces be built
infants and children. They even prefer handsome men and pretty women of different into evolution to help ensure
racial groups (Slater, 2001). Unhappily, our tendency to gravitate toward people for that adults give babies loving
care?
their looks seems somewhat biologically built in. (In case you are interested, more
symmetrical faces tend to be rated as better-looking.)
We also seem prewired to gravitate to relationships. Newborns look longer at
faces when the “eyes” are gazing directly at them (Frischen, Bayliss, & Tipper,
2007). They can mimic facial expressions that an adult makes, such as sticking
out the tongue (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). So if you have wondered why you get
uncomfortable when someone stares at you, or have agonized at your humiliat-
ing tendency to mimic everyone else’s gestures and facial tics, this research offers
answers. It’s not a personal problem. It’s built into our human biology, beginning
from day one!
With experience, our sensitivity to faces—and the emotions they reveal—
markedly improves. But fascinating research suggests that early experience also shapes
what we learn not to see (Slater and others, 2010).
Developmentalists tested European American babies at different points during
their first year of life for their ability to discriminate between different faces within
their own racial group and those belonging to other ethnicities (African American,
Middle Eastern, and Chinese). While the 3-month-olds preferentially looked at “new
faces” of every ethnicity, showing they could see the differences between individuals
in each group, by 9 months of age, the babies could only discriminate between faces
of their own ethnicity.
Why did this skill disappear? The cause, as you may have guessed, is cortical
pruning—the fact that unneeded synapses in our visual system atrophy or are lost
(Slater and others, 2010). So if you have wondered why other races look more alike
(compared to your own ethnic group, of course!), it’s a misperception. You learned
not to see these differences during your first year of life!
Is Prejudice Partly Prewired?

This tantalizing research suggests that spending our first years of life in a racially
homogenous environment might promote prejudice because the resulting neural
atrophy could blunt our ability to decode the emotions of other ethnic groups.
Amazingly, in testing U.S. teens adopted from Eastern European or Asian orphan-
ages (places where infants are only exposed to caregivers of their ethnicity), scientists
discovered that this was true. The longer a child lived in an orphanage, the less sensi-
tive that adolescent was at picking up facial expressions of people from other races.
Moreover, fMRI recordings showed an unusual spike in the amygdala (our brain’s
fear center) when these young people viewed “foreign” faces. Therefore, simply being
born in a multicultural city, such as New York or Chicago, might make us more toler-
90 PART II Infancy
ant because that experience prewires us visually to be more sensitive to the feelings
of other races (Telzer and others, 2013)!
The main conclusion, however, is that William James was wrong. Newborns
don’t experience the world as a “blooming, buzzing confusion.” We arrive in life with
a built-in antenna to tune into the human world. But also, visual skills change as we
mature, in sometimes surprising ways.
Now let’s trace another visual capacity as it comes on-line—the ability to see and
become frightened of heights.
Seeing Depth and Fearing Heights

Imagine you are a researcher facing a conundrum: How can I find out when babies
depth perception The ability develop depth perception—the ability to “see” variations in heights—without caus-
to see (and fear) heights. ing them harm? Elinor Gibson’s ingenious solution: Develop a procedure called the
visual cliff A table that visual cliff. As Figure 3.7 shows, Gibson and her colleague placed infants on one
appears to “end” in a end of a table with a checkerboard pattern while their mothers stood at the oppo-
drop-off at its midpoint;
used to test for infant depth
site end (Gibson & Walk, 1960). At the table’s midpoint, the checkerboard design
perception. moved from table to floor level, so it appeared to the babies that if they crawled
beyond that point, they would fall. Even when parents encouraged their children
to crawl to them, by 8 months of age, babies refused to venture beyond what looked
like the drop-off—showing that depth perception fully comes on-line, but only about
this age.
In sum, the sick feeling you have when leaning over a balcony—“Wow, I’d better
avoid falling into that space below”—emerged when you started moving into the world
and needed that fear to protect you from getting hurt. How does mobility unfold?
Expanding Body Size

Our brain may expand dramatically after birth. Still, it’s
out-paced by the blossoming of the envelope in which
we live. Our bodies grow to 21 times their newborn size
by the time we reach adulthood (Slater, 2001). This
growth is most dramatic during infancy, slows down
during childhood, and increases in velocity again dur-
ing the preadolescent years. Still, looking at overall
height and weight statistics is not that revealing. This
body sculpting occurs in a definite way.
Imagine taking time-lapse photographs of a baby’s
head from birth to adulthood and comparing your
photos to snapshots of the body. While you would not
see much change in the overall size and shape of the
head, the body would elongate and thin out. New-
borns start out with tiny “frog” legs timed to slowly
straighten out by about month 6. Then comes the
stocky, bowlegged toddler, followed by the slimmer
child of kindergarten and elementary school. So dur-
figure 3.7: The visual cliff: ing childhood, growth follows the same principle as inside the womb: Develop-
Even though his mother is on ment proceeds according to the cephalocaudal sequence—from the head to the
the other side, this 8-month-old feet.
child gets anxious about Now think of Mickey Mouse, Big Bird, and Elmo. They, too, have relatively large
venturing beyond what looks like
the drop-off point in the table—
heads and small bodies. Might our favorite cartoon characters be enticing because
demonstrating that by this age they mimic the proportions of a baby? Did the deliciously rounded infant shape
babies have depth perception. evolve to seduce adults into giving babies special care?
Mastering Motor Milestones

Actually, all three growth principles spelled
out in the previous chapter—cephalocaudal,
proximodistal, and mass-to-specific—apply to
infant motor milestones, the exciting progres-
sion of physical abilities during the first year
of life. First, babies lift their head, then pivot
their upper body, then sit up without support,
and finally stand (the cephalocaudal sequence).
Siri Stafford/Stone/Getty Images

Infants have control of their shoulders before
Mark Harwood/Getty Images

they can make their arms and fingers obey their
commands (proximodistal sequence, from inte-
rior to outer parts).
But the most important principle program-
ming motor abilities throughout childhood is the
mass-to-specific sequence (large before small and The tiny frog legs of very
detailed). From the wobbly first step at age 1 to the home run out of the ballpark dur- early infancy straighten out
by month 6 and then become
ing the teenage years—as the neurons myelinate—big, uncoordinated movements are
longer and fully functional
honed and perfected as we move from infancy to adult life. for carrying us around
(as toddlers)—demonstrating
the cephalocaudal principle of
Variations (and Joys) Related to Infant Mobility development.
Charting these milestones does not speak to the joy of witnessing them unfold—that
landmark moment when your daughter masters turning over, after those practice
“push-ups,” or first connects with the bottle, grasps it, and awkwardly moves it to her
mouth. I’ll never forget when my own son, after what seemed like years of cruising
around holding onto the furniture, finally ventured (so gingerly) out into the air, flung
up his hands, and, yes, yes, took his ecstatic first step!
The charts don’t mention the hilarious glitches that
happen when a skill is emerging—the first days of
creeping, when a baby can only move backward and
you find him huddled in the corner in pursuit
of objects that get farther way. Or when a child
first pulls herself to a standing position in the
crib, and her triumphant expression changes
to bewilderment: “Whoops, now tell me,
Mom, how do I get down?”
Actually, rather than viewing motor
development in static stages, research-
ers now stress the variability and ingenu-
ity of babies’ passion to get moving into
life (Adolph, 2008). Consider the “creeping” or
belly-crawling stage. Some babies scoot; others
hunch over or launch themselves forward from
their knees, roll from side to side, or scrape along
© moodboard/Corbis
with a cheek on the floor (Adolph & Berger, 2006).

And can I really say that there was a day when my
son mastered walking? When walking, or any other major
motor skill first occurs, children do not make steady prog-
At 8 or 10 months of age, getting
ress (Adolph & Berger, 2006). They may take their first solo step on Monday and around is a challenge that babies
then revert to crawling for a week or so before trying, oh so tentatively, to tackle approach in a variety of creative,
toddling again. unique ways.
92 PART II Infancy
But suppose a child is behind schedule. Let’s say your son is almost 15 months
old and has yet to take his first solo step? And what about the fantasies that set in
when an infant is ahead? “Only 8 months old, and he’s walking. Perhaps my baby is
special, a genius!”
What typically happens is that, within weeks, the worries become a memory
and the fantasies about the future are shown to be completely wrong. Except in the
case of children who have developmental disorders, the rate at which babies master
motor milestones has no relation to their later intelligence. Since different regions of
the cortex develop at different times, why should our walking or grasping-an-object
timetable predict development in a complex function such as grasping the point of
this book?
But even if a baby’s early locomotion (physically getting around) does not mean
he will end up an Einstein, each motor achievement provokes other advances.
Motor Milestones Have Widespread Effects

Consider, for instance, that landmark event: reaching. Because it allows babies to
physically make contact with the world, the urge to grasp objects propels sitting, as
a child will tolerate plopping over in her hunger to touch everything she can (Har-
bourne and others, 2013).
Now consider how crawling changes the parent–child bond (Campos and others,
2000). When infants crawl, parents see their children as more independent—people
with a mind of their own. Many say this is the first time they discipline their child. So
as babies get mobile, our basic child-rearing agenda emerges: Children’s mission is
to explore the world. A parent’s job, for the next two decades, lies in setting limits to
that exploration, as well as giving love.
INTERVENTIONS: Baby-Proofing, the First Person–Environment Fit

Motor development presents perils. Now safety issues become a concern. How can
caretakers encourage these emerging skills and still protect children from getting hurt?
baby-proofing Making the The answer is to strive for the right person–environment fit—that is, to baby-proof
home safe for a newly the house.
mobile infant.
Get on the floor and look at life from the perspective of the child. Cover electrical
outlets and put dangerous cleaning substances on the top shelf. Unplug countertop
appliances. Take small objects off tables. Perhaps pad the furniture corners, too. The
challenge is to anticipate possible dangers and to stay one step ahead. There will
come a day when that child can pry out those outlet covers or ascend to the top of the
cleanser-laden cabinet. Unfortunately, those exciting milestones have a downside, too!

1. Your 3-month-old perks up when you start the vacuum cleaner, and then after a
moment, loses interest. You are using a kind of paradigm; and the
scientific term for when your baby loses interest is
2. Tania says, “Visual capacities improve dramatically during the first year of life.”
Thomas replies, “No, in some ways our vision gets worse.” Who is correct: Tania,
Thomas, or both students? Why?
3. One implication of the face perception studies is that the roots of adult prejudice
begin (choose one) at birth/during the second 6 months of life/after age 2.
4. If Alicia’s 8-month-old daughter is participating in a visual cliff study, when she
approaches the drop-off, she should (choose one): crawl over it/be frightened.
5. What steps would you take to baby-proof the room you are sitting in right now?
Cognition
Why do infants have an incredible hunger to explore, to reach, to touch, to get into
every cleanser-laden cabinet and remove outlet plugs? For the same reason that, if
you landed on a different planet, you would need to get the basics of reality down.
Imagine stepping out onto Mars. You would roam the new environment, explor-
ing the rocks and the sand. While exercising your walking schema, or habitual way
of physically navigating, you would need to make drastic changes. On Mars, with its
minimal gravity, when you took your normal earthling stride, you would probably
bounce up 20 feet. Just like a newly crawling infant, you would have to accommo-
date, and in the process reach a higher mental equilibrium, or a better understanding
of life. Moreover, as a scientist, you would not be satisfied to perform each move-
ment only once. The way to pin down the physics of this planet would be to repeat
each action over and over again. Now you have the basic principles of Jean Piaget’s
sensorimotor stage (see Table 3.7).
Piaget’s Sensorimotor Stage

Specifically, Piaget believed that during our first two years on this planet, our mission
is to make sense of physical reality by exploring the world through our senses. Just as
in the above Mars example, as they assimilate, or fit the outer world to what they are
capable of doing, infants accommodate and so gradually mentally advance. (Remem-
ber my example in Chapter 1 of how, in the process of assimilating this information
to your current knowledge schemas or mental slots, you are accommodating and so
expanding what you know.)
Let’s take the “everything into the mouth” schema that figures so prominently
during the first year of life. As babies mouth each new object—or, in Piaget’s words, sensorimotor stage Piaget’s
first stage of cognitive
assimilate everything to their mouthing schema—they realize that objects have dif- development, lasting from
ferent characteristics. Some are soft or prickly. Others taste terrible or great. Through birth to age 2, when babies’
continual assimilation and accommodation, by age 2, babies make a dramatic mental agenda is to pin down the
leap—from relying on a set of reflexes, to reasoning and using symbolic thought. basics of physical reality.
circular reactions In Piaget’s
Circular Reactions: Habits That Pin Down Reality framework, repetitive
action-oriented schemas
By observing his own three children, Piaget discovered that driving all these advances (or habits) characteristic
were what he called circular reactions—habits, or action-oriented schemas, the child of babies during the
repeats again and again. sensorimotor stage.
Table 3.7: Piaget’s Stages: Focus on Infancy

reality. This stage ends with the development of language.
2–7 Preoperations Children’s perceptions are captured by their immediate
appearances. “What they see is what is real.” They believe,
among other things, that inanimate objects are really alive
and that if the appearance of a quantity of liquid changes (for
example, if it is poured from a short, wide glass into a tall, thin
one), the amount actually becomes different.
8–12 Concrete operations Children have a realistic understanding of the world. Their
thinking is really on the same wavelength as adults. While they
can reason conceptually about concrete objects, however, they
cannot think abstractly in a scientific way.
12+ Formal operations Reasoning is at its pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible,
fully adult. Our full cognitive human potential has been reached.
94 PART II Infancy
primary circular reactions From the newborn reflexes, during months 1 to 4, primary circular reactions
In Piaget’s framework, the develop. These are repetitive actions centered on the child’s body. A thumb randomly
first infant habits during the
sensorimotor stage, centered makes contact with his mouth, and a 2-month-old removes that interesting object,
on the body. observes it, and moves it in and out. Waving her legs captivates a 3-month-old for hours.
secondary circular reactions At around 4 months of age, secondary circular reactions appear. As the cortex
In Piaget’s framework, habits blossoms and the child begins to reach, action-oriented schemas become centered on
of the sensorimotor stage the outside world. Here is how Piaget described his daughter Lucienne’s first second-
lasting from about 4 months ary circular reactions:
of age to the baby’s first
birthday, centered on Lucienne at 0:4 [4 months] is lying in her bassinet. I hang a doll over her feet which . . .
exploring the external world. sets in motion the schema of shakes. Her feet reach the doll . . . and give it a violent
tertiary circular reactions movement which Lucienne surveys with delight . . . . After the first shakes, Lucienne
In Piaget’s framework, makes slow foot movements as though to grasp and explore . . . . When she tries to kick
“little-scientist” activities the doll, and misses . . . she begins again very slowly until she succeeds [without looking
of the sensorimotor stage, at her feet].
beginning around age 1, (Piaget, 1950, p. 159 [as cited in Flavell, 1963, p. 103])
involving flexibly exploring
the properties of objects. During the next few months, secondary circular reactions become better coor-
little-scientist phase The dinated. By about 8 months of age, babies can simultaneously employ two circular
time around age 1 when reactions, using both grasping and kicking together to explore the world.
babies use tertiary circular Then, around a baby’s first birthday, tertiary circular reactions appear. Now,
reactions to actively explore
the child is no longer constrained by stereotyped schemas. He can operate just like
the properties of objects,
experimenting with them like a real scientist, flexibly changing his behavior to make sense of the world. A toddler
“scientists.” becomes captivated by the toilet, throwing toys and different types of paper into the
means–end behavior In bowl. At dinner, he gleefully spits his food out at varying velocities and hurls his bottle
Piaget’s framework, off the high chair in different directions to see where it lands.
performing a different How important are circular reactions in infancy? Spend time with a young baby,
action to get to a goal—an
as she bats at her mobile or joyously pinwheels her legs. Try to prevent a 1-year-old
ability that emerges in
the sensorimotor stage as from hurling plates from a high chair, flushing money down the toilet, or inserting
babies approach age 1. bits of cookie into a USB slot. Then you will understand: Infancy is all about the
insatiable drive to repeat interesting acts. (See Table 3.8 for a recap of the circular
reactions, as well as a look at the sensorimotor substages.)
Piaget’s concept of circular reactions offers a new perspective on those obsessions
that drive adults crazy during what researchers call the little-scientist phase (and
parents call the “getting into everything” phase). This is the time, around age 1, when
the child begins experimenting with objects in a way that mimics how a scientist
behaves: “Let me try this, then that, and see what happens.” The reason you can’t
derail a 1-year-old from putting oatmeal into the computer, or clogging the toilet with
your hard-earned wages (making a plumber a parent’s new best friend) is that circular
reactions allow infants to pin down the basic properties of the world.
Why do specific circular reactions, such as flushing dollar bills down the toilet,
become irresistible during the little-scientist phase? This question brings me to
Piaget’s ideas about how babies progress from reflexes to the ability to think.
Tracking Early Thinking

How do we know when infants begin to think? According to Piaget, one hallmark of
thinking is deferred imitation—repeating an action that was witnessed at an earlier
time. When Piaget saw Lucienne, at 16 months of age, mimic a tantrum she had seen
another child have days earlier, he realized she had the mental skills to keep that
image in her mind, mull it over, and translate it into action on her own. Another sign
of reasoning is make-believe play. To pretend you are cleaning the house or talking
on the phone like Mommy, you must realize that something signifies, or stands for,
something else.
But the most important sign of emerging reasoning is means–end behavior—
when the child is able to perform a separate, or different, action to get to a goal.
Pushing the toilet lever to make the water swirl down, manipulating a switch to turn
Table 3.8: The Circular Reactions: A Summary Table (with a Look at Piaget’s
Sensorimotor Substages)
Primary Circular Reactions: 1–4 months
Description: Repetitive habits center around the child’s own body.
Examples: Sucking toes; sucking thumb.
Rommel/Masterfile
Secondary Circular Reactions: 4 months–1 year
Description: Child “wakes up to wider world.” Habits center on
environmental objects.
Examples: Grabbing for toys; batting mobiles; pushing one’s body to
© Christina Kennedy/PhotoEdit
activate the lights and sounds on a swing.
Substages: From 4 to 8 months, children use single secondary
circular reactions such as those above; from 8 to 12 months, they
employ two circular reactions in concert to attain a goal (i.e.,
they may grab a toy in each hand, bat a mobile back and forth,
coordinate the motions of toys).
Tertiary Circular Reactions: 1–2 years

Description: Child flexibly explores the properties of objects, like a
“little scientist.”
Examples: Exploring the various dimensions of a toy; throwing a
bottle off the high chair in different directions; putting different
kinds of food in the computer; flushing dollars down the toilet. American Images Inc/Getty Images
Substages: From 12 to 18 months, the child experiments with concrete

objects; from 18 to 24 months, his little-scientist behavior
transcends what is observable and involves using symbols
to stand for something else. (I’ll be describing the many
advances ushered in by this ability to reason symbolically in
later chapters.)
on the light, screwing open a bottle to extract the juice—all are examples of “doing
something different” to reach a particular end.
If you have access to a 1-year-old, you might try to construct your own means–end
task. First, show the child something she wants, such as a cookie or a toy. Then, put
the object in a place where the baby must perform a different type of action to get
the treat. For instance, you might put the cookie in a clear container and cover the
top with Saran Wrap. Will the baby ineffectively bang the side of the container, or
will she figure out the different step (removing the cover) essential to retrieving what
she wants? If you conduct your test by putting the cookie in an opaque container, the
baby must have another basic understanding: She must realize that—although she object permanence In
doesn’t see it—the cookie still exists. Piaget’s framework, the
understanding that objects
Object Permanence: Believing in a Stable World continue to exist even when
we can no longer see them,
Object permanence refers to knowing that objects exist even when we no longer see which gradually emerges
them—a perception that is, obviously, fundamental to our sense of living in a stable during the sensorimotor
world. Suppose you felt that this book disappeared when you averted your eyes or stage.
96 PART II Infancy
that your house rematerialized out of nothing when

you entered your driveway. Piaget believed that object
permanence is not inborn. This perception develops
gradually throughout the sensorimotor stage.
Piaget’s observations suggested that during babies’
first few months, life is a series of disappearing pic-
tures. If an enticing image, such as her mother, passed
her line of sight, Lucienne would stare at the place
Doug Goodman/Photo Researchers, Inc.
from which the image had vanished as if it would

reappear out of thin air. (The relevant phrase here is
“out of sight, out of mind.”) Then, around month 5,
when the secondary circular reactions are first flower-
ing, there was a milestone. An object dropped out of
sight and Lucienne leaned over to look for it, suggest-
ing that she knew it existed independently of her gaze.
A minute ago, this 4-month-old Still, this sense of a stable object was fragile. The baby quickly abandoned her search
girl was delightedly grabbing
this little dog but, when this
after Piaget covered that object with his hand.
barrier blocked her image, it was Hunting for hidden objects under covers becomes an absorbing game as children
“out of sight, out of mind.” If you approach age one. Still, around 9 or 10 months of age, children make a surprising
have access to a young baby, can mistake called the A-not-B error. If you put an object in full view of a baby into one
you perform this test to track the
beginning of object permanence?
out-of-sight location, have the baby get it, and then move it to another place while
the child is watching, she will look for it in the initial place!
See if you can perform this classic test if you have access to a 10-month-old: Place
an object, such as a toy, under a piece of paper (A). Then have the baby find it in
A-not-B error In Piaget’s that place a few times. Next, remove the toy as the infant watches and put it under a
framework, a classic mistake different piece of paper (B). What happens? Even though the child saw you put the
made by infants in the
sensorimotor stage, whereby toy in the new location, he will probably look under the A paper again, as if it had
babies approaching age 1 go migrated unseen to its original place!
back to the original hiding After their first birthday, children seem to master the basic principle. Move an
place to look for an object object to a new hiding place and they look for it in the correct location. However, as
even though they have seen
it get hidden in a second Piaget found when he used this strategy but covered the object with his hand, object
place. permanence does not fully emerge until children are almost 2 years old.
Emerging object permanence explains many puzzles about development. Why
does peek-a-boo become a favorite activity at around 8 months? The reason is that
a child now thinks there is probably still someone behind those hands, but doesn’t
know for sure.
Emerging object permanence offers a wonderful perspective on why younger
babies are so laid back when you remove an interesting object, and then become pos-
sessive by their second year of life. Those toddler tantrums do not signal a new, awful
personality trait called “the terrible twos.” They simply show that children are smarter.
They have the cognitive skills to know that objects still exist when you take them away.
Finally, the concept of object permanence, or fascination with disappearing
objects, plus means–end behavior, makes sense of that passion to flush dollar bills
down the toilet or the compulsion to stick bits of cookie in a USB port. What could
be more tantalizing during the little-scientist phase than taking a new action to get
to a goal plus causing things to disappear and possibly reappear? It also explains why
you can’t go wrong if you buy your toddler nephew a pop-up toy.
But during the first year of life there is no need to arrive with any toy. Buy a toy
for an infant and he will push it aside to play with the box. Your nephew probably
prefers fiddling with the TV remote to any object from Toys R Us. Toys only become
interesting once we realize that they are different from real life. So, a desire for dolls
or action figures—or for anything that requires make-believe play—shows that a child
is making the transition from the sensorimotor period to symbolic thought. With the
concepts of circular reactions, emerging object permanence, and means–end behav-
ior, Piaget masterfully made sense of the puzzling passions of infant life!
Critiquing Piaget
Piaget’s insights have transformed the way we think about childhood.
Research confirms the fact that children are, at heart, little scientists.
The passion to decode the world is built into being human from our
first months of life (Gopnik, 2010). However, Piaget’s timing was seri-
ously off. Piaget’s trouble was that he had to rely on babies’ actions
(for instance, taking covers off hidden objects) to figure out what
they knew. He did not have creative strategies, like preferential look-
ing and habituation, to decode what babies’ understand before they
can physically respond. Using these techniques, researchers realized
that young infants know far more about life than this master theorist
ever believed. Specifically, scientists now know that:
iStockphoto/Thinkstock/Getty Images
• Infants grasp the basics of physical reality well before age 1.
To demonstrate this point, developmentalist Renée Baillargeon
(1993) presented young babies with physically impossible events
such as showing a traveling rabbit that never appeared in a gap it
had to pass through to reach its place on the other side (illustrated
in Figure 3.8A). Even 5-month-olds looked astonished when they
saw these impossible events. You could almost hear them think-
ing, “I know that’s not the way objects should behave.” For this 1-year-old, pushing the
buttons on the TV remote is
• Infants’ understanding of physical reality develops gradually. For instance, while utterly captivating. Information
Baillargeon discovered that the impossible event of the traveling rabbit in the fig- processing researchers want
ure provoked astonishment around month 5, other research shows it takes until to understand what specific
skills made this boy capable
age 1 for babies to master other basics about the world, such as the fact that you of achieving this miraculous
cannot take a large rabbit out of a little container (shown in Figure 3.8B). (As an means–end feat.
aside, that explains why “magic” suddenly becomes interesting only around age 2
or 3.) Therefore, rather than viewing development in huge qualitative stages, many
contemporary researchers adopt a more specific approach: focusing on particular
mental processes such as memory; decoding step by step how cognition gradually
emerges.
Information-processing researchers use the metaphor of a computer with information-processing
separate processing steps to decode children’s (and adults’) intellectual skills. For approach A perspective on
understanding cognition
instance, instead of seeing means–end behavior as a capacity that suddenly emerges that divides thinking into
at age 1, a psychologist using this approach would isolate the talents involved in this specific steps and compo-
milestone—memory, attention, the ability to inhibit your immediate perception— nent processes, much like a
and chart how each skill develops over time. computer.
(A) (B)
Impossible event Impossible event
figure 3.8: Two impossible events: At about 5 months of age babies were surprised by the
physically impossible sequence in A—but they did not look surprised by the event in B till about
age one. The bottom line: Infants understand the physical world far earlier than Piaget believed,
but this knowledge occurs gradually.
Adapted from: Baillargeon, 1993; Baillargeon & DeVos, 1991; Baillargeon & Graber, 1987.
98 PART II Infancy
Table 3.9: Infant Memory and Conceptual Abilities: Some Interesting Findings
Memory: By using deferred imitation (see the text discussion), researchers find that babies as young
as 9 months of age can “remember” events from the previous day. Infants will push a button if
they saw an adult performing that act 24 hours earlier. In another study, most 10-month-olds
imitated an action they saw one month earlier. There even have been cases where babies this
age saw an action and then remembered it a year later.*
Forming categories: By 7 to 9 months of age, babies are able to distinguish between animals and
vehicles. They will feed an animal or put it to bed, but even if they watch an adult put a car to
bed, they will not model her action. So the first classification babies make is between something
that moves by itself or cannot move on its own. (Is it alive, like an animal, or inanimate?) Then,
categorization abilities get more refined depending on familiarity. Eleven-month-old infants, for
example, can often distinguish between dogs and cats but not among dogs, rabbits, and fish.
Understanding numbers: By about 5 months of age, infants can make differentiations between
different numbers—for instance, after seeing three dots on a screen, they will look preferentially
at a subsequent screen showing four dots. They also have an implicit understanding of addition
and subtraction. If they see someone add one doll to another, or take away a doll from a set, they
look surprised when they see an image on a screen showing the incorrect number of dolls.
Information from: Mandler, 2007.

*Because deferred imitation reflects the child’s memory capacities, a preverbal baby’s skill in this area predicts the
rapidity of language development and later IQ scores.
Table 3.9 showcases insights about babies’ memories and mathematical capacities,
derived from using this gradual, specific approach. Stay tuned for Chapters 5 and 13,
social cognition Any skill
to see how information processing sheds light on memory and thinking during elemen-
related to understanding
feelings and negotiating tary school and old age. Now, it’s time to tackle another question: What do babies
interpersonal interactions. understand about human minds?
Tackling the Core of What Makes Us Human:

Infant Social Cognition
Social cognition refers to any skill related to managing and decoding people’s
emotions, and getting along with other human beings. One hallmark of
being human is that we are always making inferences about people’s feelings
and goals, based on their actions. (“He’s running, so he must be late.” “She
slammed the door in my face, so she must be angry.”) When do these judg-
ments first occur? Piaget would say not before age 2 (or much later) because
infants in the sensorimotor period can’t think conceptually. Here, too, Piaget
was incorrect. Babies make sophisticated judgments about intentions at an
incredibly young age!
The strategy here is to first show infants a video of a puppet or stuffed
animal helping another puppet complete a challenging task (the nice puppet).
In the next scene, another puppet hinders the stuffed animal from reaching
his goal (the mean puppet). (See the photos at left.) Then, the experimenter
PBS Courtesy of Karen Wynn
offers the baby both puppets and sees if she preferentially grabs for either one.
And guess what? By the time they can reach (at about month 5), most infants
grasp the nice puppet rather than the puppet that acted “mean” (Hamlin &
Wynn, 2011; Hamlin, 2013).
This remarkable finding suggests we clue into motivations such as “She’s not
After seeing this video sequence
of events, even infants under
nice!” months before we begin to speak (Hamlin, 2013). More astonishing, 8-month-
6 months of age preferentially old babies can make adultlike judgments about intentions. They preferentially reach
reached for the “nice” tiger rather for a stuffed animal that tried to help a puppet, but failed. Here the reasoning may
than the “mean dog”—showing be: “He is a good guy. Even though he didn’t succeed, he tried” (Hamlin, 2013a).
that the fundamental human
social-cognitive awareness, “he’s
Notice that these infants have intuitively mastered modern legal concepts we use in
acting mean or nice” emerges at assessing criminal intent. Our system must determine: Was this an accident or did he
a remarkably young age. mean it? He should only be punished if he meant to do harm.
But I cannot leave you with the sense that our species is primed to be mini-
biblical King Solomons, behaving in a wise, ethical way. Some not-so-appealing
human tendencies also erupt before age 1.
Using a similar procedure, the same research group found that 8-month-olds
reach for a puppet they previously viewed hindering (acting mean) to another pup-
pet if they view that puppet as different from themselves (Hamlin, 2013b; Hamlin
and others, 2013). The principle here seems to be: “The enemy of my enemy is my
friend.” Or put more graphically: “I like people who are mean to people who are dif-
ferent than me.” (In the next chapter, you will learn that a fear of anyone different—
meaning, not a baby’s primary caregiver—kicks in at exactly 8 months of age!)
In sum, during our second six months on this planet, we can decode intentions—
inferring underlying motivations from the way people behave. This mind-reading
talent (probably unique to our species) paves the way for that other human milestone:
language, communicating our thoughts through words.

1. You are working at a child-care center, and you notice Darien repeatedly opening and
closing a cabinet door. Then Jai comes over and pulls open the door. You decide to
latch it. Jai—undeterred—pulls on the door and, when it doesn’t open, begins jiggling
the latch. And then he looks up, very pleased, as he manages to figure out how to
open the latch. Finally, you give up and decide to play a game with Sam. You hide a
stuffed bear in a toy box while Sam watches. Then Sam throws open the lid of the box
and scoops out the bear. Link the appropriate Piagetian term to each child’s behavior:
circular reaction; object permanence; means–end behavior.
2. Jose, while an avid Piaget fan, has to admit that in important ways, this master theorist
was wrong. Jose can legitimately make which two criticisms? (1) Cognition develops
gradually, not in stages; (2) Infants understand human motivations; (3) Babies under-
stand the basic properties of objects at birth.
3. Baby Sara watches her big brother hit the dog. Based on the research in this section,
Sara might first understand her brother is being “mean” (choose one) months before/
at/months after age 1.
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy

Piaget believed that language signals the end of the sensorimotor period because this
ability requires understanding a symbol stands for something else. True, in order to
master language, you must grasp the idea that the abstract word-symbol textbook refers
to what you are reading now. But the miracle of language is that we string together
words in novel, understandable ways. What causes us to master this feat, and how
does language evolve?
Nature, Nurture, and the Passion to Learn Language

The essential property of language is elasticity. How can I come up with this new grammar The rules and
sentence, and why can you understand its meaning, although you have never seen it word-arranging systems
before? Why does every language have a grammar, with nouns, verbs, and rules for that every human language
organizing words into sentences? According to linguist Noam Chomsky, the reason employs to communicate
meaning.
is that humans are biologically programmed to make “language,” via what he labeled
the language acquisition device (LAD). language acquisition device
(LAD) Chomsky’s term for a
Chomsky developed his nature-oriented concept of a uniquely human LAD in
hypothetical brain structure
reaction to the behaviorist B. F. Skinner’s nurture-oriented proposition that we learn that enables our species to
to speak through being reinforced for producing specific words (for instance, Skinner learn and produce language.
100 PART II Infancy
social-interactionist argued that we learn to say “I want cookie” by being rewarded for producing those
perspective An approach sounds by getting that treat). This pronouncement was another example of the tradi-
to language development
that emphasizes its social
tional behaviorist principle that “all actions are driven by reinforcement” run amok
function, specifically (see Chapter 1). It defies common sense to suggest that we can generate billions of
that babies and adults new sentences by having people reinforce us for every word!
have a mutual passion to Still, Skinner is correct in one respect. I speak English instead of Mandarin Chi-
communicate.
nese because I grew up in New York City, not Beijing. So the way our genetic program
babbling The alternating for making language gets expressed depends on our environment. Once again, nature
vowel and consonant sounds
that babies repeat with
plus nurture work together to explain every activity of life!
variations of intonation and Currently, developmentalists adopt a social-interactionist perspective on this
pitch and that precede the core skill. They focus on the motivations that propel language (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1997).
first words. Babies are passionate to communicate. Adults are passionate to help babies learn to
holophrase First clear talk. How does the infant passion to communicate evolve?
evidence of language, when
babies use a single word to
communicate a sentence or Tracking Emerging Language
complete thought. The pathway to producing language occurs in stages. Out of the reflexive crying of the
telegraphic speech First newborn period comes cooing (oooh sounds) at about month 4. At around month 6,
stage of combining words delightful vocal circular reactions called babbling emerge. Babbles are alternating
in infancy, in which a baby consonant and vowel sounds, such as “da da da,” that infants playfully repeat with
pares down a sentence to its
essential words. variations of intonation and pitch.
The first word emerges out of the babble at around 11 months, although that
exact landmark is difficult to define. There is little more reinforcing to paternal pride
than when your 8-month-old genius repeats your name. But when does “da da da”
really refer to Dad? In the first, holophrase stage of true speech, one word, accom-
panied by gestures says it all. When your son says “ja” and points to the kitchen, you
know he wants juice . . . or was it a jelly sandwich, or was he referring to his sister Jane?
Children accumulate their first 50 or so words, centering on the important items
in their world (people, toys, and food), slowly (Nelson, 1974). Then, typically between
ages 1 1/2 and 2, there is a vocabulary explosion as the child begins to combine
words. Because children pare communication down to its essentials, just like an old-
style telegram (“Me juice”; “Mommy, no”), this first word-combining stage is called
telegraphic speech. Table 3.10 summarizes these language landmarks, along with
offering examples and the approximate time each milestone occurs.
Just as with the other infant achievements described in this chapter, developmen-
talists are passionate to trace language to its roots. It turns out, for instance, that newborns
are prewired to gravitate to the sounds of living things—as they suck longer when rein-
forced by hearing monkey and/or human vocalizations (versus pure tones). By 3 months
of age, preferences get more selective. Now babies perk up only when they hear human
speech (Vouloumanos and others, 2010). By 8 months of age (notice the similarity to the
visual-system atrophy research described early in this chapter), infants—like adults—lose
their ability to hear sound tones in languages not their own, such as Hindi (Gervain &
Mehler, 2010). Simultaneously, a remarkable sharpening occurs. When language starts
Table 3.10: Language Milestones from Birth to Age 2*

Age Language Characteristic
2–4 months Cooing: First sounds growing out of reflexes. Example: “oooo”
5–11 months Babbling: Alternate vowel–consonant sounds. Examples: “ba-ba-ba,”
“da-da-da”
12 months Holophrases: First one-word sentences. Example: “ja” (“I want juice.”)
18 months–2 years Telegraphic speech: Two-word combinations, often accompanied by an
explosion in vocabulary. Example: “Me juice”
*Babies vary a good deal in the ages at which they begin to combine words.
to explode, toddlers can hear the difference between similar sounds like “bih” and “dih”
and link them to objects after just hearing this connection once!
Caregivers promote these achievements by continually talking to babies. Around
the world, they train infants in language by using infant-directed speech.
Infant-directed speech (IDS) (what you and I call baby talk) uses simple words, infant-directed speech (IDS)
exaggerated tones, elongated vowels, and has a higher pitch than we use in speaking to The simplified, exaggerated,
high-pitched tones that
adults (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1997). Although IDS sounds ridiculous (“Mooommy taaaaking
adults and children use
baaaaby ooooout!” “Moommy looooves baaaaby!”), infants perk up when they hear to speak to infants that
this conversational style (Santesso, Schmidt, & Trainor, 2007). So we naturally use function to help teach
infant-directed speech with babies, just as we are compelled to pick up and rock a child language.
when she cries. Does IDS really help promote emerging language? The answer is yes.
Babies identify individual words better when they are uttered in exaggerated IDS
tones (Thiessen, Hill, & Saffran, 2005). When adults are learning a new language,
they also benefit from the slow, repetitive IDS style. Therefore, rather than being just
for babies, IDS is a strategy that teaches language across the board (Ratner, 2013). In
fact, notice that when you are teaching a person any new skill (or, as you will see in
Chapter 14, when talking to an older person you perceive as impaired,) you, too, are
apt to automatically use IDS!
The close link between brain development at 7 months of age and children’s
speech understanding at age 1, shown in Figure 3.9, suggests that we can physically
“see” the roots of language before that talent appears (Deniz Can, Richards, and
Kuhl, 2013; see also Dean and others, 2014). But even if this growth rate is mainly
genetically programmed (meaning due to biological differences), parents who use
more IDS communications have babies who speak at a younger age (Ratner, 2013).
IDS is different than other talk. You don’t hear this speech style on TV, at the din-
ner table, or on videos designed to produce Einstein’s at 8 months of age. IDS kicks
in only when we communicate with babies one on one. So, if parents are passionate
to accelerate language, investing millions in learning tools seems a distant second best
to spending time talking to a child (Ratner, 2013)!
0.6
cbm Gray-Matter Concentration at 7 m
0.5
0.4
0.3
40 45 50 55 60 65
Receptive Language T-score at 12 m
figure 3.9: The relationship between grey matter (synaptogenesis) concentration in

the cerebellum at 7 months of age and language comprehension at a child’s first birthday:
This chart shows a close correlation between the quantity, or amount, of synaptogenesis that has
taken place in this particular brain region and a child’s ability to understand language at age 1. The
surprise is that this part of the brain—the cerebellum—does not qualify as a “higher brain center,”
as it programs balance and coordination.
Data from: Deniz Can Dilara, Richards. Todd Kuhl, Patricia K., (2013).
102 PART II Infancy
A basic message of this chapter is that—from language, to face perception,

to social cognition—our main agenda is to connect with the human world. The
next chapter focuses on this number-one infant (and adult) agenda by exploring
attachment relationships during our first two years of life.

1. “We learn to speak by getting reinforced for saying what we want.” “We are
biologically programmed to learn language.” “Babies are passionate to communicate.”
Identify the theoretical perspective reflected in each of these statements: Skinner’s
operant conditioning perspective; Chomsky’s language acquisition device; a
social-interactionist perspective on language.
2. Baby Ginny is 4 months old; baby Jamal is about 7 months old; baby Sam is 1 year
old; baby David is 2 years old. Identify each child’s probable language stage by
choosing from the following items: babbling; cooing; telegraphic speech; holophrases.
3. A friend makes fun of adults who use baby talk. Given the information in this section,
is her teasing justified?
SUMMARY
Setting the Context: Brain Blossoming Crying is at its height during early infancy and declines around
month 4 as the cortex develops. Colic, excessive crying that
and Sculpting disappears after early infancy, is basically a biological problem.
Because our large cerebral cortex develops mainly after birth, Strategies for quieting crying babies include rocking, holding,
during the first two years of life, the brain mushrooms. Axons and providing an outlet for the urge to suck. The skin-to-skin con-
elongate and develop a fatty cover called myelin. Dendrites sprout tact involved in infant massage, and kangaroo care, is preferable
branches and at synapses link up with other cells. Synaptogenesis to swaddling, another classic technique. These practices may
and myelination program every ability and human skill. Although help infants—especially at-risk premature babies—grow.
the brain matures for decades, we do not simply “develop more
synapses.” Each region undergoes rapid synaptogenesis, fol- Sleep is the basic newborn state, and from the 18-hour, waking-
lowed by pruning (or cutting back). Before pruning, the brain is every-few hours newborn pattern, babies gradually adjust to
particularly plastic, allowing us to compensate for early brain falling asleep at night. REM sleep lessens and shifts to the end
insults—but synaptogenesis and learning occur throughout life. of the cycle. Babies, however, really do not ever sleep through
the night. At about 6 months, many learn self-soothing, putting
themselves back to sleep when they wake up. The decision about
Basic Newborn States whether to “let a baby cry it out” or respond immediately at night
Eating undergoes dramatic changes during infancy. We emerge is personal, because the best way to foster sleep is to provide a
from the womb with sucking and rooting reflexes, which jump- caring bedtime routine. Co-sleeping (or bed-sharing)—the norm
start eating, as well as other reflexes, which disappear after the in collectivist cultures—although still controversial in the West,
early months of life. Although the “everything into the mouth” is also a personal choice.
phase of infancy can make life scary for caregivers, a 2-year-old’s
food caution can protect toddlers from poisoning themselves. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)—when a young baby stops
breathing, often at night, and dies—is a main cause of devel-
Even though its specific health benefits are not always clear- oped-world infant mortality. Although SIDS may be caused by
cut, every public health organization advocates exclusive breast- impairments in the developing fetal brain—it tends to occur most
feeding for the first 6 months of life. However, only a minority of often when babies sleep face down. Therefore, a late-twentieth-
women follows this recommendation. Mothers may find breast- century SIDS campaign urging parents to put babies to sleep on
feeding difficult and rebel against the social pressure to nurse their backs (not stomachs) has been effective, although deliver-
for 6 months. We need to realize that breast-feeding is not for ing this message is difficult in cultures that prize co-sleeping.
everyone and avoid equating nursing with being a good mom.
Undernutrition, both stunting (very short stature) and micro- Sensory and Motor Development
nutrient deficiencies, are common in young children living in The preferential-looking paradigm (exploring what objects
the developing world. Although families with children in the babies look at) and habituation (the fact that we get less inter-
United States may suffer from food insecurity, due to govern- ested in looking at objects that are no longer “new”) are used
ment entitlement programs, severe, chronic hunger is very rare. to determine what very young babies can see. Although at birth
visual acuity is poor, it improves very rapidly. Face-perception Piaget’s most compelling concept is object permanence—
studies show that newborns look at facelike stimuli, recognize knowing that objects exist when you no longer see them. Accord-
their mothers, and even prefer good-looking people from the ing to Piaget, this understanding develops gradually during the
first weeks of life. At the same time that our visual capacities first years of life. When this knowledge is developing, infants
improve, due to neural pruning, we lose the ability to “see” facial make the A-not-B error, looking for an object in the place where
differences we really don’t need. Sadly, this neural atrophy may they first found it, even if it has been hidden in another location
bias us against other races. Depth perception studies using the before their eyes.
visual cliff show that babies get frightened of heights around the
time they begin to crawl. Using preferential looking, and watching babies’ expressions of
surprise at impossible events, researchers now know that babies
Infants’ bodies lengthen and thin out as they grow. The cepha- understand physical reality far earlier than Piaget believed.
locaudal, proximodistal, and mass-to-specific principles apply to Because Piaget’s stage model also does not fit the gradual way
how the body changes and emerging infant motor milestones. cognition unfolds, contemporary developmentalists may adopt
Although they do progress through stages when getting to walk- an information-processing approach, breaking thinking into sep-
ing, babies show incredible creativity and variability when they first arate components and steps. Scientists studying social cogni-
attain skills. Reaching, in particular, literally opens babies up to tion find that babies understand people’s motivations (and prefer
encountering life. Earlier-than-normal motor development does not people, based on judging their inner intentions) remarkably early
predict advanced cognition; but as babies get more mobile, parents in life.
need to discipline their children and baby-proof their home.
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy
Cognition Language, specifically our use of grammar and our ability to
During Piaget’s sensorimotor stage, babies master the basics form infinitely different sentences, sets us apart from any other
of physical reality through their senses and begin to symbol- animal. Although B. F. Skinner believed that we learn to speak
ize and think. Circular reactions (habits the baby repeats) help through being reinforced, the more logical explanation is Chom-
babies pin down the basics of the physical world. Primary circular sky’s idea that we have a biologically built-in language acqui-
reactions—body-centered habits, such as sucking one’s toes— sition device (LAD). Social-interactionists focus on the mutual
emerge first. Secondary circular reactions, habits centered on passion of babies and adults to communicate.
making interesting external stimuli last (for example, batting
mobiles), begin around month 4. Tertiary circular reactions, also First, babies coo, then babble, then use one-word holophrases,
called “little-scientist” activities—like spitting food at different and finally, at 1 1/2 or 2, progress to two-word combinations
velocities just to see where the oatmeal lands—are the hallmark called telegraphic speech. Caregivers naturally use infant-
of the toddler years. A major advance in reasoning that occurs directed speech (exaggerated intonations and simpler phrases)
around age 1 is means–end behavior—understanding you need when they talk to babies. Talking to babies in IDS is better than
to do something different to get to a goal. any baby-genius tape in promoting this vital human skill.
KEY TERMS
cerebral cortex, p. 74 micronutrient deficiency, face-perception studies, p. 88 object permanence, p. 95
axon, p. 74 p. 79 depth perception, p. 90 A-not-B error, p. 96
dendrite, p. 74 food insecurity, p. 80 visual cliff, p. 90 information processing
colic, p. 81 baby-proofing, p. 92 approach, p. 97
synapse, p. 74
swaddling, p. 81 sensorimotor stage, p. 93 social cognition, p. 98
synaptogenesis, p. 74
kangaroo care, p. 81 circular reactions, p. 93 grammar, p. 99
myelination, p. 74
REM sleep, p. 83 primary circular reactions, language acquisition device
plastic, p. 75 (LAD), p. 99
self-soothing, p. 83 p. 94
sucking reflex, p. 77 social-interactionist view, p. 100
co-sleeping, p. 85 secondary circular reactions,
rooting reflex, p. 77 p. 94 babbling, p. 100
sudden infant death syndrome
reflex, p. 77 (SIDS), p. 86 tertiary circular reactions, holophrase, p. 100
undernutrition, preferential-looking paradigm, p. 94 telegraphic speech, p. 100
p. 79 p. 88 little-scientist phase, p. 94 infant-directed speech (IDS),
stunting, p. 79 habituation, p. 88 means–end behavior, p. 94 p. 101
104 PART II Infancy
Setting the Context: Brain Blossoming and Sculpting 4. Jorge’s child is right on schedule, but he’s wrong to say his
1. Both Cortez and Ashley are right. We are unique in our child is sleeping through the night. The baby has simply
massive cerebral cortex, in growing most of our brain outside learned to self-soothe.
of the womb, and in the fact that the human cortex does not 5. The answers here will depend on the class.
reach its adult form for more than two decades.
2. Latisha is only partly right. Synaptic loss and neural pruning Sensory and Motor Development
are essential to fostering our emerging abilities. 1. You are using a kind of preferential-looking paradigm;
3. When babies have a stroke, they may end up less impaired the scientific term for when your baby loses interest is
than during adulthood, due to brain plasticity. habituation.
4. Synaptogenesis is occurring in your mom and grandma. 2. Both Tania and Thomas are right. In support of Tania’s
Myelination (or formation of the myelin sheath) ends by our “dramatic improvement” position, while newborns are legally
mid-twenties. blind, vision improves to 20/20 by age 1. (Another example is
the visual cliff research.) Thomas is also correct that in some
Basic Newborn States ways vision gets worse during infancy. He should mention
1. You need to pick the first two statements: The rooting reflex the fact that by 9 months of age we have “unlearned” the
is programmed by the low brain centers to appear at birth ability to become as sensitive to facial distinctions in people
and then go away as the cortex matures. Its appearance is of other ethnic groups.
definitely not a sign of early intelligence. 3. The roots of adult prejudice may begin during the second
2. Elaine should say breast-feeding is inconvenient for new 6 months of life.
moms who need to work full-time at working-class jobs. It 4. At 8 months of age, the child should be frightened of
can be embarrassing to nurse in public. Plus, breast-feeding the cliff.
can be painful. 5. Your answers might include installing electrical outlet
3. Tell your relatives to carry the child around in a baby sling covers; putting sharp, poisonous, and breakable objects
(kangaroo care). Also, perhaps make heavy use of a pacifier out of a baby’s reach; carpeting hard floor surfaces;
and employ baby massage. Don’t recommend swaddling, padding furniture corners; installing latches on cabinet
though—as it limits skin-to-skin contact. doors; and so on.
Cognition hypothesized that we are biologically programmed to

1. Circular reaction = Darien; means–end behavior = Jai; object acquire language; the social-interactionist perspective
permanence = Sam. emphasizes the fact that babies and adults have a passion to
communicate.
2. Cognition develops gradually rather than in distinct stages;
infants understand human motivations. 2. Baby Ginny is cooing; baby Jamal is babbling; baby Sam is
speaking in holophrases (one-word stage); and baby David is
3. Baby Sara should pick up this idea months before age 1.
using telegraphic speech.
Language: The Endpoint of Infancy 3. No, your friend is wrong!!! Baby talk—or in developmental
1. The idea that we learn language by getting reinforced science terms, infant-directed speech (IDS)—helps promote
reflects Skinner’s operant conditioning perspective; Chomsky early language.
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Attachment: The Basic Life
Bond
Setting the Context
Exploring the Attachment
Response
Is Infant Attachment Universal?
Does Infant Attachment Predict
Later Relationships and Mental
Health?
Exploring the Genetics of
Attachment Stability and
Change
SCIENCE: Experiencing Early
Life’s Worst Deprivation
Wrapping Up Attachment
Settings for Development

The Impact of Poverty in the
United States
INTERVENTIONS: Giving
Disadvantaged Children an
Intellectual and Social Boost
The Impact of Child Care
INTERVENTIONS: Choosing
Child Care
Toddlerhood: Age of Autonomy

and Shame and Doubt
Socialization
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . That
Shy and Exuberant Children
Differ Dramatically in Self-
Control?
Being Exuberant and Being Shy
INTERVENTIONS: Providing
the Right Temperament–
Socialization Fit
© Image Source/Age Fotostock

Infancy: Socioemotional
Development
Now that we’ve talked to Kim during pregnancy and visited when Elissa was a young
baby, let’s catch up with mother and daughter now that Elissa is 15 months old.
Elissa had her first birthday in December. She’s such a happy baby, but now if you
take something away, it’s like, “Why did you do that?” Pick her up. For a second every-
thing is fine, and then her face changes and she squirms and her arms go out toward
me. She’s really busy walking, busy exploring, but she’s always got an eye on me. The
minute I make a motion to leave, she stops and races near. I think Elissa has a stronger
connection to her dad, because now that I’m working, Jeff has arranged his schedule
to watch the baby late in the afternoon . . . but when she’s tired or sick, it’s still Mom.
It was difficult to go back to work. You hear terrible things about day care, stories
of babies being neglected. I looked at the center in town, but there were just so many
kids. Finally I settled on a neighbor who watches a few toddlers in her home. I saw
how much this woman loves children, and felt secure knowing who would be caring
for my child. But you still worry, feel guilty. The worst was Elissa’s reaction—the way
she screamed the first week when I left her off. But it’s obvious that she’s happy now.
Every morning she runs smiling to Ms. Marie’s arms.
It’s bittersweet to see my baby separating from me, running into the world, becom-
ing her own little person—with some very strong likes and dislikes. The clashes are
becoming more frequent now that I’m turning up the discipline, expecting more in
terms of behavior from my “big girl.” But mainly it’s so hard to be apart. I think about
Elissa 50 million times a day. I speed home to see her. I can’t wait to glimpse her glow-
ing face in the window, how she jumps up and down, and we run to kiss and cuddle
again.
I
magine being Kim, with your child relationship, I’ll turn to the wider world,
the center of your life. Imagine being first examining how that basic marker,
Elissa, wanting to be independent but socioeconomic status (SES), affects
needing your mother close. In this chap- young children’s development, then
ter, I’ll focus on attachment, the powerful spotlighting day care, the setting where
bond of love between caregiver and child. so many developed-world babies spend
My discussion of attachment—which their days. The last section of this chapter
takes up much of this chapter—starts focuses on toddlerhood, the famous time
a conversation that continues through- lasting roughly from age 1 to 2 1/2 years.
out this book. Attachment is not only (Your tip-off that a child is a toddler is
at the core of infancy, but human life. that classic endearing “toddling” gait that
After exploring this vital one-to-one characterizes the second year of life.)
107
108 PART II Infancy
attachment The powerful bond

of love between a caregiver
and child (or between any
Attachment: The Basic Life Bond
two individuals). Perhaps you remember being intensely in love. You may be in that wonderful state
right now. You cannot stop fantasizing about your significant other. Your moves blend
toddlerhood The important
transitional stage after baby- with your partner’s. You connect in a unique way. Knowing that this person is there
hood, from roughly 1 year to gives you confidence. You can conquer the world. You feel uncomfortable when you
2 1/2 years of age; defined are separated. Your world depends on having your lover close. Now you know how
by an intense attachment to Elissa feels about her mother and the powerful emotions that flow from Kim to her
caregivers and by an urgent
need to become independent. child.
Setting the Context: How

Developmentalists (Slowly)
Got Attached to Attachment
During much of the twentieth century, U.S. psychologists seemed indif-
ferent to these feelings. At a time when psychology was dominated by
behaviorism, studying love seemed unscientific. Behaviorists minimized
our need for attachment, suggesting that babies wanted to be close to
their mothers because this “maternal reinforcing stimulus” provided food.
Worse yet, one famous early behaviorist named John Watson seemed
hostile to attachment when he crusaded against the dangers of “too much”
mother love:
When I hear a mother say “bless its little heart” when it falls down, I . . .
have to walk a block or two to let off steam. . . . Can’t she train herself to
Mark Hall/Getty Images
substitute a kindly word . . . for . . . the coddling? . . . Can’t she learn to keep
away from the child a large part of the day? [And then he made this memo-
rable statement:] . . . I sometimes wish that we could live in a community of
homes [where] . . . we could have the babies fed and bathed each week by
a different nurse. (!)
The adoring expressions on the (Watson, 1928/1972, pp. 82–83)
faces of parents and babies as
they gaze at each other make European psychoanalysts felt differently. They discovered that attachment was far
it obvious why the attachment from dangerous. It was crucial to infant life.
relationship in infancy is our Consider a heart-rending mid-twentieth-century film that showed the fate of
basic model for romantic love in
adulthood.
babies living in orphanages (Blum, 2002; Karen, 1998). In these sterile, impeccably
maintained institutions, behaviorists would have predicted that
infants should thrive. So why did babies lie listless on cots—
unable to eat, withering away?
Now consider that ethologists—the forerunners of today’s evo-
Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
lutionary psychologists—noticed that every species had a biologi-

cally programmed attachment response (or drive to be physically
close to their mothers) that appeared at a specific point soon
after birth. When the famous ethologist Konrad Lorenz (1935)
arranged to become this attachment-eliciting stimulus for goslings,
as this compelling photograph shows, Lorenz became the adored
Pied Piper the baby geese tried to follow to the ends of the earth.
However, it took a rebellious psychologist named Harry
Harlow, who studied monkeys, to convince U.S. psychologists
Ethologist Konrad Lorenz
that the behaviorist meal-dispenser model of mother love was
arranged to become the
first living thing that newly wrong. In a classic study, Harlow (1958) separated baby monkeys from their mothers
hatched geese saw at their at birth and raised them in a cage with a wire-mesh “mother” (which offered food
species-specific critical time for from a milk bottle attached to its chest) and a cloth “mother” (which was soft and
attachment. He then became the
provided contact comfort). The babies stayed glued to the cloth mother, making
goslings’ “mother,” the object
whom they felt compelled never occasional trips to eat from the wire mom. In stressful situations, they scurried to the
to let out of their sight. cloth mother for comfort. Love won, hands down, over getting fed!
CHAPTER 4 Infancy: Socioemotional Development 109
Moreover, there were serious psychological consequences for the

monkeys raised without their moms. The animals couldn’t have sex. They
were frightened of their peers. After being artificially inseminated and
giving birth, the “motherless mothers” were uncaring, abusive parents. One
mauled her baby so badly that it later died (Harlow and others, 1966;
Harlow, C. M., 1986).
Then, in the late 1960s, John Bowlby put the evidence together—the
orphanage findings, Lorenz’s ethological studies, Harlow’s research, his own
Harlow Primate Laboratory, University of Wisconsin

clinical work with children who had been hospitalized or separated from
their mothers (Hinde, 2005). In a landmark series of books, Bowlby (1969,
1973, 1980) argued that there is no such thing as “excessive mother love.”
Having a loving primary attachment figure is crucial to our development.
It is essential to living fully at any age. By the final decades of the twentieth
century, attachment moved to the front burner in developmental science.
It remains front and center today.
Exploring the Attachment Response In Harlow’s landmark study, baby monkeys

clung to the cloth-covered “mother”
Bowlby (1969, 1973) made his case for the crucial importance of attach- (which provided contact comfort) as they
ment based on evolutionary theory. He believed that, as with other species, leaned over to feed from the wire-mesh
human beings have a critical period when the attachment response “comes “mother”—vividly refuting the behaviorist
out.” As with Lorenz’s ducks, attachment is built into our genetic code to idea that infants become “attached” to the
reinforcing stimulus that feeds them.
allow us to survive. Although the attachment response is programmed to
emerge during our first years of life, proximity-seeking behavior—our need to make
contact with an attachment figure—is activated when our survival is threatened at primary attachment figure
The closest person in a
any age. child’s or adult’s life.
Bowlby believed that threats to survival come in two categories. They may be
proximity-seeking behavior
activated by our internal state. When a child clings only to her mom, you know Acting to maintain physical
she must be tired. When you go to the hospital, you make sure that your family contact or to be close to an
is close. You immediately text your “significant other” when you have a fever or attachment figure.
the flu. preattachment phase The
They may be evoked by dangers in the external world. During childhood, it’s first phase of John Bowlby’s
a huge dog that causes us to run anxiously into our parent’s arms. As adults, it’s developmental attachment
sequence, during the first
a professor’s nasty comment or a humiliating experience at work that provokes a three months of life, when
frantic call to our primary attachment figure, be it our spouse, our father, or our infants show no visible signs
best friend. of attachment.
Although we all need to touch base with our significant others when we feel social smile The first real
threatened, adults and older children can be separated from their attachment figures smile, occurring at about
for some time. During infancy and early childhood, simply being physically apart 2 months of age.
causes distress. Now, let’s trace step-by-step how human attachment unfolds.
Attachment Milestones
According to Bowlby, during their first three months of life, babies are in the
preattachment phase. Remember that during this reflex-dominated time
Kevin Fitzgerald/Stone/Getty Images
infants have yet to wake up to the world. However, at around 2 months there
is a milestone called the social smile. Bowlby believed that this first real
smile does not show attachment to a person. Because it pops up in response
to any human face, it is just one example of an automatic reflex such as
sucking or grasping that evokes care from adults.
Still, a baby’s eagerly awaited first smile can be an incredible experience
if you are a parent. Suddenly, your relationship with your child shifts to a
different plane. Now, I have a confession to make: During my first 2 months A baby’s first social smile, which appears at
the sight of any face at about 2 to 3 months
as a new mother, I was worried, as I did not feel anything for this beautiful
of age, is biologically programmed to
child I had waited so long to adopt. I date Thomas’s first endearing smile as delight adults and charm them into
the defining event in my lifelong attachment romance. providing love and care.
110 PART II Infancy
attachment in the making At roughly 4 months of age, infants enter a transitional period, called attachment
Second phase of Bowlby’s in the making. At this time, Piaget’s environment-focused secondary circular reac-
attachment sequence, when,
from 4 to 7 months of age, tions are unfolding (recall Chapter 3). The cortex is coming on-line. Babies may
babies slightly prefer the show a slight preference for their primary caregiver. But still, a 4- or 5-month-old can
primary caregiver. be the ultimate party person, thrilled to be cuddled by anyone—from Grandma, to a
clear-cut attachment Critical neighbor, to a stranger at the mall.
human attachment phase, By around 7 or 8 months of age, this changes. At this age, as you saw in Chapter 3,
from 7 months through babies are hunting for hidden objects—showing that they have the cognitive skills to
toddlerhood, defined by
separation anxiety, stranger miss their caregivers. Now that they can crawl, or walk holding onto furniture, chil-
anxiety, and needing a pri- dren can really get hurt. The stage is set for clear-cut (or focused) attachment—the
mary caregiver close. beginning of the full-blown attachment response. This phase of intense attachment
separation anxiety Signal of will last throughout the toddler years.
clear-cut attachment when a Separation anxiety signals this milestone. When your baby is about 7 or 8
baby gets upset as a primary months old, she suddenly gets uncomfortable when you leave the room. Then,
caregiver departs.
stranger anxiety appears. Your child gets agitated when any unfamiliar person
stranger anxiety Beginning at picks her up. So, as children travel toward their first birthday, the universal friend-
about 7 months of age, when
a baby grows wary of people liness of early infancy is gone. While they may still joyously gurgle at the world
other than a primary caregiver. from their caregiver’s arms, it’s normal for babies to forbid any “stranger”—a nice
social referencing A baby’s day-care worker or even a loving Grandma who flies in for a visit—to invade their
checking back and monitoring space.
a caregiver for cues as to how Between ages 1 and 2, the distress reaches a peak. A toddler clings and cries
to behave while exploring; when mom or dad makes a motion to leave. It’s as if an invisible string connects the
linked to clear-cut attachment.
caregiver and the child. In one classic study at a park, 1-year-olds
played within a certain distance from their mothers. Interestingly,
this zone of optimum comfort (about 200 feet) was identical for
both the parent and the child (Anderson, 1972).
To see these changes, pick up a young baby (such as a
© Christina Kennedy/PhotoEdit
4-month-old) and an older infant (perhaps a 10-month-old) and

compare their reactions. Then, observe 1-year-olds at a local park.
Can you measure this attachment zone of comfort? Do you notice
the busy, exploring toddlers periodically checking back to make
sure a caregiver is still there?
Social referencing is the term developmentalists use to
A few weeks ago this 7-month-old boy would have describe this checking-back behavior. Social referencing helps
happily gone to his neighbor. But everything changes alert the baby to which situations are dangerous and which ones
during the phase of clear-cut attachment when stranger
anxiety emerges.
are safe. (“Should I climb up this slide, Mommy?” “Does Daddy
think this object is OK to explore?”)
Social referencing is not only the glue that permits babies
to safely venture into the world; we depend on this core social cognitive skill (“She
is looking upset. I’d better not do that!”) to pace our behavior from age 1 to 101.
When does the infant attachment response—or need to be physically close to a
caregiver—go away? Although the marker is hazy, babies typically leave this stage
at about age 3. Children still care just as much about their primary attachment
figure. But now, according to Bowlby, they have the cognitive skills to carry a work-
ing model, or internal representation, of this number-one person in their minds
(Bretherton, 2005).
The bottom-line message is that our human critical period for attachment is
© Fotosearch/Age Fotostock
timed to unfold during our most vulnerable time of life—when we first become
mobile and are most in danger of getting hurt. Moreover, what compensates parents
for the frustrations of having a Piagetian “little scientist” is enormous gratification. Just
when a toddler is continually messing up the house and saying “No!” parents know
that their child’s world revolves totally around them.
As she socially references her
mom this baby wants to know:
Do children differ in the way they express this priceless sense of connection?
Is that giant with the strange And if so, what might these differences mean about the quality of the infant–parent
object really safe? bond?
Attachment Styles
Mary Ainsworth answered these questions by devising a clas-
sic test of attachment—the Strange Situation (Ainsworth,
1967; Ainsworth and others, 1978).
The Strange Situation procedure begins when a mother
and a 1-year-old enter a room full of toys. After the child has
© Debbie Noda/ZUMA Press/Corbis

time to explore, an unfamiliar adult enters the room. Then,
the mother leaves the baby alone with the stranger and, a
few minutes later, returns to comfort the child. Next, the
mom leaves the baby totally alone for a minute; the stranger
enters; and finally, the mother returns (see Figure 4.1). By
observing the child’s reactions to these separations and
reunions through a one-way mirror, developmentalists cat- In kindergarten, this child can say goodbye with minimal
egorize infants as either securely or insecurely attached. separation anxiety because she is in the working-model
Securely attached children use their mother as a secure phase of attachment.
base, or anchor, to explore the toys. When she leaves, they working model In Bowlby’s
may or may not become highly distressed. Most important, when she returns, their theory, the mental
eyes light up with joy. Their close relationship is apparent in the way they run and representation of a caregiver
melt into their mothers’ arms. Insecurely attached children react in one of three ways: allowing children over age 3 to
be physically apart from that
• Infants classified as avoidant seem excessively detached. They rarely show separation primary attachment figure.
anxiety or much emotion—positive or negative—when their primary attachment Strange Situation Mary
figure returns. They seem wooden, disengaged, without much feeling at all. Ainsworth’s procedure to
measure attachment at
• Babies with an anxious-ambivalent attachment are at the opposite end of the age 1, involving planned
spectrum—clingy, nervous, too frightened to explore the toys. Terribly distressed separations and reunions
with a caregiver.
by their mother’s departure, these infants may show contradictory emotions when
she returns—clinging and then striking out in anger. Often, they are inconsolable, secure attachment Ideal
attachment response when
unable to be comforted when their attachment figure comes back. a child responds with joy at
• Children showing a disorganized attachment behave in a genuinely bizarre being united with a primary
caregiver; or, in adulthood,
manner. They freeze, run around erratically, or even look frightened when the the genuine intimacy that is
caregiver returns. ideal in love relationships.
Developmentalists point out that the insecure attachments illustrated in my sum- insecure attachment Deviation
from the normally joyful
mary in Figure 4.2 on page 112 do not show a weakness in the underlying connec- response of being united with
tion. Avoidant infants are just as bonded to their caregivers as babies ranked secure. a primary caregiver, signaling
Anxious-ambivalent infants are not more closely attached even though they show problems in the caregiver–
intense separation distress. To take an analogy from adult life, when a person who child relationship.
cares deeply about you pretends to be indifferent, is this individual less in love? Is a avoidant attachment An
lover who can’t let his partner out of sight more attached than a person who allows insecure attachment style
characterized by a child’s
his significant other to have an independent life? Unless they experience the grossly indifference to a primary
abnormal rearing conditions described later in this section, every infant is closely caregiver at being reunited
attached (Zeanah, Berlin, & Boris, 2011). after separation.
Worth Publishers
figure 4.1: The Strange Situation: The classic Strange Situation, involving separations and reunions from a caregiver, can tell us
whether this one year old girl is securely or insecurely attached.
112 PART II Infancy
Albert Normandin/Masterfile
Rommel/Masterfile
Secure Attachment: The child is thrilled to see Avoidant Attachment: The child is
the caregiver. unresponsive to the caregiver.
anxious-ambivalent
Carey Kirkella/Getty Images

Ron Chapple/Getty Images
attachment An insecure
attachment style characterized
by a child’s intense distress
when reunited with a primary
caregiver after separation.
disorganized attachment An
insecure attachment style Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment: The child Disorganized Attachment: The child
characterized by responses cannot be calmed by the caregiver. seems frightened and behaves bizarrely
such as freezing or fear when when the caregiver arrives.
a child is reunited with the
primary caregiver in the figure 4.2: Secure and insecure attachments: A summary photo series
Strange Situation.
synchrony The reciprocal
aspect of the attachment The Attachment Dance
relationship, with a caregiver Look at a baby and a caregiver and it is almost as if you are seeing a dance. The part-
and infant responding ners are alert to each other’s signals. They know when to come on stronger and when
emotionally to each other
in a sensitive, exquisitely
to back off. They are absorbed and captivated, oblivious to the world. This blissful
attuned way. synchrony, or sense of being totally emotionally in tune, is what makes the infant–
temperament A person’s
mother relationship our model for romantic love. Ainsworth and Bowlby believed
characteristic, inborn style of that the parent’s “dancing potential,” or sensitivity to a baby’s signals, produces secure
dealing with the world. attachments (Ainsworth and others, 1978). Were they correct?
The Caregiver
Decades of studies suggest that the answer is yes. Sensitive caregivers tend
to have babies who are securely attached. Parents who misread their baby’s
signals or are rejecting, disengaged, or depressed are more apt to have
infants ranked insecure (see Behrens, Parker, & Haltigan, 2011 and Zeanah,
Berlin, & Boris, 2011 for a review).
Still, because these are correlations, if we find that securely attached par-
Rick Gomez/Masterfile
ents have open, loving children or that distant moms and dads have avoidant
babies, couldn’t these people be passing these styles of responding down in
their genes? Furthermore, by blaming children’s attachment issues on par-
ents, aren’t we neglecting the fact that there are two partners in the dance?
The blissful rapture, the sense
of being totally engrossed and The Child
in tune with each other, is the Listen to any mother comparing her babies (“Sara was fussy; Matthew is easier to
reason why developmentalists
use the word synchrony
soothe”) and you will realize that not all infants are born with the same dancing
to describe parent–infant talent. Babies differ in temperament—characteristic, inborn behavioral styles of
attachment. approaching the world.
In a pioneering study, developmentalists classified a group of middle-class babies

into three temperamental styles: Easy babies—the majority of the children—had
rhythmic eating and sleeping patterns; they were happy and easily soothed. More
wary babies were labeled slow to warm up. One in 10 babies were ranked as difficult—
hypersensitive, unusually agitated, reactive to every sight and sound (Thomas &
Chess, 1977; Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968). Here is an example:
Everything bothers my 5-month-old little girl—a bright light, a rough blanket, a sudden
noise—even, I’m ashamed to admit, sometimes my touch. I thought colic went away by
month 3. I’m getting discouraged and depressed.
Now, consider the stressful experiences a baby must go through during the
Strange Situation. Do you see why some developmentalists have argued that biologi-
cally based differences in temperamental “reactivity”—not the quality of a mother’s
caregiving— determine attachment status at age 1? (See, for example, Kagan, 1984.)
Does a baby’s biology (nature) or poor caregiving (nurture) produce insecure
attachments? As you might imagine—given the nature-plus-nurture message of this
book—the answer is, a little of both. Biologically hardy babies—children who have a
gene associated with resilience to stress (more about this later)—tend to be securely
attached in the face of less sensitive parenting. However, when a child is fragile emo-
tionally, he needs exceptionally nurturing caregiving to be classified as secure (Barry,
Kochanska, & Philibert, 2008; Pace & Zavattini, 2011; Pluess and Belsky, 2010). So, a
skillful dancer can sometimes shift a temperamentally “difficult” baby from insecure
to secure.
But with biologically vulnerable infants, there is a limit to what the most sensi-
tive parent can achieve. Suppose a child was extremely premature or autistic, or had
some serious disease. Would it be fair to label the baby’s attachment issues as the
caregiver’s fault?
Moreover, because “it takes two to tango” (that is, the dance is bidirectional), a
child’s temperament affects the parent’s sensitivity, too. To use an analogy from real-
life dancing, imagine waltzing with a partner who couldn’t keep time with the music;
or think of a time you tried to soothe a person who was too agitated to connect. Even a
prize-winning dancer or someone with world-class relationship skills would feel inept.
The Caregiver’s Other Attachments
And, to continue the analogy, it takes more than two to tango. Just as a woman’s atti-
tudes about being pregnant depend on feeling supported by the wider world (recall
Chapter 2), it is difficult to be a sensitive caregiver if your other attachment relation-
ships are not working out. When mothers (and fathers) are unhappily married, or
don’t dance well with each other, their babies are more likely to be rated as insecurely
attached (Cowan, Cowan, & Mehta, 2009; Moss and others, 2005).
Figure 4.3 on the next page—illustrating how the caregiver, the baby, and the
parent’s other relationships interact to shape attachment—brings home the need to
adopt a developmental systems approach. Many forces shape the attachment dance.
By assuming that problems were due simply to the parent’s personality, Bowlby and
Ainsworth were taking an excessively limited view. What about the general theory?
Is attachment to a primary caregiver universal? Do infants in different countries fall
into the same categories of secure and insecure?
Is Infant Attachment Universal?

From Chicago to Capetown, from Naples to New York, Bowlby’s and Ainsworth’s
ideas about attachment get high marks (van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999). Babies around
the world get attached to a primary caregiver at roughly the same age. As Figure 4.4
on page 114 shows, the percentages of infants ranked secure in different countries are
remarkably similar— roughly 60 to 70 percent (Sroufe, 2000; Tomlinson, Cooper, &
Murray, 2005).
114 PART II Infancy
Alex Mares-Manton/Getty Images
Luc/STOCK4B/Getty Images
sturti/Getty Images
figure 4.3: Three pathways to insecure attachment: Above left: The mother is too depressed to connect. Above center: The child
has temperamental vulnerabilities. Above right: The caregiver’s other attachment relationships make it difficult to “dance” with her baby.
Secure attachment
Avoidant attachment
The most amazing validation of attachment’s
Anxious-ambivalent attachment
universal quality comes from the Efé, a communal
hunter-gatherer people living in Africa. Efé new-
borns nurse from any lactating woman, even when
Africa their own parent is around. They are dressed and
cared for by the whole community. But Efé babies
still develop a primary attachment to their mothers at
China the typical age! (See van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999.)
So far you might be thinking that during the
phase of clear-cut attachment, babies are con-
nected to only one person. Wrong! A toddler may
Japan (Tokyo)
be attached to her father and day-care provider, as
well as her mom. And, just as you and I connect
differently with each “significant other,” a baby can
Western Europe be securely attached to his father and insecurely
attached to his mom.
Interestingly, when babies are upset, they run to
United States their primary caregiver—the parent who spends the
most time with them—even if they are insecurely
attached to this adult. So, the amount of hands-on
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 caregiving (not necessarily its quality) evokes the
Percentage
biologically programmed, security-seeking response
(Umemura and others, 2013). The good news is that
figure 4.4: Snapshots of if a child is securely attached to one parent that may
attachment security (and be all that matters for his future life.
insecurity) around the world: In a heartening longitudinal study, 15-month-olds labeled “double insecure”
Around the world, roughly 60 (insecurely attached to both caregivers) were prone to have behavior problems in
to 70 percent of 1-year-olds are
classified as securely attached—
third grade. But children with a secure attachment to either parent were as insu-
although there are interesting lated from poor mental health as those who were securely attached to both mom
differences in the percentages of and dad (Kochanska & Kim, 2013). This suggests that having one nurturing figure
babies falling into the different during infancy—a father, a grandma, or aunt—may be all we need to protect us
insecure categories.
Data from: van IJzendoorn & Sagi, 1999,
from problems down the road. How does infant attachment relate to problems down
p. 729. the road?
Does Infant Attachment Predict Later

Relationships and Mental Health?
Bowlby’s core argument, in his working-model concept, is that our
attachment relationships in infancy determine how we relate to other
people and feel about ourselves (Bretherton, 2005). A baby who acts
avoidant with his parents will be aloof and uncaring with friends; he
may be unresponsive to a teacher’s demands. An anxious-ambivalent
infant will behave in a needy way in her other love relationships. A
secure baby is set up to succeed socially.
Again, decades of research support Bowlby’s prediction. Securely
attached babies tend to be more socially competent and popular
(McElwain and others, 2011; Rispoli and others, 2013). Insecure
attachment foreshadows anxiety (Madigan and others, 2013), trouble
managing one’s emotions, and interpersonal problems, later on (Pasco
Fearon and others, 2010; Kochanska and others, 2010; von der Lippe
and others, 2010).
Interestingly, the most potent predictor of problems is the disorga-
BananaStock/Getty Images Plus

nized attachment style. This erratic, confused infant response is a risk
factor for “acting-out issues” (aggression, disobedience, difficulty con-
trolling one’s behavior) as children travel through elementary school
(Bohlin and others, 2012; Pasco Fearon & Belsky, 2011).
However, the operative word here is “risk factor.” Landmark longi-
tudinal studies measuring attachment at age 1 and tracking babies into This new member of the Efé
their adult years suggest that, while there is “moderate continuity,” attachments do people of central Africa will be
change (Grossmann and others, 2005; Simpson and others, 2007; Sroufe and others, lovingly cared for by the whole
2005; Pinquart and others, 2013). community, males as well as
females, from his first minutes of
One obvious cause relates to the environment. Sensitive, loving relationships—at life. Because he sleeps with his
every stage of life—can transform our “attachment status” from insecure to secure mother, however, at the “right”
(Zayas and others, 2011). Unfortunately, the most blissful early life does not inoculate age he will develop his primary
us against traumas later on. attachment to her.
Consider a boy named Tony, in one major infant-to-adult attachment study, ranked
securely attached at age 1. While in preschool and early elementary school, Tony was
popular, self-assured, and still securely attached; as a teenager, he suffered devastating
attachment blows. First his parents went through a difficult divorce. Then, his mother
was killed in a car accident and his father moved to another state, leaving Tony with his
aunt. It should come as no surprise that as an angry, depressed adolescent, Tony was clas-
sified as insecurely attached. But at age 26, Tony recovered. He met a wonderful woman
and became a father. His status slowly returned to secure (Sroufe and others, 2005).
It seems logical that life experiences might change our attachment relationships
for the better or the worse. But research—involving the “love hormone” oxytocin—
suggests genetics is also involved.
Exploring the Genetics of Attachment Stability and Change

Oxytocin qualifies as the attachment hormone, as this substance elicits bonding, oxytocin The hormone whose
caregiving, and nurturing in mammals and in our own species (Rilling, 2013). production is centrally
involved in bonding, nurtur-
When researchers in the infant-to-adult attachment study explored variations in a ing, and caregiving behaviors
gene involved in producing oxytocin, they found that young people, like Tony, who in our species and other
changed in attachment status, showed one variant of this particular gene. Others, mammals.
with a different, less environment-responsive genetic profile, were apt to stay stable
in attachment from age 1. Therefore, our infant attachment style may be more or less
important in shaping our adult fate, depending on our genes. (Stay tuned throughout
this chapter for research with a similar theme.)
116 PART II Infancy
The bottom-line theme, however, of all these studies is that Bowlby was wrong.
We are not destined for lifelong problems if we suffered from inadequate caregiv-
ing early in life. But what if a baby has experienced not just poor caregiving, but no
caregiving at all?
Hot in Developmental Science: Experiencing Early Life’s Worst

Deprivation
“When I . . . walked into the . . . building (in l990),” said a British school teacher . . . “what
I saw was beyond belief . . . babies lay three and four to a bed, given no attention. . . .
There were no medicines or washing facilities, . . . physical and sexual abuse were rife . . .
I particularly remember . . . the basement. There were kids there who hadn’t seen natural
light in years.”
(McGeown, 2005, para. 4)
This scene was not from some horror movie. It was real. This woman had entered
a Romanian orphanage, the bitter legacy of the dictator Ceausescu’s decision to for-
bid contraception, which caused a flood of unwanted babies that destitute parents
dumped on the state.
When the “Iron Curtain” fell and revealed these grisly Eastern European scenes,
British and American families rushed in to adopt these children. But then parents
began to report distressing symptoms—sons and daughters who displayed a strange,
indiscriminate friendliness and never showed interest in any specific adult (see
Kreppner and others, 2011). These responses did not qualify as insecure attachment.
They showed a lack of any attachment response.
Which institution-reared babies are apt to show these deficits? Can children
recover from this deprivation, and is there an age at which help might come too late?
Studies tracking the Romanian babies, as well as children adopted from orphanages
in China and Russia, offer these tantalizing conclusions (Julian, 2013):
First, babies adopted from the most intensely depriving institutions—such as
in Romania—are most at risk for problems. In these places, damage can appear if
adoption occurs after 6 months of age. In orphanages, like those in Russia that are
classified as “socially depriving” but satisfy infants’ basic health needs, the cut-off
point for beginning to show deficits is close to 18 months. Therefore, just as Bowlby
would predict, the zone of attachment (7–18 months) is a sensitive period for receiv-
dose–response effect Term ing caregiving. But, there also is a dose–response effect—meaning that the intensity
referring to the fact that (dose) of deprivation predicts the impact (response) on a given child. The probability
the amount (dose) of a
of having enduring problems depends on when a child is adopted and the kind of
substance, in this case
the depth and length of place from where the adoption occurs.
deprivation, determines its What are these children’s symptoms? A classic sign of this “institutionalization
probable effect or impact syndrome” is the indiscriminate friendliness I just described (this is called reactive
on the person. (In the
attachment disorder). Another is deficits in attention (McLaughlin and others, 2010;
orphanage studies, the
“response” is subsequent Wiik and others, 2011). EEG studies suggest the reason for this impaired focusing
emotional and/or cognitive ability is that lack of stimulation delays the maturation of the brain (McLaughlin and
problems.) others, 2010).
As they tracked babies subjected to these unfortunate “natural experiments,”
scientists discovered that institutionalized boys are more vulnerable than girls to hav-
ing enduring attachment problems (McLaughlin and others, 2012). While a massive
catch-up growth often occurs after moving to a new, loving home (Sheridan and others,
2010), symptoms can persist, or erupt again, in the adolescent years (Julian, 2013).
By exploring these grossly abnormal, worst-case early-life scenarios, developmentalists
are learning vital information about human resilience, brain plasticity, and its limits
in human beings.
Wrapping Up Attachment
To summarize, infancy is a special zone of sensitivity for forming relationships.
The attachment response that unfolds during our first years of life lays down the
foundation for healthy development in a variety of life realms. Still, attachment
capacities (and human brains) are malleable, and negative paths can be altered
provided the deprivation is not too profound and the wider world provides special
help. How does the wider world affect development during infancy and beyond? To
explore this question, let’s look at two crucial infant wider-world contexts: poverty
and day care.

1. List an example of “proximity-seeking in distress” in your own life within the past few
months.
2. Muriel is 1 month old, Janine is 5 months old, Ted is 1 year old, and Tania is age 3.
List each child’s phase of attachment.
3. Match term to the correct definition: (1) social referencing; (2) working model;
(3) synchrony; (4) Strange Situation.
a. A researcher measures a child’s attachment at age 1 in a series of separations and
reunions with the mother.
b. A toddler keeps looking back at the parent while exploring at a playground.
c. An elementary school child keeps an image of her parent in mind to calm herself
when she gets on the school bus in the morning.
d. A mother and baby relate to each other as if they are totally in tune.
4. Your cousin is the primary caregiver of her 1-year-old son. On a recent visit to her
house, you notice that the baby shows no emotion when his mother leaves the room,
and—more important—seems indifferent when she returns. How might you classify
this child’s attachment?
5. Manuel is arguing for the validity of attachment theory as spelled out by Bowlby and
Ainsworth. Manuel should say (pick one, neither, or both): Infants around the world
get attached to a primary caregiver at roughly the same age/a child’s attachment status
as of age 1 never changes.
6. Jasmine is adopting a 2-year-old from an orphanage in Haiti. List a few child issues
Jasmine might have to deal with, and then give Jasmine a piece of good attachment
news.
You can find Answers to the Tying It All Together questions at the end of this chapter.
Settings for Development

What happens to children in the United States who spend their first years of life in
poverty? And what about that crucial setting of early childhood—day care?
The Impact of Poverty in the United States

In Chapter 3, I examined the physical effects of extreme poverty—the high rates of
stunting in the developing world. While the United States doesn’t have the kind of
poverty that causes undernutrition, early-childhood poverty in the United States can
compromise a developing life. How common is child poverty in the United States?
How does growing up poor affect children’s later well-being?
118 PART II Infancy
40.0%
Share of the population below the poverty line

35.0%
65 and over
30.0%
Under 6 25.8%
25.0%
Under 22.0%
20.0%
18
15.0%
13.7%
18 to 64
10.0%
9.0%
5.0%
0.0%
1959
1961
1963
1965
1967
1969
1971
1973
1975
1977
1979
1981
1983
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
figure 4.5: Poverty rates by age, 1959–2010: Notice that since the 1970s, children under
6 years of age have been more likely to live under the poverty line than other age groups in the
United States. (FYI—Although the “poverty line” designation theoretically describes the minimum
income needed to survive, experts feel that families need twice that amount of money to really
make ends meet.)
Data from: Economic Policy Institute (2012). The State of Working America: Poor children. Retrieved January 12, 2014,
http://stateofworkingamerica.org/
figure 4.6: Resting How Common Is Early-Childhood Poverty?

cortisol levels among low- As Figure 4.5, shows, unfortunately, child poverty is prevalent in the United
and middle-income children States. In 2013, almost one in four children (22 percent) lived under the poverty
from age 7 months through
age 4 years: Notice that
line. If we consider children in “low income” families (those earning within two
low-income babies, toddlers, times the official poverty cut-off), the statistic rises to 45 percent (National Center
and preschoolers show elevated for Children in Poverty [NCCP], 2014)! Moreover, notice that, since the l970s,
levels of the stress hormone young children have been more likely to live in poverty than other age groups in
cortisol, which may impair their
ability to regulate their behavior
the United States.
and wear down the body, One cause is single motherhood. Imagine how difficult it would be as a woman
causing premature illness and raising a baby alone to work, pay for child care, and still have money to make ends
death. meet. Now imagine how difficult it would be for any person to support a family with
Data from: Evans and Kim, 2013, p. 45.
a full-time job that pays under $12 an hour. In 2013, more than 1 in 4 U.S. work-
ing men, age 25–34, earned less than this amount
(Gould, 2014). So, it’s no wonder that economic
Low income disadvantage can be the price of starting families
Middle income during the very time young people are supposed to
marry and give birth.
How Does Early-Childhood Poverty Affect

Cortisol level
Later Development?
Unfortunately, spending one’s first years of life in pov-
erty can have long-term effects. As Figure 4.6 shows,
poor children show chronically elevated levels of the
stress hormone cortisol (Evans & Kim, 2013), which
may wear down the body and promote premature
illnesses and death (Miller, Chen, & Parker, 2011;
7 months 15 months 24 months 48 months recall also my discussion of deprivation in the womb,
in Chapter 2).
The educational impact is pronounced. You might be surprised to know that

being poor during the first four years of life makes it statistically less likely for a child
to graduate from high school (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 2000; Duncan, Ziol-Guest, &
Kalil, 2010).
Why can early-childhood poverty limit later academic success? One possibility is
that it is difficult to make up for what you have lost if you enter school “left behind,”
not knowing your letters or numbers, without the basic building blocks to succeed.
(Kozol, 2005, p. 53.)
Poverty also can impair the attachment dance, especially among at-risk children
who need unusually sensitive care. Imagine arriving home exhausted from a low-wage
job or being unemployed, food insecure, and worried about getting evicted because
you can’t pay the rent. How would you deal with the kind of temperamentally irri-
table infant I described in the previous section, a baby who was difficult to soothe
(Paulussen-Hoogeboom and others, 2007). So although money cannot buy loving
parents, it can buy any parent breathing space to try to do her best.
Moreover, poor children may not have the concrete breathing space to learn
(Leventhal & Newman, 2010). If a boy or girl lives in crowded, substandard housing
or is among the roughly 1 in 3 low-income children in the United States whose fam-
ily must repeatedly move (Miller, Sadegh-Nobari, & Lillie-Blanton, 2011), it’s hard
to focus on academics or get connected to school. And if a child lives in a dangerous
area, she cannot escape the household chaos by venturing outside. Her neighborhood
is likely to be a scary place (Anakwenze & Zuberi, 2013).
Unfortunately, the impact of a chaotic environment may appear before a child
ventures outside. When researchers explored how well 6-month-olds were able to
focus their attention, the low-SES babies performed worse than the average child that
age (Clearfield & Jedd, 2013).
If you are thinking this research has eerie similarities to the orphanage-caused
attention abnormalities, you may be right. However, with poverty, the same earlier
(attachment) principles apply. Individual children are more or less genetically reac-
tive to this stress. There is dose–response effect. Deficits in the ability to focus and
modulate one’s behavior are more probable if a child has been chronically poor
(Raver and others, 2013).
There also is a rural–urban U.S. distinction. While one study suggested the risk
of experiencing preschool problems was three times greater if a poor child lived in
a large city (versus the country), over a certain economic threshold ($32,000), city
preschoolers benefited most (Miller and others, 2013). Blighted, impoverished urban
neighborhoods seem especially toxic to young children’s well-being. But having
Stan Rohrer/Getty Images
Kord.com/Getty Images
Growing up in a bucolic rural setting offers a lovely tranquil childhood, but it can’t top the
intellectual stimulation this city provides—explaining why, beyond “a threshold income level,”
urban preschoolers do better on early-childhood cognitive tests.
120 PART II Infancy
“a bit more money” allows city parents to expose their preschoolers to museums, parks,
and the many enriching experiences this kind of world-class environment provides.
Luckily, low-income parents have access to one enriching experience no matter
where they live—Head Start.
INTERVENTIONS: Giving Disadvantaged Children an Intellectual and

Social Boost
Head Start A federal program The famous government program called Head Start, established in 1965, aims
offering high-quality day to provide the kind of high-quality preschool experience to make poverty-level
care at a center and other
services to help preschoolers
children as ready for kindergarten as their middle-class peers. By the beginning
aged 3 to 5 from low-income of the twenty-first century most states also offered free pre-K (prekindergarten)
families prepare for school. programs targeted to children in economic need (U.S. Department of Health and
Early Head Start A federal Human Services, 2003).
program that provides Early Head Start extends this help to infants and toddlers. This federal program
counseling and other focuses on training parents to be more effective caregivers, as well as supports
services to low-income
parents and children under
low-income pregnant women with home visits and other services (Phillips &
age 3. Lowenstein, 2011).
preschool A teaching-oriented
Do these interventions work? The answer is yes. Provided the programs are high
group setting for children quality, study after study shows Head Start and pre-K programs make a difference
aged 3 to 5. in low-income children’s lives (Bassok, 2010; Votruba-Drzal, 2013; Magnuson &
Shager, 2010; Miller, Sadegh-Nobari, & Lillie-Blanton, 2011; Phillips & Lowenstein,
2011; Li and others, 2013). In a genuine experiment, in which researchers randomly
assigned disadvantaged children to a high-quality pre-K, this one-shot intervention
had an impact, decades later, in improved college graduation rates! (See Pungello
and others, 2010.)
Unfortunately, however, excellent preschools (teaching-oriented group programs
beginning at age 3) are most available to affluent young children (Magnuson &
Shager, 2010). Moreover, no one-shot magic intervention at age 3 or 4 compensates
for the academic barriers poor children face during their entire school careers. As you
will learn in Chapter 7, low-income children typically attend the poorest-quality kin-
dergartens. Their educational experiences—without adequate books, mold-encrusted
classrooms, and teachers who often quit just a few months into the school year—
qualify as a national shame (Kozol, 1988, 2005).
Finally, I must emphasize that preschool doesn’t work in isolation. Yes,
early-childhood programs can be a nurturing lifeline for a child whose home
environment is poor (Phillips & Lowenstein, 2011; Berry and others, 2014). But what
matters most is the quality of care at school and home (Crosnoe and others, 2010;
Stein and others, 2013).
This brings up that vital influence: parents! Mothers and fathers at every income
level differ in the enriching experiences they provide. Every study agrees: What
happens at home matters most (Lugo-Gil & Tamis-LeMonda, 2008). Some affluent
parents are neglectful. Some poverty-level moms and dads work overtime to nurture
their daughters and sons.
Can we identify the core qualities of these special low-income parents? In one
study, researchers found that if people felt good about their own childhoods and were
optimistic, they could put aside their problems and offer their children the ultimate in
tender-loving care (Kochanska and others, 2007). As a student of mine commented,
“I don’t see my family in your description of poverty. My mom is my hero. We grew
up poor, but in terms of parenting, we were very rich.”
The Impact of Child Care

As a well-off parent, poverty issues can seem distant from your life. Child care affects
every family, from millionaires, to middle-class urban mothers and fathers, to the rural
poor. One in every two mothers in the United States returns to work during a baby’s
figure 4.7: Day-care

Parent Day-care center arrangements for infants
27% 22% and toddlers with employed
mothers, late 1990s: Notice
that, while most infants and
toddlers with working mothers
Family day care are cared for by other family
17% members, 1 in 5 attend licensed
day-care centers.
Relative
Data from: Shonkoff & Phillips
27% 2000, p. 304.
Nanny/babysitter
7%
first year of life. With child-care costs currently ranging from $5,000 to 15,000 per
year, the expense of putting even one baby in day care is daunting, even to couples
who are middle class (Palley & Shdaimah, 2011). When we combine these economic
concerns (“This is taking up a huge chunk of my paycheck!”) with anxieties about
“leaving my baby with strangers,” it makes sense that many new parents struggle to
keep child care in the family. They may rely on grandma or juggle work schedules so
that one spouse is always home (Phillips & Lowenstein, 2011).
People who use paid caregivers have several options. Well-off families often hire
a nanny or babysitter. Less-affluent parents, or those who want a more inexpensive
option, often turn to family day care, where a neighbor or local parent cares for a family day care A day-care
small group of children in her home. arrangement in which a
neighbor or relative cares for
The big change on the child-care landscape has been the dramatic increase in a small number of children in
licensed day-care centers—larger settings catering to children of different ages. By her home for a fee.
the late twentieth century, roughly 1 in 2 U.S. preschoolers attended these facilities. day-care center A day-care
The comparable figure for infants and toddlers was more than 1 in 5 (see Figure 4.7). arrangement in which a large
number of children are cared
Child Care and Development for at a licensed facility by
paid providers.
Imagine you are the mother of an infant and must return to work. You probably have
heard the media messages that link full-time day care with less-than-adequate mother-
ing. So you are feeling guilty, and perhaps feel compelled to explain your decision to
disapproving family and friends (Fothergill, 2013). You may wonder, “Will my child
be securely attached if I see her only a few hours a day?” You certainly worry about
the quality of care your child would receive: “Will my baby get enough attention at
the local day-care center?” “Am I really harming my child?”
To answer these kinds of questions, in 1989, developmentalists began the National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) Study of Early Child
Care. They selected more than 1,000 newborns in 10 regions of the United States and
tracked the progress of these children, measuring everything from attachment to aca-
demic abilities, from mental health, to mothers’ caregiving skills. They looked at the
hours each child spent in day care, and assessed the quality of each setting. The NICHD
newborns are being followed as they travel into adult life (Vandell and others, 2010).
The good news is that putting a baby in day care does not weaken the attachment
bond. Most infants attending day care are securely attached to their parents. The
important force that promotes attachment is the quality of the dance—whether a
parent is a sensitive caregiver—not whether she works (Phillips & Lowenstein, 2011;
Nomaguchi and DeMaris, 2013). Moreover, as I emphasized earlier, what happens
at home is the crucial influence affecting how young children develop, outweighing
long hours spent in day care during the first years of life (Belsky and others, 2007b;
Stein and others, 2013).
However, when we look just at the impact of spending those long hours, the
findings are less upbeat. As you saw in the previous section, attending an excellent
preschool has intellectual benefits (Vandell and others, 2010). But when we look
122 PART II Infancy
at the impact of attending day care throughout the first five years of life, there is
troubling news.
Earlier NICHD research raised alarm bells by reporting that children who spent
long hours in “nonrelative care” were slightly more likely to be rated as “difficult
to control” by caregivers and kindergarten teachers (NICHD, Early Child Care
Research Network, 2003, 2004, 2006; see also Coley and others, 2013). Now we know
that long hours spent in day care, beginning early in life, still predict an elevated risk
of “acting-out issues” as teens (Vandell and others, 2010).
These results do not offer comfort to the millions of parents with babies who
rely heavily on day care. Luckily, the correlations are weak (Vandell and others,
2010). Because these settings can be a refuge from the chaotic home environments
described earlier, for infants living in poverty, attending full-time day care may pro-
mote well-being (Berry and others, 2014). Moreover, day care’s negative effects apply
mainly to children attending large centers, not smaller, family day care (Groeneveld
and others, 2010; Coley and others, 2013).
What is the trouble with day-care centers? For hints, let’s scan the state of child
care in the United States.
Exploring Child-Care Quality in the United States

Visit several facilities and you will immediately see that U.S. day care varies in quality.
In some places, babies are warehoused and ignored. In others, every child is nurtured
and loved.
The essence of quality day care again boils down to the dance—that is, the attach-
ment relationship between caretakers and the children. Children develop intense
attachments to their day-care providers. If a particular caregiver is sensitive, a child in
her care tends to be securely attached (Ahnert, Pinquart, & Lamb, 2006; De Schipper
and others, 2008).
Child-care providers and parents agree: To be effective in this job, you need
to be patient, caring, empathic, and child-centered (Berthelsen & Brownlee, 2007;
Virmani & Ontai, 2010). It’s not so much formal education that matters, but being
able to reflect on your interactions (Virmani & Ontai, 2010) and being committed to
this field (Martin and others, 2010).
You also need to work in a setting where you can relate to children in a one-to-one
way. To demonstrate this point, researchers videotaped teachers at 64 Dutch preschools,
either playing with three children or with five. Teachers acted more empathic in the
three-child group. They were more likely to criticize and get
angry with the group of five (de Schipper, Riksen-Walraven,
& Geurts, 2006). These differences in teachers’ tone and style
were especially pronounced with younger children (the 3-year-
olds). So, group size matters; and the lower the child–teacher
ratio, the better, especially earlier in life.
Another important dimension is consistency of care
(Harrist, Thompson, & Norris, 2007). Forming an attach-
ment takes time. Therefore, children are more apt to be
securely attached to a caregiver when that person has been
© Picture Partners/Alamy
there a longer time (Ahnert, Pinquart, & Lamb, 2006).

However, partly because of the abysmal pay (in the
United States, it’s often close to the minimum wage), day-
care workers are apt to quit. They may feel rejected even
Can these day-care workers give when they have valuable input to provide. As one woman in an interview study
enough attention to the babies, complained, “When . . . you try to tell them (some parents) anything, it’s like
toddlers, and preschoolers in ‘yeah right.’ They never want to hear what you have to say” (quoted in Fothergill,
their care? Unfortunately, with a
child–caregiver ratio at over 3 to
2013, p. 440).
1 at this center, the answer may Now, combine this feeling of being unappreciated, with burnout from being
be no. overwhelmed. While the recommended ratio is one caregiver to four toddlers, only
eight states follow this guideline (Stebbins & Knitzner, NCCP, 2007). Some allow as
many as one teacher per 12 children, even during the first year of life.
In sum, now we know why day-care centers are at risk of providing inadequate
care. Their culprit is size. In family day care, there is a smaller number of children
and often more stability (since the person is watching the children in her home) than
in a large facility, where caregivers keep leaving and babies can be warehoused in
larger groups (Gerber, Whitebrook, & Weinstein, 2007; Ahnert, Pinquart, & Lamb,
2006; Groeneveld and others, 2010).
INTERVENTIONS: Choosing Child Care

Given these findings, what should parents do? The take-home message is not “avoid
a day-care center,” but rather “choose the best possible place.” Look for a low staff
turnover; see if the caregivers are empathic and warm; if you have an infant or tod-
dler, make sure your baby will spend the day in a small group. You might find these
conditions at your next-door neighbor’s house. Perhaps you’ll find these attributes at
the largest child-care facility in town.
Finally, here, too, we can look to the child’s biology. While attending a low-quality day
care is harmful for infants and toddlers with an environment-responsive genetic profile,
these same children may flourish if a program is top notch (Belsky and Pluess, 2013). So,
as we learn more about environment-sensitive genes, making blanket generalizations—
such as “day care is bad (or good)”—may not be appropriate. It depends on the quality of
the program, a person’s home life, and, now, the biology of a given child.
Table 4.1 draws on these messages in a checklist. And if you are a parent who
relies heavily on day care, keep those guilty thoughts at bay. Your child may blossom
at a high-quality day care. Moreover, your responsiveness matters most. You are your
child’s major teacher and the major force in making your child secure.
Now that we have examined attachment, poverty, and day care, it’s time to turn
directly to the topic I have been implicitly talking about all along—being a toddler.
Table 4.1: Choosing a Day-Care Center: A Checklist

Overall Considerations
• Consider the caregiver(s). Are they nurturing? Do they love babies? Are they interested in
providing a good deal of verbal stimulation to children?
• Ask about stability, or staff turnover. Have caregivers left in the last few months? Can my infant
have the same caregivers when she moves to the toddler room?
• Look for a low caregiver-to-baby ratio (and a small group). The ideal is one caregiver to every
two or three babies.
• Look at the physical setting. Is it safe and clean, set up with children’s needs in mind? (With
toddlers, look for a variety of age-appropriate play materials, clearly defined social spaces and
more private nooks, child-sized furniture, clear pathways for children to circulate, and sensitive
placement of play areas, such as areas for painting situated near sinks.)
Additional Suggestions
• For infants and toddlers in full-time care, limit exposure by having a child take occasional
vacations or building in special time with the child every day.
• Consider the home environment. If your home life is chaotic or you live in a dangerous
neighborhood, your child may be better off spending the day at a structured, stable place.
• Consider a child’s temperament. While biologically reactive (highly environment-sensitive)
babies have special trouble coping with less-than-optimal care, these same toddlers may
flourish in a high-quality setting.
• And finally, for society, pay day-care workers decently and make the qualities you are looking
for in this checklist the norm!
Background information from: The authors cited in this section.

124 PART II Infancy

1. Hugo is explaining which low SES children are at higher risk of having cognitive
deficits. Pick the statement he should NOT make: These children’s families are
chronically poor/These children live in rural areas/These children are genetically reactive
to stress.
2. Nancy has just put her 6-month-old in day care, and she is anxious about her decision.
Give a “good news” statement to ease Nancy’s mind, and then be honest and give a
“not such good news” statement about day care.
3. You are making a presentation to a Senate committee investigating early child care.
What should you tell the senators about the impact of preschool on development?
What improvements can you suggest with regard to day care itself?
Toddlerhood: Age of Autonomy and

Shame and Doubt
Imagine time-traveling back to when you were a toddler. Everything is entrancing—a
bubble bath, the dishwasher soap box, the dirt and bugs in your backyard. You are
just cracking the language barrier and finally (yes!) traveling on your own two feet.
Passionate to sail into life, you are also intensely connected to that number-one
adult in your life. So, during our second year on this planet, the two agendas that
make us human first emerge: We need to be closely connected, and we want to be
free, autonomous selves. This is why Erik Erikson (1950) used the descriptive word
autonomy Erikson’s second autonomy to describe children’s challenge as they emerge from the cocoon of baby-
psychosocial task, when hood (see Table 4.2).
toddlers confront the
challenge of understanding
Autonomy involves everything from the thrill a 2-year-old feels when forming
that they are separate his first sentences, to the delight children have in dressing themselves. But it also
individuals. involves those not-so-pleasant traits we associate with the “terrible twos.” Over-
whelmed by these classic 2-year-old meltdowns, in one study, 1 in 3 parents labeled
their child as having behavior problems that were “off the charts” (Schellinger &
Talmi, 2013). This may be a misperception, as Figure 4.8 on the opposite page
shows. Difficulties “listening” and angry outbursts (Barry & Kochanska, 2010) are
normal during that magic age when children’s life passion is to explore the world
(recall Piaget’s little scientist behaviors).

Toddlerhood (1 to 2 years) Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt

Erikson used the words shame and doubt to refer to the situation when a
toddler’s drive for autonomy is not fulfilled. But feeling shameful and doubtful
is also vital to shedding babyhood and entering the human world. During their
first year of life, infants show joy, fear, and anger. At age 2, more complicated,
uniquely human emotions emerge—pride and shame. The appearance of these
self-conscious emotions is a milestone—showing that a child is becoming aware
of having a self. The gift (and sometimes curse) of being human is that we are
capable of self-reflection, able to get outside of our heads and observe our actions
from an outsider’s point of view. Children show signs of this uniquely human quality
between age 2 and 3, when they feel ashamed and clearly are proud of their actions
for the first time (Kagan, 1984).
SW Productions/Getty Images
Socialization: The Challenge for 2-Year-Olds
Shame and pride are vital in another respect. They are essential to socialization—
being taught to live in the human community.
Parents begin socializing their children by making requests such as “eat that
This toddler has reached a
cookie,” as early as 6 months of age. There are cultural differences, with Indian moth- human milestone: She can feel
ers giving their babies more instructions and getting higher rates of compliance than shame, which means that she is
do U.S. moms (Reddy and others, 2013). beginning to be aware that she
When does the U.S. socialization pressure heat up? For answers, developmental- has a separate self.
ists surveyed middle-class parents about their rules for their 14-month-olds and when self-conscious emotions
the children just turned 2 (Smetana, Kochanska, & Chuang, 2000). While rules for Feelings of pride, shame,
younger toddlers centered on safety issues (“Stay away from the stove!”), by age 2, or guilt, which first emerge
parents were telling their children to “share,” “sit at the table,” and “don’t disobey, around age 2 and show the
capacity to reflect on the self.
bite, or hit.” Therefore, we expect children to begin to act “like adults” around their
second birthdays. No wonder 2-year-olds are infamous for those tantrums called “the socialization The process by
which children are taught to
terrible twos”! obey the norms of society
Figure 4.8 shows just how difficult it is for 1-year-olds to follow socialization and to behave in socially
rules when their parents are around. When do children have the capacity to follow appropriate ways.
unwanted directions when a parent isn’t in
the room? To answer this question related to
early conscience—the ability to adopt internal Quickly shifts from
standards for our behavior, or have that little one thing to another
Angry moods
voice inside us that says, “even though I want
Can’t stand waiting/wants
to do this, it’s wrong”—researchers devised everything now
an interesting procedure. Accompanied by Easily upset
their mothers, children enter a laboratory
Doesn’t sit still during story
full of toys. Next, the parent gives an unwel-
come instruction—telling the child either to Won’t share toys or other things
clean up the toys or not to touch another Fails to follow with eyes
easily reachable set of enticing toys. Then, Doesn’t show interest
in new objects
the mother leaves the room, and researchers
Doesn’t make happy noises
watch the child through a one-way mirror.
Not unexpectedly, children’s ability to Doesn’t react when calling name
“listen to a parent in their head” and stop Seems unhappy without
good reason
doing what they want improves dramatically
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
from age 2 to 4 (Kochanska, Coy, & Mur- Percent reporting that this is sometimes or usually an issue
ray, 2001). Still, the really interesting ques-
tion is: Who is better or worse at this feat of
self-control? figure 4.8: Typical and unusual difficult toddler behaviors, based on a
Again, the marked differences in self- survey of Dutch parents of 6,491 infants aged 14 to 19 months: Notice that
control that emerge during toddlerhood (or it’s normal for toddlers not to listen, have temper tantrums, and refuse to sit still
or share—but the other difficult behaviors in red should be warning signs of a
even earlier) have genetic roots (Wang & real problem.
Saudino, 2013; Gartstein and others, 2013). Data from: Beernick and others, 2007.
126 PART II Infancy
Some of us are biologically better able to resist temptation at any age! Parenting matters,
too. While having a responsive mother seems most important at promoting compli-
ance during toddlerhood, a father’s warmth weighs heavily at older ages (Lickenbrock
and others, 2013; Schueler & Prinz, 2013). So dad’s socializing influence—at least
in traditional two-parent families—is important, but mainly when children move
beyond the clear-cut attachment zone.
What temperamental traits provoke early compliance? Here the answer comes as
no surprise. Fearful toddlers are more obedient (Aksan & Kochanska, 2004; see also
the How Do We Know box). Exuberant, joyful, fearless, intrepid toddler-explorers are
especially hard to socialize! (See Kochanska & Knaack, 2003.)
that shy and exuberant children differ dramatically in
self‑control?
How do researchers measure the toddler temperaments discussed below? How do they
test later self-control? Their first step is to design situations tailored to elicit fear, anger,
and joy and then observe how toddlers act.
In the fear eliciting “treatment,” a child enters a room filled with frightening toy objects,
such as a dinosaur with huge teeth or a black box covered with spider webs. The
experimenter asks that boy or girl to perform a mildly risky act, such as putting a hand
into the box. To measure anger, the researchers restrain a child in a car seat and then
rate how frustrated the toddler gets. To tap into exuberance, the researchers entertain
a child with a set of funny puppets. Will the toddler respond with gales of laughter or
be more reserved?
Several years later, the researchers set up a situation provoking noncompliance by ask-
ing the child, now age 4, to perform an impossible task (throw Velcro balls at a target
from a long distance without looking) to get a prize. Then, they leave the room and
watch through a one-way mirror to see if the boy or girl will cheat.
Toddlers at the high end of the fearless, joyous, and angry continuum, show less
“morality” at age 4. Without the strong inhibition of fear, their exuberant “get closer”
impulses are difficult to dampen down. So they succumb to temptation, sneak closer,
and look directly at the target as they hurl the balls (Kochanska & Knaack, 2003).
Being Exuberant and Being Shy

Adam [was a vigorous, happy baby who] began walking at 9 months. From then on, it
seemed as though he could never stop.
(10 months) Adam . . . refuses to be carried anywhere. . . . He trips over objects, falls
down, bumps himself.
(12 months) The word osside appears. . . . Adam stands by the door, banging at it and
repeating this magic word again and again.
(19 months) Adam begins attending a toddler group. . . . The first day, Adam climbs to
the highest rung of the climbing structure and falls down. . . . The second day, Adam
upturns a heavy wooden bench. . . . The fourth day, the teacher [devastates Adam’s
mother] when she says, “I think Adam is not ready for this.”
...
(13 months) (Erin begins to talk in sentences the same week as she takes her first steps.)
. . . Rather suddenly, Erin becomes quite shy. . . . She cries when her mother leaves the
room, and insists on following her everywhere.
(15 months) Erin and her parents go to the birthday party of a little friend. . . . For the
first half-hour, Erin stays very close to her mother, intermittently hiding her face on her
mother’s skirt.
(18 months) Erin’s mother takes her to a toddlers’ gym. Erin watches the children . . .
with a “tight little face.” . . . Her mother berates herself for raising such a timid child.
(Lieberman, 1993, pp. 83–87, 104–105)
Observe any group of 1-year-olds and you will immedi-

ately pick out the Erins and the Adams. Some children are
wary and shy. Others are whirlwinds of activity, constantly
in motion, bouncing off the walls. I remember my own
first toddler group at the local Y, when—just like Adam’s
mother—I first realized how different my exuberant son was
from the other children his age. After enduring the horrified
expressions of the other mothers as Thomas whirled glee-
fully around the room while everyone else sat obediently for
Courtesy of Janet Belsky

a snack, I came home and cried. How was I to know that the
very qualities that made my outgoing, joyous, vital baby so
charismatic during his first year of life might go along with
his being so difficult to tame?
The classic longitudinal studies tracing children with
shy temperaments have been carried out by Jerome Kagan. Kagan (l994; see also My exuberant son—shown
enjoying a sink bath at 9 months
Degnan, Almas, & Fox, 2010) classifies about 1 in 5 middle-class European Ameri-
of age—began to have problems
can toddlers as inhibited. Although they are comfortable in familiar situations, these at 18 months, when his strong,
1-year-olds, like Erin, get nervous when confronted with anything new. Inhibited joyous temperament collided
13-month-olds shy away from approaching a toy robot, a clown, or an unfamiliar with the need to “please sit still
and listen, Thomas!”
person. They take time to venture out in the Strange Situation, get agitated when the
stranger enters, and cry bitterly when their parent leaves the room.
This tendency to be inhibited is also moderately “genetic” (Smith and others,
2012), and we can get clues to its appearance very early in life. At 4 months of age,
toddlers destined to be inhibited excessively fret and cry (Moehler and others, 2008;
Marysko and others, 2010). At 9 months of age, they are less able to ignore distract-
ing stimuli such as flashing lights or background noise. Their attention wanders to
any off-topic, irrelevant unpleasant event (Pérez-Edgar and others, 2010a).
Inhibited toddlers are more prone to be fearful throughout childhood (Degnan,
Almas, & Fox, 2010). They overfocus on threatening stimuli in their teens (Pérez-
Edgar and others, 2010a). This temperamental sensitivity to threat shows up in adult
life. Using brain scans, Kagan’s research team found that his inhibited toddlers, now
as young adults, showed more activity in the part of the brain coding negative emo-
tions when shown a stranger’s face on a screen (Schwartz and others, 2003). So for
all of you formerly very shy people (your author included) who think you have shed
that childhood wariness, you still carry your physiology inside.
Still, if you think you have come a long way in conquering your incredible
childhood shyness, you are probably correct. Many anxious toddlers (and exuberant
explorers) get less inhibited as they move into elementary school and the teenage
years (Degnan, Almas, & Fox, 2010; Pérez-Edgar and others, 2010b).
INTERVENTIONS: Providing the Right Temperament–Socialization Fit

Faced with a temperamentally timid toddler such as Erin or an exuberant explorer
like Adam or Thomas, what can parents do?
Socializing a Shy Baby

In dealing with fearful children, parents’ impulse is to back off (“Erin is emotionally
fragile, so I won’t pressure her to go to day care or clean up her toys”). This “treat ’em like
glass” approach is apt to backfire, provoking more wariness down the road (Natsuaki and
others, 2013). With shy children, be caring and responsive (Barnett and others, 2010;
Degnan, Almas, & Fox, 2010), but provide a gentle push. Exposing a shy toddler to sup-
portive new social situations—such as family day care—helps teach that child to cope.
128 PART II Infancy
Raising a Rambunctious Toddler

When faced with fearless explorers, like Adam and Thomas, it’s tempting to adopt a
power assertion An ineffective discipline style called power assertion—yelling, screaming, and hitting a child who
socialization strategy that is bouncing off the walls (Verhoeven and others, 2010). Once they have defined
involves yelling, screaming,
or hitting out in frustration their toddler as “impossible to control,” parents are prone to come down more
at a child. harshly, misreading defiance even into benign acts. Another reaction is to give up—
abandoning any attempt to discipline a child (Mence and others, 2014).
Both strategies are counterproductive. Power assertion strongly predicts behavior
problems down the road (Brotman and others, 2009; Kochanska & Knaack, 2003;
Leve and others, 2010). Disengaging from discipline robs the child of the tools to
modify his behavior. Plus, it conveys the message, “You are out of control and there
is nothing I can do.”
The key to reducing “noncompliance” in any toddler is to offer positive guid-
ance; meaning to set limits in a calm, clear way (Christopher and others, 2013). With
fearless explorers, it’s especially crucial to foster a secure attachment, getting a child
to want to be good for mom and dad (Kochanska and Kim, 2013). As my husband
insightfully commented, “Punishment doesn’t matter much to Thomas. What he
does, he does for your love.”
Table 4.3 offers a summary of this discussion, showing these different toddler
temperaments, their infant precursors, their pluses and potential later dangers, and
lessons for socializing each kind of child. Now let’s look at some general temperament-
sensitive lessons for raising every child.
An Overall Strategy for Temperamentally Friendly Childrearing

Clearly, one key to socializing children is to provide a secure, loving attachment. How-
ever, another is to understand each child’s temperament and work with that unique
behavioral style. This principle was demonstrated in the classic study I mentioned earlier,
in which developmentalists classified babies as “easy,” “slow-to-warm-up,” and “difficult.”
Table 4.3: Exuberant and Inhibited Toddler Temperaments: A Summary

Inhibited, Shy Toddler
• Developmental precursor: Responds with intense
motor arousal to external stimulation in infancy.
• Plus: Easily socialized; shows early signs of
conscience; not a discipline problem.
Sakdawut Tangtongsap/Shutterstock
• Minus: Shy, fearful temperament can persist
into adulthood, making social encounters
painful.
• Child-rearing advice: Don’t overprotect the
child. Expose the baby to unfamiliar people and
supportive new situations.
Exuberant Toddler
• Developmental precursor: Emotionally intense but
unafraid of new stimuli.
• Plus: Joyous; fearless; outgoing; adventurous.
• Minus: Less easily socialized; potential problems
with conscience development; at higher risk for
later “acting-out” behavior problems.

• Child-rearing advice: Avoid power assertion and
harsh punishment. Offer clear rules, but provide
lots of love.
In following the difficult babies into elementary school, the researchers found
that intense infants were more likely to have problems with their teachers and peers
(Thomas & Chess, 1977; Thomas, Chess, & Birch, 1968). However, some children
learned to compensate for their biology and to shine. The key, the researchers dis-
covered, lay in a parenting strategy labeled goodness of fit. Parents who carefully goodness of fit An ideal
arranged their children’s lives to minimize their vulnerabilities and accentuate their parenting strategy that
involves arranging children’s
strengths had infants who later did well. environments to suit their
Understanding that their child was overwhelmed by stimuli, these parents kept temperaments, minimizing
the environment calm. They did not get hysterical when faced with their child’s dis- their vulnerabilities and
tress. They may have offered a quiet environment for studying and encouraged their accentuating their strengths.
child to do activities that took advantage of his or her talents. They went overboard
to provide their child with a placid, nurturing, low-stress milieu.
Here, too, emerging genetic studies suggest these parents were right. Again,
researchers find that children may be genetically predisposed to be reactive or rela-
tively immune to environmental events (Ellis and others, 2011a). In typical settings,
sensitive babies can be labeled “difficult” because they are wired to react negatively
to changes. These same infants however, may flourish when the environment is
exceptionally calm (for review, see Belsky & Pleuss, 2009). In fact, in one study, when
“environment reactive” children were put in a nurturing, placid environment, they
performed better than their laid-back peers (Obradović, Burt & Masten, 2010)!
I must emphasize that this genetically oriented research is in its infancy. Each study
I’ve highlighted in this chapter has targeted a different environment-reactive marker
gene! But the lesson here is that making assumptions about the enduring importance
of infant attachment, categorizing poverty and full-time day care as universal stressors,
or, in this case, labeling a baby (or person) as “difficult” or “easy” may not be appropri-
ate. With the right person–environment fit, what looks like a liability might be a gift!
How can we promote goodness of fit, or person–environment fit, at every stage of
life? What happens to babies who are shy or exuberant, difficult or easy, as they journey
into elementary school and adolescence? How do Ainsworth’s attachment styles play
out in adult romance? Stay tuned for answers to these questions in the rest of this book.

1. If Amanda has recently turned 2, what predictions are you not justified in making
about her?
a. Amanda wants to be independent, yet closely attached.
b. Amanda is beginning to show signs of self-awareness and can possibly feel shame.
c. Amanda’s parents haven’t begun to discipline her yet.
2. To a colleague at work who confides that he’s worried about his timid toddler, what
words of comfort can you offer?
3. Think back to your own childhood: Did you fit into either the shy or exuberant
temperament type? How did your parents cope with your personality style?
SUMMARY
Attachment: The Basic Life Bond of the importance of attachment, and Bowlby transformed devel-
For much of the twentieth century, many psychologists in the opmental science by arguing that having a loving primary attach-
United States—because they were behaviorists—minimized the ment figure is biologically built in, and crucial to our development.
mother–child bond. European psychoanalysts such as John Bowlby Although threats to survival at any age evoke proximity-seeking
were finding, however, that attachment was a basic human need. behavior—especially during toddlerhood—being physically apart
Harlow’s studies with monkeys convinced U.S. developmentalists from an attachment figure elicits distress.
130 PART II Infancy
According to Bowlby, life begins with a three-month-long preat- particularly, school success. Again, this impact varies depend-
tachment phase, which is characterized by the first social smile. ing on the duration of the deprivation, the child’s genetics, and,
After an intermediate phase called attachment in the making, at interestingly, whether a poor preschooler lives in a rural or urban
about 7 months of age, the landmark phase of clear-cut attach- area. Although Head Start and Early Head Start, as well as other
ment begins, signaled by separation anxiety and stranger anxi- high-quality preschool experiences, make a difference for disad-
ety. During this period spanning toddlerhood, children need their vantaged children, they can’t totally erase the impact of attend-
caregiver to be physically close, and they rely on social referencing inadequate schools. Poverty-level parents can be excellent
ing to monitor their behavior. After age 3, children can tolerate parents, and the quality of children’s home life matters most.
separations, as they develop an internal working model of their Going back to work in a baby’s first year of life is common, but due
caregiver—which they carry into life. to day care’s expense and anxieties about leaving their baby with
To explore individual differences in attachment, Mary Ainsworth strangers, parents in the United States ideally prefer to keep infant
devised the Strange Situation. Using this test, involving planned care in the family. Paid child-care options include nannies (for
separations, and especially reunions, developmentalists label affluent parents), family day care (where a person takes a small
1-year-olds as securely or insecurely attached. Securely attached number of children in her home), and larger day-care centers.
1-year-olds use their primary attachment figure as a secure base The NICHD Study of Early Child Care showed that the best pre-
for exploration and are delighted when she returns. Avoidant dictor of being securely attached at age 1 is having a sensitive
infants seem indifferent. Anxious-ambivalent children are incon- parent, not the number of hours a child spends in day care.
solable and sometimes angry when their caregiver arrives. Chil- While high quality day care can compensate for a chaotic family
dren with a disorganized attachment react in an erratic way and life, unfortunately, children who spend many hours in day-care
often show fear when their parent reenters the room. centers (versus family care) are at a slightly higher risk of having
Caregiver–child interactions are characterized by a beautiful syn- acting-out behaviors.
chrony, or attachment dance. Although the caregiver’s respon- In choosing day care, search out loving teachers and a setting
siveness to the baby is a major determinant of attachment where caregivers can relate in a one-to-one way. Because day-
security at age 1, infant attachment is also affected by the tem- care workers are so poorly paid in the United States and may not
perament of the child and depends on the quality of a caregiver’s get respect, staff turnover is a serious problem. This issue, plus
other relationships, too. their large size, may explain why day-care centers can be prob-
Cross-cultural studies support the idea that attachment to a pri- lematic. Babies who are genetically environment-reactive may
mary caregiver is universal, with similar percentages of babies in also be more vulnerable to low-quality day care.
various countries classified as securely attached. When they are
distressed, babies run to the caregiver who spends the most time
with them, but infants can be attached to several people, and Toddlerhood: Age of Autonomy and
having a secure attachment to only one caregiver may be all that
children need for optimal mental health.
Shame and Doubt
Erikson’s autonomy captures the essence of toddlerhood, the
As Bowlby predicted in his working-model concept, securely landmark age when we shed babyhood, become able to observe
attached babies have superior mental health. Infants with inse- the self, and enter the human world. Self-conscious emotions such
cure attachments (especially disorganized attachments) are at as pride and shame emerge and are crucial to socialization, which
risk for later problems. However, the good-news/bad-news find- begins in earnest at around age 2. Difficulties with focusing and
ing is that, when the caregiving environment changes, attach- obeying are normal during toddlerhood, but at this age, dramatic
ment security can change for the better or worse. A gene related individual differences appear in children’s ability to control them-
to oxytocin production may make us more or less responsive selves. Temperamentally fearful children show earlier signs of “con-
to the attachment environment. Babies exposed to the worst- science,” following adult prohibitions when not being watched.
case attachment situation, living in an orphanage with virtually Exuberant, active toddlers are especially hard to socialize.
no caregiving, experience a dose–response effect. Although the
risk of having enduring problems sets in during the “attachment As young babies, shy toddlers react with intense motor activity to
zone,” damage depends on the depth of the deprivation and the stimuli. They are more inhibited in elementary school and adoles-
age when a child leaves that institution. cence and show neurological signs of social wariness as young
adults. Still (with sensitive parenting), many shy toddlers and fear-
less explorers lose these extreme tendencies as they grow older.
Settings for Development To help an inhibited baby don’t overprotect the child. Socialize
Early-childhood poverty—widespread in the United States—can a fearless explorer by avoiding power assertion, offering con-
have long-lasting effects on health, emotional development, and, sistent rules, and providing lots of love. While fostering secure
attachments is essential in raising all children, another key is to dren, although prone to break down in stressful situations, may
promote goodness of fit—tailoring one’s parenting to a child’s blossom when the wider world is caring and calm.
temperamental needs. Genetically environment-sensitive chil-
KEY TERMS
attachment, p. 107 clear-cut attachment, p. 110 anxious-ambivalent preschool, p. 120

toddlerhood, p. 107 separation anxiety, p. 110 attachment, p. 111 family day care, p. 121
primary attachment figure, stranger anxiety, p. 110 disorganized attachment, day-care center, p. 121
p. 109 p. 111
social referencing, p. 110 autonomy, p. 124
proximity-seeking behavior, synchrony, p. 112
working model, p. 110 self-conscious emotions,
p. 109 temperament, p. 112 p. 125
Strange Situation, p. 111
preattachment phase, p. 109 oxytocin, p. 115 socialization, p. 125
secure attachment, p. 111
social smile, p. 109 dose–response effect, p. 116 power assertion, p. 128
insecure attachment, p. 111
attachment in the making, Head Start, p. 120 goodness of fit, p. 129
avoidant attachment, p. 111
p. 110 Early Head Start, p. 120
Attachment: The Basic Life Bond 2. The good news is that the quality of Nancy’s parenting is
1. Your responses will differ, but any example you give, such as the main force in determining her child’s attachment (and
“I called Mom when that terrible thing happened at work,” emotional health). The bad news is that many day-care
should show that in a stressful situation your immediate centers leave a good deal to be desired, and long hours
impulse was to contact your attachment figure. spent in these centers are associated with a higher risk of
having “acting-out issues” in school.
2. Muriel = preattachment; Janine = attachment in the making;
Ted = clear-cut attachment: Tania = working model. 3. Tell the Senate committee that 1) high-quality preschools
can have a lasting effect on cognitive development. But
3. (1) b; (2) c; (3) d; (4) a 2) we have an imperative need to raise day-care conditions
4. The child has an avoidant attachment. in the United States. Pass laws mandating (not simply
5. Manuel should say: Infants around the world get attached to recommending) small child-to-caregiver ratios; pay day-care
a primary caregiver at roughly the same age. workers decently; give this job the status it deserves! Also,
consider providing government-funded toddler and infant
6. Caution Jasmine that her child may show problems with
child care and mandating paid family leave, so working
attention and indiscriminant friendliness and, if Jasmine is
parents can afford to stay home after a child’s birth.
adopting a boy, have special difficulties developing a secure
attachment. However, you can also say these problems
should improve with loving care. Toddlerhood: Age of Autonomy and Shame and Doubt
1. c. Parents typically start serious discipline around age 2.
Settings for Development 2. You might tell him that most children grow out of their shyness,
1. These children live in rural areas. Children are at highest risk even if they do not completely shed this temperamental
of having deficits when their families are chronically poor tendency. But be sure to stress the advantages of being shy:
and they are temperamentally reactive to stress. (Urban His baby will be easier to socialize, not likely to be a behavior
poverty, at least under a certain economic threshold, seems problem, and may have a stronger conscience, too.
more detrimental to young children’s development.) 3. These answers will be totally your own.
DenisNata/Shutterstock
Childhood
In this three-chapter book part covering childhood, the first two chapters trace
children’s unfolding abilities. In the final chapter, I’ll explore the two settings
within which children develop: home and school.
The first part of Chapter 5–Physical and Cognitive Development examines

children’s expanding motor skills and focuses on health issues such as obesity.
Then comes the heart of this chapter: an exploration of children’s minds. If
you have ever wondered about the strange ways preschoolers think, want a
basic framework for teaching, or would like to understand how memory and
PART III
reasoning develop, this section is for you. This chapter also charts developing
language and two types of social knowledge that evolve during childhood.
In Chapter 6–Socioemotional Development my focus shifts to personality and

relationships. Here, I will trace growing self-awareness, aggression, caring acts,
play, friendships, and popularity from preschool through elementary school.
A special focus of this chapter is on boys and girls who are having trouble
relating to their peers and adults.
The first half of Chapter 7–Settings for Development: Home and School
tackles children’s family lives. Is there an ideal way of parenting? Why do
some children thrive in spite of devastatingly dysfunctional early lives? What
is the impact of spanking, child abuse, and divorce on the child? In the second
section on school, you will learn all about intelligence tests, what makes
schools successful, and how teachers can make every child eager to learn. This
chapter concludes with a section outlining the Common Core Standards, that
educational transformation in U.S. public schools.
133
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
Special Mindreading Skills
Slow-Growing Frontal Lobes
Physical Development
Two Types of Motor Talents
Threats to Growth and Motor
Skills
Childhood Obesity
INTERVENTIONS: Limiting
Overweight
Piaget’s Preoperational and
Concrete Operational Stages
Childhood Fears, Animism, and
the Power of Stephen King
INTERVENTIONS: Using Piaget’s
Ideas at Home and at Work
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal
Development
INTERVENTIONS: Becoming an
Effective Scaffolder
The Information-Processing
Perspective
INTERVENTIONS: Using
Information-Processing Theory
at Home and at Work
SCIENCE: Attention-Deficit/
Hyperactivity Disorder
INTERVENTIONS: Helping
Children with ADHD
Wrapping Up Cognition
Language
Inner Speech
Developing Speech
Specific Social Cognitive Skills

Constructing Our Personal Past
Making Sense of Other Minds
SCIENCE: Autism Spectrum
Disorders
© Corbis RF/Age Fotostock

Physical and Cognitive
Development
As the 3-year-olds drift in to Learning Preschool, Ms. Angela fills me in:
“We do free play, then structured games. Then we go outside. At 11 we have snack. We
focus on the skills the kids need for school and life: sit still; follow directions; listen; share.
During free play, they need to remember three rules: four kids to an activity center; clean
up before you leave; don’t take the toys from one center when you go to another place.”
In the kitchen corner, Kanesha is pretending to scrub pots. “What is your name?”
“You know!” says Kanesha, looking at me as if I’m totally dumb. “This is a picnic,”
Kanesha continues, giving me a plate: “Let’s have psghetti and Nadia makeacake.”
We are having a wonderful time talking as she loads me up with plastic food. The prob-
lem is that we aren’t communicating. Who is Nadia, that great cook? Then some girls
run in with Barbies from the dress-up corner: “Our babies need food!” We’re happily
feeding our toys when Ms. Angela pipes up: “No moving stuff from the play centers!
Don’t you remember our four kids to a center rule?” . . .
I move to the crafts table, where Moriah, a dreamy frail girl, and Josiah are sur-
rounded by paper: “Hey!” Moriah yells, after Josiah cuts his paper into pieces, “Josiah
has more than me!” Josiah tenderly gives Moriah his bunny, and gives me a heart-
melting, welcoming smile: “I’m [holds up three fingers].” (Moriah and Josiah are obvi-
ously interested in what I’m doing.) “I’m taking notes for a book.” “Taking nose,” both
children giggle and hold their noses. Moriah is making beautiful circles with paste.
Josiah tries to copy her but can only make random lines. These children are so different
in their physical abilities, even though they are the same age. But, oh, no, here come
the kids from the kitchen corner with plastic vegetables, forgetting the “don’t move
the toys” and “four children to a center” rules! Luckily, it’s time for structured games.
Ms. Angela shows the class cards picturing a sun, an umbrella with raindrops, and
clouds, and asks: “What is the weather today?” Josiah proudly picks the umbrella.
“How many people think Josiah is right?” Everyone raises a hand. “Who feels it’s
sunny?” Everyone yells: “Me!” “Who thinks it’s cloudy?” Everyone agrees. Then
Ms. Angela puts on a tape: “Dance fast, fast . . . slower slower . . . Now speed up!” The
kids frantically dance around, and it’s time to go outside. Soon the wind starts gusting
(it really is about to rain), and everyone gets excited: “Let’s catch the wind. . . . Oh, he
ran away again!” And now (whew!) it’s 11:00 and time for snack.
T
hese 3-year-olds have amazing skills. They can why did everyone have so much trouble remembering the
cut, climb, follow directions, tell me about their center’s rules? In this chapter you’ll find answers as we
lives, and (occasionally) remember the teacher’s track physical and cognitive development during early
rules. But it will take another decade before they can childhood (age 3 through kindergarten) and middle
reason like adults. What were the children thinking dur- childhood (elementary school).
ing the pretend feedings, and why was Kanesha sure I Before tackling these topics, let’s explore why our spe-
had to know her name? Why did Moriah assume Josiah cies needs so much time to mentally grow up.
had more paper when he cut his sheet into pieces, and
135
136 PART III Childhood
early childhood The first

phase of childhood,
lasting from age 3 through
Setting the Context
kindergarten, or about age 5. The monkeys in this photo reached adulthood at roughly age 7 or 8 (Poirier & Smith,
1974). Why do human preschoolers take twice as long to grow up?
middle childhood The second
phase of childhood, covering
the elementary school years, Special Mindreading Skills
from about age 6 to 11.
The reason is that our species has a unique capacity—the ability to build on each gen-
frontal lobes The area at the
uppermost front of the brain,
eration’s intellectual advances. Three-year-olds born in biblical times had the same
responsible for reasoning biology as today’s preschoolers, but these twenty-first-century children will grow up
and planning our actions. using iPads and surfing online. They might even take vacations on the moon or Mars.
What talent allowed humanity to mentally take off? Evolutionary theorists believe
at the core of our achievements lies our social cognitive capacity to put ourselves
in other people’s heads and decode intentions (recall
Chapter 3). Monkeys show glimmers of this mindreading
ability (see Buttelmann, Call, & Tomasello, 2009); but
because they don’t have our language capacities (also
described in Chapter 3), our close mammal cousins
can’t draw on each other’s insights to transform the world.
(“Oh, now I understand what you were trying to do. Let’s
work together to improve on that.”) Capitalizing on these
insights, in turn, demands a large, slow-growing brain.
© Markus Botzek/zefa/Corbis
Slow-Growing Frontal Lobes

Actually, our huge cerebral cortex takes more than two
full decades to mature. The myelin sheath—the fatty
neural cover—grows into our twenties. Synaptogenesis
Imagine that these chimps could (the process of making billions of connections between neurons) is on an extended
really share what insights were blossoming and pruning timetable, too, especially in the brain region responsible for
going on in each other’s minds.
Wouldn’t they be inventing the
thinking through our actions—the frontal lobes.
Internet and traveling into outer Figure 5.1, which compares the size of our cortex to that of other species, shows
space? the huge frontal lobes positioned at the top of the brain. During early childhood, the
neurons in the visual and motor cortices are in their pruning phase, which explains
why vision develops rapidly and why we master basic physical milestones, such as
Parietal lobe
Motor cortex
Occipital
Frontal lobe
lobe
Frontal
lobe
Olfactory Olfactory
bulb bulb Visual
cortex
Temporal lobe
Rat Cat Chimpanzee Human
figure 5.1: The human cortex and that of some other species: Notice the size of our cortex in comparison to other species. Also
notice the dramatic increase in the size of our frontal lobes. It is our mammoth cortex and especially our huge frontal lobes that are
responsible for everything that makes our species unique.
CHAPTER 5 Physical and Cognitive Development 137
walking, at a relatively young age. However, the frontal lobes are only beginning their
synaptic blossoming when we start toddling around. Pruning in this part of the brain
will not start until about age 9.
Their slow frontal-lobe timetable explains why preschoolers have so much trou-
ble controlling their behavior, and why our ability to plan, think through, and inhibit
our actions improves over years. It even accounts for the high expectations we have
of elementary schoolers when the frontal lobes enter their pruning phase. We expect
fourth and fifth graders to understand long division and take responsibility for com-
pleting their homework. After all, they can sometimes beat us at baseball and outscore
us at the bowling alley, too.
In addition to allowing us to have the inner control to study (rather than watch-
ing TV) and the cognitive abilities to grasp long division, the frontal lobes are vital to
mastering physical abilities, from tennis, to tightrope walking, to getting to the toilet
at about age 3.
So, understanding that many regions of the brain work together to program every
action and thought, let’s use our slow frontal-lobe timetable as a model to track how
children’s physical and cognitive abilities unfold.

1. In a sentence, explain why language is the core ability that makes human beings
special.
2. When Steven played hide-and-seek with his 4-year-old nephew, he realized that while
Ethan could run very well, the child was having trouble not betraying his hiding place
and understanding the rules of the game. The reason is that Ethan’s _________ cortex
is on an earlier developmental timetable than his _________ lobes.
3. If you learn that a colleague was in an accident and has frontal-lobe damage, what
impairments might you expect?
Look at children of different ages and you will immediately see the cephalocaudal
principle of physical growth discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. Three-year-olds have large
heads and squat, rounded bodies. As children get older, their limbs lengthen and their
bodies thin out. Although from age 2 to 12 children double their height and weight,
after infancy growth slows down considerably (National Health and Nutrition Exami-
nation Survey, 2004). Because they grow at similar rates, boys and girls are roughly
the same size until they reach the preadolescent years.
© Syracuse Newspapers/Michelle Gabel/The Image Works
© Lucianne Pashley/age fotostock
What tips us off about the ages of the children in these two photographs relates to the cephalocaudal principle
of development. We know that the children in the left photo are preschoolers because they have squat shapes
and relatively large heads, while the longer bodies in the right photo are typical of the middle childhood years.
Table 5.1: Selected Motor Skill Milestones: Progression from Age 2 to Age 6
At age 2 At age 4
Picks up small objects with thumb and Cuts paper, approximates circle
forefinger, feeds self with spoon
Walks unassisted, usually by 12 months Walks down stairs, alternating feet
Rolls a ball or flings it awkwardly Catches and controls a large bounced ball across the
body
At age 5 At age 6
Prints name Copies two short words
Walks without holding on to railing Hops on each foot for 1 meter but still holds railing
Tosses ball overhand with bent elbows Catches and controls a 10-inch ball in both hands with
arms in front of body
gross motor skills Physical

abilities that involve large Now visit a playground or take out your childhood artwork to see the mass-to-
muscle movements, such as specific principle—the progression from clumsy to sure, swift movements year by
running and jumping.
year. Three-year-olds have trouble making circles; third graders draw bodies and
fine motor skills Physical faces. At age 4, children catch a ball with both hands; by fourth grade, they may be
abilities that involve small,
coordinated movements,
able to hit home runs. You can see the changes from mass to specific in a few skills
such as drawing and writing in Table 5.1.
one’s name.
Two Types of Motor Talents
Developmentalists divide physical skills into two categories. Gross motor
skills refer to large muscle movements, such as running, climbing, and
hopping. Fine motor skills involve small, coordinated movements, such
as drawing faces and writing one’s name.
altrendo images/Stockbyte/Getty Images
The stereotype that boys are better at gross motor abilities and girls
at fine motor tasks is true—although often the differences are small. The
largest sex difference in sports-related abilities occurs in throwing speed.
During preschool and middle childhood, boys can typically hurl a ball
much faster and farther than can girls (Geary, 1998; Thomas & French,
1985). Does this mean that girls can’t compete with boys on a Little
League team? Not necessarily. The boys probably will be faster pitchers
and more powerful hitters. But the female talent at connecting with the
ball, which involves fine motor coordination, may even things out.
If a preschooler has precocious physical abilities, will that child be
advanced at school? The answer is yes, if we look at complex fine motor
skills. Researchers asked 5-year-olds to copy images and then reproduce
designs displayed on another page. Performance on this more difficult
© Sean Sprague/The Image Works
test (involving fine motor coordination and the ability to judge spatial
dimensions) strongly predicted elementary school math and writing skills
(Carlson, Rowe, & Curby 2013).
This study suggests that to improve academic abilities we might
train young children to reproduce images, in addition to teaching them
numbers or how to sound out words. The problem is that pressuring
(forcing) preschoolers to unwillingly perform physical tasks can be
These boys—being generally
advanced in the gross motor counterproductive. During early childhood, we should provide activities—such as
skills—may be the victors when cutting paper or scaling the monkey bars—that kids’ naturally enjoy (Zaichkowsky &
they compete with girls in this Larson, 1995). Allow young children to exercise their unfolding talents, but don’t
potato sack race. But this girl’s push, and provide the right person–environment fit.
exceptional fine motor talents
have set her up to do well at Now that we’ve scanned what normally happens physically, let’s look at what can
school. go wrong.
Threats to Growth and Motor Skills body mass index (BMI) The
ratio of weight to height; the
I discussed the main threat to growth and motor skills in Chapter 3: lack of food. main indicator of overweight
In addition to causing stunting, undernutrition impairs gross and fine motor skills or underweight.
because it compromises the development of the bones, muscles, and brain. Most childhood obesity A body
important, when children are hungry, they are too tired to move and so don’t get the mass index at or above the
experience crucial to developing their physical skills. 95th percentile compared to
the U.S. norms established
During the 1980s, researchers observed how undernourished children in rural Nepal for children in the 1970s.
maximized their growth by cutting down on play (Anderson & Mitchell, 1984). Play does
more than exercise our bodies. It can help prime neural development and is crucial in
promoting social cognition, helping children learn how to get along with their peers. So,
the lethargy that malnutrition produces is as detrimental to children’s relationships as it is
to their bodies and brains. Notice how, after skipping just one meal, you become listless,
unwilling to talk, less interested in reaching out to people in a loving way.
Keeping in mind that undernutrition remains the top-ranking twenty-first-century
global physical threat, let’s now explore the condition that is ringing alarm bells in the
developed world: childhood obesity.
Childhood Obesity
Have you ever wondered about the source of the num-
bers in the charts showing the ideal weights for people
of different heights? These statistics come from a regular U.S. 6- to 11-year-olds classified as obese
U.S. national poll called the National Health and Nutri- 20
tion Examination Study (NHANES). Since the 1960s,
the federal government has literally been measuring the 15
size of Americans by charting caloric intakes, heights,
(percent)
and weights. The familiar statistic researchers use to

monitor overweight is body mass index (BMI)—the 10
ratio of a person’s weight to height. If the BMI is at or
over the 85 percentile for the norms in the first poll, a 5
child is defined as “overweight.” At the 95th percentile
or above, the label is “obese.”
1971– 1976– 1988– 1999– 2003– 2007– 2011–
Exploring the Epidemic’s Size 1974 1980 1994 2000 2004 2008 2012
Years
Childhood obesity ballooned about 35 years ago.
During the late 1980s, the NHANES researchers were
astonished to find that the fraction of obese elementary figure 5.2: Percentage
school children had doubled over a decade (see Figure 5.2). By 2012, roughly 1 out of U.S. children aged 6–11
of every 6 North American children and teens was obese—four times the number in classified as obese, selected
the original poll (Gordon-Larson, The, & Adair, 2010; Centers for Disease Control years: This chart shows that
the prevalence of child obesity
and Prevention [CDC], Childhood obesity facts, 2011). To bring this increase home, almost tripled during the 1980s,
if you entered a second-grade classroom in the early 1970s, two children might stand continued to rise slowly, and
out as very overweight. Eight or nine would fit that category today. then declined slightly in 2011.
This late twentieth-century scourge has spread throughout the developed world. The wonderful news is that, as
I note in the text, the prevalence
From Finland to France and Great Britain to Greece, governments have targeted of preschool obesity has recently
child obesity as a public health threat (Stamatakis and others, 2010; Swinburn & de decreased significantly.
Silva-Sanigorski, 2010; Tambalis and others, 2010). Adapted from: National Center for
Health Statistics, CDC, 2007–2008, CDC,
The shape of the threat, however, differs by nation. Obesity rates are lower in Scan- Prevalence of childhood obesity in the
dinavia than in Mediterranean countries and the United States (Faeh & Bopp, 2010). United States 2011–2012.
In the developing world, childhood obesity is most common in cities and among afflu-
ent boys and girls (Berkowitz & Stunkard, 2002). In the United States, obesity rates are
higher in rural areas (Davis and others, 2011), and far more common among the poor.
There is also an ethnic dimension to the epidemic. Obesity is most prevalent among
Latino and African American boys and girls (Boonpleng and others, 2013).
The great news is that in recent years, the prevalence of preschool obesity
declined significantly, from roughly 14 percent in 2003–2004 to 8.4 percent in
2011–2012. The bad news is that this condition is still so common throughout the
childhood years (CDC, Childhood obesity facts, 2012). Why, despite vigorous atten-
tion, is obesity resistant to change?
Exploring the Epidemic’s Wider-World Roots

The reason lies in a perfect storm of societal “obesogenic” forces (Finegood, Merth,
& Rutter, 2010; Swinburn & deSilva-Sanigorski, 2010): stressed out working parents
who don’t have time to prepare nutritious, sit-down meals (Morrissey, Dunifon, &
Kalil, 2011); expanding restaurant portion sizes; and easy access to low-cost calorie-
dense foods—such as chips and sugar-laced sodas tailored to tempt the palates of
children (and adults) (Cornwell & McAlister, 2011).
Lack of exercise plays an important role. With the Internet and TV, play-
ing outside—that typical childhood vehicle for burning up calories—has sharply
declined. Obese children, being less physically active than their normal-weight
peers, lag behind in gross motor abilities (Soric & Misigoj-Durakovic, 2010). There
may be a poisonous bidirectional effect here. When children feel bad about their
“big clumsy bodies,” they withdraw from physical activity, watch more TV, and
snack more.
To tackle the weight of obesity-promoting forces, govern-
ments have developed a host of policies, from requiring school
cafeterias to limit fattening foods, to mandating calorie counts
for sodas and Big Macs. Still, societal efforts have been less than
effective, partly because individuals vary greatly in the tendency
to pack on pounds. When researchers tracked thousands of pre-
schoolers, they found that, yes, the school and neighborhood
fast-food milieu played some role; but the primary predictor of
© Dennis MacDonald/PhotoEdit
a child’s kindergarten “weight status” was his mother’s weight

(Boonpleng and others, 2013).
It’s tempting to see this striking correlation (overweight
parents have overweight children) and conclude that obesity
is genetic, so there is nothing we can do. Or perhaps you (like
When we see overweight many of us) have mentally accused overweight parents for loading themselves and
women and their children eating their kids up with fattening foods.
together, some not- so- nice
reactions cross our minds. What
do you think when you see Exploring the Epidemic’s Epigenetics
families like this? Tantalizing research suggests obesity has a partly epigenetic, pre-birth root. Women
who gain excessive weight during pregnancy, and so give birth to large babies, are
at higher risk of having an obese child (Boonpleng and others, 2013). Recall from
Chapter 2 that being born premature and excessively small may also “turn on” the
biological tendency to overeat and store fat. Therefore, events in the womb and at
birth might set us up to pack on pounds by literally changing our DNA.
Interestingly, scientists can predict this predisposition soon after we emerge
from the womb. Rapid weight gain during infancy and early childhood is a strong
predictor of later obesity—outweighing even a child’s genetic propensity to gain
weight (Belsky, 2013; Belsky, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2013). So what happens during our
earliest years can biologically set us up to battle obesity for life (see Belsky, 2014,
for review).
Exploring the Epidemic’s Consequences

This lifelong battle takes a social toll. From being less likely to get hired (Puhl &
Heuer, 2010) or finish college (Fowler-Brown and others, 2010) to having problems
getting elected to public office (Miller & Lundgren, 2010), obesity can present
serious barriers to living a successful life.
These barriers begin soon after babyhood (Puhl & Latner, 2007). In a classic study,
elementary schoolers were shown pictures of an overweight child, a child in a wheel-
chair, another with facial disfigurements, and several others with disabilities. When
asked, “Whom would you choose as a friend?” the children ranked the obese boy or
girl last. By age 3, children describe chubby boys and girls as “mean” and “sloppy.”
So it’s no wonder that, in the West, overweight children are at risk of suffering from
depression in their teens (Pitrou and others, 2010; Sánchez-Villegas and others, 2010).
Attitudes are less harsh in other cultures. In Bangladesh, obesity actually promotes
high self-worth (Asghar and others, 2010). There are differences by ethnicity, with Afri-
can Americans more weight tolerant than their Caucasian counterparts (more about
this in Chapter 8). And of course, there are variations from family to family. Parents
who care vitally about physical beauty hold especially negative stereotypes about over-
weight people, and are prone to monitor a child’s every bite (Puhl & Latner, 2007).
This pressure can backfire (no surprise), producing binge eating (Matton and
others, 2013), compounding an elementary schooler’s already fragile self-esteem.
Therefore, many parents go in the opposite direction. They minimize weight issues in
their child (Luttikhuis, Stolk, & Sauer, 2010). “My daughter may be chubby, but she’s
perfectly fine.” Ironically, then, in one study, the very people who could most benefit
from an obesity prevention program—mothers with overweight preschoolers—were
least likely to enroll (Taveras and others, 2011).
Let’s understand where these adults are coming from. Faced with the prejudices
their children are already enduring, parents want to protect their sons and daughters
from further pain. As one woman reported, “He’s a highly sensitive child, and he’s got
very low self-esteem generally . . . I think, (if he participated in the program) . . . he
would . . . think, ‘what’s wrong with me?’” (quoted in Barratt and others, 2013, p. 61).
Moreover—perhaps because by age 4 or 5, obesity is more resistant to change—
family-focused weight-control programs, even when they show initial success (Sung-
Chan and others, 2013) often don’t work in the long term. Plus, once a boy or girl
moves out of the family orbit, friends’ eating practices make a huge difference in that
child’s food choices (Hemar-Nicolas and others, 2013).
INTERVENTIONS: Limiting Overweight

My discussion shows that the best strategy to control overweight is to start early on.
Rather than intervening during preschool or elementary school, when self-esteem has
taken a nosedive and the child’s epigenetic path has formed,
focus on pregnancy and the earliest year of life. Specifically,
• Never put a pregnant woman on a diet. Instead, point out
that excessive weight gain during pregnancy may have obesity-
promoting effects—not just for the mom, but also for her child.
(Taking steps to reduce prematurity rates would also help.)
• Limit excessive feeding during the first year of life. Overweight
women are more apt to soothe their infants by immediately
offering the bottle or breast (Anzman-Frasca and others, 2013).

Depressed women also may promote infant weight gain, by
overlabeling their babies as fussy and prematurely providing
solid food (Gaffney and others, 2013). Mothers, one study
showed, can be taught to minimize nursing for non-hunger
related distress (Paul and others, 2011). Encourage every new Although we might think there
parent to feed until her baby is satisfied, and not beyond. couldn’t be any danger in
pushing food on this adorable
• Understand that limiting intake is especially difficult for overweight children 8-month-old girl, we would be
(Skoranski and others, 2013) and that obesity control programs are apt to be wrong, as rapid weight gain
at this age strongly predicts
rejected if they seem insulting to parents or attack children’s self-esteem. Make lifelong struggles with weight.
interventions palatable by having families serve as the experts in what they should (NOTE: You NEVER, EVER want to
do (Jurkowski and others, 2013). put a baby on a diet, though.)
Without denying that we are making strides in combatting preschool obesity,

I think you might agree that self-help programs cannot fully counter the temptations
of living in a calorie-rich milieu. Therefore, the next step is for scientists to wage war
on an internal, biological front: Can researchers decode the biochemical mechanisms
producing the rapid infant weight gain that sets some of us up to battle weight issues
for life? (See Belsky, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2013; Belsky, 2014.)
1. Jessica has terrific gross motor skills but trouble with fine motor skills. Select the two
sports from this list that Jessica would be most likely to excel at: long-distance running,
tennis, water ballet, the high jump, bowling.
2. The prevalence of obesity is _____ during preschool. (rising/leveling off/declining)
3. Melanie is a toddler. In predicting her chance of later weight struggles, you might
look to (pick right alternative): Melanie’s mom’s weight; whether Melanie was born
premature; Melanie’s weight again during the past year; all of these forces.
4. The best age to intervene to prevent obesity is: (a) birth–age 1; (b) age 3–4; (c) the
teenage years (choose a, b, or c).
5. Your friend wants to develop a child obesity intervention at your local church. Explain
in a sentence why some people might be unwilling to participate, and what your
friend might do to ensure more families enroll.
In this section, we turn to the heart of this chapter: cognition. How do children
develop intellectually as they travel from age 3 into elementary school? In our search
for answers, we explore three perspectives on mental growth, starting with that master
theorist Jean Piaget.
Piaget’s Preoperational and Concrete Operational Stages

Recall from Chapter 1 that Piaget believed that through assimilation (fitting new
information into their existing cognitive structures) and accommodation (chang-
ing those cognitive slots to fit input from the world), children undergo qualitatively
different stages of cognitive growth. In Chapter 3, I discussed Piaget’s sensorimotor
stage. Now, it’s time to tackle the next two stages, in Table 5.2: the preoperational and
concrete operational stages.
As their names imply, we need to discuss these two stages together. Preoperational
preoperational thinking In
Piaget’s theory, the type of
thinking is defined by what children are missing—the ability to step back from their
cognition characteristic of immediate perceptions. Concrete operational thinking is defined by what children
children aged 2 to 7, marked possess: the ability to reason about the world in a more logical, adult-like way.
by an inability to step back When children leave infancy and enter the stage of preoperational thought, they
from one’s immediate
perceptions and think
have made tremendous mental strides. Still, their thinking seems on a different planet
conceptually. from that of adults. The problem is that preoperational children are unable to look
concrete operational
beyond the way objects immediately appear. By about age 7 or 8, children can mentally
thinking In Piaget’s transcend what first hits their eye. They have entered the concrete operational stage.
framework, the type of
cognition characteristic of The Preoperational Stage: Taking the World at Face Value
children aged 8 to 11, marked
by the ability to reason
You saw vivid examples of this “from another planet” preschool thinking in my
about the world in a more chapter-opening vignette. Now, let’s enter the minds of young children and explore
logical, adult way. how they reason about physical substances and the social world.
Table 5.2: Piaget’s Stages: Focus on Childhood

reality. This stage ends with the development of language.
one), the amount becomes different.
thinking is really on the same wavelength as adults’. While they
12+ Formal operations Reasoning is at its pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible,
fully adult. Our full cognitive human potential has been reached.
Strange Ideas About Substances

The fact that preoperational children are locked into immediate appearances is illus-
trated by Piaget’s (1965) famous conservation tasks. In Piaget’s terminology, conserva-
tion refers to knowing that the amount of a given substance remains identical despite
changes in its shape or form.
In the conservation of mass task, for instance, an adult gives a child a round ball
of clay and asks that boy or girl to make another ball “just as big and heavy.” Then she
reshapes the ball so it looks like a pancake and asks, “Is there still the same amount
now?” In the conservation of liquid task, the procedure is similar: present a child conservation tasks Piagetian
tasks that involve changing
with two identical glasses with equal amounts of liquid. Make sure he tells you, “Yes, the shape of a substance
they have the same amount of water or juice.” Then, pour the liquid into a tall, thin to see whether children can
glass while the child watches and ask, “Is there more or less juice now, or is there the go beyond the way that
same amount?” substance visually appears
to understand that the
Typically, when children under age 7 are asked this final question, they give a amount is still the same.
peculiar answer: “Now there is more clay” or “The tall glass has more juice.” “Why?”
reversibility In Piaget’s
“Because now the pancake is bigger” or “The juice is taller.” Then, when the clay is conservation tasks, the
remolded into a ball or the liquid poured into the original glass, they report: “Now it’s concrete operational child’s
the same again.” The logical conflict in their statements doesn’t bother them at all. In knowledge that a specific
Figure 5.3 on the next page, I have illustrated these procedures as well as additional change in the way a given
substance looks can be
Piagetian conservation tasks to perform with children you know. reversed.
Why can’t young children conserve? For two reasons, Piaget believes. First, chil-
centering In Piaget’s
dren don’t grasp a concept called reversibility. This is the idea that an operation (or conservation tasks, the
procedure) can be repeated in the opposite direction. Adults accept the fact that we preoperational child’s
can change various substances, such as our hairstyle, or the color of our room, and tendency to fix on the most
reverse them to their original state. Young children lack this fundamental schema, or visually striking feature of a
substance and not take other
cognitive structure, for interpreting the world. dimensions into account.
A second issue lies in a perceptual style that Piaget calls centering. Young chil-
decentering In Piaget’s
dren interpret things according to what first hits their eye, rather than taking in the conservation tasks, the
entire visual array. In the conservation of liquid task, they become captivated by the concrete operational child’s
height of the liquid. They don’t notice that the width of the original container makes ability to look at several
up for the height of the current one. When children reach concrete operations, they dimensions of an object or
substance.
decenter. They can step back from a substance’s immediate appearance and under-
stand that an increase in one dimension makes up for a loss in the other one. class inclusion The
understanding that a general
Centering—the tendency to fix on what is visually most striking—impairs class category can encompass
inclusion. This is the knowledge that a category can encompass subordinate ele- several subordinate
ments. Spread 20 Skittles and a few Gummi Bears on a plate and ask a 3-year-old, elements.
Type of Initial step Transformation Preoperational

conservation and question and next question child’s answer
Number Two equal rows of pennies. Increase spacing of pennies in one line.
“Are these two rows the same?” (Yes.) “Now is the amount of money the same?” “No, the longer row has more.”
Mass Two equal balls of clay. Squeeze one ball into a long pancake shape.
“Do these two balls have the same “Now is the amount of clay the same?” “No, the long, thin one has more clay.”
amount of clay?” (Yes.)
Volume Two glasses of the same size with liquid. Pour one into a taller, narrower glass.
or liquid
“Do these glasses have the same “Now do these glasses have the same amount “No, the taller glass has more juice.”
amount of juice?” (Yes.) of juice?”
Matter* Two identical cubes of sugar. Dissolve one cube in a glass of water.
“Do these cubes have the same amount “Now is there the same amount of sugar?” “No, because you made one piece
of sugar?” (Yes.) of sugar disappear.”
*That is, the idea that a substance such as sugar is “still there” even though it seems to have disappeared (by dissolving).
figure 5.3: Four Piagetian conservation tasks: Can you perform these tasks with a child you
know?
“Would you rather have the Skittles or the candy?” and she is almost certain to say,
“The Skittles,” even when you have determined beforehand that both types of candy
have equal appeal. She gets mesmerized by the number of Skittles and does not notice
that “candy” is the label for both.
This tendency to focus on immediate appearances explains why, in the opening
chapter vignette, Moriah believed that Josiah had more paper when he cut his sheet
into sections. Her attention was captured by the spread-out pieces, and she believed
that now there must be more paper than before.
The idea that “bigger” automatically equals “more” extends to every aspect of
preoperational thought. Ask a 3-year-old if he wants a nickel or a dime, and he will
choose the first option. (This is a great source of pleasure to older siblings asked to
equally share their funds.) Perhaps because greater height means “older” in their own
lives, children even believe that a taller person has been on earth for a longer time:
I was substitute teaching with a group of kindergarten children—at the time I was about
22—and when I met a student’s mother, she was shocked. “When I asked Ben about
you,” she said, “he told me you were much older than his regular teacher.” This teacher
was in her mid- to late fifties and looked it. However, then we figured out the difference.
This woman was barely 5 feet tall, and I am 6 feet two!
Peculiar Perceptions About People

Young children’s tendency to believe that “what
hits my eye right now is real” explains why a
3-year-old thinks her mommy is transformed into
a princess when she dresses up for Halloween,
or cries bitterly after her first visit to the beauty
salon, believing that her short haircut has trans-
formed her into a boy. It makes sense of why a
favorite strategy of older sisters and brothers (to
torture younger siblings) is to put on a mask and
© Peter Hvizda/The Image Works

see the child run in horror from the room. As
these examples show, young children lack iden-
tity constancy. They don’t realize that people are
still their essential selves despite changes in the
way they visually appear.
I got insights into this identity constancy When her dad puts on a mask, he suddenly becomes a scary monster to
deficit at my son’s fifth birthday party, when this 4-year-old girl because she has not yet grasped the principle of identity
I hired a “gorilla” to entertain the guests (some constancy.
developmental psychologist!). As the hairy 6-foot
figure rang the doorbell, mass hysteria ensued—
requiring the gorilla to take off his head. After
the children calmed down, and the gorilla put on
his head again to enact his skit, guess what? Pure
hysteria again! Why did that huge animal cause
pandemonium? The reason is that the children
believed that the gorilla, even though a costumed
figure, was really alive.
Animism refers to the difficulty young chil-
dren have in sorting out what is really alive. Specif-
Frank Gaglione/Stone/Getty Images

ically, preschoolers see inanimate objects—such
as dolls or costumed figures—as having con-
sciousness, too. Look back at the beginning chap-
ter vignette and you will notice several examples
of animistic thinking—for example, the Barbies
that were hungry or the wind that ran away. Now
think back to when you were age 5 or 6. Do you
remember being afraid the escalator might suck His animistic thinking causes this 4-year-old to believe that the bear is
you in? Or perhaps you recall believing, as in the really going to enjoy the ride he is about to provide.
Stephen King Experiencing the Lifespan box on
page 146, that your dolls came alive at night.
Listen to young children talking about nature, and you will hear delightful
examples of animism: “The sun gets sleepy when I sleep.” “The moon likes to follow
me in the car.” The practice of assigning human motivations to natural phenomena identity constancy In Piaget’s
theory, the preoperational
is not something we grow out of as adults. Think of the Greek thunder god Zeus, child’s inability to grasp that
or the ancient Druids who worshiped the spirits that lived within trees. Throughout a person’s core “self ” stays
history, humans have regularly used animism to make sense of a frightening world. the same despite changes in
A related concept is called artificialism. Young children believe that human external appearance.
beings have made everything in nature. Here is an example of this “daddy power” animism In Piaget’s theory, the
from Piaget’s 3-year-old daughter, Laurent: preoperational child’s belief
that inanimate objects are
L was in bed in the evening and it was still light: “Put the light out please” . . . (I switched alive.
the electric light off.) “It isn’t dark”—“But I can’t put the light out outside” . . . “Yes you artificialism In Piaget’s theory,
can, you can make it dark.” . . . “How?” . . . “You must turn it out very hard. It’ll be dark the preoperational child’s
and there will be little lights everywhere (stars).” belief that human beings
(Piaget, 1951/1962, p. 248) make everything in nature.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Childhood Fears, Animism, and the Power of Stephen King
There was one shadow that would constantly cast itself that someone is under my bed and that they are going to
on my bedroom wall. It looked just like a giant creeping grab me by my ankles. I don’t think I will ever grow out
towards me with a big knife in his hand. of this, as I am 26.
I used to believe that Satan lived in my basement. The Can you relate to any of these childhood memories col-
light switch was at the bottom of the steps, and when- lected from my students? Perhaps your enemy was that evil
ever I switched off the light it was a mad dash to the top. creature lurking in your basement; the frightening stuffed
I was so scared that Satan was going to stab my feet animal on your wall; a huge object (with teeth) such as that
with knives. piano; or your local garbage truck.
Boy, do I remember the doll that sat on the top of my
Now you know where that master storyteller Stephen King
dresser. I called it “Chatty Kathy.” This doll came to life
gets his ideas. King’s genius is that he taps into the preop-
every night. She would stare at me, no matter where
erational thoughts that we have papered over, though not
I went.
very well, as adults. When we read King’s story about a toy
My mother used to take me when she went to clean house animal that clapped cymbals to signal someone’s imminent
for Mrs. Handler, a rich lady. Mrs. Handler had this huge, death, or about Christine, the car with a mind of its own,
shiny black grand piano, and I thought it came alive when or about the laundry-pressing machine that loved human
I was not looking at it. It was so enormous, dark, and blood—these stories fall on familiar childhood ground.
quiet. I remember pressing one of the bass keys, which Don’t you still get a bit anxious when you enter a dark
sounded really deep and loud and it terrified me. basement? Even today, on a dark night, do you have an
I remember being scared that there was something alive uneasy feeling that some strange monster might be lurking
under my bed. I must tell you I sometimes still get scared beneath your bed?
Animism and artificialism perfectly illustrate Piaget’s concept of assimilation.

The child knows that she is alive and so applies her “alive” schema to every object.
Having seen adults perform heroic physical feats, such as turning off lights and build-
ing houses, a 3-year-old generalizes the same “big people control things” schema
to the universe. Imagine that you are a young child taking a family vacation. After
you visited that gleaming construction called Las Vegas, wouldn’t it make sense that
people carved out the Grand Canyon and the Rocky Mountains, too?
The sun and moon examples illustrate another aspect of preoperational thought.
According to Piaget, young children believe that they are the literal center of the
universe, the pivot around which everything else revolves. Their worldview is charac-
egocentrism In Piaget’s theory, terized by egocentrism—the inability to understand that other people have different
the preoperational child’s points of view.
inability to understand
By egocentrism, Piaget does not mean that young children are vain or uncaring,
that other people have
different points of view although they will tell you they are the smartest people on earth and the activities of
from their own. the heavenly bodies are at their beck and call. Many of their most loving acts show
egocentrism. There is nothing more touching than a 3-year-old’s offer of a favorite
“blankee” if he sees you upset. The child is egocentric, however, because he assumes
that what comforts him will automatically comfort you.
You can see delightful examples of egocentrism when having a conversation
with a young child. Have you ever had a 3-year-old discuss an event at school without
providing any background information, as if you automatically knew her teacher and
the rest of the class?
Piaget views egocentrism as a perfect example of centering in the human world.
Young children are unable to decenter from their own mental processes. They don’t
realize that what is in their mind is not in everyone else’s awareness, too.
The Concrete Operational Stage: Getting on the Adult Wavelength

Piaget discovered that the transition from preoperations to concrete operations
happens gradually. First, children are preoperational in every area. Then, between
ages 5 and 7, their thinking gets less static, or “thaws out” (Flavell, 1963). A 6-year-
old, when given the conservation of liquid task, might first say the taller glass had
more liquid, but then, after it is poured back into a wide glass, becomes unsure: “Is
it bigger or not?” She has reached the tipping point where she is poised to reason on
a higher cognitive plane.
By age 8, the child has reached this higher-level, concrete operational state:
“Even though the second glass is taller, the first is wider” (showing decentering);
“You can pour the liquid right back into the short glass and it would look the same”
(illustrating reversibility). Now, she doesn’t realize that she ever thought differently:
“Are you silly? Of course it’s the same!”
Piaget also found that specific conservations come in at different ages. First,
children master conservation of number and then mass and liquid. They may not
figure out the most difficult conservations until age 11 or 12. Imagine the challenge
of understanding the last task in Figure 5.3 (see p. 144)—realizing that when sugar is
dissolved in water, it exists, but in a molecular form.
Still, according to Piaget, age 8 is a landmark for looking beyond immediate
appearances, for understanding seriation and categories, for decentering in the physi-
cal and social worlds, for abandoning the tooth fairy and the idea that our stuffed
animals are alive, and for entering the planet of adults.
Table 5.3 shows examples of different kinds of preoperational ideas. Now, test
yourself by seeing if you can classify each statement in Piagetian terms.
Table 5.3: Can You Identify the Type of Preoperational Thought from These
Real-World Examples?
Here are your possible choices: (a) no identity constancy, (b) animism, (c) artificialism,
(d ) egocentrism, (e) no conservation, and ( f ) inability to use classification.
_____1. Heidi was watching her father fix lunch. After he cut her sandwich into quarters, Heidi
said, “Oh, Daddy, I only wanted you to cut it in two pieces. I’m not hungry enough to eat
four!” (Bjorklund & Bjorklund, 1992, p. 168).
_____2. My 2-year-old son and I were taking our yearly trip to visit Grandma in Florida. As the
plane took off and gained altitude, Thomas looked out the window and said with a
delighted grin, “Mommy, TOYS!”
_____3. Melanie watched as her father, a professional clown, put on his clown outfit and then
began applying his makeup. Before he could finish, Melanie suddenly ran screaming
from the room, terrified of the strange clown.
_____4. Your child can’t understand that he could live in his town and in his state at the same
time. He tells you angrily, “I live in Newark, not New Jersey.”
_____5. As you cross the George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River to New Jersey, your
child asks, “Did the same people who built the bridge also make the river?”
Answers: 1 (e), 2 (d ), 3 (a), 4 ( f ), 5 (c)
INTERVENTIONS: Using Piaget’s Ideas at Home and at Work

Piaget’s concepts provide marvelous insights into young children’s minds. For teach-
ers, the theory explains why you need the same-sized cups at a kindergarten lunch
table or an argument will erupt, even if you poured each drink from identical cans.
Nurses understand that rationally explaining the purpose of a painful medical pro-
cedure to a 4-year-old may not be as effective as providing a magic doll to help the
child cope.
The theory makes sense of why forming a baseball team with a group of 4- or
5-year-olds is an impossible idea. Grasping the rules of a game requires abstract
conceptualization—a skill that preoperational children do not possess. It tells us
why young children are terrified of the dark and scary clowns at
the amusement park. So for parents who feel uneasy about playing
Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
into their child’s fantasies when they provide “anti-monster spray”

to calm those bedtime fears, one justification is that, according to
Piaget, when your child is ready, she will naturally grow out of her
ideas.
Piaget’s concepts also give us insights into children’s passions at
different ages. They explain the power of pretending in early childhood
(more about this in Chapter 6) and the lure of that favorite holiday,
Halloween. When a 4-year-old child dresses up as Batman, he may be
grappling with the challenge of understanding that you can look dif-
In late elementary school, ferent yet still remain your essential self. The theory accounts for why third or fourth
children take great pride in
collecting, classifying, and
graders become captivated with games such as soccer, and can be avid collectors of
trading items like Yu-Gi-Oh cards baseball cards. Now that they can understand rules and categories, concrete opera-
because they are practicing their tional children are determined to exercise their new conceptual and classification
new concrete operational skills. skills.
The theory explains why “real school,” the academic part, fully begins at about
age 7. Children younger than this age often don’t have the intellectual tools to
understand reversibility, a concept critical to understanding mathematics (if 2 plus 4
is 6, then 6 minus 4 must equal 2). Even empathizing with the teacher’s agenda is a
concrete operational skill.
The fact that age 8 is a coming-of-age marker is represented by the classic movie
Home Alone. The plot of this film would have been unthinkable if its hero were 5,
or even 6. If the star were 11, the movie would be not be interesting because, by this
age, a child could competently take care of himself. Eight is when we begin to make
the transition to being able to make it “home alone.” It is the age when we shift from
worrying about monsters—things that are not real—to grappling with the dangers that
we really face as adults.
Evaluating Piaget
Piaget has clearly transformed the way we think about young children. Still, as you
saw with infancy, in important areas, Piaget was incorrect.
I described a major problem with Piaget’s ideas in Chapter 3: just as he
minimized what babies know, Piaget underestimated preoperational children’s
capacities. In particular, Piaget overstated young children’s egocentrism. If babies
can decode intentions, the first awareness that we live in “differ-
ent heads” must dawn on children at a far younger age than 8!
(At the end of this chapter, you’ll learn when this mindreading
ability fully comes on.)
We might also take issue with Piaget’s idea that we grow out
of animism by age 8 or 9. Maybe he was giving us too much credit
here. Do you have a good luck charm that keeps the plane from
crashing, or a place you go for comfort where you can hear the
© Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE
trees whispering to you?

Children around the world do learn to conserve (Dasen,
1977, 1984). But because nature interacts with nurture, the
ages at which they master specific conservation tasks vary from
place to place. An example comes from a village in Mexico,
Because this girl growing up in where weaving is the main occupation. Young children in this
Mexico gets so much practice at collectivist culture grasp conservation tasks involving spatial concepts when they
weaving, we might expect her are younger than age 7 or 8 because they have so much hands-on training in this
to grasp concrete operational
kind of skill (Maynard & Greenfield, 2003). This brings up a crucial dimension
conservation tasks related to
spatial concepts at a relatively that Piaget’s theory leaves out: the impact of teaching in promoting cognitive
early age. growth.
Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development zone of proximal develop-

ment (ZPD) In Vygotsky’s
Piaget implies that children naturally construct an adult view of the world. We can’t theory, the gap between
convince preschoolers that their dolls are not alive or that the width of the glass makes a child’s ability to solve a
up for the height. They must grow out of those ideas on their own. The Russian problem totally on his own
and his potential knowledge
psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1962, 1978) had a different perspective: people propel if taught by a more accom-
mental growth. plished person.
Vygotsky was born in the same year as Piaget. He showed as much brilliance at a scaffolding The process of
young age, but—unlike Piaget, who lived to a ripe old age—he died of tuberculosis teaching new skills by enter-
in his late thirties. Still, Vygotsky’s writings have given him towering status in devel- ing a child’s zone of proximal
opmental science today. One reason is that Vygotsky was, at heart, an educator. He development and tailoring
one’s efforts to that person’s
believed that what we do helps children mentally advance. competence level.
Vygotsky theorized that learning takes place within the zone of
proximal development, which he defined as the difference between
what the child can do by himself and his level of “potential develop- Potential Competence
ment as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or
in collaboration with more capable peers” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86; also,
see the diagram in Figure 5.4). Teachers must tailor their instruction to
a child’s proximal zone. Then, as that child becomes more competent, ZPD
they should slowly back off and allow the student more responsibility for
Scaffolding
directing that learning activity on his own. This sensitive pacing has a
special name: scaffolding (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976).
You saw scaffolding in operation in Chapter 3 in my discussion of Current Competence
infant-directed speech, the simplified language that adults use when
talking to babies. Recall that baby talk has an adult function. It permits
caregivers to penetrate a young child’s proximal zone for language and so helps scaf- figure 5.4: Vygotsky’s zone
fold emerging speech. Now, let’s explore scaffolding as we read about a mother teach- of proximal development:
These lines illustrate the ZPD—
ing her 5-year-old daughter how to play her first board game, Chutes and Ladders: the gap between where a child is
Tiffany threw the dice, then looked up at her mother. Her mother said, “How many is currently “at” intellectually and
where he can potentially be. If a
that?” Tiffany shrugged her shoulders. Her mother said, “Count them,” but Tiffany just
teacher sensitively teaches within
sat and stared. Her mother counted the dots aloud, and then said to her daughter, “Now this zone and employs scaffolding
you count them,” which Tiffany did. This was repeated for the next five turns. Tiffany (see step-wise lines)—providing
waited for her mother to count the dots. On her sixth move, however, Tiffany counted support, then backing off when
the dots on the dice on her own after her mother’s request. . . . Eventually, Tiffany threw help is no longer needed—
the dice and counted the dots herself and continued to do so, practicing counting and students will reach their full
moving the pieces on both her own and her mother’s turns. intellectual potential.
(Bjorklund & Rosenblum, 2001)
Notice that this mother was a superb scaffolder. By

pacing her interventions to Tiffany’s capacities, she paved
the way for her child to master the game. But this process
did not just flow from parent to child. Tiffany was also
teaching her mother how to respond. Just as your profes-
sor is getting new insights into lifespan development while
teaching every class—or at this minute, as I struggle to write
this page, I’m learning to better connect with Vygotsky’s
ideas—education is a bidirectional, mind-expanding duet
Daryl Benson/Masterfile
(Scrimsher & Tudge, 2003).

In our culture, we have definite ideas about what makes
a good scaffolder. Enter a child’s proximal zone. Actively
instruct, but be sensitive to a child’s responses. However, in
collectivist societies, such as among the Mayans living in
Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, children learn by observation. This girl in Thailand is learning
to weave just by observing
They listen. They watch. They are not explicitly taught the skills they need for adult
her mother—a strategy that
life (Rogoff and others, 2003). So the qualities our culture sees as vital to socializing we might find unusual in our
children are not necessarily part of the ideology of good parenting around the globe. teaching-oriented culture.
INTERVENTIONS: Becoming an Effective Scaffolder

In our teaching-oriented society, what do superior scaffolders do? Let’s list a few
techniques:
• They foster a secure attachment, as nurturing, responsive interactions are a basic
foundation for learning (Laible, 2004).
• They break a larger cognitive challenge, such as learning Chutes and Ladders, into
manageable steps (Berk & Winsler, 1999).
• They continue helping until the child has fully mastered the concept before mov-
ing on, as Tiffany’s mother did earlier.
As you will learn in Chapter 7, these same scaffolding principles—identify each
core skill, cement-in learning within the child’s proximal zone, move to the next level
up in the academic “ladder” when the child is ready— underlie the Common Core
State Standards now being used in elementary schools across the United States.
Table 5.4 compares Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s perspectives and offers capsule
summaries of the backgrounds that shaped these world-class geniuses’ ideas
(Vianna & Stetsenko, 2006). Although often described in opposing terms, these
two theories form an ideal pair. Piaget gave us insights into the developing
structure of childhood cognition. Vygotsky offered us an engine to transform
children’s lives.
Table 5.4: Piagetian and Vygotskian Perspectives on Life and Learning

Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) Jean Piaget (1896–1980)
Bill Anderson/Science Source

© 2016 Macmillan
Biography Russian, Jewish, communist (reached Swiss, middle-class family

teenage years during the Russian
Revolution), believed in Marx
Basic interests Education, literature, literary criticism Biology, mollusks
Wanted to know how to stimulate thinking Wanted to trace the evolution of thought in
stages
Overall orientation Look at interpersonal processes and the role of Look for universal developmental processes
society in cognition
Basic ideas 1. We develop intellectually through social 1. We develop intellectually through physically
interactions. acting on the world.
2. Development is a collaborative endeavor. 2. Development takes place on our own inner
timetable.
3. People cause cognitive growth. 3. When we are internally ready, we reach
a higher level of cognitive development.
Implications for education Instruction is critical to development. Provide ample materials to let children explore
Teachers should sensitively intervene within each and learn on their own.
child’s zone of proximal development.
The Information-Processing Perspective

Vygotsky filled in the missing social pieces of Piaget’s theory and gave us a framework
for stimulating mental growth. But he did not address the gaps in the theory itself.
Why are children able to decenter? What specific skills allow children to understand
that the width of the glass makes up for the height?
Piaget never mentions how crucial abilities such as memory, concentration, and
planning develop. Was Ms. Angela, the teacher in the opening chapter vignette, ask-
ing too much of her 3-year-olds to remember those free-play rules? How can teachers
best teach spelling to a third-grade class? Parents might want guidelines as to what to
expect from a child at a particular age: “Can my 6-year-old daughter take responsibil-
ity for caring for a puppy?” “When will my son be able to get ready for school on his
own?” Clinical psychologists and caregivers would want to understand why a particu-
lar child has so much trouble focusing and obeying at school and at home. To get this
information, everyone would gravitate toward the information-processing approach.
Information-processing theorists, as you learned in Chapter 3, break cognitive
processes into components and divide thinking into steps. Let’s illustrate this approach
by examining memory, the basis of all thought.
Making Sense of Memory

Information-processing theorists believe that on the way to becoming “a memory,”
information passes through different stores, or stages. First, we hold stimuli arriving
from the outside world briefly in a sensory store. Then, features that we notice enter
the most important store, called working memory.
Working memory is where the “cognitive action” takes place. Here, we keep working memory In
information in awareness and act to either process it or discard it. Working memory is information-processing
theory, the limited-capacity
made up of limited-capacity holding bins. It also consists of an “executive processor,” gateway system, containing
which allows us to focus on what we need to remember as well as to manipulate the all the material that we
material in working memory to prepare it for permanent storage (Baddeley, 1992; can keep in awareness
Best & Miller, 2010). Once we have moved information through working memory, it at a single time. The
material in this system is
enters a more long-lasting store, and we can recall it at a later time. either processed for more
You can get a real-life example of the fleeting quality of working memory when permanent storage or lost.
you get a phone number from information and call from a landline phone. You know executive functions Any
that you can dial the number without having to write it down, and your memory will frontal-lobe ability that
not fail if you get to finish. If you are interrupted by a beep from another caller and allows us to inhibit our
lose focus, the number evaporates. In fact, for adults, the typical bin size of working responses and to plan and
direct our thinking.
memory is about the size of a local phone number: seven chunks (in this case, digits)
of information.
Just as they vary in motor talents, young children differ in working memory abilities,
and these differences predict school readiness skills (Fizpatrick & Pagani, 2012; Preßler,
Krajewski, & Hasselhorn, 2013). Moreover, while the basic structure of working memory,
described above, swings into operation by about age 6 (Michalczyk and others, 2013),
this capacity enlarges dramatically during elementary school (Alloway & Alloway, 2013;
Thaler and others, 2013). Actually, the fact that memory-bin capacity expands from
about two to five bits of information by age 7 (Dempster, 1981) explains why we reach
concrete operations at roughly that age (Case, 1999). Now, children have the memory
capacities to step back from their first impressions and remember that what they saw
previously (for instance, a wider glass) compensates for what they are seeing right now.
Exploring Executive Functions

Executive functions refer to any skill related to managing our memory, controlling
our cognitions, planning our behavior, and inhibiting our responses. Executive func-
tions depend on the brain’s master planner—the frontal lobes. Now, let’s look at three
examples of executive functions that make children in concrete operations very dif-
ferent thinkers than at age 4 or even 5.
rehearsal A learning strategy Older Children Rehearse Information

in which people repeat A major way we learn information is through rehearsal. We repeat material to embed it
information to embed it in
memory.
in memory. In a classic study, developmentalists had kindergarteners, second graders, and
fifth graders memorize objects (such as a cat or a desk) pictured on cards (Flavell, Beach, &
selective attention A learning
strategy in which people
Chinsky, 1966). Prior to the testing, the research team watched the children’s lips to see
manage their awareness so if they were repeating the names of the objects to themselves. Eighty-five percent of the
as to attend only to what fifth graders used rehearsal; only 10 percent of the kindergarteners did. So one reason why
is relevant and to filter out older children are superior learners is that they understand that they need to rehearse.
unneeded information.
Older Children Understand How to Selectively Attend
The ability to manage our awareness so we focus on what we need to know and filter
out extraneous information is called selective attention. In a classic study illustrating
young children’s problems in this area, researchers presented boys and girls of differ-
ent ages with cards. On one half of each card was an animal photo; on the other half
was a picture of some household item (see Figure 5.5). The children were instructed
to remember only the animals.
figure 5.5: A selective

attention study: In this
study measuring selective
attention, children were asked
only to memorize the animals
on the top half of the cards.
Then researchers looked
for age differences in their
memory for the irrelevant
household items.
As you might expect, older children were better at recalling the animal names.
But now comes the interesting part: when the children were asked how many irrel-
evant items they could recall, the performance differences evaporated—suggesting
that the young children wasted effort looking at the objects they did not need to know
(Bjorklund, 2005). This suggests that, in addition to having smaller memory bins, young
children clog their bin space with irrelevant information. They can’t focus
their attention on what is relevant and filter out extraneous stimuli as well.
Older Children Are Superior at Inhibition
Turn back to the vignette at the beginning of this chapter to see the problems
young children have inhibiting their impulses. Notice how the 3-year-olds
© Stefanie Felix/The Image Works
ran into the different activity centers without thinking, “That’s not what I’m
supposed to do.” The most fascinating example occurred during the weather
report. Because the temptation to say yes was so strong, the children could
not restrain themselves from agreeing when the teacher asked any question
about the weather that day.
To measure differences in inhibition directly, researchers may ask
The childhood game of Simon children to perform some action that contradicts their immediate tenden-
Says is far from all fun and cies, such as instructing them to say the word black when they see the word white
games—it’s tailored to train (Diamond, Kirkham, & Amso, 2002). Or the child may be instructed, “Press a button
executive functions by giving
children practice in the skill
as fast as you can each time you see an animal on the screen, but don’t respond when
of inhibiting their immediate you see a dog” (Pnevmatikos & Trikkaliotis, 2013). This “go, don’t go” challenge is
responses. exemplified by the classic childhood game Simon Says.
Performance on these tasks improves markedly during preschool, and gradually

gets better with age (Best & Miller, 2010). Actually, fostering inhibition—not doing
what you feel like doing—is a primary socialization goal. From following the pre-
school rules to resisting checking Facebook while you are reading this page, inhibit-
ing our responses is essential to succeeding at school and life.
Moreover, if you think these self-control feats are difficult, imagine being a
© Gregor Schlaeger/VISUM/The Image Works

young child. And never, ever tell a 4- or 5-year-old to keep a “big secret.” Her
automatic response will be to immediately blurt it out!
INTERVENTIONS: Using Information-Processing Theory at

Home and at Work
So, to return to the beginning of this section, teachers cannot assume
that third graders will automatically understand how to memorize
spelling words. Scaffolding study skills, such as the need to rehearse,
or teaching strategies to promote selective attention, such as putting large stars next Given that the exciting news
is on this child’s mind and the
to the relevant words for a test, should be an integral part of education, beginning in frontal lobes are still under con-
elementary school. struction, there is no such thing
Parents will probably need to regularly remind a child, even at age 6 or 7, to as a secret!
feed the dog. Expect activities requiring different information-processing tasks, such
as getting dressed and remembering to take homework and pencils to class, to be
difficult throughout elementary school (and beyond). Scaffold organizational strate-
gies, such as helping a second grader get everything ready for school before bedtime
and teaching that child to put important items in specific places. For everyone
else, the information-processing research suggests that executive functions—from
inhibiting yourself, to selectively attending—improve gradually over many years
(Best & Miller, 2010; Zhan and others, 2011). (See Table 5.5 for some general
information-processing tips.)
Now that we know how thinking normally develops, let’s look at the insights
information-processing research offers caregivers who want to understand children
with executive-function issues—boys and girls with attention-deficit/hyperactivity dis-
order, or ADHD.
Table 5.5: Information-Processing Guidelines for Teachers and Parents

Early childhood
1. Don’t expect a child to remember, without considerable prompting, regular chores such as
feeding a pet, the details of a show, or the name of the person who telephoned.
2. Expect the child to have a good deal of trouble with any situation that involves inhibiting
a strong “prepotent impulse”—such as not touching toys, following unpleasant rules, or
keeping a secret.
Middle childhood
1. Actively teach the child studying skills (such as rehearsing information) and selective
attention strategies (such as underlining important points).
2. Scaffold organizational strategies for school and life. For example, get the child to use a
notebook for each class assignment and keep important objects, such as eyeglasses, in a
specific place.
3. Expect situations that involve multiple tasks, such as getting ready for school, to present
problems. Also expect trouble with activities that involve ongoing inhibition, such as
refraining from watching TV before finishing homework. Build in a clear structure for
mastering these difficult executive-functioning tasks: “At 8 or 9 p.m., it’s time to get
everything ready for school.” “Homework must be completed by dinnertime, or the first
thing after you get home from school.”
4. To promote selective attention (and inhibition), have a child do homework, or any task that
involves concentration, in a room away from tempting distractions such as the TV or Internet.
Hot in Developmental Science: Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity

Disorder
attention-deficit/ Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), defined by inattentiveness, and
hyperactivity disorder hyperactivity/distractibility is the most widely diagnosed childhood disorder in the
(ADHD) The most common
United States, affecting roughly 1 in 9 or 10 girls and boys (CDC Attention deficit
childhood learning disorder
in the United States, hyperactivity disorder, n.d.). This condition is currently diagnosed in preschoolers
disproportionately affecting and during the adult years. But since sitting still and focusing becomes mandatory
boys, characterized by in elementary school, boys and girls typically receive this label during those years.
inattention and hyperactivity
Actually, boys are several times more likely to receive this label than are girls (CDC
at home and at school.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, n.d.).
ADHD follows a bewildering array of paths: from first appearing in preschool,
to erupting during adulthood; from persisting for decades, to fading after months
(Sonuga-Barke & Halperin, 2010). While twin and adoption studies confirm this
condition has primarily genetic causes (Thapar and others, 2013), a bewildering set
of biological triggers may produce this familiar contemporary condition of childhood
(and now adult) life (Sánchez-Mora and others, 2013).
ADHD has been linked to everything from prenatal maternal smoking, to breath-
ing problems at birth (Owens & Hinshaw, 2013). One widely accepted idea is that
this condition results from a lower-than-normal output of dopamine, the neurotrans-
mitter that modulates sensitivity to rewards (Hoogman and others, 2013; Silvetti and
others, 2014). Some scientists feel ADHD is caused by the delayed maturation of
the frontal lobes. Others speculate that impairments in lower brain centers are to
blame. Neuropsychologists have linked symptoms to everything from smaller brain
volume (de Mello and others, 2013), to structural abnormalities in specific cortical
regions (Ghassabian and others, 2013), and documented a range of abnormal neural
activation patterns when these children perform learning tasks (Berger and others,
2013; Wang and others, 2013; Hoogman and others, 2013; Wilson and others, 2013;
Clerkin and others, 2013).
The hallmark of ADHD, however, is deficits in executive functions (Halperin &
Healey, 2011). These children have problems with working memory (Alderson and
others, 2013; Dovis and others, 2013) and especially inhibition (Barkley, 1998, 2003;
Berger and others, 2013). When told, “Don’t touch the toys,” boys and girls diagnosed
with ADHD have special trouble resisting this impulse.
These children also have difficulties with selective attention. Researchers asked
elementary schoolers to memorize a series of words. Some words were more valuable
to remember (that is, worth more points), and others less. Boys and girls with ADHD
memorized an equal number of words as a comparison group; but, like the preschool-
ers in the previous section, they got lower scores because they clogged their memory
bins with less valuable words (Castel and others, 2010).
As you might imagine, performing a sequence of tasks under time pressure,
such as getting ready for school by 7:00 a.m., presents immense problems for boys
and girls with ADHD. These children have more trouble estimating time (Gooch,
Snowling, & Hulme, 2011; Hurks & Hendriksen, 2011; Hwang and others, 2010).
Moreover, perhaps because of their dopamine deficit, they seem less affected by
punishments and rewards (Stark and others, 2011). So, yelling, or threatening,
simply may not work.
These issues explain why school is so problematic for boys and girls with ADHD.
Working memory is critical to performing any academic task. Focusing on a teacher
demands inhibitory and selective attention skills. Taking tests can involve exceptional
time-management talents, too.
Because the same difficulties lead to problems at home, frustrated parents are apt
to resort to power-assertion disciplinary techniques (Wymbs & Pelham, 2010). They
lash out at a 9-year-old who seems incapable of getting his things in order. They
scream at, hit, and punish a daughter who can’t “just sit still.” Therefore, due to an
evocative process, boys and girls with ADHD are least likely to get the sensitive parent-
ing that they need. Their difficult behavior can provoke marital conflict (Wymbs &
Pelham, 2010) and routinely cause these children to fail with their peers (Normand
and others, 2013; Staikova and others, 2013).
Frequent social failures seem to be most upsetting for girls (Becker and others,
2013). Anxiety—for females especially—is an unfortunate side consequence of hav-
ing ADHD (Skogli and others, 2013). Given these dangers, what should a caring
adult do?
INTERVENTIONS: Helping Children with ADHD

The well-known treatment for ADHD is psycho-stimulant medications
(Barkley & Murphy, 2006; Wender and others, 2011; Pearson and others,
2013), often supplemented by parent (and sometimes teacher) training. Parent
training may be especially vital because adults with ADHD, being at a higher
genetic risk of having children with this condition, tend to inflate their positive
parenting skills (Lui and others, 2013) (“I’m doing everything fine! What can
I learn from you?”).
Parent training often takes a behavioral approach by teaching adults to
target upsetting behaviors (rather than ineffectually yelling), pay attention to
positive acts, consistently use time out, and offer children concrete rewards for
behaving (Ryan-Krause, 2011; Young & Amarasinghe, 2010). It’s important
not to pressure sons and daughters to complete demanding time-based tasks.
Allen Donikowski/Moment/Getty Images

Another strategy focuses on helping children enhance working memory,
attention, and inhibition. And then there are interventions focused on diet—
limiting the child’s intake of additives or sugar-laced foods.
One summary of the incredible 2,000-plus intervention studies in this
area suggested that dietary changes—for some children—are effective (Sonuga-
Barke and others, 2013). Unfortunately, because adults are invested in seeing
progress after enrolling a child in a program (“Yes, my kid is better because we
Parent training will ideally help
did this”), we cannot prove that parent or child training has long-lasting effects (Rapport
mothers and fathers feel more
and others, 2013; Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2013; Sonuga-Barke and others, 2013). in control (and be far less angry
What does work? Children with ADHD learn better in noisy environments. and impatient) when dealing
So, to enhance a 9- or 10-year-old’s ability to focus on homework, it may help to with this child who has ADHD.
provide “white” background noise (Soderlund,
Sikstrom, & Smart, 2007). Because they have so
much trouble delaying gratification, it’s prefer-
able to give frequent small reinforcers for good
behavior, rather than waiting for a big prize (10
minutes on the computer later today works better
than promising a family trip to Disney World next Shannon Fagan/Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images
month) (Scheres, Tontsch, & Thoeny, 2013). As
providing regular recess also helps (Ridgway and
others, 2003), schools should build more physi-
cal activity into the day (which, by the way, helps
every child perform better!). Presenting learning
tasks in a gaming format, or making any task
more high energy and less distracting, is espe-
cially beneficial for children and adults with
ADHD (Forster and others, 2014).
Students have told me that getting absorbed in
high-energy activities, such as games or sports, was Although he may regularly tune out in class, this boy clearly has no
problem being riveted to this game. Therefore, it makes sense that
the treatment that “cured” a sibling’s ADHD. Tra- providing high-intensity academics-related video games may help cure
ditional, medication-oriented experts are listening wandering school minds.
(see Halperin & Healey, 2011). Medicines, scientists point out, even when they work,
can have upsetting side effects. Once a person stops the treatment, symptoms return
(Graham and others, 2011; Sonuga-Barke & Halperin, 2010). Exercise, as you will
see later in this book, helps stimulate neurogenesis and may reduce the risk of getting
later-life Alzheimer’s disease. Might intense exercise or even providing time for playing
games help mend a child’s brain?
But perhaps some brains don’t need mending. ADHD symptoms appear on a
continuum (Bell, 2011; Larsson and others, 2012). Where should we really put the
cutting point between normal childhood inattentiveness and a diagnosed “disease”?
The dramatic early-twenty-first-century U.S. rise in the prevalence of ADHD (CDC,
2010b) is troubling. So is the male tilt to this diagnosis, as boys are more physically
active than girls. Without denying that ADHD can cause considerable heartache,
what role might a poor elementary school child–environment fit play in this “disor-
der” at this moment in history?
Wrapping Up Cognition
Now that I have reached the end of our survey of cognition, it should be clear why our
species needs a decade (or two) beyond infancy to master the intellectual challenges
of the adult world. Now, imagine the insights we would be missing if we left out any
theory. What if you wanted to make sense of the strange ideas preschoolers have, or
needed a general strategy for stimulating intellectual growth, or were looking for guid-
ance about what to expect from children in terms of listening, following directions,
and sitting still? You would have to turn to Piaget, Vygotsky, and the information-
processing perspective. Has a particular theory been especially valuable in helping
you understand the children you know?

1. While with your 3-year-old nephew Mark, you observe many examples of
preoperational thought. Give the Piagetian label—egocentrism, animism, no
conservation, artificialism, identity constancy—for each of the following:
a. Mark tells you that the big tree in the garden is watching him.
b. When you stub your toe, Mark gives you his favorite stuffed animal.
c. Mark tells you that his daddy made the sun.
d. Mark says, “There’s more now,” when you pour juice from a wide carton into a
skinny glass.
e. Mark tells you that his sister turned into a princess yesterday when she put on a
costume.
2. In a sentence, explain the basic mental difference between an 8-year-old in the
concrete operational stage and a preoperational 4-year-old.
3. Four-year-old Christopher can recognize the alphabet, and is beginning to sound out
words in books. Drawing on Vygotsky’s theory, Chris’ parents should (choose one):
buy alphabet books, because their son will succeed at recognizing the words;
buy “easy-to-read” books just above their son’s skill level; challenge Chris by getting
him books with complicated stories.
4. Turn back to the opening chapter vignette on page 135. List three activities specifi-
cally tailored to help train these preschoolers in the skills of regulating and inhibiting
their responses.
5. Laura’s son has been diagnosed with ADHD. Based on this chapter, suggest some
environmental strategies she might use to help her child.
Language inner speech In Vygotsky’s

theory, the way in by which
human beings learn to
So far, I have been discussing the cognitive and physical milestones in this chapter as regulate their behavior and
if they occurred in a vacuum. But, as I highlighted at the beginning of this chapter, master cognitive challenges,
that uniquely human skill, language, is vital to every childhood advance. Vygotsky through silently repeating
(1978) actually put language—or speaking—front and center in everything we learn. information or talking to
themselves.
Inner Speech
According to Vygotsky, learning takes place when the words a child hears from parents
and other scaffolders migrate inward to become talk directed at the self. For instance,
images by Tang Ming Tung/Moment/Getty Images

using the earlier example of Chutes and Ladders, after listening to her mother say
“Count them” a number of times, Tiffany learned the game by repeating “Count
them” to herself. Thinking, according to Vygotsky, is inner speech.
Support for this idea comes from listening to young children monitor their
actions. A 3-year-old might say, “Don’t touch!” as she moves near the stove; or she
could remind herself to be “a good girl” at preschool that day (Manfra & Winsler,
2006). We may feel the same way as adults. If something is really important—and if
no one is listening—have you ever given yourself instructions “Be sure to do X, Y,
and Z” out loud?
According to Vygotsky, by talking
to her image in the mirror “out
Developing Speech loud,” this girl is learning to
monitor her behavior. Have you
How does language itself unfold? Actually, during early childhood language does
ever done the same thing when
more than unfold. It explodes. no one was watching?
By our second birthday, we are just beginning to put together words (see
Chapter 3). By kindergarten, we basically have adult language nailed down. When
we look at the challenges involved in mastering language, this achievement becomes
more remarkable. To speak like adults, children must articulate word sounds. They
must string units of meaning together in sentences. They must produce sentences that
are grammatically correct. They must understand the meanings of words.
The word sounds of language are called phonemes. When children begin to
speak in late infancy, they can only form single phonemes—for instance, they call phoneme The sound units that
their bottle ba. They repeat sounds that seem similar, such as calling their bottle convey meaning in a given
language—for example, in
baba, when they cannot form the next syllable of the word. By age 3, while children
English, the c sound of cat
have made tremendous strides in producing phonemes, they still—as you saw in the and the b sound of bat.
introductory chapter vignette—have trouble pronouncing multisyllabic words (like
morpheme The smallest unit
psghetti). Then, early in elementary school, these articulation problems disappear— of meaning in a particular
but not completely. Have you ever had a problem pronouncing a difficult word that language—for example, boys
you were able to read on a page? contains two morphemes:
boy and the plural suffix s.
The meaning units of language are called morphemes (for example, the word
boys has two units of meaning: boy and the plural suffix s). As children get older, their mean length of utterance
(MLU) The average number
average number of morphemes per sentence—called their mean length of utterance
of morphemes per sentence.
(MLU)—expands. A 2-year-old’s sentence, “Me juice” (2 MLUs), becomes, “Me
syntax The system of gram-
want juice” (3 MLUs), and then, at age 4, “Please give me the juice” (5 MLUS).
matical rules in a particular
Also around age 3 or 4, children are fascinated by producing long, jumbled-together language.
sentences strung together by and (“Give me juice and crackers and milk and cookies
and . . .”).
This brings up the steps to mastering grammar, or syntax. What’s interesting
here are the classic mistakes that young children make. As parents are aware, one
of the first words that children utter is no. First, children typically add this word to
the beginning of a sentence (“No eat cheese” or “No go inside”). Next, they move
the negative term inside the sentence, next to the main verb (“I no sing” or “He no
do it”). A question starts out as a declarative sentence with a rising intonation: “I have
a drink, Daddy?” Then it, too, is replaced by the correct word order: “Can I have a
semantics The meaning drink, Daddy?” Children typically produce grammatically correct sentences by the
system of a language—that time they enter school.
is, what the words stand for.
The most amazing changes occur in semantics—understanding word meanings.
overregularization An error in Here, children go from three- or four-word vocabularies at age 1 to knowing about
early language development,
in which young children
10,000 words by age 6! (See Slobin, 1972; Smith, 1926.) While we have the other
apply the rules for plurals core abilities under our belts by the end of early childhood, our vocabularies continue
and past tenses even to to grow from age 2 to 102.
exceptions, so irregular One mistake young children make while learning language is called overregu-
forms sound like regular
forms.
larization. Around age 3 or 4, they often misapply general rules for plurals or past
tense forms even when exceptions occur. A preschooler will say runned, goed, teached,
overextension An error in
early language development
sawed, mouses, feets, and cup of sugars rather than using the correct irregular form
in which young children (Berko, 1958).
apply verbal labels too Another error lies in children’s semantic mistakes. Also around age 3, children
broadly. often use overextensions—meaning they extend a verbal label too broadly. In Piaget’s
underextension An error in terminology, they assimilate the word horsey to all four-legged creatures, such as dogs,
early language development cats, and lions in the zoo. Or they use underextensions—making name categories
in which young children
apply verbal labels too
too narrow. A 3-year-old may tell you that only her own pet is a dog and insist that all
narrowly. the other neighborhood dogs must be called something else. As children get older,
through continual assimilation and accommodation, they sort these glitches out.
Table 5.6 summarizes these challenges. Now you might want to have a conversa-
tion with a 3- or 4-year-old child. Can you pick out examples of overregularization,
overextensions or underextensions, problems with syntax (grammar), or difficulties
pronouncing phonemes (word sounds)? Can you figure out the child’s MLU?
Table 5.6: Challenges on the Language Pathway: A Summary Table

Type of challenge Description Example
Phonemes Has trouble forming sounds Baba, psghetti
Morphemes Uses few meaning units per Me go home
sentence
Syntax (grammar) Makes mistakes in applying Me go home
rules for forming sentences
Semantics Has problems understanding Calls the family dog a horsey
word meanings
Overregularization Puts irregular pasts and plurals Foots; runned
into regular forms
Over/underextension Applies verbal labels too Calls every old man grandpa; tells
broadly/narrowly another child he can’t have a grandpa
because grandpa is the name for his
grandfather alone

1. A 5-year-old is talking out loud and making comments such as “Put the big piece
here,” while constructing a puzzle. What would Vygotsky say about this behavior?
2. You are listening to a 3-year-old named Joshua. Pick out the example of overregular-
ization and the overextension from the following comments.
a. When offered a piece of cheese, Joshua said, “I no eat cheese.”
b. Seeing a dog run away, Joshua said, “The doggie runned away.”
c. Taken to a petting zoo, Joshua pointed excitedly at a goat and said, “Horsey!”
Specific Social Cognitive Skills autobiographical memories

Recollections of events and
experiences that make up
Language makes us capable of uniquely human social cognitive understandings. We one’s life history.
are the only species that reflects on our past and future (Fivush, 2011). The essence of
being human, as I highlighted at the beginning of this chapter, is that we effortlessly
transport ourselves into each other’s heads, decoding what people are thinking from
their own point of view. How do children learn they have an ongoing life history?
When do we fully grasp that “other minds” are different from our own?
Constructing Our Personal Past

Autobiographical memories refer to reflecting on our life histories: from our ear-
liest memories at age 3 or 4, to that incredible experience we had at work last
week. Children’s understanding that they have a unique autobiography is scaffolded
through a specific kind of talk. Caregivers reminisce with young children: “Remem-
ber going on a train to visit Grandma?” “What did we do at the beach last week?”
These past-talk conversations are teaching a lesson: “You have a past and future. You
are an enduring self.”
Paul Avis/Getty Images

Past-talk conversations typically begin with parents doing the “remembering”
when children first begin to speak (Harley & Reese, 1999). Then, children become
partners in these mutual stories, and finally, at age 4 or 5, initiate past-talk conversa-
tions on their own (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). Listen to this vivid autobiographical
memory produced by a 6-year-old: When they get home, this
mother can help her daughter
Interviewer to 6-year-old: Can you tell me about the ballet recital? construct her “personal autobi-
Child: It was driving me crazy. ography” by starting a dialogue
about their wonderful day at the
Interviewer: Really? beach.
Child: Yes, I was so scared because I didn’t know any of the people and I couldn’t
see mom and dad. They were way on top of the audience. . . . Ummm, we
were on a slippery surface and we all did “Where the Wild Things Are” and
we . . . Mine had horns sticking out of it . . . And I had baggy pants.
(adapted from Nelson & Fivush, 2004)
As this girl reaches adolescence, she will link these kinds of memories to each
other, and construct a timeline of her life (Habermas, Negele, & Mayer, 2010; Chen,
McAnally, & Reese, 2013). By about age 16, she will use these events to reflect on her
enduring personality (“This is the kind of person I am, as shown by how I felt at age
4 or 5 or 9”). Then she will have achieved that Eriksonian milestone—an identity to
carry through life (more about this in Chapter 10).
Caregivers can help stimulate autobiographical memory by sensitively asking
questions about exciting experiences they shared with their child (Valentino and
others, 2014). (“Wasn’t the Circus amazing! What did you like best?”) Moreover, the
quality of our teenage autobiographical memories vary depending on the loving past
talk experiences we receive. In one study, young teens who produced rich personal
autobiographies were apt to report close, trusting relationships with their mothers
(Bosmans and others, 2013). Conversely, overly general autobiographical memories
(“I used to go shopping”) rather than recalling specific events (“I remember how I
went to Green Hills Mall on that Tuesday with my friends”) can be a symptom of an
unhappy life (Valentino and others, 2014). In another study, having been abused, plus
an inability to recall details about one’s past, was linked to a young teen’s experiencing
depression down the road (Stange and others, 2013).
The most chilling example of this autobiographical memory failure (Freud might
label it repression) occurred when researchers tested children who were removed from
an abusive home. If a parent was insecurely attached, a child either was apt to make
false statements about what took place that day or to deny remembering anything
about the traumatic event (Melinder and others, 2013).
The take-home message is that having a personal autobiography (or full sense of
self) is taught through responsive parent–child encounters. As the sociologist George
Herbert Mead suggested a century ago by using different terminology, or as Vygotsky
implied in a different context in this chapter, relationships are the medium that teach
us to be a self.
Moreover, when researchers train parents in the rich reminiscence styles described
above, they find that past-talk conversations enhance the child’s ability to relate to
other minds (Taumoepeau & Reese, 2013). When does this vital mindreading ability
really lock in?
Making Sense of Other Minds

Listen to 3-year-olds having a conversation, and it’s as if you are hearing monologues,
or mental ships passing in the night. Around age 4 or 5, children start relating
theory of mind Children’s first in a give-and-take way. They have reached that landmark called theory of mind.
cognitive understanding, Developmentalists have a creative procedure to demonstrate this milestone—the
which appears at about false-belief task.
age 4, that other people
have different beliefs and With a friend and a young child, see if you can perform this classic theory of mind
perspectives from their own. task in Figure 5.6 (Wimmer & Perner, 1983). Hide a toy in a place (location A) while
the child and your friend watch. Then, have your friend leave the room. Once she
is gone, move the toy to another hiding place (location B). Next, ask the child where
your friend will look for the toy when she returns. If the child is under age 4, he will
typically answer the second hiding place (location B), even though your friend could
not possibly know the toy has been moved. It’s as if the child doesn’t grasp the fact
that what he observed can’t be in your friend’s head, too.
What Are the Consequences and Roots of Theory of Mind?

Having a theory of mind is not only vital to having a real conversation; it is crucial
to convincing someone to do what you say. Researchers asked children to persuade a
puppet to do something aversive, either eat broccoli or brush its teeth. Even control-
ling for verbal abilities, the number of arguments a given boy or girl made was linked
to advanced theory of mind (Slaughter, Peterson, & Moore, 2013).
Theory of mind is essential to understanding people may not have your best inter-
ests at heart. One developmentalist had children play a game with “Mean Monkey,”
a puppet the experimenter controlled (Peskin, 1992). Beforehand, the researcher had
asked the children which sticker they wanted. Then, she had Mean Monkey pick
each child’s favorite choice. Most 4-year-olds figured out how to play the game and
told Mean Monkey the opposite of what they wanted. Three-year-olds never caught
on. They always pointed to their favorite sticker and got the “yucky” one instead.
A remark from one of my students brings home the real-world message of this
research. She commented that her 4-year-old nephew had reached the stage where he
was beginning to tell lies. Under age 4, children don’t fully have the mental abilities
to understand that their parents don’t know the thoughts in their head. So lying is an
important cognitive advance! (See Evans, Xu, & Lee, 2011.)
The false-belief studies, conducted during the last decades of the twentieth century,
convinced developmentalists that Piaget’s ideas about preoperational egocentrism were
wrong. Although theory-of-mind abilities mature well into later childhood (Devine &
Hughes, 2013) and our teens (Dumontheil, Apperly, & Blakemore, 2010; Lagattuta,
Sayfan, & Blattman, 2010; Samson & Apperly, 2010), remember that children first
grasp the principle that there are other minds out there, during the first 6 months of life!
Do Individual Children (and Adults) Differ in Theory of Mind?

While most preschoolers pass theory-of-mind tasks at around 4 or 5, perhaps because
parent–child disagreements are less acceptable in collectivist societies, children in
these cultures take a bit longer to grasp the idea that people have conflicting opinions
(1) Another adult and a young child watch while you hide a toy in a place like a desk drawer.
(2) The other adult [Ms. X] leaves the room.
(3) You hide the toy under the bed and then ask the child, “Where will Ms. X look for the toy?”
figure 5.6: The

false-belief task: In this
classic test for theory of mind,
when children under age 4
are asked, “Where will
Ms. X look for the toy?” they
are likely to say, “Under the
bed,” even though Ms. X could
not possibly know the toy was
moved to this new location.
Based on Wimmer & Perner, 1983.
than do Western 4-year-olds (Shahaeian and others, 2011; see also Table 5.7 on
page 162 for some fascinating neural findings related to theory of mind and the
collectivist/individualistic distinction).
Conversely, because they have so much hands-on experience in colliding (mean-
ing arguing) with other minds—“Hey, I want that toy!” “No, I do!”—Western pre-
schoolers with brothers and sisters tend to pass theory-of-mind tasks at somewhat
younger ages than only children do (McAlister & Peterson, 2013).
Table 5.7: Brain-Imaging Theory-of-Mind and Autobiographical-Memory

Findings to Wrap Your Head Around
Reflecting on the self and others’ mental states is a frontal-lobe activity involving slightly
different brain regions: When Westerners are asked to recall autobiographical memories, a
brain region called the medial frontal cortex lights up. When given theory-of-mind–type tasks,
a slightly different area of the medial frontal cortex is activated. So thinking about ourselves
and motivations of other people involves distinctive (but closely aligned) brain areas.
Interesting cultural variation: This classic neural separation does not exist when Chinese
adults think about themselves and their mothers. More astonishing, thinking about yourself
and family members activates either the same or more separate brain regions, depending on
whether you have a collectivist (interdependent) or individualistic (self-oriented) worldview.
Interesting variation from person to person: When you judge the mental state of someone
you view as similar, such as a good friend, a closely aligned brain region lights up as when you
are asked to reflect on yourself (as if you are drawing on your feelings about how you would
respond in interpreting this person). But, inferring the mental states of dissimilar others—
people you view as very different—activates truly separate brain areas. Imagining the feelings
of disliked out-group members (e.g., as a Palestinian being asked to empathize with the
perspective of a Jewish-Israeli West Bank settler) may elicit reduced activity in the “social” brain!
Conclusion: Our attitudes about the self in relationship to other human beings are mirrored in
the physical architecture of our brain.
Data from: Abu-Akel & Shamay-Tsoory, 2011; Heatherton, 2011; Oddo and others, 2010; Rabin and others, 2010.
Bilingual preschoolers—because they must sensitively switch between languages,

depending on their conversational partner—also reach this social milestone earlier
than the typical child (Adi-Japha, Berberich-Artzi, & Libnawi, 2010; Chertkow and
others, 2010; Cushen & Wiley, 2011). So do preschoolers who are emotionally reac-
tive and, possibly, more attuned to social cues (Lane and others, 2013), and boys and
girls with parents who talk about other people’s mental states from a very young age
(Lundy, 2013; Pavarini, de Hollanda Souza, & Hawk, 2013).
My discussion implies that interpersonal or social skills are intimately involved
in grasping theory-of-mind tasks. So it comes as no surprise that the core condition
associated with “mind-blindness”—difficulties with theory of mind—is autism,
that well-known impairment in the ability to socially relate (Baron-Cohen, 1999;
© Bill Aron/PhotoEdit
Steele, Joseph, & Tager-Flusberg, 2003). As autism spectrum disorders—the current

umbrella name encompassing Asperger’s syndrome and autism—are such compelling
contemporary concerns, let’s end this chapter by outlining what these devastating
conditions are like.
For this Latino girl, the challenge
of switching to English to recite
this poem to the class may Hot in Developmental Science: Autism Spectrum Disorders
provide a lifelong cognitive boost.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) actually are defined by deficits in theory of
autism spectrum disorders mind—the inability to have normal back-and-forth conversations, share feelings
(ASDs) Conditions (or be self-aware), and a lack of interest in relationships or friends. To qualify for
characterized by persistent,
severe, widespread social this diagnosis, according to the recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5),
and conversational deficits; these severe social impairments must be combined with restricted, stereotyped,
lack of interest in people and repetitive-behavior patterns: rocking, flipping objects, a hypersensitivity to sensory
their feelings; and repetitive, input, an abnormal fixation on the nonhuman world (American Psychiatric
restricted behavior patterns,
such as rocking, ritualized Association, 2013).
behavior, hypersensitivity to Unlike ADHD, the symptoms of autism spectrum disorders routinely appear
sensory input, and a fixation in early childhood and persist, wreaking lifelong havoc. Deteriorating executive
on inanimate objects. A core functions (Rosenthal and others, 2013), poor social understanding (Bal and others,
characteristic of these
disorders is impairments in 2013), and worsening vocational adjustment (Taylor & Mailick, 2014) can be an
theory of mind. unfortunate path this disorder takes during the adult years.
200
150
Incidence per 100,000
100
50
0
1995 2000 2005 2010
Year
figure 5.7: Time trends of autism spectrum diagnoses among children aged 4-6 in
Denmark, 1995–2010: This chart vividly shows the rise in autism spectrum diagnoses among young
children over the past decades in one representative Western nation (Denmark). Is this alarming
increase partly due to the massive media attention focused on this condition? We do not know.
Interestingly, however, as the new criteria for labeling autism spectrum disorders are more stringent,
the number of children diagnosed with this condition may decline a bit in subsequent years.
Data from: Jensen, C, Steinhausen, H., & Lauritson, M. B. (1914).
The good news is that in contrast to ADHD, this fuzzy, multi-symptom

syndrome (Williams & Bowler, 2014) is rare, affecting roughly 1 in every 88 chil-
dren in the United States (Yudell and others, 2013). The problem is the alarming
increase in autism spectrum diagnoses over the past two decades (Yudell and oth-
ers, 2013). (See Figure 5.7 for an example from Denmark.) As with ADHD, autism
spectrum disorders are several times more common in boys than girls (Volkmar
and others, 2014).
What causes these devastating brain conditions? The fact that autism spectrum
disorders run in families suggests these diseases may partly have genetic causes (Rosti
and others, 2014). A puzzling array of environmental risk factors have been linked to
autism, from air pollution (Volk and others, 2013), to maternal abusive relationships
(Roberts and others, 2013); from prenatal medication use (Christensen and others,
2013), to having a premature birth. Given that pregnancy and birth problems seem
involved, it’s no surprise that older parents are at higher risk of having a child with
this condition. But astonishingly, one study traced the risk back a generation—to the
advanced age of the granddad (See Frans and others, 2013)!
What are the treatments? The most well-known intervention, developed about 40
years ago, is applied behavioral analysis. This is an intensive, hands-on approach in
which a clinician reinforces each appropriate behavior. Children with autism spectrum
disorders may receive services from a variety of professionals, while their parents get
educational training and their peers are taught strategies to help these boys and girls at
school. Unlike with ADHD, medications are not effective with the basic autistic symp-
toms, although they can ameliorate the challenging behaviors and emotional distress
the disease produces (Volkmar and others, 2014).
Unfortunately, however, despite decades of nonstop media attention, little prog-

ress has been made at finding a magic-bullet intervention or decoding what really
causes these devastating diseases (Yudell and others, 2013).
Autism spectrum disorders are poster-child diseases for the devastation that occurs
when our human capacity to relate to other minds is impaired. In the next chapter,
I’ll focus directly on charting children’s relationships (and self-awareness), as I explore
socioemotional development during the childhood years.
1. Andrew said to Madison, his 3-year-old son: “Remember when we went to Grandma
and Grandpa’s last year? . . . . It was your birthday, and what did Grandma make for
you?” This ___________conversation will help scaffold Madison’s _____________.
2. Pick the statement that would not signify that a child has developed a full-fledged
theory of mind:
a. He’s having a real give-and-take conversation with you.
b. He realizes that if you weren’t there, you can’t know what’s gone on—and tries to
explain to you what happened while you were absent.
c. When he has done something he shouldn’t do, he is likely to lie.
d. He’s learning to read.
3. Autism spectrum disorders are becoming more/less prevalent, and we are making great
progress/not making much progress in determining their causes.
SUMMARY
Setting the Context cause for this modern scourge lies in toxic environmental forces
(too little exercise, an abundance of tasty, calorie-dense foods,
Childhood comprises two phases—early and middle childhood— and so on), children differ genetically in their tendencies to be
and this period of life lasts longer in our species than in any other overweight, and the best predictor of later obesity is rapid weight
animal. We need this time to absorb the lessons passed down by gain early in life. Because prejudices against overweight chil-
previous generations, and to take advantage of our finely tuned dren are intense, parents tend to minimize their children’s weight
ability to decode intentions—the talent that has allowed us to issues and can be reluctant to participate in family interventions.
advance. The frontal lobes, in particular, take two decades to Rather than just changing society, it’s important to discourage
become “adult.” As this region of the brain—involved in reason- overfeeding babies and decode the biochemical conditions caus-
ing and planning— develops, every childhood ability improves. ing vulnerable infants to gain excessive weight.
Physical Development Cognitive Development

Physical growth slows down after infancy. Girls and boys are Piaget’s preoperational stage lasts from about age 3 to 7. The
roughly the same height during preschool and much of elemen- concrete operational stage lasts from about age 8 to 11.
tary school. Boys are a bit more competent at gross motor skills.
Girls are slightly superior in fine motor skills. Although preschool Preoperational thinkers focus on the way objects and substances
fine motor skills predict elementary school success, we need to (and people) immediately appear. Concrete operational thinkers
be careful not to push young children too hard. Undernutrition can step back from their visual perceptions and reason on a
severely impairs motor skill development by making children too more conceptual plane. In Piaget’s conservation tasks, children
tired to exercise and play. in preoperations believe that when the shape of a substance has
changed, the amount of it has changed. One reason is that young
Rates of childhood obesity—defined by a high body mass index children lack the concept of reversibility, the understanding that
(BMI)—dramatically increased starting about 40 years ago, an operation can be repeated in the opposite way. Another is
although the prevalence of this epidemic differs across nations that children center on what first captures their eye and cannot
and in specific demographic groups. While the main general decenter, or focus on several dimensions at one time. Centering
also affects class inclusion (understanding overarching catego- array of pathways and possible brain causes. Treatments involve
ries). Preoperational children believe that if something looks big- medication, training for parents and children, dietary interven-
ger visually, it always equals “more.” tions, providing white noise, exercise, and high-intensity games.
The dramatic rise in contemporary Western ADHD diagnoses
Preoperational children lack identity constancy—they don’t could be partly a product of a poor child-environment fit.
understand that people are “the same” in spite of changes in
external appearance. Their thinking is characterized by animism
(the idea that inanimate objects are alive) and by artificialism Language
(the belief that everything in nature was made by humans). They Language makes every other childhood skill possible. Vygotsky
are egocentric, unable to understand that other people have dif- believed that we learn everything through using inner speech.
ferent perspectives from their own. Although Piaget’s ideas offer During early childhood, language abilities expand dramatically.
a wealth of insights into children’s thinking, he underestimated Phonemic (sound articulation) abilities improve. As the number of
what young children know. Children in every culture do progress morphemes in children’s sentences increases, their mean length
from preoperational to concrete operational thinking—but the of utterance (MLU) expands. Syntax, or knowledge of grammati-
learning demands of the particular society make a difference in cal rules, improves. Semantic understanding (vocabulary) shoots
the age at which specific conservations are attained. up. Common language mistakes young children make include
Lev Vygotsky, with his concept of the zone of proximal develop- overregularization (using regular forms for irregular verbs and
ment, suggested that learning occurs when adults tailor instruc- nouns), overextension (applying word categories too broadly),
tion to a child’s capacities and then use scaffolding to gradually and underextension (applying word categories too narrowly).
promote independent performance. Education, according to
Vygotsky, is a collaborative, bidirectional learning experience. Specific Social Cognitive Skills
Information-processing theory provides another perspective on Autobiographical memories, the child’s understanding of having
cognitive growth. In this framework on memory, material must a personal past, is socialized by caregivers through past-talk con-
be processed through a limited-capacity system, called working versations, questioning young children about shared life events.
memory, in order to be recalled at a subsequent time. As chil- Specific autobiographical memories consolidate into a coherent
dren get older, their working memory-bin capacity dramatically identity during the teens. Overly general autobiographical memo-
expands, which may explain why children reach concrete opera- ries (or not recalling salient events from the past) may indicate a
tions at age 7 or 8. child’s having an abusive early life.
Executive functions—the ability to think through our actions and Theory of mind, our knowledge that other people have different
manage our cognitions—dramatically improve over time. Chil- perspectives from our own, is measured by the false-belief task.
dren adopt learning strategies such as rehearsal. They get better Children around the world typically pass this milestone at about
at selective attention and inhibiting their immediate responses. age 4 or 5, although the roots of this uniquely human ability
The research on rehearsal, selective attention, and inhibition pro- appear before age 1. Cultural forces, being bilingual, having older
vides a wealth of insights that can be applied in real life. siblings, and having parents’ continually talk about people’s
mental states predict the emergence of this vital skill.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the most com-
mon childhood disorder in the United States, involves impair- Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), characterized by severely
ments in executive functions such as working memory, inhibition, impaired social skills and abnormal repetitive behaviors, are
and selective attention, and presents widespread problems at emblematic of impaired theory of mind. These devastating disor-
home and school. This condition, usually diagnosed in elemen- ders, which typically are diagnosed in early childhood, are rising
tary school (more often among boys), can have a bewildering in prevalence, and have unknown causes.
KEY TERMS
early childhood, p. 135 reversibility, p. 143 working memory, p. 151 syntax, p. 157
middle childhood, p. 135 centering, p. 143 executive functions, p. 151 semantics, p. 158
frontal lobes, p. 136 decentering, p. 143 rehearsal, p. 152 overregularization,
gross motor skills, p. 138 class inclusion, p. 143 selective attention, p. 152 p. 158
fine motor skills, p. 138 identity constancy, p. 145 attention-deficit/hyperactivity overextension, p. 158
body mass index (BMI), p. 139 animism, p. 145 disorder (ADHD), p. 154 underextension, p. 158
childhood obesity, p. 139 artificialism, p. 145 inner speech, p. 157 autobiographical memories,
phoneme, p. 157 p. 159
preoperational thinking, p. 142 egocentrism, p. 146
morpheme, p. 157 theory of mind, p. 160
concrete operational zone of proximal
thinking, p. 142 development, p. 149 mean length of utterance autism spectrum disorders
(MLU), p. 157 (ASDs), p. 162
conservation tasks, p. 143 scaffolding, p. 149
Setting the Context 2. The prevalence of obesity is declining during preschool.

1. Language is what really allows us to penetrate other 3. All of these forces predict later overweight.
minds—and our superior mindreading ability is what makes 4. The best age to intervene to prevent obesity is birth age 1.
us different from other animals.
5. Because parents—especially those with an overweight
2. Ethan’s motor cortex is on an earlier developmental child—might be unwilling to participate to protect their
timetable than his frontal lobes. own and their child’s self-esteem, empower families by
3. This is a disaster! Your colleague might have trouble with having them plan the intervention strategies.
everything from regulating his physical responses, to
analyzing problems, to inhibiting his actions.
1. Long-distance running and the high jump would be ideal for
Jessica, as these sports heavily tap into gross motor skills.
Cognitive Development in sports or playing exciting games. Avoid power assertion

1. (a) animism; (b) egocentrism; (c) artificialism; (d) can’t (yelling and screaming), and go out of your way to provide
conserve; (e) (no) identity constancy lots of love.
2. Children in concrete operations can step back from Language

their current perceptions and think conceptually, while
preoperational children can’t go beyond how things 1. Vygotsky would say it’s normal—the way children learn to
immediately appear. think through their actions and control their behavior.
3. Buy Chris easy-to-read books that are just above his skill level. 2. (b) = overregularization; (c) = overextension
4. (1) Following the play center rules to clean up, not take toys
Specific Cognitive Skills
outside, and keep oneself from entering if there are four
children; (2) having the class sit still and raise their hands to 1. This past-talk conversation will help stimulate Madison’s
speak; (3) the dance slower and faster activity. autobiographical memory.
5. Don’t put your son in demanding situations involving 2. d
time management. When he studies, provide “white” 3. Autism spectrum disorders are becoming more prevalent,
background noise. Use small immediate reinforcers, such and we are not making great progress in determining their
as prizes for good behavior that day. Get your son involved causes.
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Challenge:
Emotion Regulation
Personality (and the
Emerging Self )
Observing the Self
INTERVENTIONS: Promoting
Realistic Self-Esteem
Doing Good: Prosocial Behavior
INTERVENTIONS: Socializing
Prosocial Children
Doing Harm: Aggression
Relationships
Play
Girls’ and Boys’ Play Worlds
Friendships
Popularity
Bullying
Middle-Aged Reflections on My
Middle-Childhood Victimization
SCIENCE: Cyberbullying
INTERVENTIONS: Attacking
Bullying and Helping Rejected
Children
Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Getty Images

Socioemotional Development
Nine-year-old Josiah has a new best friend, Matt. The boys bonded over their love of
soccer and their “so-called” hatred of girls. Although they aren’t in the popular kids
group, these best buddies are the kind of caring, take-charge kids you want to have
around. A perfect example of what these kids add to the class happened last week
when the boys decided to physically (!) play tag using a video game.
As she saw the kids jostling, filling up the recess area with joyous noise, Moriah—
who had earlier made the memorable statement, “Girls’ stuff is stupid” (comments
that quickly earned her the label “dork” from the female members of the class)—ran
over and asked, “Can I play?”
Everyone closed ranks, yelling, “No girls allowed!”
Then Mark pushed in, as usual, disrupting the game, hogging the device the kids
had renamed “the ball.” A few minutes later, Jimmy, an anxious child, worked up the
guts to timidly enter the group.
“Get out!” erupted Mark, “You wuss. You girl!”
Mark bopped Jimmy over the head, and—as usual—a few boys laughed. Jimmy
started to cry and began to slink away. But suddenly, Josiah slowed down.
“Cool it, guys,” he said. “Man, are you all right? Come join us.”
Josiah comforted Jimmy and managed to tell the other boys to lay off Moriah (“Hey,
guys, she’s really cool!”), while Matt did his best to keep Mark from messing up the
game. All of this earned these two good-guy heroes exuberant fist pumps from the
teacher and the rest of the class!
H
ave you ever wondered why chil- a deeper way. If so, this chapter, covering
dren, such as Josiah and Matt, children’s emotional and social develop-
are competent and caring, while ment, is for you.
others, like Mark, seem insensitive, In the following pages, you’ll be
aggressive, and rude? Perhaps you are getting insights into the challenges
curious about what makes children bond in social cognition that children face
together as best friends, or why people, as they travel from preschool through
like Jimmy and Moriah, seem isolated elementary school. But this chapter has
from their peers. Have you puzzled over another purpose: to help children such
why boys love to run around or won- as Moriah, Mark, and Jimmy, who are
dered why elementary schoolchildren having troubles relating in the world.
(say) they love to hate the other sex? With this goal in mind, let’s begin by
Maybe you simply want to understand highlighting that fundamental human
your own and other people’s behavior in challenge—managing our emotions.
169
Setting the Challenge: Emotion

Regulation
In Chapter 5, you saw how the ability to control our behavior underpins every child-
hood cognitive advance. We need the same executive function skills to succeed socially
and emotionally, too. When we get angry, we must cool down our feelings, rather than
lash out. We have to overcome our anxieties and talk to that scary professor, or conquer
our shyness and go to a party because we might meet that special person who will be
emotion regulation The the love of our life. Emotion regulation is the term developmentalists use for the skills
capacity to manage one’s involved in managing our feelings so that they don’t get in the way of a productive life.
emotional state.
Children with externalizing tendencies have special trouble with this challenge.
externalizing tendencies Like Mark in the introductory chapter vignette, they act on their immediate emotions
A personality style that
involves acting on one’s
and often behave disruptively and aggressively. Perhaps you know a child who bursts
immediate impulses and into every scene, fighting, bossing people around, wreaking havoc with his classmates
behaving disruptively and and adults.
aggressively. Children with internalizing tendencies have the opposite problem. Like Jimmy,
internalizing tendencies they hang back in social situations. They are timid and self-conscious, frightened and
A personality style that depressed.
involves intense fear,
social inhibition, and
The beauty of being human is that we vary in our temperamental tendencies—to
often depression. be shy or active, boisterous or reserved. In collectivist cultures such as India, ones that
traditionally put a premium on being self-effacing, shyness is not necessarily a social
liability (Bowker & Raja, 2011). In our individualistic society, being aggressive can be
a social plus (as you will see later). But having serious trouble controlling one’s aggres-
sion or anxiety puts children around the world at a disadvantage (Chen & French,
2008; Prakash & Coplan, 2007). Externalizing and internalizing tendencies—at their
extremes—present universal barriers to succeeding with people and in life.
In Chapter 4, you learned about the temperaments that put toddlers at risk for
having these emotion regulation issues—being highly exuberant or inhibited. Now,
let’s look at what happens if these tendencies evolve to the point where they cause
suffering during the childhood years.
1. Krista, a school psychologist, is concerned about two students: Paul, who bursts out
in rage and is continually misbehaving; and Jeremy, who is timid, anxious, and sad.
Krista describes Paul as having internalizing/externalizing tendencies and Jeremy as
having internalizing/externalizing tendencies, and she says that issues with emotion
regulation are a problem for Paul/Jeremy/both boys.
Personality (and the Emerging Self )

As they get older, how do children’s perceptions about themselves change and how
do these changes affect self-esteem? What makes children (and adults) act in caring
or hurtful ways?
Observing the Self

Developmentalist Susan Harter (1999) has explored the first questions in her research
program examining how children view themselves. To make sense of her findings, Harter
draws on Piaget’s distinction between preoperational and concrete operational thinking—
a difference I will be highlighting throughout this chapter. So let’s take another look at
the mental leap that Piaget believes takes place when children reach age 7 or 8.
CHAPTER 6 Socioemotional Development 171
Children in the concrete operational stage:

• Look beyond immediate appearances and think abstractly about inner states.
• Give up their egocentrism and realize they are but one person among many others
in this vast world.
To examine how these changes affect self-awareness—the way children reflect self-awareness The ability
on who they are as people—Harter asks boys and girls of different ages to describe to observe our abilities and
actions from an outside
themselves. Here are examples illustrating the responses she finds: frame of reference and to
I am 3 years old and I live in a big house. . . . I have blue eyes and a kitty that is orange. reflect on our inner state.
. . . I love my dog Skipper. . . . I’m always happy. I have brown hair. . . . I’m really strong. self-esteem Evaluating oneself
as either “good” or “bad” as
I’m in fourth grade, and I’m pretty popular. . . .That’s because I’m nice to people . . . ,
a result of comparing the self
although if I get into a bad mood I sometimes say something that can be a little mean. to other people.
At school I’m feeling pretty smart in . . . Language Arts and Social Studies. . . . But I’m
feeling pretty dumb in Math and Science. . . . initiative versus guilt Erik
(adapted from Harter, 1999, pp. 37, 48) Erikson’s term for the
preschool psychosocial task
Notice that the 3-year-old talks about herself in terms of external facts. The fourth involving actively taking on
life tasks.
grader’s descriptions are internal and psychological, anchored in her feelings, abili-
ties, and inner traits. The 3-year-old describes herself in unrealistic, positive ways as
“always happy.” The fourth grader lists her deficiencies and strengths in many areas
of life. Moreover, while the younger child talks about herself as if she were living in a
bubble, the older child focuses on how she measures up compared to her classmates.
So Harter believes that when they reach concrete operations, children realistically
evaluate their abilities and decide whether they like or dislike the person they see.
Self-esteem—the tendency to feel good or bad about ourselves—first becomes a
major issue during elementary school.
Actually, studies around the world show that self-esteem tends to decline during
early elementary school (Frey & Ruble, 1985, 1990; Harter & Pike, 1984; Super &
Harkness, 2003). A mother may sadly notice this change when her 8-year-old daugh-
ter starts to make comments such as, “I am not pretty” or “I can’t do math.” (“What
happened to that self-confident child who used to feel she was the most beautiful,
intelligent kid in the world?”) Caring teachers struggle with the same comparisons,
the fact that their fourth graders are exquisitely sensitive to who is popular, which
classmates are getting A’s, and who needs special academic help.
Harter’s research beautifully dovetails with Erik Erikson’s early and middle child-
hood developmental tasks. Erikson, as you can see in Table 6.l, labeled the preschool
psychosocial challenge as initiative versus guilt. Children’s mission at this age, he
believed, is to courageously test their abilities in the wider world. From risking racing

In Erikson’s framework, during preschool our agenda is to take the initiative to try out our skills in the wider world.
During elementary school, our task is to learn to work for what we want.
your tricycle in the street to scaling the school monkey bars, our chal-
lenge in early childhood is taking the initiative to confront life.
In middle childhood (from age 6 to 12) our task shifts to industry
versus inferiority—the need to manage our emotions and work for what
we want to achieve (industry). Now we know that we are not just won-
derful, and are vulnerable to low self-esteem—or inferiority—having
the painful sense that we don’t measure up. In other words, the price of
leaving the preoperational bubble, or early-childhood Garden of Eden,
is becoming realistically aware of our abilities and the demands of living
in the “real world.”
© Robert Dant/Alamy
Still, all is not lost because this new, realistic understanding produces
another change. Notice how the fourth grader on page 171 compares
her abilities in different areas such as personality and school. As they get
older, this means children’s self-esteem doesn’t hinge on one quality.
Even if they are not doing well in one area, they can take comfort in the
places where they really shine.
According to Harter, children draw on five areas to determine their
self-esteem: scholastic competence (academic talents); behavioral conduct
(obedience or being “good”); athletic skills (performance at sports); peer
likeability (popularity); and physical appearance (looks). To diagnose
how a child feels in each domain, Harter devised the kinds of questions
in Figure 6.l.
As you might expect, children who view themselves as “not so good” in
several domains often report low self-esteem. However, to really understand
Maria Sweeney/Getty Images
a given child’s self-esteem, it is important to know that person’s priorities—

the value that a boy or girl attaches to doing well in a particular area of life.
To understand this point, take a minute to rate yourself in your people
skills, politeness or good manners, your intellectual abilities, looks, and
your physical abilities. If you label yourself “not so good” in an area you
Exuberantly taking off on your don’t care about (for me, it would be physical skills), it won’t make a dent
tricycle versus listening to the in your self-esteem. If you care deeply about some area where you feel deficient, you
teacher and making sure you would get pretty depressed.
have finished your homework
This discounting process (“It doesn’t matter if I’m not a scholar; I have great rela-
before raising your hand in class
captures the essential difference tionship skills”) is vital. It lets us gain self-esteem from the areas in which we shine.
between Erikson’s initiative and The problem is that some children take this discounting to an extreme—minimizing
industry tasks. It also shows their problems in essential areas of life.
why early childhood is a magical
Garden of Eden interlude, before
we enter the real world (aka Two Kinds of Self-Esteem Distortions
concrete operations) and face Normally, we base our self-esteem on the signals from the outside world: “Am I suc-
the need to “work.” ceeding or not doing so well?” However, when children with externalizing problems
are failing—for instance, being rejected or performing poorly at school—they may
deny reality (Chung-Hall & Chen, 2010) and blame others to preserve their unreal-
istically high self-worth (Miller & Daniel, 2007). Perhaps you know an adult whose
anger gets him into regular trouble at home and at work, but who copes by taking the
position, “I’m wonderful. It’s their fault.” Because this person seems impervious to his
industry versus inferiority flaws and has such difficulty regulating his emotions, he cannot change his behavior
Erik Erikson’s term for the
psychosocial task of middle
and so ensures that he continues to fail.
childhood involving manag- Children with internalizing tendencies have the opposite problem. Their hyper-
ing our emotions and real- sensitivity to environmental cues (recall Chapter 4) may cause them to read failure
izing that real-world success into benign events. (“My teacher hates me because she looked at me the wrong
involves hard work.
way.”) They are at risk of developing learned helplessness (Abramson, Seligman, &
learned helplessness A state Teasdale, 1978), the feeling that they are powerless to affect their fate. They give up
that develops when a person
feels incapable of affecting
at the starting gate, assuming, “I know I’m going to fail, so why should I try?”
the outcome of events, and So, children and adults with externalizing and internalizing tendencies face a
so gives up without trying. similar danger—but for different reasons. When people minimize their real-world
figure 6.1: How do children view

themselves?: Harter has devised
this questionnaire format to measure
children’s feelings of competence in
her five different areas of life. The item
in the top panel is derived from Har-
ter’s scale designed for young children;
the questions in the bottom panel are
from a similar scale for elementary
school children.
Data from: Harter, 1999, pp. 121–122.
An examiner points to a girl to a preschooler’s right and says, “This girl isn’t good at doing
puzzles.” She then points to a girl to the child’s left and says, “This girl is good at doing
puzzles.” Then she asks the child to point to the appropriate circle under each girl. If “this
really fits me,” the child points to the large circle. If “this fits me a little bit,” the child points
to the small circle.
Really Sort of Sort of Really

True True True True
for Me for Me for Me for Me
Some kids are Other kids are

often unhappy BUT pretty pleased
with themselves. with themselves.
Some kids feel Other kids

like they are aren’t so sure
just as smart as BUT and wonder if
other kids their they are as
age. smart.
Here the elementary schoolchild reads the items and checks the box that applies to her.
difficulties or assume they are incompetent, they cut off the chance of working to
change their behavior and so ensure that they will fail.
Table 6.2 summarizes these self-esteem problems and their real-world conse-
quences. Then, Table 6.3 offers a checklist, based on Harter’s five dimensions, for
Table 6.2: Externalizing and Internalizing Problems, Self-Esteem Distortions,

and Consequences—A Summary Table
Description Self-Esteem Distortion Consequence
Children with externalizing problems
Act out “emotions,” are impulsive and May ignore real problems Continue to fail because
often aggressive. and have unrealistically they don’t see the need
high self-esteem. to improve.
Children with internalizing problems
Are intensely fearful. Can read failure into Continue to fail because
everything and have they decide that they cannot
overly low self-esteem. succeed and stop working.
Table 6.3: Identifying Your Self-Esteem Distortions: A Checklist Using Harter’s

Five Domains
You have externalizing issues if you regularly have thoughts like these:
1. Academics: “When I get poor grades, it’s because my teachers don’t give good tests or teach
well.” “I have very little to learn from other people.” “I’m much smarter than practically everyone
else I know.”
2. Physical skills: “When I play baseball, soccer, etc., and my team doesn’t win, it’s my
teammates’ fault, not mine.” “I believe it’s OK to take physical risks, such as not wearing a
seatbelt or running miles in the hot sun, because I know I won’t get hurt.” “It’s all statistics, so
I shouldn’t be concerned about smoking four packs a day or about drinking a six-pack of beer
every night.”
3. Relationships: “When I have trouble at work or with my family, it’s typically my co-workers’ or
family’s fault.” “My son (or mate, friend, mother) is the one causing all the conflict between us.”
4. Physical appearance: “I don’t think I have to work to improve my appearance because I’m
basically gorgeous.”
5. Conduct: “I should be able to come to work late (or turn in papers after the end of the semester,
talk in class, etc.).” “Other people are too uptight. I have a right to behave any way I want to.”
Diagnosis: You are purchasing high self-esteem at the price of denying reality. Try to look at the
impact of your actions more realistically and take steps to change.
You have internalizing issues if you regularly have thoughts like these:
1. Academics: “I’m basically stupid.” “I can’t do well on tests.” “My memory is poor.” “I’m bound to
fail at science.” “I’m too dumb to get through college.” “I’ll never be smart enough to get ahead in
my career.”
2. Physical skills: “I can’t play basketball (or some other sport) because I’m uncoordinated or too
slow.” “I’ll never have the willpower to exercise regularly (or stick to a diet, stop smoking, stop
drinking, or stop taking drugs).”
3. Relationships: “I don’t have any people skills.” “I’m doomed to fail in my love life.” “I can’t be a
good mother (or spouse or friend).”
4. Physical appearance: “I’m basically unattractive.” “People are born either good-looking or not,
and I fall into the not category.” “There is nothing I can do to improve my looks.”
5. Conduct: “I’m incapable of being on time (or getting jobs done or stopping talking in class).”
“I can’t change my tendency to rub people the wrong way.”
Diagnosis: Your excessively low self-esteem is inhibiting your ability to succeed. Work on reducing
your helpless and hopeless attitudes and try for change.
evaluating yourself. Are there areas where you gloss over your deficiencies? Do you
have pockets of learned helplessness that prevent you from living a full life?
INTERVENTIONS: Promoting Realistic Self-Esteem

This discussion shows why school programs focused just on raising self-esteem—
those devoted to instilling the message, “You are a terrific kid”—are missing the
boat (Baumeister and others, 2003; Swann, Chang-Schneider, & McClarty, 2007).
Drawing on Erikson’s theory, true self-esteem is derived from “industry”—working
for our goals. Therefore, when children are having difficulties in a vital life domain,
it’s important to (1) enhance self-efficacy, or the feeling, “I can succeed if I work”
(Miller & Daniel, 2007) and (2) promote realistic perceptions about the self. As a
caring adult, how might you carry out this two-pronged approach?
ENHANCING SELF-EFFICACY. As developmentalist Carol Dweck has demonstrated,
one key to enhancing academic self-efficacy is to praise children for effort (“You
are trying so hard!”), rather than to make comments about basic ability (“You are
incredibly smart!”). In her studies, elementary schoolers who were

praised for being “very intelligent,” after successfully completing prob-
lems, later had lower self-efficacy. They were afraid to tackle other
challenging tasks (“I’d better not try this or everyone might learn I’m
really dumb!”) (Molden & Dweck, 2006; Mueller & Dweck, 1998).
You might think that praising kids for effort would only be effective
auremar/Shutterstock, Inc.
when children have reached concrete operations and developed fixed
ideas about the self (“I am basically dumb”). But when researchers
videotaped mothers’ interactions with their 2-year-olds, and tracked
these toddlers into elementary school, guess what? Parents who years
earlier made more statements that praised effort (“You worked so hard
on that drawing,” versus, “You are a great artist!”) had 8-year-olds who By praising her 3-year-old for
(1) preferred tackling challenging tasks, (2) attributed academic success to hard work, being such a hard worker, this
mom is socializing her child to
and (3) believed that a person’s intelligence and personality can be changed (Gunder-
tackle challenging tasks in third
son and others, 2013). Therefore, instilling the efficacious message, “working is what grade.
matters,” should be a parental socialization goal starting from age one!
ENCOURAGING ACCURATE PERCEPTIONS. Still, if a child—for instance, Jimmy in the
beginning chapter vignette—has internalizing tendencies, efficacy-enhancing inter-
ventions may not be enough. These children often see themselves as failing when
they are not. Therefore, adults must continually provide accurate feedback: “The
class doesn’t hate you. Notice that Matt and Josiah wanted you in the game last week.”
And, if an elementary schooler with externalizing tendencies discounts his failures at
the price of preserving an inflated sense of self-esteem, gently point out reality, too:
Using the example of Mark, you might say, “The kids don’t like you when you barge
in and take over those games” (Thomaes, Stegge, & Olthof, 2007).
There is a way of softening this painful “You are not doing so well”
message that is the price of realistically seeing the self. Harter (1999,
2006) finds that feeling loved by their attachment figures provides a
cushion when children understand they are having trouble in an impor-
tant area of life. So, returning to the beginning of this section, school
programs (and adults) that stress the message “I care about you,” plus
foster self-efficacy (“You can succeed if you work hard”), are the key to
promoting true self-esteem (Miller & Daniel, 2007).
© Neville Elder/Sygma/Corbis
Doing Good: Prosocial Behavior
On the morning of September 11, 2001, the nation was riveted by the
heroism of the firefighters who ran into the World Trade Center build-
ings, risking almost certain death. We marveled at the “ordinary people”
working in the Twin Towers, whose response to this emergency was to
What qualities made hundreds
help others get out first. of New York City firefighters run
Prosocial behavior is the term developmentalists use to describe such amazing into the burning Twin Towers on
acts of self-sacrifice, as well as the minor acts of helping, comforting, and sharing September 11, knowing that they
might be facing death? This is
that we perform during daily life. Do we need to be taught to open a door when we
the kind of question that devel-
see someone struggling with a package, to hug a distressed friend, or to reach out to opmentalists who study proso-
include a shy kid who wants to play in our elementary school group? cial behavior want to answer.
The answer is no. Each prosocial activity naturally appears early in life (Hepach,
Vaish, & Tomasello, 2013; Thompson & Newton, 2013). Toddlers will help a
researcher retrieve an out-of-reach object; or comfort that person when she bangs her
finger and says “Ouch!” (Dunfield & Kuhlmeir, 2013.) Eighteen-month-olds even
perform sharing acts that go beyond the adult norm, giving some of their own stickers
to an experimenter when that person has acted selfishly in a previous trial (Sebastián-
Enesco, Hernández-Lloreda, & Colmenares, 2013).
This impetus to help, comfort, and share, which blossoms during toddlerhood, prosocial behavior Sharing,
appears in cultures around the world (House and others, 2013). Moreover, doing helping, and caring actions.
good makes young children feel good. Toddlers look

happier after giving a treat to another person than when
they get that treat for themselves. They seem especially joy-
ous when engaging in costly giving—giving up something
they wanted to get (Aknin, Hamlin, & Dunn, 2012). So, the
principle that it feels better to give than receive doesn’t need
to be vigorously instilled in us at our mosque, temple, or
church. It seems baked into the human genome from birth
iStock/Getty Images Plus
(Hepach and others, 2013)!
Individual and Gender Variations

However, as you saw in the vignette at the beginning of
the chapter, children differ in the strength of this impulse
The fact that toddlers naturally
take joy in giving suggests that to help, comfort, and spontaneously share. Developmentalists visited preschool
giving is built into being human. classrooms and looked specifically at spontaneous sharing, the coming-from-
the-heart giving that is different from being ordered: “Share!” When they tested these
children in elementary school, during adolescence, and in emerging adulthood, the
3-year-olds who shared most readily were more prosocial at every age (Eisenberg
and others, 1999; Eisenberg and others, 2014). So, if your 4-year-old niece seems
unusually generous (especially at cost to herself), she may grow up to be an unusually
prosocial adult.
What about your 4-year-old nephew? Are females generally more prosocial than
males? As one Dutch study confirmed, women report more prosocial attitudes on
questionnaires. However, when researchers used the EEG to tap into one facet of
caring, being sensitive to other people’s feelings, they found fewer variations by sex.
Scenes depicting strong human emotions equally activated both male and female
brains. But the women showed comparatively more arousal when viewing images of
anguished people—which suggests that females may indeed be more attuned to oth-
ers distress (Groen and others, 2013). The problem is that being sensitive to people’s
emotional pain may not result in acting in a prosocial way.
Decoding Prosocial Behavior in a Deeper Way

empathy Feeling the exact Empathy is the term developmentalists use for directly feeling another person’s
emotion that another person emotion. You get anxious when you hear your boss berating a co-worker. You were
is experiencing.
overcome by horror as you saw a video of the Twin Towers go down.
sympathy A state necessary Sympathy is the more muted feeling that we experience for another human
for acting prosocially,
involving feeling upset for
being. You feel terrible for your co-worker, but don’t feel her intense distress. Your
a person who needs help. heart went out to the people who were trapped in the Twin Towers that day. Rather
than empathy, developmentalists argue, sympathy is related to behaving in a prosocial
way (Eisenberg, 1992, 2003; Trommsdorff, Friedlmeier, & Mayer, 2007).
The reason is that experiencing another person’s distress can provoke a variety of
reactions, from becoming immobilized with fear to behaving in a far-from-caring way.
We can vividly see this when, out of empathic embarrassment, we burst out laughing
after a waiter spills a restaurant tray, or become paralyzed by terror as we see a high-
way crash. So to be prosocial, children need to mute their empathic feelings into a
sympathetic response (Eisenberg, 1992; Liew, Friedlmeier, & Mayer, 2011).
Acting prosocial, especially after preschool, also requires superior information
processing skills. You need to decide when to be generous, which explains why
2-year-olds share with everyone, but, around age 4 or 5, children become selective,
sharing mainly with people who are kind to them (Paulus & Moore, 2014). You must
draw on your blossoming, concrete operational talents to assess the situation and
decide if you can offer aid. Preoperational children will automatically give you their
blankee when you are upset, because they are egocentric and assume that everything
that comforts them will comfort you. However, just as I would not run into a flam-
ing building because I’m not a firefighter, the reasons elementary school children
report for not acting prosocial are that they don’t have the skills to help
(Denham, 1998; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1998).
Returning to gender differences, this suggests we take a more
nuanced approach to the idea that females are more (or less) proso-
cial than males. Yes, women qualify as more prosocial if we measure
comforting someone in emotional pain. Men, however, may be more
prosocial in their own competence realm—changing a motorist’s tire;
helping a stranger lift a heavy object; opening doors for people; paying
for dinner; or taking prosocial charge of a group during the fast-paced
CandyBox Images/Shutterstock, Inc.

physical elementary school situation in the opening chapter vignette.
After all, that’s what being a gentleman—or gentleman-in-training—is
traditionally all about!
Finally, people are more apt to reach out prosocially when they are
happy—explaining why, when we are immersed in our own problems,
we are less likely to help a friend, and why children who are fearful
(those prone to internalizing disorders), as well as those who are relatively Who tends to help a stranded
nonempathic (children with externalizing problems), tend to be less pro- stranger on the highway, carry
your heavy load of packages,
social than their peers (Liew and others, 2011; Saarni, 1999). or be there to offer aid when
To summarize, the impulse to share, to help, and to comfort is built into our you move? With that in mind,
species. But to predict who acts on that impulse, we need to ask specific questions: can we conclude that males are
“Does this child have good executive functions?” “Does he have the concrete skills generally less prosocial than the
other sex?
to help?” “Is she a confident, upbeat human being?”
Now that we’ve targeted the qualities involved in being prosocial, what can adults
do to encourage these behaviors in a child?
INTERVENTIONS: Socializing Prosocial Children

As some of you might imagine, offering concrete reinforcements, such as giving
prizes for sharing, is counterproductive. External reinforcers undercut the happiness
that flows from spontaneously performing costly prosocial acts. In one fascinating
study, children who had earlier been given the chance to make a difficult prosocial
decision—sharing desirable stickers with an experimenter—were more likely to be
generous later on. So, the first step in promoting generosity is to give children space
to spontaneously give (Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013).
Providing a caring socialization climate is important. Model prosocial behavior,
making sure your toddler sees you regularly help people in need (Williamson, Dono-
hue, & Tully, 2013). Behave in a caring, cooperative way with your spouse (Scrim-
geour and others, 2013). Encourage a young child to talk about her emotions, and
respond to her distress in a sympathetic way (Taylor and others, 2013). Be attuned
to the caring things that your child does and attribute them to her personality—for
instance, saying, “You really are a caring person for doing that,” instead of “That was
a nice thing you did” (Eisenberg, 2003). So, by complimenting your niece for being a
kind person, you may be getting her to define herself as caring and helping to social-
ize her to be a prosocial adult (see Kochanska and others, 2010).
Most studies of prosocial behavior focus on a socialization technique called
induction (Hoffman, 1994, 2001). Caregivers who use induction point out the
ethical issues when a child has performed a hurtful act. Now, imagine that classic
situation when your 8-year-old daughter has invited everyone in class but Sara to her
birthday party. Instead of punishing your child—or giving that other classic response,
“Kids will be kids”—here’s what you should say: “It’s hurtful to leave Sara out. Think
of how terrible she must feel!” induction The ideal discipline
Induction has several virtues: It offers children concrete feedback about exactly style for socializing prosocial
what they did wrong and moves them off of focusing on their own punishment (“Now, behavior, involving getting a
child who has behaved hurt-
I’m really going to get it!”) to the other child’s distress (“Oh, gosh, she must feel hurt”). fully to empathize with the
Induction also allows for reparations, the chance to make amends. Induction works pain he has caused the other
because it stimulates the emotion called guilt. person.
shame A feeling of being Shame Versus Guilt and Prosocial Acts

personally humiliated.
Think back to an event during childhood when you felt terrible about yourself.
guilt Feeling upset about Perhaps it was the day you were caught cheating and sent to the principal. What you
having caused harm to
a person or about hav- may remember was feeling so ashamed. Developmentalists, however, distinguish
ing violated one’s internal between feeling ashamed and experiencing guilt. Shame is the primitive feeling we
standard of behavior. have when we are personally humiliated. Guilt is the more sophisticated emotion
we experience when we have violated a personal moral standard or hurt another
human being.
I believe that Erikson may have been alluding to this maturity difference
when he labeled “shame” as the emotion we experience as toddlers, and reserved
China Tourism Press/Getty Images
“guilt” for the feeling that arises during preschool, when our drive to master the
world causes other people distress (see Table 6.1 on page 171). While shame and
guilt are both “self-conscious” relationship-oriented emotions, they have oppos-
ing effects. Shame causes us to withdraw from people, to slink away, and crawl
into a hole (Thomaes and others, 2007). We feel furious at being humiliated and
want to strike back. Guilt connects us to people. We feel terrible about what we
have done and try to make amends. So, shame diminishes us. Guilt—in modera-
tion (see Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010)—can cause us to act prosocially and
emotionally enlarge (Olthof, 2012).
This suggests that socialization techniques involving shame are especially
poisonous. If, when you arrived at the principal’s office, he shamed you (“In the
next school assembly, I’ll announce what a terrible person you are!”), you might
change your behavior, but at an emotional price. You would feel humiliated. You
might decide you hated school. But if the principal induced guilt (“I feel disap-
pointed because you’re such a good kid”), you could act to enhance self-efficacy
© Take 2 Productions/Brand X/Corbis
(“Dr. Jones, what can I do to make it up?”). You might end up feeling better
about yourself and more connected to school. Has feeling guilty and apologizing
ever made you feel closer to someone you love?
Table 6.4 summarizes these section messages and offers an additional tip.
And, for readers who are thinking, “I’m prosocial, even though I didn’t grow
up in that kind of home,” there is the reality that people can draw on shaming
childhood experiences to construct prosocial lives. Perhaps you have a friend
When parents use shame to
discipline, a child’s impulse is
who grew up in an abusive family whose mission it is to work with abused children or
to get furious. But by pointing (like me) have been privileged to meet childhood survivors of Hitler’s holocaust who
out how disappointed a parent have devoted their lives to teaching people “never again!” Then you will realize that,
is in a “good girl,” a parent can while love is the best prosocial socializer, life’s adversities can promote exceptional
produce guilt—and so ultimately
have a more prosocial child.
altruism, too (more about this compelling topic in Chapter 12).
Now that we have analyzed what makes us do good (the angel side of personality),
let’s enter the darker side of human nature: aggression.
Table 6.4: How to Produce Prosocial Children: A Summary Table

• Hold off and give the child opportunities to experience the joy of spontaneously sharing.
• Avoid giving treats or special privileges to reward prosocial acts. Instead, praise the child
effusively when she is being prosocial, and label her as a caring child.
• When the child has hurt another person, use induction: Clearly point out the moral issue, and
alert him to how the other person must feel.
• Avoid teasing and shaming. When the child has done something wrong, tell her you are
disappointed and give her a chance to make amends.
• Don’t think that you have fulfilled your responsibility to teach prosocial behavior by having a child
participate in school or church drives to help the unfortunate. Morality isn’t magically learned on
Sunday. Model caring by having a loving, cooperative marriage, being sensitive to your child’s
feelings, and performing random acts of kindness in your daily life.
Doing Harm: Aggression aggression Any hostile or

destructive act.
Aggression refers to acts designed to cause harm, from shaming to shoving, from gos-
proactive aggression A hos-
siping to starting unprovoked wars. It should come as no surprise that physical aggres- tile or destructive act initi-
sion reaches its life peak at around age 2 1/2 (Dodge, Coie, & Lynam, 2006; van Aken ated to achieve a goal.
and others, 2008). During this critical age for socialization, children are vigorously reactive aggression A hostile
being disciplined but don’t have the capacity to inhibit their responses. Imagine being or destructive act carried out
a toddler continually ordered by giants to do impossible things, such as sharing and in response to being frus-
sitting still. Because being frustrated provokes aggression, it makes perfect sense that trated or hurt.
hitting and throwing tantrums are normal during “the terrible twos.” relational aggression A
As preschoolers become more skilled at regulating their emotions and can make hostile or destructive act
designed to cause harm to a
better sense of adults’ rules, rates of open aggression (yelling or hitting) dramatically person’s relationships.
decline (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011). As children get older, the reasons for aggression
change. Preschool fights center on objects, such as toys. During elementary school,
when children have developed a full-fledged sense of self-esteem, aggression becomes
personal. We strike out when we are wounded as human beings (Coie & Dodge,
1998). How do researchers categorize aggressive acts?
Types of Aggression
One way developmentalists classify aggression is by its motive.
Proactive aggression refers to hurtful behavior that is initiated to
achieve a goal. Johnny kicks Manuel to gain possession of the block
pile. Sally spreads a rumor about Moriah to replace her as Sara’s best
friend. Reactive aggression occurs in response to being hurt, threat-
ened, or deprived. Manuel, infuriated at Johnny, kicks him back.
Its self-determined nature gives proactive aggression a calculated,
“cooler” emotional tone. When we behave aggressively to get some-
thing, we plan our behavior. We may feel a sense of self-efficacy as we
carry out the act. Reactive aggression involves white-hot, disorganized
rage. When you hear that your best friend has betrayed you, or even
As he lunges for his friend’s book, the boy on the
have a minor frustrating experience such as being caught in traffic, you right may feel powerful (proactive aggression). But
get furious and blindly lash out (Deater-Deckard and others, 2010). his furious buddy is apt to react by bopping him on
This feeling is normal. According to a classic theory called the the head (reactive aggression).
frustration-aggression hypothesis, when human beings are thwarted,
we are biologically primed to retaliate or strike back.
In addition to its motive—proactive or reactive—developmentalists
distinguish between different forms of aggression. Hitting and yelling are
direct forms of aggression. A more devious type of aggression is relational
aggression, acts designed to hurt our relationships. Not inviting Sara to
a birthday party, spreading rumors, or tattling on a disliked classmate all
qualify as relationally aggressive acts.
Because it targets self-esteem and involves more sophisticated social
skills, relational aggression follows a different developmental path than
openly aggressive acts. Just as rates of open aggression are declining, during
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middle childhood, relational aggression rises. In fact, the overabundance of

relational aggression during late elementary school and early adolescence
(another intensely frustrating time) may explain why we label these ages as
the “meanest” times of life.
Most of us assume relational aggression is more common in girls, but, Excluding someone from your
in research, this “obvious” gender difference does not appear. Yes, overt aggression is group is a classic sign of rela-
severely sanctioned in females, so girls make relational aggression their major mode tional aggression—which really
(Ostrov & Godleski, 2010; Smith, Rose, & Schwartz-Mette, 2010). But as spreading gets going in middle childhood.
Can you remember being the tar-
rumors and talking trash about your competitors can be vital to dethroning adversaries get of the behavior shown here
and climbing the social ranks, one study showed teenage boys were just as relationally when you were in fourth or fifth
aggressive as teenage girls (Mayeux & Cillessen, 2008)! grade?
Table 6.5: Aggression: A Summary of the Types

What Motivated the Behavior?
Proactive aggression: Acts that are actively instigated to achieve a goal.
Examples: “I’ll hit Tommy so I can get his toys.” “I’ll cut off that car so I can get ahead of him.”
“I want my boss’s job, so I’ll spread a rumor that he is having an affair.”
Characteristics: Emotionally cool and more carefully planned.
Reactive aggression: Acts that occur in response to being frustrated or hurt.
Examples: “Jimmy took my toy, so I’m going to hit him.” “That guy shoved me to take my place in
line, so I’m going to punch him out.” “Joe took my girlfriend, so I’m gonna get a gun and shoot him.”
Characteristics: Furious, disorganized, impulsive response.
What Was Its Form?

Direct aggression: Everyone can see it.
Examples: Telling your boyfriend you hate his guts. Beating up someone. Screaming at your mother.
Having a tantrum. Bopping a playmate over the head with a toy.
Characteristics: At its peak at about age 2 or 3; declines as children get older. More common in boys
than in girls, especially physical aggression.
Relational aggression: Carried out indirectly, through damaging or destroying the victim’s
relationships.
Examples: “Sara got a better grade than me, so I’m going to tell the teacher that she cheated.”
“Let’s tell everyone not to let Sara play in our group.” “I want Sara’s job, so I’ll spread a rumor that
she is stealing money from the company.” “I’m going to tell my best friend that her husband is
cheating on her because I want to break up their marriage.”
Characteristics: Occurs mainly during elementary school and may be at its peak during adolescence,
although—as we all know—it’s common throughout adult life.
Table 6.5 summarizes the different types of aggression and gives examples from
childhood and adult life. While scanning the table, notice that we all behave in every
aggressive way. Also, being aggressive is not “bad.” As I just implied, it is vital to mak-
ing our way in the world. Children who are popular don’t abandon being aggressive
(Guerra, Williams, & Sadek, 2011; Roseth and others, 2011). Proactive aggression,
as you will see later, particularly the relational kind, helps children climb the social
ranks (White, Jarrett, & Ollendick, 2013; Rodkin and others, 2013; Waasdorp and
others, 2013). Without reactive aggression (fighting back when attacked), our species
would never survive. Still, this disorganized, rage-filled aggression definitely doesn’t
work. Excessive reactive aggression ensures having troubles in the social world (White
and others, 2013).
Understanding Highly Aggressive Children

You just saw that, as they get older, boys and girls typically get less openly aggressive.
However, a percentage of children remain unusually aggressive into elementary
school. These children are labeled with externalizing disorders defined by high rates
of aggression. They are classified as defiant, antisocial kids.
THE PATHWAY TO PRODUCING PROBLEMATIC AGGRESSION. Longitudinal studies
suggest that there may be a poisonous two-step, nature-plus-nurture pathway to being
labeled as a highly aggressive child:
STEP 1: The toddler’s exuberant (or difficult) temperament evokes harsh discipline.
When toddlers are exuberant (Degnan, Almas, & Fox, 2010), temperamentally fear-
less (Gao and others, 2010), and have problems regulating their attention (Kim &
Deater-Deckard, 2011)—recall that caregivers often react by using power-assertion
Externalizing 60 figure 6.2: The relationship

behavior at between mothers’ reports of
age 4 Difficult spanking at 15 months and
temperament externalizing behavior at
55
age 4, for temperamentally
difficult and easy children,
from a longitudinal study:
50 In this research, notice that if a
Easy child was temperamentally easy,
temperament being regularly spanked during
toddlerhood slightly increased
45 the risk of having later exter-
nalizing problems. However,
this discipline style had a huge
negative impact on develop-
40
ment for toddlers with difficult
temperaments. Bottom line:
Low High Power assertion is poisonous for
Spanking rate at 15 months of age a temperamentally at-risk child.
Data from: Mulvaney & Mebert, 2007.
discipline—they shame, scream, and hit: “Shut up! You are impossible. You’ll get
a beating from mom.” Physically punishing a “difficult” toddler is apt to back-
fire (Boden, Fergusson, & Horwood, 2010; Edwards and others, 2010). Notice, for
instance, from scanning the study findings in Figure 6.2, that regularly spanking a dif-
ficult 15-month-old magnified that child’s risk of developing externalizing problems
at age 4. Therefore, unfortunately, the very toddlers who most need sensitive, loving hostile attributional bias The
tendency of highly aggres-
parenting are primed to get the harshest, most punitive care. sive children to see motives
STEP 2: The child is rejected by teachers and peers in school. Typically, the transi- and actions as threaten-
ing when they are actually
tion to being defined as an “antisocial child” occurs during early elementary school. benign.
As impulsive, by now clearly aggressive, children travel outside the family, they
get rejected by their classmates. Being socially excluded is a powerful stress that
provokes paranoia and reactive aggression at any age (DeWall and others, 2009;
Lansford and others, 2010). Moreover, because aggressive children generally have
trouble inhibiting their behavior (Runions & Keating, 2010), during elementary
school they may start failing in their academic work (Romano and others, 2010).
This amplifies the frustration (“I’m not making it in any area of
life!”) and compounds the tendency to lash out (“It’s their fault,
not mine!”).
A HOSTILE WORLDVIEW. As I just implied, reactive-aggressive
children also think differently in social situations. They may
have a hostile attributional bias (Crick & Dodge, 1996). They
see threat in benign social cues. A boy gets accidentally bumped
at the lunch table, and he sees a deliberate provocation. A girl
decides that you are her enemy when you look at her the wrong
Nicholas Prior/Stone/Getty Images
way. So the child’s behavior provokes a more hostile world.

To summarize, let’s enter the mind of a reactive aggressive
child, such as Mark in the opening chapter vignette. As a tod-
dler, your fearless temperament continually got you into trouble
with your parents. You have been harshly disciplined for years. In
school, you are failing academically and shunned by your class-
mates. So you never have a chance to interact with other children
This boy who has been shunned by other children for his
and improve your social skills. In fact, your hostile attributional disruptive behavior in elementary school may respond
bias makes perfect sense. You are living in a “sea of negativity” by developing a hostile attributional bias, unrealistically
(Jenson and others, 2004). And yes, the world is out to do you in! feeling that his classmates are out to do him in.
Finally, as you saw in the Chapter 5 discussion of ADHD, there is a gender dif-
ference in the risk of being defined as “an acting-out, antisocial child.” Because they
are more “exuberant” and physical when they play, boys are more likely than girls to
show the physically aggressive behavior that gets them labeled with an externalizing
problem in elementary school (Vazsonyi & Chen, 2010).
How do boys and girls relate when they play? Now, I’ll turn to this question and
others as we move to part two of this chapter: relationships.
1. You interviewed a 4-year-old and a fourth grader for your class project in lifespan
development, but mixed up your interview notes. Which statement was made by the
4-year-old?
a. “My friend Megan is better at math than me.”
b. “Sometimes I get mad at my friends, but maybe it’s because I’m too stubborn.”
c. “I have a cat named Kit, and I’m the smartest girl in the world.”
2. Identify which of the following boys has internalizing or externalizing tendencies and
then, for one of these children, design an intervention using principles spelled out in
this section: Ramon sees himself as wonderful, but he is having serious trouble getting
along with his teachers and the other kids; Jared is a great student, but when he gets a
B instead of an A, he decides that he’s “dumb” and gets too depressed to work.
3. Cotonia tells you that children need to be taught to be caring and helpful. Calista
disagrees, saying that the impulse to be prosocial is built into human nature. In a sen-
tence or two explain why both statements are correct.
4. A teacher wants to intervene with a student who has been teasing a classmate. Identify
which statement is guilt-producing, which is shame-producing, and which involves the
use of induction. Then, name which response(s) would promote prosocial behavior.
a. “Think of how bad Johnny must feel.”
b. “If that’s how you act, you can sit by yourself. You’re not nice enough to be with the
other kids.”
c. “I’m disappointed in you. You are usually such a good kid.”
5. Alyssa wants to replace Brianna as Chloe’s best friend, so she spreads horrible rumors
about Brianna. Brianna overhears Alyssa dissing her and starts slapping Alyssa. Of
the four types of aggression discussed in this section—direct, proactive, reactive,
relational—which two describe Alyssa’s behavior, and which two fit Brianna’s actions?
6. Mario, a fourth grader, feels that everyone is out to get him. Give the name for
Mario’s negative worldview.
Relationships
Think back to your days pretending to be a superhero or supermodel, getting together
with the girls or boys to play, your best friends, and whether you were popular at
school. Now, beginning with play, moving on to the play worlds of girls and boys, then
friendships and popularity, and finally tackling bullying—that important contempo-
rary concern—let’s explore each relationship-related topic one by one.
Play
rough-and-tumble play Developmentalists classify children’s “free play” (the non-sports-oriented kind) into
Play that involves shoving, different categories. Rough-and-tumble play refers to the excited shoving, wrestling,
wrestling, and hitting, but
in which no actual harm is
and running around that is most apparent with boys. Actually, rough-and-tumble play
intended; especially charac- is classically boy behavior. It seems biologically built into being male (Bjorklund &
teristic of boys. Pellegrini, 2002; Pellegrini, 2006).
Pretending: The Heart of Early Childhood

Fantasy play, or pretending, is different. Here, the child takes a
stance apart from reality and makes up a scene, often with a toy or
other prop. While fantasy play also can be immensely physical,
this “as if” quality makes it unique. Children must pretend to
be pirates or superheroes as they wrestle and run. Because
fantasy play is so emblematic of early childhood, let’s delve
into pretending in depth.
THE DEVELOPMENT AND DECLINE OF PRETENDING. Fantasy
play first emerges in toddlerhood, as children realize that
a symbol can stand for something else. In a classic study,
developmentalists watched 1-year-olds with their mothers at
home. Although toddlers often initiated a fantasy episode, they
Photodisc/Getty Images
needed a parent to expand on the scene (Dunn, Wooding, & Her-
mann, 1977). So a child would pretend to make a phone call, and his
mother would pick up the real phone and say, “Hello, this is Mommy.
Should I come home now?”
At about age 3, children transfer the skill of pretending with mothers to peers.
Collaborative pretend play, or fantasizing together with another child, really gets Rough-and-tumble play is not
only tremendously exciting, but it
going at about age 4 (Smolucha & Smolucha, 1998). Because they must work together seems to be genetically built into
to develop the scene, collaboratively pretending shows that preschoolers have a theory being “male.”
of mind—the knowledge that the other person has a different perspective. (You need
to understand that your fellow playwright has a different script in his head.) Collab-
oratively pretending, in turn, helps teach young children the skill of making sense of
different minds (Nicolopoulou and others, 2010).
Anyone involved with a young child can see these
changes firsthand. When a 2-year-old has his “best friend”
over, they play in parallel orbits—if things go well. More
likely, a titanic battle erupts, full of proactive and reactive
aggression, as each child attempts to gain possession of the
toys. By age 4, children can play together. At age 5 or 6, they
can pretend together for hours—with only a few major fights
Christopher Futcher/Getty Images

that are usually resolved.
Although fantasy play can continue into early ado-
lescence, when children reach concrete operations, their
interest shifts to structured games (Bjorklund & Pellegrini,
2002). At age 3, a child pretends to bake in the kitchen
corner; at 9, he wants to bake a cake. At age 5, you ran
around playing pirates; at 9, you tried to hit the ball like the Pittsburgh Pirates do. For these 4-year-old girls (aka
women who have dressed up to
THE PURPOSES OF PRETENDING. Interestingly, around the world, when children go to a party), their collaborative
pretend, their play has similar plots. Let’s eavesdrop at a U.S. preschool: pretend play is teaching them
vital lessons about how to
Boy 2: I don’t want to be a kitty anymore. compromise and get along.
Girl: You are a husband?
Boy 2: Yeah.
Boys 1 and 2: Husbands, husbands! (Yell and run around the play house)
fantasy play Play that involves
Girl: Hold it, Bill, I can’t have two husbands. making up and acting out a
scenario; also called pretend
Boys 1 and 2: Two husbands! Two husbands! play.
Girl: We gonna marry ourselves, right? collaborative pretend play
(adapted from Corsaro, 1985, pp. 102–104) Fantasy play in which
children work together to
Why do young children play “family,” and assume the “correct” roles when they develop and act out the
play mommy and daddy? For answers, let’s turn to Lev Vygotsky’s insights. scenes.
Play allows children to practice adult roles. Vygotsky (1978) believed that pretending
allows children to rehearse being adults. The reason girls pretend to be mommy and
baby is that women are the main child-care providers around the world. Boys play
soldiers because this activity offers built-in training for the wars they face as adults
(Pellegrini & Smith, 2005).
Play allows children a sense of control. As the following preschool conversation sug-
gests, pretending has a deeper psychological function, too:
Girl 1: Yeah, and let’s pretend when Mommy’s out until later.
Girl 2: Ooooh. Well, I’m not the boss around here, though. ’Cause mommies are
the bosses.
Girl 1: (Doubtfully) But maybe we won’t know how to punish.
Girl 2: I will. I’ll put my hand up and spank. That’s what my mom does.
Girl 1: My mom does too.
(adapted from Corsaro, 1985, p. 96)
While reading the previous two chapters, you may have
been thinking that the so-called carefree early childhood years
are hardly free of stress. We expect children to regulate their
emotions when their frontal lobes aren’t fully functional. We
discipline toddlers and preschoolers when they cannot make
sense of the mysteries of adult rules. Vygotsky (1978) believed
that, in response to this sense of powerlessness, young children
Courtesy of Dr. William Corsaro
enter “an illusory role” in which their desires are realized. In

play, you can be the spanking mommy or the queen of the cas-
tle, even when you are small, and sometimes feel like a slave.
To penetrate the inner world of preschool fantasy play,
sociologist William Corsaro (1985, 1997) went undercover,
entering a nursery school as a member of the class. (No prob-
Imagine that, like the supersized lem. The children welcomed their new playmate, whom they called Big Bill, as a
preschooler shown here (Profes-
sor William Corsaro), you could
clumsy, enlarged version of themselves.) As Vygotsky would predict, Corsaro found
spend years going down slides, that preschool play plots often centered on mastering upsetting events. There were
playing family, and bonding with separation/reunion scenarios (“Help! I’m lost in the forest.” “I’ll find you.”) and dan-
3- and 4-year-olds—and then get ger/rescue plots (“Get in the house. It’s gonna be a rainstorm!”). Sometimes, play
professional recognition for your
academic work. What an incred-
scenarios centered on that ultimate frightening event, death:
ible career! Child 1: We are dead, we are dead! Help, we are dead! (Puts animals on their sides)
Child 2: You can’t talk if you are dead.
Child 1: Oh, well, Leah’s talked when she was dead, so mine have to talk when
they are dead. Help, help, we are dead!
(adapted from Corsaro, 1985 p. 204)
Notice that these themes are basic to Disney movies and fairy tales. From Finding
Nemo, Bambi, and The Lion King to—my personal favorite—Dumbo, there is nothing
more heart-wrenching than being separated from your parent. From the greedy old
witch in Hansel and Gretel to the jealous queen in Sleeping Beauty, no scenario is as
sweet as triumphing over evil and possible death.
Play furthers our understanding of social norms. Corsaro (1985) found that death
was a touchy play topic. When children proposed these plots, their partners might try to
change the script. This relates to Vygotsky’s third insight about play: Although children’s
play looks unstructured, it has boundaries and rules. Plots involving dead animals waking
up make children uncomfortable because they violate the conditions of life. Children
get especially uneasy when a play partner proposes scenarios with gory themes, such as
cutting off people’s heads (Dunn & Hughes, 2001). Therefore, play teaches children
how to act and how not to behave. Wouldn’t you want to retreat if someone showed an
intense interest in decapitation while having a conversation with you?
Evaluating the Impact of Play gender-segregated play

Play in which boys and girls
Many educators believe fantasy play is vital to developing our social and intellectual associate only with members
skills (see, for instance, Lindsey & Colwell, 2013). They agonize about the Internet of their own sex—typical of
revolution, worrying that hours glued to computers are robbing today’s preschoolers childhood.
of the vital lessons that play provides (as reported in Lillard and others, 2013). Is pre-
tend play important to developing a full human being?
In reviewing the data, scientists concluded the jury is out (Lillard and others,
2013). Many studies showing play’s value are correlational. So they may be confusing
outcomes with causes. If preschoolers who pretend more are advanced socially and
cognitively, does pretending cause these benefits, or do these qualities cause children
to pretend more? Perhaps it is the myriad of adult activities that go along with fantasy
play—talking about emotions, reading to a child—that help preschoolers cope with
stress and make sense of the puzzling adult world. But even if it’s not essential to
development, pretending is definitely a main feature of childhood. Moreover, during
elementary school, boys and girls play in different ways.
Girls’ and Boys’ Play Worlds

[Some] girls, all about five and a half years old, are looking through department store
catalogues, . . . concentrating on what they call “girls’ stuff” and referring to some of the
other items as “yucky boys’ stuff.” . . . Shirley points to a picture of a couch . . . “All we
want is the pretty stuff,” says Ruth. Peggy now announces, “If you come to my birthday,
every girl in the school is invited. I’m going to put a sign up that says, ‘No boys allowed!’”
“Oh good, good, good,” says Vickie. “I hate boys.”
(adapted from Corsaro, 1997, p. 155)
Does this conversation bring back childhood memories of being 5 or 6? How does
gender-segregated play develop? What are the differences in boy versus girl play, and
what causes the sexes to separate into these different camps?
Exploring the Separate Societies

Visit a playground and observe children of different ages.
Notice that toddlers show no sign of gender-segregated play.
In preschool, children start to play mainly in sex-segregated
groups (Martin & Ruble, 2010). By elementary school, gender-
segregated play is entrenched. On the playground, boys and
girls do play in mixed groups (Fabes, Martin, & Hanish, 2003).
Still, with friendships, there is a split: boys are typically best
friends with boys and girls with girls (Maccoby, 1998).
Now, go back to the playground and look at the way
© Bill Aron/PhotoEdit
boys and girls relate. Do you notice that boy and girl play
differs in the following ways?
BOYS EXCITEDLY RUN AROUND; GIRLS CALMLY TALK. Boys’
play is more rambunctious. Even during physical games A visit to this elementary school
such as tag, girls play together in calmer, more subdued ways (Maccoby, 1998; vividly brings home the fact that
Pellegrini, 2006). The difference in activity levels is striking if you have the middle childhood is traditionally
pleasure of witnessing one gender playing with the opposite sex’s toys. In one defined by gender-segregated
play.
memorable episode, after my son and a friend invaded a girl’s stash of dolls, they
gleefully ran around the house bashing Barbie into Barbie and using their booty
as swords.
BOYS COMPETE IN GROUPS; GIRLS PLAY COLLABORATIVELY, ONE-TO-ONE. Their
exuberant, rough-and-tumble play explains why boys burst on the scene, running and
yelling, dominating every room. Another difference lies in playgroup size. Boys get
together in packs. Girls play in smaller, more intimate groups (Maccoby, 1990, 1998;
Ruble, Martin, & Berenbaum, 2006).
Boys and girls also differ in the way they relate. Boys try to establish dominance
and compete to be the best. This competitive versus cooperative style spills over into
children’s talk. Girl-to-girl collaborative play really sounds collaborative (“I’ll be the
doctor, OK?”). Boys give each other bossy commands (“I’m doing the operation. Lie
down, now!”) (Maccoby, 1998). Girl-to-girl fantasy play involves nurturing themes.
Boys prefer the warrior, superhero mode.
The stereotypic quality of girls’ fantasy play came as a shock when I spent three
days playing with my visiting 7-year-old niece. We devoted day one to setting up a
beauty shop, complete with nail polishes and shampoos. We had a table for massages
and a makeover section featuring all the cosmetics I owned. Then, we opened for
business for the visiting relatives and, (of course!)—by charging for our services—
made money for toys. We spent the last day playing with a “pool party” Barbie combo
my niece had selected at Walmart that afternoon.
Boys’ and girls’ different play interests show why the kindergartners in the vignette
at the beginning of this section came to hate those “yucky” boys. Another reason why
girls turn off to the opposite sex is the unpleasant reception they get from the other
camp. In observing at a preschool, researchers found that while active girls played
with the boys’ groups early in the year, they eventually were rejected and forced to
play with their own sex (Pellegrini and others, 2007). Therefore, boys are the first to
erect the barriers: “No girls allowed!” Moreover, the gender barriers are generally
more rigid for males.
BOYS LIVE IN A MORE EXCLUSIONARY, SEPARATE WORLD. My niece did choose to
buy Barbies, but she also plays with trucks. She loves soccer and baseball, not just
doing her nails. So, even though they may dislike the opposite sex, girls do cross the
divide. Boys are more likely to avoid that chasm—refusing to venture down the Barbie
aisle or consider buying a toy labeled “girl.” So boys live in a more roped-off gender
world (Boyle and others, 2003).
Now, you might be interested in what happened during my final day pretend-
ing with the pool party toys. After my niece said, “Aunt Janet, let’s pretend we are
the popular girls,” our Barbies tried on fancy dresses (“What shall I wear, Jane?”) in
preparation for a “popular girls” pool party, where the dolls met up to discuss—guess
what—where they shopped and who did their hair!
What Causes Gender-Stereotyped Play?

Why do children, such as my niece, play in gender-stereotyped ways? Answers come
from exploring three forces: biology (nature), socialization (nurture), and cognitions
(or thoughts).
A BIOLOGICAL UNDERPINNING. Ample evidence suggests that gender-segregated play
is biologically built in. Children around the world form separate play societies
(Maccoby, 1998). Troops of juvenile rhesus monkeys behave exactly like human
children. The males segregate into their own groups and engage in rough-and-tumble
play (Pellegrini, 2006). Grooming activities similar to my niece’s beauty-shop behav-
iors are prominent among young female monkeys, too (Bjorklund & Pellegrini, 2002;
Suomi, 2004).
Actually, we can predict male gender-typed play from measuring hormone levels
during the first months of life. Researchers looked at the naturally occurring amount
of salivary testosterone in 3-month-old boys and girls (females also produce this classic
male sex hormone). Remarkably, both sexes with high concentrations of testosterone
displayed more male play behaviors at age two (Saenz & Alexander, 2013).
Moreover girls exposed to high levels of testosterone before birth show more
masculine interests as teens and emerging adults (Udry, 2000)! After taking mater-
nal blood samples during the second trimester—the time, you may recall from
Chapter 2, when the neurons are being formed—one researcher tracked the female
fetuses of these women for the next two decades.
Females with high levels of prenatal testosterone, he discovered, were more gender schema theory
interested in traditionally male occupations, such as engineering, than their lower- Explanation for gender-
stereotyped behavior that
hormone-level counterparts. They were less likely to wear makeup. In their twenties, emphasizes the role of cog-
they showed more stereotypically male interests (such as race-car driving). So, in nitions; specifically, the idea
utero testosterone epigenetically affects our DNA—programming a more “feminized” that once children know their
or “masculinized” brain. own gender label (girl or
boy), they selectively watch
THE AMPLIFYING EFFECT OF SOCIALIZATION. The wider world helps biology and model their own sex.
along. From the images displayed in preschool coloring books (Fitzpatrick & McPher-
son, 2010) to parents’ different toy selections for daughters and sons; from the mes-
sages beamed out in television sitcoms (Collins, 2011; Paek,
Nelson, & Vilela, 2011) to teachers’ differential treatment of
boys and girls in school (Chen & Rao, 2011)—everything
brings home the message: Males and females act in different
© Alex Mares-Manton/Asia Images Group/age fotostock

ways.
Peers play a powerful role in this programming. When
they play in mixed-gender groups, children act in less gender-
stereotyped ways (Fabes and others, 2003); with girls, boys
tone down their rough-and-tumble activities; girls are less apt
to play quietly with dolls when they are pretending with boys.
Therefore, the act of splitting into separate play societies trains
children to behave in ways typical of their own sex (Martin &
Fabes, 2001).
Same-sex playmates reinforce one another for selecting
gender-stereotyped activities (“Let’s play with dolls.” “Great!”). They model one Just imagine the powerful
message about traditional
another as they play together in “gentle” or “rough” ways. The pressure to toe the female behavior this 5 year
gender line is promoted by social sanctions. Children who behave in “gender atypical old girl is getting from being
ways” (girls who hit a lot or boys who play with dolls) are rejected by their peers (Lee dressed in pink alongside her
& Troop-Gordon, 2011; Smith and others, 2010). mom as they both pore over this
pink hued book.
THE IMPACT OF COGNITIONS. A cognitive process reinforces these external messages.
According to gender schema theory (Bem, 1981; Martin & Dinella, 2002), once
children understand their category (girl or boy), they selectively attend to the activi-
ties of their own sex.
When do we first grasp our gender label and start this lifelong practice of model-
ing our group? The answer is at about age 2 1/2, right after we begin to talk (Martin &
Ruble, 2010)! Although they may not learn the real difference until much later (here
it helps to have an opposite-sex sibling to see naked), 3-year-olds can tell
you that girls have long hair, and cry a lot, while boys fight and play with
trucks. At about age 5 or 6, when they are mastering the similar concept
of identity constancy (the knowledge that your essential self doesn’t
change when you dress up in a gorilla costume), children grasp the idea
that once you start out as a boy or girl, you stay that way for life (Kohl-
berg, 1966). However, mistakes are common. I once heard my 5-year-old
Ariel Skelley/Blend Images/Getty Images
nephew ask my husband, “Was that jewelry from when you were a girl?”
In sum, my niece’s beauty-shop activities had a biological basis,
although a steady stream of nurture influences from adults and play-
mates helped this process along. Identifying herself as “a girl,” and then
spending hours modeling the women in her life, promoted classically
“feminine” sex role behavior, too.
But are the gender norms loosening? U.S. children now feel it’s
“unfair” to exclude boys from ballet class (Martin & Ruble, 2010). My Children spend hours modeling
students today often describe having had good friends of the other sex in elementary their own sex, demonstrating
why gender schema theory (the
school, something that would never have occurred when I was a child. Do you think
idea “I am a boy” or “I am a
our less gender-defined adult world is reducing the childhood pressures to “act like girl”) also encourages behaving
a girl or boy”? Who were your best friends when you were age 7 or 9? in gender-stereotyped ways.
Friendships
This last question brings me friends. Why do children choose specific friends, and
what benefits do childhood friendships provide?
The Core Qualities: Similarity, Trust, and Emotional Support

The essence of friendship is feeling similarity (Poulin & Chan, 2010). Children gravi-
tate toward people who are “like them” in interests and activities (Dishion & Tipsord,
2011). In preschool, an active child will tend to make friends with a classmate who
likes to run around. A 4-year-old who loves the slide will most likely become best bud-
dies with a child who shares this passion (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006).
In elementary school, children choose friends based on deeper similarities , such
as shared morals (McDonald and others, 2014; Spencer and others, 2013). (“I like
Josiah, because we think the same way about what’s right.”) As they reach concrete
operations, children also develop the concept of loyalty (“I can trust Josiah to stand
up for me”) and the sense that friends share their inner lives (Hartup & Stevens, 1997;
Newcomb & Bagwell, 1995). Listen to these fourth and fifth graders describing their
best friend:
He is my very best friend because he tells me things and I tell him things.
Me and Tiff share our deepest, darkest secrets and we talk about boys, when we grow
up, and shopping.
Jessica has problems at home and with her religion and when something happens she
always comes to me and talks about it. We’ve been through a lot together.
(quoted in Rose & Asher, 2000, p. 49)
These quotations would resonate with the ideas of personality theorist Harry
Stack Sullivan. Sullivan (1953) believed that a chum (or best friend) fulfills the devel-
opmental need for self-validation and intimacy that emerges at around age 9. Sullivan
also believed that this special relationship serves as a stepping-stone to adult romance.
The Protecting and Teaching Functions of Friends

In addition to offering emotional support and validating us as people, friends stimu-
late children’s personal development in two other ways:
FRIENDS PROTECT AND ENHANCE THE DEVELOPING SELF. Perhaps you noticed this
protective function in the quotation above in which the fourth grader spoke about
how she helped her best friend when she had problems at home. Friends help insulate
children from being bullied at school (Scholte, Sentse, & Granic, 2010). Close friends
can even mute children’s genetic tendency toward developing depression (Brendgen
and others, 2013) or reduce symptoms of ADHD (Becker and others, 2013). Windsor & Wiehahn/Getty Images
Left: Preschool best friends

connect through their shared
Mel Yates/Getty Images
passion for physical activities

such as going down slides.
Right: In late elementary school,
best friends bond by sharing
values, secrets and plans.
FRIENDS TEACH US TO MANAGE OUR EMOTIONS AND HANDLE CONFLICTS. One

reason is that friends offer on-the-job training in being our “best”(meaning prosocial)
self. Your parents will love you no matter what you do, but the love of a friend is con-
tingent. To keep a friendship, children must dampen down their immediate impulses
and attune themselves to the other person’s needs (Bukowski, 2001; Denham and
others, 2003).
This is not to say that friends are always positive influences. They can bring out
a child’s worst self by encouraging relational aggression (“We are best friends, so you
can’t play with us”) and daring one another to engage in dangerous behavior (“Let’s
sneak out of the house at 2 a.m.”) Best friends can promote an “us-against-them
mentality” and promote a shared, hostile attributional worldview (“It’s their fault you
are getting into trouble. Only I can protect you from the outside world”) (Spencer
and others, 2013; more about this dark side of friendship in Chapter 9). However, in
general, Sullivan may be right: Friends do teach us how to relate as adults.
Popularity
Friendship involves relating with a single person in a close one-to-one way. Popularity
is a group concern. It requires rising to the top of the social totem pole.
Although children differ in social status in preschool, you may remember from
childhood that “Who is popular?” becomes an absorbing question during later ele-
mentary school. Entering concrete operations makes children sensitive to making
social comparisons. The urge to rank classmates according to social status is height-
ened by the confining conditions of childhood itself. In adulthood, popularity fades
more into the background because we select our own social circles. Children must
make it on a daily basis in a classroom full of random peers.
Who Is Popular and Who Is Unpopular?

How do children vary in popularity during the socially stressful later elementary
school years? Here are the main categories researchers find when they ask third,
fourth, or fifth graders to list the two or three classmates they like most and really
dislike:
• Popular children are frequently named in the most-liked category and never appear
in the disliked group. They stand out as being really liked by everyone.
• Average children receive a few most-liked and perhaps one or two disliked
nominations. They rank around the middle range of status in the class.
• Rejected children land in the disliked category often and never appear in the
preferred list. They stand out among their classmates in a negative way.
What qualities make children popular? What gets elementary schoolers rejected by
their peers?
Decoding Popularity
Especially in elementary school, popular children are often friendly and outgoing,
prosocial, and kind (Mayberry & Espelage, 2007). However, starting as early as third
grade, popularity can be linked to being relationally aggressive (Rodkin & Roisman,
2010; Ostrov and others, 2013).
Figure 6.3, on the next page, based on a study conducted in an inner city school,
illustrates this unfortunate truth. Notice that relationally aggressive third to fifth
graders were more apt to be rated as popular class leaders. But notice that the asso-
ciation between this poisonous interpersonal form of aggression and popularity was
much stronger for girls—which offers insights into why we see relational aggression
as mainly a girl activity. Yes, relational aggression gains status for both girls and boys.
But this behavior earns females more social mileage than males.
figure 6.3: How relational

aggression related to popu-
larity among 227 elementary
schoolers attending a low
income, urban school: In this
city school, being relationally
aggressive “worked” to make
children—both males and Girls
Popularity
females—more popular; but
this type of aggression was
far, far more often effective at
promoting popularity among Boys
girls.
Data from: Waasdorp and others, 2013,
p. 269.
Low Relational High Relational
Relational aggression, as you will see in Chapter 9, is especially effective at pro-

pelling social mileage during preadolescence, when rebellion is in full flower and the
pressure to form status cliques is intense (Werner & Hill, 2010; Witvliet and others,
2010). The good news is that the study described in Table 6.6 shows being in the
popular crowd is different from being personally liked.
Table 6.6: Social Goals in Fifth Grade and How They Relate to Peer
Preferences a Year Later
1) I like it when I learn new ways to make a friend.
2) I try to figure out what makes for a good friend.
3) I try to get to know other kids better.
4) It’s important to me that the other kids think I’m popular.
5) I want to be friendly with the popular kids.
6) It’s important to me to have cool friends.
7) It’s important to me that I don’t embarrass myself around my friends.
8) When I am around other kids, I mostly just try not to goof up.
9) I try to avoid doing things that make me look foolish around other kids.
Researchers had 980 fifth graders fill out these questionnaire items and then charted children’s
social rankings in the fall and spring of the following year. Boys and girls who checked the yellow
items were more likely to ascend the classroom social hierarchy (that was their goal); but children
checking the blue items were increasingly preferred as friends. Unfortunately, however, agreeing
with the red items predicted being increasingly disliked during the next year.
Data from: Rodkin and others, 2013, p. 1142.
When researchers asked fifth graders questions such as those in the table, and
then tracked their social status over time, boys and girls whose agenda was being
popular (those agreeing with the yellow items) did rise in the social ranks. But as they
reached sixth grade, the class increasingly preferred people with the blue agendas—
children with caring, prosocial goals. So, behaving in a caring way is important at
every age if we look at what really matters: being liked as a human being.
Now let’s focus on the third group of kids, fifth graders who checked the red
items—children terrified about being embarrassed or socially goofing up. This socially
anxious group became more unpopular over time (Rodkin and others, 2013). Who,
exactly, do peers reject?
REJECTED CHILDREN HAVE EXTERNALIZING (AND OFTEN INTERNALIZING)

PROBLEMS. Actually, the traits that universally land a child into the unpopular,
rejected category are externalizing issues. Classmates shun boys and girls (like Mark
in the introductory chapter vignette) who make reactive aggression a major life mode
as early as age 5 (Hawley and others, 2007; Sturaro and others, 2011). Children with
Photography by Mijang Ka/Getty Images

internalizing disorders may or may not be rejected. However, if a child—such as
Jimmy in the introductory vignette or the fifth graders who agreed with the red items
on the table—is socially anxious, that person is apt to be avoided as early as first grade
(Degnan and others, 2010).
Moreover, a poisonous nature-evokes-nurture interaction can set in when a
child enters school extremely socially shy. As children pick up on the fact that
people are avoiding them, their shyness gets more intense. So they become less
socially competent—and increasingly likely to be rejected (and, as you will see, His shyness may set this boy
victimized)—as they advance from grade to grade (Booth-LaForce & Oxford, 2008). up for social rejection because
A bidirectional process is also occurring. The child’s anxiety makes other chil- his anxiety will make the other
dren nervous. They get uncomfortable and want to retreat when they see this person children uneasy and he may not
have the courage to reach out to
approach. In response to your own awkward encounters, have you ever been tempted his classmates.
to walk in the opposite direction when you saw a very shy person approaching in
the hall?
REJECTED CHILDREN DON’T FIT IN WITH THE DOMINANT GROUP. Children who stand
out as different are also at risk of being rejected: boys and girls (like Moriah in the
opening vignette) who don’t fit the gender stereotypes (Lee & Troop-Gordon, 2011);
low-income children in middle-class schools (Zettergren, 2007); immigrant children
in ethnically homogenous societies (Strohmeier, Kärnä, &
Salmivalli, 2010)—any child whom classmates label as “dif-
ferent,” “weird,” or “not like us.”
Exploring the Fate of the Rejected

Is childhood rejection a prelude to poor adult mental health?
The answer is “sometimes.” Highly physically aggressive chil-
dren are at risk for getting into trouble—at home, in school,
and with the law—during adolescence and in their adult
© Daniel Atkin/Alamy
years (Alatupa and others, 2013; more about this pathway in
Chapter 9). Unfortunately, one longitudinal study suggested
that women who were unpopular as preteens had high rates
of anxiety disorders and depression during midlife (Modin,
Östberg, & Almquist, 2011). Because he prefers to hang
But there is variability, especially if a child has been rejected due to being “differ- back and observe the group
scene from afar, this cerebral
ent” from the group. Consider an awkward little girl named Eleanor Roosevelt, who
boy is not winning popularity
was socially rejected at age 8, or a boy named Thomas Edison, whose preference for contests in fourth grade. But,
playing alone got him defined as a “problem” child. Because they were so different, the same introspective qualities
these famous adults were dismal failures during elementary school. To get insights that are giving him problems
in elementary school might
into the fleeting quality of childhood peer status, you might organize a reunion of
produce a world-class author
your fifth- or sixth-grade class. You might be surprised at how many unpopular class- or brilliant psychologist during
mates flowered during their high school or college years. adult life.
Bullying: A Core Contemporary Childhood Concern

You can get bullied because you are weak or annoying or because you are different. Kids
with big ears get bullied. Dorks get bullied. . . . Teacher’s pet gets bullied. If you say the
right answer in class too many times, you can get bullied.
(quoted in Guerra and others, 2011, p. 306)
Children who are different can excel in the proving ground of life. This is not the
case on the proving ground of the playground. As you just read, being different, weak,
bullying A situation in which socially awkward, or even “too good” is a recipe for bullying—being teased, made fun
one or more children (or of, and verbally or physically abused by one’s peers.
adults) harass or target a
specific child for systematic
As I implied earlier, bullying is “normal” as children jockey for power and sta-
abuse. tus in the group. But the roughly 10 to 20 percent of children subject to chronic
bully-victims Exceptionally
harassment fall into two categories. The first—the less common type—are bully-
aggressive children (with victims. These children are highly aggressive boys and girls who bully, get harassed,
externalizing disorders) who then bully again in an escalating cycle of pain (Deater-Deckard and others, 2010;
repeatedly bully and get Waasdorp and others, 2011). The classic victim, however, has internalizing issues
victimized.
(Crawford & Manassis, 2011). These children are anxious, shy, low on the social
hierarchy, and unlikely to fight back (Cook and others, 2010; Degnan and others,
2010; Scholte and others, 2010; also, see my personal confession in the Experiencing
the Lifespan box).
Home used to be a refuge for children harassed at school. No more! Facebook,
cell phones, and the Internet have made bullying a 24/7 concern.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Middle-Aged Reflections on My Middle-Childhood Victimization
It was a hot August afternoon when the birthday pres- chapter has offered me insights into the reasons for this
ent arrived. As usual, I was playing alone that day, maybe 60-year-old wound.
reading or engaging in a favorite pastime, fantasizing that
I was a princess while sitting in a backyard tree. The gift, Although I did have friends, I was fairly low in the class-
addressed to Janet Kaplan, was beautifully wrapped—huge room hierarchy. Not only was I shy, but I was that unusual
but surprisingly light. This is amazing! I must be special! girl—a child who genuinely preferred to play alone. But
Someone had gone to such trouble for me! When I opened most important, I was the perfect victim. I dislike com-
the first box, I saw another carefully wrapped box, and petitive status situations. When taunted or teased, I don’t
then another, smaller box, and yet another, smaller one fight back.
inside. Finally, surrounded by ribbons and wrapping paper, As an older woman, I still dislike status hierarchies and
I eagerly got to the last box and saw a tiny matchbox— social snobberies. I’m not a group (or party) person. I far
which contained a small burnt match. prefer talking one-to-one. I am happy to spend hours alone.
Around that time, the doorbell rang, and Cathy, then Ruth, Today, I consider these attributes a plus (after all, hav-
then Carol, bounded up. “Your mother called to tell us she ing no problem sitting by myself for many thousands of
was giving you a surprise birthday party. We had to come hours was a prime skill that allowed me to write this text!),
over right away and be sure to wear our best dresses!” But but they caused me anguish in middle childhood. In fact,
their excitement turned to disgust when they learned that when I’m in status-oriented peer situations even today—as
no party had been arranged. My ninth birthday was really a widowed older woman—I still find myself occasionally
in mid-September—more than a month away. It turned getting teased by the group!
out that Nancy and Marion—the two most popular girls in
(P.S. I can honestly tell you that what happened to me in
class—had masterminded this relational aggression plot
third grade is irrelevant to my life. I can’t help wondering,
directed at me.
though. Suppose, as would be likely today, my classmates
Why was I selected as the victim among the other third- had been invited to my so-called birthday via Facebook:
grade girls? I had never hurt Nancy or Marion. In fact, in “Janet is having a party, and she is inviting X, Y, and Z.”
confessing their role, they admitted to some puzzlement: Could being targeted through this humiliating, public
“We really don’t dislike Janet at all.” Researching this venue have caused more enduring emotional scars?)
Hot in Developmental Science: Cyberbullying

Cyberbullying, aggressive behavior repeatedly carried out via electronic media is cyberbullying Systematic
potentially more toxic than traditional bullying in several ways: Broadcasting demean- harassment conducted
through electronic media.
ing comments on Facebook ensures a large, amorphous audience that multiplies the
victim’s distress. Sending a text anonymously can be scarier than confront-
ing the person face to face. (“Who hates me this much?” “Perhaps it’s
someone I trusted as a friend?”) (See Sticca & Perren, 2013.)
Moreover, the temptation to bully on-line is easier emotionally, as it
removes all inner controls. You can lash out and be free from immediate
consequences (Runions, 2013). You don’t have to worry about the sympa-
thy (and guilt) linked to seeing your victim’s pained face.
Cyberbullying’s ease, nonstop quality, and scary public nature explain
why teens see this behavior as worse than traditional bullying (Sticca &
Perren, 2013). In one study of Canadian adolescents, involvement in
cyberbullying—either as a perpetrator or victim—predicted having inter-
nalizing difficulties over and above participating in traditional harassing
acts (Bonanno & Hymel, 2013).
Still, the same motives propel both cyberbullying and harassment
of the face-to-face kind: Kids bully for revenge (as reactive aggression, or
to get back at someone). Kids bully for recreation (for fun). Kids bully
because this activity offers social rewards, or reinforcement from one’s
peers (Runions, 2013).
© Rawdon Wyatt/Alamy
Actually, bullying—of any kind—often demands an appreciative audi-
ence. One person (or a few people) does the harassing, while everyone else
eggs the perpetrator on by laughing, posting similar comments on-line, or
passively standing by. Therefore, children are less apt to bully when their
classmates don’t condone this behavior (Christian Elledge and others, 2013; Imagine how you would feel if
Elsaesser, Gorman-Smith, & Henry, 2013; Hinduja & Patchin, 2013). Conversely, this terrifying, anonymous threat
appeared on your screen, and
when bullying is frequent in a given classroom, or the class norm supports relational you will immediately understand
aggression, everyone is prone to bullying regardless of whether or not people personally why cyberbullying is more
believe this behavior is wrong (Scholte and others, 2010; Werner & Hill, 2010). distressing than bullying of the
The fact that the nicest children bully if the atmospheric conditions are right face-to-face kind.
explains why school programs to attack bullying focus on changing the peer-group
norms.
INTERVENTIONS: Attacking Bullying and Helping Rejected Children

In the Olweus Bully Prevention Program, for example, administrators plan a school
assembly to discuss bullying early in the year. Then, they form a bullying-prevention
committee composed of children from each grade. Teachers and students are kept
on high alert for bullying in their classes. The goal is to develop a school-wide norm
to not tolerate peer abuse (Olweus, Limber, & Mihalic, 1999).
Do the many bullying-prevention programs now in operation work? The answer
is: “Yes, to some extent” (Espelage & De La Rue, 2013). But, as bullying or relational
aggression is such an effective way of gaining status (Witvliet and others, 2010), this
phenomenon, present at every age, is a bit like bad weather—not in our power to
totally control (Guerra and others, 2011).
That’s why I’d like to end this chapter by returning to the classic recipients of this
unfortunate, universal human activity—children who are socially shy. How can we
help these boys and girls succeed?
In following a group of shy 5-year-olds, researchers found that if a child developed
friends in kindergarten or first grade, that boy or girl became less socially anxious over
time (Gazelle & Ladd, 2003). So, to help a temperamentally anxious child, parents
need to immediately connect their son or daughter—preferably in preschool—with a

playmate who might become a close friend.
With toddlers at risk for externalizing disorders, as I’ve stressed earlier, providing
loving, sensitive parenting is just as important (see Kochanska and others, 2010b).
Adults also need to understand that, with active explorers, the same traits that can
spell trouble can also be potential life assets. In an amazing decades-long study, when
researchers measured temperament during infancy and then looked at personality
during adulthood, the one quality that predicted being highly competent at age 40
was having been rated fearless during the first year of life (Blatney, Jelinek, & Osecka,
2007). So with the right person–environment fit, a “difficult to tame” toddler may
U.S. Department of Defense
turn into a caring soldier or a true prosocial hero, like the firefighters on 9/11!
How important are peer groups versus parents in shaping our behavior? What
can schools do to generally help children thrive? Stay tuned as I delve into these
questions—and related topics—in the next chapter, which is devoted to home and
school.
What was this incredibly brave
prosocial soldier really like at
age 1 or 2? Probably a fearless
handful!
1. When Melanie and Miranda play, they love to make up pretend scenes together. Are
these two girls likely to be about age 2, age 5, or age 9?
2. In watching boys and girls at recess in an elementary school, which two observations
are you likely to make?
a. The boys are playing in larger groups.
b. Both girls and boys love rough-and-tumble play.
c. The girls are quieter and they are doing more negotiating.
3. Erik and Maria are arguing about the cause of gender-stereotyped behavior. Erik says
the reason why boys like to run around and play with trucks is biological. Sophia
argues that gender-stereotyped play is socialized by adults and other children. First,
argue Erik’s position and then, make Sophia’s case by referring to specific data in this
section.
4. Best friends in elementary school (pick false statement): support each other/have simi-
lar moral values/encourage good behavior.
5. Describe in a sentence or two the core difference between being popular and well
liked.
6. Which of the following children is NOT at risk of being rejected in later elementary
school?
a. Miguel, a shy, socially anxious child
b. Lauren, a tomboy who hates “girls’ stuff”
c. Nicholas, who lashes out in anger randomly at other kids
d. Elaine, who is relationally aggressive
7. (a) If a child (or adult) is being regularly bullied, name the core qualities that may be
making this person an easy target. (b) Then, based on what you just read, describe in
a sentence what you personally might do to change this situation.
SUMMARY
Setting the Challenge: A two-step pathway may produce a highly aggressive child. When
toddlers are very active (exuberant) or difficult, caregivers may
Emotion Regulation respond harshly and punitively—causing anger and aggression.
Emotion regulation, the ability to manage and control our feel- Then, during school, the child’s “bad” behavior causes social
ings, is crucial to having a successful life. Children with exter- rejection which leads to more reactive aggression. Highly aggres-
nalizing tendencies often “act out their emotions” and behave sive children may have a hostile attributional bias. This “the
aggressively. Children with internalizing tendencies have prob- world is out to get me” outlook is understandable since aggres-
lems managing intense fear. Both temperamental tendencies, at sive children may have been living in a rejecting environment
their extreme, cause problems during childhood. since their earliest years. Because boys tend to act out their feel-
ings, they are more likely to be diagnosed as having “problematic
aggression” than are girls.
Personality (and the Emerging Self )
Self-awareness changes dramatically as children move into mid- Relationships
dle childhood. Concrete operational children think about them- Play is at the heart of childhood. Rough-and-tumble play (play
selves in psychological terms, realistically scan their abilities, fighting and wrestling), is typical of boys. Fantasy play or
and evaluate themselves in comparison with peers. These real- pretending—typical of all children—begins in later infancy and
istic self-perceptions explain why self-esteem normally declines becomes mutual at about age 4, with the beginning of collabora-
during elementary school. Comparing Erikson’s early childhood tive pretend play. Fantasy play declines during concrete opera-
task (initiative versus guilt) with industry versus inferiority high- tions, as children become interested in organized activities.
lights the message that, in middle childhood, we fully wake up Fantasy play may help children practice adult roles; offer a sense
to the realities of life. Relationships, academics, behavior, sports, of control; and teach the need to adhere to norms and rules.
and looks are the five areas from which elementary schoolchil- Although educators view fantasy play as vitally important, the
dren derive their self-esteem. idea that pretending is critical to children’s development has yet
Children with externalizing tendencies minimize their difficul- to be proved.
ties with other people and may have unrealistically high self- Gender-segregated play unfolds during preschool, and in ele-
esteem. Children with internalizing tendencies may develop mentary school girls and boys typically play mainly with their own
learned helplessness, the feeling that they are incapable of sex. Boy-to-boy play is rambunctious, while girls play together in
doing well. Because both attitudes keep children from improv- quiet, collaborative ways. Boys tend to compete in groups; girls
ing their behavior, the key to helping every child is to focus on play one-to-one. Boys’ play is more excluding of girls. Gender-
enhancing self-efficacy, promote realistic views of the self, and stereotyped play seems to have a biological basis, as shown by
offer love. the fact that high testosterone levels during our early months
Prosocial behaviors—helping, comforting, and sharing acts— and in utero promote stereotypically male behaviors. It is also
seem built into our biology and appear spontaneously during socialized by adults and by peers as children play together in
toddlerhood. There also is consistency, with prosocial preschool- same-sex groups. According to gender schema theory, once chil-
ers tending to be prosocial later on. While girls may be more dren understand that they are a boy or a girl, they attend to and
attuned than boys to upsetting feelings, females are not neces- model behaviors of their own sex.
sarily more prosocial than males. In childhood (and adulthood) we select friends who are similar
Acting prosocially—at older ages—involves transforming one’s to ourselves, and when children get older, deeper qualities, such
empathy (directly experiencing another’s feelings) into sympathy as sharing feelings, having similar moral worldviews, and loyalty,
(feeling for another person), having the information processing become important. Friends provide children with emotional sup-
skills to decide when to be prosocial, feeling you can effectively port and teach us to modulate our emotions.
offer help, and being happy. Promote prosocial behavior by allow- While popular children are often prosocial, relational aggres-
ing the child to naturally experience the joy of performing proso- sion helps children gain status. Still, being kind—not relation-
cial acts, model caring in your relationships, define the child as ally aggressive—gets children well liked by their peers. Rejected
“a good person,” and use induction (get a child who has behaved children are disliked—either because of serious externalizing or
hurtfully to understand the other person’s feelings). Induction internalizing problems, or because they are different from the
helps because it induces guilt. Child-rearing techniques involv- group. Although unpopular children are at risk for later problems,
ing shame (personal humiliation) backfire, making children angry children who are rejected for being different may flower as adults.
and less likely to act in prosocial ways. Children who are unpopular—either aggressive bully-victims or,
Aggression, or hurtful behavior, is also basic to being human. more typically, shy, anxious kids—are vulnerable to chronic bul-
Rates of open aggression (hitting, yelling) dramatically decline lying. Its anonymous, 24/7 public nature makes cyberbullying
as children get older. Proactive aggression is hurtful behavior more toxic than face-to-face harassment. Because bullying of
we initiate. Reactive aggression occurs in response to being frus- any kind depends on peer reinforcement, school bully prevention
trated or hurt. Relational aggression refers to acts of aggression programs work to change the class norms favoring relational
designed to damage social relationships. Relational aggression aggression. To help socially anxious children, connect timid pre-
increases during late elementary school and middle school, and schoolers with a friend. Give at-risk exuberant toddlers lots of
is present in girls and boys. High levels of reactive aggression love, and understand that these “difficult” girls and boys can
present problems getting along in the world. flourish in the right environment.
KEY TERMS
emotion regulation, p. 170 learned helplessness, p. 172 reactive aggression, p. 179 gender-segregated play,
externalizing tendencies, prosocial behavior, p. 175 relational aggression, p. 185
p. 170 empathy, p. 176 p. 179 gender schema theory,
internalizing tendencies, hostile attributional bias, p. 187
sympathy, p. 176
p. 170 p. 181 bullying, p. 192
induction, p. 177
self-awareness, p. 171 rough-and-tumble play, bully-victims, p. 192
shame, p. 178
self-esteem, p. 171 p. 182 cyberbullying, p. 193
guilt, p. 178
initiative versus guilt, p. 171 fantasy play, p. 183
aggression, p. 179
industry versus inferiority, collaborative pretend play,
proactive aggression, p. 179 p. 183
p. 172
Setting the Challenge: Emotion Regulation Jared to identify his “hopeless and helpless” ways of think-
1. Paul has externalizing tendencies; Jeremy has internalizing ing, and train him to substitute more accurate perceptions.
tendencies; and issues with emotion regulation are problems 3. Calista is right that the impulse to be prosocial seems
for both boys. biologically built in, as toddlers get joy from spontaneously
performing helpful acts. Cotonia is correct, however, that
Personality (and the Emerging Self ) adults need to nurture this behavior by modeling caring acts,
being sensitive to a child’s emotions, defining the child as
1. c
good, and using induction.
2. Ramon = externalizing tendencies. Jared = internalizing
4. a = induction; good for promoting prosocial behavior;
tendencies. Suggested intervention for Ramon: Point out his
b = shame; bad strategy; and c = guilt; good for promoting
realistic problems (“You are having trouble in X, Y, Z areas.”),
prosocial behavior
but cushion criticisms with plenty of love. Suggested
intervention for Jared: Continually point out reality (“No one 5. Alyssa = proactive, relational. Brianna = direct, reactive
can always get A’s. In fact, you are a fabulous student.”). Get 6. Mario has a hostile attributional bias.
Relationships 4. Friends can promote negative behavior (third alternative is

1. About age 5 wrong).
2. a and c 5. Being popular refers to being in the in-group. But being in

the high-status crowd does not necessarily mean a child is
3. Erik can argue that gender-stereotyped play must be personally well liked by the other kids.
biologically built in, as this behavior occurs in primates
and appears in societies around the world. He can mention 6. d. (Unfortunately, relationally aggressive children can be
that masculine-type play and interests are programmed by popular.)
high levels of testosterone. Sophia can say differing gender 7. (a) She may be highly aggressive, and is bullied, then victim-
roles are strongly socialized by parents, teachers, and ized. Or, more typically, she is anxious, has few friends, and
media messages from a young age. Most important, peers has trouble standing up for herself. (b) Speak up against the
powerfully reinforce traditional “girl” or “boy” behavior perpetrators while the group is around, or—if the situation
as they segregate into same-sex play groups. Children are involves cyberbullying—post a comment on-line, telling the
highly motivated to conform to these “correct” ways of acting writer to “lay off X. He is a real prince.”
or risk being socially excluded.
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
Home
Parenting Styles
INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for
Thinking About Parents
How Much Do Parents Matter?
SCIENCE: Resilient Children
Readers Who Are Parents
Spanking
Child Abuse
INTERVENTIONS: Taking Action
Against Child Abuse
Divorce
School
Setting the Context: Unequal at
the Starting Gate
Intelligence and IQ Tests
From Dyslexic Child to College
Professor Adult
Schools
Classroom Learning
SCIENCE: The Common Core
State Standards
PNC/Digital Vision/Getty Images

Settings for Development:
Home and School
Josiah’s parents migrated from Honduras to Las Vegas when he was a baby. Leaving
their close, extended family was painful, but they knew their son would not have a
future in their dangerous town.
At first, life was going well. Manuel joined the Culinary Workers’ Union. Maria got
a housekeeping job at Caesar’s Palace. They sent money to relatives and made a down
payment on a condo in the best school district in the city. Liberated from the horrifying
conditions in her country, where parents had to confine their children to the house to
keep them safe, Maria was thrilled to relax and lavish love on her child. Lavishing love
was easy, because Maria was blessed to have such a sunny, talented boy. At age 5,
Josiah could repair household appliances. He put together puzzles that would stump
children twice his age. He was picking up English beautifully, even though his parents,
who only spoke Spanish, could not help him with school.
Then, when Josiah was 7, Manuel was laid off. He started to drink. He came home
late to regularly yell at his wife. Maria fell into a depression, agonizing over whether
to break her family apart. When she finally had that difficult conversation: “Dad and I
will be living separately,” Josiah cried for months. This painful talk couldn’t have been
more poorly planned. The next day, Josiah was tested for the gifted program at school.
Josiah’s block design performance was off the charts. But growing up in a Spanish-
speaking family was a handicap. Josiah’s full-scale score didn’t make the cut off,
because his vocabulary skills were still below the mean.
It’s three years later and Maria’s becoming the loving mother she used to be.
Josiah is returning to his old, delightful self. Maria sings the praises of the fourth-grade
teacher—for understanding her son’s gifts and having the know-how to implement the
Common Core State Standards. She appreciates the fact that due to the new state cus-
tody laws, Josiah can spend as much time as he wants at his father’s house. (Actually,
she hates to admit it, but Manuel is a good dad!) The thorn in Maria’s side is Grandma—
or, to be exact, Josiah’s attitude toward Grandma. Having her mother in the house is a
godsend. Josiah doesn’t have to stay home alone when Maria works double shifts to
keep the family above the poverty line. But Josiah now feels ashamed to bring friends
home to see that “Old World” lady. He wants to be a regular American boy. The downside
of seeing your baby blossom beautifully in this country is watching your heritage fade.
H
ow do children such as Josiah react after their the settings within which children develop: home and
parents get divorced? Given that we must succeed school.
in the world, how important are the lessons we While my discussion applies to all children, in every home
learn from our parents as opposed to our peers? What and school, in this chapter, I’ll pay special attention to chil-
was that test Josiah took, and what strategies can teach- dren such as Josiah, whose families differ from the traditional
ers use to make every child eager to learn. What are the two-parent, middle-class, European American norm. So let’s
U.S. Common Core State Standards all about? Now, begin our exploration of home and school by scanning the
we tackle these questions, and others, as I focus on tapestry of families in the twenty-first-century United States.
199
Setting the Context

As of 2012, the traditional nuclear family—heterosexual married
couples with biological children—had dwindled to less than half
of U.S. households. Of these, a significant percent were blended
families—spouses divorced and remarried—so children had step-
parents and, often, stepsiblings. Five percent of U.S. children
were raised by unmarried couples; two million had gay or
bisexual parents; a smaller but growing number of boys and girls
(1.3 million) were being brought up by their grandparents alone
(Healthychildren.org, n.d.).
The most important distinction relates to the 1 in 4 U.S. children
being raised by single parents (see Figure 7.1). In particular, in mother-
headed families, poverty is not an infrequent fate—2 out of 5 of these
Comstock/Stockbyte/Getty Images
children live under the poverty line (see Vespa, Lewis, & Kreider, 2013).
On a brighter note, due to a global influx of immigrants, the
developed world is blessed with a beautiful mosaic of ethnicities.
What is your country of origin? What generation American, or
Australian, or Scandinavian are you?
Parenting grandmothers, such

as this woman helping her (a) (b)
grandson with his homework, 90 90
show that strong, loving families
80 80
come in many forms. What
one- and two-parent families
Percentage of children living

exactly is this grandma doing 70 70
Percentage of children in
right? This is the question we

will explore in this next section. 60 under poverty line 60
50 50
40 40
30 30
20 20
10 10
Two-parent Unmarried Single-parent Single-parent Two-parent

married families couples families families married families
with with
children children
figure 7.1: Living arrangements of children in U.S. families: Chart (a) shows that the
two-parent married couple family is still the most common one—a family form that includes the
traditional nuclear family and nontraditional forms. Chart (b) shows that children who live in
single-mother families have roughly four times the odds of living under the poverty line as boys
and girls whose parents are married.
Source: Vespa and others, 2013.
Home
Can children thrive in every family? The answer is yes. The key lies in what parents do.
We know that parents need to promote a secure attachment and be sensitive to a child’s
temperamental needs. Is there an overall discipline style that works best? In landmark
studies conducted 40 years ago, developmentalist Diana Baumrind (l971) decided yes.
Parenting Styles
Think of a parent you admire. What is that mother or father doing right? Now think
of parents who you feel are not fulfilling this job. Where are they falling short? Most
CHAPTER 7 Settings for Development: Home and School 201
likely, your list will center on two functions. Are these people nurturing? Do they pro- parenting style In Diana
vide discipline or rules? By classifying parents on these two dimensions—being child- Baumrind’s framework,
how parents align on
centered, and giving “structure”—Baumrind (1971) and other researchers spelled out two dimensions of child-
the following parenting styles: rearing: nurturance (or child-
centeredness) and discipline
• Authoritative parents rank high on nurturing and setting limits. They set clear (or structure and rules).
standards for their children but also provide some freedom and lots of love. In authoritative parents In the
this house, there are specific bed and homework times. However, if a daughter parenting-styles framework,
wants to watch a favorite TV program, these parents might relax the rule that the best possible child-
homework must be finished before dinner. They could let a son extend his rearing style, in which
parents rank high on both
regular 9:00 p.m. bedtime for a special event. Although authoritative parents nurturance and discipline,
believe in structure, they understand that rules don’t take precedence over providing both love and clear
human needs. family rules.
authoritarian parents In the
• Authoritarian parents are more inflexible. Their child-rearing motto is, “Do just parenting-styles framework,
what I say.” In these families, rules are not negotiable. While authoritarian parents a type of child-rearing in
may love their children deeply, their child-rearing style can seem inflexible, rigid, which parents provide plenty
and cold. of rules but rank low on
child-centeredness, stressing
• Permissive parents are at the opposite end of the spectrum from authoritarian par- unquestioning obedience.
ents. Their parenting mantra is, “Provide total freedom and unconditional love.” permissive parents In the
In these households, there may be no set bedtimes and no homework demands. parenting-styles framework,
a type of child-rearing in
The child-rearing principle here is that children’s wishes rule.
which parents provide
• Rejecting-neglecting parents are the worst of both worlds—low on structure and few rules but rank high
on child-centeredness,
on love. In these families, children are neglected, ignored, and emotionally aban- being extremely loving but
doned. They are left to raise themselves (see Figure 7.2 for a recap). providing little discipline.
In relating the first three discipline studies to children’s behavior (the fourth was rejecting-neglecting parents
In the parenting-styles frame-
added later), Baumrind found that children with authoritative parents were more work, the worst child-rearing
successful and socially skilled. Hundreds of twentieth-century studies confirmed this approach, in which parents
finding: Authoritative parenting works best (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). provide little discipline and
little nurturing or love.
Decoding Parenting in a Deeper Way
At first glance, Baumrind’s authoritative category offers a
beautiful blueprint for the right way to raise children: Pro-
Discipline (Rules and Structure)
vide structure and lots of love. However, if you classify your
High Low
parents along these dimensions, you may find problems.
Perhaps one parent was permissive and another authori- Authoritative Permissive
tarian. Or, your families’ rules might randomly vary from High
Style Style
authoritative to permissive over time. Nurturance
According to one global study, the worst situation—in (child-centered
terms of a teenager’s mental health—occurs when families focus)
Rejecting-
Authoritarian
have inconsistent rules (Dwairy, 2010). If one parent is more Low
Style neglecting
authoritarian and the other permissive, you do have predict- Style
ability (“I can get away with things with Mom, but not with
Dad”), although you might feel a bit upset. But imagine how
disoriented you would be if your parents sometimes came down very hard on you and, figure 7.2: Parenting
in similar situations, seemed not to care. Rather than adhering to a single parenting styles: A summary diagram.
style, parents should provide a consistent roadmap for their child. Source: Adapted from Baumrind, 1971.
But aren’t there times when parenting styles should vary, or situations when every
child needs a more authoritarian or permissive approach? These questions bring me
to two other classic parenting styles critiques:
CRITIQUE 1: PARENTING STYLES VARY FROM CHILD TO CHILD AND MAY SHIFT AT
DIFFERENT LIFE STAGES. Perhaps your parents came down harder on a brother or
sister because that sibling needed more discipline, while your personality flourished
with a permissive style. As you learned earlier in this book, good parents should vary
their child-rearing, depending on the unique personality of a specific child.
Unfortunately, however, as you also learned in previous chapters, when children

are “high maintenance” (difficult to raise), due to an evocative process, parenting
styles are apt to change for the worse. A mom may become excessively controlling
(authoritarian) when her child has a chronic illness (Pinquart, 2013). She might yell,
scream, and wall herself off emotionally from a son or daughter with ADHD (Gau &
Chang, 2013).
A study conducted in Finland suggested mothers were most likely to retreat
into walled-off, distant caregiving when raising a temperamentally grumpy child
(Laukkanen and others, 2014). Therefore, it makes sense that U.S. researchers find
that parents are most likely to abandon being authoritative when their sons and
daughters reach adolescence—that grumpier, less compliant life stage. Interestingly,
this U.S. study showed, when caregivers did withdraw emotionally during puberty,
preteens were most at risk for delinquency later on (Schroeder & Mowen, 2014).
So again, parenting is far more “bidirectional” (and child evoked) than Baumrind
assumes. Moreover, parents are apt to become less loving in the very situations when
children need extra loving the most. Does adopting a rule-focused, authoritarian
parenting style ever work best?
CRITIQUE 2: PARENTING STYLES CAN VARY DEPENDING ON ONE’S SOCIETY.
Baumrind’s styles perspective, developmentalists point out, reflects a Western
middle-class perspective on child-rearing. Yes, we think structure (rules) is vital, but
we put a premium on loving and listening to our sons and daughters. If you know
families from Korea or China, or Latinos or African Americans, you may be struck
by the more authoritarian agendas of these moms and dads: “Be obedient,” “Don’t
talk back,” “I make the rules” (Fuller & García Coll, 2010; Mistry, Chaudhuri, &
Diez, 2003).
This cultural difference, specifically in Asian parenting, was spelled out in a
controversial book called The Battle Hymn of The Tiger Mother (2011). Amy Chua, a
second-generation Chinese American parent, made the case that, in contrast to our
laid-back democratic style, “traditional Chinese” parenting was superior at producing
a high-achieving child (see Chua, 2011; Lui & Rollock, 2013).
Do Asian-heritage U.S. parents typically adopt Chua’s authoritarian parenting
style? If we consider first-generation immigrants (Nomaguchi & House, 2013) or
people living in ethnically homogenous enclaves such as urban Chinatowns (Lee and
others, 2014), the answer is yes. But, in contrast to our stereotypes, Asian American
parents are normally not more authoritarian than anyone else (Choi and others, 2013;
Kim and others, 2013). In fact, if you grew up in India, you would probably have
been raised more “permissively” than a European-heritage
child born in the United States! (See Barnhart and others,
2013; Ferguson and others, 2013.)
Should Western parents adopt Chua’s rule-oriented child-
rearing advice? The answer is definitely no. Among contem-
porary Asian families—both in the United States (Lee and
others, 2014; Kim and others, 2013) and Japan (Uji and others,
2014)—authoritative parenting is correlated with superior child
Hero Images/Getty Images
mental health.
In the past, parents needed to act authoritarian to social-
ize their children for life in harsh, dictatorial societies or
protect their offspring from the horrors of war or disease. In
dangerous places today, such as El Salvador, people still report
The stereotype is that this reluctantly using these rigid child-rearing techniques. As one
mother should be raising her mother in this violence-wracked nation bemoaned: “. . . I do not let my son go
child using an authoritarian outside . . . . I think we have become overprotective against our will” (Rojas-Flores
style. The reality is that this
Indian mom’s childrearing
and others, 2013, p. 278). But in the contemporary West, having “authoritarian
approach is apt to be more values” is a symptom of feeling unhappier and more stressed out in the parenting
permissive than ours! role (Nomaguchi & House, 2013).
INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for Thinking About Parents

How can you use these insights to think about parents in a more empathic way?
• Understand that parenting styles don’t operate in a vacuum. They vary depending
on a family’s unique life situation and a unique child.
• Understand that retreating emotionally is normal when dealing with a child who
has problems, but realize that in our culture, adopting this distant, authoritarian
style signals parenting distress.
• Rather than accusing parents of being “soft” or permissive, celebrate the fact that today
we can be child-centered, in the sense of listening empathically to our daughters and
sons. Without minimizing the need for consistent rules, ideal twenty-first-century
parenting boils down to three joyous principles: “Listen, nurture, offer lots of love!”
Table 7.1 gives you a chance to step back and list your specific parenting priorities
in a deeper way. Let’s now consider that deeper philosophical question: Is parenting
critically important to how children turn out?
Table 7.1: Checklist for Identifying Your Parenting Priorities
Rank the following goals in order of their importance to you, from 1 (for highest priority) to 8 (for
lowest priority). It’s OK to use the same number twice if two goals are equally important to you.
Producing an obedient, well-behaved child
Producing a caring, prosocial child
Producing an independent, self-sufficient child
Producing a child who is extremely close to you
Producing an intelligent, creative thinker
Producing a well-rounded child
Producing a happy, emotionally secure child
Producing a spiritual (religious) child
What do your rankings reveal about the qualities you most admire in human beings?
How Much Do Parents Matter?

The most inspiring place to start is with those world-class role models who had
terrible childhoods, but succeeded brilliantly as adults.
Hot in Developmental Science: Resilient Children

His aristocratic parents spent their time gallivanting around Europe; they never
appeared at the nursery doors. At age 7, he was wrenched from the only person who
loved him—his nanny—and shipped off to boarding school. Insolent, angry, refusing to
obey orders or sit still, he was regularly beaten by the headmaster and teased by the other
boys. Although gifted at writing, he was incapable of rote memorization; he couldn’t pass
a test. When he graduated at the bottom of his boarding school class, his father informed
him that he would never amount to anything. His name was Winston Churchill. He
was the man who stood up to Hitler and carried England to victory in World War II.
Churchill’s upbringing was a recipe for disaster. He had neglectful parents,
behavior problems, and was a failure at school. But this dismal childhood produced
the leader who saved the modern world. resilient children Children
who rebound from serious
Resilient children, like Churchill, confront terrible conditions such as parental early life traumas to
abuse, poverty, and war and go on to construct successful, loving lives. What qualities construct successful adult
allow these unusual children to thrive? lives.
Developmentalists find that resil-

ient children often have a special tal-
Abandoned by his father at about ent, such as Churchill’s gift for writing,
age 9 to be cared for by a teenaged or superior cognitive skills. They are
sister for several years after his skilled at regulating their emotions.
mother’s premature death, raised
in a dirt-floor Kentucky shack
They have a high sense of self-efficacy
without any chance to attend and an optimistic worldview (Brodha-
school—Abraham Lincoln grew gan & Wise, 2008; Pitzer & Finger-
up to become our most beloved man, 2010). They possess a strong faith
president and perhaps the
greatest man of the nineteenth
or sense of meaning in life (Wright &
century. What qualities made this Masten, 2005).
incredibly resilient child thrive? Being resilient depends on inner
The answer: towering intellectual resources—having good executive
gifts, a remarkable drive to learn,
optimism, self-efficacy, and—most
functions and intellectual and social
of all—a world-class talent for skills (Deater-Deckard, Ivy, & Smith,
understanding human motivations 2005). But the quantity of environmen-
and connecting with people in a tal setbacks also matters (Greenfield,
The Library of Congress
caring, prosocial way. By the way,

while he guided a battered nation,
2010). If you are exposed to a series
“father Abraham”—shown here of tragedies—for instance, having your
with his son—also made time to be parents get divorced after recently
a totally permissive, hands-on dad. becoming homeless due to experienc-
ing a disaster such as a hurricane—it’s
more difficult to preserve your efficacy feelings or rebound to construct a happy life
(Becker-Blease, Turner, & Finkelhor, 2010; Kronenberg and others, 2010).
Not only is the quantity of life stress important, so are “social supports.” Children
who succeed against incredible odds typically have at least one close, caring relation-
ship with a parent or another adult (such as Churchill’s nanny). Like a plant that
thrives in the desert, resilient children have the internal resources to extract love from
their parched environment. But they cannot survive without any water at all.
Might these children have resilience-promoting genes? Remember that scientists
feel a genetic profile may set some people up to be relatively immune to stressful life
events, but that this same “immunity” gene-form is a liability when the wider world is
nurturing and calm. So, yes, some lucky people may arrive in this world biologically
blessed to weather the hurricanes of human life.
Making the Case That Parents Don’t Matter

What matters more in how we develop, our life experiences or our genes? Twin and
adoption studies, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, come down firmly on the “it’s mainly
genetic” side. Faced with this nature-oriented behavioral-genetic research message,
one developmentalist famously concluded that it doesn’t matter if you were raised
in your particular family or the one down the street. Given reasonably adequate
parenting, children grow up to express their genetic fate (see Scarr, 1997; Scarr &
Deater-Deckard, 1997).
The most interesting twist on this “parents don’t matter” argument was put forth
by psychologist Judith Harris. Harris (1995, 1998, 2002, 2006) believes that the envi-
ronment has a dramatic impact on our development; but—rather than parents—our
peer group socializes us to become adults.
Harris begins by taking aim at the principle underlying attachment theory—that
the lessons we learn from our parents transfer to our other relationships. Learning,
Harris believes, is context-specific. We cannot use the same working model with
our mother and with the classroom bully, or we would never survive. Furthermore,
because we live our lives in the wider world, she argues, the messages we absorb
from the culture of our contemporaries must take precedence over the lessons we
are taught at home.
Any parent can relate to Harris’s peer-power principle when she is horrified to acculturation Among
witness her 3-year-old picking up every bad habit from her classmates after enter- immigrants, the tendency
to become similar in
ing preschool. You saw a chilling example of a similar group infection in the last attitudes and practices to
chapter when I described how aggressive middle-school norms evoke bullying in the mainstream culture after
the “nicest kids.” time spent living in a new
The most compelling evidence for Harris’s theory, however, comes from looking society.
at immigrants. As I implied in the introductory chapter vignette, acculturation—
children’s rapid shift to embrace new cultures—offers a vivid testament that Harris
has an important point.
These arguments that genetics and our culture shape development alert us
to the fact that, when you see children “acting out,” you cannot leap to the
assumption that “it’s the parents’ fault.” As developmental systems theory pre-
dicts, a variety of influences—from genetics, to peer groups, to everything
else—affect how children behave. But you may be thinking that the idea
that parents are not important goes too far.
Many experts agree. For children to realize their genetic potential,
parents should provide the best possible environment (Ceci and others,
1997; Kagan, 1998; Maccoby, 2002). In fact, when children are vul-
nerable or fragile as I’ve been pointing out, superior parenting is
required.
© Skjold Photographs/The Image Works

Making the Case for Superior Parenting
Imagine, for instance, that your daughter is temperamentally
“difficult.” You know from reading this book that you may be tempted
to disengage emotionally from your child. You also know that adopt-
ing this less-responsive parenting style can make the situation much
worse. So, you inhibit your use of power assertion. You provide
lots of love. You arrange the environment to minimize your child’s
vulnerabilities and highlight her strengths. Look at these exuberant boys,
Actually, when a child is biologically fragile, or genetically reactive, sensitive passionate to fit in with their
caregiving can make a critical difference. From studies showing that loving touch friends. Then, ask yourself
helps premature infants grow (recall Chapter 3), to my suggestions for raising fearful whether these children are
acting the same way they were
or exuberant kids (see Chapters 4 and 6), the message is the same: When children taught to behave at home.
are “at risk,” superior parenting matters most. Suddenly, doesn’t Judith Harris’s
So let’s celebrate the fact that resilient children can flower in the face of difficult theory that “peer groups shape
life conditions and less-than-ideal parenting styles. But when a baby needs special our development” make a good
deal of sense?
nurturing, the importance of high-quality nurture shines out.
INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for Readers Who Are Parents

Now let’s summarize our discussion by talking directly to the parent readers of this
book:
There are no firm guidelines about how to be an effective parent—except to show
lots of love and provide consistent rules. But it also is critical to adapt your discipline
to your unique child. You will face special challenges if you live in a dangerous envi-
ronment or have a son or daughter who is “harder to raise” (where you may have to
work harder to stay loving and attached). Your power is limited at best.
Try to see this message as liberating. Children cannot be massaged into having
an idealized adult life. Your child’s future does not totally depend on you. Focus on
the quality of your relationship, and enjoy these wonderful years. And if your son or
daughter is having difficulties, draw inspiration from Winston Churchill’s history.
Predictions from childhood to adult life can be hazy. Your unsuccessful child may
grow up to save the world!
Now that I’ve covered the general territory, let’s turn to specifics. First, we’ll
examine that controversial practice, spanking; then, focus on the worst type of
parenting, child abuse; and finally, we’ll explore that common transition, divorce.
Spanking
corporal punishment The use Poll friends and family about corporal punishment—any discipline technique using
of physical force to discipline physical measures such as spanking—and you are likely to get strong reactions. Some
a child.
people adhere to the biblical principle, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” They
may blame the decline in spanking for every social problem. Others blame corporal
punishment for creating those social problems. They believe that parents who rely
on “hitting” are implicitly teaching children the message that it is OK to respond in
a violent way. To put these positions into perspective, let’s take a brief tour of a total
turnaround in corporal punishment attitudes in recent times.
Until the twentieth century, corporal punishment used to be standard practice.
Flogging was routine in prisons (Gould & Pate, 2010), the military, and other places
(Pinker, 2011). In the United States, it was legal for men to “physically chastise” their
wives (Knox, 2010). Today, while these practices still occur in less developed nations,
in Western democracies they are widely condemned (Knox, 2010).
Moreover in recent years—from Spain to Sweden or Croatia to Costa Rica—a
remarkable 24 nations have passed laws banning child corporal punishment. Organiza-
tions from the American Academy of Pediatrics, to the United Nations, to the Methodist
Church have also passed resolutions calling spanking children “inhumane” (Knox, 2010).
In the United States, we’ve been listening—a bit. Spanking is illegal at schools
and day-care centers in most states. But any person proposing a bill to ban this
behavior would be laughed off the congressional floor. Not only is our individualistic
society wary about government intrusions in family life, but most U.S. parents spank
their daughters and sons.
Still, with surveys showing only one in ten parents saying they “often spank,”
corporal punishment is not the preferred U.S. discipline mode. Today, the most
frequent punishments parents report are “time-outs” and removal of privileges and,
to a lesser extent, getting sent to one’s room (Barkin and others, 2007).
Who in Western nations is most likely to spank? Corporal punishment is widely
accepted in the African American community (Burchinal, Skinner, & Reznick, 2010;
Lorber, O’Leary, & Smith Slep, 2011). As one Black woman reported: “I would rather
me discipline them than (the police)” (Taylor, Hamvas, & Paris, 2011, p. 65). As
you might imagine from the “spare the rod, spoil the child” injunction, people who
believe the Bible is literally true are most apt to strongly advocate this disciplinary
technique (Rodriguez & Henderson, 2010).
Adults who were spanked as children see more value in this child-rearing
approach (Simons & Wurtele, 2010). (In my classes, I often hear students report:
“I was spanked and it helped; so I plan to do the same with my kids.”) But if you feel
that physical punishment got out of hand during your childhood, you are probably
passionate about never hitting your own daughter or son (Gagne and others, 2007).
What do experts advise? Here, there is debate. Many psychologists argue that
physical punishment is never appropriate (Gershoff, 2002; Knox, 2010). They believe
that hitting a child conveys the message that it is acceptable for big people to give
small people pain. Yes, spanking, these psychologists point out, does produce com-
pliance. But, it impairs prosocial behavior because it gets children to only focus on
themselves (Andero & Stewart, 2002; Benjet & Kazdin, 2003; Knox, 2010).
Other experts believe that mild spanking is not detrimental (Baumrind, Larzelere, &
Cowan, 2002; Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005; Oas, 2010). They suggest that, if we rule out
corporal punishment, caregivers may resort to more damaging, shaming responses
such as saying, “I hate you. You will never amount to anything.” But these psycholo-
gists have clear limits as to how and when this type of discipline might be used:
• Never hit an infant. Babies can’t control their behavior. They don’t know what they are
doing wrong. For a preschooler, a few light swats on the bottom can be a last resort
disciplinary technique if a child is engaging in dangerous activities—such as running
into the street—that need to be immediately stopped (Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005).
• This action, however, must be accompanied by a verbal explanation (“What you

did was wrong because . . .”) Spanking should rarely be considered only as a last
ditch backup when other strategies, such as time-outs, fail.
The problem is that spanking is often not a final backup—particularly among
the very children whom physical punishment does most harm—boys and girls at risk
for externalizing problems (recall Chapter 6). Therefore, parent training is crucial.
We need to emphasize the behavioral principle that positive reinforcement (giving
rewards for good behavior) is more effective than any punishment, be it spanking or
being sent to a room. We must vigorously dispel the misconception that it’s possible to
spoil a baby, and that spanking produces a well-behaved child (Burchinal, Skinner, &
Reznick, 2010).
Frequent spanking promotes the very behavior it is supposed to cure. To take one
example, researchers found that parents who believed strongly in spanking had kids
who said it was fine, during disagreements with a playmate, to “hit” that other child
(Simons & Wurtele, 2010). Worse yet, what might start out as a spanking can esca-
late as a parent “gets into it,” the child cries more, and soon you have that worst-case
scenario: child abuse.
Child Abuse
Child maltreatment—the term for acts that endanger children’s physical or emotional child maltreatment Any act
well-being—comprises four categories. Physical abuse refers to bodily injury that that seriously endangers a
child’s physical or emotional
leaves bruises. It encompasses everything from overzealous spanking to battering that well-being.
may lead to a child’s death. Neglect refers to caregivers’ failure to provide adequate
supervision and care. It might mean abandoning the child, not providing sufficient
food, or failing to enroll a son or daughter in school. Emotional abuse refers to con-
tinual shaming or terrorizing or exploiting a child. Sexual abuse covers the spectrum
from rape and incest to fondling and exhibitionistic acts.
Everyone can identify serious forms of maltreatment; but there is a gray zone
as to what activities cross the line (Greenfield, 2010). Does every spanking that
leaves bruises qualify as physical abuse? If a single mother leaves her toddler in an
8-year-old sibling’s care, is she neglectful? Are parents who walk around naked in
the house guilty of sexual abuse? Emotional abuse is inherently murky to define,
although this form of maltreatment may be the most common of all (Foster and
others, 2010).
This labeling issue partly explains why maltreatment statistics vary, depending
on who we ask. In one global summary (involving an amazing 150 studies and 10
million participants), scientists estimated that roughly 3 of 1,000 children worldwide
were physically maltreated, using informant’s (meaning, other people’s) reports. In
polling adults themselves, the rates were 10 times higher than that (Stoltenborgh and
others, 2013). Considering all forms of abuse, the figures are alarming: 15 percent of
teenage boys were labeled as abused in a city in Iran (Mikaeili, Barahmand, & Abdi,
2013). In Canada, 1 in 4 adults reported being maltreated as a child (MacMillan
and others, 2013).
Obviously, far more individuals will report (“I was abused”), than the “objective”
abuse-rate statistics in any particular community indicate. But another force that
accounts for these variations are cultural norms. Do you live in a patriarchal society
where corporal punishment is traditionally routine (as in Iran)? Do your society’s
values stress family loyalty (as in China or Japan)? (See Foynes and others, 2014.) In
both cases, we would expect fewer maltreatment reports than in the West.
What we can say is that, while a few adults are prone to err in the over-reporting
direction (saying “I was abused” when they are chronically angry with a mom or
dad), outsider-reported rates qualify as the iceberg’s tiny tip (Greenfield, 2010).
Why is maltreatment swept under the rug in our day and age? Before answering this
question, let’s look at what provokes this parenting pathology and probe its effects.
Exploring the Risk Factors

As developmental systems theory would predict, several categories of influence cause
child abuse to flare up (Wolfe, 2011):
PARENTS’ PERSONALITY PROBLEMS ARE IMPORTANT. People who abuse their chil-
dren tend to suffer from psychological disorders such as depression and externalizing
problems (Annerbäck, Svedin, & Gustafsson, 2010). They often have hostile attribu-
tional biases (Berlin, Appleyard, & Dodge, 2011; Crouch and others, 2010), assuming
“bad” behavior from benign activities, like a toddler’s running around. Their deter-
mination not to “spoil” their babies is accompanied by other unrealistic expectations.
They may believe that 3-month-olds can be taught not to cry or that 8-month-olds can
be totally toilet trained (Bissada & Briere, 2001).
LIFE STRESS ACCOMPANIED BY SOCIAL ISOLATION CAN BE CRUCIAL. Abusive parents
are often young and poorly educated (Bartlett & Easterbrooks, 2012; Sieswerda-
Hoogendoorn and others, 2013). They tend to be coping with an overload of upset-
ting life events, from domestic violence to severe poverty (Annerbäck, Svedin, &
Gustafsson, 2010). Most important, they feel cut off from other people. Social isola-
tion, plus severe economic distress, is the match that is most apt to ignite child abuse
(Berlin, Appleyard, & Dodge, 2011; Li, Godinet, & Arnsberger, 2011).
CHILDREN’S VULNERABILITIES PLAY A ROLE. A child who is emotionally fragile
can fan this fire—a baby who cries excessively (Reijneveld and others, 2004),
has a medical problem (Svensson, Bornehag, & Janson, 2011), or is premature
(Sieswerda-Hoogendoorn and others, 2013). Therefore, in a terrible irony, the
very children that require special loving care are most apt to provoke an out-
of-control caregiver’s wrath.” The fact that abusive parents may target just one
child was brought home to me when I was working as a clinical psychologist at
a city hospital in New York. A mother was referred for treatment for abusing her
“spiteful” 10-year-old, although she never harmed his “sweet” 3-year-old brother.
So disturbances in the attachment relationship are a core ingredient in the
poisonous recipe for producing a battered child.
Exploring the Consequences

As you learned in Chapter 4, maltreated children often have insecure attachments
(Stronach and others, 2011). They tend to suffer from internalizing and externalizing
problems (Mills and others, 2013), and get rejected by their peers (Kim & Cicchetti,
2010). Just as with the orphanage-reared babies discussed in Chapter 4, brain-imaging
studies suggest child maltreatment may compromise the developing frontal lobes (van
Harmelen and others, 2010). In one study, children exposed to sexual abuse even
showed epigenetic changes in their DNA (Beach and others, 2013).
Because terrible childhood experiences prime us epigenetically to biologically
break down (Shapero and others, 2014), it comes as no surprise that the long-term
effects of child maltreatment span the spectrum: from adolescent antisocial tenden-
cies (Beach and others, 2013; Brody and others, 2014), to adult executive-function
deficits (Nikulina & Widom, 2013); from depression and substance abuse (Herren-
kohl and others, 2013; Mills and others, 2013), to higher rates of midlife heart disease
(Midei and others, 2013). These children are primed to get embroiled in abusive,
adult love relationships (McCloskey, 2013) and have more trouble lovingly bonding
with their babies (Muzik and others, 2013). So yes, abused children are at higher risk
of maltreating their own children when they become moms and dads.
Still most abused children become decent, caring parents (Woodruff and Lee,
2011). Some are passionate to never, ever hit their daughters and sons (Berlin,
Appleyard, & Dodge, 2011). As one woman described: “I made a vow to protect my
children no matter what. . . . It was almost like a mantra, that I’m never going to strike
(my child)” (quoted in Hall, 2011, p. 38).
People who break the cycle of abuse tend to have good intellectual
and coping skills (Hengartner and others, 2013). They are blessed to have
LWA/Dann Tardif/Blend Images/Getty Images

a DNA profile that I alluded to earlier, that makes them genetically more
resistant to stress (Banducci and others, 2014). Being blessed to have a
stable, loving marriage also offers potent insulation from repeating the
trauma of abuse (Jaffe and others, 2013).
INTERVENTIONS: Taking Action Against Child Abuse

What should you do if you suspect child abuse? The law requires teachers,
social workers, health-care professionals, and, sometimes, any concerned
citizen, to report the situation to child protective services. Children in Having a loving family life—and particularly
imminent danger are removed from the home, and the cases are referred a caring relationship with one’s spouse—can
break the intergenerational cycle of abuse.
to juvenile court. Judges do not have the power to punish abusive parents,
but they can place their children in foster care and limit or terminate their
parental rights.
Unfortunately, there are powerful temptations not to speak up. If you
make a false report, you risk ruining a family’s life. You may feel that you don’t
AP Photo/Northwest Florida Daily News, Nick Tomecek

have the training to make a difficult judgment call, or fear your life would be
in danger from a vengeful parent if you made a report (see Chen and others,
2010; Osofsky and Lieberman, 2010): “Are those injuries normal accidents,
or are the patterned bruises characteristic of being hit by a cord or belt?”
(Harris, 2010.) “If I do report the situation, will authorities take any action?”
This last fear seems justified. In one Swedish study, even in the face of
accusations of severe abuse, only about 10 percent of children were physically
examined. Roughly 1 percent of the cases actually went to trial (Otterman,
Lainpelto, & Lindblad, 2013). This is unfortunate, because with abuse, the
family situation can get worse. In one study tracking U.S. families with docu- Imagine you are a teacher who sees these kinds
mented histories of maltreatment, the home environment deteriorated from of suspicious burns on a student’s hands. You
know that unusual injuries like this can signal
preschool to kindergarten, with mothers doing more yelling and having fewer
child abuse, but you aren’t absolutely sure.
caring interactions, especially with sons (Haskett, Neupert, & Okado, 2014). Would you immediately report the situation to
the authorities? Would you talk to the parents
first? What exactly would you do?
Divorce
Although developed-world child abuse rates have declined (see Pinker, 2011), this
parenting pathology still is unacceptably frequent today. However, since the late-
twentieth-century lifestyle revolution, even more children undergo another unwel-
come family change: divorce. How does divorce affect children, and what issues do
families undergoing this life transition face?
Let’s start with the bad news. Studies comparing children of divorce with
their counterparts in intact married families show that these boys and girls are
at a disadvantage—academically, socially, and in terms of mental health (Amato,
2010; Potter, 2010). Worse yet, Swedish researchers found that—while this statistical
disparity has shrunk, as divorce has become “normal”—it still exists (Gähler &
Garriga, 2013). In large part, the problem may be economic. Divorce can propel a
newly mother-headed household into poverty, even though that family had previously
been middle class (Schramm and others, 2013; see also Figure 7.1a on p. 200 of this
chapter).
The good news is that most children cope with divorce very well, especially if this
family event is fairly drama free. Still, I don’t want to minimize the guilt parents feel when
making this choice. One woman in a Finnish study revealed these predictable feelings
when she anguished: “What am I to change two close people’s lives . . . Was a thought
that did not leave me for a long time” (as reported in Kiiski & Määttä Uusiautti, 2013).
Imagine coping with feeling you have failed your family and then needing to have
a conversation that upends your children’s world. And it’s not just that you explain,
“Mommy and Daddy need to live apart, but we still love you,” and children get over
the news. One Israeli woman described a fairly common scenario when she reported
that for months her daughter’s conversations started with the phrase, “Soon, when
Dad will come back home” (quoted in Cohen, Leichtentritt, & Volpin, 2014).
In this interview study exploring the feelings of newly divorced Israeli mothers,
women said their main agenda was to minimize their children’s pain. So, they strug-
gled to put aside their vengeful feelings and not bad-mouth their former spouses. One
mother helped her child cope with his father’s hurtful absence by making it into a
shared game: “I laugh. I tell him, ‘OK you miss daddy. But where is he?’ And he says
‘far, far away’”. Others vowed to avoid mentioning the gritty details: “I don’t want to
hurt him,” said a woman named Trina. “I won’t tell them that his father pointed a
gun at his mother.”
parental alienation The This is not to say that parental alienation—poisoning children against ex-partners—
practice among divorced is rare. Even many years after separating, some people can’t resist denigrating the other
parents of badmouthing a
former spouse, with the goal
parent, especially after an acrimonious divorce (see Lowenstein, 2013).
of turning a child against The compelling lure to succumb to relational aggression (that is, enlisting
that person. children against a former spouse) brings up the subject of custody and visitation.
When the divorce is bitter (or high conflict) should a child be allowed to frequently
see both the dad and mom?
For almost the entire twentieth century, the mother was given custody unless
there was a serious problem with her parenting (based on the psychoanalytic principle
that women are inherently superior nurturers)—a practice that unfairly limited dads
from being involved in their children’s lives. Today, Western nations—from Canada,
to Italy, to Sweden—have rectified this wrong by passing laws encouraging joint
custody (see Lavadera, Caravelli, & Togliatti, 2013). Spouses don’t have to split living
arrangements 50/50. But when the parents share custody, even when the child lives
with the mother, the father can see his sons and daughters any time.
Does this permeable visiting schedule help children cope? Actually, “it depends.”
Researchers found that after a divorce, moving an infant child from house to house
predicted greater attachment insecurity. In contrast, adolescent research suggested
that teens who split their living arrangements between ex-spouses had better mental
health than their single-parent counterparts (Carlsund and others, 2013).
The most informative finding comes from scanning Figure 7.3. While more over-
nights with a dad who provides positive parenting promotes adjustment, if a father had
Higher
Mental health problems for child
figure 7.3: Child mental-health

problems as a function of father’s
positive parenting and whether
the child spent many or few
overnights at that parent’s house:
Notice from the red line that staying
over often at a divorced dad’s house Lower Low High
is good for children, if that man is a Father’s positive parenting
good parent. But frequent overnights
with a father who has poor parenting Low overnights with father Average overnights with
skills are clearly detrimental to father
children’s mental health. High overnights with father
Source: Sandler, Wheeler, & Braver, 2013.
poor parenting skills, children’s emo-

tional problems escalated (Sandler,
Wheeler, & Braver, 2013).
So with custody and visitation, we
need to take an individual-centered,
developmental systems approach.
Go for shared arrangements in the
abstract, but if a father is antisocial
or the spouses continually bad mouth
each other, limit access to one or
both parents, to protect the child (see
DeGarmo, 2010; Lessard and oth-
ers, 2010). Moreover, with divorce,
the ongoing parenting matters most.
Ripp/Mauritius/SuperStock
A child should spend the most time
with the parent who parents the best!
Should children be able to decide
which custody and visitation arrange-
ment they prefer? One experiment,
comparing standard divorce mediation with approaches centered more on child Do you think this girl should be
testifying in court about whether
wishes, suggested yes (Ballard and others, 2013). to live with mom or dad? Clearly
Still, in a poll of divorced families, everyone recoiled at the idea of putting total there are some serious minuses
decision-making burden on a child (Cashmore & Parkinson, 2008). Imagine forcing here.
a son or daughter to publically admit, “I prefer to live with Mom or (Dad).” And
imagine the coercion that might ensue from the parent side. During this semester’s
divorce discussion, a student poignantly described this scenario, when she told the
class: “My daughter told the judge she wanted to live with her father, and then, years
later said, ‘Mom, I wanted you, but I was afraid to say so because I was frightened
of Dad.’”
At this point some of you might be thinking unhappy couples should try to
bite the bullet and stay together for the sake of their children. If the marriage is
labeled “high conflict,” think again. For children subjected to continual marital
fighting, ending the marriage improves well-being (Amato, 2010). As another student
explained during the class divorce discussion, “Because the atmosphere at home was
terrible, I felt much happier after my parents divorced.”
Table 7.2 summarizes these points in a parenting-related divorce questionnaire.
In Chapter 11, I’ll fully explore divorce from the adult point of view. Now it’s time to
turn to that other setting within which children develop—school.
Table 7.2: Parenting Questions to Ask to Predict How Well a Given Child Is
Apt to Cope with Divorce
1. Do the parents continually fight and badmouth each other? (Engaging in parental alienation is
poisonous for the child.)
2. Can the child see the dad frequently? (Frequent overnights are a positive thing if the father is a
good parent, but can be detrimental when the man’s parenting skills are poor.)
3. Does the child have input into custody decisions? (This can be a net positive, provided the
child does not have full decision-making capacity and a parent doesn’t force the child to make
unwanted choices.)
4. What is the quality of the custodial parenting? (This is the main force determining how well the
child copes!)

1. Montana’s parents make firm rules but value their children’s input about family
decisions. Pablo’s parents have rules for everything and tolerate no ifs, ands, or buts.
Sara’s parents don’t really have rules. At their house it’s always playtime and time
to indulge the children. Which parenting style is being used by Montana’s parents?
By Pablo’s parents? By Sara’s parents?
2. Chloe grew up in a happy middle-class family, but Amber and Sierra both had
difficult childhoods. Sierra is struggling in college and often feels very unhappy, but
both Amber and Chloe are doing well at school. To which student does the term
resilient best apply?
3. Melissa’s son Jared, now in elementary school, was premature and has a difficult
temperament. What might Judith Harris advise about fostering this child’s
development, and what might this chapter recommend?
4. Your sister is concerned about a friend who uses corporal punishment with her baby
and her 4-year-old. She asks you what the experts say. Pick the following two positions
developmentalists might take.
a. Never spank children of any age.
b. Mild spanking is OK for the infant.
c. Mild spanking is OK for the 4-year-old, as a backup.
d. If the child has a difficult temperament, regular corporal punishment might help.
5. Ms. Johnson, an elementary school teacher, is worried about a student who has been com-
ing to school unwashed and with torn clothes. Yesterday, she saw what looked like burn
marks on the child’s arms. Describe how Ms. Johnson might feel about reporting this situ-
ation, and what might happen if she formally accuses the parent of abuse or neglect.
6. Imagine you are a family court judge deciding to award joint custody. In a phrase,
explain your main criterion for awarding unlimited overnights with a particular
divorced dad.
figure 7.4: Socioeconomic Answers to the Tying It All Together questions can be found at the end of this chapter.
status and kindergartners’
scores on tests of readiness
for reading and math: As
children’s socioeconomic status
rises, so do average scores on School
tests of math and reading readi- What was that test Josiah (in the introductory chapter vignette) took, and what does
ness. Notice the dramatic differ-
intelligence really mean? What makes for good teaching and superior schools? Before
ences between low-income and
affluent children. looking at these school-related topics, let’s step back and, once again, explore the impact
Source: Lee & Burkam, 2002, p. 18. of that basic marker, poverty, on young children’s cognitive skills.
Math Setting the Context: Unequal

Reading
at the Starting Gate
Average 30
In Chapter 4, you learned that living in poverty for the first
test score
25 years of life has damaging effects on cognition. Figure 7.4
reveals that devastation directly by offering sobering statistics
20 with regard to a turn of the century entering U.S. kindergarten
class (Lee & Burkam, 2002). Notice that children from low-
15 income families, on average, do markedly worse than their
upper-middle-class counterparts on tests of reading readiness
10 and math. When we compare poverty-level Latino and African
American children to the wealthiest European Americans, the
5 test-score gap becomes a chasm. The most disadvantaged U.S.
children enter school academically several years behind their
most affluent counterparts.
Low-SES Middle-SES High-SES
children children children
You would think that when children start a race miles
behind, they should be given every chance to catch up. The
reality is the reverse. From class size, to the quality of teacher training, to the attrac-
tiveness of the physical building—U.S. kindergartens serving poor children rank at
the bottom of the educational heap. As one group of researchers put it:
The consistency of these findings . . . is . . . troubling. The least advantaged of America’s
children, who also begin their formal schooling at a substantial cognitive disadvantage,
are systematically mapped into our nation’s worst schools.
(Lee & Burkam, 2002, p. 77)
Now, let’s keep these inequalities in mind as we explore the controversial topic
of intelligence tests.
Intelligence and IQ Tests

What does it mean to be intelligent? Ask classmates the question, and they will prob-
ably mention both academic and “real life” skills (Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd,
2005). Conceptions of what it means to “be intelligent” differ from society to society,
and among different ethnic groups. Latino parents, for instance, focus more on social
competence (getting along with people), while our mainstream culture views intel-
ligence in terms of cognitive traits (Sternberg, 2007).
Traditional intelligence tests reflect the mainstream view. They measure only
cognitive abilities. Intelligence tests, however, differ from achievement tests—the achievement tests Measures
yearly evaluations children take to measure knowledge in various subjects. The intel- that evaluate a child’s
knowledge in specific
ligence test is designed to predict a person’s general academic potential, or ability to school-related areas.
master any school-related task. Do the tests measure mainly genetic capacities? Do
WISC (Wechsler Intelligence
they have any relevance beyond school? To approach these hot-button issues, let’s Scale for Children) The
examine the intelligence test that children typically take today: the WISC. standard intelligence test
used in childhood, consisting
Examining the WISC of different scales composing
a variety of subtests.
The WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children), now in repeated revisions,
was devised by David Wechsler and is the current standard intelligence test. As you
can see in Table 7.3, the WISC samples a child’s performance in a variety of areas.
However, as it is divided into main sections—each testing a basic ability—testers can
give a child a separate IQ score for each part.
Achievement tests are administered to groups. The WISC is given individually to
a child by a trained psychologist, a process that often includes several hours of testing
and concludes with a written report. If the child scores at the 50th percentile for his
Table 7.3: A WISC-IV Subtest Sampler

Verbal Comprehension
Subtest Sample (simulated) Item
Similarities (analogies) Cat is to kitten as dog is to ________________.
Vocabulary (defining words) What is a table?
Perceptual Reasoning
Picture completion Pick out what is missing in this picture.
Block design Arrange these blocks to look like the photograph on the card.
Processing Speed
Coding Using the key above, put each symbol in the correct space below.
Working Memory Index

Digit span Repeat these numbers forward. Now repeat these numbers backward.
intellectual disability The age group, his IQ is defined as 100. If that child’s IQ is 130, he ranks at roughly the
label for significantly 98th percentile, or in the top 2 percent of children his age. If a child’s score is 70, he is
impaired cognitive
functioning, measured
at the opposite end of the distribution, performing in the lowest 2 percent of children
by deficits in behavior that age. Put on a graph, this score distribution, as you can see in Figure 7.5, looks like
accompanied by having an a bell-shaped curve.
IQ of 70 or below.
specific learning disorder
The label for any impairment Number
in language or any deficit of scores
related to listening, thinking,
speaking, reading, writing,
68.26%
spelling, or understanding
mathematics.
dyslexia A learning disorder 2.14% 95.44% 2.14%
that is characterized by
reading difficulties, lack
55 70 85 100 115 130 140
of fluency, and poor word
recognition that is often Wechsler IQ score
genetic in origin.
gifted The label for superior
intellectual functioning
figure 7.5: The bell-shaped curve: The WISC scores are arranged to align in a normal
distribution. Notice from the chart that about 68 percent of the population has scores between
characterized by an IQ score
85 and 115 and about 95 percent of the scores are between 70 and 130.
of 130 or above, showing
that a child ranks in the top
2 percent of his age group. When do children take this test? The answer, most often, is during elementary
school when there is a question about a given child’s classroom performance. School
personnel then use the IQ score as one component of a multifaceted assessment, which
includes achievement test scores, teachers’ ratings, and parents’ input, to determine
whether a boy or girl needs special help (Sattler, 2001). If a child’s low score (under 70)
and other behaviors warrant this designation, she may be classified as intellectually
disabled. If a child’s IQ is far higher than would be expected, compared to her
performance on achievement tests, she is classified as having a specific learning
disorder, an umbrella term for any impairment in language or difficulties related
to listening (such as ADHD), thinking, speaking, reading, spelling, or math.
Although children with learning disabilities often score in the average range
on IQ tests, they have trouble with schoolwork. Many times, they have a debili-
tating impairment called dyslexia that undercuts every academic skill. Dyslexia,
a catchall term referring to any reading disorder, may have multiple causes
(Nicolson & Fawcett, 2011; Zoccolotti and Friedmann, 2010). What’s important
is that, despite having good instruction and doing well on tests of intelligence,
a dyslexic child is still struggling to read (Shaywitz, Morris, & Shaywitz, 2008).
My son, for instance, has dyslexia, and our experience shows just how impor-
tant having a measure of general intelligence can be. Because Thomas was falling
behind in the third grade, my husband and I arranged to have our son tested.
Thomas was defined as having a learning disability because his IQ score was
© Ray Stott/The Image Works
above average but his achievement scores were well below the norm for his grade.
Although we were aware of our son’s reading problems, the testing was vital in eas-
ing our anxieties. Thomas—just as we thought—was capable intellectually. Now
we just had to get our son through school with his sense of self-efficacy intact!
Often, teachers and parents urge testing for a happier reason: They want
This second grader, taking a to confirm that a child is intellectually advanced. If the child’s IQ exceeds a certain
subtest of the WISC, will be number, typically 130, or in the top 2 percent (see Figure 7.4), she is labeled gifted
tested for at least an hour and
a half. Then, the examiner will
and is eligible for special programs. In U.S. public schools, the law mandates intel-
write a report and compare her ligence testing before children can be assigned to a gifted program or remedial class
scores with those of other chil- (Canter, 1997; Sattler, 2001).
dren that age. If this girl’s IQ Table 7.4 offers a fact sheet about dyslexia. The Experiencing the Lifespan box
is at least 130—ranking her at
roughly the top 2 percent of his
provides a firsthand view of what it is like to triumph over this debilitating condition.
age group—she will be eligible Now that we have explored the measure and when it is used, let’s turn to what the
for the school’s gifted program. scores mean.
Table 7.4: Some Interesting Facts About Dyslexia

• Reading difficulties are shockingly prevalent among U.S. children. According to one 2005 survey, more than 1 in 4 high school
seniors were reading below the most basic levels. The figures were higher for fourth graders—over 1 in 3 had trouble grasping the
basic points of a passage designed for their grade.
• Specific learning disabilities (including dyslexia) are a mainly male diagnosis—affecting roughly three times as many boys as girls
around the world. However, because a referral bias favors boys, there may be more undiagnosed females with dyslexia than had
previously been thought.
• Dyslexia is inherited and “genetic” in origin. However, multiple genes are involved in this condition, and, as I mentioned in the text,
problems learning to read have a variety of different causes.
• Late-appearing language (entering the word-combining phase of speech at an older-than-typical age, such as close to age 2 1/2
[see Chapter 3] ) and especially phonemic deficits (the inability to differentiate sounds [see Chapter 5] ) are early predictors of dyslexia.
• Children prone to dyslexia may even be identified during their first weeks after birth—by looking at the pattern of their brain waves
evoked by different sounds. These newborns have a slightly slower shift from positivity to negativity on “event-related potentials”
when exposed to noises of different frequencies.
• Although many children with dyslexia eventually learn to read, this condition persists to some extent into adulthood. Early
interventions—involving intensive instruction in teaching “at-risk” kindergartners and first graders to identify phonemes—can be
effective, but to really work this special help should be continued into elementary school.
• Boys and girls with dyslexia unfortunately perform more poorly on general tests of executive functions. They are also at higher risk
for developing other mental health problems—such as depressive and anxiety disorders. About 15 to 50 percent also have ADHD.
Sources: Beneventi and others, 2010; Gooch, Snowling, & Hulme, 2011; Henry, Messer, & Nash, 2012; Hensler and others, 2010; Landerl & Moll, 2010; Leppänen and
others, 2010; Shaywitz and others, 2008.
Experiencing the Lifespan: From Dyslexic Child to College Professor Adult
Aimee Holt, a colleague of mine who teaches our school My mom is the reason I’ve done well. She always believed
psychology students, is beautiful and intelligent, the kind in me, always felt I could make it; she never gave up. Plus,
of golden girl you might imagine would have been a great as I mentioned, I had an exceptional reading teacher. My
childhood success. When I sat down to chat with Aimee goal was always to be an elementary school teacher, but,
about her struggles with dyslexia and other learning dis- after teaching for years and realizing that a lot of the
abilities, I found first impressions can be very misleading: kids in my classes were not being accurately diagnosed,
In first grade, the teachers at school said I was mentally I decided to go to graduate school to get my Ph.D.
retarded. I didn’t notice the sounds that went along with Today, in addition to teaching, I do private tutoring with
letters. I walked into walls and fell down a lot. My parents children like me. First, I get kids to identify word sounds
refused to put me in a special school and finally got me (phonemes) because children with dyslexia have a prob-
accepted at a private school, contingent on getting a lem decoding the specific sounds of words. I’ll have the
good deal of help. I spent my elementary school years children identify how many sounds they hear in a word.
being tutored for an hour before school, an hour after- . . .“Which sounds rhyme, which don’t?” . . . “If I change
wards, and all summer. the word from cat to hat, what sound changes?” Most
Socially, elementary school was a nightmare . . . I remem- children naturally pick up on these reading cues. Kids
ber kids laughing at me, calling me stupid. There was a with dyslexia need to have these skills directly taught.
small group of people that I was friendly with, but we Many children I tutor are in fourth or even sixth grade
were all misfits. One of my closest friends had an inoper- and have had years of feeling like a failure. They develop
able brain tumor. Because of my problems coordinating an attitude of “Why try? I’m going to fail anyway.” I can
my vision with my motor skills, I couldn’t participate in tell them that I’ve been there and that they can succeed.
normal activities, such as sports or dance. By seventh So I work on academic self-efficacy—teaching them to
grade, after years of working every day with my wonder- put forth effort. Most of these kids are intelligent, but
ful reading teacher, I was reading at almost grade level. as they progress through school, their IQ drops because
Then when we moved to Tennessee in my freshman year they are not being exposed to written material at their
of high school, I felt like a new person. Nobody knew grade level. I try to get them to stay in the regular class-
that I had learning difficulties. We moved to a rural com- room, with modifications such as books on tape and oral
munity, so I got to be a top student, because I’d had the testing, to prevent that false drop in their knowledge
same classes in my Dallas private school the year before. base. I was so fortunate—with a wonderful mother, an
In the tenth and eleventh grades, I was making A’s and exceptional reading teacher, getting the help I needed at
B’s. I got a scholarship to college, where I was a straight- exactly the right time—that I feel my mission is to give
A student (with a GPA of 3.9). something back.
Decoding the Meaning of the IQ Test

The first question we need to grapple with in looking at the meaning of the test
reliability In measurement relates to a measurement criterion called reliability. When people take a test thought
terminology, a basic criterion to measure a basic trait, such as IQ, more than one time, their results should not
of a test’s accuracy that
vary. Imagine that your IQ score randomly shifted from gifted to average, year by
scores must be fairly similar
when a person takes the test year. Clearly, this test score would not tell us anything about a stable attribute called
more than once. intelligence.
validity In measurement The good news is that, in elementary school, IQ test performance does typically
terminology, a basic criterion remain stable (Ryan, Glass, & Bartels, 2010). In one amazing study, people’s scores
for a test’s accuracy involving remained fairly similar when they first took the test in childhood and then were
whether that measure
retested more than a half-century later (see Deary and others, 2000). Still, among
reflects the real-world quality
it is supposed to measure. individual children, the IQ can change. Scores are most likely to shift when children
have undergone life stresses.
Flynn effect Remarkable
and steady rise in overall This research tells us that we should never evaluate a child’s IQ during a family
performance on IQ tests that crisis such as divorce. But being reliable is only the first requirement. The test must
has been occurring around be valid. This means it must predict what it is supposed to be measuring. Is the WISC
the world over the past
a valid test?
century.
If our predictor is academic performance, the answer is yes. A child who gets
“g” Charles Spearman’s term an IQ score of 130 will tend to perform well in the gifted class. A child whose IQ is
for a general intelligence
factor that he claimed 80 will probably need remedial help. But now we turn to the controversial question:
underlies all cognitive Does the test measure genetic learning potential or biological smarts?
activities.
ARE THE TESTS A GOOD MEASURE OF GENETIC GIFTS? When we are evaluating
children living in poverty (or boys and girls growing up in non-English-speaking
families), logic tells us that the answer should be no. Look back at the items on the
WISC verbal comprehension scale (Table 7.3 on p. 213), and you will immediately
see that if parents stimulate a child’s vocabulary, she will be at a test-taking advantage.
If a family cannot buy books and learning toys, their children will be handicapped
on this part of the test.
An excellent argument that the environment weighs heavily in IQ comes from that
remarkable century-long increase in intelligence test scores described in Chapter 1.
This worldwide rise in IQ scores, called the Flynn effect (named for its discoverer
James Flynn) is dramatic. More years of education, plus the modern media, have
made twenty-first-century children and adults far better “thinkers” than their parents
and grandparents were at the same age. Incredibly, Flynn (2007) calculates that the
average-scoring child taking the WISC in 1900 would rank as “mentally retarded”
using today’s IQ norms!
We also have newer research confirming that a poor life situation artificially limits
IQ. For low-income children, the IQ score mainly reflects environmental forces.
For upper-middle-class children, the test score is more reflective of genetic gifts
(Turkheimer and others, 2003). So if an elementary schooler comes from a poverty-
level family and attends a low-quality school, yes, his IQ may predict his current
school performance. But we should not assume that score reflects true intellectual
potential unless a child has been exposed to the incredible learning advantages
upper-middle-class life provides.
Now, imagine that you are an upper-middle-class child. You were regularly read
to, taken to museums, and attended the best schools. Your IQ score is only 95 or 100.
Is your intellectual potential limited for life?
DO IQ SCORES PREDICT REAL-WORLD PERFORMANCE? When a student comes up
after this class lecture and proudly admits that his IQ is 130 or 140, he is not thinking
of school learning. He assumes that his score measures a basic “smartness” that
carries over to every life activity. In measurement terminology, this student would
agree with Charles Spearman. Spearman believed that IQ test scores reflect a general
underlying, all-encompassing intelligence factor called “g.”
Psychologists debate the existence of “g.” Many strongly believe that the IQ test
generally predicts intellectual capacities. They argue that we can use the IQ as a sum-
mary measure of a person’s cognitive potential for all life tasks (Herrnstein & Murray,
1994; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Others believe that people have unique intellectual
talents. There is no one-dimensional quality called “g” (Eisner, 2004; Schlinger,
2003; Sternberg, 2007). These critics believe it inappropriate to rank people on
a continuum from highly intelligent to not very smart (Gould, 1981; Sternberg,
Grigorenko & Kidd, 2005).
Tantalizing evidence for “g” lies in the fact that people differ in the speed with
which they process information (Brody, 2006; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Intelligence
test scores also correlate with various indicators of life success, such as occupational
status. However, the problem is that the gateway to high-status professions, such as
law and medicine, is school performance, which is what the tests predict (Sternberg,
1997; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Bundy, 2001).
One problem with believing that IQ tests offer a total X-ray into intellectual
capacities is that people may carry around their test-score ranking as an inner wound.
A psychologist supervisor once confessed to me that he was really not that intelligent
because his IQ was only 105. He devalued the criterion the scores were supposed
to predict—his years of real-life success—by accepting what, in his case, was an
invalid score!
A high test score can produce its own problems. Suppose the student who told
me his IQ was 140 decided he was so intelligent he didn’t have to open a book in my
class. He might be in for a nasty surprise when he found out that what really matters
is your ability to work. Or that person might worry: “I’d better not try in Dr. Belsky’s
class because, if I do put forth effort and don’t get an A, I will discover that my astro-
nomical IQ score was wrong.” (Recall the research in Chapter 6 that showed how
telling elementary schoolers “you are smart” made them afraid to tackle challenging
academic tasks.)
Even the firmest advocate of “g” would admit that some of us are marvelous
mechanically and miserable at math, wonderful at writing but hopeless at reading maps.
Toward a Broader View of Intelligence

But if intelligence involves different abilities, such as Josiah’s mechanical talents
(recall the introductory vignette), perhaps we should go beyond the IQ test to
measure those skills in a broader way. Psychologists Robert Sternberg and Howard
Gardner have devoted their careers to providing this broader view of what it means
to be smart.
STERNBERG’S SUCCESSFUL INTELLIGENCE. Robert Sternberg (1984, 1996, 1997) has
been a man on a mission. In hundreds of publications, this psychologist transformed
the way we think about intelligence. Sternberg’s passion comes from the heart. He
began school with a problem:
As an elementary school student, I failed miserably on the IQ tests. . . . Just the sight of
the school psychologist coming into the classroom to give . . . an IQ test sent me into
a wild panic attack. . . . You don’t need to be a genius to figure out what happens next.
My teachers in the elementary school grades certainly didn’t expect much from me. . . .
So I gave them what they expected. . . . Were the teachers disappointed? Not on your
life. They were happy that I was giving them what they expected.
(Sternberg, 1997, pp. 17–18)
Sternberg actually believes that traditional intelligence tests do damage in the

school environment. As I implied earlier, the relationship between IQ scores and
schooling is somewhat bidirectional. Children who attend inferior schools, or who
miss months of classroom work due to illness, perform more poorly on intelligence
tests (Sternberg, 1997). Worse yet, Sternberg argues, when schools assign children
to lower-track, less demanding classes on the basis of their low test scores, their IQs
gradually decline year by year.
Most importantly, Sternberg (1984) believes that conventional intelligence tests
are too limited. Although they do measure one type of intelligence, they do not cover
the total terrain.
IQ tests, according to Sternberg, measure analytic intelligence. They test
how well people can solve academic-type problems. They do not measure creative
intelligence, the ability to “think outside the box,” or to formulate problems in new
ways. Nor do they measure a third type of intelligence called practical intelligence,
common sense, or “street smarts.”
Being a math wiz (analytic

intelligence) demands different
skills from deftly snagging this
© 2/Dimitri Vervitsiotis/Ocean/Corbis
fish (practical intelligence).

That’s why Robert Sternberg
believes that IQ tests, which
Matt Jeppson/Shutterstock
mainly measure school type
analytic skills, do not tap into
many of the abilities that make
people successful in the real
world.
analytic intelligence In Robert Brazilian street children who make their living selling flowers show impressive
Sternberg’s framework on levels of practical intelligence. They understand how to handle money in the real
successful intelligence,
the facet of intelligence
world. However, they do poorly on measures of traditional IQ (Sternberg, 1984,
involving performing well on 1997). Others, such as Winston Churchill, can be terrible scholars but flower after
academic-type problems. they leave their academic careers. Then, there are people who excel at IQ test taking
creative intelligence In Robert and traditional schooling but fail abysmally once in the real world. Sternberg argues
Sternberg’s framework on that to be successfully intelligent in life requires a balance of all three “intelligences.”
successful intelligence, the (As a postscript, Sternberg recently added a fourth type of intellectual gift—that rare
facet of intelligence involved attribute called wisdom. See Sternberg, 2010.)
in producing novel ideas or
innovative work. GARDNER’S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES. Howard Gardner (1998) did not have
practical intelligence Sternberg’s problem with intelligence tests:
In Robert Sternberg’s As a child I was a good student and a good test taker . . . but . . . music . . . and the arts
framework on successful
intelligence, the facet
were important parts of my life. Therefore when I asked myself what optimal human
of intelligence involved development is, I became more convinced that [we] had to . . . broaden the definition
in knowing how to act of intelligence to include these activities, too.
competently in real-world (Gardner, 1998, p. 3)
situations.
Gardner is not passionately opposed to standard intelligence tests. Still, he
successful intelligence In believes that using the single IQ score is less informative than measuring chil-
Robert Sternberg’s framework,
the optimal form of cognition, dren’s unique talents and gifts. (Gardner’s motto is: “Ask not how intelligent you
involving having a good are, but how are you intelligent?”) According to Gardner’s (2004, 2006) multiple
balance of analytic, creative, intelligences theory, human abilities come in eight, and possibly nine, distinctive
and practical intelligence. forms.
multiple intelligences theory In In addition to the verbal and mathematical skills measured by traditional IQ tests,
Howard Gardner’s perspective people may be gifted in interpersonal intelligence, or understanding other people.
on intelligence, the principle
that there are eight separate
Their talents may lie in intrapersonal intelligence, the skill of understanding oneself.
kinds of intelligence—verbal, They may be gifted in spatial intelligence, grasping where objects are arranged in
mathematical, interpersonal, space. (You might rely on a friend who is gifted in spatial intelligence to beautifully
intrapersonal, spatial, arrange the furniture in your house.) Some people have high levels of musical
musical, kinesthetic,
naturalist—plus a possible
intelligence, or kinesthetic intelligence (the ability to use the body well), or naturalist
ninth form, called spiritual intelligence (the gift for dealing with animals or plants and trees). There may even be
intelligence. an existential (spiritual) intelligence, too.
EVALUATING THE THEORIES. These perspectives on

intelligence are exciting. Some of you may be thinking,
“I’m gifted in practical or musical intelligence. I always
knew there was more to being smart than school success!”
But let’s use our practical intelligence to critique these
approaches. Why did Gardner select these particular eight
abilities and not others (Barnett, Ceci, & Williams, 2006;
White, 2006)? Yes, parents may marvel at a 6-year-old’s
Reid Lincoln Ashton/Masterfile

creative or kinesthetic intelligence; but, it is analytic intelli-
gence that will get this child into the school gifted program,
not his artistic productions or how well his body moves
(Eisner, 2004).
We can also criticize Sternberg’s ideas. Is there such a
thing as creative or practical intelligence apart from a particu- Being a world-class gymnast
lar field? Adopting the idea that there is a single “creative” intelligence might lead to (kinesthetic intelligence) doesn’t
the conclusion that Michelangelo would be a talented musician or that Mozart could necessarily mean that you will
also shine in reading or math.
beautifully paint the Sistine Chapel. That’s why Howard Gardner
The bottom line is that neither Gardner nor Sternberg has developed replace- believes that schools need
ments for our current IQ test. But this does not matter. Their mission is to transform to broaden their focus to
the way schools teach (Gardner & Moran, 2006; Sternberg, 2010). teach to the different kinds of
intelligences that we all possess.
INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for Schools

Gardner’s theory has been embraced by teachers who understand that intelligence
involves more than having traditional academic skills. However, to implement his
ideas requires revolutionizing the way we structure education. Therefore, the main
use of multiple intelligences theory has been in helping “nontraditional learn-
ers” succeed (Schirduan & Case, 2004). Here is how Mark, a dyslexic teenager,
describes how he uses his spatial intelligence to cope with the maze of facts in
history:
I’ll picture things; for example, if we are studying the French revolution . . . Louis the
16th. . . . I’ll have a picture of him in my mind [and I’ll visualize] the castle and peas-
ants to help me learn.
(quoted in Schirduan & Case, 2004, p. 93)
Sternberg, being an experimentalist, has put his theory to rigorous test.

Does instruction tailored to each different type of intelligence produce better
achievement than teaching in the traditional way? Initial encouraging findings
suggested yes (Sternberg, Torff, & Grigorenko, 1998). But when Sternberg’s
research team carried out a massive intervention trial, assigning 7,702 fourth
graders in 223 classrooms to either be taught according to his theory or several
typical approaches, the outcome was inconsistent at best (Sternberg and others,
2014). So, while the concept of successful intelligence is intuitively appealing,
it’s not clear that Sternberg’s ideas merit changing the way classrooms operate.
How do classrooms operate?
Classroom Learning
The diversity of intelligences, cultures, and educational experiences at home is
matched by the diversity of American schools. There are small rural schools and
large urban schools, public schools and private schools, highly traditional schools
where students wear uniforms and schools that teach to Gardner’s intelligences.
There are single-sex schools, charter schools, religious schools, magnet schools that
cater to gifted students, and alternative schools for children with behavior problems
or learning disabilities.
Can students thrive in every school? The answer is yes, provided schools have an
intense commitment to student learning and teachers can excite students to learn.
The rest of this chapter focuses on these challenges.
Examining Successful Schools

What qualities make a school successful? Insights come from surveying elementary
schools that are beating the odds. These schools, while serving high fractions of eco-
nomically disadvantaged children, have students who are thriving.
In the Vista School, located on a Native
American reservation, for instance, virtually all the
children are eligible for a free lunch. However,
Vista consistently boasts dramatic improvements
on statewide reading and math tests. According to
Ms. Thompson, the principal, “Our job is not to
make excuses for students, but just to give them
every possible opportunity. At Vista, teachers refuse
Tony Cenicola/The New York Times/Redux
to dumb down the curriculum. We offer tons of high-

level conceptual work” (quoted in Borko and others,
2003, p. 177).
At Beacon Elementary School, two out of
every three students exceed state-mandated writ-
ing standards despite coming from impoverished
backgrounds. Here, Susie Murphy, the principal,
comments: “You can . . . say, these kids are poor.
A school’s physical appearance
can also make a real difference You just need to love them. Or you can come to a school like this where the phi-
in whether children “beat the losophy is that the best way to love them is to give them an education so they can
odds.” This boy attends a model make choices in their life” (quoted in Borko and others, 2003, p. 186). Beacon
public school, designed and teachers, she continues, “are here . . . by choice. They are committed to proving
built by a well-known architect
and located in an impoverished that kids who live in poverty can learn every bit as well as other kids” (p. 192). At
section of New York City. Beacon, the teachers’ goal is to challenge all their students. The school builds in
opportunities for teachers to share ideas: “We have mini-workshops in geometry,
or problem solving. Our whole staff talks about the general focus and where math
is going” (p. 194).
Committed teachers, professional collaboration, and a mission to “deliver for
all our kids” explains why a rural Florida elementary school, serving mainly low-
income children, dramatically boosted the test scores of its most struggling students
in a single year. Rather than isolating boys and girls with “learning differences,”
this school took the unusual step of embedding every child into its academic life.
Before instituting their focus on inclusiveness, only one in three at-risk child ranked
proficient in math and language arts. At the year’s end, these rates shot upward—to
roughly two in three.
As Ms. Richards, the principal, explained: “We’ve got to improve to meet all
kids needs. . . . That’s how we started and it didn’t turn into. . . a fix for one group,
but how to make . . . everyone successful.” A special education teacher named Ms.
Wood probably summed up this school’s teaching strategy best when she said, “We
have ongoing conversations about challenging students . . . at our school . . . the meat
of the curriculum is presented to everyone” (adapted from McLeskey, Waldron, &
Redd, 2014, p. 63).
To summarize, successful schools set high standards. Teachers believe that every
child can benefit from challenging, conceptual work. These schools offer an excess
of nurture—both to students, and to one another. In Baumrind’s parenting-styles
framework, these schools are authoritative in their approach.
Now that we have the outlines for what is effective, let’s tackle the challenge every
teacher faces: getting students eager to learn.
Producing Eager Learners

But to go to school in a summer morn,
O! it drives all joy away;
Under a cruel eye outworn,
The little ones spend the day
In sighing and dismay.
—William Blake, from “The Schoolboy” (1794)
Jean Piaget believed that the hunger to learn is more important than food or drink.
Why then do children over the centuries lament, “I hate school”? The reason is that
learning loses its joy when it becomes a requirement instead of an activity we choose
to engage in for ourselves.
THE PROBLEM: AN EROSION OF INTRINSIC MOTIVATION. Developmentalists divide
motivation into two categories. Intrinsic motivation refers to self-generated actions, intrinsic motivation The drive
those we take from our inner desires. When Piaget described our hunger to learn, he to act based on the pleasure
of taking that action in itself,
was referring to intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivation refers to activities that we not for an external reinforcer
undertake in order to get external reinforcers, such as praise or pay, or a good grade. or reward.
Unfortunately, the learning activity you are currently engaged in falls into the extrinsic motivation The drive
extrinsic category. You know you will be tested on what you are reading. Worse yet, if to take an action because
you decided to pick up this book for an intrinsic reason—because you wanted to learn that activity offers external
about human development—the very fact that you might be graded would make your reinforcers such as praise,
money, or a good grade.
basic interest fall off.
Numerous studies show that when adults give external reinforcers for activities that
are intrinsically motivating, children are less likely to want to perform those activities for
themselves (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Stipek, 1996). In one classic example,
researchers selected preschoolers who were intrinsically interested in art. When they
gave a “good player” award (an outside reinforcer) for the art projects, the children later
showed a dramatic decline in their interest in doing art for fun (Lepper, Greene, &
Nisbett, 1973). This research makes sense of the question you may have wondered
about: “Why, after taking that literature class, am I less interested in reading on my own?”
Young children enter kindergarten brimming with intrinsic motivation. When
does this love affair with school turn sour? Think back to your childhood, and you will
realize that enchantment wanes during early elementary school, when teachers pro-
vide those external reinforcers—grades (Stipek, 1997). Moreover, during
first or second grade, classroom learning often becomes abstract and
removed from life. Rote activities, like filling in worksheets and memoriz-
ing multiplication tables, have replaced the creative hands-on projects of
kindergarten. So ironically school may be the very setting where Piaget’s
little-scientist activities are least likely to occur.
Then, as children enter concrete operations—at around age 8—
Randi Sidman-Moore/Masterfile
they begin comparing their performance to that of their peers. This

competitive orientation erodes intrinsic motivation (Dweck, 1986; Self-
Brown & Mathews, 2003). The focus shifts from “I want to improve for
myself” to “I want to do better than my friends.”
In sum, several forces explain why many children dislike school:
School involves extrinsic reinforcers (grades). School learning, because Compare the activities of this
it often involves rote memorization, is not intrinsically interesting. In school, children kindergarten class of “little
are not free to set their own learning goals. Their performance is judged by how they scientists” with older children in
measure up to the rest of the class. your local elementary school and
you will immediately understand
It is no wonder, therefore, that studies in Western nations document an alarming why by about age 8 many
decline in intrinsic motivation as children travel through school (Katz, Kaplan, & children begin to say, “I hate
Gueta, 2010; Spinath & Steinmayr, 2008). Susan Harter (1981) asked children to choose school.”
between two statements: “Some kids work really hard to get good grades” (referring to
extrinsic motivation) or “Some kids work really hard because they like to learn new things”
(measuring intrinsic motives). When she gave her measure to hundreds of California
public school children, intrinsic motivation scores fell off from third to ninth grade.
Still, external reinforcers can be vital hooks that get us intrinsically involved.
Have you ever reluctantly read a book for a class and found yourself captivated by
the subject? Perhaps you enrolled in this course because it was required for gradua-
tion but are now so interested in the material that you want to make some aspect of
developmental science your career. Given that extrinsically motivating activities are
basic to school and life, how can we make them work best?
THE SOLUTION: MAKING EXTRINSIC LEARNING PART OF US. To answer this question,
Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985, 2000) make the point that we engage in some
types of extrinsic learning unwillingly: “I have to take that terrible anatomy course
because it is a requirement for graduation.” We enthusiastically embrace other extrin-
sic tasks, which may not be inherently interesting, because we identify with their
larger goal: “I want to memorize every bone of the body because that information is
vital to my nursing career.” In the first situation, the learning activity is irrelevant. In
the second, the task has become intrinsic because it is connected to our inner self.
Therefore, the key to transforming school learning from a chore into a pleasure is to
make extrinsic learning relate to children’s goals and desires.
The most boring tasks take on an intrinsic aura when they speak to children’s
passions. Imagine, for instance, how a first grader’s motivation to sound out words
might change if a teacher, knowing that student was captivated by dinosaurs, gave
that boy the job of sounding out dinosaur names. Deci and Ryan believe that learning
becomes intrinsic when it satisfies our basic need for relatedness (attachment). Think
back to the discussion of schools that beat the odds. Imagine how motivated those
children might be to learn to read when they understood that their success would
make their beloved school proud. Finally, extrinsic tasks take on an intrinsic feeling
when they foster autonomy, or offer choices of how to do our work (Patall, Cooper, &
Robinson, 2008; Ryan and others, 2006).
Studies around the globe suggest that when teachers and parents take away chil-
dren’s autonomy—by controlling, criticizing, or micromanaging learning tasks—they
erode intrinsic motivation (see Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010; Soenens & Vansteenkiste,
2010). We can see this principle in our own lives. By continually denigrating our
work, or hovering over every move, a controlling supervisor has the uncanny ability
to turn us off to the most intrinsically interesting job.
Our need for autonomy explains why, as I suggested in the section on successful
schools, assigning high-level conceptual learning tasks can be effective with every child.
Conversely, the poisonous effects of taking away autonomy suggests why the U.S. practice
of grading teachers (an extrinsic motivator) based on students’ performance on standard-
ized exams erodes satisfaction in this field (“I can’t teach the way I want. I have to teach
to the test or I’ll get fired”). Plus, because curriculum changes are typically dictated from
on “high” (and so take away autonomy), it makes sense that teachers can be unmotivated
to implement new reading and math directives even when those changes might work.
But, in a national experiment, when certain school districts gave staff the chance
to choose between several new programs and provided clear data about their effec-
tiveness, teachers modified their behavior—and, after 4 years, students made impres-
sive gains on standard reading tests (Slavin and others, 2013). Therefore, providing
autonomy (giving choices) and fostering relevance (pointing out the importance of
an activity to that person’s goals) benefits both students and teachers!
Table 7.5 summarizes these messages for teachers: Focus on relevance, enhance
relatedness, and provide autonomy. The table also pulls together other teaching tips
based on Gardner’s and Sternberg’s perspectives on intelligence and our look at what
makes schools successful. Now, let’s conclude by touching briefly on that sea change
in the U.S. public school landscape—the Common Core State Standards.
Table 7.5: Lessons for Teachers: A Recap of This Chapter’s Insights
1. Foster relevance. For instance, in teaching reading, tailor the books you are assigning so that
they fit children’s passions. And entice students to learn to read in other ways, such as getting
first and second graders energized by telling them that they will now be able to break a code
that the world uses, just like a detective!
2. Foster relatedness. Develop a secure, loving attachment with every student. Continually tell
each child how proud you are when that person tries hard or succeeds.
3. Foster autonomy. As much as possible, allow your students to select among several equivalent
assignments (such as choosing which specific books to read). Don’t give time limits, such
as “It’s 9:30 and this has to be done by 10:00,” or hover, take over tasks, or make negative
comments. Stand by to provide informational comments and careful scaffolding (see Chapter 5)
when students ask. Build in assignments that allow high-level thinking, such as using essays in
preference to rote work such as copying sentences or filling out worksheets.
Teaching Tips Based on Gardner’s and Sternberg’s Theories

1. Offer balanced assignments that capitalize on students’ different kinds of intelligence—creative
work such as essays; practical-intelligence activities such as calculating numbers to make
change at a store; single-answer analytic tasks (using Sternberg’s framework); and classroom
time devoted to music, dance, the arts, and caring for plants (capitalizing on Gardner’s ideas).
2. Explicitly teach students to use their different intelligences in mastering classroom work.
Additional Teaching Tips

1. Don’t rely on IQ test scores, especially in assessing the abilities of low-income and
ethnic-minority students.
2. Avoid praising children for being “brilliant.” Compliment them for hard work.
3. Go beyond academics to teach children interpersonal skills.
4. Strive for excellence. Expect all students to succeed.
5. Foster collaborative working relationships with your colleagues and students’ parents.
6. Minimize grade-oriented comparisons (such as who got A’s, B’s, C’s, etc.). Emphasize the importance
of personal improvement to students. Experiment with giving grades for individual progress.
Hot in Developmental Science: The Common Core State Standards

At this point in the chapter, you are fully aware of the dispiriting problems plaguing
U.S. schools. Affluent middle-class students get the best teachers and go to superior
schools. Simply by residing in the “wrong” zip codes, low-income children are left
behind from kindergarten onward. Because classwork involves rote memorization, a
steady erosion of intrinsic motivation sets in as children travel through school.
How can we change this scenario so that boys and girls—no matter where they
live—are literally on the same learning page? Now that we understand each child can
benefit from challenging work, can’t we inject more conceptual thinking into every class?
Enter the Common Core State Standards. Rather than learning benchmarks Common Core State
differing in a crazy-quilt pattern from state to state, the Common Core spells out Standards Transformative
U.S. public school changes,
consistent, demanding requirements for students attending every U.S. public school spelling out universal
(Kornhaber, Griffith, & Tyler, 2014). Rather than passively accepting the spit-back learning benchmarks and
information strategy that has caused children throughout the ages to love to hate emphasizing teaching
school, the Common Core encourages teachers to stress innovative thinking, problem through scaffolding, problem
solving, and communication
solving, and communication skills. Instead of presenting learning tasks haphazardly, skills.
the Common Core also specifically utilizes the Vygotskian principle of scaffolding
(see Chapter 5). Teachers are taught to tailor each assignment to flow in a stepwise
manner from what students have previously absorbed.
As of this writing, this landmark in education has been adopted in 45 states and
the District of Columbia (Kornhaber, Griffith, and Tyler, 2014). But the revolution has
miles to go (Rothman, 2014). Teachers need to learn how to teach using scaffolding and
more Socratic (questioning, discussion-based) classroom techniques. Teacher

evaluations and student end-of-year tests need to be aligned with the learning
goals in the Common Core. In addition to using fill-in-the-bubble multiple-
choice tests, for instance, student-generated portfolios may be required to test
the deeper thinking this approach to learning demands.
Will school systems give teachers the space to creatively collaborate
in how best to implement the Common Core, or will these guidelines be
viewed as another airy set of autonomy-eroding dictums from on high? Will
having clear benchmarks and putting a premium on thinking really make
a difference for students in less desirable zip codes (aka poor children) and
Masterfile
for every U.S. public school child? Stay tuned for data, as most states imple-
ment these changes after this book goes to press.
This teacher is using the
Common Core principles of The Common Core State Standards embody the equity and inclusiveness that
scaffolding, and stressing we hope for when children arrive on the planet in this enlightened day and age. I
creative thinking in teaching hope this chapter has alerted you to generally think about development in a more
this computer class–getting enlightened, inclusive way. Child-rearing priorities are shaped by our particular
these boys to think through their
answers on their own. society. Poverty-level children need a more level academic playing field. We need to
provide an environment that allows parents to effectively parent and schools to teach
in a way that permits every child to succeed.

1. If Devin, from an upper-middle-class family, and Adam, from a low-income family, are
starting kindergarten, you can predict that (pick one):
a. Both children will perform equally well on school readiness tests, but Adam will fall
behind because he is likely to go to a poor-quality kindergarten.
b. Devin will outperform Adam on school readiness tests, and the gap will probably
widen because Adam will go to a poor-quality kindergarten.
2. Malik hasn’t been doing well in school, and his achievement test scores have
consistently been well below average for his grade. On the WISC, Malik gets an
IQ score of 115. What is your conclusion?
3. You are telling a friend about the deficiencies of relying on a child’s IQ score. Pick out
the two arguments you might make.
a. The tests are not reliable; children’s scores typically change a lot during the
elementary school years.
b. The tests are not valid predictors of school performance.
c. As people have different abilities, a single IQ score may not tell us much about a
child’s unique gifts.
d. As poor children are at a disadvantage in taking the test, you should not use the IQ
scores as an index of “genetic school-related talents” for low-income children.
4. Josh doesn’t do well in reading or math, but he excels in music and dance, and he
gets along with all kinds of children. In terms of Sternberg’s theory of successful
intelligence, Josh is not good in , but he is skilled in
and . In terms of Gardner’s theory of , Josh is strong
in which intelligences?
5. A principal of a school asks for tips to help her students with learning difficulties.
Based on this section, you should advise (pick one): making the material simple/
putting these children together in a special class/providing high-level creative work
and embedding these children in the life of the school.
6. (a) Define intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. (b) Give an example of a task in your life
right now that is driven by each kind of motivation. (c) From reading the chapter, can you
come up with some ways to make the unpleasant extrinsic tasks you do feel more intrinsic?
SUMMARY
Home Children of divorce are at risk for negative life outcomes, but
most boys and girls adapt well to this common childhood event.
Families vary, from never-divorced two-parent couples to blended Parents find it difficult to tell their children they are divorcing,
families, from gay-parent families to unmarried couples or grand- and struggle not to badmouth an ex-spouse. The key to mak-
parents raising a child. The main distinction is that mother-headed ing divorce less traumatic lies in minimizing parental alienation,
families are far more likely to live in poverty than their two-parent giving children some say in custody arrangements, and promot-
counterparts. Today, in the West, families vary dramatically by ing high-quality custodial parenting. Joint custody is a common
ethnicity and immigrant status. Children, however, can thrive in arrangement today, but it only works if the dad is a reasonably
any kind of family, depending on the care parents provide. good parent.
According to Diana Baumrind’s parenting styles approach,
based on providing rules and nurturing, parents are classified
as authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and rejecting-
School
neglecting. Although, generally speaking, parents who pro- Many children from low-income families enter kindergarten well
vide clear rules and are highly child-centered tend to raise the behind their affluent counterparts in basic academic skills. These
most well-adjusted children, above all, parents should provide inequalities at the starting gate are magnified by the fact that poor
consistent discipline. Child-rearing approaches actually vary children are likely to attend the poorest-quality kindergartens.
from child to child, with at-risk children evoking poorer parent- Achievement tests measure a child’s body of knowledge. IQ
ing. Even though Asian-heritage families have been portrayed tests measure a child’s basic potential for classroom work. The
as authoritarian, they, too, adopt a child-centered authoritative Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC), is the main
style. Having rigid rules, while appropriate in the past, are symp- childhood IQ test. This time-intensive test, involving a variety of
toms of contemporary parenting distress. subtests, is given individually to a child. If the child’s IQ score is
Resilient children, boys and girls who do well in the face of trau- below 70—and if other indicators warrant this designation—that
matic experiences, tend to have good executive functions; other boy or girl may be labeled intellectually disabled. If the child’s
talents; one close, secure attachment and not be faced with an score is much higher than his performance on achievement tests,
overload of life blows. A specific genetic profile may offer some he is classified as having a specific learning disorder such as
children biological resilience in the face of stress. dyslexia. If a child’s IQ score is at or above 130, she is considered
gifted and is eligible to be placed in an accelerated class.
Behavioral-genetic researchers argue that children grow up to
fulfill their genetic destiny, and adequate parenting is all that is IQ scores satisfy the measurement criterion called reliability,
necessary. Judith Harris believes that peer groups (and the wider meaning that people tend to get roughly the same score if the
society)—not parents—are the main socializers in children’s lives. test is taken more than once. However, stressful life experiences
While the findings relating to acculturation (immigrant children can artificially lower a child’s score. The test is also valid, mean-
taking on the norms of the new society) support Harris’s theory, ing that it predicts performance in school. Some psychologists
high-quality parenting matters greatly when children are biologi- claim that the test score reflects a single quality called “g” that
cally and socially “at risk.” Parents need to be flexible, tailoring relates to cognitive performance in every area of life; others feel
their child-rearing to their environment and to their children’s that intelligence involves multiple abilities and argue that it is
needs. They should also relax and enjoy these fleeting years. inappropriate to rank people as intelligent or not based on a
single IQ score. The remarkable Flynn effect (century-long test
Attitudes about corporal punishment have changed dramatically,
performance increase due to improved environments), suggests
with many developed nations now outlawing spanking. Passing
that, for disadvantaged children, the IQ score cannot be viewed
similar bans however is unlikely in the United States. Although
as an index of genetic gifts.
physical punishment is not the preferred discipline, it is still used
by many U.S. parents and strongly endorsed by certain groups. Robert Sternberg and Howard Gardner argue that we need to
Experts disagree as to whether corporal punishment can ever be expand our measures of intelligence beyond traditional tests.
used, but we do know that spanking is particularly detrimental Sternberg believes that there are three types of intelligence: ana-
with “at-risk” children, people should never hit a baby, and posi- lytic intelligence (academic abilities), creative intelligence, and
tive reinforcement is far preferable to any punishment. practical intelligence (real-world abilities, or “street smarts”).
Successful intelligence requires having a balance among
Child maltreatment—physical abuse, neglect, emotional abuse,
these three skills. Gardner, in his multiple intelligences theory,
and sexual abuse—can sometimes be hard to classify. The prev-
describes eight (or possibly nine) types of intelligences. Although
alence of this parenting disaster varies from nation to nation,
neither of these psychologists has developed alternatives to con-
and maltreatment statistics differ, depending on whether we ask
ventional IQ tests, their ideas have been used to rethink the way
adults to reflect on their childhoods or consider observers’ reports.
we teach.
However, in general, parents’ personality problems, environmen-
tal stress, plus low social support and having an at-risk child are Schools serving disadvantaged students who flower academi-
the main factors that can provoke abuse. Abused children often cally share a mission to have every child succeed. They provide
have problems that can persist into adult life, in part because this a challenging academic environment and assume that each stu-
trauma can produce epigenetic changes in our DNA. Although dent can do well at high-level work. Teachers support and mentor
teachers and health-care professionals are required to report sus- one another at these authoritative schools.
pected abuse, it is difficult to speak up, and authorities often do Why do many children dislike school? The reason is that class-
not follow through on reports. So, unfortunately, child-abuse sta- room learning is based on extrinsic motivation (external rein-
tistics underestimate the magnitude of this problem today. forcers such as grades), which impairs intrinsic motivation
(the desire to learn for the sake of learning). School learning is students choices about how to do their work. Stimulating intrin-
inherently less interesting because it often involves rote memo- sic motivation by offering more autonomy (providing choices)
rization. Being evaluated in comparison to the class also erodes helps motivate teachers to adopt new effective teaching strate-
a child’s interest in learning for its own sake. Studies show a gies. The Common Core State Standards, by providing univer-
disturbing decline in intrinsic motivation as children progress sal learning benchmarks and teaching with an emphasis on
through elementary school. scaffolding, creativity, and problem solving, provide a potential
Teachers (and parents) can make extrinsic learning tasks sea change in U.S. education. Schools need to provide a better
more intrinsic by offering material relevant to children’s inter- planned, more interesting, consistent learning experience for
ests, fostering relatedness (or a close attachment), and giving every child.
KEY TERMS
parenting style, p. 201 child maltreatment, p. 207 gifted, p. 214 Sternberg’s successful
authoritative parents, p. 201 parental alienation, p. 210 reliability, p. 216 intelligence, p. 218
authoritarian parents, p. 201 achievement tests, p. 213 validity, p. 216 Gardner’s multiple
intelligences theory,
permissive parents, p. 201 WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Flynn effect, p. 216
p. 218
rejecting-neglecting Scale for Children), p. 213 “g,” p. 216
intrinsic motivation, p. 221
parents, p. 201 intellectual disability, p. 214 analytic intelligence, p. 218
extrinsic motivation, p. 221
resilient children, p. 203 specific learning disorder, creative intelligence, p. 218
p. 214 Common Core State
acculturation, p. 205 practical intelligence, p. 218 Standards, p. 223
corporal punishment, p. 206 dyslexia, p. 214
Home 3. c and d
1. Montana’s parents = authoritative. Pablo’s parents = 4. Analytic intelligence . . . creative intelligence and practical
authoritarian. Sara’s parents = permissive. intelligence . . . multiple intelligences . . . Josh’s strengths are
2. Amber in musical, kinesthetic, and interpersonal intelligence.
3. Judith Harris’s advice = Get your son in the best possible 5. You should advise giving these children high-level creative
peer group. This chapter’s recommendation = Provide work and embed them in the life of the school.
exceptionally sensitive parenting. 6. (a) Intrinsic motivation is self-generated—we work
4. a and c at something simply because it gives us joy. Extrinsic
motivation refers to activities propelled by external
5. Ms. Johnson might feel torn about reporting her reinforcers like grades. (b) Ask yourself: Am I doing this
observations, because she is afraid of parents retaliating or because I love it or only because this activity results in an
worried about making false accusations. Even if she does external reward? (c) 1. Make disliked, extrinsic tasks relevant
make a report, there is a good chance authorities will not to a larger personal goal. (“Cleaning the house will help me
investigate the situation. become a more organized person. Plus, it’s great exercise, so
6. The main criterion for awarding joint custody—or unlimited I’ll become healthier.”) 2. Increase your sense of autonomy
visits—should be whether the father is a good parent. or feeling of having choices around this activity. (“I’ll do my
housecleaning at the time of day that feels least burdensome
School
while I listen to my favorite CD.”) 3. Enhance attachments
1. b (“If my significant other comes home to a clean house, she’ll
2. Malik has a learning disability. feel wonderful!”)
© Image Source/Age Fotostock
Adolescence
This two-chapter part dealing with the teenage years actually progresses a bit
chronologically. That’s because my first topic, puberty, can begin to take place
as early as age 9 or 10.
In Chapter 8–Physical Development—I’ll spend a good deal of time exploring

puberty, that early adolescent total body change. However, I’ll also be focusing
on two other teenage body-oriented topics: body image (and eating disorders)
PART IV
and adolescent sexuality.
Chapter 9–Cognitive and Socioemotional Development—begins by examin-

ing the dramatic advances in reasoning and morality that occur during adoles-
cence. Next, I’ll be looking at teenagers’ emotional states and offering insights
into which children are prone to have problems or flourish during this special
decade of life. The last part of this chapter concerns relationships—how teen-
agers behave with their parents; how they act with their peers.
229
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Puberty
Setting the Context: Culture,
History, and Puberty
The Hormonal Programmers
The Physical Changes
Individual Differences in
Puberty Timetables
An Insider’s View of Puberty
Wrapping Up Puberty
INTERVENTIONS: Minimizing
Puberty Distress
Body Image Issues

The Differing Body Concerns of
Girls and Boys
Eating Disorders
INTERVENTIONS: Improving
Teenagers’ Body Image
Sexuality
Exploring Sexual Desire
Who Is Having Intercourse?
Who Are Teens Having
Intercourse With?
SCIENCE: Is There Still a Sexual
Double Standard?
Wrapping Up Sexuality:
Contemporary Trends
INTERVENTIONS: Toward
Teenager-Friendly Sex Education
Rick Gomez/Radius Images/Getty Images

Samantha and her twin brother, Sam, were so much alike—in their physical features,
their personalities, their academic talents. Except for the sex difference, they seemed
like identical twins. Then, when Samantha was 10, she started to tower over Sam and
the rest of the fifth-grade class.
Yes, there were downsides to being first to develop—needing to hide behind a
locker when you dressed for gym; not having anyone to talk to when you got your
period at age 10; being teased by the other kids about your big, strange body. But,
oh, what fun! From being a neglected, pudgy elementary school child, by sixth grade,
Samantha leaped into the ranks of most popular. At age 12, Samantha was smoking
and drinking. By 14, she regularly defied her helpless parents and often left the house
at 2 a.m.
Samantha’s parents were frantic, but their daughter couldn’t care less. Everything
else was irrelevant compared to exploring being an adult. It took a life-changing
tenth-grade trip to Costa Rica with Sara, and a pregnancy scare, to get Samantha on
track. Samantha had abandoned Sara, her best friend from first grade on, for her new
“mature” friends. But when the girls got close again that memorable summer, Sara’s
calming influence woke Samantha up. Samantha credits comments like, “Why are
you putting yourself in danger by having unprotected sex?” with saving her life. Plus,
her lifelong competition with her brother didn’t hurt. Although Sam was also an early
developer, when he shot up to 6 feet in the spring of seventh grade, he was great at
sports and also a social star.
Now that Samantha is 30, married, and expecting her first child, it’s interesting for
the three of them to get together and talk (for the first time) about the teenage years.
Sam remembers the thrill of getting so much stronger and his first incredible feelings
of being in love. Samantha recalls being excited about her changing body, but she also
remembers obsessively worrying about being too fat. Then, there is Sara, who says
middle school was no problem because she didn’t menstruate until age 14. Everyone
goes through puberty, but why does everyone react in different ways?
W
hy did Samantha have trou- puberty, tracking the unfolding changes,
ble as an early-maturing girl, focusing on how teens react to their
while Sam and Sara sailed bodies. Next, I’ll discuss body image
through these landmark years? This issues and, finally, explore sexuality dur-
chapter focuses on that question and ing this watershed time of life. As you
others as I explore puberty, the name read this chapter, think back to when
for the internal and external changes you were 10 or 12 or 14. How did you
related to physically becoming adult. feel about your body during puberty?
I’ll begin by exploring this landmark When did you begin dating and fanta-
life transition—examining what sets off sizing about having sex?
231
232 PART IV Adolescence
puberty The hormonal and

physical changes by which
children become sexually
Puberty
mature human beings and Compare photos of yourself from late elementary school and high school to get a
reach their adult height. vivid sense of the changes that occur during puberty. From the size of our thighs to
puberty rite A “coming the shape of our nose, we become a different-looking person during the early teenage
of age” ritual, usually years. Although children’s timetables vary, today puberty—which lasts about five years
beginning at some event from start to finish—typically is a pre-teen and early adolescent change (Archibald,
such as first menstruation, Graber, & Brooks-Gunn, 2003). Moreover, today, as you saw with Samantha, who
held in traditional cultures
to celebrate children’s started menstruating at age 10 and has just gotten pregnant at age 30, the gap between
transition to adulthood. being physically able to have children and actually having children can be twice as
secular trend in puberty long as infancy and childhood combined.
A century-long decline in
the average age at which
children reach puberty in the
developed world.
menarche A girl’s first
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
menstruation.
spermarche A boy’s first
ejaculation of live sperm.
These photographs of fourth graders and high school juniors at the prom offer a vivid visual
reminder of the total body transformation that takes place as children travel through puberty
during early adolescence.
This lack of person–environment fit, when our body is passionately saying “have
sex” and society is telling us to “just say no” to intercourse, explains why issues relating
to teenage sexuality provoke such anxiety among Western adults. Our concerns are
recent. They are a product of living in the contemporary developed world.
Setting the Context: Culture, History,

For this rural Vietnamese
boy, reaching puberty means
and Puberty
it’s time to assume his adult As my sisters and I went about doing our daily chores, we choked on the dust stirred up
responsibilities as a fisherman. by the herd of cattle and goats that had just arrived in our compound. . . . These animals
This is the reason why having were my bride wealth, negotiated by my parents and the family of the man who had
puberty rites to mark the end of been chosen as my husband. . . . I am considered to be a woman, so I am ready to marry,
childhood makes excellent sense have children, and assume adult privileges and responsibilities. My name is Telelia ole
in less-industrialized cultures,
Mariani. I am 14 years old.
but not in our own.
(quoted in Wilson, Ngige, & Trollinger, 2003, p. 95)
As you can see in this quotation from a girl in rural Nigeria,

throughout most of history and even today in agrarian
cultures, having sex as a teenager was “normal.” The rea-
son is that puberty was often society’s signal to find a spouse
(Schlegel, 1995; Schlegel & Barry, 1991). The fact that
a young person’s changing body meant entering a new
Keren Su/The Image Bank/Getty Images
adult stage of life produced a different attitude toward the

physical changes. In our culture, we downplay puberty
because we don’t want teenagers to act on their sexual
feelings for years. In traditional societies, people might
celebrate the changes in a coming-of-age ceremony called
the puberty rite.
CHAPTER 8 Physical Development 233
Celebrating Puberty
Puberty rites were emotional events, carefully
scripted to highlight a young person’s entrance into
adulthood. Often, children were removed from their
families and asked to perform challenging tasks.
Moeletsi Mabe/The Times/Gallo Images/Getty Images

There was anxiety (“Can I really do this thing?”) and
feelings of awe and self-efficacy, as the young person
returned to joyfully enter the community as an adult
(Feixa, 2011; Weisfeld, 1997).
So as this photo shows in one South African
tribe, after a private group initiation, boys returned
to their tribe and were labeled as “warriors” in a
community celebration. In the Amazon, males were
required to prove their manhood by killing a large
animal and then, metaphorically, “die”—by drinking
This photo shows South
a hallucinogen and spending time in isolation to “be born again” as adults. Among the African boys returning from an
Masai of Africa, male children first faced the challenge of undergoing a painful cir- “initiation school” to welcome
cumcision without showing distress. After passing this test, they entered a segregated their entry into adulthood.
compound to learn military maneuvers before proudly returning home and taking As is classic, in this culture
the puberty ritual involves
wives (Feixa, 2011). separation from one’s family,
For girls, menstruation was the standard marker to celebrate one’s arrival into symbolically being “reborn”
womanhood. In the traditional Navajo Kinaalda ceremony, for instance, girls in or changed (in this case, being
their first or second menstrual cycle, guided by a female mentor, performed the circumcised), and intensive
instruction in the conduct
long-distance running ritual, sprinting for miles. (Imagine your motivation to befitting their new status
train for this event, when you understood that the length of your run symbolized as men.
how long you would live!) The female role
model massaged the girl’s body, painted her
face, and supervised her as she prepared a huge Finland
Sweden
corn cake (a symbol of fertility) to be served Norway
to the community during a joyous, all-night Italy (north)
sing. The Navajo believe that when females U.K. (south)
begin menstruating, they possess special spiri- U.S.A. (middle class)
tual powers, so everyone would gather around
for the girl’s blessings as they gave her a new Average age at 16
adult name. menarche
Today, however, girls may menstruate at (years) 15
age 10 or even 9. At that age—in any society—
could people be ready for adult life? The answer 14
is no. In the past, we reached puberty at an
older age. 13
The Declining Age of Puberty 12

1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960
You can see this fascinating decline, called the
Year
secular trend in puberty, in Figure 8.1. In the
1860s, the average age of menarche, or first men-
struation, in northern Europe was over 17 (Tanner, 1978). In the 1960s, in the devel- figure 8.1: The secular
oped world, it dropped to under 13 (Parent and others, 2003). Then, after a pause, trend in puberty: Notice that
the average age of menarche
about 20 years ago, the menarche marker began to slide downward again (Lee & dramatically declined in
Styne, 2013). developed countries during
This means, a century ago, many girls could not get pregnant until their late the first half of the twentieth
teens. Today, many girls can have babies before their teenage years. century. Why exactly is this
decline continuing? Stay tuned
Researchers typically use menarche as their benchmark for charting the secular for surprising answers later in
trend because it is an obvious sign of being able to have a child. The male signal of this chapter.
fertility, spermarche, or first ejaculation of live sperm, is a hidden event. Data from: Tanner 1978, p. 103.
In addition, because it reflects better nutrition, in the

same way as with stunting in early childhood (remember
Chapter 3), we can use the secular trend in puberty as an
index of a nation’s economic development. In the United
States, African American girls begin to menstruate at close
to age 12. In impoverished African nations, such as Senegal,
© Peter Hvizdak/The Images Works
the average age of menarche is over 16 (Parent and others,

2003)!
Given that nutrition is intimately involved, what exactly
sets puberty off? For answers, let’s focus on the hormonal sys-
tems that program the physical changes.
If they had grown up a century

ago, these seventh graders at a
The Hormonal Programmers
summer computer camp would Puberty is programmed by two command centers. One system, located in the adre-
really have looked like girls. Due nal glands at the top of the kidneys, begins to release its hormones at about age
to the secular trend in puberty,
females today mature physically
6 to 8, several years before children show observable signs of puberty. The adrenal
at a younger age than they did androgens, whose output increases to reach a peak in the early twenties, eventually
one hundred years ago. produce (among other events) pubic hair development, skin changes, body odor, and,
as you will read later in this chapter, our first feelings of sexual desire (McClintock &
Herdt, 1996).
About two years later, the most important command center kicks in. Called the
HPG axis—because it involves the hypothalamus (in the brain), the pituitary (a gland
at the base of the brain), and the gonads (the ovaries and the testes)—this system
produces the major body changes.
As you can see in Figure 8.2, puberty is set off by a three-phase chain reaction.
At about age 9 or 10, pulsating bursts of the hypothalamic hormone stimulate the
pituitary gland to step up production of its hormones. This causes the ovaries and
testes to secrete several closely related compounds called estrogens and the hormone
adrenal androgens Hormones called testosterone.
produced by the adrenal As the blood concentrations of estrogens and testosterone float upward, these
glands that program various hormones unleash a physical transformation. Estrogens produce females’ changing
aspects of puberty, such as
growth of body hair, skin
shape by causing the hips to widen and the uterus and breasts to enlarge. They set in
changes, and sexual desire. motion the cycle of reproduction, stimulating the ovaries to produce eggs. Testoster-
HPG axis The main hormonal
one causes the penis to lengthen, promotes the growth of facial and body hair, and
system programming is responsible for a dramatic increase in muscle mass and other internal masculine
puberty; it involves a changes.
triggering hypothalamic Boys and girls both produce estrogens and testosterone. Testosterone and the
hormone that causes the
pituitary to secrete its
adrenal androgens are the desire hormones. They are responsible for sexual arousal
hormones, which in turn in females and males. However, women produce mainly estrogens. The concentra-
cause the ovaries and testes tion of testosterone is roughly eight times higher in boys after puberty than it is in
to develop and secrete the girls; in fact, this classic “male” hormone is responsible for all the physical changes
hormones that produce the
major body changes.
in boys.
Now, to return to our earlier question: What primes the triggering hypothalamic
gonads The sex organs—the
ovaries in girls and the testes
hormone? As Figure 8.2 illustrates, many forces help unleash the pulsating hypo-
in boys. thalamic bursts—from genetics, to exposure to light; from possible chemicals in our
testosterone The hormone
water and food, to environmental stress (more about this fascinating force later).
responsible for the Central to this process is a threshold amount of a hormone called leptin, which is
maturation of the organs of tied to the level of body fat (McCarthy, 2013; Lee & Styne, 2013). This explains why
reproduction and other signs boys and girls whose bodies are stunted due to lack of food reach puberty at older
of puberty in men, and for
hair and skin changes during
ages. It accounts for the role that the obesity epidemic may play in the declining age
puberty and for sexual desire of puberty in recent years (Lee & Styne, 2013; more about this later). These puberty
in both sexes. primers unleash a cascade of physical changes.
figure 8.2: The HPG axis:

The three-phase hormonal
sequence that triggers
INFLUENCES ON TIMING puberty: As you can see here,
Environmental chemicals in response to various genetic
and environmental influences,
Life stress Body weight Nutrition level
(body fat) the hypothalamus releases a
hormone that stimulates the
Light, climate Genetics Growth
pituitary gland to produce its
own hormones, which cause the
ovaries in girls and the testes
in boys to grow and secrete
estrogens and testosterone,
producing the physical changes
of puberty.
Brain Adapted from Tanner, 1978, p. 103.
(right hemisphere)
Pituitary
gland
Hypothalamus
Pituitary hormones
stimulate gonads to
increase production Hormones produce
of their hormones bodily changes:
• growth spurt
GONADS • primary sexual
characteristics
• secondary sexual
characteristics
Ovaries
(estrogen) Testes
(testosterone)
The Physical Changes

Puberty causes a total psychological as well as physical transformation. As the hor-
mones flood the body, they affect specific brain regions, making teenagers more
emotional, sensitive to social cues, and interested in taking risks (as you will read in
Chapter 9). Scientists divide the physical changes into three categories:
• Primary sexual characteristics refer to the body changes directly involved in
reproduction. The growth of the penis and menstruation are examples of primary
sexual characteristics. primary sexual
characteristics Physical
• Secondary sexual characteristics is the label for the hundreds of other changes changes of puberty that
that accompany puberty, such as breast development, the growth of pubic hair, directly involve the organs
of reproduction, such as the
voice changes, and alterations in the texture of the skin. growth of the penis and the
• The growth spurt merits its own special category. At puberty—as should come as onset of menstruation.
no surprise—there is a dramatic increase in height and weight. secondary sexual
characteristics Physical
Now, let’s offer a motion picture of these changes, first in girls and then in boys. changes of puberty that
are not directly involved in
reproduction.
For Girls
growth spurt A dramatic
The first sign of puberty in girls is the growth spurt. During late childhood, girls’ increase in height and
growth picks up speed, accelerates, and then begins to decrease (Abbassi, 1998). On a weight that occurs during
visit to my 11-year-old niece, I got a vivid sense of this “peak velocity” phase of growth. puberty.
Six months earlier, I had towered over her. Now, she insisted on standing back-to-back
to demonstrate: “Look, Aunt Janet, I’m taller than you!”
About six months after the growth spurt begins, girls start to develop breasts and
pubic hair. On average, girls’ breasts take about four years to grow to their adult form
(Tanner, 1955, 1978).
Menarche typically occurs in the middle to final stages of breast and pubic hair
development when growth is winding down (Christensen and others, 2010; Peper &
Dahl, 2013; Lee & Styne, 2013). So you can tell your 12-year-old niece, who has
just begun to menstruate, that, while her breasts are still “works in progress,” she is
probably about as tall today as she will be as an adult.
When they reach menarche, can girls get pregnant? Yes, but there is often a win-
dow of infertility until the system fully gears up. Does puberty unfold in the same way
for every girl? The answer is no. Because the hormonal signals are complex, in some
girls, pubic hair development (programmed by the adrenal androgens) is underway
before the breasts begin to enlarge. Occasionally, a girl does grow much taller after
she begins to menstruate.
The most fascinating variability relates to the rate of change. Some chil-
dren are developmental “tortoises.” Their progression through puberty is slow-
paced. Others are “hares.” They speed through the body changes. For instance,
while breast development on average takes four years, the process—from start to
finish—can range from less than two to an incredible nine years! (See Mendle
and others, 2010.)
New research suggests the pace at which children progress through puberty is
affected by when the process starts. Girls who begin to develop earlier often proceed
at a slower rate. Late starters pass through puberty for a shorter time. So if your
13-year-old niece is worried because she has just begun developing breasts, you can
tell her that she may catch up a bit with the rest of the class now that her puberty
system has locked into gear.
In tracking puberty in females, researchers focus on charting pubic hair and breast
development because they can measure these external secondary sexual changes in
stages. But the internal changes are equally dramatic. During puberty the uterus
grows, the vagina lengthens, and the hips develop a cushion of fat. The vocal cords
get longer, the heart gets bigger, and the red blood cells carry more oxygen. So, in
addition to looking very different, after puberty, girls
become much stronger (Archibald, Graber, & Brooks-
Gunn, 2003). The increases in strength, stamina,
height, and weight are astonishing in boys.
For Boys
Photography by Alan Antiporda/Moment/Getty Images
In boys, researchers also chart how the penis, testicles,

and pubic hair develop in stages. However, because
these organs of reproduction begin developing first,
boys still look like children to the outside world for
a year or two after their bodies start changing. Voice
changes, the growth of body hair, and that other
visible sign of being a man—needing to shave—all
take place after the growth of the testes and penis are
underway (Tanner, 1978). Now, let’s pause to look at
Because the landmark change, the most obvious signals that a boy is becoming a man—the mammoth alterations in
shaving, occurs fairly late in the body size, shape, and strength.
sequence of puberty, we can be Recall from Chapter 5 that elementary school boys and girls are roughly the same
sure that this 14-year-old-boy
has been looking like a man, for
size. Then, during the puberty growth spurt, males shoot up an incredible average of
some time, in ways we can’t see 8 inches, compared to 4 inches for girls (Tanner, 1978). Boys also become far stronger
in this photo. than the other sex.
One reason lies in the tremendous Boys

increase in muscle mass. Another lies in Girls
the dramatic cardiovascular changes. At 17
Blood hemoglobin
puberty, boys’ hearts increase in weight by (cm/100 ml)
more than one-third. In particular, notice 16
in Figure 8.3 that, compared to females,
after puberty, males have many more red 15
blood cells and a much greater capacity for
carrying oxygen in their blood. The visible 14
signs of these changes are a big chest, wide
shoulders, and a muscular frame. The real-
13
world consequence is that after puberty,
males get a boost in gross motor skills that
12
give them an edge in everything from soc-
cer to sprinting; from cycling to carrying 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
heavy loads. Age
Do you know seventh- or eighth-grade (years)
boys? If so, you might notice that growth 56
Red blood cells
during puberty takes place in the opposite (millions/c.mm)
pattern to the one that occurs earlier in 54
life. Rather than following the cephalocau- 52
dal and proximodistal sequences (from the
head downward and from the middle of the 50
body outward), at puberty, the hands, feet,
48
and legs grow first. While this happens for
both sexes, because their growth is so dra- 46
matic, these changes are especially obvious
44
in boys.
Their long legs and large feet explain 12
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
why, in their early teens, boys look so
Age
gawky (and unattractive!). Adding to the (years)
problem is the crackly voice produced
by the growing larynx, the wispy look of
beginning facial hair, and the fact that during puberty a boy’s nose and ears grow figure 8.3: Changes in
blood hemoglobin and red
before the rest of his face catches up. Plus, the increased activity of the sweat glands blood cells during puberty
and enlarged pores leads to the condition that results in so much emotional agony: in males and females: At
acne. Although girls also suffer from acne, boys are more vulnerable to this condi- puberty, increases in the amount
tion because testosterone, which males produce in abundance, produces changes of hemoglobin in the blood and
in the number of red blood cells
in the hair and skin. cause children of both sexes to
get far stronger. But notice that
Are Boys on a Later Timetable? A Bit these changes are more pro-
nounced in boys than in girls.
Now, visit a middle school and you will be struck by the fact that boys, on average, Data from: Tanner, 1955, p. 103.
appear to reach puberty two years later than girls. But appearances can be deceiv-
ing. In girls, as I mentioned earlier, the externally visible signs of puberty, such as
the growth spurt and breast development, take place toward the beginning of the
sequence. For boys, the hidden development—growth of the testes—occurs first
(Huddleston & Ge, 2003; Lee & Styne, 2013).
If we look at the real sign of fertility, the timetables for girls and boys are not
very far apart. In one study, boys reported that spermarche occurred at roughly
age 13, only about six months later than the average age of menarche (Stein &
Reiser, 1994).
Figure 8.4, on the next page, graphically summarizes some changes I have been
discussing. Now, let’s explore the numbers inside the chart. Why do children undergo
puberty at such different ages?
figure 8.4: The sequence

of some major events of Average girl
puberty: This chart shows the Average boy
ages at which some important Height spurt 91/2–141/2 101/2–16
changes of puberty occur in
the average boy and girl. The
Breast
numbers below each change development 8–13
show the range of ages at which
that event begins. Notice that Menarche
girls are on a slightly earlier 10–161/2
timetable than boys, that boys’
Penis
height spurt occurs at a later 11–141/2
point in their development,
and that there are dramatic Testes
differences from child to child 10–131/2
in the timing of puberty.
Data from: Tanner, 1978, pp. 23, 29.
Pubic hair 8–14
10–18
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Age
(years)
Individual Differences in Puberty Timetables

I’m seventeen already. But I still look like a kid. I get teased a lot, especially by the other
guys. . . . Girls aren’t interested in me, either, because most of them are taller than I
am. When will I grow up?
(adapted from an on-line chat room)
The gender difference in puberty timetables can cause anxiety. As an early-maturing

girl, I vividly remember slumping to avoid the humiliation of having my partner’s
head encounter my chest in sixth-grade dancing class! But nature’s cruelest blow
may relate to the individual differences in timing. What accounts
for the five-year difference in puberty timetables between
children who live in the same environment? (See Parent and
others, 2003.)
Not unexpectedly, genetics is important. Identical twins go
through puberty at roughly the same ages (Silventoinen and others,
Bananastock/Jupiter Images/Getty Images
2008; Lee & Styne, 2013). Asian Americans tend to be slightly

behind other U.S. children in puberty timetables (Sun and others,
2002). African American and Hispanic boys and girls are ahead of
other North American groups (Rosenfield, Lipton, & Drum, 2009;
Lee & Styne, 2013).
But remember that in impoverished African countries—where
children are poorly nourished—girls begin to menstruate, on aver-
age, as late as age 16. Recall from Chapter 5 that, in the United
Look at female middle school States, obesity rates are skyrocketing among African American
friends—such as these girls elementary school girls and boys. Given that body fat is intimately involved, and the
getting ready for a dance—
and you will be struck with secular trend picked up steam during the past 20 years, does childhood weight predict
the differences in puberty when a boy or girl physically matures?
timetables. As you can see, a
variety of interesting forces pre- Overweight and Early Puberty (It’s All About Girls)
dict why children mature earlier
or later than their peers. The answer is yes— if we consider female children only. Controlling for other forces,
having a high BMI (body mass index) during elementary school does predict enter-
ing puberty earlier for girls (Rosenfield, Lipton, & Drum, 2009; Lee & Styne, 2013).
Most tantalizing, rapid weight gain in the first nine months of life is strongly linked to
menstruating at a younger age! (See Walvoord, 2010.)
Recall that this finding dovetails with the research in

Chapter 5, suggesting that our overweight path is set in motion
early in life. Now—in addition to foreshadowing later obesity—
weight gain during infancy may even predict when we sexually
mature. What I find strangest, however, is that the data for boys
is inconsistent. Some studies show obese boys mature early; oth-
ers suggest these children develop later than their peers! (See
Lee & Styne, 2013.)
Now let’s turn to a more astonishing environmental influ-
ence predicting puberty, specifically in girls—the quality of
family life.
Family Stress and Early Puberty

In Chapter 5 you learned that
(Again, It’s About Girls) pushing food on this adorable
Drawing on an evolutionary psychology perspective, some developmentalists argue 8-month-old girl might
that when family stress is intense, nature might build in a mechanism to acceler- program her body to put on
excessive weight. Now we know
ate sexual maturity and free a child from an inhospitable nest (Belsky, Steinberg, & overfeeding can have another
Draper, 1991). Just as stress in the womb “instructs” the baby to store fat (recall the negative epigenetic effect—
fetal programming hypothesis in Chapter 2), researchers believe that an unhappy priming this baby to reach
childhood signals the body to expect a short life and pushes adult fertility to a younger puberty at an early age.
age (Belsky, Houts, & Pasco Fearon, 2010).
I must emphasize that “genetics” is the most important force predicting your
puberty timetable (when your mother or father developed). But, if a girl is tempera-
mentally vulnerable, controlling for every other influence (genetics, body weight, and
so on), her family life makes its small, tantalizing contribution, too (Ellis and others,
2011b). Early-maturing girls are more apt to grow up in mother-headed households
(Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010; Neberich and others, 2010) and report
intense childhood stress (Ellis, 2004; Allison & Hyde, 2013). In one longitudinal
study, mothers’ use of power-assertive discipline during preschool—yelling, shaming,
rejecting—was associated with earlier menstruation (Belsky and others, 2007a, 2010).
Even being insecurely attached at age 1 predicts reaching menarche at a younger age
(Belsky, Houts, & Pasco Fearon, 2010).
Why—specifically in girls—is the hypothalamic timer sensitive to body weight
and family stress? We do not know. But, these surprising studies emphasize the
developmental-systems theory message that underlies this book: To understand every
aspect of who we are, look to a variety of influences—from genetics to gender, from
physiology to parenting, to everything else.
Table 8.1 summarizes these points by spelling out questions that predict a female
child’s chance of reaching puberty at a younger-than-average age. If you were an early
maturer, how many—if any—of these forces applied to you?
Now that I’ve described the physical process, let’s shift to an insider’s perspective,
exploring how children feel about three classic signs of puberty—breast development,
menstruation, and first ejaculation—then, looking at the consequences of reaching
puberty relatively early or late.
Table 8.1: Predicting a Girl’s Chances of Early Puberty: Some Questions
1. Did this girl’s parents reach puberty early?

2. Is this girl African American?
3. Is this girl overweight? Did she gain weight rapidly during her first year of life?
4. Has this girl’s family life been stressful and unhappy? Did she have an insecure attachment?
An Insider’s View of Puberty

If you think back to how you felt about your changing body during puberty, you
probably remember a mixture of emotions: fear, pride, embarrassment, excitement.
Now, imagine how you would react if a researcher asked you to describe your inner
state. Would you want to talk about how you really felt? The reluctance of pre-teens
to discuss what is happening (“Yuck! Just don’t go there!”) explains why, to study
reactions to puberty, researchers often ask adults to remember this time of life, or use
indirect measures, such as having children tell stories about pictures, to reveal their
inner concerns.
The Breasts
In a classic study, researchers used this indirect strategy to explore how girls feel
in relation to their parents while undergoing that most visible sign of becoming a
woman—breast development (Brooks-Gunn and others, 1994). They asked a group
of girls to tell a story about the characters in a drawing that showed an adult female
(the mother) taking a bra out of a shopping bag while an adolescent girl and an
adult male (the father) watched. While girls often talked about the mother in the
picture as being excited and happy, they typically described the teenager as humili-
ated by her father’s presence in the room. Moreover,
girls in the middle of puberty told the most negative
stories about the fathers, suggesting that body embarrass-
ment is at its height when children are undergoing the
physical changes.
Because society strongly values this symbol of being
a woman (and our contemporary culture sees bigger as
better!), other research suggests that U.S. girls feel proud
David Sacks/The Image Bank/Getty Images
of their developing breasts (Brooks-Gunn & Warren,

1988). However, among girls in ballet schools, where
there are strong pressures to look prepubescent, breast
development evokes distress (Brooks-Gunn & Warren,
1985). The principle that children’s reactions to puberty
depend on messages from the wider world holds true for
menstruation, too.
Imagine how these girls
auditioning at a premier ballet Menstruation
academy in New York City will Think of being a Navajo girl and knowing that when you begin to menstruate, you
feel when they develop breasts
enter a special spiritual state. Compare this with the less-than-glowing portrait West-
and perhaps find that their
womanly body shape inter- ern societies paint about “that time of the month” (Brooks-Gunn & Ruble, 1982;
rupts their career dreams, Costos, Ackerman, & Paradis, 2002). From the advertisements for pills strong enough
and you will understand why to handle even menstrual pain to its classic description as “the curse,” there’s no
children’s reactions to puberty
wonder that in the past, girls approached this milestone with dread (Brooks-Gunn &
depend totally on their unique
environment. Ruble, 1982).
Luckily, upper-middle-class, baby boom mothers have changed these cultural
scripts. When 18- to 20-year-old students at Oregon State University were asked
in 2006 to write about their “first period experiences,” 3 out of 4 women recalled
their moms as being thrilled (“She treated me like a princess”). One person wrote
that, the day after she told her mother, “I saw an expensive box of chocolates and
a card addressed to me. It said ‘Congrats on becoming a woman’” (quoted in Lee,
2008, p. 1332).
Positive responses make a difference. In contrast to earlier research, about half
of these young women described menarche as positive or “no big deal.” But nega-
tive emotions linger. Even when they described their mothers as supportive, 1 in 3
students remembered feeling “disgusted” or, more likely, ambivalent—both ashamed
and happy—when menarche arrived.
First Ejaculation
Daughters must confide in their mothers about menarche because this change
demands specific coping techniques. Spermarche, as I mentioned earlier, is hidden,
because this event doesn’t require instructions from the outside world. Who talks to
male adolescents about first ejaculation, and how do teenagers feel about their signal of
becoming a man? Read these memories from some 18-year-olds (Stein & Reiser, 1994):
I woke up the next morning and my sheets were pasty. . . . After you wake up your mind
is kind of happy and then you realize: “Oh my God, this is my wet dream!”
(quoted in Stein & Reiser, 1994, p. 380)
My mom, she knew I had them. It was all over my sheets and bedspread and stuff, but
she didn’t say anything, didn’t tease me and stuff. She never asked if I wanted to talk
about it—I’m glad. I never could have said anything to my mom.
(quoted in Stein & Reiser, 1994, p. 377)
Most of these boys reported that they needed to be secretive. They didn’t want
to let anyone know. And notice from the second quotation—as you saw earlier with
fathers and pre-teen girls—that boys also view their changing bodies as especially
embarrassing around the parent of the opposite sex.
Is this tendency for children to hide the symptoms of puberty around the par-
ent of the other gender programmed into evolution to help teenagers emotionally
separate from their families? We do not know. Where we do have massive scientific
information is on the emotional impact of being early or late.
Being Early: It Can Be a Problem for Girls

Imagine being an early-maturing girl. How would you feel if you looked
like an adult while everyone else in your class still looked like a child? Now
imagine being a late maturer and thinking, “What’s wrong with my body?
Will I ever grow up?”
Actually, the timing of development matters, but again the results differ
for boys and girls. Early-maturing boys are more prone to abuse substances,
particularly if these teens are low in impulse control (Castellanos-Ryan and
others, 2013). They also may be at risk for depression if they have prior
personality problems and an unhappy family life (Benoit, Lacourse, &
Laurence Mouton/PhotoAlto Agency RF Collections/Getty Images

Claes, 2013). But, because of being physically stronger (and so better at
sports) and on time for the average girl, maturing early provides boys a
popularity and self-esteem boost (Li and others, 2013).
Unfortunately, the research is consistently downbeat for the other sex:
Hundreds of studies suggest early-maturing girls can have widespread dif-
ficulties during their adolescent years.
EARLY-MATURING GIRLS ARE AT RISK OF DEVELOPING EXTERNALIZING
PROBLEMS. Because we choose friends who are “like us,” early-maturing
girls may gravitate toward becoming friends with older girls and boys.
So they tend to get involved in “adult activities” such as smoking, drink-
ing, and taking drugs at a younger age. Maturing early heightens the
tendency—described in the next chapter—for teens to make dangerous, While early-maturing girls may
impulsive decisions with their peers (Kretsch & Harden, 2014.) be prone to get into trouble, for
Because they are so busy testing the limits, in one classic study, early-maturing these manlike seventh-grade
girls tended to get worse grades than their classmates in the sixth and seventh boys, developing earlier can be a
social plus, as they are right on
grades (Simmons & Blyth, 1987). By their twenties, Swedish researchers found, early- time for the average girl in this
maturing girls were several times less likely to have graduated from high school than class.
their later-developing peers (Stattin & Magnusson, 1990).
Then, there is the main concern with having a mature body early on: having
unprotected sex. Because they may not have the cognitive abilities to resist this social
pressure and often have older boyfriends, early-maturing girls are more likely to have
intercourse at a younger age (Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010). They are less
apt to use contraception, making them more vulnerable to becoming pregnant as teens
(Allison & Hyde, 2013). Imagine being a sixth- or seventh-grade girl thrilled to be pur-
sued by the high school boys. Would you have the presence of mind to “just say no”?
EARLY-MATURING GIRLS ARE AT RISK OF GETTING ANXIOUS AND DEPRESSED. As
if this were not enough, early-maturing girls are also more prone to feel bad about
themselves (Carter, Silverman, & Jaccard, 2013; Joinson & others, 2013). As I implied
in the introductory chapter vignette, in fourth or fifth grade, these girls can be bul-
lied by their peers, because they look so different from the other children in class
(Allison & Hyde, 2013). Then, there is the shame (and peer harassment) attached
to generally having a larger body size. Not only are early-maturing girls apt to be
heavier during elementary school, but they also end up shorter and stockier because
their height spurt occurs at an earlier point in their development (Adair, 2008; Must
and others, 2005). Late-maturing girls are more prone to fit the tall ultra-slim model
shape. Reaching puberty early sets girls up for a poor body image and low self-esteem.
So far, I’ve been painting a dismal portrait of early-maturing girls. But, as with
any aspect of development, it’s important to look at the whole context of a person’s
life. Early maturation may not pose body image problems in ethnic groups that have a
healthier, more inclusive idea about the ideal female body size (more about this later).
Most important, these negative effects happen mainly when there are other risk
factors in a child’s life. If a girl is exposed to harsh parenting (Deardorff and others,
2013) or if she is living in poverty, then,
0.4
yes, early maturation can be the straw that
breaks the camel’s back (Lynne-Landsman,
Sweden
Slovakia
Graber, & Andrews, 2010). But, when a
0.3
child has close relationships with her par-
ents, strong religious values, and doesn’t
0.2
get involved with older “at-risk” friends,
her puberty timetable will not matter at all
Problem behavior (2 score)
0.1 (Stattin & Magnusson, 1990).

The risks linked with maturing early also
0 seem dependent on the society in which a
girl grows up. In one interesting interna-
–0.1 tional comparison, while early-maturing
Swedish girls were more prone to get into
–0.2 trouble than late maturers, this was not true
in Slovakia (see Figure 8.5). The reason,
–0.3 these researchers argue, is that Scandinavia
is a permissive society that accepts adoles-
–0.4
cent sex, while Slovakia severely restricts
Late developers Early developers these activities (Skoog and others, 2013). So,
again, a protective milieu can cushion a girl
(or any child) from acting on the behavioral
figure 8.5: The interaction messages her blossoming body gives off.
between culture and pubertal
timing in predicting girls’
This brings up that important teenage milieu: school. In a classic study, researchers
problem behavior in Sweden (Simmons & Blyth, 1987) found that early-maturing girls were set up to have prob-
(red line) and Slovakia (blue lems when they transferred to a large middle school versus staying in a smaller K–8
line): Notice that in sexually- school). In fact, in this landmark research, moving to middle school predicted getting
permissive Sweden, being early
has a huge impact on a girl’s
poor grades and being more stressed out for every child.
risk of getting into trouble (with Based on these findings, developmentalists have argued that it’s best not to
drugs, ignoring curfews, being “warehouse” boys and girls in middle schools during the stressful pubertal years (see
truant at school, and so on); but Eccles & Roeser, 2003). But, the following study suggests we might rethink this clas-
a girl’s puberty timetable makes
far less difference if that child
sic scientific advice.
lives in Slovakia. In tracking students in 36 rural school systems that did and did not offer middle
Data from: Skoog and others, 2013. school, the researchers were surprised to find that bullying was less frequent among
the sixth graders who moved to middle schools. Moreover, the middle schoolers
reported having more supportive class environments than children who remained in
K–8 or K–12 schools (Farmer and others, 2011).
This study highlights the fact that with pre-teens (and every child), we need to
go beyond a school’s structure to consider more basic questions: Is this a nurturing,
authoritative environment (see Chapter 7)? Does this school have caring peer norms (see
Chapter 6)? Moreover, imagine being locked into the calcified status-hierarchies that
can solidify, based on spending your whole childhood with the same group of peers. The
advantage of middle school is that it offers you (and everyone else) a liberating new start!
Wrapping Up Puberty
Now, let’s summarize these messages:
• Children’s reactions to puberty depend on the environment in which they
physically mature. Negative feelings are more likely to occur when society looks
down on a given sign of development (as with menstruation) or when the physical
changes are not valued in a person’s particular group (as with breast development
in ballerinas). Living in a sexually permissive society or changing to a non-nurturing
school during puberty magnifies the stress of body changes.
• With early-maturing girls, we should take special steps to arrange the right
body–environment fit. Having an adult body at a young age is dangerous for girls,
but only when the changes happen in a high-risk milieu. Therefore, when a girl
reaches puberty early, it’s important to arrange her life with special care.
• Communication about puberty should be improved—especially for boys. While
some contemporary mothers may be doing a fine job discussing menstruation with
their daughters, boys, in particular, seem to enter puberty without any guidance
about what to expect (Omar, McElderry, & Zakharia, 2003).
INTERVENTIONS: Minimizing Puberty Distress

Given these findings, what are the lessons for parents? What changes should society
make?
LESSONS FOR PARENTS. It’s tempting for parents to avoid discussing puberty
because children are so sensitive about their changing bodies (see Elliot, 2012; Hyde
and others, 2013). This reluctance is a mistake. Developmentalists urge parents
to discuss what is happening with a same-sex child. They advise beginning these
discussions when the child is at an age when talking is emotionally easier, before
the changes take place (Graber, Nichols, & Brooks-Gunn, 2010). Fathers, in par-
ticular, need to make special efforts to talk about puberty with their sons (Paikoff &
Brooks-Gunn, 1991).
Finally, parents of early-maturing daughters should try to get their child involved
in positive activities, especially with friends her own age and, if possible, carefully pick
the best school environment.
LESSONS FOR SOCIETY. No matter what a child’s puberty timetable, the implicit
message of this section is that the school environment matters tremendously at this
gateway-to-adulthood age. Rather than viewing sixth or seventh grade as relatively
unimportant (compared, let’s say, to high school), understand that nurturing schools
are vital to setting young teens on the right path.
It also seems critical to provide more adequate puberty education. Think back to
what you wanted to know about your changing body (“My breasts don’t look right”;
“My penis has a strange shape”), and you will realize that offering a few fifth-grade
health lectures at school is not enough. Formal sex education in the United States
typically begins in high school, after puberty has occurred (Guttmacher Institute,
2011a). (That’s like locking the barn door after the horses have been stolen!)
UNESCO has developed global guidelines aimed at teaching young children

(aged 5 to 8) to respect their bodies. But, with the exception of a few European nations,
schools routinely ignore this document—offering “too little too late” alarmist-oriented
instruction focused on pubertal damage control: “Don’t get pregnant,” “Avoid STDs”
(Goldman & Coleman, 2013). Suppose our culture really celebrated children’s blos-
soming bodies, as the Navajo do? Perhaps this might cause a revolution where we
celebrated every body size.
1. In contrast to earlier times, give the main reason why our culture can’t celebrate
puberty today?
2. You notice that your 11-year-old cousin is going from looking like a child to looking like
a young woman. (a) Outline the three-phase hormonal sequence that is setting off the
physical changes; and then (b) name the three classes of hormones involved in puberty.
3. Kendra has recently begun to menstruate. Calista has just shot up in height. Carl is
developing facial hair. Statistically speaking, which child is at the beginning of puberty?
4. Brianna, an overweight second grader, has a harsh, rejecting family life. Based on this
chapter, you might predict that Briana should enter puberty earlier/later than her peers.
5. Based simply on knowing a child’s puberty timetable, spell out who is most at risk of
getting into trouble (e.g., with drugs or having unprotected sex) as a teen.
6. You are on an international advisory committee charged with developing programs to
help children cope emotionally with puberty. What recommendations might you make?
Body Image Issues

What do you daydream about?
Being skinny.
—Amanda (quoted in Martin, 1996, p. 36)
Puberty is a time of intense physical preoccupations, and there is hardly a teenager

who isn’t concerned about some body part. How important is it for young people to
be generally satisfied with how they look?
Consider this finding: Susan Harter (1999) explored how feeling competent in
each of her five “self-worth” dimensions—scholastic abilities, conduct, athletic skills,
peer likeability, and appearance (recall Chapter 6)—related to teenagers’ overall self-
esteem. She found that being happy about one’s looks outweighed anything else in
determining whether adolescents generally felt good about themselves.
This finding is not just true of teenagers in the United States. It appears in surveys
conducted in Western countries among people at various stages of life. If we are happy
with the way we look, we are likely to be happy with who we are as human beings.
Feeling physically appealing is important to everyone—for boys, surprisingly, one
study suggested, more than for girls (Mellor and others, 2010). But, girls (no surprise)
are prone to be especially unhappy with their looks (Lawler and Nixon, 2011; Warren,
Schoen, & Schafer, 2010). One reason for pervasive body dissatisfaction comes as no
surprise—the intense cultural pressure to be thin.
The Differing Body Concerns of Girls and Boys

thin ideal Media-driven
The distorting impact of the thin ideal, or pressure to be abnormally thin, was
cultural idea that females graphically suggested in an Irish survey. The researchers found that 3 out of 4 female
need to be abnormally thin. teens with average BMIs felt they were too fat. An alarming percentage—2 out of 5—of
© Norman Parkinson/Sygma/Corbis
Flirt/Flirt/Superstock
When did our culture develop the idea that women should be unrealistically thin? Historians
trace this change to the 1970s, when extremely slim actresses like Audrey Hepburn became
our cultural ideal. More recently, as you can see in the second photo, similar body pressures
have infected the other sex, causing this vulnerable eighth-grade boy to struggle to attain the
muscled male shape that is our contemporary cultural ideal.
underweight girls also wanted to shed pounds (Lawler & Nixon, 2011). While some
boys (those who were genuinely heavy in this study, for instance) also worried about
their weight, especially in our twenty-first century culture, males have another con-
cern: They want to build up their muscles—spending hours at the gym, sometimes
using dangerous anabolic steroids to increase their body mass (Parent & Moradi,
2011; Smolak & Stein, 2010).
These preoccupations may be set in motion by biological forces. As you will see
in the next chapter, the hormonal changes of puberty prime pre-teens to be unusually
sensitive to social cues. New research suggests that the female obsession to be thin may
have roots even before we emerge from the womb. In one incredible study, scientists
found female twin pairs were more apt to develop unhealthy dieting practices at puberty
than females in fraternal twin pairs where the other twin was male—suggesting that
testosterone (given off by the male twin’s body) may dampen down the female tendency
to become weight obsessed during the pubertal years (Culbert and others, 2013).
Still, even if the signal “be supersensitive to your body” is
hormonal, outer-world pressures prime the pump: Pre-teens love to
tease one another about weight (“Ha, ha, you are getting fat!”) (Com-
pian, Gowen, & Hayward, 2004; Jackson & Chen, 2008; Lawler &
Nixon, 2011). When children are already unhappy, this teasing can
provoke an obsession with dieting—for either sex (Benas, Uhrlass,
& Gibb, 2010; Hutchinson, Rapee, & Taylor, 2010).
A primary culprit is the media, for its regular drumbeat advocat-
Anna Azimi/Shutterstock
ing the thin ideal. As early as preschool, one study showed, girls have
internalized the message, “You need to be thin” (Harriger and others,
2010). Digitally altered images beamed from TV, the Internet, and
magazines set body-size standards that are often impossible to attain
(López-Guimerà and others, 2010). So it’s no wonder that being
Interestingly, due to an
shown snapshots of ultra-thin women activates body dissatisfaction in temperamen- epigenetic process, this fraternal
tally vulnerable teens and adults (Anschutz and others, 2011; Roberts & Good, 2010). twin girl may be more insulated
Still, some children are less susceptible to the media messages. In Albert Bandura’s from developing an eating
disorder as a teen by simply
social learning framework, for instance, African American and Latino girls should be
being exposed to the circulating
more insulated from the thin ideal because their media role models, such as Queen testosterone her brother’s body
Latifah and Beyonce, demonstrate that beauty comes in ample sizes. As one young is giving off.
African American woman in an interview study explained: “I feel like . . . for the
woman of color . . . the look is like thick thighs, you know fat butt . . . (men) like, like
want you to have meat on your body” (quoted in Hesse-Biber and others, 2010, p. 704).
Does this mean that, unless they are obese, Latino and African American teens
don’t worry about their weight? No! If an ethnic minority girl identifies with the main-
stream, Western thin ideal, she is just as vulnerable to developing eating disorders as
any other teen (Sabik, Cole, & Ward, 2010). What exactly are eating disorders like?
Eating Disorders
In the morning I’ll have a black coffee. At noon I have a mix of shredded lettuce, carrots
and cabbage. At around dinnertime I have 9 mini whole-wheat crackers. On a bad day
I may have. . . . with my (morning) black coffee an egg white, . . .
(adapted from Juarascio, Shoaib, & Timko, 2010, p. 402)
Scales are evil! But I’m obsessed with them! I’m on the damn thing like 3 times a day!
(adapted from Gavin, Rodham, & Poyer, 2008, pp. 327–328)
© Sayre Berman/Corbis
As these quotations from “pro-anorexia” social network sites show, eating disorders
differ from “normal” dieting. Here, eating is the sole focus of life. Imagine waking up
and planning each day around eating (or not eating). You monitor every morsel. You
are obsessed with checking and rechecking your weight. Or you have the impulse
to gorge every time you approach the refrigerator or buy a box of candy at the store.
Queen Latifah embodies the Let’s now explore three major forms these total food fixations take: anorexia, bulimia,
fact that bodies are beautiful at
every size. Not only is she a role
and binge eating disorder.
model for women of color, but Anorexia nervosa, the most serious eating disorder, is defined by self-starvation—
for every woman in our culture. specifically to the point of being 85 percent of one’s ideal body weight or less. (This
means that if 110 pounds is the ideal weight for your height, you would now weigh less
than 95 pounds.) Another common feature of this primarily female disorder is that
leptin levels have become too low to support adult fertility and the girl has stopped
menstruating. A hallmark of eating disorders—among both girls and boys—is a dis-
torted body image (Espeset and others, 2011). Even when people look skeletal, they
feel fat. They often compulsively exercise, running miles for hours, abandoning their
other commitments to spend every day at the gym (Holland, Brown, & Keel, 2014).
eating disorder A pathological They may be disconnected from reality, denying that their symptoms apply to them
obsession with getting
and staying thin. The two
(“Oh no, I don’t binge and purge”) (Gratwick-Sarll, Mond, & Hay, 2013). Sometimes
best-known eating disorders they literally don’t see their true body size: As one girl named Sarah commented: “I
are anorexia nervosa and remember . . . passing an open door and saw myself in the mirror . . . and thought
bulimia nervosa. “Oh gosh, she is thin!” but then when I understood that it was actually me, I didn’t
anorexia nervosa A poten- see me as thin anymore” (quoted in Espeset and others, 2011, p. 183).
tially life-threatening eat- Anorexia is a life-threatening disease. When people reach two-thirds of their ideal
ing disorder characterized
by pathological dieting
weight or less, they need to be hospitalized and fed—intravenously, if necessary—to
(resulting in severe weight stave off death (Diamanti and others, 2008). A student of mine who runs a self-help
loss and, in females, loss group for people with eating disorders provided a vivid reminder of the enduring
of menstruation) and by a physical toll anorexia can cause. Alicia informed the class that she had permanently
distorted body image.
damaged her heart muscle during her bout with this devastating disease.
bulimia nervosa An eating Bulimia nervosa is typically not life threatening because the person’s weight
disorder characterized by at
least biweekly cycles of bing-
often stays within a normal range. However, because this disorder involves frequent
ing and purging (by inducing binging (at least once weekly eating sprees in which thousands of calories may be
vomiting or taking laxatives) consumed in a matter of hours) and either purging (getting rid of the food by vomit-
in an obsessive attempt to ing or misusing laxatives and diuretics) or fasting, bulimia can seriously compromise
lose weight.
health. In addition to producing deficiencies of basic nutrients, the purging episodes
binge eating disorder A newly can cause mouth sores, ulcers in the esophagus, and the loss of tooth enamel due to
labeled eating disorder
defined by recurrent, out-of-
being exposed to stomach acid.
control binging accompanied Binge eating disorder, which first appeared in the new Diagnostic and Statistical
by feelings of disgust. Manual (DSM-5) in 2013, involves recurrent out-of-control eating. The person wolfs
down huge quantities of food and then is wracked by disgust, guilt, and shame. This
mental disorder was added to the DSM-5 because (no surprise) it is intimately tied
to obesity and so presents a serious threat to health (Myers & Wiman, 2014). Binge
eating disorder, like anorexia and bulimia, can wreak enduring havoc on the person’s
life (Goldschmidt and others, 2014).
How common are these mainly female disorders, which most frequently erupt
in the early twenties or late teens? In one eight-year-long community survey, binge
eating disorder was most prevalent, affecting roughly 3 in 100 young women over that
time; bulimia ranked second (at 2.6 in 100). Thankfully, the most serious
condition, anorexia, struck only 8 out of a thousand girls. The bad news is
that subclinical (less severe) forms of eating disorders may affect an astonish-
ing 18 million people in the United States at some point in life (Forbush &
Hunt, 2014).
What causes these conditions? Twin studies suggest anorexia and bulimia
have a hereditary component (Striegel-Moore & Bulik, 2007). One nonspe-
cific risk factor is prior internalizing symptoms—a tendency during middle
childhood to be anxious and depressed (Touchette and others, 2011). At
puberty, if these “I hate myself” attitudes translate into a commitment to the
thin ideal, an obsession with dieting or binge eating and purging can result
(Espinoza, Penelo, & Raich, 2010; Stice, Ng, & Shaw, 2010).
Researchers find teens and young adults with eating disorders have
other psychological symptoms: insecure attachments, an extreme need for
Jamie Grill/The Image Bank/Getty Images

approval (Abbate-Dega and others, 2010), or rigidity (Masuda, Boone, &
Timko, 2011). They often have trouble expressing their needs (Norwood and
others, 2011). One hallmark of eating disorders is incredibly poor self-worth,
that is, feeling like a terrible human being (Fairchild & Cooper, 2010). At
bottom, these teens have low self-efficacy—feeling out of control of their lives.
If a young person develops anorexia or bulimia, how do these feelings
get channeled into an obsession with being too fat? Hints come from an
experiment in which researchers told girls with an eating disorder and others
A temperamental tendency to
a comparison group to think about an event in which they felt useless or incapable.
be anxious, low self-efficacy, a
After the “feeling incompetent” instructions, the girls with an eating disorder auto- great need for approval, and the
matically focused on their body flaws (McFarlane, Urbszat, & Olmsted, 2011). So inability to express your legiti-
when girls are temperamentally prone to low self-esteem and believe that the key to mate needs. These poisonous
forces, plus a commitment to the
happiness is being ultrathin, negative emotions may be displaced into feeling “I’m too
thin ideal, may have produced
fat,” and warded off by extreme measures to control one’s weight. this child’s eating disorder.
Table 8.2 offers a summary checklist for determining if a teenager you love is at Moreover, because whenever
risk for serious body dissatisfaction. Still, if you know a young person who is struggling she feels bad about herself, she
automatically thinks, “I’m too
with an eating disorder, there is brighter news. Most adolescents grow out of eating
fat”—self-starvation has become
problems as they get older and construct a satisfying adult life (Keel and others, 2007). her main mode of dealing with
Moreover, contrary to popular opinion, therapy for eating disorders works! stress.
Table 8.2: Is a Teenager at Risk for Serious Body Dissatisfaction? A Checklist

(Background influences: Has this child reached puberty? Is this child female?)
1. Is this child temperamentally prone to anxiety and depression?
2. Does this child vigorously subscribe to the thin ideal?
3. Is this child becoming obsessed with dieting (or, if male, becoming obsessed with building up
his muscles)?
4. Does this child have insecure attachments, trouble expressing her feelings, and excessively low
self-efficacy and self-esteem?
5. When this child gets rejected or experiences a negative event, does she automatically think,
“I feel fat”?
INTERVENTIONS: Improving Teenagers’ Body Image

Perhaps the first place to begin to treat young people with eating disorders is to exam-
ine how girls who embrace their bodies reason and think. As one interview study
suggested, these teens do not deny their “imperfections,” but they discount negative
comments and focus on their physical pluses. Yes, they do care deeply about their
looks, but they view being beautiful as taking care of their physical health—eating
nutritious foods, exercising, appreciating what their bodies can do (Frisén & Hol-
mqvist, 2010). These adolescents are often spiritually oriented (Boisvert & Harrell,
2013). They understand what really makes people beautiful in life. As one woman
named Heather put it: “You have to remind yourself that even though (the thin ideal)
is what (the media are) . . . promoting, self-esteem really looks the best” (Wood-
Barcalow, Tylka, & Augustus-Horvath, 2010, p. 115).
Heather’s remarks explain why a popular eating-disorder treatment (called dialec-
tic behavior therapy) teaches meditation, as well as strategies to promote self-efficacy
(feeling in control of one’s life) (Lenz and others, 2014). Therapists have devised other
creative approaches, such as repeatedly exposing women to video images of themselves,
to train them to see their real body size (Trentowska, Svaldi, & Tuschen-Caffier, 2014).
One innovative therapy ignores any underlying psychological causes. Arguing
that eating disorders are totally biologically based, therapists have had success by
keeping the girl’s body temperature warm and training her in the appropriate amount
to eat via a scale under a plate that measures her intake (Bergh and others, 2013).
While, as I just mentioned, eating disorders have the reputation of being hard to
cure, the reverse seems true. This may explain why therapists who treat these young
people have lower burnout rates than do their colleagues (Thompson-Brenner, 2013;
Warren and others, 2013) and find such personal meaning in this work (Zerbe, 2013).
The same upbeat message is typical of much (but not all) of the research relating
to our final topic: teenage sex.
1. Kimberly, an eleventh grader, tells you, “I am ugly,” but knows she is terrific in sports
and academics. According to Harter’s studies, is Kimberly likely to have high or low
self-esteem?
2. Amy is regularly on a diet, trying for that Barbie-doll figure. Jasmine, who is far below
her ideal body weight, is always exercising and has cut her food intake down to virtu-
ally nothing. Sophia, whose weight is normal, goes on eating sprees followed by purges
every few days. Clara also has regular, out-of-control eating sprees, after which she
says she feels like a bloated “blimp.” Identify which girls have an eating disorder, and
name each person’s specific problem.
3. Pick which three female teens seem protected from developing an eating disorder:
Cotonya whose role model is Beyonce; Caroline who has high self-efficacy; Cora who
has a twin brother; Connie who exercises for an hour every day.
4. Eating disorders are very hard to treat. True or False?
Sexuality
548: Immculate ros: Sex sex sex that all you think about?
559: Snowbunny: people who have sex at 16 r sick:
560: Twonky: I agree
564: 00o0CaFfEinNe; no sex until ur happily married—Thtz muh rule
566: Twonky: I agree with that too.

567: Snowbunny: me too caffine!
(quoted in Subrahmanyam, Greenfield, & Tynes, 2004, p. 658)
Sex is the elephant in the room of teenage life. Everyone knows it’s a top-ranking
issue, but the adult world often shies away from mentioning it. Celebrated in the
media, minimized or ignored by anxious parents (“If I talk about it, I’ll encourage
my child to do it”) (see Elliot, 2012; Hyde and others, 2013), the issue of when and
whether to have sex is left for teenagers to decide on their own as they filter through
the conflicting messages and—as you can see above—vigorously stake out their posi-
tions in on-line chats.
It is a minefield issue that contemporary young people negotiate in different ways.
Take a poll of your classmates. Some people, as with the teenagers quoted above, may
advocate abstinence, believing that everyone should remain a virgin until marriage.
Others probably believe that having sex within a loving relationship is fine. Some
students, if they are being honest, will admit, “I want to try out the sexual possibilities,
but I promise to use contraception!”
This increasing acceptability (within limits) of carving out our own sexual path
was highlighted in sexual surveys polling U.S. high school seniors in 1950, 1972, and
2000 (Caron & Moskey, 2002). Over the years, the number of seniors who decided,
“It’s okay for teenagers to have sex,” shot up from a minority to more than 70 percent.
But in the final turn-of-the-century poll, more teens agreed that a person could decide
to not have sex and still be popular. Most felt confident they would use birth control
when they were sexually active, and could wait to have intercourse until they got
married. How are these efficacious attitudes translated into action? Let’s begin our
exploration at the sexual starting gate—with desire.
Exploring Sexual Desire

David, age 14: Since a year or so ago, I just think about sex and masturbation ALL THE
TIME! I mean I just think about having sex no matter where I am and I’m aroused all
the time. Is that normal?
Expert’s reply: Welcome to the raging hormones of adolescence!
(adapted from a teenage sexuality on-line advice forum)
At what age does sexual desire begin? Although scientists had long assumed that
the answer was during puberty, when testosterone is pumping through the body,
research with homosexual adults caused them to rethink this idea. When gay
women and men were asked to recall a watershed event in their lives—the age
when they first realized that they were physically attracted to a person of the
same sex—their responses centered around age 10. At that age the output of the
adrenal androgens is rising but testosterone production has not yet fully geared up
(McClintock & Herdt, 1996). So, our first sexual feelings seem programmed by the
adrenal androgens and appear before we undergo the visible changes of puberty,
by about fourth grade!
How do sex hormone levels relate to teenagers’ sexual desires? According to
researchers, we need a threshold androgen level to prime our initial feelings of desire
(Udry, 1990; Udry & Campbell, 1994). Then, signals from the environment feedback
to heighten our interest in sex. As children see their bodies changing, they think of
themselves in a new, sexual way. Reaching puberty evokes a different set of signals
from the outside world. A ninth-grade boy finds love notes in his locker. A seventh-
grade girl notices men looking at her differently as she walks down the street. It is the
physical changes of puberty and how outsiders react to those changes that usher us
into our lives as sexual human beings. Which young people act on those desires by
having intercourse as teens?
100
Female
90 Male
Percent of adolescents who have had sex by each age

80
70
60
50
40
figure 8.6: Percent of U.S. 30

teens who have had inter-
course, at different ages: This
chart pinpoints late adolescence 20
as the tipping point when most
American teens have had sex; 10
but, it also shows (not unex-
pectedly) that intercourse rates
begin to rise dramatically after 0
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
age 15. Age
Data from: Guttmacher Institute, 2014.
Who Is Having Intercourse?

Today, the average age of first intercourse in the United States is age 17.8 for women
and 18 for men (Finer & Philbin, 2014). But about 1 in 8 children make a “sexual
debut” by age 15 (Guttmacher Institute, 2014; see also Figure 8.6).
As developmental systems theory suggests, a variety of forces predict making
what researchers call an earlier transition to intercourse. One influence, for both boys
and girls, is biological—being on an earlier puberty timetable. Ethnicity and socio-
economic status (SES) also matter. African Americans and lower-income males are
more apt to be sexually active at younger ages (Moilanen and others, 2010; Zimmer-
Gembeck & Helfand, 2008; Finer & Philbin, 2014).
Personality makes a difference. Teens who
are more impulsive, that is, those with external-
izing tendencies, are apt to make the transition
earlier (Moilanen and others, 2010). For Euro-
pean American girls, one study has suggested,
having a risk-taking personality plus low social
self-worth (but not depression) correlates with
being more advanced sexually—that is, engag-
ing in pre-intercourse activities such as fon-
dling at age 12 (Hipwell and others, 2010).
Conversely, also for girls, having religious par-
kristian sekulic/E+/Getty Images
ents predicts staying a virgin because it makes

it more likely that a teen will be religious and
so have friends who agree that abstinence is
the way to go (Landor and others, 2011).
This brings up the crucial role of peers. As
I suggested earlier in the discussion of early-
Is my teenage daughter having maturing girls, we can predict a teenager’s chance of having intercourse by looking
intercourse? Researchers can at the company she (or he) chooses. Having an older boyfriend, or girlfriend (no
now offer parents precise odds
surprise), raises the chance of a child’s becoming sexually active (Martin, 1996). In
by determining how many
people in this crowd of best fact, scientists can make precise statistical calculations of a teen’s intercourse odds
buddies have gone “all the way.” based on the number of people in that child’s social circle who have gone “all the
way” (Ali & Dwyer, 2011). So, just as with other aspects of
teenage behavior, to understand whether a teen you know
is sexually active, look at the values and behaviors of his
(or her) group.
You also might want to look at what a child watches
on TV. In one fascinating study, researchers were able to
predict which virgin boys and girls were likely to become
David Harding © Art Directors & TRIP/Alamy

sexually active from looking at their prior TV watching
practices. Teens who reported watching a heavy diet of
programs with sexually oriented talk were twice as likely to
have intercourse in the next year as the children who did
not (Collins and others, 2004).
Since sexual experiences (affairs, and so on) are a com-
mon media theme, we might predict that simply watching a
good deal of television would promote an earlier transition to intercourse. We would The image of this girl absorbed
be wrong. Teens are at special risk when they watch sexually suggestive programs in in reading the sex-laden articles
mixed gender groups (Parkes and others, 2013). With any media, it’s the content that in Cosmo may be a tip-off that
she is poised to make the transi-
matters—whether a child prefers sex-laced cable channels (Bersamin and others,
tion to intercourse.
2008), gravitates to Internet porn, or avidly consumes magazines like Cosmo rather
than sticking to Seventeen (Walsh, 2008).
Should we blame Cosmo reports such as “101 Ways to Drive Him Wild in Bed”
for causing teenagers to start having sex? A bidirectional influence is probably in
operation here. If a teenager is already interested in sex, that boy or girl will gravitate
toward media that fit this passion. For me, the tip-off was raiding my parents’ library
to read the steamy scenes in that forbidden book, D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s
Lover. Today, parents know that their child has entered a different mental space when
she abandons the Discovery Channel in favor of MTV. Swimming in this sea of media
sex then, naturally, further inflames a teenager’s desires.
Who Are Teens Having Intercourse With?

Internet pornography celebrates anonymous sex. Many intercourse episodes on TV
involve one-night stands (Grube and others, 2008). Are children imitating these
models when they start having intercourse? With most U.S. teens (70 percent of girls
and 56 percent of boys) reporting they first had sex with a steady partner, the answer
is no. But as roughly 1 in 5 teens report making the transition to intercourse outside
of a committed relationship (Guttmacher Institute, 2014), let’s pause to look briefly
at what these nonromantic encounters are like.
Do adolescents who have sex with a person they are not dating hook up with a
stranger or a good friend? For answers, we have an interview study in which research-
ers asked high schoolers in Ohio about their experiences with “noncommitted” sex
(Manning, Giordano, & Longmore, 2006).
Of the teens who admitted to a nonromantic sexual encounter, 3 out of 4 reported
that their partner was a person they knew very well. As one boy, who lost his virginity
with his best friend described: “. . . I wouldn’t really consider dating her . . . but I’ve
known her so long . . . anytime I feel down or she feels down, we just talk to each
other” (quoted in Manning, Giordano, & Longmore, 2006, p. 469). Sometimes, the
goal of having sex was to change a friendship to a romance: “After we started sleeping
together . . . having a relationship came up.” Or, a teenager might fall into having
sex with an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend: “Well, it (sex) kind of happened like towards
the end when we were both friends” (quoted in Manning, Giordano, & Longmore,
2006, p. 470).
So far, I have painted a benign portrait of these more casual, “friends with ben-
efits” experiences. Wrong! Especially for girls, as you will read in Chapter 10, having
one-night stands is a serious risk factor for getting depressed. This brings me to the
supposedly clashing sexual agendas of women and men.
Hot in Developmental Science: Is There Still a Sexual Double

Standard?
It’s different for boys, it’s like . . . if they have sex with somebody and then they are rewarded
. . . and all the guys are just like “That’s great!” You have sex, and you’re a girl and it’s like
“Slut.” That’s how it is . . .
(quoted in Martin, 1996, p. 86)
sexual double standard A These complaints from a 16-year-old girl named Erin refer to the well-known sexual
cultural code that gives men double standard. Boys are supposed to want sex; girls are supposed to resist. Teen-
greater sexual freedom than
age boys get reinforcement for “getting to home base.” Intercourse is fraught with
women. Specifically, society
expects males to want to ambivalence and danger for girls: “Should I do it? Will he love me if I do it? Will he
have intercourse and expects love me if I don’t? Will I get pregnant? What will my friends and my parents think?”
females to remain virgins Basic to the stereotype of the double standard is the idea that girls are looking for
until they marry and to be
committed relationships and that boys mainly want sex. The Ohio study, discussed
more interested in relation-
ships than in having sex. in the previous section, offered a different view (Manning, Giordano, & Longmore,
2006). These interviews confirmed the statistics showing that teenage sex often hap-
pens within a committed relationship. In fact, feeling emotionally intimate, most
teens reported, was the reason why both boys and girls decided to have sex. And, when
a couple did take that step, the decision was often as difficult for guys as girls.
Read what a boy named Tim had to say:
That was something that I had been saving. I really wanted to save it for marriage, but I was
curious and um she was special enough to me that I could give her this part of my life that I had
been saving and um . . . She felt the same way because she wanted to wait till marriage, but we
had decided and we was [were] both curious I guess and so it just happened”
(quoted in Giordano, Manning, & Longmore, 2010, p. 1007)
Moreover, when sex happened too quickly, as this next quotation shows, boys—as
much as girls—were turned off:
She was like . . . moving too fast . . . like she wanted to have sex with me in the car and I’m like
“No” and then she starts touching me and I’m like “I’m cool, I’m cool; I got to go”. . . . And I did
that and I left. . . . I was just, I don’t know; she wasn’t the girl I wanted to have sex with. . . . She
wasn’t the right girl.
In this study, both male and female teens reported that the decision to have sex was
mutual; no one was pressuring anyone else. Or, as another boy named Tim delight-
fully put it:
So if a girl says yes and a boy says no; it’s a maybe. If a guy doesn’t know and a girl says yes, it’s
yes . . . . If a girl says yes and a guy says yes, it’s yes . . . . So I think the women have more control
because their opinion matters more in that situation.
Is it really true, as Tim implies, that females are the main initiators (aggressors) when
it comes to sex? Consider this revealing evidence from the virtual world: When
researchers analyzed the profile photo comments on a popular Belgian social net-
work site, they found that girls’ sexually-oriented responses to boys’ posted photos far
outnumbered boys’ comments to the photos posted by girls.
Here are a few enthusiastic female posts that a boy named Kendeman’s photo
evoked: “You are ****.. ... beautiful!” “I just wanted to say this because I think you
are wonderfuuuuuul. Nobody can compete with you!” (Quoted from De Ridder &
Van Bauwell, 2013, p. 576.)
So, even though the double standard seems firmly in operation, when we hear
male teens brag about their exploits or listen to people make snide comments about
Brendan O’Sullivan/Photolibrary/Getty Images

What are teens who avidly scan the photos on a social-network site likely to do? The surprise is
that girls may decide to post more sexually oriented comments than boys.
“sluts and studs,” the reality is complex. Boys want sex in a loving relationship—just like
girls (Ott and others, 2006). In terms of making the first sexually oriented moves, either
on-line or, sometimes, in the flesh—if anything, an anti-double standard can apply!
Wrapping Up Sexuality: Contemporary Trends

In summary, the news about teenage sexuality is good. Teenagers today feel more con-
fident about charting their sexual path. Most sexual encounters occur in committed
love relationships. The decision to have teenage
sex is not typically taken lightly, but in a climate of
caring and mutual decision making for both girls Teens aged
1995
15 to 17 who have
and boys. Girls have far more control in the sexual had intercourse
2006-2008
arena than we think!
These changes are mirrored in the encouraging
statistics in Figure 8.7: fewer U.S. teenagers are hav- Sexually active female
1995
teens using contraception
ing intercourse, and most teens report they use con- at last intercourse
2006
doms when they do have sex. In fact, over a decade
spanning the late 1990s to the early twenty-first
Sexually active male teens
century, teen pregnancy rates in the United States using contraception
1995
dipped from more than 5 to 4 per thousand girls. 2006
at last intercourse
Still, with regard to teenage pregnancy, the
United States ranks near the pinnacle of the devel- 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
oped world. While European teens have compa- Percent
rable levels of sexual activity as U.S. adolescents,
E.U. pregnancy rates put the United States to shame (Guttmacher Institute, 2014;
figure 8.7: Encouraging
McKay & Barrett, 2010). Compared to Western Europe, the prevalence of gonorrhea snapshots of twenty-first-
and chlamydia among U.S. adolescents is very high (Guttmacher Institute, 2011b). century teenage sexuality in
the United States: This news
INTERVENTIONS: Toward Teenager-Friendly Sex Education about teenage sex is good!
Fewer young people are having
These less-than-flattering statistics bring us back to the issue I alluded to in the discus- intercourse and more sexually
sion of puberty: sex education. Clearly, in its mission to prevent teenage pregnancy, active adolescents report using
the United States is falling short. Could one reason be that teens are not getting the contraception.
Data from: Guttmacher Institute, 2011a,
“correct” information in school sex education classes? 2011b; 2014; Mckay & Barrett, 2010.
Actually, around the world, school sex education offers a patchwork of slip-
shod strategies. Some school systems and countries teach only abstinence. Others
discuss contraception and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Some teach teens
about alternative lifestyles, such as being gay. Other nations teach nothing about
sex in school at all. The reason comes as no surprise: From Canada, to Australia
(Goldman & Coleman, 2013), to South Africa (Francis & DePalma, 2014), parents
are deeply divided about what to say to teens about sex (Elliot, 2012).
One classic fear is that teaching contraception might encourage teens to have
intercourse. This we know is not true. When Irish researchers compared young people
in that nation who had high school sex education and a group with no instruction,
girls and boys exposed to sex education classes became sexually active at an older age
than their peers (Bourke and others, 2014).
Some of you reading the above information might say, “Ok, Dr. Belsky, perhaps
that’s true, but having my child’s school discuss contraception is ethically distasteful,
Ron Levine/Digital Vision/Getty Images
because I believe abstinence is the only way to go.” Perhaps everyone might agree
with the following alternate approach.
For decades, teens have complained that high school sex-education is irrelevant
to their lives. Adolescents say they are hungering for different information: “How can
I develop a relationship?” “What does it mean to fall in love?” (see Martin 1996).
Therefore, stale controversies about whether to teach contraception may be miss-
ing the boat. In contrast to the alarmist messages, we now understand that most teens
Because teens really want
to know how to have loving are not passionate to have random sex. Young people are lusting—if anything—to
relationships, this high school find love. We also know that parents have difficulty discussing these new, embar-
couple might love romance edu- rassing “adult” yearnings with their daughters and sons. Therefore, to really speak to
cation classes!
teenagers’ passions, sex education can’t focus mainly on sex. Schools need romance
education classes!
Designing an optimal romance (or relationship) class depends on knowing how ado-
lescents think and reason about life. The next chapter focuses on this topic in depth.
1. When a mother asks you when her son may experience his first sexual feelings, you
should answer: around age 10, before the physical signs of puberty occur/around age 13
or 14/in the middle of puberty/toward the end of puberty.
2. Your friend thinks her teenage daughter may be having sex. So she asks for your opin-
ion. All the following questions are relevant for you to ask except:
a. Are your daughter’s friends having sex?
b. Is your daughter’s school teaching abstinence?
c. Is your daughter watching sexually explicit cable channels with her male friends
and reading Cosmo?
d. Does your daughter have an older boyfriend?
3. Tom is discussing trends in teenage sex and pregnancy. Which two statements should
he make?
a. Today, sex often happens in a committed relationship.
b. Today, the United States has lower teenage pregnancy rates than other Western
nations.
c. In recent decades, rates of teenage births in the United States have declined.
d. Today, boys are still the sexual initiators.
4. Imagine you are designing a “model” sex-education program. According to this sec-
tion, you should focus on:
a. encouraging abstinence
b. providing information about birth control and STDs
c. discussing how to have loving relationships
SUMMARY
Puberty schools to children at this vulnerable age. Parents need to talk

about puberty with their children, especially their sons. We need
Today, the physical changes of puberty occur during early to be alert to the potential for problems with early-maturing girls.
adolescence, and there can be decades between the time chil- We need to implement global guidelines for elementary school
dren physically mature and the time they enter adult life. Because education that generally focus on respecting your body.
in traditional agrarian societies a person’s changing body used to
be the signal to get married, many cultures devised puberty rites
to welcome the physical changes. The secular trend in puberty Body Image Issues
has magnified the separation between puberty and full adult- How children feel about their looks is closely tied to their overall
hood, the fact that menarche (and spermarche) have been occur- self-esteem. Girls tend to feel worse about their looks than boys
ring at much younger ages. do, partly because society expects women to adhere to the thin
ideal. Boys feel pressured to build up their muscles. The impulse
Two hormonal command centers program puberty. The adrenal
to be thin may be rooted in biological forces for girls, but peer
glands produce adrenal androgens starting in middle childhood.
pressures and media images play an important role in this passion.
The HPG axis, the main system that sets the bodily changes in
motion, involves the hypothalamus, the pituitary, and the gonads The two classic eating disorders are anorexia nervosa (severe
(ovaries and testes), which produce estrogens and testosterone underweight resulting from obsessive dieting) and bulimia
(found in both males and females). Leptin levels and a variety nervosa (chronic binging and, often, purging) accompanied
of environmental influences trigger the initial hypothalamic by body image distortions. Binge eating disorder (involving
hormone. binging alone) was recently added to the list. Genetic vulner-
abilities, prior internalizing tendencies, and low self-esteem put
The physical changes of puberty are divided into primary sex-
teenage and young adult girls at special risk for these problems.
ual characteristics, secondary sexual characteristics, and the
Children with eating disorders have low self-efficacy, and may
growth spurt. Although in females puberty begins with the
cope with distressing feelings by “projecting” these emotions
growth spurt and menarche occurs late in the process, the rate
onto their body shape. Eating disorder interventions take varied
and sequence of this total-body transformation varies from child
forms, and treatments for these so-called intractable problems
to child. Because for males the externally visible changes of
often do work.
puberty occur later and the organs of reproduction are the first
to start developing, the puberty timetables of the sexes are not
as far apart as they appear. Sexuality
Teenagers today feel freer to make their own sexual decisions,
The striking individual differences in the timing of puberty are
including whether or not to begin to have intercourse. While
mainly genetically programmed. African American children tend
sexual desire is triggered by the adrenal androgens, and first
to reach puberty at a younger age. For girls, being overweight and
switches on at around age 10, sexual signals from the outside
having stressful family relationships are tied to reaching puberty
world feed back to cause children to really become interested
earlier. These “environmental events” push up the hypothalamic
in sex.
timer, but strangely, only for females.
Factors that predict making the transition to intercourse include,
How children feel about their changing bodies varies, depend-
among others, race, SES, family and peer influences, and gravi-
ing on the social environment. Breast development often evokes
tating to sex-laden media. Most teens have their first intercourse
positive emotions. Feelings about menstruation seem more posi-
experience in a romantic relationship. Noncommitted sex most
tive than in the past because today’s mothers are more apt to
often takes place with someone a teen knows well. Although
celebrate this change. First ejaculation is rarely talked about.
the sexual double standard suggests that boys just want sex
Children tend to be embarrassed about their changing bodies
and girls are interested in relationships, both males and females
when they are around the parent of the opposite sex.
are mainly interested in love. Ironically, our image of men as the
Girls who mature early are at risk of getting into trouble as teens sexual aggressors may operate in the opposite way in the “real
(for example, taking drugs, getting pregnant, or doing poorly in world.”
school), but only if they reach puberty in a stressful environment
The good news about teenage sexuality in the United States is
or live in a permissive culture, and get involved with older friends.
that children feel freer to make their own sexual choices, and
Because they often end up heavier and shorter, these girls tend
teens typically report having sex in a committed relationship.
to have a poor body image and are more prone to be anxious
Rates of teen pregnancies have dramatically declined, although
and depressed.
they are still markedly higher in the United States than in other
Although, based on older research, developmentalists have Western nations. Rather than arguing about whether to teach
argued it’s better not to move children undergoing puberty to a contraception, educators should provide sex-education classes
new school, there may be interesting pluses to moving to middle relevant to young people’s real concerns: relationships and
school. In general, our mission should be to provide nurturing romance.
KEY TERMS
puberty, p. 231 adrenal androgens, p. 234 secondary sexual bulimia nervosa, p. 246
puberty rite, p. 232 HPG axis, p. 234 characteristics, p. 235 binge eating disorder, p. 246
secular trend in puberty, gonads, p. 234 growth spurt, p. 235 sexual double standard,
p. 233 testosterone, p. 234 thin ideal, p. 244 p. 252
menarche, p. 233 primary sexual eating disorder, p. 246
spermarche, p. 233 characteristics, p. 235 anorexia nervosa, p. 246
Puberty Push for more adequate, “honest” puberty education

1. Today, puberty occurs a decade or more before we can fully at a younger age, possibly in a format—such as on-line—
reach adult life. where children can talk anonymously about their
concerns. Institute a public awareness program
2. (a) The initial hypothalamic hormone triggers the pituitary to encouraging parents to talk about puberty with a
produce its hormones, which cause the ovaries and testes to same-sex child. Encourage mothers to speak
mature and produce their hormones, which, in turn, produce positively about menstruation and have dads
the body changes. (b) Estrogens, testosterone, and the discuss events such as spermarche with sons.
adrenal androgens. Make everyone alert to the dangers associated with
3. Calista being an early-maturing girl and develop formal
4. earlier interventions targeted to this “at-risk” group.
Institute sensitive, school-based “respect your body”
5. An early maturing girl discussions—based on the UNESCO guidelines— for
6. Possible recommendations: Pay special attention to children beginning in the early elementary school
providing nurturing schools in sixth and seventh grade. years.
Body Image Issues Sexuality

1. Unfortunately, low self-esteem 1. around age 10, before the physical signs of puberty occur
2. Jasmine, Sophia, and Clara have eating disorders. Jasmine 2. b
has the symptoms of anorexia nervosa; Sophia has the symp- 3. a and c
toms of bulimia nervosa. Clara has binge eating disorder.
4. c, discuss how to have loving relationships
3. Cotonya, Caroline, and Cora (We don’t know about Connie—
but, if she obsessively exercises just to stay thin, she might
be at higher risk)
4. False (new research suggests eating disorders are treatable)
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
The Mysterious Teenage Mind
Three Classic Theories
of Teenage Thinking
Studying Three Aspects
of Storm and Stress
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . That
Adolescents Make Riskier
Decisions When They Are with
Their Peers?
SCIENCE: A Potential Pubertal
Problem, Popularity
Different Teenage Pathways
Wrapping Things Up: The
Blossoming Teenage Brain
INTERVENTIONS: Making the
World Fit the Teenage Mind
Innocently Imprisoned at 16
Another Perspective on the
Teenage Mind
Teenage Relationships
Separating from Parents
Connecting in Groups
A Note on Adolescence
Worldwide
Fabrice LEROUGE/ONOKY/Getty Images

Cognitive and Socioemotional
Development
Samantha’s father began to worry when his daughter was in sixth grade. Suddenly,
his sweet little princess was becoming so selfish, so moody, and so rude. She began
to question everything, from her 10 o’clock curfew to why poverty exists. At the same
time, she had to buy clothes with the right designer label and immediately download
the latest music. She wanted to be an individual, but her clique shaped every decision.
She got hysterical if anyone looked at her the wrong way. Worse yet, Samantha was
hanging out with the middle school “popular” crowd—smoking, drinking, not doing
her homework, cutting class.
Her twin brother, Sam, couldn’t have been more different. Sam was obedient, an
honor student, captain of the basketball team. He mellowly sailed into his teenage
years. Actually, Sam defied the categories. He was smart and a jock; he really had
heart. Sam volunteered with disabled children. He effortlessly moved among the nerdy
brains, the popular kids, and the artsy groups at school. Still, this model child was also
caught smoking and sampling the occasional joint. The most heart-stopping example
happened when the police picked up Sam and a carload of buddies for drag racing
on the freeway. Sam’s puzzled explanation: “Something just took over and I stopped
thinking, Dad.”
If you looked beneath the surface, however, both of his children were great. They
were thoughtful, caring, and capable of having the deepest discussions about life.
They simply seemed to get caught up in the moment and lose their minds—especially
when they were with their friends. What really is going on in the teenage mind?
T
hink of our contradictory stereo- These contradictory ideas are mir-
types about the teenage mind. rored in a confusing welter of laws relat-
Teenagers are supposed to be ing to when teens are considered “adult.”
idealistic, thoughtful, and introspective; In the United States, adolescents can
concerned with larger issues; pondering sometimes be tried in adult court at 14,
life in deeper ways; but also impulsive, at an age when they are barred from
moody, and out of control. We expect seeing R-rated movies. Deemed mature
them to be the ultimate radicals, reject- enough to vote at age 18, U.S. teens are
ing everything adults say, and the con- unable to buy liquor until age 21. How
summate conformists, dominated by the is science shedding light on the elusive
crowd, driven by the latest craze, totally teenage mind? That is the subject of the
influenced by their peers. chapter you are about to read.
259
Setting the Context

Youth are heated by nature as drunken men by wine.
Aristotle (n.d.)
I would that there were no age between ten and twenty-three . . ., for there’s nothing in
between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting. . . .
William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act III
As the quotations above illustrate, throughout history, wise observers of human nature
have described young people as being emotional, hot-headed, and out of control.
When, in 1904, G. Stanley Hall first identified a new life stage characterized by
“storm and stress” G. Stanley “storm and stress,” which he called “adolescence,” he was only echoing these time-
Hall’s phrase for the intense less ideas. Moreover, as the mission of the young is to look at society in fresh, new
moodiness, emotional
sensitivity, and risk-taking
ways, it makes sense that most cultures would view each new generation in ambiva-
tendencies that characterize lent terms—praising young people for their energy and passion; fearing them as a
the life stage he labeled menace and threat.
adolescence. However, until fairly recently, young people never had years to explore life or
rebel against society because they took on adult responsibilities at an early age. As
you may remember from Chapter 1, adolescence only became a distinct stage of life
in the United States during the twentieth century, when—for most children—going
to high school became routine (Mintz, 2004; Modell,
1989; Palladino, 1996).
Look into your family history and you may find
a great-grandparent who finished high school or col-
lege. But a century ago, these events were fairly rare, as
the typical U.S. child left school after sixth or seventh
grade to find work (Mintz, 2004). Unfortunately, how-
ever, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, there
was little work to find. Idle and at loose ends, young
people took to roaming the countryside, angry, demor-
alized, and depressed. Alarmed by the situation, the
federal government took action. At the same time that
it instituted the Social Security system to provide for the
© LOC/SSPL/The Image Works
elderly (to be discussed in Chapter 13), the Roosevelt

administration implemented a national youth program
to lure young people to school. The program worked.
By 1939, 75 percent of all U.S. teenagers were attending
high school.
High school boosted the intellectual skills of a
As this famous 1930s
photograph of a migrant whole cohort of Americans. But it produced a generation gap between these young
family traveling across the people and their less educated, often immigrant parents and encouraged teens to
arid Southwest to search for spend their days together as an isolated, age-segregated group. Then, during the
California jobs illustrates, early
1950s, when entrepreneurs began to target products to this new, lucrative “teen”
in the Great Depression, there
was no chance to go to high market, we developed our familiar adolescent culture with its distinctive music
school and no real adolescence and dress (Mintz, 2004; Modell, 1989). The sense of an adolescent society bonded
because children had, at a very together (against their elders) reached its height during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
young age, to work to help sup-
With “Never trust anyone over 30” as its slogan, the huge teenage baby boom cohort
port their families.
rejected the conventional rules related to marriage and gender roles and transformed
the way we live our adult lives.
In this chapter, we will explore the experience of being adolescent in the contem-
porary developed world—a time in history when we expect teenagers to go to high
school (and now college) and society insulates young people from adult responsibili-
ties for a decade or more. First, I’ll be examining the cognitive abilities and emotional
CHAPTER 9 Cognitive and Socioemotional Development 261
Table 9.1: Stereotypes About Adolescence: True or False?

T/F 1. Adolescents think about life in deeper, more thoughtful ways than children do.
T/F 2. Adolescence is when we develop our personal moral code for living.
T/F 3. Adolescents are highly sensitive to what other people think.
T/F 4. Adolescents are unusually susceptible to peer influences.
T/F 5. Adolescents are highly emotional compared to other age groups.
T/F 6. Adolescents are prone to taking risks.
T/F 7. Most adolescents are emotionally disturbed.
T/F 8. Rates of suicide are at their peak during adolescence.
T/F 9. Adolescents feel more stressed out with their parents than with their peers.
T/F 10. Getting in with a bad crowd makes it more likely for teenagers to “go down the
wrong path.”
(Answers: 1. T, 2. T, 3. T, 4. T, 5. T, 6. T, 7. F, 8. F, 9. T, 10. T)
lives of teens. Then, I’ll chart how teenagers separate from their parents and relate to
one another in groups. This chapter ends by touching on some issues that affect the
millions of young people living in impoverished regions of the world, who can’t count
on having a life stage called adolescence at all.
Before beginning your reading, you might want to take the “Stereotypes About
Adolescence: True or False?” quiz in Table 9.1. In the following pages, I’ll be discuss-
ing why each stereotype is right or wrong.
The Mysterious Teenage Mind

Thoughtful and introspective, but impulsive, moody, and out of control; peer-
centered conformists and rebellious risk takers; being able to make adult decisions,
but needing to be sheltered from the real world: Can teenagers really be all these
things? In our search to explain these contradictions, let’s first look at three classic
theories of teenage thinking, then explore the research related to teenage storm
and stress.
Three Classic Theories of Teenage Thinking

Have a thoughtful conversation with a 16-year-old and a 10-year-old and you will
be struck by the remarkable mental growth that occurs during adolescence. It’s not
so much that teenagers know much more than they did in fourth or fifth grade,
but that adolescents think in a different way. With an elementary school child in
the concrete operational stage, you can have a rational talk about daily life. With a
teenager, you can have a rational talk about ideas. This ability to reason abstractly
about concepts is the defining quality of Jean Piaget’s formal operational stage (see
Table 9.2 on p. 262).
formal operational stage
Formal Operational Thinking: Abstract Reasoning at Its Peak Jean Piaget’s fourth and
Children in concrete operations can look beyond the way objects immediately appear. final stage of cognitive
They realize that when Mommy puts on a mask, she’s still Mommy “inside.” They development, reached
at around age 12 and
understand that when you pour a glass of juice or milk into a different-shaped glass, characterized by teenagers’
the amount of liquid remains the same. Piaget believed that when children reach ability to reason at an
the formal operational stage, at around age 12, this ability to think abstractly takes abstract, scientific level.
Table 9.2: Piaget’s Stages: Focus on Adolescence

reality.
one), the amount actually becomes different.
thinking is really on the same wavelength as adults’. While they
12+ Formal operations Reasoning is at its pinnacle: hypothetical, scientific, flexible, fully
adult. Our full cognitive human potential has been reached.
a qualitative leap. Teenagers are able to reason logically in the

realm of pure thought. Specifically, according to Piaget:
ADOLESCENTS CAN THINK LOGICALLY ABOUT CONCEPTS AND
HYPOTHETICAL POSSIBILITIES. Ask fourth- or fifth-graders to
put objects such as sticks in order from small to large, and they
will have no problem performing this seriation task. But pre-
sent a similar task verbally: “Bob is taller than Sam, and Sam
is taller than Bill. Who is the tallest?” and the same children
will be lost. The reason is that, during adolescence, we first
become capable of logically manipulating concepts in our
minds (Elkind, 1968; Flavell, 1963).
Moreover, if you give a child in concrete operations a rea-
soning task that begins, “Suppose snow is blue,” she will refuse
to go further, saying, “That’s not true!” Adolescents in formal
operations have no problem tackling that challenge because
once our thinking is liberated from concrete objects, we are
comfortable reasoning about concepts that may not be real.
ADOLESCENTS CAN THINK LIKE REAL SCIENTISTS. When our
thinking occurs on an abstract plane, we can approach prob-
lems in a systematic way, devising a strategy to scientifically
prove that something is true.
figure 9.1: Piaget’s Piaget designed an exercise to reveal this new scientific thought: He presented chil-
pendulum apparatus: A task
to assess whether children dren with a pendulum apparatus and unattached strings and weights (see Figure 9.1).
can reason scientifically: Notice that the strings differ in their length and the weights vary in size or heaviness.
Piaget presents the child with Children’s task was to connect the weights to the strings, then attach them to the
the different weights and string
lengths illustrated here and
pendulum, to decide which influence determined how quickly the pendulum swung
shows the boy or girl how to from side to side. Was it the length of the string, the heaviness of the weight, or the
attach them to the pendulum height from which the string was released?
(and to one another). Then he Think about how to approach this problem, and you may realize that it’s crucial
says, “Your task is to discover
what makes the pendulum swing
to be systematic—keeping everything constant but the factor whose influence you
more or less rapidly from side want to assess (remember my explanation of an experiment in Chapter 1). To test
to side—is it the length of the whether it’s the heaviness of the weight, you must keep the string length and the
string, the heaviness of the height from which you drop it constant, varying only the weight. Then, you need to
weight, or the height (and force)
from which you release the
isolate another variable, keeping everything else the same. And when you vary the
pendulum?” and watches to see length of the string, keeping everything else the same, you will realize that the string
what happens. length alone affects how quickly the pendulum swings.
Elementary school children, Piaget discovered, approach these problems

haphazardly. Only adolescents adopt a scientific strategy to solve reasoning
tasks (Flavell, 1963; Ginsburg & Opper, 1969).
HOW DOES THIS CHANGE IN THINKING APPLY TO REAL LIFE? This new ability
to think hypothetically and scientifically explains why it’s not until in high school
that we can thrill to a poetic metaphor or comprehend chemistry experiments
(Kroger, 2000). It’s only during high school that we can join the debate team and
argue the case for and against capital punishment, no matter what we personally
believe. In fact, reaching the formal operational stage explains why teenagers are
famous for debating everything in their lives. A 10-year-old who wants to stay up
till 2 a.m. to watch a new movie will just keep saying, “I don’t want to go to bed.”
Steve McAlister/The Image Bank/Getty Images

A teenager will lay out his case point by point: “Mom, I got enough sleep last
night. Besides, I only need six hours. I can sleep after school tomorrow.”
But, do all adolescents reach formal operations? The answer is no. For
one thing—rather than being universal—formal operational reasoning only
occurs in scientifically oriented Western cultures. Worse yet, even in our soci-
ety, most people don’t make it to Piaget’s final stage. In a classic study, one
researcher discovered only a fraction of U.S. adults approached the pendulum
problem scientifically. More disheartening, when asked to debate a controver-
sial issue, such as capital punishment, most people did not even realize that The advances in scientific
they needed to use logic to construct their case (Kuhn, 1989). thinking that allow teenagers to
Still, even if many of us never reason like real scientists or master debaters, solve the pendulum problem are
the core qualities that made it
we can see the qualities involved in formal operational thinking if we look at how possible for this undergraduate
adolescents—especially older teenagers—reason about their own lives. to be a real research collaborator
If you are a traditional emerging-adult student, think back to the organizational skills in his professor’s chemistry lab.
it took to get into college. You may have learned about your options from an adviser,
researched each possibility on the Internet, visited campuses, and constructed different
applications to showcase your talents. Then, when you got
accepted, you needed to reflect on your future self again:
“This school works financially, but is it too large? How will
I feel about moving far from home?” Would you have been
able to mentally weigh these possibilities, and project your-
self into the future in this way, at age 10, 12, or even 14?
The bottom line is that reaching concrete operations
allows us to be on the same wavelength as the adult world.
Reaching formal operations allows us to act in the world
© James Marshall/The Image Works

like adults.
Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Judgment:

Developing Internalized Moral Values
This new ability to reflect on ourselves as people allows us
to reflect on our personal values. Therefore, drawing on
Piaget’s theory, developmentalist Lawrence Kohlberg (1981, 1984) argued that during Discussing your plans with
an adviser, filling out college
adolescence we become capable of developing a moral code that guides our lives. applications, and realistically
To measure this moral code, Kohlberg constructed ethical dilemmas, had people assessing your interests and
reason about these scenarios, and asked raters to chart the responses according to the talents involve the kind of
three levels of moral thought outlined in Table 9.3 on p. 264. Before looking at the future-oriented adult thinking
that only becomes possible
table, take a minute to respond to the “Heinz dilemma,” the most famous problem in late adolescence. So, even
on Kohlberg’s moral judgment test: if they don’t reason at the
formal operational level on
A woman was near death from cancer. One drug might save her. The druggist was
Piaget’s laboratory tasks,
charging . . . ten times what the drug cost him to make. The . . . husband, Heinz, went these Portland, Maine, high
to everyone he knew to borrow the money but he could only get together about half of school seniors are probably
what it cost. [He] asked the . . . druggist to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the firmly formal operational in
druggist said NO! Heinz broke into the man’s store to steal the drug. . . . Should he terms of thinking about their
have done that? Why? own lives.
Table 9.3: Kohlberg’s Three Levels of Moral Reasoning, with Sample

Responses to the Heinz Dilemma*
Preconventional level:
Description: Person operates according to a “Will I be punished or rewarded?” mentality.
Reasons given for acting in a certain way: (1) to avoid getting into trouble or to get concrete
benefits. (2) person discusses what will best serve his own needs (“Will it be good for
me?”), although he may also recognize that others may have different needs.
Examples: (1) Heinz shouldn’t steal the drug because then the police will catch him and he will
go to jail. (2) Heinz should steal the drug because his wife will love him more.
Conventional level:
Description: Person’s morality centers on the need to obey society’s rules.
Reasons given for acting in a certain way: (1) to be thought of as a “good person”; (2) the idea
that it’s vital to follow the rules to prevent a breakdown in society.
Examples: (1) Heinz should steal the drug because that’s what “a good husband” does; or
Heinz should not steal the drug because good citizens don’t steal. (2) Heinz can’t steal
the drug—even though it might be best—because, if one person decides to steal, so will
another and then another, and then the laws would all break down.
Postconventional level:
Description: Person has a personal moral code that transcends society’s rules.
Reasons given for acting in a certain way: (1) talks about abstract concepts, such as taking
care of the welfare of all people; (2) discusses the fact that there are universally valid moral
principles that transcend anything society says.
Examples: (1) Although it’s wrong for Heinz to steal the drug, there are times when rules must
be disobeyed to provide for people’s welfare. (2) Heinz must steal the drug because the
obligation to save a human life is more important than every other consideration.
*Within each general moral level, the reasons and examples numbered (1) reflect a slightly lower substage of
moral reasoning than those numbered (2).
Source: Adapted from Reimer, Paolitto, & Hersh, 1983.
preconventional level of If you thought in terms of whether Heinz would be personally punished or
morality In Lawrence rewarded for his actions, you would be classified at the lowest level of morality, the
Kohlberg’s theory, the lowest preconventional level. Responses such as “Heinz should not take the drug because
level of moral reasoning,
in which people approach
he will go to jail,” or “Heinz should take the drug because then his wife will treat him
ethical issues by considering well,” suggest that—because your focus is solely on external consequences, whether
the personal punishments or Heinz will get in trouble or be praised—you are not demonstrating any moral sense.
rewards of taking a particular If you made comments such as “Heinz should [or shouldn’t] steal the drug
action.
because it’s a person’s duty to obey the law [or to stick up for his wife]” or “Yes, human
conventional level of life is sacred, but the rules must be obeyed,” your response would be classified at
morality In Lawrence
the conventional level—right where adults typically are. This shows your morality
Kohlberg’s theory, the
intermediate level of moral revolves around the need to uphold society’s norms.
reasoning, in which people People who reason about this dilemma using their own moral guidelines apart
respond to ethical issues from society’s rules are operating at Kohlberg’s highest postconventional level. A
by considering the need to
response showing postconventional reasoning might be, “No matter what society
uphold social norms.
says, Heinz had to steal the drug because nothing outweighs the universal principle
postconventional level
of saving a life.”
of morality In Lawrence
Kohlberg’s theory, the When he conducted studies with different age groups, Kohlberg discovered that
highest level of moral at age 13, preconventional answers were universal. By 15 or 16, most children around
reasoning, in which people the world were reasoning at the conventional level. Still, many of us stop right there.
respond to ethical issues
Although some of Kohlberg’s adults did think postconventionally, using his incredibly
by applying their own
moral guidelines apart from demanding criteria, almost no person consistently made it to the highest moral stage
society’s rules. (Reimer, Paolitto, & Hersh, 1983; Snarey, 1985).
HOW DOES KOHLBERG’S THEORY APPLY TO REAL LIFE? Kohlberg’s categories get us
to think deeply about our values. Do you have a moral code that guides your actions?
Would you intervene, no matter what the costs, to save a person’s life? These catego-
ries give us insights into other people’s moral priorities, too. While reading about
Kohlberg’s preconventional level, you might have thought: “I know someone just like
this. This person has no ethics. He only cares about whether or not he gets caught!”
However, Kohlberg’s research has been severely criticized. For one thing,
Kohlberg was wrong when he said that children can’t go beyond a punishment and
reward mentality. Remember from Chapters 3 and 6, developmentalists now know
that our basic sense of morality naturally kicks in at an incredibly young age.
In a classic late-twentieth-century critique, feminist psychologist Carol Gilligan
argued that Kohlberg’s stages offer a specifically male-centered approach to moral
thought. Recall that being classified at the postconventional stage requires abstractly
weighing ideals of justice. People must verbalize the tension between societies’ rules
and universal ideals. Women’s morality, Gilligan believes, revolves around concrete,
caring-oriented criteria: “Hurting others is wrong”; “Moral people take responsibility
to reach out in a nurturing way” (Gilligan & Attanucci, 1988).
Gilligan’s criticisms bring up an interesting question: Is Kohberg’s scale valid?
Does the way people reason about his scenarios relate to the attitudes and behaviors,
which, as you learned in Chapter 6, predict acting prosocially in life? Unfortunately,
the answer is “not necessarily.” When outstandingly prosocial teenagers—community
leaders who set up programs for the homeless—took Kohlberg’s test, researchers
rated their answers at the same conventional level as non-prosocial teens! (See
Reimer, 2003.)
Concerns about whether responses to artificial vignettes predict real-world
morality are heightened when we look around. We all know people who can spout
the highest ethical principles but behave pretty despicably: the minister who lec-
tures his congregation about the sanctity of marriage while cheating on his wife;
the chairman of the ethics committee in the state legislature who has been taking
bribes for years.
Still, when he describes the changes in moral reasoning that take place during
adolescence, Kohlberg has an important point. Teenagers are famous for question-
ing society’s rules, for seeing the injustice of the world, and for getting involved in
idealistic causes. Unfortunately, this ability to step back and
see the world as it should be, but rarely is, may produce the
emotional storm and stress of teenage life.
Elkind’s Adolescent Egocentrism: Explaining

Teenage Storms
This was David Elkind’s (1978) conclusion when he drew on
Piaget’s concept of formal operations to make sense of teen-
agers’ emotional states. Elkind argues that, when children RICHARD B. LEVINE/Newscom
make the transition to formal operational thought at about

age 12, they can see beneath the surface of adult rules. A sixth-
grader realizes that his 10 o’clock bedtime, rather than being
carved in stone, is an arbitrary number capable of being con-
tested and changed. A socially conscious 14-year-old becomes
acutely aware of the difference between what adults say they
Taking to the streets to protest
do and how they really act. The same parents and teachers who punish you for missing environmental destruction
your curfew or being late to class can’t get to the dinner table or a meeting on time. (fracking) is apt to be a
The realization that the emperor has no clothes (“Those godlike adults are no life-changing experience for this
better than me”), according to Elkind, leads to anger, anxiety, and the impulse to teen. It also is a developmental
landmark, as advances in moral
rebel. From arguing with a ninth-grade English teacher over a grade to testing the reasoning make adolescents
limits by driving fast, teenagers are well known for protesting anything just because highly sensitive to social
it’s “a rule.” injustices.
More tantalizing, Elkind draws on formal operational

thinking to make sense of the classic behavior we often
observe in young teens—their incredible sensitivity to what
other people think. According to Elkind, when children first
become attuned to other people’s flaws, this feeling turns
inward to become an obsession with what others think
about their own personal flaws. This leads to adolescent
© Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE
egocentrism—the distorted feeling that one’s own actions are

at the center of everyone else’s consciousness.
So 13-year-old Melody drives her parents crazy. She
objects to everything from the way they dress to how they
chew their food. When her mother picks her up from school,
she will not let this humiliating person emerge from the car:
Look at the worried expressions “Mom, I don’t know you!” She does not spare herself: A minuscule pimple is a monu-
on the faces of these freshmen mental misery; stumbling and spilling her food on the school lunch line is a source
cheerleaders and you can almost
hear them thinking, “If I make
of shame (“Everyone is laughing at me! My life is over!”). According to Elkind, this
a mistake during the game, intense self-consciousness is caused by one facet of adolescent egocentrism called the
everyone will laugh at me for my imaginary audience. By that term, he meant that young teens, such as Melody, liter-
whole life!” According to David ally feel that they are on stage, with everyone watching everything they do.
Elkind, the imaginary audience
can make daily life intensely
A second component of adolescent egocentrism is the personal fable. Teenagers
humiliating for young teens. feel that they are invincible and that their own life experiences are unique. So Melody
believes that no one has ever had so disgusting a blemish. She has the most embar-
rassing mother in the world.
These mental distortions explain the exaggerated emotional storms we laugh
about during the early adolescent years. Unfortunately, the “It can’t happen to me”
component of the personal fable may lead to tragic acts. Boys put their lives at risk by
drag racing on the freeway because they imagine that they can never die. A girl does
not use contraception when she has sex because, she reasons, “Yes, other girls can
get pregnant, but not me. Plus, if I do get pregnant, I will be the center of attention,
a real heroine.”
Studying Three Aspects of Storm and Stress

Are teenagers unusually sensitive to people’s reactions? Is Elkind (like other observers,
from Aristotle to Shakespeare to G. Stanley Hall) correct in saying that risk taking is
intrinsic to being a “hot-headed youth”? Are adolescents really intensely emotional
and/or likely to be emotionally disturbed? Now, let’s turn to research related to these
three core aspects of teenage storm and stress.
adolescent egocentrism Are Adolescents Exceptionally Socially Sensitive?

David Elkind’s term for the
tendency of young teenagers
In the last chapter, you learned that, when they reach puberty, children—especially
to feel that their actions are girls—become attuned to their bodies’ flaws. In Chapter 6, you saw how the passion
at the center of everyone to fit in socially (and target people who don’t!) causes bullying to flare up during the
else’s consciousness. early teens. In one revealing study, when researchers asked middle schoolers to list
imaginary audience their priorities, pre-teens ranked socially succeeding as their top concern. Being in
David Elkind’s term for the the “in crowd” was more important than being a scholar, being nice, or even having
tendency of young teenagers
to feel that everyone is
friends! (See LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010.)
watching their every action; Moreover, as Elkind would predict, when they reach puberty, children are
a component of adolescent especially sensitive to social disapproval. If presented with unfamiliar faces on a
egocentrism. screen, and told they were unexpectedly rejected by those virtual peers, pre-teen girls’
personal fable David Elkind’s heart rates dramatically slow (Gunther Moor and others, 2014). When scientists con-
term for the tendency of structed a cyber ball game and then arranged for study participants to get ostracized
young teenagers to believe
that their lives are special
(no one threw these people the ball)—as the researchers predicted, adolescents
and heroic; a component of reacted to this social slight more intensely than did adults (Sebastian and others,
adolescent egocentrism. 2010).
More telling, young teens are prone to act impul- Increase

sively, specifically in situations involving arousing
social cues (Blakemore & Mills, 2014). As Figure
9.2 reveals, they selectively fail Simon Says–like
tasks, but only when an enticing, smiling person says
“Simon Says, ‘don’t go’” (Casey & Caudle, 2013).
As the landmark study in the How Do We Know Self-Control
box spells out, boys tend to make risky driving deci- failure
sions, but only with their friends (Steinberg, 2005;
2008). After being socially excluded (via the cyber
ball game) especially teens who are highly rejection-
sensitive overreact by impulsively taking these scary
driving risks (Peake and others, 2013). Decrease
Moreover, fMRI studies show that this predis- Children Teens Adults
position to act precipitously in emotional situations
is mirrored in specific brain changes (Blakemore &
figure 9.2: Developmental
Mills, 2014; Peake and others, 2013). So, the answer to the question, “Are adolescents differences in a go, no go,
more socially sensitive?” is “absolutely yes,” especially around the pubertal years! Simon Says–like task: This
chart shows teens made more
impulsive “I’ll go ahead” errors
than either children or adults
when a welcoming, smiling face
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . said, “Don’t go,” suggesting that
that adolescents make riskier decisions when they are with adolescents, in particular, are
apt to lose control in enticing
their peers? peer situations.
Their heightened social sensitivity gives us strong evidence that teenagers do more Data from: Casey & Caudle, 2013, p. 84.
dangerous things in arousing situations with their friends. About a decade ago, an
ingenious video study drove this point scientifically home. Researchers (Gardner &
Steinberg, 2005) asked younger teenagers (aged 13 to 16), emerging adults (aged 18 to
22), and adults (aged 24-plus) to play a computer game in which they could earn extra
points by taking risks, such as continuing to drive a car after a traffic light had turned
yellow. They assigned the members of each age group to two conditions: Either play
the game alone or in the presence of two friends.
The chart below shows the intriguingly different findings for young teenagers and
for people over age 24. Notice that, while being with other people had no impact on
risky decision making in
the adults, it had an enor-
Alone
mous effect on young
With friends
teens, who were much
More 0.6 more likely to risk crash-
0.5 ing the car by driving
farther after the yellow
0.4
light appeared when with
0.3 friends. The bottom line:
0.2 Watch for risky behavior
0.1
when groups of teenag-
ers are together—a fact
Risky driving 0
to consider the next time
–0.1 you see a car full of ado-
–0.2 lescents barreling down
the road with music play-
–0.3
ing full blast!
Less –0.4
Adolescents Adults
(age 13–16) (age 24+)
Are Adolescents Risk Takers?

Doing something and getting away with it. . . . You are driving at 80 miles an hour and
stop at a stop sign and a cop will turn around the corner and you start giggling. Or you
are out drinking or maybe you smoked a joint, and you say “hi” to a police officer and
he walks by. . . .
(quoted in Lightfoot, 1997, p. 100)
This quotation from a teen in an interview study, plus the research in the previous
section, suggests that (no surprise) the second storm-and-stress stereotype is definitely
true. From the thrill of taking that first drink to the lure of driving fast, pushing the
envelope is a basic feature of teenage life (Dahl, 2004; Steinberg, 2010).
Consider, for instance, the findings of yearly nationwide University of Michigan–
sponsored polls tracking U.S. young people’s lives. In examining data spanning 1997
to 2008, researchers found that 1 in 6 teens had been arrested by age 18. By age 23,
the arrest rate slid up to an astonishing almost 1 in 3! (See Brame and others, 2012.)
In the 2010 survey, roughly 2 in 10 high school seniors admitted to binge drinking
(defined as having five or more drinks at a time for males and four or more drinks in
a row for females) (Johnston and others, 2011). (Table 9.4 showcases some interesting
research facts related specifically to alcohol and adolescents.)
The good news is that, as you can see in Figure 9.3, in contrast to our images of
rampant teenage substance abuse, most high school seniors do not report using any
drugs. The most recent 2013 University of Michigan poll found the lowest rates of
teenage alcohol use since the survey was instituted four decades ago! (See Johnston
and others, 2014.) The bad news is that—for an alarming fraction of young people
in the United States—encounters with the criminal justice system are a depressing
feature of modern life.
Younger children also rebel, disobey, and test the limits. But, if you have seen
a group of teenage boys hanging from the top of a speeding car, you know that the
Table 9.4: Stereotypes and Surprising Research Facts About Alcohol and Teens
Stereotype #1: Teenagers who drink are prone to abuse alcohol later in life.
Research answer: “It depends on when you begin.” Drinking during puberty is a risk factor for later
alcohol problems, with animal research suggesting that alcohol use specifically at this time of life
primes the brain physiologically to want alcohol later on (Blomeyer and others, 2013). However,
during the late teens and twenties, drinking—at least in Western societies—is normative. So we
can’t predict well from a person’s consumption at these peak-use ages to the rest of adulthood.
Stereotype #2: Involvement in academics and/or athletics protects a teen from abusing
alcohol.
Research answer: “It’s complicated.” While excelling at academics protects children at high genetic
risk from drinking to excess as a teen (Benner and others, 2014), heavy athletic involvement is
correlated with binge drinking (Barnes and others, 2007; Peck, Vida, & Eccles, 2008) for boys. In
both cases, this research points (again) to the pivotal role of the peer environment. Drinking (no
surprise) is apt to be a prominent feature of the high school jock culture, and more of a “no, no”
in the society of scholars, specifically during the high school years (see below).
Stereotype #3: Middle childhood problems are risk factors for later excessive drinking.
Research answer: “Both true and surprisingly false.” As you might expect, impulse control problems
predict teenage and adult problem-drinking (Englund and others, 2008; Pitkanen and others,
2008; Lopez-Caneda and others, 2014). However, two longitudinal investigations—conducted in
the United States and Great Britain—revealed that, for girls, high academic achievement was a
risk factor for heavy drinking in the early twenties! (Englund and others, 2008; Maggs, Patrick, &
Feinstein, 2008.) To explain this uncomfortable finding, researchers suggest that girls who do
well academically may be more likely to go to college, where, as many of you know, again the
peer culture encourages drinking to excess.
Percent 80
12th Grade
60
40
20
0
’76 ’78 ’80 ’82 ’84 ’86 ’88 ’90 ’92 ’94 ’96 ’98 ’00 ’02 ’04 ’06 ’08
Year
figure 9.3: Trends in prevalence of illicit drug use, reported by U.S. high school seniors
from the mid-1970s to 2010: Contrary to our stereotypes, only 2 in 5 U.S. high school seniors
reports using any illicit drugs (including alcohol) over the past year. Notice also that drug use was
actually somewhat more common during the late 1970s and early 1980s—among the parents of
today’s teens, during their own adolescence.
Data from: Johnston and others, 2011.
risks adolescents take can be threatening to life. At the very age when they are most
physically robust, teenagers—especially males—are most likely to die of preventable
causes such as accidents (Dahl, 2004; Spear, 2008). So, yes, parents can worry about
their children—particularly their sons—when they haven’t made it home from a party
and it’s already 2 a.m.!
Are Adolescents More Emotional, More Emotionally Disturbed,

or Both?
Given this information, it should come as no surprise that the third major storm-
and-stress stereotype is also correct: Adolescents are more emotionally intense than
adults. Developmentalists could not arrive at this conclusion by using surveys in
which they asked young people to reflect on how they generally felt. They needed
a method to chart the minute-to-minute ups and downs of teenagers’ emotional
lives.
Imagine that you could get inside the head of a 16-year-old as that person
went about daily life. About 40 years ago, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Reed
Larson (1984) accomplished this feat through developing a procedure called the
experience-sampling technique. The researchers asked students at a suburban experience-sampling
Chicago high school to carry pagers programmed to emit a signal at random inter- technique A research
procedure designed to
vals during each day for a week. When the beeper went off, each teenager filled capture moment-to-moment
out a chart like the one you can see in Figure 9.4 on page 270. Notice, if you experiences by having
turn to Greg’s record, that the experience-sampling procedure gives us insights people carry pagers and
into what experiences make teenagers (and people of other ages) feel joyous or take notes describing their
activities and emotions
distressed. Let’s now look at what the charts revealed about the intensity of ado- whenever the signal sounds.
lescents’ moods.
The records showed that adolescents do live life on an intense emotional plane.
Teenagers reported experiencing euphoria and deep unhappiness far more often than
a comparison sample of adults. Teenagers also had more roller-coaster shifts in moods.
While a 16-year-old was more likely to be back to normal 45 minutes after feeling
terrific, an adult was likely to still feel happier than average hours after reporting an
emotional high.
Mood (raw score)

Negative Positive
–24 –16 –8 0 8 16 –24 What he was doing and thinking about
Monday 12:45 P.M. Walking down the hall at school with a friend
2:52 Walking to work with a girl
6:40 On a dinner break at work, heading for Arby's; "I'm hungry"
8:30
10:25 Lying in bed, daydreaming about the Prom; listening to music
In English Lit. discussing Lord Tennyson's "Memoriam": thinking

Tuesday 8:44 A.M. about "the Creeds in the poem"
In Chemistry, watching movie: complaining to teacher that the sound
11:00
is too loud: "This movie is terrible"
12:35 P.M. Outside at school; "rapping to a friend"
2:05 In Sociology, listening to a teacher talk about "living together"
5:15 At work, cleaning shelves; just dropped wristwatch
7:05 Getting off work; rushing to catch the el train; "I want to get home and eat"
figure 9.4: Two days in the life of Gregory Stone: An experience-sampling record: This chart is based on two days of
self-reports by a teenager named Greg Stone, as he was randomly beeped and asked to rate his moods and what he was doing at that
moment. By looking at the ups and downs of Greg’s mood, can you identify the kinds of activities that he really enjoys or dislikes?
Now, as an exercise, you might want to monitor your own moods for a few days and see how they change in response to your own life
experiences. What insights does your internal mental checklist reveal about which activities are most enjoyable for you?
Adapted from Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984, p. 111.
Does this mean that adolescents’ moods are irrational? The researchers con-
cluded that the answer was no. As Greg’s experience-sampling chart shows, teenag-
ers don’t get excited or down in the dumps for no reason. It’s hanging out with their
friends that makes them feel elated. It’s a boring class that bores them very, very much.
Does this mean that most adolescents are emotionally disturbed? Now, the answer
is definitely no. Although the distinction can escape parents when their child wails,
“I got a D on my chemistry test; I’ll kill myself!” there is a difference between being
highly emotional and being emotionally disturbed.
Actually, when developmentalists ask teenagers to evaluate their lives, they get
an upbeat picture of how young people generally feel. Most adolescents around the
world are confident and hopeful about the future (Gilman and others, 2008; Lewin-
Bizan and others, 2010). In one U.S. poll, researchers classified 4 out of 10 adoles-
cents as “flourishing”—efficacious, zestful, connected to family and friends. Only 6
percent were “languishing,” totally demoralized about life (Keys, 2007).
So the stereotypic impression that most teenagers are unhappy or suffer from
serious psychological problems is false. Still, as you just read, the picture is far from
totally rosy. Their risk-taking propensities make the late teens the peak crime years
(Warr, 2007; see Figure 9.5). Teenagers’ emotional storms can produce other dis-
tressing symptoms, too. Again, contrary to our stereotypes, adolescent suicide is rare
nonsuicidal self-injury
(Males, 2009). As I’ll describe in Chapter 13, the peak life stage for suicide is old age!
Cutting, burning, or
purposely injuring one’s But, in several international polls, researchers found an alarming fraction of teens—
body to cope with stress. between 1 in 4, to 1 in 6 young people—have engaged in nonsuicidal self-injury
Frequency 4000
of Arrests
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37
Age
figure 9.5: Frequency of arrests by age in a California study of offenders: This chart
shows the standard age pattern around the world. The peak years for law breaking are the late
teens, after which criminal activity falls off.
Data from: Natsuaki, Ge, & Wenk, 2008.
(Muehlenkamp and others, 2012; Giletta and others, 2012). These ado-
lescents cut themselves, or perform other self-mutilation acts, to deal with
stress.
Scientists are passionate to make sense of this global epidemic. The
impulse to self-injure, they find, unlike addictions such as drinking or
taking drugs, is used specifically to cope with distress. Cutting episodes
erupt when emotionally fragile teens experience bouts of incredibly low
self-esteem (Victor, Glenn, & Klonsky, 2012; Anestis and others, 2013).
As one adolescent in an interview study explained: [It’s due to] “pure
black hatred of the self that has failed at everything else” (Breen, Lewis, &
Peter Dazeley/Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images

Sutherland, 2013, p. 59). Still, another child who regularly self-injured
admitted a poisonous positive feeling is involved: “I love looking at my
scars. They are an important part of me that I know will always be with me
even if nothing else is.” (p. 60) Therefore, in some distorted way, cutting
may be a strategy for defining one’s identity and ironically preserving the
sense of an enduring self. Which brings up an interesting question. Given
that cutting can flare up—and externalizing behaviors such as risk-taking
become common—do depression rates rise during the adolescent years?
Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Moreover, while the prevalence of
this mental disorder is about equal for each sex during childhood, by the Most teens are upbeat and
mid-teens, the adult gender pattern kicks in. Throughout life, women are roughly happy, and suicide is very, very
twice as susceptible to depression as are men. So, while they are worrying about rare during the adolescent
their teenage sons, mothers might be a bit concerned about their daughters, too (see years. But, engaging in cutting,
or nonsuicidal self-injury, is
Oldehinkel & Bouma, 2011, for review). upsettingly prevalent at this age
Depression rates may escalate during adolescence because the hormonal changes around the world.
of puberty make the teenage brain more sensitive to stress (Romeo, 2013). But why
is depression a mainly female disorder during adult life? Are women biologically
primed to internalize their problems when under stress, and could this gender differ-
ence have roots in the womb? We do not know. What we do know is that if a child’s
fate is to battle any serious mental health disorder, from depression to schizophrenia,
that condition often has its onset in late adolescence or the early emerging-adult
years.
Moreover, I believe that the push to be socially successful (or popular) may
explain many classic distressing symptoms during the early teens.
Hot in Developmental Science: A Potential Pubertal Problem,

Popularity
Young teens’ drive for social status, for instance, seems partly to blame for the fact
that academic motivation often takes a nosedive in middle school (LaFontana &
Cillessen, 2010; Li & Lerner, 2011).
Worse yet—because at this age it can be
“cool” to rebel (recall Chapter 6)—for
aggressive children, being in the “popular
group” is a risk factor for failing in school
(Troop-Gordon, Visconti, & Kuntz, 2011).
Therefore, chasing popularity can have
academic costs. Plus, young teens may be
faced with a difficult choice: “Either be
in the ‘in crowd’ or do well in school”
(Wilson, Karimpour, & Rodkin, 2011).
Making it into the in crowd can also
have personal costs. Pre-teens often base
their friendships on similarities in social
status—not on shared interests or anything
© JAG IMAGES/Cultura/age fotostock
else (Logis and others, 2013). Higher-

status adolescents tend to reject their
lower-status peers (Berger & Dijkstra,
2013). Plus, when a child is passionate
about being popular and ascends to the
high status group, this achievement leads
to more aggression over time (Dawes &
Being in the elite “in crowd” at school is
probably a thrilling experience for these girls. Xie, 2014).
But, now that their quest to be popular has Finally, because social standing is so
succeeded, they may develop some not-so- important at this age (Molloy, Gest, &
nice qualities as a result of having climbed Rulison, 2011), getting isolated from the
the status rungs.
“in crowd” can lead to becoming depressed
(Buck & Dix, 2012; Witvliet and others, 2010). Popularity pressures seem implicated
in both the upsurge in unhappiness and acting out during the early teens!
Different Teenage Pathways

So far, I seem to be sliding into stereotyping “adolescents” as a monolithic group.
This is absolutely not true! Teenagers, as we know, differ—in their passion to be
popular, in their school connectedness, in their tendencies to take risks or get
depressed. As diversity at this life stage—and any other age—is the norm, the criti-
cal question is, “Who gets derailed and who thrives during this landmark decade
of life?”
Which Teens Get into Serious Trouble?

Without denying that serious adolescent difficulties can unpredictably erupt, here are
three thunderclouds that foreshadow stormy weather ahead:
AT-RISK TEENS TEND TO HAVE PRIOR EMOTION REGULATION PROBLEMS. It should
come as no surprise that one thundercloud relates to elementary school externaliz-
ing tendencies and academic difficulties. Not only is the lure of getting into trouble
overwhelming, when a child’s problems regulating his behavior are already causing
him to fail (Hirschfield & Gasper, 2011; Li & Lerner, 2011; Sibley and others, 2011),
as I will describe later, children who are not succeeding with the mainstream kids
gravitate toward antisocial groups of friends, who then give each other reinforcement
for doing dangerous things.
Therefore, tests of executive functions—measures charting whether girls and boys

are having difficulties generally thinking through their behavior—strongly predict
adolescent storms (Pharo and others, 2011; May & Beaver, 2014). Moreover, the
same self-regulation issues that lead to teenage turmoil are apt to appear earlier in life.
AT-RISK TEENS TEND TO HAVE POOR FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS. Feeling alienated
from one’s parents can also be a warning sign of developing storms. When research-
ers explored the emotions of teens who self-injured, these children often anguished:
“My parents are way too critical”; “I can’t depend on my mom or dad” (Bureau and
others, 2010; You, Lin, & Leung, 2013).
In essence, these young people were describing an insecure attachment. Teenag-
ers want to be listened to and respected. They need to know they are unconditionally
loved (Allen and others, 2007). So, to use the attachment metaphor spelled out in
Chapter 4, with adolescents, parents must be skillful dancers. They should under-
stand when to back off and when to stay close. In Chapter 7’s terms, adolescents
require an authoritative discipline style.
Given what you learned in previous chapters, it comes as no surprise that parent–
child problems appearing years earlier foreshadow teenage distress. From disorganized
infant attachment (Spangler & Zimmermann, 2014) to lack of maternal warmth
(Morgan, Shaw, & Forbes, 2014)—what happens relationship-wise during infancy
and early childhood may epigenetically alter how the adolescent brain reacts to stress.
Moreover, it comes as no shock that, just as conflict-ridden parent–child interactions
evoke pre-teen depression, being depressed impairs a young person’s ability to com-
municate with her mom or dad (Brière, Archambault, & Janosz, 2013).
This brings up the fact that the attachment dance at any age is bidirectional.
When we see correlations between teenagers’ reporting distant family relationships
and having troubles, it’s not simply parents who are at fault. Imagine that you are a
15-year-old who is having unprotected sex, taking drugs, or withdrawing from the
world. Would you tell your parents about your life? And when you withdrew to your
room or lied about your activities, wouldn’t you feel even more alienated: “My family
knows zero about who I am” (Bradley & Corwyn, 2013).
Yes, it’s easy to say that being authoritative is vital in parenting teens. But take it
from me (I’ve been there!), when your teenager is on the road to trouble, confronting
him about his activities is apt to backfire. So, it can be difficult for frantic parents to
understand how to really act authoritatively in a much-loved son or daughter’s life.
AT-RISK TEENS LIVE IN A RISK-TAKING ENVIRONMENT. Focusing on parent–child
relationships neglects the role the social milieu plays in seeding teenage storms. If
your much-loved older brother is into drugs (Solmeyer, McHale, & Crouter, 2014),
your boyfriend is robbing stores (Monahan, Dimitrieva, & Cauffman, 2014), or the
values at your school encourage risk-taking (Rambaran, Dijkstra, & Stark, 2013), your
chance of getting into trouble as an adolescent accelerates. To rephrase the old saying:
“It may take a village to raise a child, but it really takes a nurturing village to help a
teenager thrive.” Now, let’s look at who thrives during their teens.
Which Teens Flourish?

In high school I really got it together. I connected with my lifelong love of music. I’ll
never forget that feeling when I got that special prize in band my senior year.
At about age 15, I decided the best way to keep myself off the streets was to get involved
in my church youth group. It was my best time of life.
As the quotations show, these attributes offer a mirror image of the qualities I just
described: Teenagers thrive when they have superior executive functions and can
thoughtfully direct their lives (Gestsdottir and others, 2010; Urban, Lewin-Bizan, &
Lerner, 2010). They flourish when they are connected to school (Lewis and others,
2011). Having a mentor or VIP (very important non-parental adult) boosts young
people’s self-esteem (Haddad, Chen, & Greenberger, 2011)—and so does having a
life interest, like music, provided caring adults nurture your

passion (Scales, Benson, & Roehlkepartain, 2011). In two-
parent families in particular, attending religious services in
later childhood with your parents and siblings promotes thriv-
ing later on (Petts, 2014).
Thriving does not mean staying out of trouble. Adolescents
who are flourishing may also engage in considerable risk taking
during the early and middle teens (Lerner and others, 2010).
© Hill Street Studios/Blend Images/Corbis
So again, we need to approach adolescent behavior by adopt-

ing the developmental systems approach. Those human beings
called teens, like human beings of any age, are not all angel or
devil, but complex mixtures of frailties and strengths (Larson
& Tran, 2014). Testing the limits is a normal adolescent experi-
ence even among the happiest, healthiest teens.
And let’s not give up on children who do get seriously
derailed. Developmentalists make a distinction between
Suppose this 16-year-old chess adolescence-limited turmoil (antisocial behavior during the teenage years) and
wiz had no adult mentors to life-course difficulties (antisocial behaviors that continue into adult life) (Moffitt,
encourage and nurture his
passion. He would probably 1993). Perhaps you have a friend who used to stay out all night partying, drinking, or
never have a chance to express taking drugs, but later became a responsible parent. Or you may know an extremely
his talent and flourish during his “troubled teen” who is succeeding incredibly well after finding the right person–
teenage years. environment fit at college or work. (For a compelling example, stay tuned for page
276.) If so, you understand a main message of the next chapter: We change the most
during our emerging-adult years. (Table 9.5 offers a checklist so you can evaluate
whether a child you love might have a stormy or sunny adolescence.)
Table 9.5: Predicting Whether a Child Is Prone to Teenage Storms or to

Flourish: A Section Summary Checklist
Threatening Thunderclouds
1. Does this child have emotion regulation difficulties and academic problems?
2. Does this child have distant or conflict-ridden family relationships?*
3. Does this child live in an environment where risk taking is prized?
Sunny Signs
4. Does this child have good executive functions and/or is she connected to school?
5. Does this child have a mentor or close family relationships?
6. Does this child have a passion or talent that is being nurtured by caring adults?
7. Does this child live in a two-parent family and did she regularly attend church with her
parents and siblings during elementary school?
Source: Adapted from Masten (2004), p. 315, and the sources in this section.
*As I will describe later in this chapter, some conflict (and distancing) from parents predictably occurs during early
adolescence.
adolescence-limited turmoil
Wrapping Things Up: The Blossoming Teenage Brain
Antisocial behavior that, for Now, let’s put it all together: the mental growth; the morality; the emotionality; and
most teens, is specific to the sensitivity to what others think. Give teenagers an intellectual problem and they
adolescence and does not
persist into adult life.
reason in mature ways. But younger teens tend to be captivated by popularity, and get
overwhelmed in arousing situations when with their friends.
life-course difficulties
Antisocial behavior that, for
According to adolescence specialists, these qualities make sense when we look
a fraction of adolescents, at the developing brain. During the teens, a dramatic pruning occurs in the frontal
persists into adult life. lobes (see Table 9.6). The insulating myelin sheath has years to go before reaching its
Table 9.6: Teenage Brain-Imaging Questions and Findings

Question #1: How does the brain change during adolescence?
Answer: Dramatically, in different ways: Frontal lobe grey matter (the neurons and synapses)
peaks during the pre-teen years, and then declines due to pruning—meaning the cortex “gets
thinner” over the teenage years. In the meantime, white matter (the myelin sheath) steadily
grows into the twenties.
Question #2: Are there gender differences in this brain development?
Answer: Yes. Girls are on an earlier brain-development timetable than boys, with grey matter
peaking at a younger age (10 for girls and 12 for boys), and white matter increasing at a faster
rate in the female brain. Might these differences relate to emerging gender differences in
depression, or the male tendency to take dangerous risks? We do not know.
Question #3: Do the brain-imaging findings mirror the behavioral research in this section?
Answer: Not really. For instance, although as suggested above, the teen brain matures in definite
ways from adolescence to adulthood, studies exploring specific activation pattern differences
between teens and adults—as they relate to social sensitivities, risky decisions, and so on—have
sometimes confusing results.
Conclusion: While we do have good general data on teenage brain development, we still have far
to go in neuroscientifically mapping the teenage (and adult!) mind.
Sources: Blakemore, Burnett, & Dahl, 2010; Bramen and others, 2011; Burnett and others, 2011; Lenroot & Giedd, 2010;
Luciana, 2010; Negriff and others, 2011; Bava and others, 2010; Koolschijn & Crone, 2013; Moreno & Trainor, 2013.
Note: The final statement here is based on my own impressions from reviewing the research cited above.
mature form. At the same time, puberty heightens the output of certain neurotrans-
mitters, which provokes the passion to take risks (Guerri & Pascual, 2010; Steinberg,
2010). As Laurence Steinberg (2008; Smith, Chein, & Steinberg, 2013) explains,
it’s like starting the engine of adulthood with an unskilled driver. This heightened
activation of the “socioemotional brain,” with a cognitive control center still “under
construction,” makes adolescence a potentially dangerous time.
But from an evolutionary standpoint, it is logical to start with an emotional
engine in high gear. Teenagers’ risk-taking tendencies propel them to venture into
the world. Their passion to make it with their peers is vital to leaving their parents
and forming new, close attachments as adults. The unique qualities of the adolescent
mind are beautifully tailored to help young people make the leap from childhood to
the adult world (Dahl, 2004; Steinberg, 2008).
INTERVENTIONS: Making the World Fit the Teenage Mind

Table 9.7 summarizes these section messages in a chart for parents. Now, let’s explore
our discussion’s ramifications for society.
Table 9.7: Tips for Parents of Teens

1. Understand that strong emotions may not have the same meaning for your teen as for you. So
try not to take comments like “I hate myself ” or “I’m the dumbest person in the world” very
seriously. Also, during the early teen years, new research—discussed later in this chapter—
suggests it’s normal for your child to become more secretive and rebellious. But just because
your daughter gets furious at you, don’t think she doesn’t love you.
2. Understand that, while sampling forbidden activities is normal, if your teen is getting involved
in clearly illegal activities or seems seriously depressed, you do need to be concerned.
3. Understand that your child’s peer choices (and peer-group status) offer good hints about her
behavior, and that striving to be in the “popular crowd”—while normal—can have unpleasant
consequences.
4. Roll with the punches, encourage your child’s passions, and enjoy your teenager!
Don’t punish adolescents as if they were mentally just like adults. If the adolescent
brain is a work in progress, it doesn’t make sense to have the same legal sanctions
for teenagers who commit crimes that we have for adults. Rather than locking ado-
lescents up, it seems logical that at this young age we focus on rehabilitation. As
Laurence Steinberg (2008) and virtually every other adolescence expert suggest, with
regard to the legal system, “less guilty by reason of adolescence” is the way to go.
Is the U.S. legal system listening to the adolescence specialists? The answer is “a
bit, but only recently.” In 2005, the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for
adolescents and, in 2012, eliminated mandatory life sentences without the possibility
of parole for teens (Shulman & Cauffman, 2013). Still, today, as the Experiencing
the Lifespan Box suggests, officers and prosecutors can transfer selected adolescents
accused of violent crimes out of the juvenile justice system and have those teens tried
as adults. Yes, as my amazing interview with Jason suggests, with luck and a resilient
temperament, a shockingly punitive approach can help turn a person around. How-
ever, statistically speaking, there is no evidence that condemning adolescents to the
gulag of dysfunctional adult prisons deters later criminal acts (Fabian, 2011). Do you
believe that it’s ever acceptable to try teenagers as adults?
Pass laws user-friendly to the teenage mind. Putting adolescents in adult prisons is
counterproductive, simply because it exposes this socially-sensitive age group to the
kind of social milieu that encourages criminal acts. Therefore, we need to craft legisla-
tion taking teenagers mental processes into account. One good example is graduated
driving rules, which limit young people just getting their license from operating cars
Experiencing the Lifespan: Innocently Imprisoned at 16
If you think the U.S. legal system protects 16-year-olds from facilities, and he convinced the judge that was best for
adult jail and that citizens can’t be falsely incarcerated with- me. I quickly had to take what they offered—being sent
out a trial, think again. Then, after reading Jason’s story, to the Nashville Rescue Mission and then a halfway
you might link his horrific teenage years to the qualities house for 2 years—because my trial date was coming
involved in resilience I discussed in Chapter 7. up very soon.
I grew up with crazy stuff. My mom was a drug dealer and Jail was unbelievable. The ninth floor of the Jefferson
my dad passed away so I was adopted by my grandpar- County Jail is well known because that’s where they send
ents. I was kicked out of four schools before ninth grade. criminals from the penitentiary who have committed the
By age 15, I was involved with a street gang and heavy most violent crimes to await trial. My first cellmate had
gun trading in Birmingham, Alabama. I was in a car with cut a guy’s head off. Every time you get to know a group,
some older guys during a drive-by shooting, got pulled the next week another group arrives in jail and you have
over, and that was the last time I saw daylight for over to fight again. The guards were no better. If they didn’t
3 years. like a prisoner, they would persuade inmates to beat the
The original charge was carrying a concealed weapon, living daylights out of that person.
and I was sent to a juvenile boot camp. Then, two days What helped me cope were my dreams, because you are
after being discharged, detectives were knocking on my not in jail in your dreams. I wrote constantly, read all the
door with the full charges: three counts of attempted time. What ultimately helped was being sent out of state
murder. The arresting officers decided to transfer me to (so I couldn’t get involved with my old friends) and, espe-
county jail, where I ended up for 19 months. If you go cially, my counselors at the mission. I never met guys so
to trial and lose, you get the maximum sentence, 20 humble; such amazing people. Also, if I got into trouble
years to life, so—even though I was innocent—avoiding again, I knew where I could be heading. Scared the heck
trial is the thing you want to do. What happens is that out of me. Now, everything I do is dependent on being
your lawyers keep negotiating plea bargains. First, I was normal. I’m 22. I have good friends but I haven’t told
offered 20 to life, with the idea I’d be out in 10 years; anyone anything about my past. I have a 3.5 average. I’m
then 15 years, then 10. Not very appealing for a 16-year- working two jobs. I’ll be the first person in my family to
old kid! Finally, by incredible good luck, I got a lawyer graduate college. I want to go to grad school to get my
who takes kids from prisons and puts them into rehab psychology Ph.D.
while in groups of peers. Better yet, let’s draw on adolescents’ social sensitivities and
passion to connect with the wider world in a positive way.
Provide group activities that capitalize on adolescents’ strengths. How can we
help teenagers forge growth-enhancing peer relationships and promote their inner
development?
Youth development programs fulfill this mission. They give adolescents safe youth development program
places to explore their passions during the late afternoon hours, when teens are most Any after-school program or
structured activity outside
prone to get into trouble while hanging out with their friends (Goldner and others, of the school day that
2011). From 4-H clubs, to church groups, to high school plays, youth development is devoted to promoting
programs ideally foster qualities that developmentalist Richard Lerner has named the flourishing in teenagers.
five C’s: competence, confidence, character, caring, and connections. They provide an
environment that allows young people to thrive (Bowers and others, 2010; Lerner,
Dowling, & Anderson, 2003).
I wish I could say that every youth program fostered flourishing. But as anyone
who has spent time at a girls’ club or the local Y knows, these settings can encour-
age group bullying and antisocial acts (Rorie and others, 2011). Therefore, youth
programs must be structured and well supervised. They have to promote the five
C’s. At the same time, they should be places where young people can exercise their
autonomy and relax, let loose, or joke around (Adachi & Willoughby, 2014). So,
rather than just saying, “Afterschool activities are great,” we need to consider what
each specific program actually provides.
It also helps to embed less academic offerings into the school day. In one
heartening study, having strong high school arts programs boosted children’s
academic performance, making students feel more engaged in all of their classes
(Martin and others, 2013). Intense involvement, specifically in high school clubs,
predicts work success years down the road (Gardner, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn,
2008; Linver, Roth, & Brooks-Gunn, 2009)—which brings me to that important
issue: For the sake of both their present and future, how can we get more teens
connected to school?
Change high schools to provide a better adolescent–environment fit. Adolescents who
feel imbedded in nurturing schools tend to feel good about themselves (Hirschfield &
Gasper, 2011; Lewis and others, 2011) and the world (Flanagan & Stout, 2010).
School can offer at-risk teens a haven when they are having problems at home
(Loukas, Roalson, & Herrera, 2010).
Unfortunately, however, many Western high schools
are not nurturing places. In one disheartening interna-
tional poll, although teenagers were generally upbeat
about other aspects of their lives, they rated their high
school experience as only “so-so” (Gilman and others,
2008). How can we turn this situation around?
In surveys, teenagers say that they are yearning for the Ariel Skelley/Blend Images/Getty Images
experiences that characterize high-quality elementary

schools (described in Chapter 7)—autonomy-supporting
work that encourages them to think and teachers
who respect their point of view (LaRusso, Romer, &
Selman, 2008); courses that are relevant to their lives
(Wagner, 2000).
In addition to injecting more creativity into the day
through the arts, service-learning classes can make a These teens are probably taking
lasting difference in later development (McIntosh, Metz, & Youniss, 2005). Here is great pleasure in serving meals
what one African American young man had to say about his junior-year course in to the homeless as part of
their school community-service
which he volunteered at a soup kitchen: “I was on the brink of becoming one of those project. Was a high school
hoodlums the world so fears. This class was one of the major factors in my choosing experience, like this one, life
the right path” (quoted in Yates & Youniss, 1998, p. 509). changing for you?
Finally, we might rethink the school day to take into account teen-
agers’ unique sleep requirements. During early adolescence, the sleep
cycle is biologically pushed back (Colrain & Baker, 2011; Feinberg &
Campbell, 2010). Although adolescents often need at least nine hours of
Jose Luis Pelaez Inc./Getty Images
sleep to function at their best, because they tend to go to bed after 11 and
must wake up for school at 6 or 7 a.m., the typical U.S. teen sleeps fewer
than 7 hours each day (Colrain & Baker, 2011). Worse yet, children who
strongly show this evening circadian shift are generally at risk for a stormy
teenage life. They tend to have poorer family relationships (Díaz-Morales
and others, 2014), are often lonely, and are less mentally tough (Brand
Could this have been you in
and others, 2014; Doane & Thurston, 2014). Because sleep deprivation throws the
high school, particularly toward cognitive and socioemotional control systems more out of whack, these adolescents
the end of the week? Did you are apt to be impulsive (Peach & Gaultney, 2013) and engage in deviant acts (Telzer
decide not to take early-morning and others, 2013), in addition to (no surprise) doing poorly in class.
classes this semester because
you realized the same thing
For this reason, researchers are exploring how strategies such as reducing
would happen to you today? Do ambient light at night might better promote teenage sleep (Shochat, Cohen-Zion, &
you think that we are making a Tzischinsky, 2014; Short and others, 2013). But perhaps these scientists should
mistake by resisting teenagers’ consider a simpler route: Start school at 10 or even 11 a.m.!
biological clocks and insisting
that their school day start at
Think back to your high school—what you found problematic; what helped you
8 a.m.? cope; what may have allowed you to thrive. Do you have other ideas about how we
might change schools, or any other aspect of the environment, to help teenagers make
the most of these special years?
Another Perspective on the Teenage Mind

Until now, I’ve been highlighting the mainstream developmental science message:
“Because of their brain immaturity, teens need protection from the world.” Let’s con-
sider some different views: Do we know enough about how the brain functions to make
these kinds of neural attributions? Given the somewhat confusing findings in Table 9.6,
some experts legitimately answer no (Epstein, 2010; Sercombe, 2010). Might scientists
be over-invoking biology, to inappropriately label teenagers as out-of-control?
Consider, for instance, that the brain evidence targeting the early teens as a time
for trouble is out of sync with many real-world risk-taking facts. From the frequency of
arrests, to bingeing on alcohol, the peak age-zone for deviant behavior is late adoles-
cence and early emerging adulthood—when the frontal lobes are almost fully mature.
Furthermore, is teenage risk taking that dangerous compared to the impulsive activi-
ties we engage in throughout adult life—from marry-
ing multiple times, to making investments we can’t
afford, to starting unprovoked wars (see Willoughby and
others, 2013)?
The most innovative critique of the immature
adolescent brain was put forth by psychologist Robert
Epstein. Epstein (2010) reminds us that the life stage
called adolescence is an artificial construction. Nature
intended us to enter adulthood at puberty. Now young
Keren Su/The Image Bank/Getty Images
people may be forced into depression and dangerous

risk taking by languishing for a decade under the ill-
fitting label “child.” How many “predictable” teenage
symptoms of storm and stress, Epstein argues, have lit-
tle to do with faulty frontal lobes and everything to do
with a poor contemporary body–environment fit? Do
teenagers really have immature brains, or are adults
Assuming adult responsibilities right after puberty, like fishing for
a living, is what nature intended for our species (see Chapter 8).
to blame for shackling teenagers’ minds? Let’s keep
Therefore, Robert Epstein believes so-called teenage “dysfunction” these thoughts in mind, as we turn now to explore
is produced by a dysfunctional contemporary society. parent–teenager relationships in depth.

1. Robin, a teacher, is about to transfer from fourth grade to the local high school, and
she is excited by all the things that her older students will be able to do. Based on
what you have learned about Piaget’s formal operational stage and Kohlberg’s theory
of moral reasoning, pick out which two new capacities Robin may find among her
students.
a. The high schoolers will be able to memorize poems.
b. The high schoolers will be able to summarize the plots of stories.
c. The high schoolers will be able to debate different ideas even if they don’t person-
ally agree with them.
d. The high schoolers will be able to develop their own moral principles.
2. Eric is the coach of a basketball team. The year-end tournament is tomorrow, and the
star forward has the flu and won’t be able to play. Terry, last year’s number one player,
offers to fill in—even though this is a violation of the conference rules. Eric agonizes
about the ethical issue. Should he deprive his guys of their shot at the championship,
or go against the regulations and put Terry in? How would you reason about this issue?
Now, fit your responses into Kohlberg’s categories of moral thought.
3. A 14-year-old worries that everyone is watching every mistake she makes; at the same
time, she is fearless when her friends dare her to take life-threatening risks like bungee
jumping off a cliff. According to Elkind, this feeling that everyone is watching her
illustrates ; the risk taking is a sign of ; and both are
evidence of the overall process called .
4. In your 15-year-old nephew, pick which symptom(s) is unusual and so might indicate
a real psychological problem: intense mood swings and social sensitivities/depression/a
tendency to engage in risky behavior with friends.
5. Your child has finally made it into the popular kids crowd at school. You should feel
(Pick one): proud because that means he is able to get along with the kids/worried
because he may be at risk for acting out behaviors such as aggression.
6. There has been a rise in teenage crimes in your town, and you are at a community
meeting to explore solutions. Given what you know about the teenage mind, which
two interventions should you definitely support?
a. Push the state legislature to punish teenage offenders as adults. Let them pay for
their crimes!
b. Encourage the local high school to expand its menu of arts classes.
c. Think about postponing the beginning of the school day to 10 a.m.
7. Imagine you are a college debater. Use your formal operational skills to argue first for
and then against the proposition that society should try teens as adults.
Teenage Relationships
What exactly are teenager–parent interactions like? Now, it’s time to tackle this
question, as I focus on those two adolescent agendas—separating from parents and
connecting with peers.
Separating from Parents

When I’m with my dad fishing, or when my family is just joking around at dinner—it’s
times like these when I feel completely content, loved, the best about life and myself.
In their original experience-sampling study, Csikszentmihalyi and Larson (1984)
discovered that teenagers’ most uplifting experiences occurred when they were with
their families—sharing a joke around the dinner table or having a close moment with
Increase
figure 9.6: Mean of parent–

child stress versus stress Stress level with parents
with peers, as reported by Stress level with peers
teens in various regions of
the globe: Notice that with the Decrease
exception of southern Europe,
U.S. and Southern Eastern Middle Asia Latin
worldwide, adolescent stress
Northern Europe Europe East America
with parents is more intense
Europe
than stress with peers.
Data from: Persike & Seiffge-Krenke, Region
2014, p. 499.
mom or dad. Unfortunately, however, those moments were few. In fact, while peer
encounters were more apt to evoke passionate highs, when adolescents were with
their families, unhappy emotions outweighed positive ones 10 to 1.
This tendency to lock horns with our parents seems built into the adolescent
experience, as the global poll illustrated in Figure 9.6 shows. Notice that, while the
magnitude of the gap differs from nation to nation, teens worldwide typically rank
stress in the parent–child relationship as more upsetting than stress with peers (Persike
& Seiffge-Krenke, 2014).
The Issue: Pushing for Autonomy

Why does family life produce such teenage pain? As developmentalists point out, if
our home life is good, our family provides our cocoon. Home is the place where we
can relax, be ourselves, and feel completely loved. However, in addition to being our
safe haven, parents must be a source of pain. The reason is that parents’ job is both
to love us and to limit us. When this parental limiting function gets into high gear,
teenage distress becomes acute.
What do teenagers and their parents argue about? This global poll offers insights
into unique cultural parenting priorities in different regions of the world (Persike &
Seffige-Krenke, 2014). In northern Europe and the United States, arguments around
academic issues loom large (“I hate that pressure to get good grades!”). For Japanese
and Chinese teens, as you might imagine, these kinds of school-related conflicts
outweigh everything else.
Perhaps, because it’s especially crucial in these collectivist societies to marry
within “one’s own group,” in the Middle East, micromanaging peer relationships
is a major stress (“My parents won’t let me see the friends I want!”). In southern
Europe, where children still live with their parents well into their late twenties and
early thirties, dependency and general parent–child acrimony is a serious concern
(“We fight all the time!” “They won’t let me grow up!”). (More about these cultural
priorities in Chapters 10 and 11.)
But it should come as no surprise that the underlying issue in every nation centers
around independence (“Why can’t I do what I want? You have too many rules!”).
Moreover, the most intense clashes occur just when peer group popularity pressures
reach their height—around the early to middle teens (De Goede, Branje, & Meeus,
2009; Daddis, 2011.)
The Process: Exploring the Dance of Autonomy

Actually, parent–adolescent conflict flares up while children are in the midst of
puberty (Steinberg, 2005; Steinberg & Hill, 1978). From an evolutionary perspective,
the hormonal surges of puberty may propel this struggle for autonomy (“You can’t tell
me what to do!”) that sets in motion the dance of separation intrinsic to becoming
an independent adult.
How does the dance of autonomy unfold? Based on periodically
asking teens questions—such as, “Do your parents know what you do
in your free time?” or “Do you tell your parents who you hang out
with?”—and exploring parental rules, Canadian researchers offered a
motion picture of changing parent–child relationships over the teenage
years (Keijsers & Poulin, 2013).
As it turns out, children first initiate the push for independence
by becoming secretive and distant in their early teens. But, parents
only respond by steadily granting their children much more freedom
beginning after age 15.
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Why is mid- to later adolescence a crucial autonomy-granting
cutting point? The reason may be that by about their Junior year of
high school, parents feel their children are more responsible and
mature (Wray-Lake, Crouter, & McHale, 2010). As we get closer to
high school graduation, our priorities start to shift from rebelling to
constructing an adult life. Now, we must get it together and think
Passing a driving test and finally getting the keys
concretely about college and a career (Malin and others, 2014).
to the car is a joyous late-teenage transition into
Even the major social markers of independence at around age 16 or adult liberation. It’s almost the developed-world
17 eliminate sources of family strain. Think about how getting your first equivalent of a puberty rite!
job, or your license, removed an important area of family conflict. You
no longer had to ask your parents for every dime or rely on mom or dad to get around.
These adult landmarks put distance between parents and teenagers in the most
basic, physical way. The experience-sampling charts showed that ninth-graders spent
25 percent of their time with family members. Among high school seniors, the figure
dropped to 14 percent (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1984).
So the process of separating from our families makes it possible to have a more har-
monious family life. The delicate task for parents, as I suggested earlier, is to give teens
space to explore their new, adult selves and still remain
closely involved (Steinberg, 2001). One mother of a
teenager explained what ideally should happen, when
she said: “I don’t treat her like a young child anymore,
but we’re still very, very close. Sort of like a friendship,
but not really, because I’m still in charge. She’s my
buddy” (quoted in Shearer, Crouter, & McHale, 2005,
p. 674).
This quotation brings up a fascinating gender
difference in the parent–child intimacy dance. Boys,
Randi Sidman-Moore/Masterfile
the earlier Canadian study showed, maintained their

new, distant pubertal communication pattern as they
traveled into the late teens—not telling mothers
much about their activities, avoiding sharing their
lives. But, after becoming more secretive and distant
as young teens, during mid- and later adolescence,
Sharing a real woman-to-woman talk is one joy of being an older
girls reached out to their moms to reconnect again as female teen, as, during later adolescence, girls often reconnect emo-
confidants and “best friends.” tionally with their mothers again.
Cultural Variations on a Theme

My parents won’t let me date anyone who isn’t Hindi—or go to parties. They never tell
me they love me. I have to be at home right after school to do the grocery shopping and
other family chores. Why can’t they just let me be a normal American kid?
In individualistic societies, we strive for parent–child adult relationships that are
less hierarchical, more like friends. What about teens—such as the young person
quoted above—whose parents have collectivist values centered on
obedience and putting family obligations first? How do these immi-
grant teens cope with separation issues?
As researchers point out, with immigrant adolescents, the normal
impulse to separate can be exacerbated by issues relating to accultura-
tion (Kim & Park, 2011; Park and others, 2010; Wu & Chao, 2011;
Kim and others, 2013). Teens want to become “real” Americans.
They may think: “My parents have old-fashioned attitudes. Their
values have nothing to do with my life.” As Judith Harris’s peer group
socialization theory might predict (recall Chapter 7), with immigrant
adolescents, parent–child disagreements may go beyond bickering
about family rules to involve a fundamental difference in worldviews
(Arnett, 1999).
Family pressures, as you saw in the example above, present spe-
cial hurdles for immigrant teens. Straddling two cultures can upend
the normal parent–child relationship—catapulting some second-
generation children into becoming the family adults. As one teacher
AP Photo/Lincoln Journal Star, Krista Niles
who works with Chinese immigrants commented, “The kids may be

doing the interpreting and translating…, they may be the de facto
parents” (quoted in Lim and others, 2009).
Given these strains, are immigrant teens at risk for poor parent–
child relations? The answer is, “it depends.” Rules that seem rigid to
Western eyes have a different meaning when young people under-
stand that their parents have sacrificed everything for their well-
As she translates an oath
being (Wu & Chao, 2011). As one touching, international poll
of naturalization to her showed, the core quality that makes adolescents feel loved worldwide is feeling their
non-English-speaking Iraqi parents have gone out of their way to do things that are rare and emotionally hard
mom, this daughter is engaging (McNeely & Barber, 2010).
in a role reversal that can be
distressing, but can also offer a
So, knowing that one’s parents made a rare sacrifice (“giving up their happiness
lifelong sense of empathy and and moving for my future”) can create unusually close parent–child bonds. Helping
self-efficacy. a non-English-speaking mom or dad negotiate this unfamiliar culture can promote
self-efficacy and empathy, too. As one l9-year-old revealingly commented: “My entire
childhood, I was translating simple things day to day . . . (it made me feel) . . . empow-
ered, proud, frustrated at times, (but) understanding of my parents’ struggle” (Guan,
Greenfield, & Orellana, 2014, p. 332).
immigrant paradox The fact This quotation may explain a phenomenon called the immigrant paradox.
that despite living in poverty, Despite coping with an overload of stresses (Cho & Haslam, 2010), many immigrant
going to substandard
children living in poverty do better than their peers (van Geel & Vedder, 2011). But
schools, and not having
parents who speak the like all children, immigrant teens take different paths—some flourish and others
language, many immigrant flounder (Suárez-Orozco and others, 2010). One force can be critical in predicting
children do far better than failure or success—no surprise, it’s a person’s group of peers.
we might expect at school.
Connecting in Groups
Go to your local mall and watch sixth and seventh graders hanging out to get a first-
hand glimpse of the group passion that takes over during the early teens. Now that we
understand peer group’s potentially destructive effects, let’s turn to the vital positive
functions pre-teen peer groups serve.
Defining Groups by Size: Cliques and Crowds

Developmentalists classify teenage peer groups into categories. Cliques are inti- clique A small peer group
mate groups having a membership size of about six. Your group of closest friends composed of roughly six
teenagers who have similar
would constitute a clique. Crowds are larger groupings. Your crowd comprises
attitudes and who share
both your best buddies and a more loose-knit set of people you get together with activities.
less regularly.
crowd A relatively large
In a l960s observational study in Sydney, Australia, one researcher found that teenage peer group.
these groups serve a crucial purpose: They are the vehicles that convey teenagers to
relationships with the opposite sex (Dunphy, 1963).
As you can see in the photos in Figure 9.7, children enter their pre-teen years
belonging to unisex cliques, the close associations of same-gender best friends that
I talked about in Chapter 6. Relationships start to change when cliques of boys and
girls enter a public space and “accidentally” meet. At the mall, notice the bands of
sixth- or seventh-grade girls who have supposedly arrived to check out the stores, but
who really have another agenda: They know that Sam or José and his buddies will be
there. A major mode of interaction when these groups meet is loud teasing. When
several cliques get together to walk around the stores, they have melded into that
larger, first genuinely mixed-sex group called a crowd (Cotterell, 1996).
The crowd is an ideal medium to bridge the gap between the sexes because there
is safety in numbers. Children can still be with their own gender while they are cross-
ing into that “foreign” land. Gradually, out of these large-group experiences, small
heterosexual cliques form. You may recall this stage during high school, when your
dating activities occurred in a small group of girls and boys. Finally, at the end of
adolescence, the structure collapses. It seems babyish to get together as a group. You
want to be with your romantic partner alone.
You might be surprised to know that the progression outlined in this 50-year-old
research still rings true (Child Trends Data Bank, 2008): First, teenagers get together
in large mixed-sex crowds; next, they align into smaller heterosexual groups; then,
they form one-to-one relationships, or date.
What Is the Purpose of Crowds?

Crowds have other functions. They allow teenagers to connect with people who
share their values. Just as we select friends who fit our personalities, we gravitate to
the crowd that fits our interests. We disengage from a crowd when its values diverge
from ours. As one academically focused teenager lamented: “I see some of my friends
changing. . . . They are getting into parties and alcohol. . . . We used to be good
friends . . . and now, I can’t really relate to them . . . . That’s kind of sad” (quoted in
Phelan, Davidson, & Yu, 1998, p. 60).
At entry to Late middle school/ High school: Late high school:

middle school: early high school:
Val Loh/Jupiter Images/Photolibrary/Getty Images
Unisex cliques Crowds Mixed-sex cliques Romantic partners

Plush Studios/Bill Reitzel/Blend
© Anna Peisl/zefa/Crave/Corbis
Masterfile Royalty Free

Images/Getty Images
figure 9.7: The steps from unisex elementary cliques to adult romantic relationships: A
visual summary: Unisex cliques meld into large heterosexual crowds, then re-form as heterosexual
cliques, and then break up into one-to-one dating relationships. Does this sequence match your own
teen experience?
Crowds, actually, serve as a roadmap, allowing

teens to connect with “our kind of people” in an over-
whelming social world (Smetana, Campione-Barr, &
Metzger, 2006). Interestingly, it’s mainly in large high
schools that teens align into defined crowds such as
“the Goths” or “the brains,” who share activities, atti-
tudes, and a special type of dress. Therefore, one
Allen Russell/Photolibrary/Getty Images
developmentalist suggested that a school’s size plays a

vital role in promoting the teenage crowd (Cotterell,
1996). When your classes are filled with unfamiliar
faces, it is helpful to develop a mechanism for finding
a smaller set of people just like you. Teenagers adopt
a specific look—like having blue hair and wearing
grungy jeans—to signal: “I’m your type of person. It’s
okay to be friends with me.”
As you pass this group of
“punks” on the street, you may What Are the Kinds of Crowds?
think, “Why do they dress in this
crazy way?” But for this group, In affluent societies, there is consistency in the major crowd categories. The intel-
their outlandish hair and clothes lectuals (also called brains, nerds, grinds, or geeks), the popular kids (also known as
are a message that “I’m very hotshots, preppies, elites, princesses), the deviants (burnouts, dirts, freaks, druggies,
different, and I don’t agree with
what society says,” and most
potheads), and a residual type (Goths, alternatives, grubs, loners, independents)
important, they are a signal to appear in high schools throughout the West (Sussman and others, 2007).
attract other fellow minds: “I’m How much mixing occurs between different crowds? Although teens do straddle
like you. I’m safe. I have the different groups (Lonardo and others, 2009), adolescents tend to have friends in simi-
same ideas about the world.”
lar status crowds. So a popular boy, as suggested earlier in the chapter, associates with
the popular kids. He shuns the socially more marginal groups, such as the deviants
(bad kids) or nerdy brains. Moreover, as being brainy and especially advertising that
you work for high grades can go against the group norms, intellectuality does not gain
teenagers kudos in the peer world, at least in the standard public school (Sussman
and others, 2007).
A study tracking children’s self-esteem, as they moved from elementary school
into high school, documents exactly how being brainy can be transformed from a plus
to a greater teenage liability, and also charts the wider peer group scene (Prinstein
& La Greca, 2002). Notice in Figure 9.8 that children who end up in the popular
kids and jocks crowds became more self-confident during adolescence. (These are
the people who would tell you, “I wasn’t very happy in elementary school, but high
school was my best time of life.”) The brains group followed the opposite path—
happiest during elementary school, less self-confident as teens.
Finally, notice that the teenagers in the deviant burnout group tend to be most
depressed before adolescence and stay at the low end of the happiness continuum
in high school (see also Heaven, Ciarrochi, & Vialle, 2008). We already know that
failing in middle childhood predicts gravitating toward groups of “bad” peers. Now,
let’s explore why joining that bad crowd makes a teenager even more likely to fail.
“Bad Crowds”
The classic defense that parents give for a teenager’s delinquent behavior is, “My child
got involved with a bad crowd.” Without ignoring the principle of selection (birds of
a feather flock together), there are powerful reasons why bad crowds do cause kids to
do bad things.
For one thing, as we know, teenagers are incredibly swayed by their peers. More-
over, each group has a leader, the person who most embodies the group’s goals. So,
if a child joins the brains group, his school performance is apt to improve because
everyone is jockeying for status by competing for grades (Cook, Deng, & Morgano,
2007; Molloy, Gest, & Rulison, 2011). However, in delinquent groups, the pressure is
to model the most antisocial member. Therefore, the activities of this most acting-out
leader set the standard for how the others want to behave.
Populars/Jocks
Brains
Burnouts
Feelings of High
depression 9
Low 3
ho y
ol
sc tar
ho
ol
en
sc
em
gh
El
Hi
figure 9.8: Feelings of depression in late elementary school and high school, for
children who ended up in three different high school crowds: In this “follow-back” study,
researchers tested children in grades four and six and then looked at their depression levels in
high school and explored their particular high school crowds. Notice that the boys and girls in
the high-status “popular” and “jocks” crowds became happier during high school. The children
destined to be in the “brains” crowd felt happiest during elementary school. The teens who became
“burnouts” were more depressed than any other group both in late elementary school and in high
school. If you remember being in one of these high school crowds, how do these findings relate to
your feelings in elementary school versus high school?
Data from: Prinstein & La Greca, 2002, p. 340.
So, in the same way you felt compelled to jump

into the icy water at camp when the bravest of your
bunkmates took the plunge, if one group member
begins selling guns or drugs, the rest must follow the
leader or be called “chicken.” Moreover, when chil-
dren compete for status by getting into trouble, this
monkeybusinessimages/iStockphoto/Getty Images
creates ever-wilder antisocial modeling and propels
the group toward taking increasingly risky actions.
Combine this principle with the impact of
just being in a group. When young people get
together, a group high occurs. Talk gets louder and
more outrageous. People act in ways that would be
unthinkable if they were alone. From rioting at rock
concerts to being in a car with your buddies during
a drive-by shooting (recall the earlier Experiencing
the Lifespan box), groups do cause people to act in As a group euphoria sets in and people start surging for the stage, these
dangerous ways (Cotterell, 1996). teenagers at a rock festival in England might trample one another—and
By videotaping groups of boys, developmen- then later be horrified that they could ever have acted this way.
talists have documented the deviancy training, or
socialization into delinquency, that occurs as a function of simply talking with friends
in a group (Dishion, McCord, & Poulin, 1999; Rorie and others, 2011). The research- deviancy training
ers find that at-risk pre-teens forge friendships through specific kinds of conversations: Socialization of a young
teenager into delinquency
They laugh, egg one another on, and reinforce one another as they discuss commit- through conversations
ting antisocial acts. So peer interactions in early adolescence are a medium by which centered on performing
problem behavior gets established, solidified, and entrenched. antisocial acts.
The lure of entering an antisocial peer group is especially strong for at-risk kids
because they are already feeling “it’s me against the world” (Veenstra and others,
2010). Put yourself in the place of a child whose impulsive behavior is causing him
to get rejected by the “regular” kids. You need to connect with other children like
yourself because you have failed at gaining entry anywhere else. Once in the group,
your buddies reinforce your hostile attributional bias. Your friends tell you that it’s
fine to go against the system. You are finally finding acceptance in an unfriendly
world.
In middle-class settings, popular kids sometimes get into trouble. “Self-identifying”
as a jock is actually a risk factor for abusing alcohol or having unprotected sex (Cook,
Deng, & Morgano, 2007). (At this point, any reader who has lived through adoles-
cence is probably saying, “Duh!”) But in affluent communities, children with prior
problems tend to gravitate toward the druggy or delinquent groups. In economically
deprived neighborhoods, however, there may be few achievers to hang out with.
Flourishing is difficult because the community is a toxic place. The only major crowd
may be the antisocial group called a gang.
Society’s Nightmare Crowd: Teenage Gangs

gang A close-knit, delinquent The gang, a close-knit, delinquent peer group, embodies society’s worst nightmares.
peer group. Gangs form Gang members share a collective identity, which they often express by adopting spe-
mainly under conditions
of economic deprivation;
cific symbols and claiming control over a certain territory or turf (Shelden, Tracy, &
they offer their members Brown, 1997). This mainly male group appears in different cultures and historical
protection from harm and eras. However, with gangs, the socioeconomic context looms large: Adverse economic
engage in a variety of conditions promote gangs (again for a vivid example, turn back to the Experiencing
criminal activities.
the Lifespan box on page 276).
Gangs provide teenagers with status. They offer physical protection in danger-
ous neighborhoods (Shelden, Tracy, & Brown, 1997). When young people have few
options for making it in the conventional way, gangs offer a pathway to making a
living (for example, by selling drugs or stealing). So, in dangerous neighborhoods,
what starts as time-limited adolescent turmoil is more likely to turn into a life-course
criminal career.
This suggests that moving inner city children to middle-class communities might
turn them around. Not so fast! When impoverished ghetto families were randomly
assigned by lottery to move to subsidized housing in an affluent suburban town, the
“mover” teenagers actually did worse than the children who were left behind! (See
Fauth, Leventhal, & Brooks-Gunn, 2007.) When we think more deeply, it makes
sense that relocating disadvantaged children to a potentially unfriendly place might
backfire. If a specific group is defined as “not like us”—in this case, rejected as
“those scary kids who live in subsidized housing”—these young people will feel more
isolated from a caring community than before. Again, it takes a nurturing village for
adolescents to thrive.
A Note on Adolescence Worldwide

It also takes a kinder, gentler society for adolescence to exist. So, children growing
up in impoverished areas of the world are less apt to have this extra decade insulated
from adult life. Unfortunately, adolescence has been eliminated for the approximately
1 million children who enter the sex trade every year (United Nations Children’s
Fund [UNICEF], 2002). Some of these boys and girls are street children, living in
gangs in cities in Latin America and Southeast Asia. Or destitute parents may sell their
daughters into the sex industry in order for the family to survive (Gajic-Veljanowki &
Stewart, 2007). In poor regions of the globe, parents may force their female children
into unwanted marriages as early as age 13 (Erulkar, 2013).
Marvi Lacar/Edit by Getty Images

AP Photo/Adam Butler
This 14-year-old soldier and devastated child bride in Africa offer a stark testament that, in some
regions of the world, young people still are deprived of an adolescence.
Adolescence has been eliminated for the hundreds of thousands of child soldiers.
Many combatants in the poorest regions of the globe are teenage boys. Some are
coerced into fighting as young as age 10 or 8 (Child Soldiers Global Report, 2008;
UNICEF, 2002a).
Yes, many teenagers in the world’s affluent areas are flourishing. But children in
the least-developed regions of the globe may not have the chance to be teenagers or
construct a decent adult life. Although critics, such as Robert Epstein, bemoan the
shackles of Western teens, having an extra decade liberated from grown-up responsi-
bilities can be critical to flourishing during the adult years.
How can you personally flourish during your adult years? Stay tuned for research
relating to this question in the next part of the book.

1. Chris and her parents are arguing again. Based on this chapter, at what age might
arguments between Chris and her parents be most intense? Around what age would
Chris’s parents have begun to seriously loosen their rules? Choose between ages 12,
16, and 19.
2. Your niece Heather hangs around with a small group of girlfriends. You see them at
the mall giggling at a group of boys. According to the standard pattern, what is the
next step?
a. Heather and her friends will begin going on dates with the boys.
b. Heather and her clique will meld into a large heterosexual crowd.
c. Heather and her clique will form another small clique composed of both girls and
boys.
3. Mom #1 says, “Getting involved with the ‘bad kids’ makes teens get into
trouble.” Mom #2 disagrees: “It’s the kid’s personality that causes him to get into
trouble.” Mom #3 says, “You both are correct—but also partly wrong. The kid’s
personality causes him to gravitate toward the ‘bad kids,’ and then that peer group
encourages antisocial acts.” Which mother is right?
4. You want to intervene to help prevent at-risk pre-teens from becoming delinquents.
First, devise a checklist to assess who might be appropriate for your program. Then,
applying the principles in this chapter, offer suggestions for how you would turn
potentially “troublemaking teens” around.
SUMMARY
The Mysterious Teenage Mind who are succeeding experiment with forbidden activities, and even
serious adolescence-limited turmoil may not lead to life-course dif-
Wise observers have described the “hot-headed” qualities of ficulties. Many problem teens construct fulfilling adult lives.
youth for millennia. However, adolescence, first identified by
G. Stanley Hall in the early 1900s and characterized by “storm The unique characteristics of the developing teenage brain may
and stress,” became a life stage in the United States during make early adolescence a relatively dangerous life stage. The fron-
the twentieth century, when high school became universal and tal lobes are still maturing. Puberty heightens teenagers’ social
“isolated” teens together as a group. sensitivities and emotional states. The lessons for society are:
Don’t punish teenagers who break the law in the same ways that
Jean Piaget believes that when teenagers reach the formal opera- adult offenders are punished; pass legislation that takes teenage
tional stage, they can think abstractly about hypothetical possi- sensitivities into account; and, most of all, channel teenage pas-
bilities and reason scientifically. Although even most adults don’t sions in a positive way through high-quality youth development
typically reason like scientists, older teenagers use the skills programs. We also need to make high school more appealing
involved in formal operations to plan their adult futures. and adjust the school day to fit adolescent sleep needs. While
According to Lawrence Kohlberg, reaching formal operations the “immature brain” conception of adolescence is currently in
makes it possible for teenagers to develop moral values that vogue, critics suggest that it minimizes teenagers’ strengths.
guide their lives. By examining how they reason about ethical
dilemmas, Kohlberg has classified people at the preconventional
level (a level of moral judgment in which only punishment and Teenage Relationships
reward are important); the conventional level (moral judgment Teenagers’ struggles with parents are most intense during puberty,
that is based on obeying social norms); and the highest, post- and issues relating to independence loom large in these conflicts
conventional level (moral reasoning that is based on one’s own around the world (with interesting cultural variations). After young
moral ideals, apart from society’s rules). Despite the fact that teens initiate the push for autonomy by distancing themselves
Kohlberg’s criteria for measuring morality have serious problems, from their families, by mid- and later adolescence, parents respond
adolescence is when we become attuned to society’s flaws. by relaxing their rules. Eventually, the goal is to develop a more
According to David Elkind, this ability to evaluate the flaws of friendlike relationship with one’s parents as adults. Immigrant
the adult world produces adolescent egocentrism. The imagi- adolescents from families with collectivist values face unique fam-
nary audience (the feeling that everyone is watching everything ily separation stresses, although the immigrant paradox suggests
one does) and the personal fable (feeling invincible and utterly that caring for a non-English-speaking mother or father can make
unique) are two components of this intense early-teenage sensi- teens self-confident, empathic, and mature.
tivity to what others think. Teenage peer groups comprise cliques and crowds. These differ-
Studies suggest that many, but not all, storm-and-stress stereo- ent sized groups convey adolescents, in stages, toward romantic
types about teenagerhood are true. Adolescents are highly socially involvement. Crowds, such as the jocks or the brains, give teen-
sensitive. In arousing peer situations, they are apt to take dan- agers an easy way of finding people like themselves in large high
gerous risks. This risk-taking (and sometimes law-breaking) pro- schools. The popular kids and the jocks (in contrast to the lower-
pensity, especially with friends, makes adolescence a potentially status brains) feel better about themselves in high school than
dangerous time. Research, using the experience-sampling tech- during elementary school. Children who enter delinquent groups
nique, shows teens are more emotionally intense than adults. Con- tend to be unhappy before high school and remain distressed
trary to our stereotypes, however, most adolescents are upbeat during their teenage years.
and happy. Still, teenage nonsuicidal self-injury is prevalent Entering a “bad crowd” may smooth the way to antisocial behav-
around the world and depression rates rise during adolescence— ior because group members model the most antisocial leader and
especially among females. The push to be popular may explain compete for leadership by performing delinquent acts. Deviancy
many unfortunate behaviors during the pubertal years. training, in which pre-teens egg one another on by talking about
The minority of teenagers who get into serious trouble tend to have doing dangerous things, leads directly to delinquency as at-risk
prior emotional and school problems, feel distant from their families children travel into high school. Gangs, mainly male teenage peer
(and create more family distance), and live in a risk-taking social groups that engage in criminal acts, are most common in impov-
milieu. Being connected to academics and having personal and erished communities. In poor regions of the world, young people
wider-world resources helps teens thrive. However, even adolescents may not have any adolescence at all.
KEY TERMS
“storm and stress,” p. 260 postconventional level of nonsuicidal self-injury, immigrant paradox, p. 282
formal operational stage, morality, p. 264 p. 270 clique, p. 283
p. 261 adolescent egocentrism, p. 266 adolescence-limited turmoil, crowd, p. 283
preconventional level of imaginary audience, p. 266 p. 274
deviancy training, p. 285
morality, p. 264 personal fable, p. 266 life-course difficulties, p. 274
gang, p. 286
conventional level of morality, experience-sampling youth development program,
p. 264 technique, p. 269 p. 277
The Mysterious Teenage Mind Con arguments: The research in this chapter shows that
1. c and d teens are indeed biologically and behaviorally different, so it
is cruel to judge their behavior by adult standards. Moreover,
2. If your arguments centered on getting punished or rewarded if the U.S. bars young people from voting or serving in the
(the coach needs to put Terry in because that’s his best shot military until age 18, and won’t let people buy alcohol until
at winning; or, the coach can’t put Terry in because, if some- age 21, it’s unfair to put teens in adult prisons.
one finds out, he will be in trouble), you are reasoning at the
preconventional level. Comments such as “going against the Teenage Relationships
rules is wrong” might be classified as conventional. If you
1. At age 12, the arguments would be most intense; by age 16,
argued, “Putting Terry in goes against my values, no matter
Chris’s parents would be giving her much more freedom
what the team or the rules say,” your response might qualify
as postconventional. 2. b
3. the imaginary audience; the personal fable; adolescent 3. Mom #3 is correct.
egocentrism 4. Checklist: (1) Is this child unusually aggressive? (2) Is he
4. depression failing at school and being rejected by the mainstream kids?
(3) Does this child have poor relationships with his parents?
5. worried, because he is at risk for acting out behaviors such
(4) Does he live in a dangerous community, or a risk-taking
as aggression
environment? (Or, because he is poor, is he being defined
6. b and c as “dangerous” by the community?) Your possible program:
7. Trying teens as adults. Pro arguments: Kohlberg’s theory Provide positive extracurricular activities that nurture
clearly implies teens know right from wrong, so if teens each child’s interests. Offer service-learning opportunities.
knowingly do the crime, they should “do the time.” Actually, Possibly, institute group sessions with parents to solve
the critical dimension in deciding on adult punishment problems around certain issues. Definitely try to get these
should be a person’s culpability— premeditation, teens connected with caring mentors and a different set of
seriousness of the infraction, and so on, not age. (prosocial) friends.
© IMAGEMORE/Age Fotostock
Early and Middle
Adulthood
This three-chapter book part spans the time from high school graduation
(at roughly age 18) until society labels us as senior citizens (in our mid-sixties)—
a lifespan chunk that covers almost 50 years!
Chapter 10–Constructing an Adult Life tackles the challenges of making it
PART V
to full adulthood—a process that often takes a decade after we reach age 18.
In this chapter, among other topics, I’ll tackle the challenges of college,
choosing a career, and finding a mate—including paying special attention to
the on-line revolution in romance. If you are a traditional college student or a
twenty-something young adult, this chapter is about your life.
Chapter 11–Relationships and Roles continues this focus on work and love
by exploring marriage, parenthood, and careers. In the marriage section, you
will get insights into how different societies view this core relationship, how
marriages change over time and, especially, learn the latest research relating
to having enduring, satisfying love. In the parenthood section, you’ll find out
how becoming parents changes a marriage and learn what twenty-first-century
motherhood and fatherhood is really like. The last section of the chapter
addresses work: How have our career lives been changing? What makes
for happiness in this vital role? Do men’s and women’s career attitudes and
pathways differ today?
Chapter 12–Midlife. In much of this chapter, my focus is, “How do people

change over the adult years?” Once again, as I survey the research on
personality and intellectual change, you’ll be getting a wealth of insights into
what makes for a fulfilling adult life. The last sections of this chapter cover
topics specific to middle age: grandparenthood, caring for elderly parents, and
age-related changes in sexuality.
291
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Emerging into Adulthood
Setting the Context: Culture and
History
Beginning and End Points
Constructing an Identity
Marcia’s Identity Statuses
The Identity Statuses in Action
Ethnic Identity, a Minority
Theme
Finding a Career
Entering with High (but Often
Unrealistic) Career Goals
Self-Esteem and Emotional
Growth During College and
Beyond
Finding Flow
Without a College Degree
(in the United States)
INTERVENTIONS: Smoothing
the School Path and School-
to-Work Transition
Being in College
INTERVENTIONS: Making
College an Inner-Growth Flow
Zone
Finding Love
Setting the Context: Seismic
Shifts in Searching for Love
SCIENCE: Same-Sex Romance
Similarity and Structured
Relationship Stages: A Classic
Model of Love, and a Critique
SCIENCE: Facebook Romance
Love Through the Lens of
Attachment Theory
HOW DO WE KNOW . . . That a
Person Is Securely or Insecurely
Attached?
INTERVENTIONS: Evaluating
Your Own Relationship
Stockbyte/Getty Images
Constructing an Adult Life
After graduating from high school in the top third of his class, Matt looked forward
to pursuing his dream of becoming a lawyer. But his freshman year at State U was a
nightmare. His courses felt irrelevant. He zoned out during lectures. Compared to high
school, the work seemed impossibly hard. Most important, with his full-time job at the
supermarket, and five classes a semester, he lost his scholarship after the first year.
The only rational solution seemed to be to drop out for a while and move back with his
parents, so he could work his way up to management and then consider going back.
Six years later, Matt is doing well. In June he was promoted to store supervisor and
(finally) moved out of the house. One reason is that he met a terrific girl on Facebook
named Clara—his first real relationship in five years. Clara and Matt share many values
even though, he must admit, she is more mature. He respects Clara’s strong woman
ethic and the fact that she has been caring for her disabled sister, while working
and going to nursing school full time. Clara—being the take-charge person in their
relationship—is pushing Matt to return to college. But it’s going to be such a stretch,
financially. And—frankly—Matt is worried that he won’t get into the work.
Should he give up his job or cut down his hours? And what will he major in if he
returns to State U? Adulthood can be thrilling—but the choices you face during the
twenties are much harder than you’d expect!
C
an you identify with Matt’s finan- Jeffrey Arnett labels (2004, 2007) emerg-
cial troubles or his decision- ing adulthood.
making problems centered on This chapter is devoted to this new
school? Perhaps, like Clara, you are life phase. It explores that time lasting
struggling to balance work and family roughly from age 18 through the late
responsibilities while getting your twenties, when we are constructing an
degree. No matter what your situation, adult life. First, I’ll explore the features
if you are in your twenties, you might feel of emerging adulthood and describe the
a bit “in between.” You are clearly not a challenges we face during this water-
child, but you still haven’t reached those shed, transitional life stage. The last
classic goals of adulthood—marriage, half of this chapter focuses on three cru-
parenthood, embarking on your “real” cial emerging-adult concerns: career,
career. You fit into that new life category college, finding love.
293
294 PART V Early and Middle Adulthood

emerging adulthood The As you learned in Chapter 1, emerging adulthood is not a universal life stage. It exists
phase of life that begins for a minority of young people—those living at this point in history in the Western
after high school, tapers off
toward the late twenties, and
world. Its function is exploration—trying out options before committing to adult
is devoted to constructing an roles. Emerging adults often are “not quite ready” to settle down. They don’t feel
adult life. financially or emotionally secure. They may be exploring trial pathways—moving
role The characteristic from job to job, entering and then exiting college or a parent’s home, testing out
behavior that is expected relationships before they commit (Arnett, 2007; Arnett & Tanner, 2010).
of a person in a particular Emerging adulthood is defined by testing out different possibilities and developing
social position, such as
student, parent, married
the self. Its other core quality, according to Arnett, is often exuberant optimism about
person, worker, or retiree. what lies ahead (Tanner & Arnett, 2010). Emerging adults, as Table 10.1 shows, are
at their physical peak. Their abilities to think and to reason are in top form. Still, the
challenges of this age are perhaps more daunting than those we face at any time of life.
We need to re-center our lives. Our parents protect us during adolescence.
Now, our task is to take control of ourselves and act like “real adults” (Tanner, 2006;
Tanner & Arnett, 2010). We used to count on the standard roles of marriage or sup-
porting a family to make us feel adult. No more! Parents in collectivist countries
such as China disagree with their developed world counterparts, viewing the core
characteristics of adulthood in relational terms—such as keeping the family safe (see
Nelson and others, 2013). But, Westerners view the benchmarks of adulthood in
internal ways: Being adult means accepting responsibility. Adults financially support
themselves. Adults make their own independent decisions about life (Arnett, 2007).
We have entered an unstructured, unpredictable path. During adolescence,
high school organizes our days. We wake up, go to class; we are on an identical track.
Then, at age 18, our lives diverge. Many of us go to college; others enter the world
of work. Some people get married; others never enter that state. Emerging adults live
alone or with friends, stay with their parents or move far away. For some emerging
adults, constructing an adult life takes decades. For others—people who have children,
get married, and enter the work world at age 18 or 19—there may be no life stage
called emerging adulthood at all. So emerging adulthood is defined by variability—as
we each set sail on our own. Why did this structure-free life stage emerge?
Table 10.1: A Twenty-Something Body at Its Physical Peak, and Snapshots

of How a Few Capacities Decline Over Time*†
The skeleton: Our height peaks at age 20 and then, due to the compression of the joint cartilage
and bones, declines, especially after midlife. So by age 70, we are roughly 2–5 percent
shorter. (Erosion in the joint cartilage and fragile bones also produces classic age-related
illnesses called osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, explained in Chapter 14.)
The muscles: The contracting skeletal muscle fibers allow us to perform physical tasks. As we
age, these fibers atrophy and are replaced by fat, causing an average 30–40 percent decline
in strength by the seventies.
The heart: During exercise, cardiac output, or our heart’s pumping capacity, dramatically
increases—delivering more oxygen to the muscles. With age the cardiac muscle weakens and
thickens, so this maximum pumping ability declines, and we easily get winded. Fatty deposits
and a loss of elasticity of the artery walls also compromise our strength and stamina over time.
The lungs: The lungs are the bellows that deliver oxygen to the blood. Our ability to breathe
in deeply and exhale forcefully peaks in the twenties, and declines year by year, even for
nonsmokers. This loss in vital capacity (and related measures) also explains why physical
performance declines with age.
Data from: Spense, 1989; Masoro, 1999.

* In general, losses accelerate after midlife.
† People differ greatly in the extent of these losses.
CHAPTER 10 Constructing an Adult Life 295
Setting the Context: Culture and History

Emerging adulthood was made possible because of our dramatic twentieth-century
longevity gains. Imagine reaching adulthood a half-century ago. With a life expec-
tancy in the mid-sixties, you could not have the luxury of spending almost a decade
constructing an adult life. Now, with life expectancy floating up to the late seventies
in industrialized nations, putting off adult commitments until an older age makes
excellent sense.
Emerging adulthood was solidified by the need for more education. A half-
century ago, high school graduates could climb to the top rungs in their careers.
Today, in the United States, college is often crucial to adult success (Danziger &
Ratner, 2010; Furstenberg, 2010). But, although most emerging adults enter college,
it typically takes six years to get an undergraduate degree, especially because so many
people need to work to finance school. If we add in graduate school, constructing a
career can normally take until the mid-twenties and beyond (Johnson, Crosnoe, &
Elder, 2011).
Emerging adulthood was promoted by uniquely individualistic attitudes about
what makes for a satisfying adult life (Côté & Levine, 2002; Yeung & Hu, 2013).
This life-stage took hold in a late-twentieth-century Western culture that stresses
self-expression and “doing your own thing,” in which people make dramatic changes
throughout their adult years.
Longevity, the need for education, and a Western ethic that stresses personal free-
dom made emerging adulthood possible. Still, the forces that drive this life stage vary
from place to place. For snapshots of this variability, let’s travel to southern Europe,
Scandinavia, and then enter the United States.
The Mediterranean Model: Living with Parents and Having

Trouble Making the Leap to Adult Life
In southern Europe, sagging economies make it difficult for
young people to find jobs. The Italian and Spanish cultures,
in particular, have norms against cohabitation, or living
together (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). People only push to leave
home when they find a serious romantic partner and can
support a spouse. This means young people in Portugal, Italy,
Spain, and Greece often spend their emerging-adult years in
Klaus Vedfelt/Taxi/Getty Images

their parents’ house (Mendonça & Fontaine, 2013; Seiffge-
Krenke, 2013). Unfortunately, in Mediterranean nations, at
the time of this writing (early 2015), family traditions, plus
financial constraints, have seriously impeded young people’s
travels into an independent life.
Many Greek men in their late

The Northern European Plan: Expect to Live Independently, twenties and thirties are still
Hopefully with Government Help living with their families, in
some cases because they cannot
These impediments do not exist in northern European nations, where the economy afford to the leave the nest and
is better (again, as of this writing) and where young people often live together and construct an adult life. If you
can have babies outside of marriage. In Norway, Sweden, and Denmark the gov- were in this situation, how would
ernment subsidizes university attendance. A strong social safety net provides free you react?
health care and other benefits to citizens of every age. So (although the reality can
be different) in northern Europe, nest-leaving—moving out of a parent’s home to
cohabitation Sharing a
live independently—traditionally begins at the brink of the emerging-adult years household in an unmarried
(Furstenberg, 2010; Hendry & Kloep, 2010; Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). In the Nordic romantic relationship.
countries, in particular, the twenties are a stress-free interlude—a time for explor- nest-leaving Moving out of a
ing, for testing out different relationships and careers before settling down to adult childhood home and living
life (Buhl & Lanz, 2007). independently.
The United States: Alternating Between Independence

and Dependence
Emerging adulthood in the United States has features of both the northern Euro-
pean and Mediterranean scenes. As in northern Europe, in the United States, young
people often live together and increasingly have children before they get married.
Our individualistic culture has traditionally encouraged moving out of a parent’s
home at 18. However, as in southern Europe, the United States does not help young
people find work and has its own sluggish economy, so it can be difficult to exit the
nest (more about this issue in the next section).
The reality is that our dramatic income inequalities, plus diversity of cultures,
make U.S. young people emerging into adulthood very different at the starting gate
(Furstenberg, 2010). We also have a more erratic passage to constructing an adult life
(Settersten & Ray, 2010).
This bumpy path became evident several decades ago when researchers tracked
several hundred New York State young people from ages 17 to 27, looking at their
progress toward reaching classic adulthood markers such as financial independence,
marriage, and living on their own (Cohen and others, 2003). Yes, there was an over-
all shift to more mature adult status as people moved deeper into their twenties. But
notice from Figure 10.1 that, when we look at individuals, we see variability and
movement backward and forward toward the benchmarks of being adult.
Commitment 100 Independence 100

figure 10.1: The level level
ups and downs of the
emerging-adult years: In a 80 80
10-year study tracing how young
people develop from age 17 to 60 60
27, researchers discovered that
many emerging adults move 40 40
backward and forward on their
way to constructing an adult 20 20
life. These graphs illustrate the
adult pathways of five different
people in the areas of financial 17 19 21 23 25 27 17 19 21 23 25 27
independence and romantic Age Age
relationships. Romantic relationships Financial status
Data from: Cohen and others, 2003.
So, at age 22, a man might be cohabiting with the idea of getting married. At
25, he might break up with his fiancée and begin dating again. A woman could be
financially independent at 21, then slide backward, depending on her parents’ help
after losing her job and returning to school.
If you are in your mid- or upper-twenties, think about your progress to adult-
hood in terms of relationships, career, and becoming financially independent. Does
your pathway also show these ups and downs? When do you expect to fully arrive at
adulthood?
Beginning and End Points

This last question brings up an interesting issue: When does emerging adulthood
begin and end?
Exploring the “So-Called” Entry Point: Nest-Leaving

If you are like many middle-class Westerners, you might mark the event that launches
emerging adulthood as moving out of a parent’s home. Leaving home after high
school for college, a job, or—if your parents are affluent—a gap year traveling the
world is often viewed as a rite of passage. It forces people

to take that first step toward independent adulthood—
taking care of their needs on their own. It also causes a
re-centering in family relationships, as parents see their
children in a different, adult way. Listen to this British
mother gushing about her 20-year-old daughter: “To be
honest I’m real proud of her. . . . She keeps her flat tidy
© Jose Luis Pelaez, Inc./Blend Images/Corbis

which was a total shocker to me; I’d expected to be a laun-
dry and maid service to her but fair play, she’s done all
her washing and cleaning” (quoted in Kloep & Hendry,
2010, p. 824).
This quotation hints at two potential benefits of
leaving home: It should produce more harmonious family
relationships; it should force young people to “grow up.”
DOES LEAVING HOME PRODUCE BETTER PARENT–CHILD
For this mother, being invited to
RELATIONSHIPS? U.S. research suggests the answer to this common perception is her daughter’s first apartment
yes. In several longitudinal studies, both young people and their parents reported less may be a thrilling experience:
conflict and more adult-to-adult relationships when college-bound children left the “My baby did grow up to become
a responsible woman!”
nest (Whiteman, McHale, & Crouter, 2007; Morgan, Thorne, & Zubriggen, 2010).
However, this is not the case in Portugal, where family dependence is prized and stay-
ing at home is “normal” during the emerging-adult years. In this nation, where more
than one-half of all people between the ages of 18 and 35 live with their parents, one
study showed that staying in the nest had no impact on parent–child relationships.
Ironically, Portuguese parents got more agitated when their children moved out! (See
Mendonça & Fontaine, 2013.)
I must emphasize that, even in the United States, physically leaving home
does not mean having distant family relationships. Judging by the 24/7 texts that fly
back and forth between my students and their mothers, the impulse to stay closely
connected to parents is more intense among this cohort of twenty-somethings than
when I was a college student decades ago (see Levine & Dean, 2012). Having close
mother–child relationships and even calling each other frequently is correlated with
adjusting well to college and homing in on a satisfying career (Gentzler and others,
2011; Melendez & Melendez, 2010; Stringer & Kerpelman, 2010). Although they
may not be making the meals or doing the laundry, mothers in particular remain a
vital support as young people exit the nest and travel into the wider world.
DOES LEAVING HOME MAKE PEOPLE MORE ADULT? Here, European studies imply
the answer is yes. In the Portuguese research I just described, young people who lived
on their own managed their lives more competently than did their peers who stayed
in the nest (Mendonça & Fontaine, 2013). When Belgian researchers compared
young people in their early twenties who never left home with a same-aged group who
moved out, the “nest residers” were less likely to be in a long-term relationship, felt
more emotionally dependent on their parents, and were less satisfied with life (Kins
& Beyers, 2010; see also Seiffge-Krenke, 2010). One Belgian emerging-adult named
Adam spelled his feelings out: “(It) is comparable to living in a hotel actually. I have
no charges . . . my meals are prepared, my laundry is done” (quoted in Kins, de Mol,
& Beyers, 2014, p. 104). Another British mom put it more graphically: “He is my
little boy, a mummy’s boy if you like. . . . And ’cos he lives at home still . . . I do his
clothes, his washing, tidy his room . . . and even still do packed lunch for him to take
to work” (quoted in Kloep & Hendry, 2010, p. 826).
These quotations reinforce our negative images about emerging adults who stay in
the nest (yes, in the developed world, they tend more often to be males): They are lazy,
babyish, and unwilling to grow up. The problem is that we are confusing consequences
with causes. In southern Europe, the push to move out is often propelled by finding a
serious romantic relationship (“Now that I found my life love, I must leave home!”).
In every nation, as I implied earlier, nest-leaving has a clear eco-

nomic cause (Seiffge-Krenke, 2013). Young people stay at home,
or return to live with their families, because they cannot afford
to live on their own (Berzin & De Marco, 2010; Britton, 2013).
In addition to economic issues, there is another barrier to
moving out for some immigrant and ethnic minority youth—
values (Furstenberg, 2010; Kiang & Fuligni, 2009). If a young
Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock
person’s collectivist worldview says, “put family first,” or if a fam-

ily really needs help, children may stay in the nest for very adult-
centered reasons—to help with the finances and the chores.
As one Latino 20-year-old explained: “I can’t leave my mom
by herself, she is a single mother. The only person she’s got is
me. . . .” (quoted in Sánchez and others, 2010, p. 872).
This college student is living at
home to save money. How can
So, does nest-leaving qualify as the entry point of emerging adulthood? The
she and her mother negotiate answer is “not really anymore.” Do young people need to live independently to act
the difficult task of getting along mature? The answer is definitely no. The real challenge for families is to construct
as adults? Stay tuned for sug- adult-to-adult relationships with their children no matter where the younger genera-
gestions right now.
tion lives (see Table 10.2 for some suggestions). And the challenge for young people
is to assemble the building blocks to construct a satisfying adult life. When should
this constructing phase end and full adulthood arrive? The answer brings up a classic
social clock The concept that concept in adult development.
we regulate our passage
through adulthood by an
inner timetable that tells
us which life activities are Table 10.2: Tips for Getting Along as Co-residing Adults
appropriate at certain ages.
age norms Cultural ideas 1. For parents: Don’t baby your child or micromanage or hover—texting or calling when your
about the appropriate ages child comes home “late.” Support and scaffold your child’s passage into adulthood.
for engaging in particular
2. For children: Resist the lure of being babied, but lean on your parents for emotional support.
activities or life tasks.
Understand, if you are making progress to adulthood, that’s the important issue—not that
on time Being on target in you are living “at home.”
a culture’s timetable for
achieving adult life tasks. 3. For parents and children: Talk openly about your living together concerns and set up shared
rules if you think they will help: How will you divide household tasks? Is it important that
off time Being too late or too your son or daughter stays in school or is looking for a job? Then, vow to treat each other like
early in a culture’s timetable loving adults.
for achieving adult life tasks.
Exploring the Fuzzy End Point: The Ticking of the Social Clock
Our feelings about when we should get our adult lives in order reflect our culture’s
social clock (Neugarten, 1972, 1979). This phrase refers to shared age norms that
act as guideposts to what behaviors are appropriate at particular ages. If our passage
matches up with the normal timetable in our culture, we are defined
as on time; if not, we are off time—either too early or too late in terms
of where we should be at a given age.
So in the twenty-first-century West, exploring different options is
considered “on time” during our twenties, but these activities become
off time if they extend well into the next decade of life. A parent whose
39-year-old son is “just dating” and shows no signs of deciding on a
Volt Collection/Shutterstock
career or moves back home for the third or fourth time may become
impatient: “Will my child ever grow up?” A woman traveling through
her thirties may get uneasy: “I’d better hurry up if I want a family,” or
“Do I still have time to go to medical school?”
Society sets the general social-clock guidelines. Today, with the
When this not-so-young man in his forties finally average age of marriage in most E.U. countries floating up to the
proposed to his long-time, 38-year-old girlfriend,
late twenties for women and the early thirties for men (Shulman &
she and her family were probably thrilled. Feeling
“off time” in the late direction in your social-clock Connolly, 2013), it’s fine to date for more than a decade if you live in
timetable can cause considerable distress. the West. But in China, everyone is expected to get married, and the
marriage age is lower now than in the past (Yeung & Hu, 2013). So, in Beijing,
it’s shameful, as a female, to be over age 30 without a mate: “The older gen-
eration cannot understand why I keep being single . . . ,” said one woman.
“Many people will think . . . I must have some mental or physical deficien-
cies” (quoted in Wang & Abbott, 2013, p. 226).
Personal preferences make a difference, too. In one survey,
developmentalists found that they could predict a given
student’s social-clock timetable by asking a sim-
ple question: “Is having a family your main
passion?” People who said that “marriage is
© Myrleen Pearson/PhotoEdit
my top-ranking agenda,” or “I can’t wait
to be a mom or dad,” often had an earlier
timetable for entering adult life (Carroll
and others, 2007). So, the limits of emerg-
ing adulthood are set both by the culture
and shaped by our own priorities and goals.
For a surprising number
The problem, however, is that our personal social-clock agendas are not totally of people, coping with the
under our control. You cannot simply “decide” to marry the love of your life at a demands of college can
defined age. This sense of being “out of control,” combined with the pressures to get seem like an insurmountable
our adult life in order, may explain why emerging adulthood is both an exhilarating challenge. You need to struggle
with the anxious feeling of “can
and emotionally challenging time. On the positive side, most emerging adults are I make it academically?” plus
optimistic about their futures (Frye & Liem, 2011; Pryor and others, 2011). On the take responsibility for handling
minus side, especially in the first year after entering college emotional distress can be all those fast-paced deadlines,
intense (Pryor and others, 2011). all on your own. This shock of
first bumping up against adult
For many young people, the issue lies in failing at the task of taking adult respon- realities helps explain why—as
sibility. As one emerging adult anguished: “My life looks like a . . . gutter and effort you will see later—many college
to fight that gutter . . . then back in the gutter . . . I just don’t have any control over freshmen report high levels of
myself” (quoted in Macek, Bejcek, & Vanickova, 2007, p. 466). For others, concerns emotional distress.
center around balancing multiple commitments, such as the need to work full time
and go to school. Or, some emerging adults may have the feeling of not knowing
where they are going in life: “We do have more possibilities . . . but that’s why it’s
harder” . . . “You study and you wonder what it is good for” (quoted in Macek,
Bejcek, & Vanickova, 2007, p. 468). The reason for this inner turmoil is that, during
emerging adulthood, we undergo a mental makeover. We decide who to be as adults.

1. You are giving a toast at your friend Sarah’s twenty-first birthday party, and you want to
offer some predictions on what the next years might hold for her. Given your understand-
ing of emerging adulthood, which of the following would NOT be a safe prediction?
a. Sarah may not reach all the standard markers of adulthood until her late twenties.
b. Sarah’s pathway to adulthood will flow smoothly, with steady, predictable steps forward.
c. Sarah might need to move back into the nest or might still be living at home.
2. Which twenty-something person is LEAST likely to be in the nest?
a. Manuel who lives in Madrid
b. Jose who just lost his job
c. Paula whose parents are living under the poverty line
d. Silvia who lives in Stockholm
3. Staying in the nest during the twenties today is typically a “symptom” of a child’s refus-
ing to grow up. (True or False)
4. Which person is most apt to worry about a social-clock issue: Martha, age 50, who
wants to apply to nursing school, or Lee, age 28, who has just become a father?
Constructing an Identity
Erik Erikson was the theorist who highlighted the challenge of transforming our
childhood self into the person we will be as adults. Recall he called this process the
identity In Erikson’s theory, the search for identity (see Table 10.3).
life task of deciding who to
be as a person in making the
transition to adulthood. Table 10.3: Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages
Time spent wandering through Europe to find himself sensitized Erikson to the
difficulties young people face in constructing an adult self. Erikson’s fascination with
identity as a developmental task, however, crystallized when he worked as a psycho-
therapist in a psychiatric hospital for troubled teens. Erikson discovered that young
role confusion Erikson’s patients suffered from a problem he labeled role confusion. They had no sense of
term for a failure in identity any adult path:
formation, marked by the
lack of any sense of a future [The person feels as] if he were moving in molasses. It is hard for him to go to bed
adult path. and face the transition into . . . sleep; and it is equally hard for him to get up . . . Such
complaints as . . . “I don’t know” . . . “I give up” . . . “I quit” . . . are often expressions
of . . . despair.
(Erikson, 1968, p. 169)
Some young people felt a frightening sense of falseness about themselves: “If I tell
a girl I like her, if I make a gesture . . . this third voice is at me all the time—‘You’re
doing this for effect; you’re a phony’” (quoted in Erikson, 1968, p. 173). Others could
not cope with having any future and planned to end their lives on their eighteenth
birthday or some other symbolic date.
This derailment, which Erikson called confusion—an aimless drifting, or shut-
ting down—differs from the active search process he labeled moratorium (1980).
Taking time to explore various paths, Erikson argued, is crucial to forming a solid
adult identity. Having witnessed Hitler’s Holocaust, Erikson believed that young
people must discover their own identities. He had seen a destructive process of iden-
tity formation firsthand. To cope with that nation’s economic problems after World
War I, German teenagers leaped into pathological identities by entering totalitarian
organizations such as the Hitler Youth.
Can we categorize the different ways people tackle the challenge of constructing
identity statuses Marcia’s an adult identity? Decades ago, James Marcia answered yes.
four categories of identity
formation: identity diffusion,
identity foreclosure,
moratorium, and identity
Marcia’s Identity Statuses
achievement. Marcia (1966, 1987) devised four identity statuses to expand on Erikson’s powerful
identity diffusion An identity ideas:
status in which the person
is aimless or feels totally
• Identity diffusion best fits Erikson’s description of the most troubled teens—young
blocked, without any adult people drifting aimlessly toward adulthood without any goals: “I don’t know where
life path. I am going.” “Nothing has any appeal.”
Balazs Kovacs Images/Shutterstock
junpinzon/Shutterstock
This young woman may fit Marcia’s category This student, forced by his dad to get a
of identity diffusion. She seems listless and degree in computer science in order to get a
depressed. well-paying job, feels incredibly bored. People
who follow their parents’ career choices with-
out exploring other possibilities are in iden-
tity foreclosure. (While Erikson and Marcia
linked this status to poor mental health—as
you will see on page 302—young people “in
foreclosure” can also feel happy about this
state.)
Robert Daly/Caiaimage/Getty Images
This young woman who has accepted a This delighted man is in identity achievement, Tetra Images/Getty Images
company internship is in identity moratorium, because he has discovered his life passion lies
because she wants to figure out if she likes in computer design.
working in this career. We need to know, how-
ever, if she is happily exploring her options, or
unproductively obsessing about her choices.
• Identity foreclosure describes a person who adopts an identity without any self- identity foreclosure An
exploration or thought. At its violent extreme, foreclosure might apply to a Hitler identity status in which the
person decides on an adult
Youth member or a person who becomes a terrorist in his teens. In general, how- life path (often one spelled
ever, researchers define young people as being in foreclosure when they adopt a out by an authority figure)
life path handed down by some authority: “My parents want me to take over the without any thought or
family business, so that’s what I will do.” active search.
moratorium An identity
• The person in moratorium is engaged in the exciting, healthy search for an adult status in which the person
self. While this internal process may provoke anxiety, because it involves wrestling actively searches out various
with different philosophies and ideas, Marcia (and Erikson) felt it is critical to possibilities to find a truly
arriving at the final stage. solid adult life path. A
mature style of constructing
• Identity achievement is the end point: “I’ve thought through my life. I want to be an identity.
a computer artist, no matter what my family says.” identity achievement An
identity status in which
Marcia’s categories offer a marvelous framework for pinpointing what is going the person decides on
wrong (or right) in a young person’s life. Perhaps while reading these descriptions a definite adult life path
you were thinking, “I have a friend in diffusion. Now, I understand exactly what this after searching out various
options.
person’s problem is!” How do these statuses really play out in life?
The Identity Statuses in Action

Marcia originally believed that, as we move through adolescence, we pass from dif-
fusion to moratorium to achievement. Who thinks much about adulthood in ninth
or tenth grade? At that age, your agenda is to cope with puberty. You test the limits.
You sometimes act in ways that seem tailor-made to undermine your adult life (see
Chapter 9). Then, as older adolescents and emerging adults, we undertake a morato-
rium search as adulthood looms in full view. At some point during our twenties, we
have reached achievement, finalizing our search for an adult identity.
However, in real life, identity pathways are erratic. People move backward and
forward in statuses throughout their adult years (Côté & Bynner, 2008; Waterman,
1999). A woman might enter college exploring different faiths, then become a com-
mitted Catholic, start questioning her choice again at 30, and finally settle on her
spiritual identity in Bahai at age 45. As many older students are aware, you may have
gone through moratorium and firmly believed you were in identity achievement in
your career, and now have shifted back to moratorium when you realized, “I need a
more secure, fulfilling job.”
This lifelong shifting is appropriate. It’s unrealistic to think we reach a final iden-
tity as emerging adults. The push to rethink our lives, to change directions, to have
plans and goals, is what makes us human. It is essential at any age. Moreover, revising
our identity is vital to living fully since our lives are always being disrupted—as we
change careers, become parents, are widowed, or adapt to our children leaving the
nest (McAdams, 2001b, 2013).
The bad news is that people can be stuck in unproductive places in their identity
search. In some studies, an alarming 1 in 4 undergraduates is locked in diffusion
(Côté & Bynner, 2008). They don’t have any career goals. Or, as I see in my classes,
students are sampling different paths, but without much Eriksonian moratorium joy.
Is your friend who keeps changing his major and putting off graduation excitedly
exploring his options, or is he afraid of entering the real world? Are the emerging
adults who spend their twenties moving from low-wage job to low-wage job really in
moratorium or randomly drifting into adult life?
Actually, Erikson and Marcia’s assumption that we need to sample many fields in
order to construct a solid career identity, is not accurate. Having a career goal in mind
from childhood, such as knowing you want to be a nurse from age nine (the status
Marcia dismisses as “foreclosure”) is fine (Ryeng, Kroger, & Martinussen, 2013). Anx-
ruminative moratorium When iously obsessing about possibilities, or being locked in a state called ruminative mora-
a young person is unable torium, causes more distress (Ritchie and others, 2013; Luyckx and others, 2014). (“I
to decide between different
identities, becoming
don’t know if I want to be an anesthesiologist or an actor and that’s driving me crazy.”)
emotionally paralyzed and There can even be problems with being identity achieved. Suppose after consid-
highly anxious. erable searching you adopt a devalued identity. (“Yes, I’ll give up and go to medical
school, but I’m not convinced being a doctor is really me.”) It doesn’t matter how you
got there. What’s crucial is to make a commitment and feel confident that this decision
expresses your true self (see Meeus, 2011; Schwartz and others, 2013 for reviews).
Ethnic Identity, a Minority Theme

The emotional pluses of committing to our identity and feeling positive about that
ethnic identity How people choice are underlined by examining ethnic identity—our sense of belonging to an
come to terms with who they ethnic category, such as “Asian American.” If, like me, you are part of the mainstream
are as people relating to
their unique ethnic or racial
culture, you rarely think of your ethnicity. For minority young people, labeling your-
heritage. self as part of a group, with defined characteristics, tends to happen during concrete
operations (recall Chapter 6), although the need to explore one’s relationship to that
label waxes and wanes at older ages. For instance, although ethnic identity issues
often become intense during the teens, one study showed that in college, people
grapple with that consciousness again (Syed & Azmitia, 2009).
People cope with this consciousness in various ways. They may develop
dual minority and mainstream identities (acting African American in
one setting and not another), or reject one identity in favor of another
(“I never think of myself as Black, just as American,” or “I never think
of myself as American, just as Black”) (Phinney, 2006).
Studies routinely show that identifying with one’s ethnicity is cor-
related with a host of positive attributes and traits (Acevedo-Polakovich
and others, 2014; Kiang, Witkow, & Champagne, 2013). Being proud of
one’s heritage as an African American or Asian American buffers young
people from becoming depressed or resorting to risk taking when faced
with discrimination in the wider world (Polanco-Roman & Miranda, 2013;
© Winter Media/Corbis
Toomey and others, 2013). But, it’s important to reach out to the wider cul-
ture, too. Actually, firmly connecting with the mainstream culture (“I’m
also proud of being American”) is one sign that an ethnic minority
young person has the skills to reach out fully in love.
The challenges for biracial or multiracial emerging adults, Coming to terms with a biracial background (“Should I
people from mixed racial or ethnic backgrounds (like President identify with my African or European heritage?” “Where
Obama), are particularly poignant. These young people may do I really fit in?”) can help develop a crucial life
feel adrift without any ethnic home (Literte, 2010). But, here, strength—the capacity to think more deeply and thought-
fully about the world.
too, reaching identity achievement can have widespread bene-
fits. Fascinating research suggests having a biracial or bicultural
background pushes people to think in more creative, complex ways about life (Tad- biracial or multiracial
mor, Tetlock, & Peng, 2009). It can promote resilience, too. As one biracial woman identity How people of
in her early thirties put it: “When I was younger I felt I didn’t belong anywhere. mixed racial backgrounds
come to terms with who they
But now I’ve just come to the conclusion that my home is inside myself” (Phinney, are as people in relation to
2006, p. 128). their heritage.
Making sense of one’s “place in the world” as an ethnic minority is literally
a minority identity theme. But every young person has to grapple with those two
universal identity issues: choosing a career and finding love. The rest of this chapter
tackles those agendas.

1. You overheard your psychology professor saying that his daughter
Emma shows symptoms of Erikson’s identity confusion. Emma must be
(drifting, actively searching for an identity), which in Marcia’s
identity status framework is a sign of (diffusion, foreclosure,
moratorium).
2. Joe said, “I’ve wanted to be a lawyer since I was a little boy.” Kayla replied, “I don’t
know what my career will be, and I’ve been obsessing about the possibilities day and
night.” Joe’s identity status is (moratorium, foreclosure, diffusion,
or achievement), while Kayla’s status is (moratorium, foreclosure,
diffusion, or achievement). According to the latest research, who is apt to be most
anxious and disturbed?
3. Your cousin Clara has enrolled in nursing school. To predict her feelings about this
decision, pick the correct question to ask: Have you explored different possibilities?/Do
you feel nursing expresses your inner self ?
4. Confronting the challenge of a biracial or multiracial identity tends to make people
think in more rigid ways about the world. (True or False)
Finding a Career
In a famous statement, Sigmund Freud, when asked to sum up the definition of ideal
mental health, answered with the simple words, “the ability to love and work.” Let’s
now look at finding ourselves in the world of work.
When did you begin thinking about your career? What influences are drawing
you to psychology, nursing, or business—a compelling class, a caring mentor, or the
conviction that this field would fit your talents best? How do young people feel about
their careers, their futures, and working?
To answer these kinds of questions, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Barbara
Schneider (2000) conducted a pioneering study of teenagers’ career dreams. They
selected 33 U.S. schools and interviewed students from sixth to twelfth grade. To
chart how young people felt—when at home, with friends, when at school—they used
the experience-sampling method (discussed in Chapter 9). Now, let’s touch on their
insights and other studies as we track young people entering and moving through the
emerging adult years.
Entering with High (but Often Unrealistic) Career Goals

Almost every teenager, the researchers found, expects to go to college. Almost every-
one wants to have a professional career. The tendency to aim high appears regardless
of gender or social class. Whether male or female, rich or poor, adolescents have lofty
career goals. Moreover, I believe that the experts who view today’s young people as
over coddled (Levine & Dean, 2012), narcissistic (Twenge, 2006), and “basically”
unmotivated are unfair. Due to the lingering effects of the Great Recession, young
people face a far harsher economic climate than we baby boomers encountered when
we emerged into adult life (Economic Policy Institute, n.d.). In one survey of U.S.
college freshmen, young people reported being more driven to work hard than their
counterparts in previous years (Pryor and others, 2011).
The real problem, however, is that teens are (naturally) clueless about what it
takes to implement their dream careers. Can someone who “hates reading” really
spend a decade getting a psychology Ph.D.? What happens when my students learn
they have to have a GPA close to 3.7 to enter our university’s nursing program, or
they can’t go to law school because of the astronomical costs? Career disappointment
can lurk right around the corner for young people as they emerge from the cocoon
of high school and confront the real world. How do people react as they enter their
college years?
Self-Esteem and Emotional Growth During College

and Beyond
Interestingly, one U.S. survey showed that self-esteem dips dramatically during the
first semester of college (Chung and others, 2014) and then gradually rises over the
next few years (see also Wagner and others, 2013; Higher Education Research Insti-
tute [HERI], 2013). Because students tend to inflate their academic abilities (Chung
and others, 2014), it can be a shock when those disappointing first-semester grades
arrive. The other bad news is that, due to the well-known social reinforcement in
college for activities such as binge drinking (recall the previous chapter), emerging
adulthood offers ample room for addictions to flower (Sussman & Arnett, 2014). Still,
as the research described in Figure 10.2 shows, there is diversity, with some people
getting unhappier and others improving in mental health from age 18 to 22 (Frye &
Liem, 2011).
Who thrives? The figure implies that personality matters. Young people who
enter emerging adulthood upbeat and competent are set up to flourish when con-
fronting the demands of college life. In their study, Csikszentmihalyi and Schneider
30 High stable 1%
Low stable 75%
25 Decreasing 17%
Increasing 7%
20
Depression
15
10
0
18 20 22
age
figure 10.2: The diverse ways depression changed in an economically diverse sample
of over 1,000 young people traveling from age 18 to age 22: Notice from this chart that the
vast majority of young people are happy both during their teens and as they emerge into their early
twenties (red). Those teens with major depressive disorders are still battling their condition three
years later (blue). But a reasonable percentage of moderately depressed teens become happier
as they make the transition to adult life (yellow line)—although, granted, some do become more
depressed.
Data from: Frye & Liem, 2011.
(2000) called these efficacious teens “workers”—the 16-year-olds who amaze you with
their ability to balance band, a part-time job, and honors classes. It’s also a no-brainer
that succeeding at academics boosts self-esteem (Chung and others, 2014). But, the
most interesting discovery of the studies tracking people as they traveled through their
early twenties was the impact of having a stable love relationship on young people’s
self-worth.
You might think finding love would be especially important for females. You
would be wrong. Interestingly, men, in particular, felt especially good about them-
selves if they were in a caring relationship by age 23 (Wagner and others, 2013).
In what ways do people change for the better during this landmark decade?
Growth is most apt to occur in a temperamental dimension that researchers call
conscientiousness—becoming more reliable; developing self-control (see Cramer,
2008; Donnellan, Conger, & Burzette, 2007; Walton and others, 2013); being better
able to manage your emotions (Zimmermann & Iwanski, 2014); reasoning in more
thoughtful ways (Labouvie-Vief, 2006; more about these qualities in Chapter 12).
To explain this rise in executive functions—what you and I would call
“maturity”—adolescent specialists might look to the fully developed frontal lobes.
But an equally plausible cause lies in the wider world. Shedding an unproduc-
tive adolescent risk-taking identity in college (recall Jason’s story in the previous
chapter) or finding a satisfying job can transform troubled teens into “workers,”
in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s terms (Dennissen, Asendorpf, & van Aken, 2008). A
powerful inner state—also spelled out by Csikszentmihalyi—can help transform us
into “workers” and lock people into the right career.
Finding Flow
Think back over the past week to the times you felt energized and alive. You might
be surprised to discover that events you looked forward to—such as relaxing at home
or watching a favorite TV program—do not come to mind. Many of life’s most uplift-
flow Csikszentmihalyi’s term
ing experiences occur when we connect deeply with people. Others take place when for feeling total absorption in
we are immersed in some compelling task. Csikszentmihalyi names this intense task a challenging, goal-oriented
absorption flow. activity.
Flow is different from “feeling happy.” We enter this state when

we are immersed in an activity that stretches our capacities, such as
the challenge of decoding a difficult academic problem, or (hopefully)
getting absorbed in mastering the material in this class. People also
JGI/Daniel Grill/Blend Images/Getty Images
differ in the kinds of activities that cause flow. For some of us, it’s hik-
ing in the Himalayas that produces this feeling. For me, it has been
writing this book. When we are in flow, we enter an altered state of
consciousness in which we forget the outside world. Problems disap-
pear. We lose a sense of time. The activity feels infinitely worth doing
for its own sake. Flow makes us feel completely alive.
Csikszentmihalyi (1990), who has spent his career studying flow,
finds that some people rarely experience this feeling. Others feel flow
For this graduate student who several times a day. If you feel flow only during a rare mountain-
is puzzling over the meaning of climbing experience or, worse, when robbing a bank, Csikszentmihalyi argues that
a difficult paper in his field, the
hours may fly by. Challenging
it will be difficult to construct a satisfying life. The challenge is to find flow in ways
activities that fully draw on our related to your career.
talents and skills produce that Flow depends on being intrinsically motivated. We must be mesmerized by what
marvelous inner state called we are doing right now for its own sake, not for an extrinsic reward. But there also
“flow.”
is a future-oriented dimension to feeling flow. Flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi,
happens when we are working toward a goal.
For example, the idea that this book will be published two years from now is the
goal that is pushing me to write this very page. But what riveted me to my chair this
morning is the actual process of writing. Getting
into a flow state is often elusive. On the days when
(High) ∞
I can’t construct a paragraph, I get anxious. But if I
Anxiety could not regularly find flow in my writing, I would
Flow never be writing this book.
channel Figure 10.3 shows exactly why finding flow can
Challenges be difficult. That state depends on a delicate person–
environment fit. When a task seems beyond our
Boredom
capacities, we become anxious. When an activity is
too simple, we grow bored. Ideally, the activities in
(Low) 0 which we feel flow can alert us to our ideal careers.
0 (Low) (High) ∞ Think about some situation in which you recently
Skills felt flow. If you are in ruminative moratorium or
Answer: Vygostky
worry you may be in career diffusion, can you use
this feeling to clue you in to a particular field?
figure 10.3: The zone Drawing on the concept of flow, my discussion of identity, as well as recent
of flow: Notice that the flow economic concerns, let’s now look at two career paths emerging adults in the United
zone (white area) depends on a
delicate matching of our abilities
States follow.
and the challenge involved in a
particular real-world task. If the
task is too difficult or beyond our
Emerging into Adulthood Without a College Degree
capacities, we land in the upper (in the United States)
red area of the chart and become
anxious. If the task is too easy,
“I never want this kind of job for my kids.” This comment, from a 35-year-old high
we land in the lower, gray area school graduate working at a construction job, sums up the contemporary feeling
of the chart and become bored. in the United States that college is vital for having a good life (Furstenberg, 2010).
Moreover, as our skills increase, Actually, more than 2 of every 3 U.S. high school graduates enroll in college right
the difficulty of the task must
also increase to provide us with
after high school. However, as time passes, the ranks thin. For students beginning
the sense of being in flow. Which at four-year institutions, the odds of graduating within the next six years are about 3
theorist’s ideas about teaching in 5 (National Center on Education Statistics, n.d.). The graduation rates for their
and what stimulates mental community-college counterparts are far lower than this.
growth does this model remind
you of? (Turn page upside down
People in the United States who don’t go to college or who never get their
for answer.) degree can have fulfilling careers. Some may excel at Robert Sternberg’s practical
Data from: Csikszentmihalyi, 1990. or creative intelligence (described in Chapter 7) but do not do well at academics.
When they find their flow in the work world, they blossom. Consider the career
of that college failure, the famous filmmaker named Woody Allen, or even that of
Bill Gates, who found his undergraduate courses too confining and left Harvard to
pioneer a new field.
Unfortunately, these famous college dropouts are a statistical blip. The bleak
reality is that non-college graduates have a far harder time constructing a middle-class
life. As you can see in Figure 10.4A, the well-known difference in earnings, based
on education, has stayed relatively stable in the past 15 years. In 2012, the median
income of people aged 25 to 35 with master’s degrees, who worked full time, was
roughly $70,000 per year. Their counterparts, with only high school diplomas, earned
less than one-half of that amount—$30,000 (National Center on Health Statistics,
n.d.). And, of course, college graduates are more likely to find jobs. In 2013, in the
age group of 25 to 34, roughly 1 out of 10 non-college graduates were unemployed.
The comparable statistic for young people with a B.A. degree or higher was 6 percent
(National Center for Health Statistics, n.d.).
Given these realities, why do many emerging adults drop out of school? Our first This twenty-something high
assumption is that most of these people are not “college material”—uninterested in school graduate probably felt
academics, poorly prepared in high school, and/or can’t do the work. lucky to find this low-wage job.
True, to succeed in college, prior academic aptitude is important. As a C stu- For emerging adults who do not
go to college, the current U.S.
dent in your public school class, your odds of getting a bachelor’s degree are less economic realities are bleak.
than 1 in 5 (Engle, n.d.). But, as Figure 10.4B shows, economic considerations
matter greatly. The unfortunate reality is that talented, low-SES young people are
far less likely to graduate from college than their affluent peers (Carnevale & Strohl,
2010).
When the Gates Foundation commissioned a survey of more than 600 young
adults ages 22 to 30 who had dropped out of college, they discovered the same
message—money matters. Only 1 in 10 students said they left school because the
courses were too difficult or they weren’t interested in the work. The main reason was
that they had to work full time to finance school, and the strain became too much
(Johnson & Rochkind, 2011).
(A) (B)
Median yearly earnings of full-time workers ages 25–34, by education: 2000–2012
Master’s degree High school diploma

or higher or equivalent
$80,000 Bachelor’s Less than high 100
school completion Lowest SES
Associate’s
Percent graduated college
Highest SES
60,000
40,000
20,000
0 0
2000 2005 2007 2009 2011 2012 SAT scores between
1200 – 1500
Year
figure 10.4: Snapshots of economic inequality, with regard to higher education, earnings, and getting a college degree:
Chart (A) shows that the high school versus higher-education earnings gap has been pronounced for the past decade, underlining the
fact that people without a college degree are “left behind” economically. Chart (B) shows that for intellectually talented young people,
family income makes a huge difference in getting that degree. Bottom line: In the United States, finishing college is vital and low-income
high-ability students are at a severe disadvantage.
Data from: Chart (A) ICS National Center on Education Statistics, n.d. Chart (B) adapted from data in Carnevale & Strohl, 2010.
The silver lining is that most of these people did plan to return. And, as many
nontraditional student readers are aware, there can be emotional advantages to leav-
ing and then coming back. In Sweden, the social clock for college is programmed to
start ticking a few years after high school (Arnett, 2007). The reasoning is that time
spent in the wider world helps people home in on what to study in school.
Moreover, as you saw in the beginning chapter vignette, emerging adults can
sometimes advance in their careers without a college degree. Employers look for reli-
ability and a good work ethic, virtues that can be demonstrated once someone gets
his foot in the door. When British researchers explored the qualities that distinguished
people who left school at l6 and had gone on to do well economically during midlife
(granted, during better economies), the main predictor that stood out was prior aca-
demic skills (Schoon & Duckworth, 2010). So, if a non-college graduate is a “worker”
and intellectually competent, that person can sometimes succeed against the odds.
INTERVENTIONS: Smoothing the School Path and School-to-Work
Transition
Still, we can’t let society off of the hook. The fact that financing college is difficult
for U.S. young people is a national shame. The standard practice of taking out
loans means that young people face frightening economic futures after getting their
degrees. In 2012, more than half of U.S. emerging adults left college owing the
government and private lenders $20,000 or more. Moreover, in the same poll, more
than 1 out of 2 graduating seniors searching for a full-time job were still looking for
work (HERI, 2013).
What can colleges do? Rather than having students languish, unproductively
shifting from major to major, offer centralized advising to get students on the right
track during the freshman year (Kot, 2014). As of this writing, states are experiment-
ing with low-cost alternatives—such as MOOCS and credit for work experience—to
streamline college costs and cut down on the time it takes to earn a degree.
Most important, we need to rethink our contemporary emphasis on college as the
only ticket to a decent life. As some people are skilled at working with their hands,
or excel in practical intelligence, why force non-academically oriented emerging
adults to suffer, enduring a poor talent–environment fit? Can’t we develop the kinds
of apprentice programs that have been successful in
Germany? (See Cook & Furstenberg, 2002; Seiffge-
Krenke, Persike, & Luyckx, 2013.) In that nation,
employers partner with schools that offer on-the-job
training. Graduates emerge with a definite position
in that specific firm.
Germany, like other Western countries, has
a youth unemployment problem. But because
Frances M. Roberts/Newscom
its apprenticeship programs offer young people

careers outside of college, this nation helps under-
cut the unproductive ruminative-identity morato-
rium that can cause so much angst in the Western
world. In one German national survey, having a
After joyously getting their degree, these new CUNY graduates now job or being enrolled in an apprentice program
must face the dispiriting experience of feeling like a number as they predicted both identity achievement and occupa-
wend their way through this impersonal job-fair line. At least in the tional self-efficacy down the road (Seiffge-Krenke,
United States, negotiating the school-to-work transition can be difficult.
Persike, & Luyckx, 2013).
How many young people are locked in diffusion or moratorium because the
United States lacks a defined school-to-work transition (school-to-career path)?
Rather than leaving the anxiety-ridden, post-education job hunt to luck, random
school-to-work transition The
change from the schooling
contacts, and putting the burden on the so-called “inner” talents of kids, let’s devise
phase of life to the work creative strategies to help young people confront this crucial social-clock challenge
world. of adult life.
Table 10.4 summarizes the main messages of this section, by offering suggestions
for emerging adults and society at large. Now, it’s time to immerse ourselves in the
undergraduate experience.
Table 10.4: Succeeding in College/Finding a Career Identity Tips for Young

People and Society
For Young People
1. Understand that it’s common to have high expectations about your abilities and to expect a
let down when you enter college. It takes time to get adjusted to the demands of this new life
stage!
2. Focus on finding your flow in selecting a career. Try to avoid obsessing about different
possibilities, but understand that it can take time to formulate a career plan.
3. If you need to drop out for some time, understand it’s not the end of the world. Having a year
or two off may help you home in on a career identity and be a better student.
For Society
1. Assign counselors for incoming freshmen to map out classroom and financial options, and
link students to community employers.
2. Reach out to low-income undergraduates, and offer special services for students who are
parents or working adults.
3. Set up apprenticeship programs linked to jobs—ones that offer a conduit to the work world
without college.
4. Make negotiating young people’s school-to-work transition a national priority!
Being in College
So far, I’ve been implying that the only purpose of going to college is to find a
career. Thankfully, in surveys, most U.S. college graduates disagree. They report the
main value of their undergraduate years was to help them “grow intellectually and
personally” (Hoover, 2011).
How does this inner growth progress during college? According to William Perry
(l999), freshmen come in blindly accepting the facts that authorities hand down, and
then they move to relativism (understanding that there are multiple truths); by senior
year, they make their own ethical commitments in the face of appreciating diverse
points of view.
Perry’s findings are based on studies conducted with Harvard undergradu-
ates 40 years ago. But another longitudinal study (granted, also at a selective
university) confirms that this inner development occurs—and most important—it
takes place specifically during the undergraduate years (Bauer & MacAdams,
2010).
If you are a traditional college student, here are tips to make your college
experience an inner-growth flow zone.
INTERVENTIONS: Making College an Inner-Growth Flow Zone

GET THE BEST PROFESSORS (AND TALK TO THEM OUTSIDE OF CLASS!). It’s a
no-brainer that exciting teachers loom large in student success (Komarraju,
Musulkin, & Bhattacharya, 2010; Schreiner and others, 2011). Outstanding pro-
fessors adore their subject and can vividly communicate their passion to students
(Bane, 2004). Just like their elementary school counterparts (see Chapter 7), they
respect their students’ talents and are committed to nurturing undergraduates’
growth. So reach out and talk to your professors. Students from every end of the
academic spectrum agree that feeling listened to can be a peak experience in
one’s academic life:
From a Harvard senior:
He began by asking me which single book had the biggest impact on me. He was the
first professor who was interested in what matters to me. . . . You can’t imagine how
excited I was.
(quoted in Light, 2001, pp. 82–83)
From a community college student:

You know, what he does more than anything else is that . . . he really listens. I was
in his office last semester and I was telling him how I was struggling. . . . He really
let me talk myself into doing what I needed to pass. It’s like, you know he gives
a damn.
(quoted in Schreiner and others, 2011, p. 324)
CONNECT YOUR CLASSES TO POTENTIAL CAREERS. Professors’ mission is to excite

you in their field. But classes can’t provide the hands-on experience you need to
actually find your personal zone of flow. So, institute your personal school-to-work
transition. Set up independent studies involving volunteer work. If you are interested
in science, work in a professor’s lab. If your passion is politics, do an internship with
a local legislator. In one study, college seniors mentioned that the highlight of their
undergraduate experience occurred during a mentored project in the real world
(Light, 2001).
IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE COLLEGE MILIEU. Following this advice is easier if you
are attending a small residential school. The college experience is at your doorstep,
ready to be embraced. At a large university, especially a commuter school, you’ll
need to make efforts to get involved in campus life. If possible, spend your first
year living in a college dormitory. Join a college organization, or two, or three.
Working for the college newspaper or becoming active in the drama club not only
will provide you with a rich source of friends, but can help promote your career
identity, too.
CAPITALIZE ON THE DIVERSE HUMAN CONNECTIONS COLLEGE PROVIDES. As you
saw in previous chapters, the peer groups we select help shape who we become. At
college, it is tempting to find a single clique and then not
reach out to other crowds. Resist this impulse. A major growth
experience college provides is the chance to connect with
people of different points of view (Hu & Kuh, 2003; see also
Leung & Chiu, 2011). Here’s what another Harvard under-
graduate had to say:
I have re-evaluated my beliefs. . . . At college, there are
people of all different religions around me. . . . Living . . .
with these people marks an important difference. . . .
[It] has made me reconsider and ultimately reaffirm my
faith.
(quoted in Light, 2001, p. 163)
But this community college student summed it up best:

When I come home and have all these great stories; they think
college is the most amazing thing . . . and that’s because of all
the people I’m surrounded with.
(quoted in Schreiner and others, 2011, p. 337)
Photodisc
Being surrounded by interesting people has another

College is an ideal time to connect with people from benefit: It smoothes the way to Erikson’s other emerging adult
different backgrounds. So go for it! task: finding love.

1. Your 17-year-old cousin is graduating from high school. Given what you learned in
this section, you might predict that she has overly high/overly low expectations about
her abilities to do college work.
2. Juan has just turned 19; all of these forces predict he may have high self-esteem as he
travels through his early twenties EXCEPT:
a. Juan is a “worker,” a person who thrives on mastering challenging tasks.
b. Juan gets good college grades.
c. Juan puts off having a close love relationship during these years.
3. Hannah confesses that she loves her server job—but only during busy times. When the
restaurant is hectic, she gets energized. Time flies by. She feels exhilarated, at the top
of her form, like a multitasking whiz! Hannah is describing a experience.
4. Josiah says the reason why his classmates drop out of college is that they can’t do the
work. Jocasta says, “Sorry, it’s the need to work incredible hours to pay for school.”
Make each person’s case, using the information from this chapter.
5. Your cousin Juan, who is about to enter his freshman year, asks you for tips about how
to succeed in college. Based on the information in this section, pick the advice you
should not give:
a. Get involved in campus activities.
b. Search out friends who have exactly the same ideas as you do.
c. Select the best professors and reach out to make connections with them.
Finding Love
How do emerging adults negotiate Erikson’s first task of adult life (see Table 10.5)—
intimacy, the search for love? Let’s first explore two major cultural shifts in the ways intimacy Erikson’s first adult
we choose mates before turning to our main topic: finding fulfilling love. task, involving connecting
with a partner in a mutual
loving relationship.
Table 10.5: Erikson’s Life Stages and Their Psychological Tasks
Young adulthood (twenties to early forties) Intimacy versus isolation*
*Although this next section is devoted to the early adult search for intimacy, I’ll spend more time on this topic in the
Chapter 11 discussion of marriage.
Setting the Context: Seismic Shifts in Searching for Love

The following quotations perfectly introduce our first total transformation in how we
search for enduring love:
Daolin Yang lives in Hebie Province, China. . . . At age 15, he married his wife Yufen,
then 13. . . . A matchmaker proposed the marriage on behalf of the Yang family. They
have been married for 62 years. . . . He says that they married first and dated later. It is
“cold at the start and hot in the end.” The relationship gets better and better over the
years.
(Xia & Zhou, 2003, p. 231)
I got married a month ago to the woman . . . I met on Match a year ago. I met my wife
just a week after setting up my profile, and we have been together ever since . . . Thanks
to the profiles, local singles matching, and easy chats, I found the girl of my dreams.
(Adapted from, Top 10 Best Dating Sites, 2014)
Many More Potential Partners

Throughout history, as I just illustrated in the first example, in many regions of the
world, parents chose a child’s marital partner (often during puberty), and newlyweds
hoped (if they were lucky) to later fall in love. Today, even in places like India, where,
until recently, arranged marriages had been standard, many people accept freely
choosing a mate (Gala & Kapadia, 2014, more about this topic in the next chapter).
Moreover, until very recently, romantic choices were confined to our own social
network. People searched for their soul mates at parties, at school, or at synagogue.
Often, they relied on family and friends to fix them up.
Today, with the explosion of on line dating, as we all know, the Internet has glo-
balized the search for love. By the second decade of the twentieth century, an incred-
ible 1 in 3 married couples in the United States had met on-line. Plus, new research
suggests on-line marriages are more likely to be happy than those in which spouses
meet in the old-style traditional way! (See Cacioppo and others, 2013.)
At the same time, since the 1960s lifestyle revolution, Western young people are
far more willing to date outside of their own ethnic group. By the turn of the twenty-
first century, 1 in 3 European Americans reported getting romantically involved with
someone of a different ethnicity or race. More than one-half of all African Americans,
Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans had also made that claim (Yancey &
Yancey, 2002).
Interest in dating and/or marrying outside one’s own ethnicity varies from person
to person. In one survey of on-line daters, females—especially White women—were
less open to contacting someone of another ethnic group than were men. As implied
by the statistic above, minorities are more open to interethnic dating than are Whites.
Interestingly, in this poll, there was special reluctance to getting romantically involved
with African Americans, again if someone was female and White (Hwang, 2013).
Religious attitudes also make a difference. Contrary to popular opinion, one
national U.S. poll found that having a strong religious faith might not matter. But if
someone is White and accepts the bible as literal truth (and doesn’t attend a multi-
racial congregation), this person is apt to be more opposed to this widening of love
choices (Perry, 2013).
Christians who believe biblical injunctions must be obeyed word for word are
particularly aghast (no surprise!) at that other contemporary expansion in the land-
scape of love: same-sex romance.
Hot in Developmental Science: Same-Sex Romance

In the l990s, when I began teaching at my southern university, I remember being
disturbed by the snickering that would erupt when I mentioned issues related to
being gay. No more! Although the gay rights movement exploded on the scene in
the late 1960s in New York City, its most revolutionary strides took place during the
early twenty-first century. As one expert put it, within a few years, the announcement
“I’m gay” went from evoking shock to producing yawns—“So, what else is new?” (See
Savin-Williams, 2001, 2008.) In an era in which emerging adults define themselves
as “mostly straight,” “sometimes gay,” “occasionally bisexual,” or “heterosexual but homophobia Intense fear and
attracted to the other gender,” even limiting one’s sexual identity to a defined category dislike of gays and lesbians.
is becoming passé (see Morgan, 2013).
This is not to say that homophobia, fear and dislike of gays and lesbians,
is rare. Despite our landmark U.S. strides in legalizing same sex marriage
in all 50 states—as we know from the use of derogatory terms for gays and
lesbian—many people—even in enlightened Western nations—have seri-
ous qualms about embracing this new form of love (see Jowett, 2014; Peltz,
2014).
Given this continuing (although more covert) social scorn, it makes
sense that sexual-minority young people can undergo considerable
emotional turmoil during their teens (see Table 10.6). Interestingly, how-
ever, while self-loathing may still be prevalent in traditional world regions,
such as in Asia (Li, Johnson, & Jenkins-Guarnieri, 2013), these feelings are
not the norm in the United States today. In a recent survey of 165 bisexual,
gay, and lesbian young people, the largest group (about 4 in 5 adolescents
and emerging adults) was classified as identity achieved. These people
© Anthony Bolante/Reuters/Corbis
said they felt comfortable about their sexual identity. They reported few
qualms about being rejected by their close attachment figures when they
came out. The concern was the 1 in 5 respondents the researchers labeled
as “struggling.” While these young people “knew” their sexual identity,
they worried about disclosing this fact to disapproving parents and friends
(Bregman and others, 2013).
Another at-risk group may be people who are “identity confused.” When This cake decoration, created in
researchers explored the mental health of women who defined themselves as the early twenty-first century for
the first gay marriage show in
Seattle, was a perfect harbinger
of the quickly evolving times, as
in just a brief decade, same-sex
Table 10.6: Homosexual Stereotypes and Scientific Facts marriage became far more
widely accepted throughout the
Stereotype: Overinvolved mothers and distant fathers “cause” boys to be homosexual. Western world.
Scientific fact: There is no evidence that this or any other parenting problem causes homosexuality.
The causes of homosexuality are unknown—however, recent research suggests that levels of
prenatal testosterone may help program a fetus’ later gender orientation (see Chapter 6).
Stereotype: Homosexual couples have lower-quality relationships—their interactions are
“psychologically immature.”
Scientific fact: Researchers have compared the relationships of committed gay couples with their
heterosexual counterparts via a variety of strategies. The typical finding: There are usually
NO differences in the quality of heterosexual and homosexual relationships. When same-sex
partners have personality issues, they fight a good deal, just like any couple does (Markey
and others, 2014). But, in a recent Swiss study, lesbian couples reported less conflict than a
comparable heterosexual group. These women also showed a trend to being more satisfied
with their mates (Meuwly and others, 2013).
Stereotype: Homosexual parents have pathological family interactions and disturbed children.
Scientific fact: When British researchers (Golombok and others, 2003) compared lesbian-mother,
two-parent-heterosexual, and single-mother families, they found that children raised in
lesbian families had no problems with their gender identity and had no signs of impaired
mental health. In fact, the lesbian mothers showed signs of superior parenting—hitting their
children less frequently and engaging in more fantasy play.
Stereotype: Homosexuals are emotionally disturbed.
Scientific fact: Unfortunately, in the past, elevated rates of psychological problems, such as
suicidal thoughts, depression, and drug abuse, were common when gay young people
formulated their sexual identities and dealt with anxieties relating to coming out (Saewyc,
2011). However, as you can see above, intense distress is not the norm today in the West.
heterosexual but reported having mainly same-sex attractions, this group was as
prone to be distressed as a comparison sample who openly labeled themselves as
gay (Johns, Zimmerman, & Bauermeister, 2013).
Again, I think this research underlines the importance of being identity achieved
in a positive way. Once you embrace your identity (or self), whether as a gay person
or ethnic minority, there is a feeling of self-efficacy and relief. Problems arise if your
other attachment figures cause you to dislike the person you “really” are, or when you
languish untethered in moratorium for an extended time.
A More Erratic, Extended Dating Phase

Unfortunately, however, as I implied earlier in this chapter, romantic moratorium
is built into Western society because the untethered dating phase of mate selection
lasts so long (Shulman & Connolly, 2013). As the average age of marriage has shifted
upward, people not only are delaying making serious love commitments, but younger
emerging adults are even putting off getting romantically involved.
In tracking over 500 economically diverse young people from age 18 to 25, U.S.
researchers found a fraction—about 1 in 4 respondents—did find an enduring, stable
relationship soon after leaving their teens. Interestingly, the largest group—almost 1 in
3 people—fit into the low-involvement categories, having only sporadic relationships
or no romantic involvement throughout those years (Rauer and others, 2013).
When emerging adults do find romance, they
may have off-again on-again relationships. In another
U.S. survey, nearly one-half of couples in their twen-
ties who broke up, got back together again at some
point. And, after ending the relationship, one-half
continued to have sex with their ex (Halpern-Meekin
and others, 2013).
This extended finding-love phase is related to
the time it takes to construct a career (Shulman &
Connolly, 2013). In Argentina, where young people
have few enticing work identities, young people are
Brocreative/Shutterstock
passionate to find love in their early twenties (Facio &

Resett, 2014). In Holland (Branje and others, 2014),
the United States, and especially in Finland where
there are many career options, people put relation-
ships on the back burner until their mid-twenties
This once standard campus
scene is less typical today, as
when they are finished with school (Mayseless & Keren, 2014; Ranta, Dietrich, &
more undergraduates are putting Salmela-Aro, 2014). (“My first priority is to become a doctor or lawyer. I need to get
off romance until they have their my career in order before finding romance.”)
careers in place. But I believe What happens when young people delay making love commitments? We might
that this new lengthening of the
unattached phase of love can
think that having casual sexual encounters is a risk-free way of spending these years.
have emotional downsides. Unfortunately, data suggests otherwise. In tracking a national sample of U.S. emerg-
ing adults, people who reported one-night stands or friends-with-benefits encounters
were at risk of having poorer mental health (Sandberg-Thoma & Kamp Dush, 2014).
Friends-with-benefits relationships are less problematic for women than one-night
stands. One-night stands have fewer mental health downsides for men than for the
other sex (Claxton & van Dulmen, 2013). On the other hand, recall from page 305
that having a stable love relationship during the early twenties seems most critical to
self-esteem for males!
At the risk of going out on a limb (your class can debate this point), I’m going to
agree with Erikson that finding intimacy—meaning a significant other—is immensely
helpful throughout the turbulent twenties. A high-quality love relationship helps
buffer people from the ups and downs of this life stage and the ups and downs we
face at every age. How can people achieve this goal?
Similarity and Structured Relationship Stages: A Classic

Model of Love, and a Critique
Bernard Murstein’s now-classic stimulus-value-role theory (1999) views finding a stimulus-value-role theory
satisfying love as a three-phase process. During the stimulus phase, we see a potential Murstein’s mate-selection
theory that suggests similar
partner and make our first decision: “Could this be a good choice for me?” “Would
people pair up and that
this person want me?” Since we know nothing about the person, our judgment is our path to commitment
based on superficial signs, such as looks or the way the individual dresses. In this progresses through three
assessment, we compare our own reinforcement value to the other person’s along a phases (called the stimulus,
value-comparison, and role
number of dimensions (Murstein, 1999): “True, I am not as good-looking, but she
phases).
may find me desirable because I am better educated.” If the person seems of equal
stimulus phase In
value, we decide to go on a date.
Murstein’s theory, the
When we start actually dating, we enter the value-comparison phase. Here, our initial mate-selection
goal is to select the right person by matching up in terms of inner qualities and traits: stage, in which we make
“Does this person share my interests? Do we have the same values?” If this person judgments about a potential
partner based on external
seems “right,” we enter the role phase, in which we work out our shared lives.
characteristics such as
So, at a party, Aaron scans the room and decides that Samantha with the tattoos appearance.
and frumpy-looking Abigail are out of the question. If he is searching on Facebook
value-comparison phase
or Cupid’s Arrow, he might be put off by Georgette, who looks too gorgeous or has In Murstein’s theory, the
posted photos of her glorious vacation at San Tropez. Aaron gravitates to Ashley, second mate-selection stage,
whose appearance and self-presentation suggests that she is more low maintenance, in which we make judgments
about a partner on the
and maybe—like him—a bit shy. As Aaron and Ashley begin dating, he discovers that
basis of similar values and
they are on the same wavelength. They enjoy the same movies; they both love the interests.
mountains; they have the same worldview. The romance could still end. On their
role phase In Murstein’s
third or tenth date, there may be a revelation that “this person is too different.” But, if theory, the final
things go smoothly, Aaron and Ashley begin planning their future. Should they move mate-selection stage, in
to California when they graduate? Will their wedding be small and intimate or big which committed partners
work out their future life
and expensive?
together.
The “equal-reinforcement-value partner” part of Murstein’s theory explains why
we expect couples to be similar in social status. We’re not surprised if the best-looking
girl in high school dates the captain of the football team. When we find seri-
ous partner status mismatches, we search for reasons to explain these discrepancies
(Murstein, Reif, & Syracuse-Siewert, 2002): “That handsome young lawyer must have
low self-esteem to have settled for that unattractive older woman.” “Perhaps he chose
that woman because she has millions in the bank.”
Most important, Murstein’s theory suggests that opposites do not attract. In
love relationships, as in childhood and adolescent friendships, the driving force is
homogamy (similarity). We want to find a soul mate, a person who matches us, not homogamy The principle that
just in external status, but also in interests and attitudes about life. we select a mate who is
The principle that homogamy promotes happiness (the eHarmony, Match, and similar to us.
Christian Mingle approaches to love) has scientific truth. Late-twentieth-century
research consistently showed that sharing basic values promotes a happy married life
(see Belsky, 1999 for review). Moreover, when people connect through their mutual
passions (“I met my love on a theater blog”), they find an interesting side benefit.
As you will see in the next chapter, sharing flow activities such as acting helps keep
marital passion alive.
The Limits to Looking for a Similar Mate

But should couples be similar in every respect? When psychologists asked
undergraduates to describe their ideal mate, in accordance with the homogamy prin-
ciple, people selected someone with a similar personality. But, in actually examining
happiness among long-married couples, these researchers discovered relationships
worked best when one partner was more dominant and the other more submissive
(Markey & Markey, 2007).
Logically, matching up two strong personalities should be unlikely to promote

romantic bliss (people would probably fight). Two passive partners might frustrate
each other. (“Why doesn’t my lover take the lead?”) Yes, in general, similarity is
important. (Birds of a feather should flock together!) But, as in the other familiar say-
ing, “opposites attract,” couples can mesh best when they have a few carefully selected
opposing personality preferences and styles.
Moreover, suppose a given couple is very similar but in unpleasant traits, such as
their tendency to fly off the handle or be pathologically shy. What really matters in
happiness is not so much objective similarity (the eHarmony approach of matching
people whose personality test scores agree), but believing that one’s significant other
has terrific personality traits. People who see their partner as outgoing and emotionally
stable (“He is a real people person, and open to new things”) have better relationships
over time (Furler, Gomez, & Grob, 2013; Furler, Gomez, & Grob, 2014).
The bottom-line message is that finding a soul mate means
something different than selecting a clone. We don’t want a
reflection of our current real self. We want someone who
embodies our “ideal self”—the person we would like to be.
One study showed that when people believe their significant
Hill Street Studios/Blend Images/Getty Images
other embodies their best self (“I fell in love with him because
he’s a wonderful actor, and that’s always been my goal”), they
tend to grow emotionally as people, becoming more like their
ideal. Idealizing a partner’s good qualities promotes more hap-
piness over time (Rusbult and others, 2009).
Actually rather than “objectively” matching up, happy
couples see their mates through rose-colored glasses (Murray &
Holmes, 1997). They inflate their partner’s virtues (Murray
and others, 2000). They overestimate the extent to which they
Admiring each other’s talents in
and that person are alike in values and goals (Murray and others, 2002). So, science
their shared life passion (“I love
how brilliant my significant confirms George Bernard Shaw’s classic observation: “Love is a gross exaggeration of
other is at acting”) predicts the difference between one person and everyone else.”
future happiness for this young
couple. It also may make these
emerging adults feel as if they The Limits to Charting Love in Stages
are becoming better performers
just from being together—and As soon as I met R, . . . he was just so kind and thoughtful and he was considerate. So
it certainly helps if they inflate we started talking on email and the phone and when I got back from the trip, and he
each other’s talents, too. (My came over a month after the cruise . . . I knew like right away . . . It was just like kind of
partner is going to be the next a confirmation that, I don’t know, we were meant to be together.
Denzel Washington!) (quoted in Mackinnon and others, 2011, p. 607)
This quotation implies that, by viewing mate selection in defined steps, Murstein is
also missing the magical essence of real-world love. Couples may suddenly fall in love
when they meet after months of emails. Or there may be an epiphany, at some point in
your relationship, when you decide, “This person is the one.” As I mentioned earlier,
couples often break up and then reconsider that decision and get back together again.
While turbulent relationships can spark passion, especially for men (that’s the
thrill of the chase), one study found that married couples who recalled their court-
ship as accelerating in a positive direction were more likely to report being happy
with their mates (Wilson & Huston, 2013). Happily married spouses, it turned out,
recalled having similar levels of love as their relationship developed. They were on the
same page about how their feelings progressed. Still, even though we should become
surer of our love over time, any romance has some doubts and ups and downs.
To get insights into this ebb and flow, researchers asked couples who were seri-
ously dating to graph their chances (from 0 to 100 percent) of marrying their partner
(Surra & Hughes, 1997; Surra, Hughes, & Jacquet, 1999). They then had the young
people return each month to chart changes in their commitment and asked them to
describe the reasons for any dramatic relationship turning points, for better or worse.
You can see examples of these turning points in Table 10.7. Notice that relation-
ships do often hinge on homogamy issues (“This person is really right for me”). Other
causes may be turning points, too—from the input of family and friends (“I really like
that person”) to social comparisons (“Our relationship seems better than theirs”) to
the insight, “I’m too young to get involved.” Today, one milestone in the commitment
journey is becoming “Facebook official” with your mate.
Table 10.7: Some Major Positive (+) and Negative (–) Turning Points
in a Relationship
Personal Compatibility/Homogamy*
We spent a lot of time together. +
We had a big fight. –
We had similar interests. +
Compatibility with Family and Friends
My friends kept saying that Sue was bad for me. –
I fit right in with his family. +
Her dad just hated me. –
Other Random Forces
I just turned 21, so I don’t want to be tied down to anyone. –
The guy I used to date started calling me. –
Information from: Surra, Hughes, & Jacquet, 1999.
*Notice that homogamy issues can be critically involved in relationship turning points; but also that other forces
provoke turning points, too—from the input of family and friends, to having other romantic possibilities, to simply
deciding, “I’m too young to get involved.”
Hot in Developmental Science: Facebook Romance

Facebook is a double-edged relationship sword. On one hand, this medium widens
the field of romantic possibilities. On the other hand, Facebook is tailor-made to
evoke jealousy when your partner’s friend list is laden with competing attractive possi-
bilities, or your lover uses Facebook as a tool to make you jealous and spy on your life.
Imagine your shock to wake up, check Facebook, and find your lover has changed
his status from “in a relationship” to “ it’s complicated.” And how do you feel about
needing to change your own status to “it’s complicated,” and thereby broadcast to the
world the humiliating fact that your relationship is not working out?
In one focus-group study exploring these issues, young people agreed it’s not
kosher to defriend a former lover. Still, it can be impossible to get over a breakup
when you witness your ex cavorting with new females (or males) in cyberspace. Even
when you delete that person, you are vulnerable to seeing hurtful images, because
you share so many friends. Posting multiple mushy statements (“I love my sweet baby
so much”) on a partner’s wall, respondents agreed, is a “no, no.” But some people felt
it’s important to log in at least one caring comment every day.
The universal perception of the young people in this study, however, was that, in
their words: “Facebook is a trap”; “It’s a total . . . train wreck”; “It’s not going to make
a relationship better but it could make it worse”(quoted in Fox, Osborn, & Warber,
2014, p. 531). Unfortunately, however, everyone still felt wedded to this technology.
In spite of reporting numerous negative experiences, 46 of these 47 young adults still
maintained a Facebook page. The one emerging adult who had deleted his profile
Table 10.8: Everything (or Some Interesting Things) You Wanted to Know About Cyberspace
Love Relationships
Question 1: Should I worry if there is a huge assortment of potentially competing romantic possibilities on my partner’s Facebook
friends list?
Research answer: Actually no, but you should be concerned if your lover seems interested in adding new friends. In one study
exploring commitment in 145 college students, researchers found that people in a relationship who reported lower feelings of
love for their partners were apt to solicit new Facebook friends. But the sheer number of romantic possibilities on a friend list had
nothing to do with the odds that a person was less committed or would stray. Bottom line: Ignore your lover’s existing Facebook
friends, but beware of the ones she adds! (See Drouin, Miller, & Dibble, 2014.)
Question 2: My lover texts me constantly every day. Does that mean he is anxious about my love?
Research answer: Not really, but you might be alert to whether he prefers texting to contacting you in other ways. In measuring
relationship satisfaction among 364 daters, and controlling for background variables such as physical distance, one psychologist
(Luo, 2014) found that the absolute number of texts per day didn’t matter. However, overusing this communication mode, when
compared to calling or meeting face to face, predicted relationship distress. So, it may be OK to receive love texts every hour. But
when your lover’s cyberspace messages are replacing “real life” interactions, that person may be feeling uneasy about your love.
Question 3: I must admit that I’ve been guilty of sexting my partner. Does that mean I’m a loose woman or have personality issues?
Research answer: Contrary to the media alarm bells, sexting is not a symptom of having mental health problems (Gordon-Messer and
others, 2013). Actually, the main correlate of engaging in this activity is having a close romantic relationship (Delevi & Weisskirch, 2013;
Samimi & Alderson, 2014). Still, among females, unwanted sexting is fairly common—with more than one-half of girls in one study
reporting they engaged in this behavior to please their mates (Drouin & Tobin, 2014). There also is an interesting difference between
European nations. While living in a country with traditional values (such as Italy) does not affect sexting prevalence, it does predict
gender differences in this activity. In permissive societies such as Scandinavia, females are more apt to sext than males. In conservative
countries, by far the main sexters are men (Baumgartner and others, 2014).
was reconsidering getting a new one, ironically, “just to keep tabs on his girlfriend”
(p. 533). (Check out Table 10.8 for other interesting research facts related to romance
in the on-line age.)
Although it makes romance (in Facebook terms) “complicated,” the on-line
revolution is not apt to make or break a relationship. Studies tracking the real-world
couples that I’ve been describing offer that crystal ball. To summarize: It helps to be
similar in values to your partner and on the same page about your feelings of love; it’s
a good sign if your relationship progresses without too much turmoil. It’s important to
idealize your partner (“My mate is the greatest!”) and to find someone whose personal
attributes you respect. This brings me to the importance of that final, critical personal
attribute—Find someone who can reach out in love!
Love Through the Lens of Attachment Theory

adult attachment styles Think back to Chapter 4’s discussion of the different infant attachment styles. Remem-
The different ways in ber that Mary Ainsworth (1973) found that securely attached babies run to Mom with
which adults relate to
romantic partners, based
hugs and kisses when she appears in the room. Avoidant infants act cold, aloof, and
on Mary Ainsworth’s infant indifferent in the Strange Situation when the caregiver returns. Anxious-ambivalent
attachment styles. (Adult babies are overly clingy, afraid to explore the toys, and angry and inconsolable when
attachment styles are their caregiver arrives. Now, think of your own romantic relationships, or the love rela-
classified as secure, or
preoccupied/ambivalent
tionships of family members or friends. Wouldn’t these same attachment categories
insecure, or avoidant/ apply to adult romantic love? Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver (1987) had the same
dismissive insecure.) insight: Let’s draw on Ainsworth’s dimensions to classify people into different adult
preoccupied/ambivalent attachment styles.
insecure attachment An People with a preoccupied/ambivalent type of insecure attachment fall quickly
excessively clingy, needy and deeply in love (see the How Do We Know box). But, because they are engulfing
style of relating to loved
ones.
and needy, they often end up being rejected or feeling chronically unfulfilled. Adults
with an avoidant/dismissive form of insecure attachment are at the opposite end of
avoidant/dismissive insecure
attachment A standoffish,
the spectrum—withholding, aloof, reluctant to engage. You may have dated this kind
excessively disengaged style of person, someone whose main mottos seem to be “stay independent,” “don’t share,”
of relating to loved ones. “avoid getting close” (Feeney, 1999).
that a person is securely or insecurely attached?
How do developmentalists classify adults as either securely or insecurely attached?
In the current relationship interview, they ask people questions about their goals and
feelings about their romantic relationships; for example, “What happens when either of
you is in trouble? Can you rely on each other to be there emotionally?” Trained evalu-
ators then code the responses.
People are labeled securely attached if they coherently describe the pluses and minuses
of their own behavior and of the relationship, if they talk freely about their desire for
intimacy, and if they adopt an other-centered perspective, seeing nurturing the other
person’s development as a primary goal. Those who describe their relationship in
formal, stilted ways, emphasize “autonomy issues,” or talk about the advantages of
being together in non-intimate terms (“We are buying a house”; “We go places”), are
classified as avoidant/dismissive. Those who express total dependence (“I can’t func-
tion unless she is nearby”), anger about not being treated correctly, or fears of being
left are classified as preoccupied/ambivalent.
This in-depth interview technique is time intensive. But many attachment researchers
argue that it reveals a person’s attachment style better than questionnaires in which
people simply check “yes” or “no” to indicate whether items on a scale apply to them.
Secure attachment
• Definition: Capable of genuine intimacy in
relationships.
• Signs: Empathic, sensitive, able to reach
out emotionally. Balances own needs
with those of partner. Has affectionate,
caring interactions. Probably in a loving,
Photodisc/Getty
long-term relationship.
Avoidant/dismissive insecure attachment

• Definition: Unable to get close in
relationships.
• Signs: Uncaring, aloof, emotionally
distant. Unresponsive to loving feel-
ings. Abruptly disengages at signs of
© Ken Seet/Corbis
involvement. Unlikely to be in a long-term

relationship.
Preoccupied/ambivalent insecure
attachment
• Definition: Needy and engulfing in
relationships.
• Signs: Excessively jealous, suffocating.
Needs continual reassurance of being
totally loved. Unlikely to be in a loving,
Bill Aron/Photo Edit
long-term relationship.
Securely attached people are fully open to love. They give their partners space secure attachment The
to differentiate, yet are firmly committed. Like Ainsworth’s secure infants, their faces genuine intimacy that is
ideal in love relationships.
light up when they talk about their partner. Their joy in their love shines through.
Decades of studies exploring these different attachment styles show that insecurely
attached adults have trouble with relationships. Securely attached people are more
successful in the world of love.
Securely attached adults have happier marriages. They report more satisfy-
ing romances (Feeney, 1999; Mikulincer and others, 2002; Morgan & Shaver,
1999). Avoidant husbands are disengaged when their wives get upset (Barry &
Lawrence, 2013). Perhaps because they are so frightened about being left, anxi-
ously attached spouses are more apt to have affairs (Russell, Baker, & McNulty,
2013). Insecurely attached people get far more dissatisfied with their lovers over
time (Hadden, Smith, & Webster, 2014). But, securely attached adults hang in
during difficulties. They freely support their partner in times of need. Using the
metaphor of mother–infant attachment, described in Chapter 4, people with
secure attachments are wonderful dancers. They excel at being emotionally
responsive and in tune.
Recall that Bowlby and Ainsworth believe that the dance of attachment
between the caregiver and baby is the basis for feeling securely attached in
infancy and for dancing well in other relationships in life. If you listen to friends
anguishing about their relationship problems, you will hear similar ideas: “The
reason I act clingy and jealous is that, during my childhood, I felt unloved.” “It’s
hard for me to warm up and respond to kisses because my mom was rejecting and
cold.” We already know that attachment styles can change throughout childhood
and adolescence (see Chapter 4). In fact, a better predictor of being securely
attached in your twenties is not your attachment status during infancy, but
maintaining close friendships as a teen (Fraley and others, 2013; Pascuzzo, Cyr, &
Moss, 2013). Once entering adulthood, how much can attachment styles change
from year to year?
To answer this question, researchers measured the attachment styles of several
hundred women at intervals over two years (Cozzarelli and others, 2003). They found
that almost one-half of the women had changed categories over that time. So the good
news is that we can change our attachment status from insecure to secure. And—as
will come as no surprise to many readers—we can also move in the opposite direction,
temporarily feeling insecurely attached after a terrible experience with love. The best
way to understand attachment styles, then, is as somewhat enduring and consistent,
arising, in part, from our recent experiences in love.
One reason attachment styles stay stable is that they may operate as a self-
fulfilling prophecy. A preoccupied, clingy person does tend to be rejected repeatedly.
An avoidant individual remains isolated because piercing that armored shell takes
such a heroic effort. A secure, loving person gets more secure over time because his
caring behavior evokes warm, loving responses (Davila & Kashy, 2009).
By now, you are probably impressed with the power of the attachment-styles
perspective to predict real-world love. But alert readers might notice that these
correlational findings have conceptual flaws: Let’s say, for instance, that a person
labels his childhood as unhappy, is classified as having an insecure attachment style,
and experiences relationship distress. It’s tempting to say that “poor parenting” caused
this insecure worldview, which then produced the current problems; but couldn’t
the causal chain go in the opposite way? “I’m not getting along with my partner, so
I believe love can’t work out, and it must be my parents fault.” Or, couldn’t these
self-reports be caused by a third force having nothing to do with attachment: being
depressed. If you have a gloomy worldview, wouldn’t you see both your childhood
and current relationship as dissatisfying, and also have an “avoidant” or “preoccupied”
attachment style?
Still, as a framework for understanding people (and ourselves), the attachment
styles perspective has great appeal. Who can’t relate to having had a lover (or friend or
parent) with a “dismissing” or “preoccupied” attachment? Don’t the defining qualities
of secure attachment give us a beautiful roadmap for how we personally should relate
to the significant others in our lives? Attachment theory allows us to look at every love
relationship through a fascinating new lens.
INTERVENTIONS: Evaluating Your Own Relationship

How can you use all of the insights in this section to ensure smoother-sailing
romance? Select someone who is similar in values and interests, but don’t necessar-
ily search for a partner with your personality traits. Find someone who you respect
as an individual, a person whose qualities embody the “self” you want to be—but it’s
best if you each differ on the need to take charge. Focus on the outstanding “special
qualities” of your significant other. Look for someone who is securely attached
and secure as a human being. It’s a good sign if your relationship progresses fairly
smoothly, but expect bumps along the way. Still, however, notice the other implicit
message of the research on relationship turning points (see Table 10.7 on page 317):
If things don’t work out, it easily may have nothing to do with you, the other per-
son, or any problem basic to how well you get along! If you want to evaluate your
own relationship, you might take the questionnaire based on these chapter points
in Table 10.9.
Table 10.9: Evaluating Your Own Relationship: A Section Summary Checklist

Yes No
1. Are you and your partner similar in interests and values? ❒ ❒

You don’t have to be clones of each other, but the research shows that
the more similar you are in many worldviews, the greater your chances of
a happy relationship.*
2. Do you believe that your partner has a great personality and, in important ❒ ❒
ways, embodies your ideal self?
Seeing your partner as having wonderful qualities and as someone you
want to be like predicts staying together happily as well as growing
emotionally toward your ideal.
3. Do you see your partner as utterly terrific and unique? ❒ ❒
Deciding that this person has no human flaws is not necessary—but
seeing your partner as “unique and special” also predicts being happy
together.
4. Is your relationship getting better and better, with you two becoming more ❒ ❒
committed over time?
If you experience minor ups and downs in your feelings of love, that’s
fine, but it’s best if your relationship generally continues on an upward
trajectory.
5. Is your partner able to fully reach out in love, neither intensely jealous nor ❒ ❒
aloof?
Some jealousy or hesitation about commitment can be normal, but in
general, your partner should be securely attached and able to love.
If you checked “yes” for all six of these questions, your relationship is in excellent shape. If you
checked “no” for every question, your “relationship” does not exist! One or two no’s mixed in
with yes’s suggest areas that need additional work.
*Recall that it may be best if one of you has a stronger, or more dominant, personality.
So far, I have just begun my exploration into those adult agendas: love and
work. In the next chapter, we’ll focus directly on that core adult love relationship—
marriage—and talk in more depth about careers. Then stay tuned, in Chapter 12, for
exciting findings exploring how we change as people during adulthood, and tips for
constructing a fulfilling adult life.
1. If Latoya is discussing with James how relationships have changed in recent decades,
which two statements should she make?
a. There is now more interracial and interethnic dating.
b. Same-sex relationships are now much more acceptable.
c. Homophobia is now rare.
2. Today, relatively few/many single people are open to Internet dating, and on-line
relationships are less/more apt to be successful than traditional relationships.
3. Natasha and Akbar met at a friend’s New Year’s Eve party and just started dating.
They are about to find out whether they share similar interests, backgrounds, and
worldviews. This couple is in Murstein’s (choose one) stimulus/value-comparison/role
phase of romantic relationships.
4. Catherine tells Kelly, “To have a happy relationship, find someone as similar to you as
possible.” Go back and review this section. Then list the ways in which Catherine is
somewhat wrong.
5. Kita is clingy and always feels rejected. Rena runs away from intimate relationships.
Sam is affectionate and loving. Match the attachment status of each person to one of
the following alternatives: secure, avoidant-dismissive, or preoccupied.
SUMMARY
Emerging into Adulthood twenties, but off time if it extends well into the thirties. Although
society sets the overall social-clock guidelines, people also have
Psychologists have identified a new life phase called emerg- their own personal timetables for when to get married and reach
ing adulthood. This in-between, not-quite-fully-adult time of other adult markers. Social-clock pressures, plus other forces,
life, beginning after high school and tapering off by the late make emerging adulthood both an exhilarating life stage and a
twenties, involves testing out adult roles. The main challenge time of special stress.
of this least-structured life stage is taking adult responsibility
for our lives. This new, developed-world life stage differs from
person to person and country to country. In southern Europe, Constructing an Identity
young people typically live at home until they marry, and they Deciding on one’s identity, Erikson’s first task in becoming an
often have great trouble becoming financially independent. In adult, is the major challenge facing emerging adults. Erikson
northern Europe, cohabitation and having babies before mar- believed that exploring various possibilities and taking time to
riage are widespread. In these nations, better economies, plus ponder this question is critical to developing a solid adult self.
an emphasis on independence, make early nest-leaving the At the opposite pole lies role confusion—drifting and seeing no
norm. In the United States, there is tremendous variability, with adult future.
people moving backward and forward on the way to constructing
James Marcia identified four identity statuses: identity diffusion
an adult life.
(drifting aimlessly), identity foreclosure (leaping into an identity
We often think of the entry point of emerging adulthood as leav- without any thought), moratorium (exploring different pathways),
ing the nest. But, although, in many nations, parent–child rela- and identity achievement (settling on an identity). In contrast to
tionships improve after emerging adults move out, this is not true Marcia’s idea that we progress through these stages and reach
in places such as Portugal where most young people stay in the achievement in the twenties, people shift from status to status
nest through their twenties. The idea that we must leave home to throughout life. Emerging adults may not need to sample differ-
“act adult” is also incorrect. Young people typically live with their ent fields to develop a secure career identity. Being paralyzed
parents because they cannot afford to live alone. Ethnic-minority by different possibilities, or locked in ruminative moratorium,
young people, in particular, may stay in the nest to help their produces special distress. In terms of identity—including one’s
families as “full adults.” ethnic (biracial or multiracial identity)—it’s important to make
Social-clock pressures, or age norms, set the boundaries of a choice, feel positive about your identity, and believe that your
emerging adulthood. Exploring is on time, or appropriate, in the decision expresses your inner self.
Finding a Career are less open to interethnic romance. Same-sex relationships

are “out in the open,” in the West, although homophobia still
Teenagers have high career goals. The downside is that, because exists. Western gay teens are more comfortable about coming
many teens overinflate their abilities, self-esteem often drops out than in the past. The dating phase of life lasts longer, too,
when young people enter college. Emerging adults follow diverse with more young people putting off serious romantic involve-
emotional paths as they leave high school and move through ments until they establish a career. Unfortunately, putting
their early twenties. Getting good grades, being someone who relationships on the back burner can have negative effects,
enjoys mastering challenges (a “worker”), and finding a stable as casual sex has emotional downsides, and having a caring
love relationship (if you are a male) seem important in boosting partner seems important during the early twenties, especially
self-worth. Emerging adulthood, in general, is a time of emo- for men.
tional growth, with young people getting more conscientious,
gaining self-control, and thinking about life in more complex Stimulus-value-role theory spells out a three-stage process
ways. “Troubled teens,” in particular, tend to grow emotionally leading to marriage. First, we select a potential partner who
if they lock into a satisfying job. looks appropriate (the stimulus phase); then, during the value-
comparison phase, we find out whether that person shares our
Flow is a feeling of total absorption in a challenging task. The interests and worldview. Finally, during the role phase, we plan
hours seem to pass like minutes, intrinsic motivation is high, and our lives together. Homogamy, people’s tendency to choose simi-
our skills are in balance with the demands of a given task. Flow lar partners and partners of equivalent status to themselves, is
states can alert us to our ideal careers. the main principle underlying this theory.
Although higher education is more necessary than ever, and most Although it does help to be similar in values, there are quali-
young people in the United States enroll in college, many drop out fications to the idea that we should search for a similar mate.
before finishing. Economics looms large in who leaves college, as Relationships flourish when people respect their partner’s per-
high-performing young people from low-income backgrounds are sonality, and two very dominant (or submissive) personalities
less apt to finish school than their affluent counterparts. While might not mesh. It helps to view a lover as embodying your “ideal
there may be advantages to leaving college and coming back, self’ and idealize that person’s virtues. While the experience of
we need to make it easier for financially strapped young people love doesn’t fall into patterned stages, it helps to gradually get
to get a B.A. and offer non-college alternatives that lead directly closer, too—although every relationship has ups and downs.
to jobs. The absence of a real school-to-work transition in the Facebook, that new medium for selecting and announcing one’s
United States is a national crisis. love, can make things more complicated by evoking jealousy
Ideally, the college experience should be a time of inner growth. and distress. Relationship success, however, depends on the
Get the best professors (and reach out to them); explore career- above qualities, and one final attribute: finding someone who is
relevant work; become involved in campus activities; and reach securely attached.
out to students of different backgrounds to make the most of
Researchers have spelled out three adult attachment styles.
these special years.
Adults ranked as insecurely attached—either preoccupied/
ambivalent (overly clingy and engulfing) or avoidant/
Finding Love dismissive (overly aloof and detached)—have poorer-quality
Erikson’s second emerging-adult task, intimacy—finding relationships. Securely attached adults tend to be successful in
committed love—has changed dramatically in recent decades. love and marriage. Although we can question the validity of this
People now find romance on-line, and are far more likely to date research, the attachment-styles framework offers fascinating
outside their ethnicity and race, although White women and insights into the qualities we should search for in selecting
Christians who accept biblical pronouncements as literal truth a mate.
KEY TERMS
emerging adulthood, role confusion, p. 300 biracial or multiracial value-comparison

p. 294 identity statuses, p. 300 identity, p. 303 phase, p. 315
role, p. 294 identity diffusion, p. 300 flow, p. 305 role phase, p. 315
cohabitation, p. 295 identity foreclosure, p. 301 school-to-work transition, homogamy, p. 315
nest-leaving, p. 295 p. 308 adult attachment styles, p. 318
moratorium, p. 301
social clock, p. 298 intimacy, p. 311 preoccupied/ambivalent
identity achievement,
age norms, p. 298 p. 301 homophobia, p. 313 insecure attachment, p. 318
on time, p. 298 ruminative moritorium, stimulus-value-role avoidant/dismissive insecure
off time, p. 298 p. 302 theory, p. 315 attachment, p. 318
identity, p. 300 ethnic identity, p. 302 stimulus phase, p. 315 secure attachment, p. 319
Emerging into Adulthood 2. foreclosure; moratorium. Kayla is most likely to be distressed

1. b. Sara’s pathway to adulthood will flow smoothly (in moratorium).
2. d. Silvia who lives in Stockholm 3. Do you feel nursing expresses your inner self?
3. False (there are many rational “adult reasons” people stay in 4. False
the nest)
Finding a Career
4. Martha, who is starting a new career at age 50; she will be
most worried about the ticking of the social clock. 1. Overly high
2. c. Juan might do best if he finds a close caring relationship
Constructing an Identity during these years
1. drifting; diffusion 3. flow
4. Josiah might argue that prior academic performance predicts 3. value-comparison phase
college completion, with low odds of finishing for high 4. Actually, people who have dominant personalities might
school graduates with a C-average or below. Jocasta should be better off with more submissive mates (and vice versa).
reply that money is crucial because academically talented Respecting a partner’s personality is more important than
low-income kids are far less likely to finish college than their being alike in every attribute and trait. Rather than search-
affluent peers, and drop-outs cite “financial issues” as the ing for a clone, it’s best to find a mate who is similar to one’s
main reason for leaving. ideal self. Overinflating that person’s virtues helps tremen-
5. b dously, too!
5. Kita’s status is preoccupied. Rena is avoidant/dismissing.
Finding Love
Sam is securely attached.
1. a and b
2. Today many people are open to internet dating and on-line
relationships are more apt to be successful than traditional
relationships.
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Marriage
Setting the Context:
The Changing Landscape of
Marriage
The Main Marital Pathway:
Downhill and Then Up
The Triangular Theory
Perspective on Happiness
Commitment, Sanctification,
and Compassion: The Core
Attitudes in Relationship
Success
Couple Communications and
Happiness
INTERVENTIONS: Staying
Together Happily for Life
Divorce
SCIENCE: Marriage the Second
or Third or “X” Time Around
Parenthood
Setting the Context: More
Parenting Possibilities, Fewer
Children
The Transition to Parenthood
Exploring Motherhood
Exploring Fatherhood
Work
Setting the Context: The
Changing Landscape of Work
Dimitri Otis/Getty Images

Exploring Career Happiness
(and Success)
SCIENCE: A Final Status Report
on Men, Women, and Work
Relationships and Roles
Home at 3 a.m. from closing the restaurant and hopefully to bed by 4. Then, Jamila
wakes up and gets the kids ready for school to arrive at her job at 9.
Matt’s first marriage to Clara ended in a disastrous divorce. He feels blessed to
have this second chance for happiness at age 35. Matt and Jamila met at a community-
wide faith celebration. They share the same values. They understand that marriage
involves commitment and sacrifice. They believe that god has sanctified their marriage.
After a difficult year struggling to connect with the twins, Matt finally knows that
his stepchildren see him as their real dad—he knows he would die for these precious
children and more. But supporting his family means being apart more than he would
like. Matt wants to make enough money to give the kids a top-notch education and
allow his wife to quit her high-stress job to spend more time at home.
That’s why Matt just “supplemented” his store manager position with a weekend
shift running the local health food store. Yes, the 70-plus-hour workweeks will be
exhausting, but Matt is thrilled. What a blessing to find not just one, but two decently
paying jobs. It’s a 24/7 struggle, but this marriage must work for life!
D
o you know someone like Matt Soon you will learn why each stereotype
who is trying to be a caring is right or wrong.
husband, a sensitive father, and Although I will discuss them sepa-
support his family? Perhaps like Jamila, rately, I must emphasize that we can-
you have a friend who feels overwhelmed not look at marriage, parenthood, and
by a high-pressure job and wants to spend career as separate. Our work situation
more time at home with her kids. If determines if we decide to get married
so, you know a twenty-first-century adult. (recall the last chapter). Having children
This chapter is devoted to the main changes a marriage and, as with Matt,
role challenges involved in being adult. affects our feelings about our career. As
Here, I’ll build on the Chapter 10 dis- developmental systems theory suggests,
cussion of love and career by focusing marriage, parenthood, and career are
directly on marriage, parenthood, and tri-directional, interlocking roles. More-
work. Before beginning your reading, over, how we approach these core adult
you might want to take the family and roles depends on the time in history and
work quiz in Table 11.1 on the next page. the society in which we live.
327
Table 11.1: Stereotypes About Family and Work: A Quiz
Write “True” or “False” next to each of the following statements. To see how accurate your beliefs
about family and work are, look at the correct answers, printed upside down below the table. As
you read through the chapter, you’ll find out exactly why each statement is true or false.
______ 1. Americans today are not as interested in getting married as they were in the past.
______ 2. Poor people often don’t get married because they are basically less interested in
having a permanent commitment.
______ 3. People are happiest in the honeymoon phase of a marriage.
______ 4. Having children brings married couples closer.
______ 5. People who don’t have children are self-absorbed and narcissistic.
______ 6. Mothers used to spend more time with their children in the past than they
do today.
______ 7. Most dads today share the childcare 50/50 with their wives.
______ 8. Technology has reduced the hours we spend at work.
______ 9. People work fewer hours than they used to, at least in the United States.
______ 10. Traditional gender roles have mainly disappeared in the world of work.
Answers: 1. F, 2. F, 3. T, 4. F, 5. F, 6. F, 7. F, 8. F, 9. F, 10. F
Marriage
Ask people to describe their ideal marriage (or relationship) and you may hear phrases
such as “soul mates,” “equal sharing,” and “someone who fulfills my innermost self”
(Amato, 2007; Dew & Wilcox, 2011). This vision of “lovers for life,” who work and
share the housework equally, is a product of living in the contemporary, developed
world.
Setting the Context: The Changing Landscape of Marriage

Throughout history, as I implied in Chapter 10, people often got married based on
practical concerns. With marriages often being arranged by the couple’s parents, and
daily life being so difficult, we did not have the luxury of marrying for love. In addi-
tion, in the not-so-distant past, life expectancy was so low that the typical marriage
only lasted a decade or two before one partner died.
Then, in the early twentieth century, as life got easier and health care advances
allowed us to routinely live into later life, in Western nations, we developed the
idea that people should get married in their twenties and be lovers for a half-
century or more. The traditional 1950s Leave It to Beaver marriage, with defined
gender roles, reflected this vision of enduring love (Amato, 2007; Cherlin, 2004;
Coontz, 1992).
In the last third of the twentieth century, Western ideas about marriage took
another turn. The women’s movement told us that women should have careers and
spouses should share the child care. As a result of the 1960s lifestyle revolution,
which stressed personal fulfillment, we rejected the idea that people should stay in
an unhappy marriage. We could get divorced, have babies without being married, and
deinstitutionalization of choose not to get married at all.
marriage The decline in The outcome was the dramatic change that social scientists call the deinsti-
marriage and the emergence
of alternate family forms that
tutionalization of marriage (Cherlin, 2004, 2010). This phrase means that mar-
occurred during the last third riage has been transformed from the standard adult “institution” into an optional
of the twentieth century. choice.
CHAPTER 11 Relationships and Roles 329
Ryan McVay/Photodisc/Getty Images

© H. Armstrong Roberts/CORBIS
From the 1950s stay-at-home mom to the two-career

marriage with fully engaged dads—over the last third
of the twentieth century, a revolution occurred in our
ideas about married life. How do you feel about these
lifestyle changes?
Figure 11.1 shows one symptom of this transformation in the United States: A
steady cohort-by-cohort rise in cohabitation rates during the emerging adult years.
When people born in the late 1950s and early 1960s (shown in the first bar of the
figure) were in their twenties, only 1 in 3 women dared move in with a romantic
partner without a wedding ring. (This was called “living in sin.”) With the cohabita-
tion odds now reversing to 2 in 3, living together before getting married is a normal
event (Vespa, 2014).
The most revealing change relates to serial cohabitation—living with different serial cohabitation Living
partners sequentially during adult life. When emerging adults cohabit with only sequentially with different
partners outside of marriage.
one person, they are more apt to see this arrangement as a step to a wedding ring
(“We want to see if we can make it as husband and wife”). Serial cohabiters are
unlikely to have any marriage goals (Vespa, 2014). They may join the millions of
contemporary women who give birth without a spouse.
This brings up the most controversial U.S. change: unmarried parenthood. During
the 1950s, if a U.S. woman dared to have a baby without being married, her family
2 3
100 5 5 9 Three or
7
10 more
13 14
16 Two
80
32
Percent of females cohabiting
36
39
60 42
46 One
figure 11.1: Percent of
women who cohabited during
40
emerging adulthood: Notice
59 how, over time, cohabitation has
52 become a normal event during
43 39 the twenties (red, green and
20
29 orange bars). Also notice the
None
increase in serial cohabitation—
living together with different
partners on the way to becoming
1958–1962 1963–1967 1968–1972 1973–1977 1978–1982 an adult (green and orange
Year of birth bars).
Data from: Vespa, 2014, p. 211.
might ship her off to a home for unwed mothers or insist that she marry the dad
(the infamously named “shotgun marriage”). A half-century later, with only 11 per-
cent of U.S. women without a college degree being married before giving birth
(Gibson-Davis & Rackin, 2014), the disconnect between marriage and a baby carriage,
for less well-educated Americans, is a predictable path (see also Manning, Brown, &
Payne, 2014).
Acceptance of divorce, cohabitation, and unmarried motherhood clearly varies
around the globe. How are these lifestyles playing out in countries famous for rigid
marriage rules? For answers, let’s travel to Iran and India.
Iran: Eroding Male Dominated Marriage

When we imagine cultures most horrified by our “decadent” Western practices,
countries such as Iran might come to mind. In Iran, in accordance with fundamen-
talist Islamic Law, marriage is the only acceptable life path. Moreover, Iran’s Civil
Code includes provisions suggesting that women are subservient to men. A daughter
should be pure—meaning a virgin—until she marries, on pain of shaming the family
name. After she marries, a wife is expected to obey a spouse. Husbands traditionally
can forbid their wives to go to school and to work, as a female’s proper role is to care
for children and the house.
Just as shocking to Western eyes were Iranian regulations surrounding divorce:
Husbands have decision-making power to dissolve a marriage. Ex-wives are barred
from receiving alimony. The man automatically gets custody of the children once
they are over a certain age. So, it’s no wonder that Iranian mothers classically warned
their daughters: “A woman will go to her husband’s house with her veil and come out
with her . . . (shroud)” (quoted in Aghajanian & Thompson, 2013, p. 113).
Within the past 15 years, these pronouncements lost force. Iranian women can
now initiate divorce proceedings and draw up prenuptial agreements, spelling out
their right to work; they can insist on getting half of the man’s property if the couple
splits up.
Moreover, in recent decades, women in Iran made massive strides in moving into
the wider world. In Iran today—as in the West—more women enroll in universities
than men (Abbas-Shavazi, Mohammad, & McDonald, 2008). Although—in contrast
to the West—only about 1 in 5 married Iranian women are in the labor force, women
are postponing marriage until older ages. In fact, in the last 15 years, divorce rates in
this nation accelerated, to outpace those in Catholic countries such as Ireland, Italy,
and Spain. Bottom line: Iran is becoming a more gender equal nation, where the
first stages of the deinstitutionalization of marriage have arrived (see Aghajanian &
Thompson, 2013).
India: From Arranged Marriages to Eloping for Love

India is an even stronger “anti-Western” marriage model because of
its arranged marriages, unions in which parents choose their child’s
spouse. As late as 2005, most wives in India reported that their fami-
lies had made the primary decision about whom they would wed, and
many barely knew their husbands before their wedding day. However,
© PhotosIndia.com Batch 16 LLC/Alamy
with the younger generation now having veto power over parental
choices, here, too, arranged marriage is in steep decline.
The most radical change relates to what people in India call
elopements: Young people run away and get engaged without their
parents’ consent. What typically happens here is that the girl leaves
home without telling her parents (or the boy and girl both leave
home). Then, the boy’s family goes to the girl’s family, informs them
If you visited this family, the mother would almost
certainly have had an arranged marriage. There
of her whereabouts and gets consent for the marriage. A few months
would be a good chance that the daughter would later, unless the girl’s parents forbid the union, the couple formally
choose a mate on her own. weds (Allendorf, 2013).
What do people think about this change? For answers researchers traveled to
a rural area of India to conduct interviews. While believing that each type of mar-
riage had its pluses and minuses, most residents were in favor of elopements. Well-
educated people in particular used the phrases, “modern,” “advanced,” and “forward”
to describe this trend.
India is miles from Western in its marriage views. However, in this nation, it
seems appropriate to cite the lyrics, “The times they are a changing.”
Western Variations
The deinstitutionalization of marriage is the melody
now being played throughout the developed world. Disapproval
Still, as Figure 11.2 shows, attitudes toward alter- 0.8 Feelings about alternative family types
nate family forms differ from nation to nation in 0.6 Importance marriage
the West. Because the United States is ambivalent 0.4
about unmarried motherhood, women who give birth 0.2
without a wedding ring, particularly those who move Neutral 0
from cohabiting relationship to relationship, are far –0.2
more likely to be poor (Farber & Miller-Cribbs, 2014; –0.4
Nepomnyaschy & Teitler, 2013). Scandinavia has no
–0.6
stigma attached to these lifestyle choices. So in this
–0.8
nation, unmarried couples with children cohabit at Approval
Denmark
Sweden
Norway
U.S.
every educational and economic rung (Vanassche,
Swicegood, & Matthijs, 2013).
The reality is that the United States is still in love
with marriage. Roughly 8 out of 10 U.S. young people
want to eventually get married—the same fraction as figure 11.2: Importance of marriage and feelings about
in the past (Manning, Longmore, & Giordano, 2007). alternate family types in samples of adults aged 22–55 in
But before taking this step, we want to be sure we have Scandinavian nations and the United States (based on data
from the International Social Survey program): Notice that
the foundations in place. Scandinavians—especially residents of Denmark—are fine with non-
Think about your requirements for getting mar- marriage alternatives (red bars) and don’t place great emphasis on
ried if you are single—or, if you are married, think of getting married (blue bars), while in the United States, people still
your personal goals before you were wed. In addition strongly disapprove of family forms such as unmarried motherhood.
Data from: Vanassche, Swicegood, & Matthijs, 2013.
to finding the right person, if you are like most people,
you probably believe that making this commitment
demands reaching a certain place in your development. It’s important to have a
solid sense of identity and to be financially secure (Gibson-Davis, 2009; Umber-
son, Pudrovska, & Reczek, 2010; also, recall Chapter 10). Therefore, because we
select partners according to homogamy, the marriage market for less-well-educated
Maria Rutherford/Taxi/Getty Images
Jonathan Fernstrom/Getty Images
If you visited this Scandinavian family, these parents

might be happily cohabiting without feeling they
needed a wedding ring. In the United States we
believe that making it to a marriage ceremony is ideal.
young people is poor (Gibson-Davis, 2009; Gibson-Davis & Rackin, 2014). Even
when couples are committed to each other, it can be difficult to move from living
together to getting engaged.
Read what Candace, a 25-year-old, had to say about her marriage plans:
Um, we have certain things that we want to do before we get married. We both want
very good jobs. . . . He’s been looking out for jobs everywhere and we— . . . we’re
trying. We just want to have—we gotta have everything before we say, “Let’s get
married.”
(quoted in Smock, Manning, & Porter, 2005, p. 690)
As this comment implies, rather than blaming a “culture of irresponsibility”

(see Murray, 2012), the lack of well-paying jobs is a major reason why many
U.S. young people at the lower end of the economic spectrum never wed
(Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). Today, for increasing numbers of young women,
having babies is the main marker of adulthood. Getting married can seem like a
hazy, far-in-the-future goal (Edin & Kefalas, 2005; Parham-Payne, Dickerson, &
Everette, 2013).
Another goal that seems hard to reach—for everyone, rich or poor—is staying
married for life. I got insights into the awe young people feel about this achieve-
ment when a college-student server came up to my husband and me at a local
restaurant and shyly asked for our secret when we said we had been married for
over 30 years.
Is our dream of finding a life soul mate too idealistic, given that we never
U-shaped curve of marital
expected people to stay madly in love for 50 or more years? How can couples stay
satisfaction The most together for decades when there are so many alternatives to marriage today? In the
common pathway of marital next section, I’ll focus on this question as I explore the insights that research offers for
happiness in the West, in having enduring, happy relationships. Let’s begin, however, by tracing how marital
which satisfaction is highest
at the honeymoon, declines
happiness normally changes through the years.
during the child-rearing
years, then rises after the
children grow up. The Main Marital Pathway: Downhill and Then Up
Many of us enter marriage (or any romantic relationship) with blissful expectations.
Then, disenchantment sets in. Hundreds of studies conducted in Western
countries show that marital satisfaction is at its peak during the honeymoon and
then decreases (Blood & Wolfe, 1960; Glenn, 1990; Lavner & Bradbury, 2010).
As the decline—statistically speaking—is steepest during the first few years, some
researchers believe that if people make it beyond four years of marriage, they have
passed the main divorce danger zone (Bradbury & Karney, 2004).
Notice the interesting similarity to John Bowlby’s ideas about the
different attachment phases. In the first year or two of marriage, cou-
ples are in the phase of clear-cut attachment, when they are madly in
love and see their significant other as the center of life. As they move
into their relationship’s working model phase—developing more separate
lives, getting involved in the wider world—they risk disconnecting from
their spouse.
The good news is that there is a positive change to look
Andrew Olney/Masterfile
forward to later on. According to the U-shaped curve of marital

satisfaction, after it dips to a low point, couples can get
happier at the empty nest, when the children leave the
house and husbands and wives have the luxury of focus-
ing on each other again (Glenn, 1990; White & Edwards,
The so-called “difficulties” of the 1990). And, at retirement, the curve can swing up even
empty nest are highly overrated.
In fact, many couples find that,
more. Compared to middle-aged couples, elderly spouses fight less. They relate
when the children leave, they can in kinder, less combative ways (Carstensen, Graff, Levenson & Gottman, 1996;
joyously rekindle marital love! Windsor & Butterworth, 2010).
Happy elderly couples actually embody many of the good love-relationship

principles spelled out in Chapter 10. They idealize their partners (“Your grandma
is the best woman in the world!”); and, you might be interested to know, men who
rank themselves as disagreeable are especially likely to display this trait (“How did
I deserve this woman? I married a saint!”) (O’Rourke and others, 2010). And, not only
is there a well-known correlation between being married and living longer (Robles
and others, 2014), being old-old and happily married mutes feelings of distress when
old age disabilities strike (Waldinger & Schultz, 2010). So, we are right to yearn to
stay married “till death do us part”—if (and this is a very important “if”) our marriage
is a happy one.
This brings up individual differences. Many of you may know miserable, long-
married 80-year-olds who may be making each other ill, or be fortunate to have
friends who buck the U-shaped curve and grow happier as the years pass. For some
newlyweds, marital happiness declines sharply during the first four years; for others,
it wanes slightly. Interestingly, we can predict the steepness of this early downslide by
examining marriage attitudes on the wedding day.
Almost everyone gets married convinced the statistics don’t apply to them: “We
are going to live happily ever after. Our relationship will improve over time, and it
certainly won’t get worse.” Ironically, in tracking newly married couples, researchers
found women who held these optimistic ideas to an extreme were at special risk of
being disenchanted, or totally turned off, in the next few years (Lavner, Karney, & triangular theory of love
Bradbury, 2013). Robert Sternberg’s
Why might seeing one’s marriage—in particular—as flawless promote distress? categorization of love
For answers, researchers made the interesting distinction between being a generally relationships into three
facets: passion, intimacy,
optimistic person and being optimistic about a marriage. People who were generally and commitment. When
upbeat, they found, were prone to constructively solve marital conflicts. But spouses arranged at the points of a
who magically believed, “We can’t have problems,” developed a shocked, learned- help- triangle, their combinations
lessness attitude when reality hit. Unprepared for disagreements, expecting romance describe all the different
kinds of adult love
to conquer all, they were blindsided when things didn’t go as planned, and so poorly relationships.
equipped to deal with the normal ups and downs of married life (Neff & Geers, 2013).
What does it mean to constructively handle conflicts, and what other attitudes
help us stay together happily for life? To offer some perspective on these issues let’s
first spell out a familiar psychologist’s (that is, from
his theory of intelligence, described in Chapter 7)
Intimacy
conceptualizations about love—Robert Sternberg’s Best friends
triangular theory.
The Triangular Theory Perspective

on Happiness
According to Sternberg’s (1986, 1988, 2004) Romantic Companionate marriage
love (Long-married happy
triangular theory of love, we can break adult couples)
love relationships into three components:
passion (sexual arousal), intimacy (feelings of
closeness), and commitment (typically marriage, CONSUMMATE LOVE
Anne Rippy/Getty Images
but also exclusive, lifelong cohabiting relation- Passion Commitment

ships). When we arrange them on a triangle A crush
Purely sexual
"Empty marriage"
such as Figure 11.3, as I’ll describe next, we get marriages
a portrait of the different kinds of relationships
in life.
With passion alone, we have a crush, the figure 11.3: Sternberg’s triangle: The different types of love:
The three facets of love form the points of this triangle. The relationships
fantasy obsession for the girl down the street or a along the triangle’s sides reflect combinations of the facets. At the center
handsome professor we don’t really know. With is the ideal relationship: consummate love.
intimacy alone, we have the caring that we feel for Data from: Sternberg, 1988.
a best friend. Romantic love combines these two qualities. Walk around your campus
and you can see this relationship. Couples are passionate and clearly know each other
well but have probably not made a commitment to form a lifelong bond.
On the marriage side of the triangle, commitment alone results in “empty mar-
riages.” In these emotionally barren, loveless marriages (luckily, fairly infrequent
today), people stay together physically but live separate lives. Intimacy plus com-
mitment produces companionate marriages, the best-friend relationships that long-
married couples may have after passion is gone. Finally, recall from the bottom of the
diagram that a few married couples stay together because they share sexual passion
consummate love In Robert and nothing else. The ideal in our culture is consummate love—a relationship that
Sternberg’s triangular theory combines passion, intimacy, and commitment.
of love, the ideal form of
Why is consummate love fragile? One reason is that, with familiarity, passion
love, in which a couple’s
relationship involves all often falls off. It’s hard to keep lusting after your mate when you wake up together
three of the major facets of day after day for years (Klusmann, 2002). This sexual decline has an unfortunate
love: passion, intimacy, and hormonal basis. Married couples—both men and women—show lower testosterone
commitment.
levels than their single or divorced counterparts (Barrett and others, 2013; Gettler
and others, 2013).
As couples enter into the working-model phase of their marriage, and move out
into the world, intimacy can also wane. You and your partner don’t talk the way you
used to. Work or the children are more absorbing. You may become “ships passing
in the night.”
Sternberg’s theory beautifully alerts us to why marriages normally get less happy.
But it does not offer clues as to how we can beat the odds and stay romantically con-
nected for life. Actually, a fraction of couples (roughly 1 in 10 people) do stay passion-
ate for decades (Acevedo & Aron, 2009). What are these marital role models doing
right? For answers, researchers decided to decode the experience of falling in love.
When we fall in love, they discovered, efficacy feelings are intense. We feel
powerful, competent, capable of doing wonderful things (Aron and others, 2002).
Given that romantic love causes a joyous feeling of self-expansion (and boosts testos-
terone!), couldn’t we teach people to preserve passion and intimacy by encouraging
couples to share exciting activities that expand the self?
To test this idea, the psychologists asked married volunteers to list their most
exciting activities—the passions that gave them a sense of flow (see Chapter 10).
Then, they instructed one group of husbands and wives to engage in the stimulating
activities both partners had picked out (for example, going to concerts or skiing) fre-
quently over 10 weeks. As they predicted, marital happiness rose among these couples
compared to control groups who were told to engage in pleasant but not especially
interesting activities (such as going out to dinner) or just to follow their normal rou-
tine (Reissman, Aron, & Bergen, 1993).
So, to stay passionate for decades, people may not need to
take trips to Tahiti, or even have candlelit dinners with a mate.
The secret is to continue to engage in the flow-inducing activities
that may have brought couples together in the first place. If you
connected through your commitment to church, take mission trips
Peathegee Inc/Blend Images/Getty Images
with your mate. If you met through your passion for skate boarding,
sharpen those skills with your spouse. The problem is that during
the working-model phase of a relationship, arousing activities that
expand ourselves tend to migrate outside of married life. When
work does become more compelling (or flow-inducing), people
may find their partner dull. Worse yet, they may fall in love with
someone who is on the scene to promote their most efficacious,
attractive self: “I feel so competent, powerful, and energized at
This couple is doing more than sharing a wonderful
experience. They are actually “working” on their
my job. Hey, wait a second! It’s my co-worker, not my wife, who is
relationship. Engaging in mutually exciting activities bringing out my best self!” Keeping “growth experiences” within a
helps preserve marital passion. marriage helps keep marital (and sexual) passion alive.
Commitment, Sanctification, and Compassion: The Core

Attitudes in Relationship Success
But sharing exciting activities may not be sufficient to keep couples glued to one
another during the stresses and storms of daily life. People must be committed to a
spouse.
Researchers are passionate to identify the glue called
“commitment,” the inner attitudes that keep couples hang-
ing in happily together over years (Epstein, Pandit, & Tha-
kar, 2013). One force that fosters commitment, they find, is
believing one’s union is sanctified by god (“My marriage is
an expression of god’s will”) (Stafford, David, & McPherson,
2014; Kusner and others, 2014). This conviction of being des-
tined for a particular person—Jewish people use the evocative
word bashert, or meant to be—explains why arranged mar-
riages, because they eliminate any choice, can sometimes be
happier than those that happen the romantic way (Epstein,
Pandit, & Thakar, 2013). When you marry with the idea
of “this must work,” love can unexpectedly flower. As one
African American man married for decades, explained to
researchers:
I was committed to proving them [others’ predictions] wrong . . .
somewhere along in trying to stay in there to prove everyone
wrong, I fell in love. I probably should have fallen in love before
I said “I do” . . . but I wasn’t you know . . . —it’s amazing!
(quoted in Hurt, 2013, p. 870)
Andersen Ross/Blend Images/Getty Images

But if you assume commitment means making the best of
a relationship because there is no alternative (as in the lyrics,
“If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re
with”), you are wrong. Commitment involves immensely
positive emotions, too.
Committed spouses are dedicated to a partner’s “inner
growth” (Fincham, Stanley, & Beach, 2007; Overall, Fletcher, &
Simpson, 2010). Specifically, commitment involves sacrifice, giving up one’s desires Imagine how this father-to-be
to further the other person’s joy. When people sacrifice for their partner, they are ben- feels when he pampers his wife
and you will understand why the
efiting themselves. Drawing on our natural high from performing costly prosocial acts thrill of “sacrificing” for a loved
(recall Chapters 4 and 6), there is no greater joy than performing personally difficult one helps relationships lovingly
acts for the people we love (Kogan and others, 2010). survive.
Intrinsic to sacrifice is compassion, being devoted to the other person’s well-being.
In one study, older couples who checked items such as “I spend a lot of time con-
cerned about my partner,” were particularly likely to have happy married lives (Sabey,
Rauer, & Jensen, 2014). Here, too, compassion benefited givers more than receivers.
Feeling compassion for a spouse—not believing one’s partner had that feeling—
cemented one’s attachment to a mate. These commitment attitudes, in turn, translate
into specific communication styles.
Couple Communications and Happiness

Watch happy couples, whether they are age 80 or 18, and you will be struck with the
way they relate. Like mothers and babies enjoying the dance of attachment, loving
couples share joyous experiences. They are playful, affectionate. They use humor
to signal, “I love you,” even when they disagree (Driver & Gottman, 2004). During
disagreements, women in happy relationships regulate their emotions. They dampen
down angry feelings rather than letting the situation get out of hand (Bloch, Haase, &
Levenson, 2014).
But have you ever spent an evening with friends and

had the uneasy feeling, “This relationship isn’t working
out”? By listening to couples talk, psychologist John Gott-
man (l994, l999) can tell, with uncanny accuracy, whether a
marriage is becoming unglued. Here are three communica-
tion styles that distinguish thriving relationships from those
with serious problems:
• Happy couples engage in a high ratio of positive to
negative comments. People can fight a good deal and
still have a happy marriage. The key is to be sure that
© moodboard/Corbis
your caring comments strongly outweigh critical ones.

In videotaping couples discussing problems in his “love
lab,” Gottman has discovered that when the ratio of posi-
tive to negative interactions dips well below 5 to 1, the
Their delighted facial risk of getting divorced escalates.
expressions tip us off that
• Happy couples don’t get personal when they disagree. When happy couples
this young married man and
woman are blissfully in love. fight, they confine themselves to the problem: “I don’t like it when I come
But, specifically, how do happy home and the house is messy. What can we do?” Unhappy couples person-
couples communicate when they alize their conflicts: They use put-downs and sarcasm. They look disgusted.
talk? The answers are listed
They roll their eyes. Expressions of contempt for a partner are poisonous to
right here.
married life.
• Happy couples are sensitive to their partner’s need for “space.” Another classic
way of interacting that signals a relationship is in trouble occurs when one person
provides too much “support” (Brock & Lawrence, 2014). A husband gives his
wife excessive advice about her clothes or raising the children; a wife intrusively
micromanages her partner’s life. You would not be surprised to learn that these
actions don’t qualify as compassion, even when a person says, “I’m doing this
for your well-being.” People who sensitively perform the dance of attachment—
whether moms with infants or married couples—know when to be close and
when to back off (Feeney & Noller, 2002; Murray and others, 2003; Brock &
Lawrence, 2014).
INTERVENTIONS: Staying Together Happily for Life

How can you draw on all of these insights to have an enduring, happy relationship?
Understand the natural time course of love. Be fully committed to your partner.
Act on that feeling by being devoted to the person’s development and tak-
ing joy in sacrificing for your mate. Preserve intimacy and passion by sharing
arousing, exciting activities. Be very, very positive after you get negative. Avoid
getting personal when you fight. Be sensitive to your partner’s need for space.
Table 11.2 offers a checklist based on these points to evaluate your current rela-
tionship or to keep on hand for the love relationships you will have as you travel
through life.
As a final caution, however, I must emphasize that commitment is some-
times misplaced. One key to sacrificing is reciprocity. If a relationship is totally
one-sided—for instance, one man complained that “he worked all day and then
had to cook the evening meals” (Paechter, 2013)—or someone is being treated with
a lack of compassion—“He criticized everything about me,” said a wife. “He made
fun of my C section. He told me my teeth weren’t white enough” (quoted in Watson
& Ancis, 2013, p. 173)—it’s time to reconsider one’s commitment and contemplate
divorce.
Table 11.2: Evaluating Your Close Relationship: A Checklist

Answer these questions as honestly as you can. The more “yes” boxes you check, the stronger your
relationship is likely to be.
Yes No
1. Do you have realistic expectations about your relationship—realizing ❒ ❒
that passion and intimacy don’t magically last forever?
2. Do you engage in activities that your partner feels as passionate about ❒ ❒
as you do?
3. Do you feel your relationship was blessed by god or “meant to be”? ❒ ❒
4. Does sacrificing your own needs to make your partner happy ❒ ❒
give you pleasure, and are you devoted to your mate’s
well-being?
5. Are you affectionate and positive with your partner? ❒ ❒
6. Do you solve differences of opinion in a constructive way—and do not get ❒ ❒
personal when you fight?
7. Are you able to give your partner space to make his or her own decisions ❒ ❒
and choices?
Divorce
Researchers stress that we need to think of divorce
as having specific phases. When people consider this
major life change, they weigh the costs of leaving
against the benefits (Hopper, 1993; Kelly, 2000).
You and your spouse are not getting along, but
perhaps you should just hang on. One deterrent
is financial: “Can I afford the loss in income after
a divorce?” But if the couple has children, money
issues are trumped by a more critical concern: “How
will divorce affect my parenting?” “Will this dam-
William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

age my daughter or son?” (See Poortman & Seltzer,
2007; recall also Chapter 7.)
Couples typically cite communication problems
like those I’ve been discussing, and lack of “attach-
ment,” as the reasons for their divorce (Bodenmann
and others, 2007). In extreme cases, women report
being denigrated and completely controlled: “If I had a . . . contrary opinion,” Compare the body language of
(one woman complained) “then the reaction would be, ‘Well what do you know?’” this man and woman with the
joyous couples in the previous
(Adapted from Watson & Ancis, 2013, p.173.) three photos and you can graphi-
Once a couple separates, they experience an overload of changes: the need to cally see why the marital discon-
move or perhaps find a better-paying job (Amato, 2010). Housework burdens rise, nect labeled in the text as “lack
particularly for men (Hewitt, Haynes, & Baxter, 2013). There are the legal hassles, of attachment” can provoke a
divorce.
anxieties about the children, and telling loved ones (“How will my friends and family
feel?”).
Still, divorce can produce emotional growth and enhanced efficacy feelings
as people learn they can make it on their own (Fahs, 2007; Hetherington & Kelly,
2002). And, of course, ending a marriage can come as a welcome relief (Monte-
murro, 2014). Perhaps aided by that burst of testosterone, some women rediscover
their sexuality, too. Listen to a 58-year-old woman whose husband divorced her after
years of an unfulfilling sexual relationship: “I’ve been like reborn

almost . . . in the sexual realm. . . . It’s like a renewal” (Montemurro,
2014, p. 83).
Who feels relieved or sexually energized after divorce? Insights
come from considering why people separate. In one U.S. study track-
ing married couples, researchers put divorced couples into two catego-
ries: spouses who had reported being miserable in their marriage, and
couples who divorced, even though they had previously judged their
marital happiness as “fairly good” (Amato, 2010; Amato & Hohmann-
Marriott, 2007).
People in very unhappy marriages did feel liberated after divorcing.
But relatively satisfied couples who later divorced, perhaps thinking,
“I just don’t find our relationship fulfilling,” reported subsequent
declines in well-being! Given this finding, family expert Paul Amato
(2007, 2010) suggests that perhaps our cultural fantasy of finding a life
soul mate (or the sense that something is missing if we don’t automati-
cally have intimacy and passion for life) lures people to leave a mar-
riage who might be better off remaining with their spouse. And what
© Norbert Schaefer/Corbis
happens to children when couples make this choice? If your house is

a battleground, as I described in Chapter 7, it’s better for the children
if you divorce. But imagine being shocked to learn that your parents
are separating when you always believed their marriage was perfectly
fine. Then, think of having to adjust to a new family when your mom
The fact that their marriage is or dad remarries again.
so conflict ridden suggests that
this couple may feel much better
after they divorce—but simply
splitting up because you find
your relationship “somewhat Hot in Developmental Science: Marriage the Second or Third
unfulfilling” predicts feeling or “X” Time Around
more depressed after a marriage
breaks up.
This brings up that common sequel to divorce: remarriage. Today, about 1 in 4 U.S.
marriages occur between previously divorced partners, and almost 1 in 2 involve a
spouse who has been married at least once before (see Shafer & James, 2013). Are
people correct that they might do better the second or third time around?
Before considering the issue, let’s spell out some realities. If you are a woman, and
especially if you have children (and are older), it’s harder to find a mate. One U.S.
study showed that after they divorce, women have 60 percent lower odds of remarry-
ing than men (Shafer & James, 2013).
Are remarried couples happier? The fact that one Swedish study showed women
select second husbands similar in education and earnings suggests yes (Åström and
others, 2013). Remarried people say they communicate better with their current
spouse. Still, these reports go along with a gingerly approach to disagreements—more
withholding and avoidance when couples talk (Mirecki, Brimhall, & Bramesfeld,
2013). Have these spouses decided, “not to sweat the small stuff,” or will this gun-shy
approach to conflict cause them to harbor resentments down the road?
Whatever the answer, remarriages face unique barriers. These couples seem less
committed, in the sense that they express more positive attitudes toward divorcing if
they don’t get along (Whitton and others, 2013). Bringing children into the marriage
involves complications that go well beyond just relating to a husband or wife (Mirecki
and others, 2013).
Stepchildren are a loose cannon in remarriage, because they naturally feel
angry and resentful of a stepparent for “replacing” my real mom or dad. There-
fore, stepparents must tread carefully: “Be there” to give support, but do not step
far into that landmine area for trouble—the disciplinarian role (Kinniburgh-White,
Cartwright, & Seymour, 2010).
When children live with a stepfather, do they become more

attached to this person than their biological dad? One study showed
length of residence trumps biology. The preference for biological
fathers is attenuated the longer a child lives with a stepdad (Kalmijn,
2013). If there is open communication between children and their
mothers, a happy family climate, and parents agree on child-rearing,
sturti/Vetta/Getty Images
stepchildren are more apt to lovingly connect (Jensen, Shafer, &
Larson, 2014).
Yes, attachment-wise, this new family form presents hurdles
(van der Pas, van Tilburg, & Silverstein, 2013). But stepchil-
dren can enlarge our circle of attachments, too. One encourag-
ing Dutch study showed that the percentage of remarried adults who enveloped a Will this girl see this stepfather
stepchild in their attachment network rose from 69 percent in 1992 to 85 percent in as her real dad? A good deal
2009 (Suanet, van der Pas, & van Tilberg, 2013). depends on the quality of her
home life, and how long this
Most important, these new sons and daughters can provide incredible joy: As one man has been raising his child.
woman reported: “I don’t look at her as a stepdaughter because that implies they are
not . . . your child . . . she’s my only child and I just accept the fact that she has another
mother as well” (quoted in Whiting and others, 2007, p. 102). And a stepfather put it
more bluntly: “I don’t introduce her as my stepdaughter because I didn’t step on her.
I introduce her, ‘This is my daughter.’ . . . I’d go crazy if something happened to her”
(quoted in Marsiglio, 2004, p. 32).
Now, let’s explore the feelings these men and women are experiencing by turning
to parenthood, that second important adult role.

1. Jared is describing marriage around the world. Which two statements can he make?
a. In Sweden, unmarried couples with children are far more likely to be poor.
b. In the United States, we no longer believe in marriage.
c. In Iran today, married women have far more rights than in the past.
d. In India, arranged marriages are in decline.
2. Three couples are celebrating their silver anniversaries. Which relationship has
followed the “classic” marital pathway?
a. After being extremely happy with each other during the first three years, Ted and
Elaine now find that their marriage has gone steadily downhill.
b. Steve and Betty’s marriage has had many unpredictable ups and downs over the years.
c. Dave and Erika’s marital satisfaction declined, especially during the first four years,
but has dramatically improved now that their children have left home.
3. Describe the triangular theory to a friend and give an example of (a) romantic
love, (b) consummate love, and (c) a companionate marriage. Can you think of
couples who fit each category? At what stage of life are couples most likely to have
companionate marriages?
4. Jennifer says, “I am trying to do exciting things with my spouse.” Mark says, “I’m
passionate about focusing on my wife’s well-being.” Explain in a sentence why each
strategy promotes marital happiness.
5. You are a marriage counselor. Drawing on the research with regard to (1) keeping
passion alive, (2) commitment, and (3) couple communications, formulate a
suggestion for “homework” to give couples who come to your office for help.
6. Your best friend (who has children) is getting remarried. Without being excessively
negative, explain frankly why her new relationship can be at risk.
Parenthood
I have never felt the joy that my daughter brings me when I wake up and see
her . . . when you are laying there and . . . and feel this little hand tapping on
your hand . . . that has been the most joyful thing I ever have experienced. . . .
I’ve never been able to get that type of joy anywhere else.
(quoted in Palkovitz, 2002, p. 96)
Setting the Context: More Parenting Possibilities,

Fewer Children
Poll parents and you will hear similar comments: “The love and joy you
have with children is impossible to describe.” The great benefit of the
1960s lifestyle revolution is that more people than ever can participate in
Rachel Epstein/Photo Edit, Inc.
this life-changing experience, from stepparents, to gay couples, to never-

married adults.
At the same time, people have freedom not to be parents—and more
adults are making that choice. One sign of the times is the decline in
fertility rates, or the average number of births per woman, in many devel-
oped countries. And whatever happened to those huge Spanish, Italian,
In the past, gay couples such as these women or Greek families? As Figure 11.4 shows, adults in these southernmost
could never have hoped to be parents. They
would have had to hide their relationship from
European nations have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
the outside world. Today, they proudly can Why has fertility dropped well below the level to keep the population
fulfill their life dream. constant (2.1 births) in every European nation, as well as in Russia and
Asia? (See Li and others, 2011.) A major cause, in Europe, lies in the
stalled progress people are making toward adulthood.
Remember from Chapter 10 that, in Italy, Spain, and
Greece, most twenty-somethings don’t have the finan-
United States cial resources to get married and have children.
France Are people who decide not to have children more
Denmark materialistic and narcissistic than their peers? The answer
Netherlands is no! (See Gerson, Posner, & Morris, 1991.) Child-
Russia less adults—especially if they have freely chosen this
Germany path—are just as happy as parents (Nelson, Kushlev, &
Greece
Lyubomirsky, 2014). Moreover, the stereotype that hav-
Italy
Spain
ing children makes a relationship stronger (or that having
Japan a child saves an unhappy relationship) is equally false.
South Korea How does having a baby change people’s lives?
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5
Fertility rate The Transition to Parenthood
To see how becoming parents affects a marriage,
researchers conduct longitudinal studies, selecting cou-
figure 11.4: Fertility
rates in selected developed ples when the wife is pregnant, then tracking those families for a few years after the
countries, 2008: This chart baby’s birth. Understanding that parenthood arrives via many routes, social scientists
reveals just why declining have explored how having a child affects the bond between gay partners (Goldberg,
fertility is a crucial concern Smith, & Kashy, 2010) and cohabiting couples, too (Kamp Dush and others, 2014).
in Western Europe, where
fertility rates are now below the Here are the conclusions of these studies exploring the transition to parenthood:
replacement level (2.1 children)
in every country. Notice, also,
• Parenthood makes couples less intimate and happy. Look back to the infancy
that childbearing rates are chapters—especially the discussion of infant sleep in Chapter 3—and you will
especially low in the southern- immediately see why a baby’s birth is apt to change passion and intimacy for the
most European nations, Russia, worse. In fact, look at any couple struggling with an infant at your local restaurant
and several Asian countries.
Data from: Central Intelligence
and you will understand why researchers find that feelings about one’s partner shift
Agency, 2008. from lover to “fellow worker” after the baby arrives (Belsky, Lang, & Rovine, 1985).
This tendency to get less satisfied (and certainly less romantic) applies equally fertility rate The average
to heterosexual couples and gay couples who are adopting a child (Goldberg, number of children a woman
in a given country has during
Smith, & Kashy, 2014; Tornello & Patterson, 2012). Still, in one tantalizing U.S. her lifetime.
study, heterosexual men in cohabiting relationships felt especially hemmed in and
marital equity Fairness in
unhappy after a child’s arrived (Kamp Dush and others, 2014). We need to be cau- the “work” of a couple’s life
tious about interpreting these results, because recall that unmarried U.S. cohabit- together. If a relationship
ing couples are apt to be less economically secure. However, these findings clearly lacks equity, with one
imply that—in the United States—a wedding ring can heighten our commitment partner doing significantly
more than the other, the
to family life. outcome is typically marital
• If the couple is heterosexual, parenthood produces more traditional (and dissatisfaction.
potentially conflict-ridden) marital roles. Among heterosexual partners, having
children accentuates traditional gender roles (Katz-Wise, Priess, & Hyde, 2010).
Even when the man and woman have been sharing the household tasks fairly
equally, women often take over most of the housework and child care after the
baby arrives. Often this occurs because, as you will see later in this chapter, after
having children, a woman may leave her job or reduce her hours at work. How-
ever, even when both spouses work full time, mothers tend to do more of the
diaper changing and household chores than dads (Bryan, 2013). This change can
provoke conflicts centered on marital equity, or feelings of unfairness: Women get
angry with men for not doing their share around the house (Dew & Wilcox, 2011;
Feeney and others, 2001).
What compounds the sense of over-sacrificing are clashes centered on differing
parenting styles (recall Chapter 7). One unhappy wife described this kind of disagree-
ment when she informed her husband: “What’s really getting to me . . . is that we
hardly ever agree on how to handle [the baby]. I think you are too rough, and you
think I’m spoiling her, and none of us wants to change” (quoted in Cowan & Cowan,
1992, p. 112).
These examples show exactly why we can’t expect having a
child to draw people closer together, whether the partners are gay
or heterosexual, married or not. (Here the most relevant saying
may be, “Three is a crowd.”) However, after becoming parents,
one classic study revealed that about 1 in 3 spouses did report
more love for a husband or wife (Belsky & Rovine, 1990).
Bruce Ayres/The Image Bank/Getty Images

To predict which relationships are prone to develop serious
problems, survive, or flourish, we need to adopt a developmental
systems approach—looking at everything from the family’s finan-
cial situation, to the baby’s temperament (recall Chapter 4), to
whether the couple really wanted this child (Chapter 2).
The pre-baby attachment dance matters most (see Feeney
and others, 2001). How did the couple cope with disagreements
before the child arrived? In the words of pioneering researchers, Will this young couple’s
“The transition to parenthood seems to act as an amplifier, tuning couples into their relationship seriously
strengths and turning up the volume on existing difficulties in managing their . . . deteriorate after the baby? Will
it improve? To answer these
[love]” (Cowan & Cowan, 1992, p. 206). questions, we need to look at
Now that we’ve looked at its impact on the couple, let’s turn to parenthood from what their marriage was like
mothers’ and fathers’ points of view. before having a child.
Exploring Motherhood
I’ve already talked about the love that mothers feel for their children, especially in the
infancy section of this book. Drawing on the previous section, children are our prime
vehicles for expressing compassion. They embody the joy we get from sacrificing for
a beloved person’s well-being.
Still, the downside of this 24/7 sacrifice—lack of sleep, financial strains, spending
hours in less than fun (aka boring) activities, a messy house, dealing with tantrums,
time taken away from being with our partner, and so on—can tip the balance from
pleasure to pain. In surveys, mothers rank child care on an emotional par with house-
keeping, and it’s far less enjoyable than shopping and watching TV. Studies routinely
show mothers are no happier (and sometimes far less happy) on a daily basis than
their counterparts without children or people in the empty nest (Nelson, Kushlev, &
Lyubomirsky, 2014).
Table 11.3 offers a research-based checklist for parent readers, listing forces that
make the motherhood experience “better or worse.” Now, let’s turn to a decades-old
interview study, to get insights into that experience in the flesh.
Table 11.3: Research Forces that Erode the Quality of the Day-to-Day
Motherhood Experience: A Questionnaire for Moms
1. Do you have serious money worries, a rocky relationship with your partner, and/or are you a
single parent? (These stresses make daily life difficult and also can impair the quality of your
attachments to your children.)
2. Do you have several children and/or infants and toddlers? (Both forces make mothering a more
overwhelming job.)
3. Do you have a temperamentally difficult son or daughter, and/or a child with chronic medical
problems? (Again, these conditions increase the hands-on burden, plus may affect the
attachment response.)
4. Are you a young mom? (Yes, older parents—women over 25—seem to cope better with the
normal stresses of motherhood!)
These questions are based on Nelson, Kushlev, & Lyubomirsky, 2014.
The Inner Motherhood Experience

One downside of motherhood, women in this U.S. national poll reported, is that
it destroys cherished fantasies people have about how they expected to behave
(Genevie & Margolies, 1987). One in two mothers admitted that they had trouble
controlling their temper. Disobedience, disrespect, and even typical behaviors
such as a child’s whining might provoke reactions bordering on rage. When
confronted with real-life children, these mothers found that their dream of being
the ideal calm, empathetic, and always in control mother came tumbling down
(Genevie & Margolies, 1987).
Given the bidirectional quality of the parent–child bond, it should come as no
surprise that a main force that affected how closely a woman fit her motherhood
ideal lay in her attachment with a given child. Children who were temperamentally
difficult provoked more irritation and lowered a mother’s self-esteem. An easy child
evoked loving feelings and made that mother feel competent in her role. As one
woman wrote:
Lee Ann has been my godsend. My other two have given me so many problems and are
rude and disrespectful. Not Lee Ann. . . . I disciplined her in the same way . . . except
that she seemed to require less of it. Usually she just seemed to do the right thing. She
is . . . my chance for supreme success after two devastating failures.
(quoted in Genevie & Margolies, 1987, pp. 220–221.)
These emotions destroy another motherhood ideal: Mothers love all their children
equally. Many women in this study did admit they had favorites. Typically, a favorite
child was “easy” and successful in the wider world. However, most important, again,
was the attachment relationship, the feeling of being totally loved by a particular
child. As one woman reported:
There will always be a special closeness with Darrell. He likes to test my word. . . . There
are times he makes me feel like pulling my hair out. . . . But when he comes to “talk”
to mom that’s an important feeling to me.
(quoted in Genevie & Margolies, 1987, p. 248)
Not only does the experience of motherhood vary dramatically from child to
child, it shifts from minute to minute and day to day:
Good days are getting hugs and kisses and hearing “I love you.” The bad days are hear-
ing “you are not my friend.” Good days are not knowing the color of the refrigerator
because of the paintings and drawings all over it. Bad days are seeing a new drawing on
a just painted wall.
(quoted in Genevie & Margolies, 1987, p. 412)
In sum, motherhood is wonderful and terrible. It evokes the most uplifting emo-
tions and offers painful insights into the self. Now that we understand the individual
situations that make motherhood more challenging, let’s explore how the wider world
can amplify mothers’ distress.
Expectations and Motherhood Stress

Society provides women with an airbrushed view of motherhood—from the
movie stars who wax enthusiastic about the joys of having babies (“much
Tom Merton/Caiaimage/Getty Images

better than that terrible old career”) to the family members who gush at
bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived new mothers: “How wonderful you must feel!”
By portraying motherhood as total bliss, are we doing women a disservice
when they realize that their own experience does not live up to this glorified
image? (See Douglas & Michaels, 2004.)
What compounds the problem are unrealistic performance pressures.
Good children, as you saw in the above quotation, make a mother feel
competent. “Difficult” children can make a woman feel like a failure. The blissful image of a mother and baby is
nothing like contending with the reality of
Despite all we know about the crucial role of genetics, peers, and the wider continual sleep deprivation and a scream-
society in affecting development, mothers still bear the responsibility ing newborn—explaining why the idealized
for the way their children turn out (Coontz, 1992; Crittenden, 2001; media images can make the first months of
Douglas & Michaels, 2004; Garey & Arendell, 2001). motherhood come as a total shock.
Single mothers face the most intense pressures as they strug-
gle with financial hurdles, working full time, plus trying to fulfill
the “blissful” mom ideal. But every woman is subject to the
intense pressures of contemporary motherhood: be patient; cram
in reading; provide enriching lessons; produce a perfect child. To
what degree is the so-called epidemic of “helicopter” mothers a
Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Blend Images/Getty Images

by-product of these intense demands, which compel women to
go overboard in their hovering to prove that they are not slacking
off in the motherhood role?
I’m sure you’ve heard that today’s moms are not giv-
ing children the same attention as in “the good old days.”
Figure 11.5, on the next page, proves this “obvious” assump-
tion is wrong. Notice that twenty-first-century mothers spend
more time with their children than their counterparts did a
generation ago (Bianchi, Robinson, & Milkie, 2006). In particular, notice the This photograph shows the
dramatic increase in hours spent teaching and playing. This cohort of young reality of motherhood today.
Working mothers are spending
mothers—including those remarkable single moms—is spending almost twice as much more time teaching their
much time engaging in child cognition-stimulating activities as their own mothers children than their own stay-at-
spent with them! home mothers did in the past!
Daily
care*
All
mothers 1965
Teaching
and playing 1975
1985
1998
Daily
care*
Married
mothers
Teaching
and playing
Daily
care*
Single
mothers
Teaching
and playing
30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 105 110 115
Average number of minutes per day
figure 11.5: Minutes per day devoted to hands-on child care by U.S. mothers from diary
studies during the last third of the 20th century: Notice in particular that, in contrast to our
myths, in more recent years, mothers are spending much more time teaching and playing with their
children than in previous decades.
Data from: Sayer, Bianchi, & Robinson, 2004.
*Refers to routine kinds of care, such as helping the child get dressed.
Where are fathers in his picture? Earlier, when I talked about equity issues dur-
ing the transition to parenthood, I might have given the impression that contempo-
rary dads are slacking off. Not so! Today’s fathers are often making valiant efforts to
be involved parents, too.
Exploring Fatherhood
When women first entered the workforce in large numbers in the 1970s, it
became a badge of honor for fathers, in addition to fulfilling the traditional
breadwinner role Traditional breadwinner role, to change the diapers and to be deeply involved in caring for
concept that a man’s job is to their children. From Slovakia (Švab & Humer, 2013) to Sweden (Björk, 2013)
support a wife and children.
and from Australia (Thompson, Lee, & Adams, 2013) to Japan and the United
nurturer father Husband States (Ito & Izumi-Taylor, 2013), the nurturer father has become one mascu-
who actively participates in
hands-on child care.
line ideal. Furthermore, according to psychologists, we expect fathers to be good
sex-role models, giving children a road map for how men should ideally behave.
Sometimes, we want them to be ultimate authority figures, people responsible
for laying down the family rules (as in the old saying: “Wait until your father gets
home!”).
The lack of guidelines leaves fathers with contradictory demands. “Should I be
strict, or nurturing, sensitive, or strong? Should I work full time to feed my family
or reduce my hours at work and stay home to feed my child?” (Björk, 2013; McGill,
2014; Mooney and others, 2013). Given that there may be no “right” way to be a
father, how do men carry out their role?
How Fathers Act

As you would expect from the principle that they should be good sex-role
models, fathers, on average, spend more time with their sons than their daughters
(Bronstein, 1988). They play with their children in classically “male,”

rough-and-tumble ways (see Chapter 6). Fathers run, wrestle, and chase.
They dangle infants upside down (Belsky & Volling, 1987). Although
children adore this whirl-the-baby-around-by-the-feet play (in our house
we called it “going to Six Flags”), it can give mothers palpitations as they
wonder: “Help! Is my baby going to be hurt?”
How much hands-on nurturing do today’s fathers perform? Diary
studies show that, although in Western countries a genuine father-as-
caregiver revolution occurred about 20 years ago, statistically speaking,
contemporary child care remains mainly a female job (Bianchi, Robinson,
Betsie Van Der Meer/Getty Images

& Milkie, 2006). On average, Western women do roughly twice as much
hands-on child care as do men (Craig & Mullan, 2010).
Furthermore, these studies don’t tell us which parent is taking
bottom-line responsibility for the children—making that dentist appoint-
ment, arranging for a babysitter, planning the meals, and being on call
when a child is sick. Having bottom-line responsibility may not translate
into many hours spent physically with a daughter or son, but the weight
Think back to the thrilled
and worry make this aspect of parenting a 24/7 job. expressions on the faces of the
Based on the earlier discussion of society’s expectations, it seems likely that boys engaged in rough-and-
mothers typically continue to take bottom-line responsibility. When we look at where tumble play in Chapter 6 and you
the parenting buck stops, the gender dimension of being a parent is fully revealed can understand why this male
“hang ’em upside down” play
(Lamb, 1997). style is a compelling bonding
In sum, although today’s fathers are doing far more hands-on child care than in experience for both fathers
the past, their involvement still is skewed toward play activities, particularly of the and their sons. It’s also clear
rough-and-tumble, “Six Flags” kind. Dads are often more involved with their sons why “daddy play” is apt to give
moms fits.
than their daughters. Mothers remain the caregivers of final resort.
Variations in Fathers’ Involvement

If you look at the fathers you know, however, you will be struck by the variations in this
profile. There are divorced men who never see their children, and traditional “I never
touch a diaper” dads; there are househusbands who assume primary caregiving
responsibilities, and men who take sole care of the kids. What statistical forces predict
how involved a given father is likely to be?
In two-parent couples, a good deal depends on a man’s attitudes. In one U.S.
study, researchers found men who cared deeply about being hands-on dads heroically
blended 50-hour workweeks with devoting their leisure time to playing with their
child (McGill, 2014). Still, physical hours at work make a difference, especially when
a man has more traditional fatherhood ideas. Jobless fathers—even those living in
male-dominated cultures such as Palestine—ramp up their time spent on child care
Véronique Burger/Science Source

(Strier, 2014).
Dads in gay relationships are apt to be full caregiving partners (Golombok and
others, 2014), as are married heterosexual men who have good relationships with their
mates (Perry & Langley, 2013)—giving us another reason why male/female cohab-
iting parents, at least in the United States, seem most at risk. Liberal family-leave
policies, such as those in Sweden, that permit men and women more than a year off
with pay after a child’s birth, can seduce dads into giving up the breadwinner role and Contemporary fathers differ in
opting for part-time work (Björk, 2013). how willing they are to change
diapers. To explain this young
This last consideration brings up the greatest barrier that keeps fathers from being man’s behavior, we would
completely involved: the need to be the primary breadwinner. For all our talk about predict that he has “father as
equal family roles, supporting a family is at the core of many men’s identities as adults. hands-on caregiver” gender-role
Men—like women—complain that working long hours interferes with family time ideas, and—if he has traditional
conceptions of a man’s role—
(Bryan, 2013; more about this soon). Still, fathers around the world who cannot ful- that he may have been laid off
fill the provider role are apt to feel distressed (Bryan, 2013; Strier, 2014; Thompson, or is working many fewer hours
Lee, & Adams, 2013). than his wife.
How are things really changing with regard to work for women and men? First,
let’s sum up these section messages in Table 11.4, then explore this question as we
turn to the third vital adult role: work.
Table 11.4: Advice for Parents: A Checklist

Coping with the Transition to Parenthood
• Don’t expect your romantic feelings about each other to stay the same—they won’t.
• Try to agree on who is going to do what around the house, but understand that you may
fall into more traditional roles.
• Work on your communication skills before the baby arrives.
For Mothers
• Understand that you won’t and can’t be the perfect mother—in fact, sometimes you will be
utterly terrible—and accept yourself for being human!
• Don’t buy into the fantasy of producing a perfect child. Children cannot be micromanaged
into being perfect. Focus on enjoying and loving your child as he or she is (see also
Chapter 7).
• Don’t listen to people who say that working outside the home automatically means that
you can’t be an involved mother. Remember the findings discussed in this section.
For Fathers
• Understand that your role is full of contradictions—and that there is no “perfect” way to
be a dad.
• Be aware of your attitudes toward doing the diapers and other hands-on nurturing, and
clearly communicate these feelings to your partner.
• Know your work priorities, too. If—as may be typical—fulfilling the breadwinner role is vital
to you, don’t beat yourself up for those feelings, but also take care to communicate your
priorities to your partner.
• If you are not married to the mother of your child, take special care to bond together as
a family.

1. Jenna and Charlie, a married couple, are expecting their first child. According to
the research, how might their marital satisfaction change after having the baby?
How might their happiness change if they were a same-sex couple or they were not
married?
2. Akisha, a new mother, is feeling unexpectedly stressed and unhappy. She and other
mothers might cope better if they experienced which two of the following?
a. Got a less rosy, more accurate picture about motherhood from the media
b. Had more experts giving them parenting advice
c. Had less pressure placed on them from the outside world to “be perfect”
3. Your grandmother is complaining that children today don’t get the attention from
their parents that they got in the “good old days.” How should you respond, based on
this chapter? Be specific with regard to both mothers and fathers.
4. Construct a questionnaire to predict how heavily involved in child care a particular
man is likely to be, and give it to some fathers you know.
Work
What is work like in the Western world, and how can you construct a fulfilling career life?
Setting the Context: The Changing Landscape of Work

Let’s begin our discussion by spelling out three changes in the developed-world career
landscape over the past half-century (I’ll be discussing that other sea change, women
in the work force, at the end of the chapter):
• More career (and job) changes. Work used to have a structured path. Right after
high school or college, men found a job and often stayed in that same organi-
zation until they retired (Super, 1957). This traditional stable career is now traditional stable career A
atypical. People move from job to job, or change direction, starting new careers career path in which people
settle into their permanent
as they travel through life. Today adults experience a shifting work pattern called life’s work in their twenties
boundaryless careers (DeFillippi & Arthur, 1994). Our less-defined career path is and often stay with the same
mirrored by less definition to work itself. organization until they retire.
• The disappearing barrier between work and family. Work life used to be separate boundaryless career Today’s
most common career path for
from home life (Davies & Frink, 2014). You went to your job from 9 to 5 on Monday Western workers, in which
through Friday and spent weekends and evenings with your children and spouse. people change jobs or pro-
Today, with people working flexible hours, nonstandard work hours have become fessions periodically during
common (Cappelli & Keller, 2013). More important, technology has moved work their working lives.
out of the office to permeate family life (Perrone-McGovern and others, 2014).
The benefit of the on-line revolution is work flexibility. People can telecommute
from an office that is halfway around the world; or, even if their office is around the
corner, work on their own schedule at home. This melding of work and home time,
however, is a double-edged sword. Yes, not having to go into the office allows you to
take the kids to the dentist or pick them up from school, but you are potentially on
the job 24 hours a day. In fact, in several U.S. polls, people who reported working
50-plus hours per week had the most flexible schedules of all! (See Golden, 2008;
see also Bianchi & Milkie, 2010; DiRenzo, Greenhaus, & Weer, 2011.)
• Longer working hours (and more job insecurity). Actually it’s a myth that the U.S.
Jamie Grill/Iconica/Getty Images

work ethic has diminished and that Americans worked longer hours in the “good
old days.” Educated men (and, of course, women) in the United States are putting
in more hours per week at their full-time jobs than their parents or grandparents did.
Consider findings from the National Survey of the Changing Workforce
(NSCW), a U.S. poll that regularly monitors the hours that workers work (Families
and Work Institute, 2009). The survey showed that by the beginning of the twenty- Having the flexibility to
first century, the 40-hour workweek was a relic of the past. In 2002, the typical male work at home is definitely a
worker spent an average of 49 hours a week on his so-called 40-hour-a-week job double-edged sword. Not only
are you tempted to work on
(Galinsky and others, 2005). assignments when you should
In the European Union, governments limit overwork by requiring member states be paying attention to your child,
to keep work time to less than 48 hours per week. Japan, with its routine 50-plus work- but you are probably working
week, clocks in with the longest working hours in the developing world. But because far longer hours than if you had
gone to the office.
the United States doesn’t regulate work hours, employers are free to “encourage” their
employees to stay on their jobs as much as they can (Fuwa, 2014).
One force propelling the drive to work longer hours is job insecurity. Especially
since the Great Recession of 2008, people know that unless they perform well, they
are at risk of getting fired. So one co-worker at your law firm works 100 hours per
week. In order to keep your job, you feel compelled to work 75. Soon, not working
weekends and evenings is defined as slacking off.
Clearly these kinds of treadmill pressures limit our joy in a job. What specifically
makes for career happiness and success?
Exploring Career Happiness (and Success)

Suppose you wanted to predict which high school classmates would be successful at
their careers. It’s a no-brainer that you might bet on the class valedictorian or your
friend from an affluent family. But some of you may know Harvard Ph.D.s or people
with billionaire parents who are failing miserably to live up to their career potential.
What are these people missing in life?
Clues come from that regular University of Michigan poll exploring health
behaviors and attitudes in different cohorts of teens (discussed in Chapter 9). At their
first evaluation, sampling high schoolers in 1979, the researchers measured what they
called “core self-evaluations”: whether a person had high self-esteem, was optimistic
or depressed, and felt in control of his life. Among people who graduated college,
this single evaluation from decades earlier predicted work success by early midlife!
(See Judge & Hurst, 2007.)
Why do attitudes such as optimism and self-efficacy matter so much when we
are on the college or graduate track? One reason is that people who generally feel
good about themselves gravitate to more rewarding fields (Drago, 2011). So, given
equal GPAs, your college classmates with high self-esteem will tend to “go for” a more
fulfilling career.
Once at work, people who have high self-efficacy proactively shape their jobs.
They seek realistic feedback from their supervisors and ask for the kind of support that
will make them effective employees (W. Li and others, 2014; L. Li and others, 2014).
Interestingly, one study, sampling Israeli workers, showed having this efficacious
“workerlike” attitude made a special difference when
people saw their jobs as less than meaningful (Steger
and others, 2013). Anyone can become engaged in a
job if they are lucky to have compelling work. The
challenge is to find meaning in less-than-optimal jobs.
Other personality traits that go along with work
success are having the emotion-regulation talents
to disengage from job stress (Hülsheger and others,
2014) and gravitating to challenging tasks (Fossen &
Vredenburgh, 2014). The goal is to view our job as a
calling—perfectly expressing our identity, embodying
© Gideon Mendel/ Corbis
our mission in life.

Are you blessed to see your work as a life calling?
As I can tell you, there is no greater gratification than
finding a career that you feel called to do. We might
think that living a calling causes us to be committed
Because they view making a
difference for young children as
to our work. One longitudinal study suggested the reverse. In a way similar to mar-
their life calling and this job fits riage, researchers found developing this feeling grew out of time spent committed
their nurturing personalities, to a career (Duffy and others, 2014). So, the reason I see writing textbooks as my life
these male childcare workers calling (it’s beshert!) came from years spent making writing the center of my life.
have had the courage to choose
a “gender atypical” career.
But seeing writing textbooks as my calling involved more than being committed
to working hard. I lucked into a career that matched my personality!
Strategy 1: Match Career to Your Personality

According to John Holland’s (1997) classic theory, the key to work happiness is to
find my kind of personality–career match. People who are sociable, those who crave
continual human interaction, should not be textbook writers. If I needed to spend a
lot of time outside, I would not be happy devoting days to scanning this computer
screen. The closer we get to our ideal personality–career fit, Holland argues, the more
satisfied and successful we can be at our jobs.
To promote this fit, Holland classifies six personality types, described in Table 11.5,
and fits them to occupations. Based on their answers to items on a career inventory,
Table 11.5: Holland’s Six Personality Work Types

Realistic type: These people enjoy manipulating machinery or working with tools. They like physical
activity and being outdoors. If you fit this profile, your ideal career might be in construction,
appliance repair, or car repair.
Investigative type: These people like to find things out through doing research, analyzing
information, and collecting data. If you fit this pattern, you might get special satisfaction in some
scientific career.
Artistic type: These people are creative and nonconforming, and they love to freely express
themselves in the arts. If this is your type, a career as a decorator, dancer, musician, or writer
might be ideal.
Social type: These people enjoy helping others and come alive when they are interacting with other
human beings. If this description fits you, a career as a bartender, practicing physician, or social
worker might be right.
Entrepreneurial type: These people like to lead others, and they enjoy working on organizational
goals. As this kind of person, you might find special joy as a company manager or in sales.
Conventional type: These people have a passion for manipulating data and getting things organized.
If you fit this type, you would probably be very happy as an accountant, administrative assistant,
or clerk.
Take a minute to think about your three-letter code. Can you use this framework to come up with
your ideal career?
people get a three-letter code, showing the three main categories into which they fit,
in descending order of importance. If a person’s ranking is SAE (social, artistic, and
entrepreneurial), that individual might find fulfillment directing an art gallery or
managing a beautiful restaurant. If your code is SIE (social, investigative, and entre-
preneurial), you might be better off marketing a new medicine for heart disease, or
spending your work life as a practicing veterinarian.
Still, even when people have found work that fits their personality, there is no
guarantee that they will be happy at a job. What if your gallery director job involves
mountains of paperwork and little time exercising your creative or social skills? Sup-
pose your gallery is in financial trouble, and you have a micromanaging owner in
charge? To find work happiness, it’s vital to consider the actual workplace too.
Strategy 2: Find an Optimal Workplace

What constitutes an ideal job situation? Workers agree that jobs should give us
autonomy to exercise our creativity. We want caring colleagues, and organizations
that are sensitive to our needs (Fossen & Vredenburgh, 2014). Remember from
Chapter 7 that these same qualities—autonomy, nurturing, and relatedness—define
ideal school environments. Ideally, we are looking for intrinsic career rewards—work intrinsic career rewards
that is fulfilling in itself. Work that provides inner
Extrinsic career rewards, or external reinforcers, such as salary, can also be cru- fulfillment and allows people
to satisfy their needs for
cial, depending on a person’s situation. For instance, one longitudinal study showed creativity, autonomy, and
intrinsic career rewards become less vital to work satisfaction as people (particularly relatedness.
men) moved through their twenties and had families—again suggesting that the extrinsic career rewards
breadwinner role remains a priority for twenty-first-century married men (Porfeli & Work that is performed for
Mortimer, 2010). As people age, they feel freer to focus more on enjoying working external reinforcers, such
in itself (Kooij, Bal, & Kanfer, 2014; Allen & Finkelstein, 2014). Moreover, while as pay.
money does not make for happiness, below a certain salary, family income has a
dramatic impact on well-being. So, for the many workers who are struggling to make
it from paycheck to paycheck, salary is a prime job concern. Unfortunately, having
the luxury of viewing a job as an intrinsically gratifying, flow-inducing experience
depends on having our “security needs” satisfied or knowing we can economically
survive.
Remember from Chapter 10 that flow states require that our skills match the
demands of a given task. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that one poisonous
job-related stress is “role ambiguity,” or a lack of clear work demands (Gilboa and oth-
ers, 2008). If you are unsure of what people expect at your job, or have no guidelines
as to how you can be effective, there is no chance of feeling “in flow.” If you are a
nurse (and by extension, any worker), one Dutch study showed, feeling powerless to
shape your work conditions is tailor-made to produce alienation (“I have to follow
these ridiculous regulations. Plus I’m overwhelmed by paperwork, not patient care”)
(Tummers & Den Dulk, 2013). A related problem is role overload—having way too
role overload A job situation
that places so many much to do, to do an effective job—or role conflict—being torn between competing
requirements or demands life demands.
on workers that it becomes This brings up the topic of family–work conflict. As hundreds of studies docu-
impossible to do a good job.
ment, being pulled between the demands of a job and family is a major stress for
role conflict A situation in women and men, especially during their parenting years (see, for example, Wattis,
which a person is torn
Standing, & Yerkes, 2013). But, without minimizing the fact that work-to-family con-
between two or more
major responsibilities— flict (“I feel guilty about not spending enough time with my son or daughter”) and
for instance, parent and family-to-work interference (“If I stay home with my sick child, I might get fired”)
worker—and cannot do can cause anguish, a fulfilling job also energizes people to relate better as a parent or
either job adequately.
spouse (van Steenbergen, Kluwer, & Karney, 2014; Dunn & O’Brien, 2013; Gatrell
family–work conflict A and others, 2013).
situation in which people—
How do women and men behave when faced with the competing pulls of
typically parents—are torn
between the demands of family and career? For answers, let’s end this chapter with a status report on gender
family and work. and work.
Hot in Developmental Science: A Final Status Report on Men,

Women, and Work
Today, men say they are searching for well-educated, successful working-wives
(Perrone-McGovern and others, 2014). How much have things changed with regard
to twenty-first-century gender work roles?
With women now more likely than men to graduate from college in many
nations, we might expect females to overtake males in their careers. Still, for the
reasons below, traditional gender attitudes are alive and well in the world of work.
• Women (especially when they are married) have more erratic, less continu-
ous “careers” than men. For one thing, husbands are more apt to work con-
tinuously, while wives move in and out of the workforce to provide family care
(Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). The first exit may occur early in adulthood. As one
U.S. longitudinal survey showed, a pregnant woman has three times higher odds
of leaving work than her counterpart who is not planning to have a child (Shafer,
2011). Another may happen in midlife, when she takes off time to care for her
elderly parents as they become physically frail (see the next chapter for more
information).
In places like Japan, which provide minimal government support for family care,
an astonishing 3 out of 4 married working women exits the labor force after having
a child (Fuwa, 2014). But in Sweden, a nation that encourages gender equality
and offers both sexes equally lavish family leave, after becoming parents, women
also become less committed to their jobs (Evertsson, 2014). Swedish leave-time
statistics actually offer our best evidence that traditional work attitudes are alive
and well (Duvander, 2014). Notice from Figure 11.6 that while women take ample
leave time after giving birth, men in that nation more quickly leap to go back to
their jobs!
Increase
Women
Man
New parents
figure 11.6: Parental leave

time taken in Sweden for
women (broken red line) and
men (blue line): This chart
shows that, in Sweden, women
are apt to use far more family
leave after a couple’s child is
born than men—suggesting that
in this most gender equal nation,
Length of family leave traditional family and work roles
still exist.
Data from: Duvander, 2014.
• Women earn less than men, and jobs are gender defined. This difference may
be partly due to economics. Men who work full time earn more than their female
counterparts. In the United States in 2011, for instance, women’s wages on average
stood at 82.4 percent of men’s salaries when both genders worked full time (U.S. occupational segregation
Department of Labor, 2011). The separation of men and
women into different kinds
We might think the cause is occupational segregation, meaning that work is divided of jobs.
into classically “male” (higher paying) and “female” (lower paying) jobs (Charles,
1992; Cohen, 2004; Reskin, 1993). Female-type jobs such as secretary or home
health aide typically pay at the lower ends of the wage scale. However, the same wide
salary gap occurs within comparable careers. So, as a U.S. female engineer, you can
expect to earn considerably more than someone who majored in the arts;
but you still will make, on average, a whopping $17,000 a year less than
the typical male in that same field!
• Society prioritizes salaries for fathers and expects married men to
out-earn their wives. Although this wage disparity is partly due to
women’s less continuous careers, societal attitudes also are involved. In
the United States, fatherhood is associated with a wage rise of 4 percent
(Killewald, 2013). The interesting fact that stepfathers and cohabiting
men don’t show this statistical income jump suggests that employers
implicitly believe that men deserve to bring home more bacon when
they are married and father a child.
Actually, the fact that (at least in the United States) people don’t feel
Chris Ryan/OJO Images/Getty Images
it’s quite kosher for married women to bring home most of the bacon is
supported by other evidence: Researchers gave undergraduates fictitious
scenarios in which they were asked to rate the qualifications of a person for
promotion. When they arranged to have everything be equal, but made the
main wage earner a wife (saying her salary was $100,000 in a household
reporting an income of $150,000), both males and females rated this person
as basically less qualified to advance (Triana, 2011).
If we learn that this female
There is even a sexual counterpart to this connection to traditional gender roles. executive is greatly out-earning
When researchers studied prescription-use patterns (in Denmark, no less), married her spouse, some not-so-nice
men in that nation whose wives out-earned them were more apt to take erectile images may pop into our minds.
dysfunction medication than their peers (Pierce, Dahl, & Nielson, 2013). And, just as
depressing, U.S. researchers found that spouses who adopted the traditional housework
arrangement, with the wives doing the cooking and cleaning, reported having more
marital sex! (See Kornrich, Brines, & Leupp, 2013.)
The bottom line is that the women’s movement seems to have changed society
(and our inner sex-role feelings) less than we thought. But if you think I’m advocating
reverting back to the l950s Leave It to Beaver era, you are wrong. The great benefit of
the lifestyle revolution is that today both women and men can express their human
potential in work and love. The next chapter is all about expressing your human
potential during adult life.

1. Michael, age 30, has just begun his career. Compared to his grandfather, who entered
his career 50 years ago, what two predictions can you make for Michael?
a. Michael will change jobs more often than his grandpa.
b. Michael will work fewer hours per week than his grandpa.
c. Michael will have less traditional work hours than his grandpa.
2. Vanessa, a bubbly, outgoing 30-year-old, has what her friends see as a perfect job: She’s
a researcher in a one-person office, with flexible hours; she has a large, quiet work-
space; a boss who is often away; job security; and great pay. Yet Vanessa is unhappy
with the job. According to Holland’s theory, what is the problem?
3. Malia and her husband work full time. Statistically speaking, you can make two of the
following predictions:
a. Malia will probably take more time off from work for family caregiving.
b. Malia will probably earn less than her spouse.
c. Malia will probably be less well-educated than her spouse.
4. According to this chapter, with regard to family and work, traditional gender roles still
exist/no longer exist.
SUMMARY
Marriage once the only option in India, are being replaced by the Western
practice of marrying for love. Marriage attitudes differ in the
Marriages used to be practical unions often arranged by families. West, with Scandinavians seeing unmarried motherhood as
In the early twentieth century, as life expectancy increased dra- fully acceptable, but people in the U.S. caring far more about
matically, we developed the idea that couples should be best being married before having children. U.S. marriage has a
friends and lovers for life. During the late twentieth century, socioeconomic dimension, with parents often not getting married
with the women’s movement, divorce, rising serial cohabitation if they are at the lower ends of the income rungs.
rates, and the dramatic increase in unwed motherhood, mar-
riage became deinstitutionalized—less of a standard path in the Especially during the first four years after being married, couples
Western world. can expect a decline in happiness; but, for people who stay
together, there may be a U-shaped curve of marital satisfac-
While male-dominated marriage used to be standard in Iran, tion, with happiness rising at the empty-nest stage. Ironically,
today divorce is becoming more common, and married women expecting one’s relationship to be perfect may predict becoming
in this nation have more rights than before. Arranged marriages, especially disenchanted after the honeymoon phase.
According to Robert Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, Today, we expect men to be breadwinners and nurturer fathers
married couples start out with consummate love, but passion as well as good sex-role models and, sometimes, disciplinarians.
and intimacy can decline as partners construct separate lives. To In recent decades, dads do far more hands on caregiving,
preserve passion and intimacy, share exciting experiences with although, statistically speaking, women typically still do more.
your mate, be totally committed to the marriage, feel devoted to Fathers play with their children in traditionally male, active ways,
a partner’s well-being, and take joy in sacrificing for your mate. and vary in their involvement, depending on their fatherhood
When they communicate, happy couples make a high ratio of attitudes and work schedules. Despite our new nurturer
positive to negative comments and don’t get personally hurtful fatherhood ideals, men still vitally care about fulfilling the tradi-
or offer their partners excessive advice. tional breadwinner role.
Divorce, that common adult event, has negative causes and con-
sequences. Still this life event can result in greater well-being, Work
and even a sexual rebirth (for females), especially if couples were
very distressed (versus simply feeling “a bit” unfulfilled) with We used to have traditional stable careers. Today, we often have
their mates. Although many people do remarry after divorcing, boundaryless careers. Technology, while it offers more flexibility
the odds of finding a new mate don’t favor females, and second with regard to physically being at an office, has led to a blurring
marriages can be difficult, because it’s hard for stepchildren to of family and work time. We also work longer hours than in the
get attached to a “new” mom or dad. Attachments are more likely past, partly because Western adults have less job security than
when stepfamilies provide a loving atmosphere, and a stepdad in previous decades.
lives with the children for an extended time. Stepchildren give Among college graduates, high core self-evaluations, measured
both men and women tremendous joy. in high school, predict mid-life career happiness and career
success. People who have high self-efficacy and optimistic atti-
Parenthood tudes seek out challenging work, proactively shape their jobs,
Although many more people can become parents in our twenty- and manage to enjoy their jobs even when engaged in less mean-
first-century society, a major concern in Europe and Asia is declin- ingful work. The ideal is to see our career as a calling, fully
ing fertility rates. Despite our negative stereotypes, childless expressing our life mission.
adults are not more self-centered or unhappy than parents. Career happiness (and seeing our job as a calling) involves work-
The transition to parenthood tends to lessen romance and hap- ing hard at a job and, especially, finding an ideal personality–
piness, for both gay and heterosexual couples, and especially work fit. People want jobs that offer intrinsic career rewards
for men who have not married the mother. Gender roles become although extrinsic career rewards, such as pay, become salient
more traditional. Conflicts centered on marital equity can arise. when people need to support a family or need a paycheck to
Still, some couples grow closer after the baby is born. Coping economically survive. Role overload (too much work to do) and
constructively with conflicts before becoming parents predicts role conflict (being pulled between family and work) impair
how a relationship will fare after the child arrives. career satisfaction. While family–work conflict is endemic,
especially during the parenting years, work can also enrich
The emotional quality of motherhood is affected by a variety of
family life.
forces, and this experience, although meaningful, is tailor-made
to destroy women’s images of how they thought they would Traditional gender roles still operate in the world of work. Because
behave. Society conveys a sanitized view of motherhood. We they are more apt to periodically leave the workforce to provide
tend to blame mothers for their children’s “deficiencies,” and we family care, women have more erratic careers than men. Occu-
sometimes berate women who work for not spending enough pational segregation also explains (a bit) why females who work
time with their children. In contrast to our images of an epidemic full time continue to earn less than males. Society gives priority
of uninvolved mothers, twenty-first-century women spend much to married fathers in salaries and expects men to out-earn their
more time (especially teaching time) with their children than in the wives. Unfortunately, when a wife is the primary breadwinner
past. Contemporary mothers (and fathers) are giving their children and the husband engages in most of the housework, a couple’s
unparalleled attention and love—even while they hold down jobs. sexual life may be affected.
KEY TERMS
deinstitutionalization of consummate love, p. 334 traditional stable career, p. 347 role overload, p. 350
marriage, p. 328 fertility rate, p. 340 boundaryless career, p. 347 role conflict, p. 350
serial cohabitation, p. 329 marital equity, p. 341 intrinsic career rewards, family–work conflict, p. 350
U-shaped curve of marital breadwinner role, p. 344 p. 349 occupational segregation,
satisfaction, p. 332 extrinsic career rewards, p. 349 p. 351
nurturer father, p. 344
triangular theory of love, p. 333
Marriage no longer passionate. Couples who have been married for

1. c and d decades are most likely to have companionate marriages.
2. c 4. Sharing mutually exciting activities cements passion.

Commitment grows out of (and is embodied by) feeling
3. According to Sternberg, by looking at three dimensions— devoted to a partner’s well-being.
passion, intimacy, and commitment—and exploring their
combinations we can get a portrait of all the partner love 5. (1) Spend time together doing exciting activities you
relationships that exist in life. By exploring how these facets both enjoy. (2) Practice sacrificing for your mate (giving
change over time, we can also understand why marital hap- up activities you might enjoy to further your partner’s
piness might naturally decline over the years. (a) This couple happiness). (3) Keep disagreements to the topic; never get
is extremely emotionally involved (has intimacy and passion) personal when fighting; hold off from giving too much advice.
but has not decided to get married or enter a fully commit- 6. Be careful! You may more quickly contemplate leaving your
ted relationship. (b) This couple has it all: intimacy, passion, new spouse when you disagree. Your children are apt to feel
and commitment. Most likely, they are newlyweds. (c) This threatened by your new relationship, and may place barriers
couple is best friends (intimate) and married (committed) but to your getting along.
Parenthood share this responsibility? (2) Are females basically

1. Statistically speaking, you would expect this couple’s marital superior at child-rearing than men? (3) How important
satisfaction to decline (same would be true if this couple is it to you to be the primary breadwinner? (4) How
were gay). If Jenna and Charlie were not married, Charlie much does your wife earn compared to you? (5) Have
might be especially dissatisfied after Jenna gave birth. you been laid off at work? (6) Do you live in a patriarchal
society?
2. a and c
3. Tell grandma that’s not true! Parents are spending more time Work
with their children than in the past. Moms do far more hands-on
1. a and c
teaching—even when they have full-time jobs. And of course,
fathers are also much more involved. Not only are dads spend- 2. Vanessa’s isolated work environment doesn’t fit her sociable
ing more time playing, particularly, with their sons; but depend- personality. She needs ample chances to interact with people
ing on their attitudes, they are even doing more routine care. during the day.
4. My questions (but you can think of others!): (1) Do you think 3. a and b
child care is basically a woman’s job, or should couples 4. still exist
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
Exploring Personality (and
Well-Being)
Tracking the Big Five
SCIENCE: Tracking the Fate
of C (Conscientiousness)
Generativity: The Key to a
Happy Life
Wrapping Up Personality (and
Well-Being)
Exploring Intelligence (and

Wisdom)
Taking the Traditional Approach:
Looking at Standard IQ Tests
INTERVENTIONS: Keeping a
Fine-Tuned Mind
Taking a Nontraditional
Approach: Examining
Postformal Thought
Midlife Roles and Issues

Grandparenthood
Parent Care
Body Image, Sex, and
Menopause
Jupiterimages/Stockbyte/Getty Images
Midlife
At 20, I was so anxious about life. But there is nothing like 30-plus years of living to
teach you who you really are. I mainly credit the life-changing experience of having
twins for making me mature. Children lock you into the fact that you have a mission
larger than the self. The down-times strengthened me, too: raising my own babies as
a single mom, helping to take care of Dad during his final years. At age 53, I have zero
fears about physical aging. Getting through menopause was no problem; my sex life
is actually better than it was at 25! My anxiety relates to my mind. Now that the kids
are grown, I’m passionate to make a difference in the world. I want to return to school
to get a Ph.D. in public policy. But can I succeed in the classroom at my age? Am I too
old to get a job?
Then, there are anxieties about time. I’m watching my new grandbaby during the
week, while my daughter is at work. Not only is day care expensive, I can’t let Joshua
spend his first year of life with strangers. Child care is a grandma’s job!
Still, I’m up for these challenges, especially since I can rely on my life love, Matt,
to cheer me on. In most ways, I’m the same person I was at 20—just as outgoing,
caring—but much more responsible, of course. And, it’s now or never. I feel the clock
ticking when I look around. My friend Charron recently died of cancer. My baby brother
retired after having a stroke last year. I get my inspiration from Mom—at age 75, still
the youth group director at Church. Mom—well, she’s supposed to be old, but she’s
really middle-aged.
W
hen you think of middle imagine vigorous, happy grandparents,
age, what images come to or midlife daughters overburdened by
mind? As is true of Jamila in caring for their parents in old age. In this
the vignette, you might imagine adults chapter, devoted to the long life stage
at the peak of their powers: confident, that psychologist Carl Jung (1933) poeti-
mature, taking on empty nest chal- cally labeled “the afternoon of life,” we’ll
lenges, focused on making a difference explore these joys and heartaches, chal-
in the world. But you might also think lenges, and changes.
of people fearful about mental loss, and Let’s start by setting boundaries.
grappling with sexual decline. You could When are people middle-aged?
357
Setting the Context

If you are like most people reading this chapter, you believe we enter middle age at
about age 40 and exit this life stage at age 60 or 65 (Etaugh & Bridges, 2006; Lachman,
2004). Your parents or grandparents might not agree. In U.S. surveys, roughly half of all
people in their late sixties and seventies call themselves middle-aged (Lachman, 2004).
They may be right. When a woman, such as Jamila’s mother, is healthy and working
in her seventies, should we call her middle-aged or old?
When someone is starting a family at age 45 or 50, is that
individual middle-aged or a young adult?
At the other extreme, you may know a middle-aged
person who does feel “old”: a relative in his fifties cop-
ing with heart disease or a colleague who acts like 80
even though she is 45.
What causes one midlife adult to embrace aging
and another to feel frightened about the years ahead?
One poll showed an important influence fostering a
downbeat view of the future, as I just suggested, is health
concerns—having an off-time chronic disease.
Gender and socioeconomic status make a differ-
ence, with females and affluent adults having more
© Joel Rafkin/PhotoEdit
upbeat aging attitudes than their peers (more about

these forces in Chapter 14). But personality matters
most. A basic temperamental trait called neuroticism
is almost certain to cloud people’s view about the older
Although the calendar would
years (Miche and others, 2014).
categorize these seventy- What exactly is neuroticism, and how do personality and cognition change as
something dance instructors as we travel into life’s afternoon? What role concerns become salient during the middle
“senior citizens,” they would years? This chapter tackles these topics one by one.
almost certainly say, “No, we are
middle-aged.” When people are
healthy and active, middle age
extends well into later life!
Exploring Personality
(and Well-Being)
Actually, we have contradictory views about how our personality changes during
adulthood. One is that we don’t change: “If Calista is irascible in college, she will be
bitter in the nursing home.” Another is that entering new life stages, or having life-
changing experiences, propels emotional growth: “Since getting married, I’m a more
stable person.” “Coming close to death in my car accident transformed how I think
about the world.”
Do people stay the same or grow as the years pass? As we see now, by looking at
the research, both ideas are true!
Tracking the Big Five

Today, the main way psychologists measure personality is by ranking people accord-
ing to five basic temperamental qualities. As you read this list, take a minute to think
of where you stand on these largely genetically determined dimensions, which Paul
Big Five: Five core Costa and Robert McCrae have named the Big Five traits:
psychological
predispositions— • Neuroticism refers to our general tendency toward mental health versus psychologi-
neuroticism, extraversion, cal disturbance. Are you resilient, stable, and well-adjusted, someone who bounces
openness to experience,
conscientiousness, and
back after setbacks; or hostile, high-strung, hysterical, and impulsive, a person who
agreeableness—that others might label as psychologically disturbed? (Children with serious externalizing
underlie personality. and internalizing tendencies, for instance, would rank high on neuroticism.)
CHAPTER 12 Midlife 359
• Extraversion describes outgoing attitudes, such as warmth, gregariousness, activity,

and assertion. Are you sociable, friendly, a real “people person,” someone who
thrives on meeting new friends and going to parties, or are you most comfortable
curling up alone with a good book? Do you get antsy when you are by yourself,
thinking “I’ve got to get out and be with people,” or do you prefer living a reflective,
solitary life?
• Openness to experience refers to our passion to seek out new experiences. Do you
adore traveling the world, adopting different perspectives, having people shake up
your preconceived ideas? Do you believe life should be a continual adventure and
relish getting out of your comfort zone? Or are you cautious, rigid, risk averse, and
comfortable mainly with what you already know?
• Conscientiousness describes having the kind of efficacious, worker personality
described in Chapters 10 and 11. Are you hardworking, self-disciplined, and reli-
able, someone others count on to take on demanding jobs and get things done?
Or are you erratic and irresponsible, prone to renege on obligations and forget
appointments, a person your friends and co-workers really
can’t trust?
• Agreeableness has to do with kindness, empathy, and the
ability to compromise. Are you pleasant, loving, and easy
to get along with; or stubborn, hot-tempered, someone who
continually seems offended and gets into fights? (Agreeable
people, for instance, have secure attachment styles.)
Hundreds of studies show that our Big Five rankings
have consequences for our lives. Because they are upbeat and
happy, extraverts have more fulfilling relationships (Butkovic,
Brkovic, & Bratko, 2011; Cox and others, 2010). People high
on neuroticism, being impulsive and depressed, are more apt to
suffer from chronic diseases (Sutin and others, 2013). Passionate
to expand their horizons, adults high on openness are set up to Look at these exuberant women enjoying themselves at a
grow emotionally (Lilgendahl, Helson, & John, 2013) and stay party and you will understand why extroverts are gener-
ally happy (and also why simply being around a “people
cognitively sharp (von Stumm, 2013) as the years pass. One person” makes us feel more upbeat). How would you rank
longitudinal study even suggested that openness to experience yourself on extraversion, and each of the other Big Five
and conscientiousness might help protect us against developing traits I just described?
Alzheimer’s disease (Duberstein and others, 2011).
Without neglecting the role of each Big Five trait in constructing a successful
life, researchers are particularly interested in the impact of conscientiousness as we
travel from childhood to old age. So let’s pause to look at the lifespan path of this
personality dimension in more depth. (Unless otherwise noted, these findings come
from Shanahan and others, 2014; Reiss, Eccles, & Nielson, 2014.)
Hot in Developmental Science: Tracking the Fate

of C (Conscientiousness)
The childhood quality that defines conscientiousness is good executive functions—
meaning being able to think through your actions and modulate your emotions.
Therefore, it makes sense that this Big Five quality is closely correlated with educa-
tional success. In fact C (conscientiousness) may be as important as IQ in predicting
our GPA! Because, as teens, they are less apt to succumb to risky behaviors, conscien-
tious boys and girls arrive at the brink of adulthood blessed with superior academic
credentials and good health. During adulthood, their conscientious, “workerlike”
personalities smooth the path to further success.
Conscientious adults have more stable marriages. They tend to be affluent or

middle class. Study after study suggests they live longer than their peers because
they take such good care of their health (see, for instance, Hampson and others,
2013; Sutin and others, 2013).
For example, let’s take Sara, who ranked high on conscientiousness at age 10.
Her hard-working personality ensured that she got into a good college, graduated at
the top of her class, and got an excellent first job. As she traveled through her career,
Sara was praised for her industriousness, got promotions, and eventually landed an
executive position at a firm. Sara was committed to her marriage, had the emotion
regulation talents to communicate well with her mate and—because we match up
by homogamy—selected a conscientious spouse. At age 55, Sara’s life is a testament
to the power of hard work in building a fulfilling life. Because Sara and her husband
take care to exercise and eat right, this couple is on track to live healthy, wealthy, and
happy, into old age.
Now, imagine Joe, an emerging-adult friend, who ranks low on this Big Five
dimension. In his teens, Joe became ensnared in alcohol and drugs, so he never made
it through school. Because Joe was so unreliable, he continually lost jobs and—over
the decades—had several bitter divorces. At age 60, when you bump into Joe, he has
serious health concerns and appears years older than his age. His decades of failure
have left your friend penniless, demoralized, and depressed.
These descriptions suggest that because our nature (or basic temperamental
traits) shape specific life experiences, we should become more like ourselves as we
age. Due to an evocative and active process, Sara’s conscientious personality paved
the way for her to outshine her contemporaries dramatically at each adult stage.
Joe and Calista (mentioned earlier in this chapter), are set up to fail socially and
work-wise, and become bitter over time. In addition to genetic and environmental
forces both converging to promote consistency, we expect similar behaviors from
people such as Sara, Joe, and Calista (“She’s a nasty you-know-what!”) because we
yearn for a stable world (Allemand, Steiger, & Hill, 2013). If you have ever been
shocked when a family member acted totally “out of character,” you know what
I mean.
Therefore, what’s astonishing is that twin studies show personality gets less
heritable as we age and encounter the random ups and downs of life (Bleidorn,
Kandler, & Caspi, 2014; Briley & Tucker-Drob, 2014; Specht and others, 2014).
Moreover, although the main theme is consistency (who you are as a person prob-
ably won’t basically change), the good news is that during adulthood many of us get
more mature.
Making the Maturity Case

One early influence fostering maturity is confronting the challenges of adult life (see
Hutteman and others, 2014). As I suggested in Chapters 9 and 10, after leaving the
cocoon of our families, we need to emotionally grow up. In a mammoth study explor-
ing the Big Five in 62 nations, researchers found that in every society, agreeableness
and extraversion increased from youth into middle age (Bleidorn and others, 2013).
Not unexpectedly, however, worldwide conscientiousness rose the most (Walton and
others, 2013).
This study also offered compelling evidence that assuming adult roles makes
us more mature. In cultures with an earlier onset of marriage or parenthood,
people became more conscientious and agreeable at younger ages (Bleidorn and
others, 2013).
A delightful example of the power of adult relationships to mold our charac-
ter (meaning the Big Five trait of conscientiousness) comes from a German study
exploring personality changes in relation to the living arrangements of emerging

adults. While young people who cohabited with roommates did not increase much
in conscientiousness over a four-year period, moving in with a romantic partner was
apt to be accompanied by a real boost in that core trait (Jonkmann and others, 2014).
Bottom line: close, adult encounters—especially of the romantic kind—force us to
toe the maturity line.
But emotional growth doesn’t just stop after we assume adult roles. Many people
feel more in control of their lives and grow self-assured well into their older years
(Specht and others, 2014).
Consider a cross-sectional study examining the prevalence of mature (resilient)
personalities at different ages in huge samples of Australian and German adults. As
Figure 12.1a shows, the percentages of women classified as resilient (people rank-
ing high on the positive Big Five traits) floated upward from a low during emerging
adulthood, to a high in old age (Specht, Luhmann, & Geiser, 2014). Now scan the
findings relating to self-criticism in Figure 12.1b. This chart comes from another
thousand-plus person poll of Canadian adults. From a high point at age 19, notice
that self-criticism scores decline for men and women at older ages (Kopala-Sibley,
Mongrain, & Zuroff, 2013).
Moreover, this self-assured worldview does not signal narcissism. In creative stud-
ies conducted in Switzerland and the United States, researchers offered convincing
evidence that midlife and older people have a less egocentric, more altruistic attitude
toward life (Freund & Blanchard-Fields, 2014). When asked to imagine owning
an apple orchard, older age groups were more prone to choose an ecology-friendly
harvesting strategy over one maximizing profit. Midlife adults were more apt to
donate their funds from participating in the study to a social cause than young people
provided with the same choice (see Figure 12.1c). This greater generosity had noth-
ing to do with older adults having more personal wealth, as it appeared controlling
for people’s income, too.
80
Donate money
Men 70 Keep money
Women
60
Probability resilient
50
Self-criticism
40
30
20
10
0
up to 30 31–40 41–50 51–60 61–70 70 and up Young people Middle-aged Older people
Age group age 19 Age 59
people
figure 12.1a: In huge cross- figure 12.1b: The relationship figure 12.1c: Donation behavior at
sectional studies conducted in between age and self-criticism in different ages in several thousand Swiss
Germany and Australia, the per- over 300 Canadian adults ranging in and U.S. adults: When asked to either keep
centage of resilient personalities age from 19 to 59, recruited from the or donate the money from participating in
floated upwards in older groups: Internet: In this study, when people of dif- this study to charity, notice, in particular, the
This chart, showing the findings for ferent ages were asked to respond to items dramatic rise in altruism (donating) among
women, reveals that the probability of such as “There is a big difference between middle-aged people.
being classified as resilient increases how I am and how I want to be,” far fewer Data from: Freund & Blanchard-Fields, 2014.
dramatically particularly during people (especially men) gave self-critical
middle age. ratings at each of the older ages.
Data from: Specht, Luhmann, & Geiser, 2014. Data from: Kopala-Sibley, Mongrain, & Zuroff,
2013, p. 135.
Obviously, these findings are averages. There are clearly many, selfish “out-of-
control” sixty-somethings. Perhaps you have a friend who peaked emotionally in
adolescence and went on to have an unhappy life: the teenage football hero who
descended into drug abuse, or your high-school prom queen who now lives homeless,
on the street.
Table 12.1 showcases interesting predictors at different life stages (apart from our
rankings on the Big Five) that predict either growing emotionally or having problems
down the road. The last item—processing traumatic events in a thoughtful, open
way—brings me to the core quality involved in adult fulfillment: generativity.
Table 12.1: Interesting Forces Promoting Maturity or Distress at Different

Stages of Life
In the preteen years: Not being in the cool kids crowd. In following 184 adolescents, researchers
found that while early adolescent “mature behaviors,” such as drinking and smoking, promoted
popularity in sixth or seventh grade, these cool teens were prone to have long-term difficulties
with relationships and substance-abuse problems during their twenties (Allen and others, 2014;
see also my popularity feature in Chapter 9).
In college: Having prosocial values. In exploring life goals during college and then tracking people
for 20 years, researchers found that men with strong prosocial values—versus priorities revolving
around making a lot of money—were most likely to be living meaningful, happy lives at the brink
of middle age (Hill and others, 2011).
During adulthood: Experiencing a medium amount of stress and coping with difficult life events in
an open, productive way. When researchers explored major life stresses and then related these
reports to overall well-being, people who reported no life traumas were more unhappy than
those who reported having a medium number of major stresses (Seery, Holman, & Silver, 2010).
In following midlife women, psychologists found that if a person ranked high on openness to
experience and openly processed upsetting life events, she was apt to be ranked mature at
age 61 (Lilgendahl, Helson, & John, 2013).
Generativity: The Key to a Happy Life

By now you should be impressed with the power of the Big Five to predict life suc-
cess. But while knowing where we stand on these core dimensions can help reveal our
journey’s outcome, it tells us nothing about specifics of the journey itself. Think of
several friends who rank high on conscientiousness. One person might be a full-time
mother; another might be a company manager; yet another might have found the
outlet for his conscientiousness through being a nurse. In order to really understand
what makes human beings tick, we have to move in closer and interview people about
their lives. This is the strategy that Dan McAdams has used to explore personality dur-
ing the adult years. Let’s eavesdrop on one of McAdams’s interviews:
I was living in a rural North Dakota town and was the mother of a 4-year-old son. One
summer afternoon . . . Jeff left without me and was hit by a car. When I got there, he
was lying in the street unconscious . . . . I felt sure he was dying, and I didn’t know of
anything I could do . . . . My friend did, though, and today [Jeff ] is 18 years old and
very healthy. That feeling of being helpless . . . while I was sure I was watching my son
die was a turning point. I decided I would never feel it again and I became an E.M.T.
(quoted in McAdams, de St. Aubin, & Logan, 1993, p. 228)
In listening to these life stories, McAdams realized the power of random life
events in shaping personality. Although this woman might have always ranked high
in conscientiousness, the specific path her life took was altered by this pivotal experi-
ence. In McAdams’s opinion, in order to really understand development, we need to
get up close and personal and talk to people about their missions and goals.
Examining Generative Priorities generativity In Erikson’s

theory, the seventh
Actually, McAdam’s professional mission has been to scientifically test the ideas of the psychosocial task, in which
pioneering theorist who does believe that our goals shift dramatically in different life people in midlife find
stages: Erik Erikson. Does generativity, or nurturing the next generation, become our meaning from nurturing
main agenda during midlife? Is Erikson (1969) correct that fulfilling our generativ- the next generation, caring
for others, or enriching the
ity is the key to feeling happy during “the afternoon” of life? When people in their lives of others through their
forties or fifties don’t feel generative, are they stagnant, demoralized, and depressed? work. According to Erikson,
(See Table 12.2.) when midlife adults have
not achieved generativity,
they feel stagnant, without a
sense of purpose in life.
To capture Erikson’s concept, McAdams’s research team constructed a question-

naire to generally measure generative concerns (you can take the first ten items on this
scale in Table 12.3). The researchers also explored people’s generative priorities by
telling them to “list the top ranking agendas in your life now” (see McAdams, 2001a).
When these researchers gave their measures to young, middle-aged, and elderly
people, they found few age differences in generative attitudes. People were just
as likely to care about making a difference in the world at age 20 or 50 or 85.
Table 12.3: McAdams’s Generative Concern Scale

True False
❒ ❒ 1. I try to pass along the knowledge I have gained through my experiences.
❒ ❒ 2. I do not feel that other people need me.
❒ ❒ 3. I think I would like the work of a teacher.
❒ ❒ 4. I feel as though I have made a difference to many people.
❒ ❒ 5. I do not volunteer to work for a charity.
❒ ❒ 6. I have made and created things that have had an impact on other people.
❒ ❒ 7. I try to be creative in most things that I do.
❒ ❒ 8. I think that I will be remembered for a long time after I die.
❒ ❒ 9. I believe that society cannot be responsible for providing food and shelter
to all homeless people.
❒ ❒ 10. Others would say that I have made unique contributions to society.
Information from: McAdams & de St. Aubin, 1992, pp. 1003–1015.
How do you score on this scale measuring overall generative motivations?
Answers: 1. T, 2. F, 3. T, 4. T, 5. F, 6. T, 7. T, 8. T, 9. F, 10. T
The researchers did discover age differences

in generative priorities—with emerging adults
ranking very low on this scale (McAdams,
Hart, & Maruna, 1998). Young people’s goals
were centered on identity issues. A 20-year-old
might say, “I want to make it through college
and get a good job” or “My plan is to figure out
what I want to do with my life.” Midlife and
older adults were more likely to report: “My
mission is to help my teenage son,” or “My goal
is to work for justice and peace in the world.”
digitalreflections/Shutterstock
This makes sense. Remember from

Chapters 3 and 6 that prosocial behaviors are
in full swing by toddlerhood. There is no rea-
son to think that our basic human drive to be
nurturing changes at any life stage. But, just
Adults of every age derive great as Erikson would predict, we need to resolve
pleasure from engaging in issues related to our personal development before our primary concern shifts to giving
generative activities. But now to others in the wider world.
that he is in his sixties and has Is Erikson right that, as people enter midlife, generativity takes center stage?
transcended identity concerns,
cultivating a community garden According to one study, “not necessarily.” In following women from their forties
to provide poor people with into their sixties, researchers found that issues relating to identity (“developing
free vegetables qualifies as the as a person,” “expanding myself”) remained strong well into middle age. But, as
generative center of this elderly these women got older, generativity gradually grew. According to this research,
man’s life.
priorities fully focused on giving to the next generation reach a crescendo in the
early sixties, once we know exactly who we are (Newton & Stewart, 2010).
Examining Adult Happiness

Is Erikson correct that generativity is the key to happiness during adult life? Here,
the answer is “yes,” as long as we define happiness in the right way. If we imagine
hedonic happiness Well-being happiness as simply “feeling good” (hedonic happiness), generativity has nothing to
defined as pure pleasure. do with living a happy life. But, if we consider this term in its richer sense, as having
eudaimonic happiness Well- purpose and meaning (eudaimonic happiness), then, yes, highly generative people
being defined as having a do have exceptionally happy lives (Grossbaum & Bates, 2002; Zucker, Ostrove, &
sense of meaning and life
purpose.
Stewart, 2002; Versey, Stewart & Duncan, 2013).
So, generativity makes sense of why sacrificing for a beloved mate makes
spouses feel personally fulfilled, or why parents happily spend decades chang-
ing diapers when they could be luxuriating in hotel spas (recall the last chapter).
Our main mission as adults (and starting from childhood) is not simply hedonic
pleasure—packing in pleasurable events—but living purposeful, generative lives
(Seligman, 2011). (Check out Table 12.4 for other interesting happiness facts
plus another reason why just packing in pleasures can’t permanently produce a
happy life.)
When people don’t have generative goals, do their lives lack meaning? As Erikson
described, do these adults feel stagnant—purposeless and at loose ends? Read what
one researcher had to say about Deborah, who, in her late forties, scored very low on
generativity in his study of women’s lives:
In reference to the birth of her first child, Deborah wrote, “All actions automatic. No
emotional involvement . . . ; totally self-preserving but very unpleasant.” After many
years of marriage, Deborah underwent a difficult divorce. She began to work in a “blur
of meaningless jobs.”
(adapted from Peterson, 1998, p. 12)
Table 12.4: Happiness Perceptions and Interesting Research Facts

“Youth is the happiest life stage.”
Answer: Wrong! Emerging adulthood is the peak age for developing emotional problems. Many
cross-sectional studies in Western nations agree: People are apt to be happiest in later life
(more about this surprising finding in the next chapter)!
“Money can’t buy happiness.”

Answer: That’s true, but only once we are fairly comfortable economically. Around the globe,
poor people are significantly less happy than their more affluent counterparts. Once our basic
survival needs are satisfied, the correlation between income and happiness becomes weaker—
although it still exists. The main reason is probably not that getting more “things” matters, but
that money can buy quality family time. And satisfying family relationships are highly related to
reports of a happy life.
“I’ll be happy when I get my career in order, become famous, and have the funds
to eat at that five-star restaurant every night.”
Answer: Sorry, not really. According to a phenomenon called the hedonic treadmill, when we win the
lottery, graduate from college, or (in my case) get a book published, we are thrilled at first, but
then revert to our normal happiness set point (“So I got an Oscar last year. What else is new?”).
Therefore, piling on Kudos or engaging in pleasurable activities such as indulging in gourmet
food no longer provide an emotional boost when these activities become routine. The good news
is that the hedonic treadmill also applies to negative events. We adjust and then, eventually, our
“natural” happiness returns.
“You can’t (1) measure happiness or (2) teach people to be happy.”

Answer: Point 1 is totally false; point 2 is probably false. Research shows that we can concretely
quantify what it takes to be happy. Once people get above a ratio of 2.9 positive to negative
emotions, they generally feel good about life. Therefore, happiness experts (e.g., Seligman,
2011) have developed programs to teach people to savor the moment, count their blessings,
or do gratitude exercises. Still, your author (me) believes the best strategy for achieving
happiness is not to spend time monitoring that feeling. When we are generative, as the text
shows, a natural by-product is a happy life.
“Because happiness is an inner state, the nation we live in makes a minor impact
on personal happiness.”
Answer: Wrong! Our nation and its government greatly affects personal well-being (Ott, 2011; Pinker,
2011). As a resident of Denmark, for instance, you are probably very happy, with well-being
scores topping the global charts at an average of 8 on a 10 point scale; in some African nations,
the average person ranks fairly miserable (at below 4) (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). Check out
page 367 for a surprising society-wide characteristic that predicts happiness among both affluent
and poor citizens.
Information from: Jorgensen, Jamieson, & Martin, 2010; Ladis, Daniels, & Kawachi, 2009; Angelini and others, 2012;
Bergsma & Ardelt, 2011; George, 2010; Helson & Soto, 2005; Windsor & Anstey, 2010.
As this case history suggests, having children does not automatically evoke
generativity. You can give birth and be totally nongenerative and uninvolved.
Conversely, midlife adults who never have children can be incredibly generative
in the wider world (see Newton & Baltys, 2014). Classic contemporary outlets for
generativity, such as environmental activism, involve caring for generations “not
yet born” (Morselli, 2013). Our world-class generative role models, such as Mother
Theresa or Martin Luther King, lived lives devoted (in the beautiful phrase) to
“repairing the world.”
Examining the Childhood Memories

of Generative Adults
Do the childhoods of people who embody this rich,
Martin Luther King-like community-centered kind of
generativity differ from those of more typical adults? To
Francis Miller/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
answer this question, McAdams’s research team selected

community leaders who scored at the upper ends of their
Generative Concern Scale (see page 363) and asked
them to tell their life stories. Would these autobiographies
differ from those of adults such as Deborah in my previ-
ous example, who ranked low on Erikson’s midlife task?
The answer was yes. The life stories of highly
generative adults had themes demonstrating what the
researchers called a commitment script. They often
described early memories of feeling “blessed”: “I was
The saintly life of Martin
Luther King is a testament my grandmother’s favorite”; “I was a miracle child who should not have survived.”
(and reminder) that the ultimate They reported feeling sensitive to the suffering of others, from a young age. They
generative activity lies in talked about having an identity revolving around generative values that never wavered
devoting one’s life to making a from their teenage years. A 50-year-old minister in one of McAdams’s studies was a
difference in the wider world.
teenage prostitute, and then a con artist who spent two years in a federal prison; but,
throughout her life, she reported, “I was always doing ministry.”
The most striking characteristic of generative adults’ life stories was redemption
sequences—examples of devastating events that turned out in a positive way (McAdams,
commitment script In Dan 2006; McAdams & Bowman, 2001). For instance, in the example I just mentioned,
McAdams’s research, a type the woman minister might view the humiliation of being sent to prison as the best
of autobiography produced
by highly generative adults
thing that ever happened, the experience that turned her life around. According to
that involves childhood McAdams (2006), early memories of feeling personally blessed, an enduring sensitiv-
memories of feeling special; ity to others’ misfortunes, caring values, and, especially, being able to turn one’s trag-
being unusually sensitive to edies into growth experiences are the core ingredients of the commitment script and
others’ misfortunes; having a
the main correlates of a generative adult life (see also Lilgendahl & McAdams, 2011).
strong, enduring generative
mission from adolescence; What produces the kind of adult devoted to “repairing the world”? According to
and redemption sequences. McAdams’ interviews, one force may be the presence of caring adults in a person’s
redemption sequence In past. When his research team asked people in their late fifties to pinpoint emotional
Dan McAdams’s research, turning points in their lives, adults high in generativity described critical incidents
a characteristic theme of involving family members and teachers more frequently than their less generative
highly generative adults’
peers. Here is an example:
autobiographies, in which
they describe tragic events The day before my mom died, I went to the hospital . . . and I was actually on my way to
that turned out for the best. pick up my senior pictures. So when I got these photographs I shared them with my
mom. . . . I could just tell in her eye that she had this real proud moment . . . it was a
moment I . . . treasured . . . she never saw me physically at the graduation, but in my mind
I will always believe she was there in spirit. So that will always be a highlight of my life.
(quoted in Jones & McAdams, 2013, p. 168)
If you think of your own generative role models—from a favorite teacher

to, hopefully, your mom or dad—these special people are apt to be sprinkled in
every ethnic group. But, interestingly, McAdams’ studies consistently show that
African American men and women are overrepresented in their samples of gen-
erative community-minded adults (Hart and others, 2001; McAdams, 2006; Jones &
McAdams, 2013; Newton & Baltys, 2014). Does coping with discrimination—plus a
strong grounding in religion—make African Americans unusually sensitive to human
suffering and so prone to devote their lives to repairing the world? In support of this
possibility, themes stressing progress toward overcoming adversity are central in highly
generative African Americans’ autobiographies (McAdams & Bowman, 2001).
In sum, this powerful generativity research explains why raindrops—meaning
stressful life events—often make us more mature (recall the last item in Table 12.1 on
page 362). It all depends on how we make meaning out of our personal storms. As one
61-year-old women, who grew emotionally, in a study put it: “I do not
Blend Images - Hill Street Studios/Walter Jimenez/Brand X

regret the past for it is the pain of my first 50 years that has brought me
to where I am now” (Lilgendahl, Helson, & John, 2013, p. 413).
Wrapping Up Personality (and Well-Being)

Now, let’s summarize all of these messages. Having read this sec-
Pictures/Getty Images
tion, here is what you might tell an emerging-adult friend who wants
insights into who she will be at 40 or 59.
• Expect to grow in maturity and especially become much more
conscientious, although, in general, your core personality will
probably not change much over the years. This group project to restore
the oldest Black Baptist
• Expect to become more self-assured and altruistic as you travel through middle age. church in South Carolina is
typical in the African American
• Expect your priorities to shift toward more generative concerns and to grow in experience, where a mission to
generativity, especially during late midlife. be of service—especially in a
caring community that revolves
• I predict that if you rank high on conscientiousness and the other positive Big Five around the church—is standard.
traits; have prosocial, generative priorities; and deal productively with the traumas
in your life, you are on track for a fulfilling middle age—but don’t hold me to my
word, as scientists never know for sure what the future will bring!
As a final note, I must emphasize that it’s difficult to grow emotionally if you are
mired in poverty or live in a society rife with conflict and corruption, where life trau-
mas are routine. McAdams’s generative community-minded African Americans were
typically economically secure (Jones & McAdams, 2013). The reason why Denmark
clocks in with the world’s highest well-being (recall Table 12.4 on page 365) is not
just that this country is comparatively affluent. People are happiest in nations where
they trust their government to be fair and effective (Ott, 2011) and income inequali-
ties are relatively small (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2009). So our own happiness depends
on living in a generative society, where life isn’t a zero-sum game. We are most likely
to flourish as people when everyone around us is flourishing, too.
In the next section, devoted to cognition, I’ll be filling in more pieces of the
puzzle involved in constructing a fulfilling life.

1. Tim is going to his thirtieth college reunion, and he can’t wait to find out how his
classmates have changed. Statistically speaking, which two changes might Tim find
in his undergraduate friends?
a. They will be more conscientious and self-confident.
b. They will have different priorities than they did earlier, caring more about
nurturing the next generation.
c. They will care more deeply about making money than they did before.
d. They will be more depressed and burned out than they were earlier.
2. You are giving your best friend tips about growing emotionally and feeling fulfilled
during midlife. Pick the item that should not be on your list:
a. Live a calm, stress-free life.
b. Live a generative life.
c. Develop prosocial goals as a young person.
d. Be conscientious and open to experience.
3. Should your professor agree with this suggestion, write about a difficult life experience,
and discuss how you coped with that event.
Exploring Intelligence (and Wisdom)

Remember from Chapter 7 that, when psychologists measure intelligence during
childhood, they look mainly at how elementary schoolers perform on standard intel-
ligence tests. Sometimes, they spell out different ideas about what it means to be
smart, such as Gardner’s multiple intelligences or Sternberg’s successful intelligence.
Developmentalists use standard IQ tests and nontraditional strategies to trace adult
intelligence, too.
Taking the Traditional Approach: Looking at Standard

IQ Tests
Think of your intellectual role model. Most likely, your mind will immediately gravi-
tate to someone who is 50 or 80—not a person who is 20 or 25. In fact, if you are like
most adults, you probably assume that, in general, people get more intelligent
over the years (Sternberg & Berg, 1992).
Mid-twentieth-century psychologists had a different idea: They believed
that people reach their intellectual peak in their twenties, and then intel-
ligence steadily declines (Botwinick, 1967). They based these disturbing
conclusions on studies using the (at the time) newly developed Wechsler
Adult Intelligence Scale.
The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS), the standard
test measuring adult IQ, has a similar format as the WISC, the scale
© william87/Kalium/age fotostock
for children, described in Chapter 7. It has verbal items testing differ-

ent types of knowledge, such as vocabulary and adults’ ability to solve
math problems. It also asks test takers to perform relatively unfamiliar
nonverbal activities quickly, such as putting together puzzles or arrang-
ing blocks. On this part of the test, called the performance scale, speed
is essential. People must complete these tasks within a limited time.
How will this young woman’s When psychologists tested adults to derive their standards for how people should
cognitive abilities change as she normally perform on the WAIS at different ages, they discovered that, starting in
ages? Stay tuned for genuinely
the twenties, in each older age group, average scores declined. They also found the
scientific answers on the next
page. interesting pattern in Figure 12.2 on the top of the opposite page. While scores on
the verbal sections stayed stable or declined to a lesser degree, average scores on the
performance scale steadily slid down, starting in people’s twenties (Botwinick, 1967).
These findings would not give any fifty-something student, like Jamila in the
introductory chapter vignette, confidence about venturing into a college classroom
full of 20-year-olds. Luckily, however, the researchers were ignoring the huge educa-
tional differences between different cohorts at that time in U.S. history. While virtu-
ally all of the young test takers had gone to high school, many middle-aged or elderly
Wechsler Adult Intelligence people taking the original WAIS had probably left school in seventh or eighth grade.
Scale (WAIS) The standard So the psychologists were comparing apples to oranges—adults with less education
test to measure adult
to those with much more.
IQ, involving verbal and
performance scales, each of How does our performance on standard intelligence tests really change as we
which is made up of various travel through adult life? To answer this question, in the early 1960s, researchers
subtests. began the Seattle Longitudinal Study—the definitive study of intelligence and age
Seattle Longitudinal Study (Schaie, Willis, & Caskie, 2004; Schaie & Zanjani, 2006).
The definitive study of Imagine being a twentieth-century researcher interested in charting how people
the effect of aging on
change intellectually during adulthood. If you were to carry out a cross-sectional study—
intelligence, carried out by
K. Warner Schaie, involving comparing different age groups at the same time—your findings would be biased in a
simultaneously conducting negative way. Older cohorts would be at a disadvantage, not having had as much experi-
and comparing the results ence taking tests, typically having gone to school for far fewer years. But if you carried
of cross-sectional and
out a longitudinal study, you would end up with a far-too-positive portrait of how the
longitudinal studies carried
out with a group of Seattle average person changes. The volunteers who enrolled in your study would probably be
volunteers. highly educated. Over the years, as people dropped out of your research, you would be
left with an increasingly self-selected group, the fraction

Average Verbal scale
of older people who were proud of proving their intellec-
scores
tual capacities and—as they reached their seventies—those
healthy enough to take your tests (Baltes & Smith, 1997).
Faced with these contrasting biases (longitudinal Performance scale
research will be too positive; cross-sectional research will
be biased in a negative way), the researchers devised a
brilliant solution: Combine the two kinds of studies, fac-
tor out the biases of each research method, and isolate the
“true” impact of age on IQ.
First, the research team selected people enrolled in
a Seattle health organization who were 7 years apart in
age, tested them, and compared their scores. Then, they 10 20 30 40 50 60
followed each group longitudinally, testing them at 7-year Age
intervals. At each evaluation, the psychologists selected (in years)
another cross-sectional sample, some of whom they also
followed over time.
figure 12.2: Age-related
Using an IQ test that, unlike the WAIS, measured five basic cognitive abilities, changes in mean scores on
the researchers got a more encouraging portrait of how we change intellectually— the performance and verbal
one that fits our intuitive sense of how we should perform. Notice in looking at scales of the WAIS: This chart
Figure 12.3 that, on this measure—involving, for instance, tests of vocabulary and showed the depressing pattern
of decline from a study using
our ability to quickly think up words—we reach our intellectual peak during our for- the early form of the WAIS.
ties and early fifties (Schaie, 1996; Schaie, Willis, & Caskie, 2004). Still, the Seattle Notice how average scores
study showed the same pattern researchers first found on the WAIS. On tests measur- on the performance scale
ing people’s store of knowledge, such as vocabulary, scores improve till at least age (items involving manipulating
materials) regularly slid down
60 (Larsen, Hartmann, & Nyborg, 2007). But when a test involves doing something starting in the twenties, while
new very fast (such as arranging puzzles within a time limit or the word fluency scores on the verbal scale
measure in Figure 12.3), losses start as early as the forties (Ardila, 2007). Now, let’s remained more stable with
look at a theory that makes sense of these findings and tells us a good deal about our age. Now compare this early
age-decline with the data
intellectual abilities in the real world. in Figure 12.3.
Data from: Botwinick, 1967.
Two Types of Intelligence: Crystallized and Fluid Skills
Psychologists today typically divide intelligence into two categories. Crystallized crystallized intelligence A
basic facet of intelligence,
intelligence refers to our knowledge base, the storehouse of information that we have consisting of a person’s knowl-
accumulated over the years. The verbal scale of the WAIS, with its tests of vocabulary edge base, or storehouse of
and math, mainly measures crystallized skills. Fluid intelligence involves our ability accumulated information.
to reason quickly when facing new intellectual challenges. The WAIS performance fluid intelligence A basic facet
of intelligence, consisting of
the ability to quickly master
new intellectual activities.
Vocabulary figure 12.3: Changes in

Test scores (measuring just-crystallized skills) two intellectual abilities over
the decades in the Seattle
Longitudinal Study: Notice that
scores on a test demanding a
heavier component of fluid skills
(word fluency, which asks people
Word fluency to name as many words as they
(measuring mainly fluid skills) can starting with a letter such
as A, within a time limit) decrease
after the late forties; while
those on a totally crystallized
test (vocabulary) stay stable
into the sixties. But in general,
this landmark study shows
25 32 39 46 53 60 67 74 81 88 intellectual abilities peak in the
Age (in years) fifties and decline in old age.
Data from: Schaie, 1996.
scale, with its emphasis on putting together blocks or puzzles within a time limit,
tends to measure fluid skills.
Fluid intelligence—because it depends on our nervous system being at its biolog-
ical peak—is at its high point in our twenties and then declines. Because it measures
the knowledge that we have amassed over years, crystallized intelligence tends to
increase into late middle age. However, by later life, crystallized IQ declines, because
our forgetting rate outpaces the new knowledge that we can absorb.
The good news is that, with regard to the most vital crystallized skill—negotiating
relationships—age losses may not appear. While their slower information processing
skills can impair older people’s performance on standard theory of mind tasks (Henry
and others, 2013), sixty-somethings seem just as good (or better) at judging people as
younger adults (Hess & Smith, 2014). Plus, the losses on fluid intelligence tests are not
as great for my baby boom cohort as for my parents’ generation (Zelinski & Kennison,
2007), suggesting that the Flynn effect (mentioned in Chapters 1 and 7) also applies
to the older years. The bad news is that the inevitable age-related losses on fluid IQ
tests reflect a slowing of information processing that extends to many areas of life.
So, in any situation requiring multitasking, people may notice their abilities
declining at a relatively young age. In your late thirties it seems harder to dribble a
basketball while keeping your attention on the opposing team. You are having more
trouble juggling cooking and having conversations with guests at your dinner parties
than at age 25. In old age, these steady fluid losses, as you will see in Chapter 14,
progress to the point where they truly interfere with daily life.
The distinction between fluid and crystallized intelligence accounts for why peo-
ple in fast-paced jobs, such as air-traffic controllers, worry about being over the hill in
their forties. It makes sense of why airline CEOs or professors reach their professional
peak in their early sixties (but not much beyond!). Anytime an activity depends heav-
ily on quickness, being older presents problems. Whenever an intellectual challenge
involves stored knowledge, people improve into their fifties and beyond.
Suppose you are an artist or a writer. When can you expect to do your finest work?
Researchers find that when a creative activity is dependent on being totally original,
such as dancing or writing poetry, people tend to perform best in their thirties (see
Simonton, 2007). If the form of creativity depends just on crystallized experience, such
as writing nonfiction or, in my case, producing college textbooks (yes!), people perform
at their best in their early sixties (Simonton, 1997, 2002). But in tracing the lives of peo-
ple famous for their creative work, one researcher discovered that who we are as people,
or our enduring abilities, outweighs the changes that occur with age. As Figure 12.4 on
the next page shows, true geniuses outshine everyone else at any age (Simonton, 1997).
David Becker/Getty Images
AP Photo
As his passion demands speedy mental processing, this gaming guru may feel “old” in his thirties. But this 60-year-old professor will
probably see his teaching as better than ever today because his job depends almost exclusively on crystallized skills.
figure 12.4: Age-related

changes in the career paths
of geniuses and of less
eminent creators: This chart
shows that people reach their
peak period of creativity in
Best midlife. However, the most gifted
Genius-level talent
geniuses stand head and shoul-
Less talented
ders above their contemporaries

Contribution
First at every age.
Data from: Simonton, 1997.
Last
Best
First Last
20 30 40 50 60 70 80 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Age Age
(in years) (in years)
So, creatively or career-wise, expect to reach your peak in

middle age (in most fields). Still, as you saw earlier with per-
sonality, expect to be the same person—to a large degree—as
when you were younger. If you are exceptionally competent
and creative at 30, you can stay exceptionally competent and
creative at 70, or even 95. To illustrate this point, here are
Romilly Lockyer/Stone/Getty Images

quotations from an interview study of creative people over age
60 (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996):
The poet Anthony Hecht, at age 70, commented:
I’m not as rigid as I was. And I can feel this in the poems . . . .
They are freer metrically, . . . The earliest poems that I wrote were
almost rigid in their eagerness not to make any errors. I’m less
worried than that now. Is this middle-aged fashion designer at his creative peak?
(p. 215) According to the research, the answer is yes. How proficient
is he, compared to his peers ? For answers, we would want
And the historian C. Vann Woodward, at the time in his to look at this man’s enduring creative talents from youth.
mid-eighties, said:
Well, [today] I have . . . changed my . . . conclusions. . . . For example, that book on
Jim Crow. I have done four editions of it . . . , and each time it changes . . . largely from
criticisms that I have received. I think the worst mistake you could make as a historian
is to be . . . contemptuous of what is new. You learn that there is nothing permanent in
history. It’s always changing.
(p. 216)
From Sigmund Freud, who put forth masterpieces into his eighties, to Frank
Lloyd Wright, who designed world-class buildings into his ninth decade of life, history
is full of examples showing that creativity can burn bright well into old age.
Staying IQ Smart
Returning to normally creative people, such as you and me, what qualities help any
person stay cognitively sharp? What causes our intellectual capacities to decline at a
younger-than-normal age?
HEALTH MATTERS. As our mind and our body are “all connected,” the first key to
staying intelligent as we age lies in staying physically fit. Hundreds of studies show
that physical interventions, as varied as Taekwondo (van Dijk, Huijts, & Lodder,
2013) to resistance exercise (Chang and others, 2014), help keep intelligence
fine-tuned.
The most powerful scientific evidence that our physical state affects our thinking
comes from a mammoth U.S. study tracking thousands of adults. After testing physi-
ological functions spanning heart rate to glucose metabolism, body mass index to
cortisol levels, and more, scientists devised an overall physical deterioration score they
labeled allostatic load (Karlamangla and others, 2014). As you can see in Figure 12.5,
this global index of body dysregulation was strongly related to performance on execu-
tive function tests. To put these findings concretely: As an adult with an allostatic load
score of 2.7 (the seventy-fifth percentile), you would rank almost three years older
in your ability to quickly process information than someone of the same age with a
ranking of 1 (the twenty-fifth percentile)!
excellent
Executive function score
figure 12.5: How allostatic

load relates to scores on
executive function tests in
over a thousand U.S. adults
with an average age in
their late fifties: This chart
shows concretely that body
deterioration (measured by allo-
static load score) is intimately poor
tied to cognitive functioning in
midlife (not just over age 65). low high
Allostatic load score
Data from: Karlamangla and others,
2014, p. 391.
Even more compelling (at least for me) is an eerie phenomenon gerontologists
call terminal drop. In the first longitudinal studies of cognition, researchers were
astonished to discover that they could predict which older people were more likely
to die within the next few years by “larger than expected” losses in their verbal IQ
(Cooney, Schaie, & Willis, 1988; Riegel & Riegel, 1972). If a person’s scores on tests
of vocabulary and other crystallized measures steeply declined, these changes were an
ominous early warning sign of a soon-to-be-diagnosed life-threatening disease.
These studies haunted me the summer when I noticed that my father had suddenly
aged mentally. My dad, who was always an intellectual whiz, had lost interest in the world.
allostatic load An overall He was disoriented and depressed. A few months later, my worst fears were confirmed: My
score of body deterioration, father was diagnosed with liver cancer, the illness that was to quickly end his life.
gained from summing how a
person functions on multiple MENTAL STIMULATION (WITH PEOPLE) MAY MATTER. Because, recall from Chapter 3,
physiological indexes. environmental stimulation promotes synaptogenesis, the second key to staying intelli-
Allostatic load predicts gent should be a no-brainer: Exercise your mind!
cognitive performance during
adult life. To begin our discussion, let’s return to the Big Five—this time to openness to
experience. As this trait measures our tendency to reach out and seek stimulating
terminal drop A research
phenomenon in which experiences, it comes as no surprise that adults who score high on openness are apt
a dramatic decline in an to grow most dramatically in crystallized IQ (von Stumm, 2013).
older person’s scores on Professional choices make a difference. People who work in complex, challeng-
vocabulary tests and other ing jobs tend to become more mentally flexible with age (Schooler, 1999, 2001;
measures of crystallized
intelligence predicts having Schooler, Mulatu, & Oates, 2004). Careers involving people—from hosting talk
a terminal disease. shows, to coaching teens—are especially likely to keep midlife people mentally on
their toes (Finkel and others, 2009). So, one good intellectual
insurance policy is to follow my advice in Chapters 10 and 11:
Find a challenging, compelling, flow- inducing career!
But wait a second! Aren’t adults with challenging jobs apt to
be intelligent and well educated to begin with, and also younger
health-wise than the average person their age? Couldn’t these other
forces account for why their crystallized abilities improve most with
Julian Finney/FIFA/ FIFA/ Getty Images

age? To prove that mental stimulation promotes cognitive growth,
we might have to conduct an impossible (but fun) experiment:
Assign young people to participate in a Jeopardy-like quiz show,
or to host National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, then
compare their IQs to those of a control group in later middle age.
The good news, however, is that while we can’t carry out
this study with our species, it’s fine to experiment on rats. And, Obviously, this fifty-something
when researchers put a group of rats in a large cage with challenging wheels and coach needs to take care of his
swings and then compared their cortexes with control animals, this quiz show treat- health in order to do his job—
ment produced thicker, heavier brains (Diamond, 1988, 1993). Let’s tentatively but the interpersonal challenges
involved in dealing with these
accept the widespread idea, then, that, just as physical exercise strengthens our young athletes will keep him “on
muscles, mental exercise may produce a resilient mind. (I’d be careful about spend- his toes” intellectually during
ing hours doing Suduko or other solitary brain-busting activities, however, on the his older years.
principle that stimulation involving people works best.)
In sum, people in their forties and fifties are at the peak of their mental powers.
But they will have more trouble mastering new cognitive challenges (those involv-
ing fluid skills) when under time pressure. To preserve their cognitive capacities as
they age, people need to take care of their health and search out stimulating inter-
personal and work experiences. And you can tell any worried 50-year-old family
member who is considering going back to school that she should definitely go for it!
INTERVENTIONS: Keeping a Fine-Tuned Mind

Now, let’s look at the lessons the research offers for any person who wants to stay
mentally sharp as the years pass.
• Develop a hobby that involves physical exercise of some kind—from dancing to
Taekwondo.
• Stay (or become) passionate to learn new things, and search out careers that
expand your mind.
• As challenging, interpersonal activities matter most, search for careers that involve
complex, people-oriented work, or try volunteer activities, like tutoring or serving
on a community board.
• Understand that as you get older, new tasks involving complicated information
processing will be difficult. To cope with these losses, you might adopt the following
three-part strategy advocated by Paul Baltes called selective optimization with selective optimization
compensation. with compensation Paul
Baltes’s three principles for
As we move into the older years and notice we cannot function as well as we successful aging (and living):
used to, Baltes believes that we need to (1) selectively focus on our most important (1) selectively focusing on
what is most important,
activities, shedding less important priorities; (2) optimize, or work harder, to perform (2) working harder to
at our best in these most important areas of life; and (3) compensate, or rely on exter- perform well in those
nal aids, when we cannot cope on our own (Baltes, 2003; Baltes & Carstensen, 2003; top-ranking areas, and
Krampe & Baltes, 2003). (3) relying on external aids to
cope effectively.
Let’s take Mrs. Fernandez, whose passion is gourmet cooking. In her fifties, she
might decide to give up some less important interest such as gardening, conserving
her strength for the hours she spends at the stove (selection). She would need to work
harder to prepare difficult dishes demanding split-second timing, such as her prize-
winning soufflés (optimization). She might put a chair in the kitchen rather than
stand while preparing meals, or give up preparing dinner party feasts

all by herself, and rely on her guests to bring an appetizer or dessert
(compensation).
Although Baltes originally spelled out these guidelines to apply
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
to successful aging, they are relevant to anyone coping with the

demands of daily life—from parents struggling with family–work conflict
(Young, Baltes, & Pratt, 2007; recall Chapter 11), to students, such
as you, balancing the challenges of different courses. Because find-
ing better life balance helps promote happiness at any age (Sheldon,
Cummins, & Kamble, 2010), Table 12.5 offers a selective-optimization-
with-compensation checklist to complete to help you enhance your life.
What can this white-haired
college student do to ensure
that he can keep up with the
twenty-something classmates Table 12.5: Using Selective Optimization with Compensation to Construct
in this course? Try to take just a Fulfilling Life
this one class, rather than four
or five, this term (selection);
Selection: List your top-ranking priorities. Estimate how much time you spend on these agendas.
spend more time studying
(optimization); and perhaps 1. hrs
tape the lectures, so he doesn’t
have to just rely on his notes 2. hrs
(compensation). Can you increase the time you spend on these most critical agendas and decrease the time you
spend on less important concerns?
Optimization: List strategies that you could use to perform better in your top-priority areas.
1.
2.
Compensation: List external aids that might help you be more successful in managing your time
and/or family and friends you can rely on to take over some jobs when you feel overwhelmed.
1.
2.
3.
Taking a Nontraditional Approach: Examining

Postformal Thought
So far, I have been mainly discussing the insights related to intelligence derived from
traditional IQ tests. But look back at the quotations from the older poet Anthony
Hecht and the historian C. Vann Woodward, on page 371. The qualities these creative
people were describing have nothing to do with putting together puzzles or blocks.
What stands out about these men is their openness to experience and sensitivity to
their inner lives. Given that standard IQ tests were devised to predict performance in
school, perhaps it would make sense to come up with a test to capture the qualities
that define thinking intelligently during adult life.
Jean Piaget described qualitative changes in cognition that occur in children
as they age. So developmentalists drew inspiration from this landmark theory to
construct an adult-relevant measure of IQ (Labouvie-Vief, 1992; Rybash, Hoyer, &
Roodin, 1986; Sinnott, 2003).
postformal thought A Recall Piaget believed that we develop cognitively through hands-on experience
uniquely adult form of with the world. Although Piaget thought that the pinnacle of mental development
intelligence that involves
being sensitive to different
occurs when teens reach formal operations and reason like “real scientists,” wouldn’t
perspectives, making years of living produce a more advanced kind of thinking called postformal thought?
decisions based on one’s Let’s look at what separates this adult intelligence from Piaget’s formal operational stage:
inner feelings, and being
interested in exploring new POSTFORMAL THOUGHT IS RELATIVISTIC. As you saw in Chapter 9, adolescents
questions. in formal operations can argue rationally about rights and wrongs. With age and
life experience, we realize that most real-world problems do not have clear-cut
“right” answers. Postformal thinkers accept the validity of different perspectives.
They embrace the ambiguities of life. This awareness that the truth is relative does
not mean that postformal thinkers avoid making decisions or having strong beliefs.
As with C. Vann Woodward, people who reason postformally make better deci-
sions because they are open to changing their ideas when faced with competing
perspectives that make sense.
POSTFORMAL THOUGHT IS FEELING-ORIENTED. Teenagers in formal operations
feel that by using logic, they can make sense of the world. Postformal thinkers go
beyond rationality to reason in a different way. Because there is often no objec-
tively “right” answer to life’s dilemmas, thinking postformally means relying more
on one’s gut feelings as the basis for making decisions. As with Anthony Hecht,
people who reason postformally are less rigid, more open, fully in touch with their
inner lives.
POSTFORMAL THOUGHT IS QUESTION-DRIVEN. Adolescents want to get the correct
answers and finish or solve tasks. Postformal thinkers are less focused on solutions.
They thrive on developing new questions and reconsidering their opinions. As you
saw with both Anthony Hecht and Prof. Woodward, people who think postformally
enjoy coming up with new, interesting ways of looking at the world.
Clearly, we cannot measure this kind of intelligence by giving tests in which
questions have a single correct answer. We need to adopt the strategy that Lawrence
Kohlberg used with his moral dilemmas (recall Chapter 9): Present people with
real-world situations and examine the way they think. How
would you respond to this sample problem?
John is known to be a heavy drinker, especially when he goes to 2.2 Individual rankings shown in colored dots
parties. Mary, John’s wife, warns him that if he gets drunk one Lower 80%
more time, she will leave him and take the children. John goes Higher 20%
to an office party and comes home drunk. Does Mary leave him? 2.0
How sure are you of your answer?
Wisdom score
If you answered this question rigidly (“Mary said she 1.8

would leave, so she should; yes, I am sure I am right”), you
are not thinking postformally. You must explore the conse-
quences of leaving for Mary, for John, and for the children. 1.6
You must understand that any answer you gave would be a
judgment call. 1.4
Actually, astute readers may be thinking that the qualities
involved in postformal thinking have uncanny parallels to the
same personality attributes involved in growing emotionally
30 40 50 60 70 80 90
with age: Be open to experience; confront and process nega-
Age
tive life events in a thoughtful way.
Since post-formal thinking seems so linked to our endur-
ing personality, it makes sense that simply growing older figure 12.6: Age
does not make people more capable of reasoning in this wiser, more “mature” way. distribution of “wisdom”
However, one important facet of wisdom does increase in later life—our ability to scores as judged by the way
a random sample of Michigan
take a more realistic view of societal change. adults of different ages
Psychologists (Grossmann and others, 2010) asked adults to talk about social/ reasons about scenarios
ethnic conflicts: “The Issi want to preserve that nation’s traditions, and the Assari want involving ethnic and social
social change. What will happen? What would you advise?” They wondered: Would conflicts: In this interesting
study, notice that wisdom rates
older people discuss the problem from each group’s vantage point and realize that the dramatically rise among the
outcome was uncertain? Would they understand change comes gradually and stress people in their sixties (blue
the need for compromise? dots), although about half of all
As you can see by the blue dots in Figure 12.6, the answer was yes. Notice that a elderly adults don’t make it into
the wise category (red dots).
few middle-aged adults fit into the wise category. About half of elderly adults do not. Data from: Grossmann and others,
But after the early sixties—wisdom takes off. 2010, p. 7248.
Now, returning to what we have learned so far, what lessons does this whole chap-
ter have for constructing a fulfilling life? Table 12.6 summarizes all of these insights
in a chart that offers tips for flourishing during adult life.
Until this point, I have been discussing issues that are relevant to people in their
twenties, their forties and fifties, and even adults aged 95. In the next section, I’ll
explore transitions unique to the middle years.
Table 12.6: How to Flourish During Adulthood: A Summary Table

Rolf Bruderer/Masterfile
1. Develop a generative mission. If you feel that your life lacks purpose, try volunteering or helping
others—it’s addictive!
2. Try to view your failures and upsetting life experiences as learning lessons. Understand life’s
disappointments offer us our best opportunities to grow, provided we openly confront and
process these changes.
Now that she is 60, this woman 3. To keep your mind fine-tuned, take care of your physical health and be open to experience—
may qualify as truly wise, putting yourself in mentally stimulating situations involving people.
particularly if she has the
4. When you feel in role conflict—or that your life lacks balance—establish priorities, work hard in
qualities listed here.
your most important areas, and rely on external aids to help you perform.
5. Think postformally: Be open to different perspectives; question your established ideas and ways
of thinking; reflect on your feelings to help guide you in making wise life choices.

1. Andres is an air traffic controller and Mick is a historian. Pick which man is likely to
reach his career peak earlier, and explain the reasons why.
2. Your author (me) is writing another textbook on lifespan development. I am also
learning a new video game. Identify each type of intellectual skill involved and
describe how my abilities in each of these areas are likely to change now that I am
in my sixties.
3. Rick says, “I’ve got too much on my plate. I can’t do anything well.” Identify the
theory discussed in this chapter that would be most helpful in addressing this
problem, and explain what this theory would advise.
4. Kayla is contemplating breaking up with her boyfriend, Mark, because, she says,
“He doesn’t give me the attention I need.” Name the advice a postformal thinker
would not give to Kayla.
a. “Leave the bum!”
b. “Think of what is going on from Mark’s perspective—for instance, is he
overworked?”
c. “Whatever choice you make, look at all the angles.”
d. “There may be no ‘right decision.’ Go with your gut.”
Midlife Roles and Issues

As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, classic midlife events can be sources
of joy and issues for concern. On the uplifting side, there is that terrific life experi-
ence called grandparenthood. The downside may be the need to care for disabled
aged parents, and to face sexual decline. Let’s now look at these “aging phase of life”
joys and concerns one by one.
Grandparenthood
The (Lakota) grandparents always took . . . the first grandchild to raise. They think that
. . . they’re more mature . . . and they could teach the children a lot more than the young
parents. . . . I’m still trying to carry on that tradition because my grandmother raised me
most of the time up until I was nine years old.
(quoted in Weibel-Orlando, 1999, p. 187)
This comment from Mrs. Big Buffalo, a Native American grandmother, reminds us
that every adult role, from spouse, to parent, to worker, to grandparent, is shaped
by our society. Native American and Hawaiian grandparents are apt to see raising
grandchildren as “our custom” (Yancura, 2013). In Western cultures, where we put
a priority on the nuclear family, grandparents are more peripheral to family life. In
most societies, maternal grandparents (the daughter’s parents) are more involved
with the grandchildren. In China, it’s the moms and dads of sons (Xu, Silverstein, &
Chi, 2014).
Still, even in Western nations, where tradition dictates taking a hands-off stance,
in our era of single parents and full-time working mothers, grandparents must be more
involved than in the past (Dunifon, 2013). As I implied in Chapter 4, many women
today help care for an infant grandchild while their sons and daughters work (Hank
& Buber, 2009; McNally, Share, & Murray, 2014). Doesn’t this impulse to watch over
the youngest, most vulnerable family members suggest that there is a basic benefit
built into grandparenthood?
Exploring the Grandparent Mission to Care

Because human beings are the only species with female bodies programmed to outlast
the reproductive years, evolutionary theorists argue, the answer is yes. Menopause,
they believe, evolved to offer an extra layer of mothers, without their own childrearing
distractions, to care for the young (Coall & Hertwig, 2010). Put bluntly, grandmas
function to help our species survive.
This lifesaving function is apparent in subsistence societies. Remember from
reading the Experiencing the Lifespan box in Chapter 3 that, in Ghana, a grandma
often steps in to take care of the family so her daughter can make the weekly trek
to the clinic to stave off death in a young, malnourished child. Therefore, in Africa,
the presence of a grandmother reduces mortality rates during the early years of life
(Gibson & Mace, 2005).
In our culture, grandparents do their lifesaving selectively. As family watchdogs, family watchdogs A basic
they step in during a crisis to help the younger family members cope (Dunifon, 2013). role of grandparents, which
involves monitoring the
At these times, their true value shines through. Grandparents are the family’s safety
younger family member’s
net (Troll, 1983). well-being and intervening to
In more normal times, grandparents function as mediators, helping parents provide help in a crisis.
and children resolve their differences (Kulik, 2007). They serve as cheerleaders and
reinforcers of prized family norms (Dunifon, 2013) (“Wow you got on the honor
role. Nana is SO proud!”). Grandparents can be the family cement, keeping cousins
close. From Christmas get-togethers to Thanksgiving dinners, “Grandma’s house” is
often the focal meeting point—the place where cousins regularly reconnect. As one
developmentalist put it:
Grandparents serve as symbols of connectedness within and between lives; as people
who can listen and have the time to do so; as reserves of time, help, and attention; as
links to the unknown past; as people who are sufficiently varied, flexible, and complex
to defy easy categories and clear-cut roles.
(Hagestad, 1985, p. 48)
You may notice this complexity and flexibility in your own family. One grandpar-
ent might be a shadowy figure; another may qualify as a second mother or best friend.
Some grandparents love to jump on trampolines; others show their

love in “baking cookies” ways. An intellectual grandpa may take you
to lectures; a fishing grandpa may take you on the lake.
Which Grandparents Are More or Less Involved?

What forces determine how involved a particular grandparent is likely
to be? Gender matters. Study after study agrees that grandparent-
hood is a more joyous, emotionally central role for women than men
(Findler and others, 2013). Perhaps because they have spent so many
decades as “old style” distant dads, grandfathers more frequently report
having trouble connecting emotionally with their grandchildren than
do their wives (Ben Shlomo, 2014).
Physical proximity makes a huge difference—whether grandchil-
dren live around the corner or many miles away (Hakoyama & Malo-
neBeach, 2013). As one grandfather sadly mentioned, “We get to see
her maybe once or twice a year, and every time . . . I’m thrilled with
the development I see but I am disappointed that I had very little to do
Stockbroker/Stockbroker/Superstock
with it” (Bangerter & Waldron, 2014, p. 92).

Age matters—being a younger grandparent (Ben Shlomo,
2014) and, especially, having young granddaughters and grandsons.
Although, grandparent–grandchild involvement can be intense dur-
ing the early years of life, just as they separate from their parents,
older children naturally leave the grandparent orbit and prefer to be
around their peers. As one grandparent lamented: “We’ll come for
Thanksgiving and she’ll (the 19-year-old daughter) have dinner with
Jose Luis Pelaez/Photographer's Choice/Getty Images
us and then say, ‘I gotta go meet my friends’ . . . (and I’m thinking).

Well your grandparents just drove 400 miles (to see you)” (adapted
from Bangerter & Waldron, 2014).
These quotations—from a study exploring grandparent–teenager
closeness—suggest that technology can erode these barriers of distance
and age. Here is how one woman described a Skype visit with her
13-year-old granddaughter: “She just . . . put the computer on her bed
and so we did a kind of virtual tour of her room and it was just like she
and I were hanging . . . out. No one else in the house even knew we were
talking . . . and it was really cool” (Bangerter & Waldron, 2014, p. 93).
From jumping on trampolines to
taking the grandchildren to the And a side benefit of friending your grandchild on Facebook is that you can feel
local lake, grandparents fulfill closely connected without having any conversation at all: “I keep my mouth shut”
this joyous life role in their own said another grandma. “They know I’m there (on Facebook) and they are comfortable
distinctive, personal ways. with it . . . if I got on the phone with them and tried to have them tell me . . . the
things they do, it wouldn’t happen” (2014, p. 93).
Grandparent Problems
Grandparents take pride in the fact that they are free to “be there” to lov-
ingly listen, and to leave the disciplining to mom and dad. But my discus-
sion implies grandparents are really not free. For one thing, it’s important
to hold your tongue and not criticize your child’s parenting, because your
© Purestock/Kablonk/Alamy
access to the grandchildren depends on having a good relationship with

the generation in between (Sims & Rofail, 2013; Lou and others, 2013).
Now imagine your built-in barriers if you are a paternal grandmother,
the mother of a son. Because women are closer to their own mothers
(versus their mothers-in-law) and, in Western nations, control the family’s
For this grandma, spending the day with social relationships, paternal grandparents are in danger of “not being
her grandson and her daughter-in-law is an
absolute joy. Still, she has to be careful not to
there” as much as they would like.
criticize this young woman’s child-rearing skills Being in this situation created heartache for a friend of mine, when
or risk being cut off from future visits. this preference for maternal moms cost her physical proximity. Her
daughter-in-law decided to move across the country to be close to her own mother in
Seattle, rather than stay in New York City—transforming my friend into the distant
grandma she never wanted to be.
The allegiance to one’s family of origin can have devastating effects after a divorce.
When the wife gets custody, and especially if she remarries and has other children,
she can lock her ex-husband’s parents out of the family’s life (Sims & Rofail, 2013).
When people get locked out of seeing their grandchildren—whether due to a
divorce, being a disliked paternal grandma, or because of disputes with a biological
child—you would think that courts might grant these grandparents visitation rights.
You would be wrong. Some ethicists argue that simply being a grandparent doesn’t
give people any intrinsic legal rights (Draper, 2013). Yes, many states have legislation
allowing grandparent visitation depending on “the best interests of the child.” But
consider the situation in Florida (and Canada), where these statutes have been struck
down as unconstitutional, in favor of the idea that parents alone, except in cases of mal-
treatment, are perfectly free to decide who their child sees (Beiner and others, 2014).
Then there is the opposite situation—feeling compelled to “be there” more than
you want. Let’s spell out a typical scenario: Your daughter (or son) wants you to watch
the baby while she is at work. You don’t want to disappoint your child, but you want
your own life. The role conflict is especially intense when grandparents assume a more
demanding job—becoming full-time parents again.
Caregiving grandparents take full responsibility for raising their grandchildren. caregiving grandparents
In recent decades, the ranks of these grandparents have swelled. In the 2010 census, Grandparents who have
taken on full responsibility
7.5 million U.S. children lived with a grandparent. The number of grandparents
for raising their
having primary care for that grandchild doubled over the past 40 years (Rubin, 2013). grandchildren.
Although they span the socioeconomic spectrum, caregiving grandparents tend to be
poor. In extreme cases, these front-line caregivers must petition the court for custody
and formally adopt a granddaughter or grandson.
How does it feel to take this step? As you might expect, custodial grandparents are
typically deeply distressed, mourning the fact that their own son or daughter—often
because of incarceration, or drug or alcohol problems—is incapable of performing
this job (Rubin, 2013). They may feel angry at being forced into this “off-time” role.
But they often feel a generative, “watchdog” responsibility to protect their flesh and
blood (Hayslip & Patrick, 2003). Here is what one woman had to say to the police
after her drug-abusing daughter took off with a grandchild and stole her car:
[The police in a different state] said to me, “Ma’am, if you don’t get here in 72 hours,
then your grandson will be put in the [state protective services system] and you will have
to fight to get him.” I said, “I will fight from the moment I get there if my grandson is
not there for me.”
(quoted in Climo, Terry, & Lay, 2002, p. 25)
And another woman summed up the general feeling of the custodial grand-
mothers in this study when she blurted out: “Nobody is going to take [my grandson]
away from me. I have done everything except give birth to him” (quoted in Climo,
Terry, & Lay, 2002, p. 25).
These women, mainly in their late fifties, complained about feeling physically
drained: “Some days I feel really old, like I just can’t keep up with him” (quoted in
Climo, Terry, & Lay, 2002, p. 23). They had mixed emotions about their situation:
“Some days I feel real blessed by it, other days I want to sit and cry” (p. 25). They
sometimes described redemption sequences, too: “God has given me this wonderful
little boy to raise and I’m thinking, ‘How many people get the opportunity to do it a
second time?’” (p. 26).
Parent Care
Ask friends and family members and they will tell you that becoming a grandpar-
ent is one of the joys of being middle-aged. Words such as joy and fulfillment
do not come to mind when we imagine that second classic midlife role: car-
parent care Adult children’s ing for elderly parents. Researchers who study parent care speak of this family
care for their disabled elderly job using phrases like “burden,” “hassles,” and “strain” (Hunt, 2003; Son and
parents.
others, 2007).
Caring for parents violates the basic principle in Western cultures that parents
give to their children, not the reverse (Belsky, 1999). So, it makes sense that while
older people may welcome help from siblings or a spouse, they prefer being the
“givers” (or help providers) with an adult child. Moreover, as you might expect from
the vow “in sickness and in health,” elderly spouses find caregiving far less burden-
some than daughters or sons do (Perrig-Chiello & Hutchison, 2010).
Actually, let me get personal and relate all of this to Chapter 11. When older
people are happily married, sacrificing for a chronically ill spouse is not a burden,
but a source of fulfillment. It’s definitely a “labor of love.”
Unfortunately, this is often not true with parent care. Because caring for an ill
parent is typically a woman’s job, it can produce role conflict, when a daughter or
daughter-in law must cut back her work hours, or leave her career. If, as is increas-
ingly true, a caregiving child is in her sixties or seventies, parent care may put a
damper in that child’s retirement plans or interfere with the need to care for her
frail, disabled spouse. More rarely, a woman is pulled between two intergenera-
tional commitments, caring for her elderly parent and watching the grandchildren
full time.
At this point, I need to set the record straight: The phenomenon called the
“sandwich generation”—women pulled between caring for their young children and
disabled elderly parents— is fairly rare. Since parent care typically occurs in the fifties,
that job usually occurs during empty nest, grandparent stage. Moreover, the classic
concept that people have a predictable “midlife crisis” is another myth. The research
facts show it doesn’t exist for most adults.
Finally, the belief that in Asian cultures or in U.S. groups with more collectiv-
ist values, children are “happy” to care for aging parents is also untrue (Freeman
and others, 2010; Hashizume, 2010). In Japan, for instance, with polls showing
one in two middle-aged people want to live apart from their children when they
get old, hands-on caring for elderly parents is
no longer a cultural norm (Qu, 2014). In one
U.S. study, if children reported that helping
their aged parent was “a family obligation,” they
felt under more stress when actually providing
care (Sayegh & Knight, 2011). How stressful,
generally, is parent care?
The answer—as developmental systems
theory predicts—is “it varies” (Merz, Schulze, &
Schuengel, 2010). If the older adult’s needs are
minimal, a daughter is not working, and/or she
© Dennis MacDonald/PhotoEdit
is providing intense care but getting a lot of

support, caring for an aged parent is no prob-
lem (DiRosa and others, 2011). But coping with
other stressful commitments (such as working
and caring for the grandchildren full time) and
especially feeling one’s brothers and sisters are
Will this middle-aged child
find parent care an impossible
not doing their “fair share” is a recipe for depression and poor health (Koerner,
stress? Keys lie in her parent’s Shirai, & Kenyon, 2010; Merrill, 1996).
personality, the amount of The older person’s personality looms large. Parent care, as you will see in
help she needs to provide, Chapter 14, poses particular challenges with Alzheimer’s disease. According to one
her other commitments, and
whether this daughter feels
alarming study, if a caregiver perceived a parent as difficult and manipulative and
her siblings are doing their became resentful, the situation could escalate to screaming, yelling, or threatening
fair share. that person with a nursing home (Smith and others, 2011).
Still, caring for a disabled parent can have the opposite effect. It may offer its own
redemption sequence, giving children the chance to repay a beloved mother or father
for years of care (Kramer & Thompson, 2002). Moreover, as with other life stresses,
productively confronting this challenge can help midlife children grow emotionally
and become “wiser,” especially about planning for their lives when they become old
(Pope, 2013).
Balancing the need to respect a frail older parent’s autonomy and knowing when
to intervene (Funk, 2010); being generative with the grandchildren, but not intrusive,
while balancing your own and your family’s needs: These are the kinds of complex
relationship challenges that explain why, in Jung’s evocative words, the long “after-
noon of life” may teach us to be wise.
Body Image, Sex, and Menopause

Jung famously believed, “We cannot live life’s afternoon by
the program of life’s morning”—meaning that the key to grow-
ing mature with age lies in giving up the quest for physical
beauty in favor of more spiritual concerns. But judged by our
contemporary passion for cosmetic surgery, how many twenty-
first century adults fit Jung’s idea of “wise”?
The (somewhat) good news is that while fifty-something
females do love to catalog each sign of physical decay, body
dissatisfaction does not increase in midlife. Moreover, unless
© Mark Savage/Corbis
they are particularly age-phobic (Slevec & Tiggemann, 2011),
many middle-aged women take a kind of middle position
with regard to Jung’s advice: rejecting body-altering measures,
such as facelifts, but wanting to age as beautifully as possible
by using creams and dyes (Muise & Desmarais, 2010). The
In her late-fifties, Sharon Stone
media presence of “mature” sex symbols such as Sharon Stone suggest that today is a glorious testament to the
we don’t have to give up our sexual selves until fairly far into life’s afternoon (Weitz, fact that youthful sex symbols
2010). What really happens sexually to both men and women as they age? can remain just as alluring (and
natural looking!) well into the
afternoon of life.
Exploring the Facts Relating to Physical Sexual Decline
The findings for middle-aged men are somewhat depressing. Older males need
more time to develop an erection. They are more likely to lose an erection before
ejaculation occurs. Their ejaculations become less intense. By their fifties, most
men are not able to have another erection for 12 to 24 hours after having had
sex (Masters & Johnson, 1966). This slower arousal to ejaculation tempo explains
the popularity of the billion-dollar market for erection-stimulating drugs. Desire
remains, but by late middle age, many men need extra help to implement their
plans.
Because their sexual apparatus does not critically depend on blood flow, older
women can be just as orgasmic at 80 as at age 20. Unfortunately, however, in middle
age, women are more apt to turn off to sex than men. The reason is environmental:
being without a partner (due to widowhood or divorce); having an older spouse with
a chronic disease; not having anyone respond to you as a sexual human being. Meno-
pause can indirectly affect sexuality, too.
Menopause typically occurs at about age 50, when estrogen production falls menopause The age-related
off dramatically and women stop ovulating. Specifically, the defining marker of process, occurring at about
age 50, in which ovulation
menopause is not having menstruated for a year. As estrogen production declines and menstruation stop due
and a woman approaches this milestone, her menstrual cycle becomes more to the decline of estrogen.
irregular. During this sexual winding-down period, called perimenopause, as the
stereotypes described in Table 12.7 on the next page suggest, many women have
other physical symptoms, such as night sweats and hot flashes (sudden sensations
of heat) (Lerner-Geva and others, 2010).
Table 12.7: Stereotypes and Facts About Menopause
1. The stereotype: Women have terrible physical symptoms while going through menopause.
The facts: Researchers find that an upsurge of minor physical complaints does occur during
the few years preceding menopause: lack of energy, backaches, and joint stiffness. Many
women experience hot flashes and some sleeplessness. Still, there is variability from person
to person, and complaints vary from culture to culture. In one study, while fewer than half the
women in a Scandinavian poll reported difficult symptoms, 2 out of 3 U.S. women did (Nappi &
Kokot-Kierepa, 2010).
2. The stereotype: Women are very moody while going through menopause.
The facts: Statistically speaking, women may show a minor rise in anxiety and depression as
they approach menopause, when estrogen levels are waning (Avis and others, 2004). However,
more recent research suggests menopause has no impact on mental health (Soares, 2013).
3. The stereotype: Women feel empty, “dried up,” old, and asexual after menopause.
The facts: Many women find menopause a relief. For instance, one-third of the women in Taiwan
and almost half of all Australian women in a cross-cultural study said that they were happy not
to have to deal with a period every month (Fu, Anderson, & Courtney, 2003). In another Danish
study, at menopause, most women felt that they were entering a new, freer (and sexier) stage of
life (Hvas, 2001).
This estrogen loss produces changes in the reproductive tract. After menopause,
the vaginal walls thin out and become more fragile. The vagina shortens, and its
opening narrows. The size of the clitoris and labia shrinks and blood flow tends
to decrease. It takes longer after arousal for lubrication to begin (Masters & Johnson,
1966; Saxon, Etten, & Perkins, 2010). Women don’t produce as much fluid as
before. These changes can make having intercourse so painful that some women
stop having sex.
Baring the Real Sexual Truth

By now readers might be sadly thinking, “I’d better
enjoy my current sex life, because my sexual self
will probably evaporate when I get old.” Not so fast!
Yes, being partnerless, or having a husband
who is ill, can stop sexuality in the older years
(Syme and others, 2013). However, well into later
life, many couples still enjoy sex (Trudel and oth-
ers, 2014). In one national Swedish study, 2 in 3
men in that nation over age 70 reported still having
intercourse. The odds for 70-plus women, while l
wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock
in 3, still show that female sexuality remains alive

and well far beyond the middle years (Beckman
and others, 2014).
And if you assume male performance prob-
lems signal the death of decent sex, think again. In
The secret is that this one survey, while admitting their erectile problems
70-something couple may were troubling, middle-aged and elderly men rejected the idea that erectile capacity
be just as passionate now defined their sexual selves (Thompson & Barnes, 2013). In an interview study, many
as ever—because they have
a more inclusive definition
reported becoming better lovers during life’s afternoon (and evening). As Frank,
of lovemaking than having age 71, explained: “As a sexual partner I am probably more considerate . . . Between
intercourse! 50 and 70 I . . . became more tender” (Sandberg, 2013, p. 271).
Another 84-year-old named Owe shared this delightful under-the-covers account:

“It’s (sex is) more carefree . . . They (people Owe’s age) are lying naked together caress-
ing each other’s bodies and saying tender words . . . fondling the genitals from time to
time. Back then it was the arousal and everything was over. . . . And everyday life was
back. . . . This is more elongated; it can stretch over an entire evening or day” (adapted
from Sandberg, 2013, p. 269).
This lovely description makes sense of why, in one survey, during their older
years, men and women, lesbian, gay, and bisexual couples, described great sex
in similar ways: It’s all about intimacy, communication, and authenticity. More-
over, many respondents reported that their current lovemaking was better than
the sex they had when young! (See Kleinplatz and others, 2013.) The only group
who disagreed were sex therapists—who, perhaps by focusing mainly on what goes
wrong physically, believed that sex automatically becomes more dysfunctional and
dissatisfying with age.
Table 12.8 summarizes the male and female changes described in this section,
and offers advice for staying passionate about sex as you age.
How do we change physically, cognitively, and personality-wise as we move into
old age? Stay tuned for answers in the next part of the book, as I focus on “the evening,
or twilight, of life.”
Table 12.8: Staying Passionate About Sex with Age
For Men
Problem Solutions
Trouble maintaining or 1. Understand that some physiological slowing down is normal,
achieving an erection and do not be alarmed by problems performing. Sexual
relations need to occur more slowly; manual stimulation
may be necessary to achieve erection and orgasm. Also
understand that some of these very changes may make you
a more creative, sensitive lover as you grow old.
2. Stay healthy. Avoid sexually impairing conditions such as
heart disease. If possible, avoid medications that have
sexual side effects (such as antidepressants and blood
pressure pills).
3. If troubled by chronic problems performing, explore the
medicines that are available for treating these issues, as well
as devices such as the penile pump.
For Women
Problem Solutions
No sexual signals coming 1. Stay sexy, be conscious of your physical appearance.
from the outside world
2. Find a partner (there are many!) who appreciates you as a
sexual human being.
Decline in estrogen 1. Consider using lubricants, such as K-Y Jelly, when having
levels makes having sex.
sexual intercourse painful
2. Consider hormone replacement therapy (but discuss this
with your doctor).
Concluding advice for both sexes: Don’t accept the stereotype that sexuality declines with age.
Sex has the potential to become more emotionally gratifying (meaning affection-centered) as
people grow old.

1. Juanita, aged 4, has two grandmothers, Karen and Louisa. Grandma Karen is much more
involved with Juanita than is Grandma Louisa. List two possible reasons why this might be.
As Juanita gets older you might expect her to get more/less involved with Grandma Karen.
2. Poll your class. Do most people report being closest to their maternal grandmother
(or grandfather)? Does your class feel that technology is increasing their sense of
connection to grandparents (and, if so, perhaps they could give specific examples).
3. Kim is caring for her elderly mother, who just had a stroke. Each of the following
should make Kim’s job feel easier except:
a. Kim views caregiving as an opportunity to repay her mom for years of love.
b. Kim’s mom has a mellow personality.
c. Kim has several siblings.
4. For the following “age and sexuality” statements, select the right gender: Males/
Females decline the most physiologically Male/female sexuality is most affected by
social issues (such as not having a partner).
5. Summarize, to a friend, how sexuality changes in middle and later life.
SUMMARY
Although the boundaries of middle age span about age 40 to the productively—may produce emotional growth. Growing emo-
early sixties, many older adults describe themselves as middle tionally (and being highly generative) is most apt to occur when
aged. Personality, specifically neuroticism, predicts whether people are economically secure and live in “generative nations.”
midlife adults have an upbeat or gloomy view of the future. Early studies using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)
Research on the Big Five traits shows scores on neuroticism and found that people reach their intellectual peak in their twenties—
the other core dimensions of personality predict a variety of life although scores on the timed performance scale tests declined
outcomes. In particular, conscientiousness sets us up to age more rapidly than did scores on the verbal scale. The Seattle
healthier and be successful in work and love. Because genetic and Longitudinal Study—which controlled for the biases of this
environmental forces converge to promote consistency, our core research—showed the same change pattern, but it also indicated
personality probably doesn’t change much as we age. Still, peo- that we reach our intellectual peak in midlife.
ple grow in conscientiousness and other positive Big Five traits as Fluid intelligence, the capacity to master unfamiliar cognitive chal-
they assume adult roles. People also are more resilient, less self- lenges quickly, is at its height early in adulthood, and then it declines.
critical, and seem more altruistic at older ages. Dan McAdams’s Crystallized intelligence, our knowledge base, rises until well into
research exploring Erikson’s generativity shows that our priorities middle age. In professions that heavily depend on crystallized
shift to “other-centered concerns” during later midlife. Generativ- knowledge—versus fast information processing—people do well
ity, while not related to hedonic happiness, defines eudaimonic into their sixties. Creativity reaches its peak in midlife, although our
happiness—living a meaningful, fulfilling adult life. basic talents predict our real-world performance (at any age) best.
In their autobiographies, highly generative adults produce a com- Staying healthy, indexed by having a low allostatic load, and seek-
mitment script and describe redemption sequences—negative ing out stimulating interpersonal activities (and jobs) can prevent
events that turned out for the best. They also more often describe age-related cognitive decline. Terminal drop, a significant loss
defining life events involving caring family members or teach- in IQ, can indicate that a person is near death. Using selective
ers. The fact that African Americans may often be highly gen- optimization with compensation helps people successfully cope
erative suggests that adversity—in moderation and handled with age-related losses and live more successfully at any life stage.
Postformal thinkers are sensitive to diverse perspectives, inter- the grandchildren after a divorce, or due to having alienated the
ested in exploring questions, and attuned to their inner feelings parents. The opposite problem, being forced to be too involved,
in making life decisions. The specific aspect of wise thinking, at its extreme occurs with caregiving grandparents, especially
involving realistically reasoning about social conflicts in particu- people needing to take full legal custody of a child.
lar, may rise during later life. Parent care is another family role that some middle-aged daugh-
ters may assume. While often stressful, a variety of forces affect
Midlife Roles and Issues how women feel when caring for a disabled parent, and this life
Grandmotherhood may have evolved to help our species survive. role can sometimes promote emotional growth. Another midlife
In our society, grandparents act as family watchdogs, stepping in concern involves declining sexuality. For males, erectile capacity
when the younger family members need help. Gender, physical steadily declines. Although women show few (or no) physical sex-
proximity, the grandchildren’s ages, and especially people’s rela- ual changes, menopause has the side effect of making intercourse
tionship with the parent generation, determine people’s involve- more painful. The main reason, however, that older women may
ment in this joyous but constrained life role. Because women give up sex is social: being without a partner, not being viewed as
tend to be closer to their own mothers, paternal grandmothers sexual human beings. First-person accounts of old-age sexuality
are at risk of being less involved with the grandchildren than belie the standard gloom-and-doom decline message, suggesting
they want. At its extreme, people may be cut off from seeing that lovemaking can become more gratifying in later life.
KEY TERMS
Big Five, p. 358 Wechsler Adult Intelligence allostatic load, p. 372 family watchdogs, p. 377
generativity, p. 363 Scale (WAIS), p. 368 terminal drop, p. 372 caregiving grandparents,
hedonic happiness, p. 364 Seattle Longitudinal Study, selective optimization with p. 379
p. 368 compensation, p. 373 parent care, p. 380
eudaimonic happiness, p. 364
crystallized intelligence, p. 369 postformal thought, p. 374 menopause, p. 381
commitment script, p. 366
fluid intelligence, p. 369
redemption sequence, p. 366
Exploring Personality (and Well-Being) (2) work harder in his top-ranking areas, and (3) use external
1. a and b aids to help him cope.
2. a 4. a
3. The answers here are up to you, but it would be best to Midlife Roles and Issues
confront and process that event in a way that might promote 1. Karen may live closer to Emma. Most likely she is a maternal
personal growth. grandma. As Juanita gets older you would expect her to be
Exploring Intelligence (and Wisdom) less involved with her grandma.
1. Andres will reach his career peak far earlier than Mick because 2. Answers here will vary.
his job is heavily dependent on fluid skills. A historian’s job 3. c
depends almost exclusively on crystallized skills. 4. Males decline the most physiologically; female sexuality
2. Textbook writing is a crystallized skill, so I should be just as is most affected by social issues (such as the lack of a
good at my life passion during my sixties—provided I don’t partner).
get ill. Playing video games depends heavily on fluid skills, 5. Although the “physical sexual facts” show declining perfor-
so I will be far worse now than when I was young. mance is universal, especially for men, many people remain
3. The theory that applies to Rick’s problem—“too much on his sexually active into later life. Because sex is more centered
plate”—is Baltes’s selective optimization with compensation: on affection, many older adults say lovemaking is actually
He needs to (1) prioritize and shed less important jobs, better at their age.
Fuse/Getty Images
Later Life
This two-chapter book part, devoted to life’s last stage, highlights how we
develop and change as we move through senior citizenhood (the sixties and
beyond). Chapter 13 covers issues relevant to both the young-old and old-old
years. Chapter 14 emphasizes concerns that become pressing priorities in
advanced old age.
Chapter 13–Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development begins
PART VI
with an overview of the historic twenty-first-century age boom, then looks at
how memory changes as we age. During this discussion, you will not only learn
a wealth of information about memory and aging, but also get insights into
how to improve memory at any age. Then, we turn to the emotional side of life.
I’ll outline a creative theory and research spelling out why old age might be
the best life stage, and then offer tips for living meaningfully at this pinnacle
age. The second half of this chapter tackles those major later-life transitions:
retirement and widowhood.
Chapter 14–The Physical Challenges of Old Age begins by describing the

aging process and how it progresses into disease and disability. Then, I’ll
explore late-life sensory and motor changes and offer a detailed look at that
most feared old-age illness: Alzheimer’s disease. At the end of this chapter,
you will learn about the living arrangements and health-care options available
to people when old-age frailties strike. This chapter will open your eyes to the
challenges of age-related disabilities and, hopefully, sensitize you to the need
to change the wider world to promote an ideal older adult–environment fit.
387
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
Ageism Through the Ages
The Evolving Self

Memory
INTERVENTIONS: Keeping
Memory Fine-Tuned
Personal Priorities (and
Well-Being)
Jules: Fully Functioning at
Age 94
INTERVENTIONS: Using the
Research to Help Older Adults
Later-Life Transitions
Retirement
SCIENCE: U.S. Retirement
Realities
Widowhood
Visiting a Widowed Person’s
Support Group
Johnny Greig/E+/Getty Images

Later Life: Cognitive
and Socioemotional
Development
Ten years ago, at age 62, Susan and Carl retired. They were healthy (at the time)—and
with Carl’s investments and their pensions—well off. They were passionate to enjoy
these final decades, to travel, to focus on the moment, to revel in this new phase of life.
Carl and Susan never had children, but they had their nieces and nephews and many
friends. In particular, Susan was close to her niece, Emma, who called her favorite aunt,
“my adoptive mom.”
For Susan and Carl, retirement meant spending time with their closest friends and
family members, like Emma. It involved devoting weekdays to volunteering at church
and taking those well-loved cruises to Mexico, the Mediterranean, and Marrakesh.
Most of all, it meant having the joy of being together as a couple, free from the
demands of work. Carl’s heart disease—first diagnosed at age 66—lent poignancy to
their shared life. As it turned out, their retirement years were priceless, but they were
over too soon. After several bypass surgeries, and years of declining health, Carl died
of a massive stroke.
After Carl’s death, Susan felt numb. How can you go on without your high school
sweetheart, your life love for more than 50 years? But she was astonished by her mixed
emotions: the loneliness and sense of loss, even when surrounded by her friends; the
incredible joy (for the priceless relationship she and Carl had); the relief that Carl never
had to suffer being bedridden; pride in her ability to go on.
Actually, for the most part (bless the Lord), Susan has been amazed at her inner
strength. Realizing that as an “old lady of 72” she needed to make a new life, Susan
enrolled in an adult education program at the local college. With Emma’s help, she
mustered the courage to construct a profile on a seniors’ dating website. Of course, no
one will ever, ever take Carl’s place. But wouldn’t it be fun to try dating, liberated from
the fears of being rejected or anxieties about making an adult life she had at age 21!
S
usan’s life changed dramatically confronts physical frailties of advanced
from the time she and Carl retired old age.
until her husband got sick and died. Susan’s life differs dramatically from
These two chapters capture the develop- most elderly widows around the globe—
mental shifts people experience as they in her lifestyle, in her open attitudes
travel through the young-old (sixties toward dating, in having the income to
and seventies) and old-old (over age 80) enjoy her older years. Still, in one way,
years. In the current chapter, I’ll focus on her experience is similar to millions of
cognition and the socioemotional side of other people her age. She is a foot soldier
later life. In Chapter 14, I’ll be following in a late-life army storming through the
Susan as she moves into her eighties and developed world.
389
390 PART VI Later Life
median age The age at which

50 percent of a population
is older and 50 percent is
Setting the Context
younger.
The well-known reason for this invasion is the baby boomers marching into their
young-old years. Moreover, due to our twentieth-century advances in life expectancy,
young-old People in their
sixties and seventies.
when people reach that magical sixty-fifth birthday, they can now expect, on average,
to live for 18 more years (Adams & Rau, 2011).
old-old People almost age 80
and older.
Falling fertility is also producing this unique historic demographic change
(Cherlin, 2010; recall Chapter 11). When birth rates decline, the median age of a
nation—the cutoff age at which half of the population is older and half is younger—
tends to rise. With childbearing rates dipping sharply in Europe and Asia in recent
decades, the median age of the population in most developed countries is now well
into middle age.
The baby boomers, longevity, and low fertility are converging to produce our
new, old world. You can track this demographic storm as it peaks in specific nations
Jens Lucking/MECKY/Getty Images
in Figure 13.1. In 2030 in Japan, where average life expectancy now tops age 81 and
fertility rates are low, the median age of the population will be roughly age 50. In
Italy, 1 out of every 2 people will be at least 52. And in that same year, roughly 1 in
every 5 Americans and 1 in 4 Europeans will be over age 65 (National Center for
Health Statistics, 2008).
How will you feel about living in a nation where the people with walkers may
Long life expectancies, declining be about to outnumber the babies in strollers on your streets? For hints, you might
fertility, the baby boomers reach- take a trip to a U.S. city where the age storm has struck. In Sarasota, Florida, where
ing old age—all of these forces the 65-plus population tops 30 percent, residents view age 70 as “young.” You aren’t
explain why the median age of
the population is increasing and defined as elderly until you make it to age 80 and above (Fishman, 2010). In Sarasota,
why, in the decades to come, people understand: Statistically speaking, there is a world of difference between being
more people will look closer in healthy and young-old and having physical frailties (or depending on those walkers)
age to this elderly woman than during the old-old years.
her 22-year-old granddaughter.
The health (and wealth) differences between the young-old and old-old may
explain our contradictory stereotypes about later life. We have the image of the vital,
energetic widow dating on-line, and the vision of the lonely, aged person languish-
ing in a nursing home; the portrait of an affluent, retired married couple traveling
the world, and picture of the depressed institutionalized elder with a dementing
disease.
Canada 2015 (est.)

2030 (est.)
Germany
Japan
Italy
United States
China
35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53
Median age
(years)
figure 13.1: Predicted median age of the population, selected countries, in 2015 and
2030: Now, the median age of the population—the point at which half the people are younger and
half are older—is 45-plus in Italy, Germany, and Japan. Also, notice how high the median ages in
these nations will be in 2030. How do you think living in these “most-aged nations” will affect
residents’ daily lives?
Data from: Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001.
CHAPTER 13 Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development 391
The expressions on the faces

of this joyous 65-year-old and
dour 90-year-old say it all. In
© Bjarki Reyr MR/Alamy

terms of lifestyle, personality,
© Randy Faris/CORBIS
memory, health, and everything

else, there can be a world of
difference between being
young-old and old-old.
But amid this diversity lies consensus about the negative qualities related to being
old. Worldwide, people link old age with physical and mental decline. While people
in places like Sardinia, Italy, where the elderly have reputations for living healthy to
the end of life, have more upbeat attitudes (Bottiroli and others, 2013), if you ask most
older adults to forecast their futures, you are apt to hear gloomy comments such as, “I
won’t be as happy in five years as I am today” (Lang and others, 2013).
The bottom line is that everyone—young and old—is guilty of ageism, intensely ageism Stereotypic, intensely
negative attitudes about old age, although among emerging adults this aversion negative ideas about old
varies depending on personality traits such as openness to experience or whether a age.
young person is phobic about physical decline (Allan, Johnson, & Emerson, 2014).
Moreover, as the Experiencing the Lifespan box shows, in contrast to our stereotypes,
throughout history, old age has also been feared as a time of unremitting loss. Luckily,
we also gravitate to the elderly for classic positive traits.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Ageism Through the Ages

The hair is gray. . . . The brows are gone, the eyes are disabled and ill. In many societies, for instance, the same
blear . . . The nose is hooked and far from fair. . . . The ears person who had been revered was subjected to barbaric
are rough and pendulous. . . . The face is sallow, dead and treatment once he outlived his usefulness—that is, became
drear. . . . The chin is purs’d . . . the lips hang loose. . . . decrepit or senile. Samoans killed their elderly in elaborate
Aye such is human beauty’s lot! . . . Thus we mourn for the ceremonies in which the victim ageism
was required to participate.
Stereotypic, intensely
good old days . . . , wretched crones, huddled together negativetoideas
Other cultures left their older people die about old
of neglect.
by the blaze. . . . age. as old men, stand
Michelangelo and Sophocles, revered
as symbols of the age-friendly attitudes of the nations in
(excerpted from an Old English poem called
“Lament of the Fair Heaulmiere” [or Helmet-maker’s which they lived. However, the images portrayed in their
girl], quoted in Minois, 1989, p. 230) creative works celebrated youth and beauty. Even in Clas-
sical Greece and Renaissance Italy—societies known for
Many of us assume that people had better values and atti- being enlightened—people believed old age was the worst
tudes toward old age in “the good old days.” Poems such time of life.
as the one above show that we need to give that stereotype
a closer look. As historian Georges Minois (1989) concluded in a survey
of how Western cultures treated their elders, “It is the
In ancient times, old age was seen as a miracle because it tendency of every society to live and go on living: it extols
was so rare. Where there was no written language, older the strength and fecundity that are so closely linked to
people were valued for their knowledge. However, this youth and it dreads the . . . decrepitude of old age. Since
elevated status applied only to a few people—typically the dawn of history . . . young people have regretted the
men—who were upper class. For slaves, servants, and onset of old age. The fountain of youth has always consti-
women, old age was often a cruel time. tuted Western man’s most irrational hope” (p. 303).
Moreover, just as today, cultures made a distinction (The information in this box is taken from Minois, 1989, and
between active, healthy older people and those who were Fischer, 1977.)
In one U.S. poll, adults agreed that a 75-year-old would be superior to a 20-
something in calmly handling conflicts (Swift, Abrams, & Marques, 2013). When
undergraduates were asked to discuss the personalities of audio recordings of speak-
ers with “elderly” and “young” voices,” students did judge the old voices being less
powerful. But they said they would gravitate to the elderly speakers for being gifted
storytellers and being wise (Montepare, Kempler & McLaughlin-Volpe, 2014).
In these next two chapters, I’ll be giving you a wealth of scientific insights into
our negative old-age stereotypes—as I chart the ways thinking and physical abilities
decline in the older years. But as we enter the emotional lives of the elderly, I hope
to give you a more positive image of your late life future, too. Do older people really
have a mellower, more balanced, wise perspective on life? Before reading the research
facts relating to this topic and others, you might want to explore your personal old-age
stereotypes by taking the “Is It True About the Elderly” questionnaire (Table 13.1).
Table 13.1: Is It True About the Elderly?
1. Memory stays stable through midlife, then declines in later life.

2. There is little that can be done to improve memory in old age.
3. Old people think about life more negatively than young people.
4. The typical retirement age is 65.
5. Older workers are more rigid.
6 Widowhood is always a totally devastating emotional blow.
7. Due to scientific advances, we will soon be able to live well beyond the maximum human
lifespan.
8. Compared to vision difficulties, hearing losses in old age are “a piece of cake.”
9. No one who has Alzheimer’s disease can live a meaningful life.
10. About 50 percent of people over 65 live in nursing homes.
(I’ll be discussing items 1–6 in this chapter and items 7–10 in Chapter 14.)
Answers: 1. F, 2. F, 3. F, 4. F, 5. F, 6. F, 7. F, 8. F, 9, F, 10. F
The Evolving Self

Now, let’s start our research tour, by first exploring how that important component of
thinking, memory, changes during our older years, and then turning to the emotional
quality of later life.
Memory
When we think of specific cognitive abilities, as we get older, we can look forward
to positive changes—expanding our crystallized skills, becoming wise (recall
Chapter 12). If you are like people in the poll I mentioned earlier, you would believe
that 75-year-olds are more talented at specific abilities such as solving crossword
puzzles than the young (Swift, Abrams, & Marques, 2013). These upbeat feelings do
not extend to memory. With memory, starting in midlife, we see only decline. (The
classic fifty-something phrase is, “Sorry, I’m having a senior moment!”) Once people
reach their late sixties and seventies, the wider world is on high alert for memory
problems, too.
In a classic study, psychologists demonstrated this mindset by filming actors
aged 20, 50, and 70 reading an identical speech. During the talk, each person made
a few references to memory problems, such as “I forgot my keys.” Volunteers then

watched only the young, middle-aged, or older actor and wrote about what the per-
son was like. Many of the people who saw the 70-year-old described him as forgetful.
No one who heard the identical words read by the younger adults even mentioned
memory! (See Rodin & Langer, 1980.)
The reality is that, when a young person forgets something, we pass off the prob-
lem as due to external forces: “I was distracted”; “I had too much going on”; “It might
be those four glasses of wine I had at dinner last night.” When that person is old, we
have a more ominous interpretation: “Perhaps this is the beginning of Alzheimer’s
disease” (Erber & Prager, 1999). When you last were with an elderly family mem-
ber and she forgot a name or appointment, did the idea that “Grandma is declining
mentally” cross your mind?
Scanning the Facts

Are older people’s memory abilities really much worse than those of younger adults?
Unfortunately, the answer, based on thousands of studies, is yes. In testing everything
from the ability to recall unfamiliar faces to the names of new places, from remem-
bering the content of paragraphs to recalling where objects are located in space,
the elderly perform more poorly than the young (see Dixon and others, 2007, for a
review).
As a memory task gets more difficult, the performance gap between young and
old people expands. When psychologists ask old people to recognize an item or word
they have previously seen, they do almost as well as 20-year-olds (Danckert & Craik,
2013). The elderly score comparatively worse when they need to come up with that
word or name completely on their own. (The distinction here is analogous to taking
a multiple-choice exam versus a short-answer test.) Older people perform even more
dismally when they have to recall a face or name and link it to a specific context
(Dennis and others, 2008; see also Craik, Luo, & Sakuta, 2010): “Yes, I recognize
that guy . . . but was he the cable repairman or a guest at Claire’s commencement
party last month?”
While connecting names to places, or remembering exactly
where we heard some bit of information, is difficult in old age,
this task is not easy at any life stage. I’ll never forget when a
twenty-something student server blew me away with this com-
ment: “I remember you very well, Dr. Belsky. I learned so much
© Sean Locke Photography/Shutterstock

in your English Literature class three years ago.”
The elderly do especially poorly on divided-attention
tasks—situations in which they need to memorize material or
perform an activity while monitoring something else. Remem-
bering to keep checking the clock so that you don’t miss your 3
p.m. class, texting or spending time on Facebook while “listen-
ing” to a lecture—these multitasking activities impair memory
performance at any age (Craik, Luo, & Sakuta, 2010). Warning! If you can relate to this photo the next time you are
This is a documented fact! But while young people can master tempted to text during that not-so-interesting class, keep
these kinds of difficult divided-attention tasks, they are virtually this message in mind: Divided-attention tasks make
memory worse!
impossible in old age (Gothe, Oberauer, & Kliegl, 2008).
More depressing, when researchers pile on the memory demands and add
time pressures, deficits show up as early as the late twenties (Borella, Carretti,
& De Beni, 2008). Returning to the previous chapter, it makes sense that when
people have to remember new, random bits of information very fast, losses take
place soon after youth. These requirements are prime examples of fluid intel- divided-attention task
ligence tasks. A difficult memory
challenge involving
What is going wrong with memory as we age? Let’s get insights from examining
memorizing material while
two different ways of conceptualizing “a memory”: the information-processing and simultaneously monitoring
memory-systems approaches. something else.
An Information-Processing Perspective on Memory Change

Remember from Chapters 3 and 5 that developmentalists who adopt an information-
processing theory perspective on cognition see memory as progressing through stages.
The gateway system, which transforms information into more permanent storage, is
called working memory.
Working memory, as I mentioned in Chapter 5, contains a limited memory-bin
space—the amount of information we can keep in our awareness. It includes an
executive processor that controls our attention and transforms the contents of this
temporary storage facility into material we can remember later on. Recall that, during
childhood, as the frontal lobes mature, working memory-bin capacity dramatically
improves. Unfortunately, as we travel through adulthood, working memory works
worse and worse (McCabe and others, 2010; Reuter-Lorenz, 2013).
What explains this decline? Experts target deficits with the exec-
utive processor, that hypothetical structure responsible for manipu-
lating material into the permanent memory store. As people age,
they have more problems with focusing this master controller and
so can’t attend as well to what they need to learn (Müller-Oehring
and others, 2013; Ofen & Shing, 2013; Rowe, Hasher, & Turcotte,
2008). One classic symptom of this executive function deficit, as you
just saw, is that older people have exceptional trouble mastering
divided-attention tasks.
BraunS/E+/Getty Images
When we think of executive functions such as selective atten-

tion, a particular brain structure comes to mind. Later-life memory
deficits, according to current thinking, mainly reflect age-related
deterioration in the frontal lobes (Reuter-Lorenz, 2013). Neurosci-
Remembering the speaker’s
entists can vividly “see” this cortical thinning by taking images of the
messages at this senior citizen brain (Müller-Oehring, 2013; Fjell and others, 2014). Brain-imaging studies reveal an
center lecture is going to erosion of myelin in the frontal lobes is typical during the older years (Lu and others,
be especially hard because 2013). Although they can’t directly view individual neurons, based on autopsying
older people have special
trouble screening out distracting
animals, scientists now believe that synaptic loss also characterizes the elderly brain
audience conversations and (Samson & Barnes, 2013).
focusing on what they need to How does the older brain adapt? Because brain-imaging techniques allow us to
learn. track activation patterns when adults are given memory tasks, they also offer fascinat-
ing information about this issue.
With easy memory challenges, such as remembering a few items, notice from
Figure 13.2 that older adults show a broader pattern of frontal-lobe activity compared
to young adults (Reuter-Lorenz, 2013; Friedman & Johnson, 2014). But, as the task
figure 13.2: Frontal lobe

activation in young (left)
and older adults (right) in a
memory study: In this fMRI
study, researchers measured
activation in the frontal lobes
when older and younger adults
were given a relatively easy
laboratory memory task. Notice
on the left photo that, while
regions of the left hemisphere
alone are activated in young
Chris Gallagher/Science Source
adults, the older brains (right

image) are working harder
to master this task—as here
activation occurs in both brain
hemispheres.
Data from: Reuter-Lorenz &
Cappell, 2008.
gets difficult, the older brain shifts to underactivation—suggesting that it totally

maxed out! (See Park & McDonough, 2013; Reuter-Lorenz, 2013.)
This finding is very depressing. Does the aging brain have to work on overdrive
and then ultimately “give up” (neurologically speaking) in remembering everything?
Luckily, the answer is no. Some memories are more indelibly carved in our mind.
A Memory-Systems Perspective on Change

Think of the amazing resilience of some memories and the incredible vulnerability
of others. Why do you automatically remember how to hold a tennis racquet even
though you have not been on a court for years? Why is “George Washington,” the
name of our first president, locked in your mind while you are incapable of remem-
bering what you had for dinner three days ago? These kinds of memories seem to
differ in ways that go beyond how much effort went into embedding them into our
minds. They seem qualitatively different in a fundamental way.
According to the memory-systems perspective (Craik, 2000; Tulving, 1985), memory-systems perspective
there are three basic types of memory: A framework that divides
memory into three types:
• Procedural memory refers to information that we automatically remember, with- procedural, semantic, and
out conscious reflection or thought. A real-life example involves physical skills. episodic memory.
Once we have learned a complex motor activity, such as how to ride a bike, we auto- procedural memory In
matically remember how to perform that skill once we are in that situation again. the memory-systems
perspective, the most
• Semantic memory is our fund of basic factual knowledge. Remembering that resilient (longest-lasting)
George Washington was our first president and knowing what a bike is are exam- type of memory; refers
to material, such as well-
ples of the kinds of information in this well-learned, crystallized database. learned physical skills,
that we automatically
• Episodic memory refers to the ongoing events of daily life. When you remember recall without conscious
going bike riding last Thursday or what you had for dinner last night, you are draw- awareness.
ing on episodic memory. semantic memory In
As you can see in these examples and those described in Table 13.2, episodic the memory-systems
perspective, a moderately
memory is the most fragile system. A year from now you will still remember who resilient (long-lasting) type
of memory; refers to our
ability to recall basic facts.
Table 13.2: Examples of the Differences Among Procedural, Semantic, episodic memory In
the memory-systems
and Episodic Memory perspective, the most fragile
type of memory, involving
Procedural Memory Semantic Memory Episodic Memory the recall of the ongoing
You get into your blue Toyota You know that you have a blue You memorize where you events of daily life.
and automatically know how to Toyota. left your blue Toyota in the
drive. parking lot of the amusement
park.
You automatically find yourself You remember that “Jingle You remember the last time
singing the words to “Jingle Bells” is a song. you heard “Jingle Bells.”
Bells” when the melody comes
on the radio.
You begin to get excited as you You know that you are a You memorize the room
approach your college campus student at X University and that number of this class during
for the fall semester of your you are a psychology major. the first week of the new
senior year. semester.*
I unconsciously find the I know that I am writing a I remember that today
letters I am typing now on my book called Experiencing the I must go to the library and
computer. Lifespan. photocopy an article on
memory that I will need in
preparing this chapter.
*Now that it’s late in the semester, the location of this class has migrated into procedural memory; so, although you
automatically walk to the door, if a friend says, “I’ll meet you at class. Just tell me the room number,” you are apt to
draw a blank!
George Washington is (semantic memory). You will recall how to get on the bike
and use the handlebars to pace your speed (procedural memory). However, even a
few days later, you are likely to forget what you had for dinner on a particular night.
Remembering isolated events—from what day we last went bike riding, to what we
ate last Tuesday, to the paragraph you are reading now—are especially vulnerable
to time.
The good news is that on tests of semantic memory older people may do as well
as the young (Dixon and others, 2007). Procedural memory is amazingly long-lasting,
as we know when we get on a bike after not having ridden for decades, and take off
down the road. The real age loss occurs in episodic memory—remembering the
details of daily life.
This decline in episodic memory is what people notice when they realize they
are having more trouble remembering the name of a person at a party or where they
parked the car. Our databank of semantic memories stays intact until well into later
life (Ofen & Shing, 2013)—explaining why we expect older people to outperform
the young at crystallized verbal challenges such as crossword puzzles. People with
Alzheimer’s disease can retain procedural memories after the other
memory systems are largely gone. They can walk, dress themselves,
and even remember (to the horror of caregivers) how to turn on the
ignition and drive after losing their ability to recall basic facts, such
as where they live.
The incredible resilience of procedural memory explains why
your 85-year-old aunt, who was a musician, can still play the piano
beautifully, even though she is now incapable of remembering family
members’ names. Why is this particular system the last to go? The rea-
Ralf Nau/Digital Vision/Getty Images
son, according to neuropsychologists, is that the information in proce-

dural memory resides in a different region of the brain. When we first
learn a complex motor skill, such as driving or playing an instrument,
our frontal lobes are heavily involved. Then, after we have thoroughly
learned that activity, this knowledge becomes automatic and migrates
to a lower brain center, which frees up our frontal cortex for mastering
other higher-level thinking tasks (Friedman, 2003).
Why can this elegant 85-year-
old pianist still beautifully Actually, this is good. If I had to focus on remembering how to type these words
entertain you, even though she on my computer, would I ever be able to simultaneously do the complicated mental
is beginning to forget basic work of figuring out how to describe the concepts I am explaining now?
facts about her life? Because
In sum, the message with regard to age and memory is both worse and also far
her talents have migrated into
procedural memory—the final better than we might have thought: As we get older, we do not have to worry much
memory system to go. about remembering basic facts. Our storehouse of crystallized knowledge is “really
there.” However, we will have more trouble memorizing bits of new information, and
these losses in episodic memory show up at a surprisingly early age.
INTERVENTIONS: Keeping Memory Fine-Tuned

What should people do when they notice that their ability to remember life’s ongoing
details is worse? Let’s look at three approaches:
USE SELECTIVE OPTIMIZATION WITH COMPENSATION. The first strategy is to use
Baltes’s three-step process, spelled out in Chapter 12: (1) Selectively focus on what
you want to remember—that is, don’t clog your working memory bins with irrelevant
thoughts. (2) Optimize, or work hard to manipulate material in this system into per-
manent memory. (3) Use compensation, or external memory aids.
For example, to remember where you parked at the airport: (1) Focus on where
you are parking when you slide your car into the spot. Don’t daydream or get dis-
tracted by the need to catch the plane. (2) Work hard to encode that specific location
in your brain. (3) Take a photo on your smart phone so you won’t have to remember
that place all on your own.
At this point, readers might be thinking: Why not just bypass those difficult
executive-function challenges (selecting and optimizing) and skip to compensa-
tion, by using your phone? The problem, experts point out, is that over-relying on
environmental supports can have a dark side (Lindenberger & Mayr, 2014). If an
older person—or any person—depends excessively on external cues, that person
is destined for problems when those supports malfunction. Put concretely, if your
phone goes on the fritz, without a backup, you have lost your whole life. Moreover,
no technology can eliminate our need to memorize everyday episodic facts, such as
linking names to faces, remembering when we took Dr. Belsky’s class, or recalling
where we might have misplaced our keys two days ago. So let’s turn to optimization
(Baltes’s step 2), by spelling out strategies for effortlessly sliding information into
our memory bins.
USE MNEMONIC TECHNIQUES. Have you ever noticed that some episodic events are
locked in memory (such as your wedding day or the time you and your significant
other had that terrible fight), while others fade? Emotional events embed themselves
solidly into memory because they activate wider regions of the brain (Dolcos &
Cabeza, 2002). Therefore, the key to memorizing isolated bits of information is to
make material stand out emotionally.
Mnemonic techniques are strategies to make information emotionally vivid. mnemonic technique
These approaches range from using the acronym OCEAN to help you recall the A strategy for aiding
memory, often by using
name of each Big Five trait in studying for the Chapter 12 test to, when introduced imagery or enhancing the
to the elderly woman in the photo below, thinking, “I’ll remember her name is emotional meaning of what
Mrs. Silver because of her hair.” needs to be learned.
The fact that we learn emotionally salient information without much effort may
explain why our memories vary in puzzling ways in real life. A history buff soaks up
every detail about the Civil War but remains clueless about where he left his socks.
Because your passion is developmental science, you do well with very little studying
in this course, but it takes you hours to memorize a single page in your biology text.
Actually, the principle that emotional events are locked more firmly in our brains
may partly account for our impression that the elderly remember past experiences
best. In fact, when researchers asked adults to remember self-defining events in their
personal autobiographies (“the day I got accepted into graduate
school”; “when I hit that car on Lakeshore drive in November of
l982”), the elderly did perform better than the young! (See Martinelli
and others, 2013.)
WORK ON THE PERSON’S MENTAL STATE. This brings up the
thought that standard laboratory memory tests are unfair to older
adults. These tests require remembering random bits of episodic
information. So they showcase the very memory skill that dramati-
cally declines with age. Wouldn’t the elderly do comparatively better
when asked to remember emotionally salient information they need Ronnie Kaufman/Getty Images
in their daily lives?

Now compound this bias with the poisonous impact of self-
doubt. If you were 70 or 80, imagine how you would feel when asked
to participate in a memory study. Wouldn’t you be frightened, think-
ing, “This test might show I have Alzheimer’s disease!”
Actually, just being told, “I’m giving you a memory test,” makes older people feel Although his main goal is to
greet this woman in a warm,
years older (Hughes, Geraci, & De Forrest, 2013). Moreover, labeling a test as “measur- personal way, in order to
ing memory” impairs an older person’s performance on any cognitive test. In one scary remember his new friend’s name,
study, after being informed, “This is a memory test,” 70 percent of older adults scored this elderly man might want to
below the clinical cut-off for Alzheimer’s disease on a classic diagnostic test, compared step back and use the mnemonic
strategy of forming a mental
to less than one in five people not given that threat! Conversely, when researchers said image, thinking, “I’ll remember
a given IQ scale tapped wisdom, older people’s performance improved—even though it’s Mrs. Silver because of her
that test really measured a fluid skill (Hehman & Bugental, 2013). hair.”
socioemotional selectivity Moreover, subjective memory complaints (“I’m having terrible trouble remem-
theory A theory of aging bering”) have a tenuous relationship to an older person’s actual scores on memory
(and the lifespan) put
forth by Laura Carstensen,
tests (Crumley, Stetler, & Horhota, 2014; Pearman, Hertzog, & Gerstorf, 2014).
describing how the time What does predict subsequent cognitive decline, one longitudinal study suggested,
we have left to live affects is depression—feeling chronically unhappy with one’s current life (Goveas and
our priorities and social others, 2014).
relationships. Specifically, in
later life people focus on the
So, to take a family example, when my 90-year-old mother complained, “I can’t
present and prioritize being remember anything,” we children were wrong to automatically assume that she was
with their closest attachment developing Alzheimer’s disease. And, in fact, after taking action to improve my mom’s
figures. emotional state by moving her to a continuing care community (described in the next
chapter), her memory greatly improved.
Actually, in contrast to the image of late-life memory loss as caused by an irrevers-
ible brain “condition,” teaching the elderly memory improvement techniques does
work (see, for instance, Borella and others, 2014). Today, these strategies have prolifer-
ated (Gajewski, 2013), with scientists training older adults on everything from video
games (designed to heighten selective attention) (Toril, Reales, & Ballesteros, 2014), to
mastering the demands of daily life (Burkard and others, 2014; Brom & Kliegel, 2014;
McDaniel and others, 2014). Still, we do run into the problem of motivation. People
tend to “get lazy” (meaning not follow through) because optimization strategies demand
serious mental work! (See Burkard and others, 2014; Ennis, Hess, & Smith, 2013.)
Personal Priorities (and Well-Being)

Everyone believes that memory declines with age. But as I mentioned earlier, we have
more positive ideas about our emotional lives. Does old age really bring serenity and
emotional balance? Laura Carstensen believes it does.
Focusing on Time Left to Live: Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Imagine that you are elderly and aware that you have a limited time left to live.
How might your goals and priorities change? The idea that our place on the lifespan
changes our life agendas is the premise of Carstensen’s socioemo-
tional selectivity theory.
According to Carstensen (1995), during the first half of adult life,
our push is to look to the future. We are eager to make it in the wider
world. We want to reach a better place at some later date. As we grow
older and realize that our future is limited, we refocus our priorities.
We want to make the most of our present life.
Carstensen believes that this focus on making the most of every
moment explains why late life is potentially the happiest life stage. When
our agenda lies in the future, we often forgo our immediate desires in
the service of a later goal. Instead of telling off the boss who insults us,
we hold our tongue because this authority figure holds the key to getting
ahead. We are nice to that nasty person, or go to that dinner party we
would rather pass up in order to advance socially or in our career. We
accept the anxiety-ridden months when we first move to an unfamiliar
city because we expect to feel better than ever in a year or two.
Martin Barraud/Getty Images
In later life, we are less interested in where we will be going. So we

refuse to waste time with unpleasant people or enter anxiety-provoking
situations because they may have a payoff at some later point. Almost
unconsciously, we decide, “I don’t have that long to live. I have to
spend my time doing what makes me feel good emotionally right now.”
Furthermore, when our passion lies in making the most of the
Socioemotional selectivity theory, with its principle
that, in old age, we make the most of every
present, Carstensen argues, our social priorities shift. During child-
moment, explains why, at celebrations, older adults hood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood our mission is to leave
are often the life of the party. our attachment figures. We want to expand our social horizons, form
new close relationships, and connect with exciting new people

who can teach us new things. Once we have achieved our life
goals, we are less interested in developing new attachments. We
already have our family and network of caring friends. So we cen-
ter our lives on our spouse, our best friends, and our children—
the people we love the most.
Actually, as we travel throughout adulthood our social net-
© Stockbroker/MBI/Alamy
works do shrink, and we center our lives more on family than
friends (Wrzus and others, 2013). Moreover, perhaps partly due
to years of experience managing complex social situations (see
the previous chapter), the elderly report more positive interper-
sonal encounters than the young (English & Carstensen, 2014).
Older people, Carstensen finds, carefully limit their social encounters, too. When Socioemotional selectivity
her research team asked elderly and young people, “Who would you rather spend theory, with its principle that, in
time with—a close family member, an acquaintance, or the author of a recent book?” old age, we focus on our closest
attachment figures, explains why
Young people’s choices were spread among the three possible partners. Older people simply spending time with each
chose overwhelmingly to be with the family member, their closest attachment figure other and their grandchildren
in life (Fung, Lai, & Ng, 2001). is this elderly couple’s passion
in life.
When Do We Prioritize the Present Regardless of Our Life Stage?

But is this change in priorities simply a function of being old? The answer is no.
Adults with fatal illnesses also voted to spend an evening with a familiar close person.
So did people who were asked to imagine that they were about to move across the
country alone. According to Carstensen, whenever we see our future as limited, we
pare down our social contacts, maximize our positive experiences, and spend time
with the people we care about the most.
Socioemotional selectivity theory explains why—although normally you are con-
tent to live a continent away—when you are in danger of losing a loved one, you want
to be physically close. So, you fly in to spend time with your beloved grandma when
she is seriously ill. You insist on spending a weekend with your high school friend
who is leaving for a tour of duty in the military in some dangerous part of the world.
The theory accounts for the choices my cousin Clinton made when he was diag-
nosed with lymphoma in his early twenties. An exceptionally gifted architect, Clinton
gave up his promising career and retired to rural New Hampshire to build houses,
hike, and ski for what turned out to be another quarter-century of life. Clinton’s
funeral, at age 50, was an unforgettable celebration—a testament to a person who,
although his life was shorter than most, lived fully for longer than many people who
survive to twice this age. Have you ever seen the principles of socioemotional selectiv-
ity theory in operation in your own life?
Making the Case for Old Age as the Best Time of Life
This passion to make the most of every moment may partly explain the paradox of paradox of well-being The
well-being—the puzzling research fact that, as I mentioned in Chapter 12, happi- fact that despite their
physical and mental losses,
ness improves well into later life (Gana and others, 2013). Here are two additional the elderly report being just
(related) causes: as happy or happier than the
OLDER PEOPLE PRIORITIZE POSITIVE EMOTIONAL STATES. This bias to focus on young.
positive experiences, alluded to earlier, has been so well documented by now that it
has its own label: the positivity effect. To take one example, imagine being at a casino positivity effect The tendency
and sitting next to an elderly adult. Carstensen’s research suggests the older person for older people to focus on
positive experiences and
will be just as happy as you when she expects to win. But she probably won’t be upset screen out negative events.
(or will get far less disturbed) when she loses (Nielsen, Knutson, & Carstensen, 2008).
People of every age, as I described in the previous section, remember emotional
stimuli best. However, the elderly perform better when asked to recall happy versus
sad images and faces (Simon and others, 2013).
Older people also view their distressing life experiences in a less gloomy way.
When asked to describe an upsetting event in their past, older adults used fewer
negative emotions and described far less anxiety than did younger adults (Robertson &
Hopko, 2013). When Carstensen’s research team had different age groups listen to
stories about a 25-year-old and a 75-year-old, then asked these volunteers to retell the
stories from the perspective of each person, the elderly participants used more positive
statements when talking from the older person’s point of view. The younger adults
showed no signs of understanding that old people might think differently
than the young (Sullivan, Mikels, & Carstensen, 2010). So, not only are
older people adept at minimizing negativity, they have a secret knowledge
you only get from reaching later life. In old age, we can rise above the
storms of daily life.
If you need more evidence that age offers this serene bird’s-eye per-
spective, consider a remarkable poll charting the emotional states of over
40,000 Australian adults over age 40: While younger adults were more apt
to describe intense highs and lows, the elderly more often reported feel-
ing calm and peaceful than the middle-aged group (Windsor, Burns, &
Byles, 2013).
OLDER PEOPLE LIVE LESS-STRESSFUL LIVES. Actually, there are clear,
external reasons why old age should be a worry-free life stage: No lon-
ger having the hassles of raising children or the gut-churning pressures
to perform at work. Older people report fewer daily stresses than the
young (Charles & Almeida, 2007; Charles and others, 2010; von Hippel,
© KatarzynaBialasiewicz/iStock/Getty
Henry, & Matovic, 2008). An added bonus is that the outside world treats
you with special care (Luong, Charles, & Fingerman, 2010). In one study,
when researchers asked adults how they would react in a difficult interper-
sonal situation, people said they would be prone to hold off confronting
someone if that individual was old (Fingerman, Miller, & Charles, 2008).
An elderly speaker alerted my class to this interesting perk when he men-
Having help from young women tioned, “The best thing about being 88 is that everyone is incredibly nice!”
is likely to be a new life experi- If strangers opened doors for you, people forgave your foibles, and everyone made
ence for this man. How would a special effort to be kind, wouldn’t you feel better about life and the human race?
you feel about “the goodness
of humanity,” if people started
So knowing your life will end, and many years spent living, provide surprising
treating you in this unusually emotional bonuses. Moreover, in old age, people have more luxury to do just what
caring way? they want, and the outside world hassles them less!
What Can Make Old Age the Unhappiest Time of Life?

But at this point, many of you may be thinking, “Something is wrong with this pic-
ture.” What about the miserable elderly people who the world doesn’t treat so kindly,
older adults left to languish, lonely and impoverished, in their so-called golden years?
When I gave talks on successful aging at local senior centers in my thirties (some
gall!), I vividly recall one 89-year-old woman who put me in my place: “Wait till you
are my age, young lady. Then you will really know how terrible it is to be old!”
The erosion of U.S. retirement as a life stage (to be described in the next section)
is destined to impair the emotional quality of old age. As “social connectedness” is
critical to human happiness, widowhood and outliving friends must take a psycho-
logical toll. Now, combine this with the physical losses of advanced old age, and
it should come as no surprise that some studies show happiness takes a nosedive
as people approach the old-old years (Dozeman and others, 2010; Rothermund &
Brandstädter, 2003).
So, the paradox of well-being extends only so far. When people are frail or dis-
abled and death looms on the horizon, life can lose all of its purpose and joy. As one
formerly ideally-aging man wrote: “I was still driving, walking . . . and feeling pretty
confident about my condition . . . at age 87; now after three more years of age-related
decline, I’ve almost had enough. . . . Without (my wife) . . . I would be hard pressed
to find reasons to get up in the morning. Even with Kathe, I’ve begun to feel that I’ve
almost had enough living without the people and possessions that shaped my life”
(adapted from Crum, 2014, p. 6).
Still, let’s not stereotype all ninety-somethings as in a dismal holding pattern,
waiting for death. As my inspiring interview with Jules in the Experiencing the
Lifespan box shows, some people live exceptionally gratifying lives at the uppermost
limits of life.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Jules: Fully Functioning at Age 94

It was a hot August morning at Vanderbilt University as about living an ethical life?” During the Second World War
friends, colleagues, and students gathered to celebrate my brothers and I decided we could never participate in
the publication of his book. Their voices often cracked violence, and so we were conscientious objectors. I knew
with emotion as they rose to testify: “You changed my I could never kill another human being.
life. You are an inspiration—the best therapist and super-
I started out my work life as a public school teacher in
visor I’ve ever had.” Frail, bent over, beginning to doze—
Baltimore. I had no desire to get a Ph.D., but when I read
suddenly, 94-year-old Jules came to life. “My book traces
a paper by Carl Rogers* in 1948, who was developing his
the development of my ideas about ideal mental health.
client-centered therapy, I was electrified: Understand the
It’s been a 60-year journey to identify the ‘fully functional
person from his own framework; don’t be judgmental; look
person’ that I’m still trying to get right today.” Who is
beyond the diagnosis to the real human being. By listening
this revered role model? What made Jules the person he
empathically and relating unconditionally, you can guide a
is, and what is his philosophy about aging and life? Let’s
person toward health. Those decades I spent collaborating
read this interview.
with Carl ended up defining my life work.
My parents left Europe right before the First World War.
I’m still the same person as always, the same adolescent
So in 1915, I was lucky enough to arrive in this world
hiding in the body of a 94-year-old man—but with much
(or be born). Growing up in Baltimore, my brothers and
more experience in living! The difference is that, physically,
I were incredibly close because, as the only Jewish family
I am handicapped [with congestive heart failure] and so I use
in our Christian immigrant neighborhood, we were living
a shorter horizon. Instead of thinking about a year ahead,
in an alien world. I vividly remember the neighborhood
I might think about a week. . . . I am well aware that I could
kids regularly taunting us as Jesus killers as we walked
die any time. But it’s unthinkable to me not to do therapy. I’m
to school. So we learned from an early age that the world
incomplete if I am not expressing my passion in life.
can be a dangerous place. What this experience did was to
take us in the opposite direction . . . to see every person as It’s important never to put life in the past tense. There is no
precious, to develop attitudes that were worldwide. such thing as “aging” or “retirement.” You are always learn-
ing and developing. When I was younger and looked to the
When I was a teenager, and asked myself, “What is impor-
Bible for guidance, I gravitated to the prophet Micah. Micah
tant in life?” the answer was “relationships,” . . . to have a
sums up my philosophy for living in this one sentence:
fundamental faith in people. It was clear that human beings
“What doeth the lord require of me but to do justly, to love
had a long way to go to reach maturity, but you need to act
mercy, and to walk humbly with thy god.”
ethically and lovingly. I also looked to the Bible for guid-
ance, asking myself, “What do the ancient prophets tell us *Rogers was one of the premier twentieth-century psychologists.
Decoding Some Keys to Happiness in Old Age

Do you have an old-age role model such as Jules, someone who believes he is
continuing to develop as a person at age 90 or 94? What makes these people stand
out? For one thing, Jules demonstrates the openness to experience, self-efficacy, and
ability to reinterpret upsetting life events as growth experiences that define being wise
(Etezadi & Pushkar, 2013; recall the previous chapter). What is particularly striking is
this master therapist’s generativity, and the fact that Jules has reached Erikson’s mile-
stone of integrity (see Table 13.3 on the next page). Jules knows he has lived accord-
ing to the prophetic guidelines that he views at the core of having a meaningful life.
Table 13.3: Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages and Tasks

According to Erikson, our task in later adulthood is to look back over our life to see if we
accomplished what we set out to do. Older people who know they have lived fully are not afraid to
die. But older adults who have serious regrets about their lives may be terrified of death and feel a
sense of despair.
integrity Erik Erikson’s eighth Erikson believed that, to reach integrity, older people must review their lives and
psychosocial stage, in which make peace with what they have previously done. But, happiness in old age does not
elderly people decide that
their life missions have
involve dwelling on the past. As with Jules, it involves finding purpose and meaning
been fulfilled and so accept in your present life (Burr, Santo, & Pushkar, 2011).
impending death. Moreover, younger readers might be interested to know
that, apart from everything else, having a sense of life purpose
also predicts living longer. In one mammoth longitudinal
study, adults of every age who agreed with questionnaire
items such as, “I wander aimlessly through life,” died at ear-
lier ages than their peers (Hill & Turiano, 2014).
By now you might be thinking that I am being far, far too
positive. Clearly, people who remain upbeat emotionally and
connected socially in advanced old age are rare. Not so fast! In
Tim Macpherson/The Image Bank/Getty Images
four studies tracking Swedish people as they moved through

their eighties, researchers did find specific groups declined dra-
matically cognitively or were isolated and depressed. But, the
largest fraction of this oldest-old group remained stable in terms
of life satisfaction and being socially engaged. They retained a
reasonably good memory, too (Morack and others, 2013).
Live purposefully, be open to experience, remain lov-
ingly attached, be generative—these are some keys to aging
happily into advanced old age (and living happily during any
Notice this man’s sense of
stage of adult life!).
pleasure at helping his friend.
Now we know that feeling
generative and, especially, INTERVENTIONS: Using the Research to Help Older Adults
having a sense of life purpose, Now, let’s summarize all of these messages. How can we help older people improve
may even extend older people’s their memory skills? How should you think about the relationship priorities of older
lives.
loved ones, and when should you worry about their emotional states? Here are some
suggestions:
• As late-life memory difficulties are most likely to show up in situations where
there is “a lot going on,” give older people ample time to learn material and pro-
vide them with a nondistracting environment (more about this environmental
engineering in Chapter 14).
• Don’t stereotype older adults as having a “bad” memory. Remember that semantic
memory stays stable with age, and that teaching mnemonic strategies can work.
Help older people develop their memory skills by suggesting this chapter’s tips.
Also, however, be realistic. Tell the older person, “If you notice a decline in your
ability to attend to life’s details (episodic memory), that’s normal. It does NOT
mean you have Alzheimer’s disease” (Dixon and others, 2007).
• Encourage older loved ones—even those with disabilities—to maintain a personal
passion. Being “efficaciously” engaged not only helps slide information through
our memory bins, but makes for a happy life.
• Using the insights that socioemotional selectivity theory offers, don’t expect older
people to automatically want to socialize or make new friends. When an elderly
person says, “I don’t want to go to the senior citizen center. All I care about is my
family,” she may be making an age-appropriate response.
• Don’t imagine that older people are unhappy. Actually, assume the reverse is
true. However, be alert to depression in someone who is physically frail and
socially isolated. Again, the key to warding off depression in old age is the same as
at any age: being generative, feeling closely attached, having a sense of meaning
in life.

1. Dwayne is planning on teaching lifespan development at the senior center. He’s
excited; but since, until now, he’s taught only younger people, he’s worried about
how memory changes in his older students might affect their enjoyment of his class.
Based on your understanding of which memory situations give older people the most
trouble, suggest some changes Dwayne might make in his teaching.
2. Classify each of the following memory challenges as involving episodic memory,
semantic memory, or procedural memory:
a. Someone asks you for your street address.
b. Someone asks you what you just read in this chapter.
c. You go bike riding.
3. Which of the abilities in the previous question (1) will an older loved one retain
the longest if she gets Alzheimer’s disease, and (2) will start to decline relatively
early in life?
4. As you study this section, come up with a vivid image to embed the major terms
in your mind. (For instance, to remember working memory, think of a brain on a
treadmill; to recall episodic memory, think of an episode of your favorite TV show.)
Do you agree that this optimization technique, while helpful, demands mental
effort?
5. You are eavesdropping on three elderly friends as they discuss their feelings about
life. According to socioemotional selectivity theory, which two comments might you
hear?
a. Frances says, “Now that I’m older, I want to meet as many new people as possible.”
b. Allen reports, “I’m enjoying life more than ever today. I’m savoring every
moment—and what a pleasure it is to do just what I want!”
c. Milly mentions, “I’ve been spending as much time as possible with my family, the
people who matter to me the most.”
6. Based on this chapter, give three reasons why happiness should peak in later life.
Later-Life Transitions
Now, let’s look at how people find meaning as they confront the life transitions of
retirement and widowhood.
Retirement
When we imagine the U.S. retirement age, we immediately think of 65. But, you
might be surprised to know, the age for collecting full Social Security benefits is now
66 (and for people born after 1970, it will be 67); and for decades the “true” average
U.S. retirement age was under 62 (Munnell & Rutledge, 2013). When we think of
being retired, we imagine a short life stage before death. But if you leave work in your
early sixties—particularly if you are female—expect to be retired for about a quarter
of your total life! (See Adams & Rau, 2011.)
What caused retirement to take up such a huge chunk of the lifespan, and what
is happening to this life stage in the United States today? Stay tuned as I scan the
global economic retirement scene, and then offer a synopsis of current U.S. retire-
ment trends.
Setting the Context: Differing Financial Retirement Cushions

If you are like many young people, you probably aren’t sure whether retirement will
continue to exist once you reach later life. Actually, there are places where retirement
doesn’t exist today. In Bangladesh, Jamaica, and Mexico, where more than half of
all people over 65 are in the labor force, the elderly must work till they get seriously
ill (Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001). The reason is that these nations lack the government-
financed programs that propelled developed world retirement into a full life stage.
By the late twentieth century, government-sponsored programs, sometimes allow-
ing retirement as young as the late fifties—were a fixture in more than 160 nations
(Kinsella & Velkoff, 2001). But even in Europe, which has universal old-age govern-
ment supports, retirement anxieties differ from place to place. In Scandinavia, with
its shared national goal to “help everyone cradle to grave,” residents feel secure that
they will be helped in old age. In Central Europe, where the gaps between rich and
poor are wide and economic hardship is common earlier in life, people are intensely
worried about their retirement years (Hershey, Henkins, & van Dalen, 2010).
What retirement programs can affluent nations provide? For answers, let’s com-
pare Germany and the United States.
GERMANY: MERCEDES MODEL GOVERNMENT SUPPORT. Germans currently do worry
more about retirement because they live in a rapidly aging nation where the govern-
ment may need to cut back on the funds citizens have long enjoyed—comfortable
old-age income for life. Retirement in Germany is mainly financed by employee and
employer payroll taxes similar to the system we have in the United States. However,
unlike in the United States, in Germany, the philosophy has traditionally been to
keep people well off during their older years. When the typical German worker
retires, the government has replaced roughly three-fourths of that person’s working
income for life. Until recently, Germans have had no worries about falling into pov-
erty in old age. Remarkably, German retirees have had more spending power as they
traveled further into old age (Hungerford, 2003).
THE UNITED STATES: GOING IT ALONE WITH MODEST GOVERNMENT HELP. If
Germany has offered a Mercedes-like model, government-funded U.S. retirement is
more like an old used car; it allows people to barely make it, but in no comfort at all.
The reason is that the famous, guaranteed old-age insurance program called Social
Security operates as a safety net to keep people from being destitute in old age.
Social Security The U.S.
Social Security, the landmark government program instituted by President
government’s national Franklin D. Roosevelt in l935 at the height of the Great Depression, gets its financing
retirement support program. from current workers. Employees and employers pay into this program to fund today’s
retirees; then, when it is their turn to retire, these adults get a lifelong stipend financed
by the current working population. However, with an average monthly check of
$1303 in late 2014, Social Security can barely support the basics of life for older adults
(Social Security Monthly Statistical Snapshot, 2014).
Private pensions (and personal savings) are supposed to take up the slack. private pensions The major
Workers put aside a portion of each paycheck, and these funds, often matched by source of nongovernmental
income support for U.S.
employer contributions, go into a tax-free account that accumulates equity. Then,
retirees, in which the
at retirement, the person gets regular payouts, or a lump sum, on which to live individual worker and
(Johnson, 2009). employer put a portion
The central role of private pensions in financing retirement reflects the priority of each paycheck into an
account to help finance
that the United States places on individual initiative. We are leery about the welfare-
retirement.
state implications of a federal government plan, preferring to provide tax incentives
that encourage workers to plan for retirement on their own.
Hot in Developmental Science: U.S. Retirement Realities

The problem is that, with an average retirement nest egg of $127,000, most baby
boomers haven’t come close to amassing the pension cushion (at least 10 times that
amount) to support a decent lifestyle for 15 or so years (Leicht & Fitzgerald, 2014;
Collinson, 2014). Moreover, unfortunately, many adults have unrealistic impressions
about their retirement futures, expecting help from family members or from pensions
that are unlikely to exist (Whitaker & Bokemeier, 2014). What are the real retirement
realities in the United States?
EXPECT LONGER WORKING LIVES. Hints come from asking people at the brink of
retirement age. Less than one in nine baby boomers feel very confident they can
retire with a comfortable lifestyle. Two out of three say they will work after age 65
(Collinson, 2014). In another poll, two in five people said they planned to work “til
they drop” (reported in Leicht & Fitzgerald, 2014).
Why do people in the United States approach retirement so financially strapped?
No, it’s not conspicuous consumption or an inability for this “entitled cohort” to
live within their means. The real problem, social critics argue, lies in rising income
inequality and the eroding loss in real wages (Leicht & Fitzgerald, 2014). When your
salary has not been keeping pace with the cost of living for years, you simply don’t
have the financial resources to save much for retirement. Now, combine this with the
fact that, when the Great Recession hit in 2008, one in four people had their wages
reduced or were laid off. Many baby boomers helplessly witnessed the value of their
largest asset, their homes, erode.
In Chapter 10, I alluded to how the Great Recession has forced young people to
postpone important events such as leaving the nest or getting married, in part because
of the difficulty of finding decent jobs. But as a laid-off older job seeker during those
gloomy years, you would also have considerable trouble finding work. Between 2008 and
2009, the over-55 unemployment rate soared from 3.2 to 7 percent. The median dura-
tion of joblessness for this group was 38.4 weeks at its peak (Leicht & Fitzgerald, 2014).
Moreover, even when baby boomers are fortunate to have well-paying jobs, they
may be reluctant to retire for another recession-related reason: In one national poll,
7 percent of U.S. older workers said they were putting off retiring to care for struggling
adult daughters and sons (Golden, 2014).
Where do women fit into this picture? As you might imagine, their less continuous
work histories and lower-wage jobs (remember Chapter 11), plus longer life expectan-
cies, make it particularly hard to amass sufficient retirement funds (“How can I save
for old age when I need my income to live?”) (Wang & Shi, 2014). While upper-
middle-class married women entering retirement are better off, they are vulnerable
to spending their nest eggs and ending their lives dependent just on Social Security.
In fact, the U.S. age group most likely to live in poverty is females over 85.
EXPECT TO CONSIDER WORKING AFTER YOU RETIRE.

These economic realities partly explain why two out
of three retirees in the United States do return to
work (Wang & Shi, 2014). Some people are fortu-
nate to continue working for the same employer at
reduced hours. Others search for less-stressful jobs or
start new, fulfilling late-life careers. Some go back to
AP Photo/The Star Tribune, Courtney Perry
work because they miss their social attachments at a

job (Wöhrmann, Deller, & Wang, 2013).
In Northern Europe, people who take post-
retirement jobs are more apt to be happy, because they
more often have voluntarily chosen this path (Cho &
Lee, 2014; Dingemans & Henkens, 2014). But this
is not true in the United States, where retirees may
be forced back into the labor market to make ends
This 70-year-old clerk would meet. Perhaps, like me, you have an older friend in this situation—needing to take
probably prefer basking at
a low-wage job to supplement his Social Security in order to financially survive.
the beach to bending over a
deli freezer. But given Social
Security’s meager allotment, The dismal message is that, yes, U.S. retirement is becoming a shorter, more frag-
millions of older Americans ile phase of life. Moreover, the income inequalities highlighted throughout this book
must work during their so-called persist into the older years. Just as being single and female predicts earlier adult poverty,
“golden” years.
the same forces spell financial trouble in later life. But even formerly upper-middle-
class people caught in the net of the Great Recession are vulnerable to struggling
financially in old age (Collinson, 2014). And as a woman, even if you enter retirement
affluent, poverty can be the unfortunate price of surviving until advanced old age.
Now that we understand the U.S. landscape, it’s time to explore other influences
that go into the decision to leave work.
Exploring the Complex Push/Pull Retirement Decision

Imagine that you are in your sixties and considering leaving your job. Clearly, your
primary consideration is economic: “Do I have enough money?” However, a second
force that comes into play in Western nations is health: “Can I physically continue at
work?” (De Preter, Van Looy, & Mortelmans, 2013; Wang & Shi, 2014). There may
be another, insidious influence prompting your decision: age discrimination.
age discrimination Illegally THE IMPACT OF AGE DISCRIMINATION. Age discrimination in the United States is
laying off workers or failing illegal. People cannot get fired for being “too old.” But because it’s acceptable to get
to hire or promote them on
the basis of age.
rid of more expensive workers—who tend to be older—for “business reasons,” it’s
difficult to prove that “age” was the reason why a fifty-something worker got laid off
(Rothenberg & Gardner, 2011).
Encouraging retirement via a special buyout is the preferred positive route
employers use to entice Western workers to “go gently” into their retirement years
(Ekerdt, 2010). In fact, in Northern Europe, lavish pension incentives often made
retiring at age 60 normal, because it didn’t make financial sense for people to con-
tinue to work (De Preter, Van Looy, & Mortelmans, 2013). But workers also disengage
from their jobs when they identify with being “ older employees,” agree with the
negative stereotypes attached to that category, and feel discriminated against at work
(Bayl-Smith & Griffin, 2014).
Older workers are supposed to be rigid, make more mental mistakes, be fearful of
technology, and be less adaptable at work (McCann & Keaton, 2013). The problem is
that these images are false! In one Swedish study, age made people more flexible at work
(Kunze, Boehm, & Bruch, 2013). Research in the United States has suggested older
workers are more compliant and, amazingly, less likely to take time off for being sick,
in addition to generally being more reliable than younger employees (Newman, 2011).
Still, these facts don’t matter much when a laid-off worker of age 50 or 60 bumps
up against age discrimination when looking for a new job (van Selm & Van der
Heijden, 2013). It’s impossible to prove that “too old” is the reason for a given appli-
cant being consigned to the “won’t hire” pile (Neumark, 2009). However, studies
suggest that given hypothetical older and younger job seekers, employers routinely go
for the younger adult (Ekerdt, 2010; Rothenberg & Gardner, 2011).
THE IMPACT OF WANTING TO WORK LONGER OR RETIRE. So far, I’ve been focusing
on the dismal forces that affect retirement: Financial problems keep people in the
labor force unwillingly; health issues and age discrimination push people to retire.
I’ve been neglecting the fact that the decision to keep working or retire is also a posi-
tive choice. Many baby boomers say they want to keep working after age 65 because
they love their jobs (Adams & Rau, 2011; Galinsky, 2007). People may retire in order
to enter an exciting, new phase of life.
Who is passionate to stay in the labor force until their seventies or up to age 85?
As I implied earlier, these older adults are often healthy and highly educated workers,
like Jules in the Experiencing the Lifespan box on page 401, who feel tremendous
flow in their careers (Adams & Rau, 2011; Wang & Shi, 2014). What about adults
who permanently retire? Are they depressed or thrilled after taking this step?
Life as a Retiree
The answer is “it depends.” Retirement at age 65 typically has no effect on well-being
(Wang & Shi, 2014); but leaving work early and feeling forced out of the workforce
does negatively affect people’s emotional and physical health (Calvo, Sarkisian, &
Tamborini, 2013; Zantinge and others, 2014; Dingemans & Henkens, 2014).
Actually, the qualities that make for retirement happiness are identical to the
attributes that make for a satisfying life at any age: Be open to experience, generative
(Burr, Santo, & Pushkar, 2011), healthy, happily married, and have the economic
resources to enjoy life (Pinquart & Schindler, 2007).
Having a serious leisure passion, such as playing the flute or volunteering at
church, smooths the way to a satisfying retirement life (Heo and others, 2010). In
an uncanny parallel to the research described earlier relating to life purpose, one
research summary suggested that volunteering in later life significantly reduced a
person’s risk of death (Okun, Yeung, & Brown, 2013). In fact, you can predict whether
a just-retired relative will flourish by knowing two facts: Did this person retire on time
and voluntarily leave work? (Potocnik, Torera, & Peiro, 2013.) What is she like as a
human being? (See Table 13.4 for a summary of these forces.)
How can you expect your relative to spend these years? Because “personality
endures,” one key is to look to her passions now (Atchley, l989; Pushkar and others,
2010). So, a social activist joins the Peace Corps. A business executive volunteers at
SCORE (Senior Corps of Retired Executives), advising young people about setting
up small businesses. Others decide to take up new “bucket list” goals such as hiking
the Himalayas or getting a history Ph.D. Many people open to experience might retire
to pack in as much new learning as they possibly can.
Table 13.4: Questions to Ask to Predict If a Relative Will Be Happy

as a Retiree: A Section Summary
1. Did this person want to retire or was he forced out of the workforce?
2. Is this person relying just on Social Security and/or feeling compelled to take a post-retirement
job to make ends meet?
3. Is this person generative and open to experience?
4. Is this person married (happily!), and in good health?
5. Does this person have an absorbing hobby, plan to use this time giving back to the community,
or have fulfilling “bucket list” goals?
A dazzling menu of options are available to older adults

passionate to expand their minds, from reduced fees at colleges,
to older-adult institutes, to senior citizen center classes. Readers
might be interested that, in the spirit of mind expansion (not
credential collection!), during the next few years, I plan to get
my master’s in a liberal arts program specifically for adults.
As my goal and the life agendas of millions of baby boomers
© Tom Wagner/TWPhoto/Corbis
reveal, in the Western world, we see the older years as a time to

vigorously connect to the world (Ekerdt, 1986). However, there
is a different cultural model of retirement. In the traditional
Hindu perspective, later life is a time to disengage from worldly
concerns. Ideally, people become wandering ascetics, renounc-
These older people are enrolled ing their connections to loved ones and earthly pleasures in
in an English class in a special preparation for death (Savishinsky, 2004). Although this plan is rarely followed in
senior citizens college in Japan. practice (after all, our need to be closely attached is a basic human drive!), let’s
Because many people use their
retirement years to devote them-
not assume that our “do not go gently into the sunset,” keep-active retirement ideal
selves to the human passion for applies around the world.
learning, special educational
programs for the elderly are Summing Things Up: Social Policy Retirement Issues
flourishing in nations around the Now, let’s summarize these section messages by focusing on some critical social issues
world.
with regard to retirement.
• Retirement is an at-risk life stage. In the United States, the lack of pension income
and other assets is the immediate threat to retiring at 65. But the other issue lies in
probable future cutbacks in Social Security (perhaps an increase until age 70 for
receiving full benefits, or declining support levels). In 1950, there were about 16
old-age dependency ratio workers for every U.S. retiree. Soon, the old-age dependency ratio, or proportion
The fraction of people over of working adults to retirees, will decline to almost 2 to 1 (Johnson, 2009). Social
age 60 compared to younger,
working-age adults (ages 15
Security was never intended to finance a stage of life. It was instituted during a
to 59). This ratio is expected time when life expectancy was far shorter, as a stopgap for when health issues made
to rise dramatically as the it impossible to work. Now that the age of eligibility for full Social Security benefits
baby boomers retire. is rising to 67, what other changes (retrenchments) will be on the horizon when
the baby boomers have all stormed into later life?
• Older workers are (currently) an at-risk group. From being offered incentives to
retire early, to not hiring older workers—age discrimination at work is alive and
well (Ekerdt, 2010; Neumark, 2009). But, the situation is changing. Anxious about
their shrinking labor force, European employers are taking steps to reverse their
decades-long practice of enticing older people to leave work via pension perks (van
Selm & Van der Heijden, 2013). While the United States still has ample young
workers to float its economy, this may not be true in another decade when the
mammoth baby boom cohort all reaches 65. At that time, will U.S. employers also
change their negative attitudes toward hiring older employees?
• Older people are more at risk of being poor. During the 1960s and 1970s, the
United States took the landmark step of dramatically reducing poverty among older
adults. Congress extended Social Security benefits. Our nation passed that crucial
government-funded health-care program called Medicare. (You can see the dra-
matic effects of these programs in cutting elderly poverty-rates by turning back to
intergenerational equity Figure 4.6, on page 118.) Old-age economic hardship is currently the fate for the
Balancing the needs of the roughly 1 in 3 retired Americans who survive on Social Security alone (Binstock,
young and old. Specifically, 2010), for the many people who must keep working during their so-called golden
often referred to as the years, and for an alarming percentage of women as they reach advanced old age.
idea that U.S. government
entitlements, such as Will poverty become endemic among the over-65 population in future years?
Medicare and Social Security,
“over-benefit” the elderly
Finally, I can’t leave the topic of old-age poverty without touching on the topic
at the expense of other age of intergenerational equity—balancing the needs of the young and the old. Given
groups. that the U.S. elderly get Medicare and Social Security, and citizens in many other
Western nations receive even more lavish old-age aid, it’s easy for social critics to
argue that affluent societies are over-funding older people at the expense of the young
(as reported in Moulaert & Biggs, 2013). But, abandoning these programs leaves
people dependent on their families. That hurts everyone, young and old (Binstock,
2010). Suppose you had to choose between helping your children and supporting
your grandmother, and destitute older people roamed the streets? Again, we are in
this together. Life is not a zero-sum game.
Widowhood
Although we worry about its future, most of us associate retirement with joy. That
emotion does not apply to widowhood. In a classic study of life stress, researchers
ranked the death of a spouse as life’s most traumatic change (Holmes & Rahe, 1967).
What multiplies the pain is that today, widowhood still may strike a pre-baby boom
cohort who married in their early twenties and never lived alone.
Imagine losing your life partner after 50 or 60 years. You are unmoored and adrift,
cut off from your main attachment figure. Tasks that may have been foreign, such as
understanding the finances or fixing the food, fall on you alone. You must remake
an identity whose central focus has been “married person” for all of your adult life.
Decades ago, British psychiatrist Colin Parkes (1987) beautifully described how the
world tilts: “Even when words remain the same, their meaning changes. The family
is no longer the same as it was. Neither is home or a marriage” (p. 93).
How do people mourn this loss? Who has special trouble with this trauma, and
how can we help people cope? Let’s look at these questions one by one.
Exploring Mourning
During the first months after a loved one dies, one classic study showed, people
are often obsessed with the events surrounding the final event (Lindemann, 1944;
Parkes, 1972). Especially if the death was sudden, husbands and wives report repeatedly
going over a spouse’s final days or hours. They may feel the impulse to search for their
beloved, even though they know intellectually that they are being irrational. Notice
that these responses have similarities to those of a toddler who frantically searches for
a caregiver when she leaves the room. With widowhood—as the poignant comments
of the women in the Experiencing the Lifespan box show—John Bowlby’s clear-cut
attachment response reemerges at full force.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Visiting a Widowed Person’s Support Group

What is it like to lose your mate? What are some of the “I was married to a handyman and a cook. He spoiled me
hardest things to endure in the first year after a spouse rotten. You don’t realize it until they are gone.”
dies? Here are the responses I got when I visited a local
“For me, it’s the incessant doctors’ bills. I got one
support group for widowed people and asked the women
yesterday. It’s that continual painful reminder of the
these kinds of questions:
death.”
“I’ve noticed that even when I’m with other people, I feel
lonely.” “And you get all this stuff from Medicare, from Social
Security. This year will be the last I file with him.”
“I find the weekends and evenings hard, especially now
that it gets dark so early.” “You just don’t know what to do. I didn’t know anything,
didn’t know how much money we had . . . didn’t know about
“Sundays are my worst. You sit in church by yourself. the insurance. . . . My family would help me out but, you
People avoid you when you are a widow.” know, it’s funny—you don’t ask.”
“I think the hardest thing is when you had a handyman
“You have friends, but you can’t really talk to them. You
and then you lose your handyman. You would be amazed
don’t bring him up, and neither does anyone else.”
at how much fixing there is that you didn’t know about. My
hardest jobs were George’s jobs. For instance, every time “The thing that upsets me is that I’m scared that no one but
I have a car problem I break down and cry.” me will remember that he was alive.”
Experts dislike using the word “recovery” to describe bereavement, as it implies

that mourning, a normal life process, is a pathological state (Sandler, Wolchik, &
Ayers, 2008). Moreover, when people lose a spouse, they do not simply “get better.”
They emerge as different, hopefully more resilient human beings (Balk, 2008a,
2008b; Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2008). Still, as I will describe in chapter 15, after about
a year, we expect widowed people to “improve” in the sense of remaking a satisfying
new life. People still care deeply about their spouses. Their emotional connection
remains. However, this mental image is incorporated into the survivor’s evolving
identity as the widowed person continues to travel through life.
Now, let’s survey the research messages we get from tracking people’s feelings as
they move from early bereavement into what attachment theorists might label the
working model—or constructing an independent life—phase of widowhood:
WIDOWHOOD INVOLVES FLUCTUATING EMOTIONS. Interestingly (and in contrast to
the image of unremitting pain), one conclusion of these studies is that widowhood
evokes contradictory emotions. In following 59 widows, psychologists charted a regu-
lar decline in depressive symptoms over time. However, life satisfaction scores showed
a different pattern, dipping to a low at the first year anniversary, and then rising during
the second year (Powers, Bisconti, & Bergeman, 2014). Other researchers, following
a huge national sample of Australian adults, found that, after widowhood, there was
a rise in well-being (Anusic, Yap, & Lucas, 2014)!
What could explain this embarrassing finding? One possibility is that, as you saw
in the introductory chapter vignette, even people in the happiest long-term marriages
may not realize how well they can cope on their own. When you discover that, yes,
you can prepare the taxes or fix the faucet and you do not fall apart when finding
yourself single after 50 or 60 years, you have a tremendous sense of self-efficacy. As
the Chinese proverb puts it: Within the worst crisis lies an opportunity (or, in the last
chapter’s terminology, a potential redemption sequence). As I described in Chapter
12, life traumas do promote emotional growth.
This is not to minimize the health consequences of widowhood. Study after study
finds that, compared to married adults, the widowed have worse mental health (Choi
and Vasunilashorn, 2014; Sasson & Umberson, 2014). In one alarming Canadian
finding, 2 in 5 elderly people showed chronic symptoms of depression after losing a
husband or wife (Jozwiak, Preville, & Vasiliadis, 2013). The most powerful example
widowhood mortality effect
The elevated risk of death
comes from the widowhood mortality effect—a markedly higher risk of dying for
among surviving spouses the surviving spouse after a partner dies (Sullivan & Fenelon, 2014). Who can people
after being widowed. most rely on for support during this difficult time?
FRIENDS SEEM MORE IMPORTANT THAN CHILDREN
IN DETERMINING HOW PEOPLE ADJUST. Actually
the surprising answer is friends. Family members do
get people over the initial bereavement hump. But,
because they have their own lives, children may
need to move on (“Now that it’s been three months,
I don’t need to visit Mom every day. I have to take
care of my own husband and kids”). Therefore, to
cope effectively over the long term, widows need to
reach out to friends (Ha & Ingersoll-Dayton, 2008).
The vital role friends play in widowhood well-being
Susan Chiang/E+/Getty Images
was showcased in this German finding: While sat-

isfying “family attachments” predicted happiness
among married elderly women, if a female was sin-
gle, her happiness depended on having good friends
(Albert, Labs, & Trommsdorff, 2010).
These widows enjoying a visit to a local nature preserve illustrate just The virtue of friends is that, not only are they
why friends seem especially important after people lose a spouse. companions with whom to share activities, they also
may allow you to more openly share your distress. For instance, in one study, Chinese
widows living in Canada felt it was inappropriate to discuss their grief with family
members (Martin-Matthews and others, 2013). This tendency to clam up (meaning
not embarrass people by discussing your pain) may explain why widows report feeling
lonely even when in a group (recall the Experiencing the Lifespan Box on page 409).
And, in specifically studying loneliness among the widowed, researchers found the
best cure for this common condition lay in making a new widowed friend (Utz and
others, 2014).
At this point, readers may be tempted to urge everyone who has lost a spouse to
join a widowed person’s group. This may be a mistake. An underlying message of my
discussion is that most widowed people are resilient. We are doing them a disservice by
assuming they are incompetent and totally in need of help. Actually, support groups
for widowed people, psychologists find, are use-
ful mainly for people who are having unusual
trouble coping with this life event (Bonanno &
Lilienfeld, 2008; Onrust and others, 2010). Who
has special trouble coping with widowhood?
Predicting Which Widowed Adults Are

Most at Risk
Some of you might imagine that men should be
most vulnerable to having serious problems after
their spouse dies. Women are more emotionally
embedded in relationships. They can use their
close, enduring connections with friends to con-
© Chuck Franklin/Alamy
struct new lives. Imagine losing your only attach-
ment figure and you will understand why, for
elderly widowers living alone, suicide is a major
concern (Stroebe, Schut, & Stroebe, 2007).
Still, men have one great advantage over women in the reattachment odds—their Lost in loneliness, spending
far higher chance of finding a new mate. To give just one example, 9 out of 10 men your days staring out at sea,
this classic image of the elderly
in a study exploring dating after widowhood were actually in new relationships. But widower says it all. Men—when
only 1 of 9 women who said they were interested in dating was able to achieve this they haven’t found a new mate—
goal (Carr & Boerner, 2013). Attend any U.S. boomer event at your local church (or can be at high risk for suicide in
older adult institute) and, like me, you might be struck by this strange thought: Have the older years.
aliens swooped down and abducted all the men?
Another general risk factor, we might think, relates to whether the death was pre-
dicted or struck out of the blue (Schaan, 2013). Did your husband die unexpectedly
on the golf course or pass away after years of worsening health? On-time (expected)
deaths seem inherently less stressful because they give people a chance to prepare
emotionally for the event. Moreover, when you have cared for a beloved partner who
has suffered for years, there can be a sense of relief when the person dies.
Perhaps because males might be losing their only attachment figure, one study
exploring the widowhood mortality effect showed husbands whose wives died unex-
pectedly were at much higher risk of dying than other widowed adults (Sullivan &
Fenelon, 2014). In contrast, other researchers (Sasson & Umberson, 2014) found
losing a spouse hits women harder when that event happens at an off-time (young)
age—which makes sense because, as a 30- or 40-year-old widow, it’s hard to find
friends who share your experience and can understand your pain.
However, rather than making generalizations based on gender or age, again,
in predicting reactions to widowhood we need to adopt a developmental systems
approach—that is, consider a complex set of forces. How emotionally resilient is the
widowed person? Does that individual have other attachments or a life passion to
cushion the blow? (See Carr, 2004.) We also need to look at the person’s married
attachment style. People who are securely attached to their partner tend to have other
secure attachments in the wider world. Men and women who are
insecurely attached, because they generally have more trouble relat-
ing, may have trouble forming new close relationships to make up
for their loss (Bonanno and others, 2002; Field, Gal-Oz, & Bonanno,
2002; Ha, 2008).
We also can’t neglect the role of the wider environment.
Widowhood can be a more devastating blow for working-class women
because they lack the financial resources to construct a new life
(Angel, Jimenez, & Angel, 2007; Sullivan & Fenelon, 2014). In one
study, researchers found that, if older adults were living in an area
with a high concentration of widowed people, their odds of dying after
being widowed were reduced (Subramanian, Elwert, & Christakis,
2008). So moving as a couple to a senior citizen community with all
those widows and widowers may have an unexpected survivor bonus
in later life!
Finally, we also need to look to the way a given culture treats
widowed people. To take an extreme case, let’s travel to a place where
being widowed (for women) can have nightmarish aspects that go
© Steve Hamblin/Alamy
well beyond losing a spouse.

Among the Igbo of West Africa, new widows must “prove” that
they did not kill their spouse by sleeping with their husband’s corpse.
Because property rights revert to the paternal side of the family, after
the man’s death, his relatives feel free to take the bereaved woman’s
What should this young woman possessions and force her off her land (Cattell, 2003; Sossou, 2002).
do to help her newly widowed
grandma? Check out Table 13.5
Given this totally male-dominated tilt to their society, it is no wonder that an African
below for answers. widow in her sixties made this comment: “I’ve had so much of this bossing by men.
I have my house, my garden. Why should I have a man take my money and spend
it on drink and other women? I am the boss now” (quoted in Cattell, 2003, p. 59).
Table 13.5 pulls together the main points of my discussion in guidelines for help-
ing a widowed family member. As a final comment, if you are a child, please allow
your widowed parent to develop a new romantic attachment! You might think that
new relationships run into headwinds from children mainly after parents’ divorce (see
Chapter 11). But, in the dating in late life study I alluded to earlier, when father–child
bonds were somewhat ambivalent, daughters in particular were apt to get very angry
when their widowed dad found a replacement life love (Carr & Boerner, 2013).
In the next chapter, devoted to the physical challenges of later life, I’ll be continu-
ing this discussion by offering tips about how to sensitively treat loved ones, especially
during the old-old years.
Table 13.5: Guidelines for Helping a Family Member Survive Widowhood

1. Expect your widowed relative to experience different emotions, and don’t decide this person is
uncaring for having positive feelings such as pride and a sense of relief.
2. Offer comfort, but don’t take over everything. Let your family member connect with her new
efficacious self.
3. Encourage a female relative to reach out to friends, and possibly advise joining a widowed person’s
group, but only if the person seems especially isolated and distressed. Also understand that your
family member may have special problems if she lost her spouse at an off-time (young) age.
4. Be alert that a man, in particular, may need special help if his wife died suddenly, or if he can’t
find a new love relationship. Among depressed elderly widowers who don’t find another mate,
suicide can be a serious concern.
5. Advise seeking special help if any widowed family member seems genuinely depressed for over
a year.

1. Joe, a baby boomer, is approaching an age when he might retire from his public
school teaching job. Compared to a colleague who retired a decade ago, Joe (pick
false statement): (a) is apt to have lower retirement assets (due to the 2008 recession);
(b) will probably retire at an older age; (c) may need to work after he does retire;
(d) will be unhappy if he devotes retirement to volunteering with at risk kids.
2. Social Security provides a lavish/meager income that is guaranteed by the government/
depends on personal investments.
3. As I touched on in the text, to preserve Social Security, U.S. readers are apt to hear
discussions about increasing the age of eligibility for getting full benefits to age 70.
Discuss the pros and cons of this controversial idea.
4. If your favorite aunt’s husband recently died, you can expect (choose one): mixed
feelings of loss and self-efficacy/just sadness that gets steadily less intense. To predict
how well your relative copes, the quality of her family/friendships matters most.
SUMMARY
Setting the Context Depression does become a more serious risk when people are
old-old and physically frail; but, many older adults preserve their
The median age of the population is rising due to declining fertil- happiness and social connections into advanced old age. Reach-
ity, longer life expectancies, and, of course, the baby boom. While ing integrity, feeling generative, and having a sense of purpose
ageism (negative stereotypes about the elderly) is universal, we in life are keys to being happy in old age.
also gravitate to the elderly for positive traits, and have contra-
dictory old age images partly because there are such dramatic
differences between being young-old and old-old. Later-Life Transitions
Until recently, most people retired in their early sixties and lived
The Evolving Self in that state for a large chunk of adult life. The reason was the
Everyone believes that as people get older, memory declines. explosion of government sponsored old-age programs offering
Elderly people do perform less well than the young on most developed-world older citizens income for life. Germany has his-
memory tasks. Memory challenges that are more difficult—such torically been a model of the ultimate in guaranteed, comfortable
as linking faces to specific situations, remembering bits of infor- government support.
mation quickly, and especially divided-attention tasks—produce In the United States, our main sources of retirement income are
the most severe deficits, and losses in these situations begin at Social Security, private pensions, and savings. However, unlike
a surprisingly young age. in Germany, Social Security only provides a meager guaranteed
Using the information-processing perspective, researchers find income. Today, because most U.S. baby boomers don’t have the
that as people age, working memory declines because fron- funds to fully float retirement, they are planning on working until
tal lobe executive functions are impaired. Using the memory- older ages. When they retire, many U.S. workers may be forced to
systems perspective, studies reveal few age-related losses in take post-retirement jobs. The Great Recession of 2008 and the
semantic memory or procedural memory but dramatic declines erosion of real wages have made U.S. retirement a more fragile
in episodic memory. To improve memory in old age (or at any life stage.
age), use selective optimization with compensation, employ Older workers mainly base their retirement decisions on financial
mnemonic techniques, and work on improving the person’s men- considerations, but poor health can also force people to leave
tal state. Also, understand that when tests are labeled as “for work. Age discrimination, although illegal, also propels older
memory,” older people may get too anxious to perform as well as people to retire. Even though most negative stereotypes about
they should, and that late life memory complaints may not relate older workers are false, employers are reluctant to hire older
to a person’s scores on objective memory tests. employees. Still, the decision to retire (or not to retire) can be a
Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that in old age (or at positive choice. People who choose to keep working into their
any age), when people see their future as limited, they focus on seventies or eighties are typically healthy and well-educated,
maximizing the quality of their current life, and prefer to be with with flow-inducing jobs.
their closest attachment figures. This emphasis on enjoying the Retirees are happy when they have retired on time, freely cho-
present, plus the late life positivity effect and lower daily stress, sen to leave work, have few health- and money worries, are
offer compelling reasons for the paradox of well-being, the fact generative, open to experience, and have an enduring leisure
that, in surveys, older people report high levels of happiness. passion. People use these years to further their generativity, to
pursue other “bucket list” goals, and to learn. Baby boomers’ room. Rather than being an unmitigated trauma, however, losing
inadequate pension and savings, looming cuts to Social Security a spouse evokes many different emotions and friends loom large
(partly due to the rising old-age dependency ratio), and age in how people cope. Still, widows’ comparatively higher rates of
discrimination in the workforce remain serious threats. Still, due depression and the widowhood mortality effect suggest that this
to work force shortages, when the massive baby boom cohort major life event can take an enduring toll.
all reaches their late sixties in the next decade, people may be While women who lose a spouse seem more cushioned by
more willing to hire older adults. Intergenerational equity issues their friend network, widowed men find it much easier to find
(especially over-benefiting the elderly) are a concern in nations new mates. For males being widowed suddenly (versus after a
where retirees have traditionally had many government and pen- spouse’s long illness) and for females losing a spouse at a too
sion perks. young, off-time age, widowhood seems particularly hard. Per-
Widowhood is a top-ranking life stress, especially when it strikes sonality resilience, socioeconomic status, the person’s overall
old-old people who have been married for their entire adult lives. life situation, and cultural forces shape the experience of widow-
The early symptoms of bereavement have much in common with hood, too. Children need to let widowed parents develop new
the separation response of an infant whose caregiver leaves the romantic attachments after their mother or father has died.
KEY TERMS
median age, p. 390 procedural memory, p. 395 paradox of well-being, p. 399 old-age dependency ratio,
young-old, p. 390 semantic memory, p. 395 positivity effect, p. 399 p. 408
old-old, p. 390 episodic memory, p. 395 integrity, p. 402 intergenerational equity,
p. 408
ageism, p. 391 mnemonic technique, Social Security, p. 404
p. 397 widowhood mortality effect,
divided-attention task, p. 393 private pensions, p. 405
p. 410
memory-systems socioemotional selectivity age discrimination, p. 406
perspective, p. 395 theory, p. 398
Setting the Context 6. Older people (1) focus on enjoying the present, (2) selectively
1. Dwayne should present concepts more slowly (but not screen out negativity, and (3) live less-stressful lives.
talk down to his audience) and refrain from presenting a Later-Life Transitions
good deal of information in a single session. He should
1. d
tie the course content into older adults’ knowledge base
or crystallized skills and strive to make the material 2. meager/guaranteed
relevant personally. He might offer tips on using mnemonic 3. Pros: Raising the retirement age to 70 will keep Social
techniques. He should continually work on reducing memory Security solvent, encourage older people to be productive
fears: “With your life experience, learning this stuff should be for longer, and get society used to the fact that people can
a piece of cake!” function competently well into later life. Cons: Depriving
2. a. semantic memory b. episodic memory c. procedural people of this money will add to the pressure forcing older
memory people to unwillingly keep working—and for the millions
of workers who don’t have other retirement nest eggs and
3. 1) Bike riding, that automatic skill, is “in” procedural health problems—have the devastating consequence of
memory, so it can be maintained even into Alzheimer’s making people penniless in later life. Keeping older people
disease. 2) Remembering the material in this chapter, since in the labor force longer will make it more difficult for young
it is in the most fragile system (episodic memory), is apt to people to get jobs or advance at work.
decline at a relatively young age.
4. You can expect mixed feelings of intense loss and self-
4. The answers here are up to you efficacy. The quality of your aunt’s friendships will matter
5. b and c most.
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Tracing Physical Aging
Can We Live to 1,000?
Socioeconomic Status, Aging,
and Disease
Gender, Aging, and Disease
INTERVENTIONS: Taking a
Holistic Lifespan Disease-
Prevention Approach
Sensory-Motor Changes
Our Windows on the World:
Vision
INTERVENTIONS: Clarifying Sight
Our Bridge to Others: Hearing
INTERVENTIONS: Amplifying
Hearing
Motor Performances
INTERVENTIONS: Managing
Motor Problems
SCIENCE: Driving in Old Age
Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs)
An Insider Describes His
Unraveling Mind
The Dimensions of These
Antony Nagelmann/The Image Bank/Getty Images

Disorders
Neurocognitive Disorders’ Two
Main Causes
Targeting the Beginnings: The
Quest to Nip Alzheimer’s in the
Bud
INTERVENTIONS: Dealing with
These Devastating Disorders
Options and Services for the
Frail Elderly
Setting the Context: Scanning
the Global Elder-Care Scene
Alternatives to Institutions in
the United States
Nursing Home Care
Getting It Together in the
Nursing Home
A Few Concluding Thoughts
The Physical Challenges
of Old Age
At age 76, Susan was vigorous and fit. She walked a mile each day. As the community col-
lege’s star pupil, she took classes three days a week. But, Susan was finding it hard to hear
her professors because those young students made so much noise! Her night-vision trou-
bles made it scary to drive home from school, especially during the dark winter months.
Susan’s doctor worried about her atherosclerosis. But it was the vision and bone
problems that preoccupied Susan’s thoughts. What if she fell when walking to class,
or had an accident on those curving highway exit ramps? When Susan almost backed
into a truck on Main Street—in broad daylight!—she realized she had to quit school
and consider giving up her car.
Four years later, at age 80, Susan was having trouble cooking and cleaning. She
began to worry: “What will happen when I can’t take care of myself?” Emma, now
50 (and single), urged Susan to move in with her: “I’m buying a condo in this terrific
planned community where you don’t need to drive. It has no stairs; I’ll put grab bars
in the bathroom. As my adoptive mom, I’d consider it a privilege to help care for you.”
Susan politely said no. She was determined to plan for a future that did not involve
burdening loved ones with her care. It was time to check out that beautiful assisted
living facility that was advertised as being at the forefront of geriatric care. But after
going on Shady Acres website, Susan almost had a heart attack. The average rates
($6,000 a month) were higher than at a four-star hotel! Thank the Lord for Carl’s IRA
and the long-term care insurance her husband had urged her to buy at the impossibly
young age of 63. Susan put her name on the waiting list—and none too soon. Six
months later, she fell, breaking her hip, and could no longer live at home.
Today, Susan uses a walker. It’s hard to get dressed and use the toilet. However, when
I visited her, she was surprisingly upbeat. True, life at 83 can be difficult—not simply
because of a person’s physical state. The problem is the ridiculous status cliques some
rude old ladies have formed. Still, the facility is wonderful. She loves the activities. Old
ladies can hang onto their passions, too. The monthly lectures—covering everything from
great books to politics, taught by her former community college professors—are a real joy!
W
hat enemy is Susan battling? How does physi- he can barely take a step without stumbling—is sensi-
cal aging turn into disease, disability, and tively doing therapy and writing books.
sometimes the need for a nursing home? This Aging successfully means having Jules’s sense of life
chapter offers answers to these questions and many more. purpose and generative mission. But, successful aging also
In the following pages, I’ll be exploring problems that depends on whether the wider world offers older people
some gerontologists (for example, Rowe & Kahn, 1998) the support they need to function at their best. The issue in
have labeled as “unsuccessful aging,” describing what later life is not so much being ill, but living fully in the face
goes physically wrong during the old-old years. By now, of chronic disease. The way people function in later life
you should realize that equating “successful aging” with depends on their personal capacities (or nature) combined
walking miles at age 90 is wrong. Successful aging means with nurture—having the right person–environment fit.
drawing on what gives your life meaning to live fully, How can we engineer the right person–environment
no matter how your body behaves. It is epitomized by fit for older loved ones? Let’s begin our search for answers
94-year-old Jules, described on page 401, who—although by charting the aging process itself.
417
normal aging changes

The universal, often Tracing Physical Aging
progressive signs of physical Susan has atherosclerosis, or fatty deposits on her artery walls. Her fragile bones and
deterioration intrinsic to the
aging process. vision and hearing problems are also classic signs of normal aging—body deteriora-
tion that advanced gradually over years. Over time, normal aging shades into disease,
chronic disease Any long-term
illness that requires ongoing then disability, and, finally—by a specific barrier age—death.
management. Most chronic PRINCIPLE #1 CHRONIC DISEASE IS OFTEN NORMAL AGING “AT THE EXTREME.”
diseases are age-related and
are the endpoint of normal Many physical losses, when they occur to a moderate degree, are called normal.
aging changes. When these changes become extreme, they have a different label: chronic dis-
ADL (activities of daily ease. Susan’s bone loss and atherosclerosis are perfect examples. These changes,
living) problems Difficulty as they progress, produce those familiar later-life illnesses—osteoporosis and heart
in performing everyday tasks disease.
that are required for living The National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), an annual government poll of
independently. ADLs are
classified as either basic or health conditions among the U.S. population, tells us other interesting illness facts.
instrumental. As you can see in Figure 14.1, arthritis is the top-ranking chronic illness in later life
instrumental ADL problems (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2009). As we get older, our
Difficulty in performing chance of having a variety of illnesses increases. Like arthritis, many age-related
everyday household tasks, diseases are not fatal. They interfere with the ability to function in the world. So
such as cooking and the outcome of chronic illness is not just death, but ADL (activities of daily living)
cleaning.
problems—difficulties handling life.
basic ADL problems Difficulty
in performing essential self- PRINCIPLE #2 ADL IMPAIRMENTS ARE A SERIOUS RISK DURING THE OLD-OLD
care activities, such as rising YEARS. ADL limitations come in two categories. Instrumental ADL problems
from a chair, eating, and refer to troubles performing tasks important for living independently, such as
getting to the toilet.
cooking and cleaning or driving. Basic ADL limitations refer to problems with
basic self-care activities, such as standing or getting to the bathroom or feeding
oneself. When people have these severe disabilities, they typically need full-time
caregiving help.
Heart disease
Stroke
Arthritis
Percentage 60
of people in Serious hearing problem
population with
chronic conditions 50
40
30
20
10
55–64 65–74 75–84 85+

years years years years
Age
figure 14.1: Prevalence of selected chronic health conditions among U.S. adults in
middle and later life (percentages): As people travel into their seventies and eighties, the rates
of common age-related chronic diseases rise. Although every chronic illness can impair the ability
to fully enjoy life, many common chronic diseases don’t actually result in death.
Data from: CDC (2009); National Center for Health Statistics (2008).
CHAPTER 14 The Physical Challenges of Old Age 419
Although ADL problems can happen at any age, notice from

Figure 14.2 that the old-old years are when these problems really strike.
Half of all people over 85 living in their homes, have instrumental
ADL difficulties. Basic ADL limitations, or fundamental self-care impair-
ments, such as walking to the toilet or dressing, affect 1 in 6 of the oldest
old (CDC, 2009). These statistics minimize the true rate of problems
because older adults with basic ADL impairments often have to enter a
nursing home.
So, yes, people can arrive at age 85 or 90 virtually disability free. But
as we travel further into later life, problems physically coping become a
serious risk.
PRINCIPLE #3 THE HUMAN LIFESPAN HAS A DEFINED LIMIT. A final fact
about aging is that it has a fixed end. More people than ever are surviving past
a century. But a miniscule fraction make it beyond that barrier age. In August
2014, worldwide, there were roughly 75 documented “super-centenarians”—
people who lived until 110 and beyond (Gerontology Research Group, n.d.).
Unless scientists can tamper with our built-in, species-specific maximum
lifespan, soon after a century on this planet, we are all fated to die.
Can We Live to 1,000?

At this point, you might be thinking that many babies will soon make it to be
Stockbyte/Getty Images
supercentenarians. Due to scientific breakthroughs in extending the lifespan,
you may have read the world is poised for the arrival of the first 1,000-year-
old human being (As reported in Carnes, Olshansky, & Hayflick, 2013).
Here, you can see the real enemy

Age in old age: It’s ADL impairments.
Moreover, since this 85-year-old
65–74 man’s difficulties standing are
75+ permanent, he was forced to
Percentage of 20 enter a nursing home.
people needing help
18
16
14
12
10
Basic Instrumental
ADLs ADLs
figure 14.2: Percentages of people needing assistance with instrumental ADLs and
basic ADLs in the young-old years and over age 75: Although in the sixties and early seventies
the fraction of people with ADL difficulties is relatively small, the risk of having these problems
escalates dramatically over age 75. (Over age 85, roughly 1 in 6 people living in the community
have a basic ADL problem.)
Data from: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2009.
These futuristic forecasts fall on fertile ground because one life-extension strat-
egy has been known for 75 years. By underfeeding rats, researchers can increase the
animals’ maximum lifespan by up to 60 percent. The key is what one biologist calls
“undernutrition without malnutrition.” The animals are restricted to less food but
given a nutritionally rich diet. They are allowed few empty calories (see Belsky, 1999,
for review).
Calorie restriction is actually an all-purpose anti-ager, enhancing
everything from glucose metabolism (Fok and others, 2013) to cardiac
function (Cisiszar and others, 2013). These research findings make
excellent sense because obesity, especially via its side-effect of diabetes
(impaired sugar metabolism), causes every organ—from our eyes, to our
heart, to our kidneys—to prematurely breakdown.
Without denying that it’s important to watch your diet, however,
restricting your intake just to live to 110 is a mistake. The calorie reduc-
tion research has typically been carried out with rats. The scientific
Sextoacto/Shutterstock
literature is littered with miracle disease-reduction interventions—such

as massive doses of vitamin A, supposed to prevent cell damage—that
worked with rodents but had toxic effects on human beings!
Calorie restriction has confusing effects. Sometimes it postpones
deaths in youth or allows just a small number of the most long-lived
This species has been the target
of almost all of our life-extension
members of a species to survive longer (Gribble & Welch, 2013). There may be an
research carried out over the unwelcome fertility trade off. Suppose you lived to 110 but put off puberty to age 25?
past 75 years—but it’s unclear Let’s listen to the foremost experts in the biology of aging explain why extending
if the rat underfeeding results the maximum lifespan in the near future is an unrealistic dream (Carnes, Olshansky, &
generalize to human beings.
Hayflick, 2013):
• The body breakdown involved in aging has complex causes, from multiple genetic
timers to random insults that happen as cells do their metabolic work. There can’t be
a single magic-bullet intervention that stops aging and extends life. Even if a break-
through technology such as stem-cell research fulfills its promise to regenerate cells
lost to Parkinson’s disease (Kim, Lee, & Kim, 2013), a few years later some other age-
related illness, like cancer, is going to crop up. The best analogy to our aging bodies
is an old car. Replacing each defective part only puts off the day when so much goes
wrong that the whole system reaches its expiration date and everything stops.
• Our body’s evolutionary expiration date is naturally set well below a century,
because the survival of our species promotes, at best, living through the grandpar-
ent years (recall Chapter 12). Therefore, even in the most affluent nations, the
probability of a twenty-first-century newborn living to 100 remains low. (It’s about
4.5 percent in Japan.) So, let’s celebrate our remarkable twentieth-century progress
at allowing most babies born in the developed world to survive close to our expira-
tion date. But, let’s realize that extending the maximum lifespan is going to be far
harder than the breakthroughs that allowed us to make it to later life.
Now let’s turn to two familiar markers that affect our journey toward our expiration
date (and every other aspect of our lifespan journey): socioeconomic status and gender.
Socioeconomic Status, Aging, and Disease

The most powerful evidence that poverty affects how long we live comes from scan-
ning a few life-expectancy statistics in the developing versus the developed worlds:
Babies born in South Africa can expect on average to survive to age forty years longer.
Infants lucky to emerge from the womb in Monaco have a 50/50 chance of living 30
socioeconomic health gap years longer—to 89 (CIA World Factbook, n.d.). This mammoth global difference
The disparity, found in
nations around the world,
is mirrored by a socieoeconomic health gap within each country. From Canada
between the health of the to Cameroon and from Sweden to Somalia, affluent and well-educated people live
rich and poor. healthier and survive for a longer time.
Marcel Jolibois/Photononstop/Getty Images

© Ulrich Doering/Alamy
These snapshots show visually why babies born in the affluent kingdom of Monaco statistically out-survive South African
newborns by a remarkable 40 years.
When, during adulthood, is the socioeconomic health gap most pronounced?

The answer, according to most (but not all) surveys, is during midlife, as normal age
changes are progressing to chronic disease. For instance, in one study in Holland,
only 5 percent of people in the top quarter of the income distribution reported being
in poor health at age 55. For their bottom quarter counterparts, the odds were 1 in 3
(Kippersluis and others, 2010).
You may see these statistics in operation by just looking around. Notice how, by the
late thirties people show clear differences in their aging rates. Although there are many
exceptions, notice also that low-income adults are apt to look physically older than
their chronological age. In fact, for disadvantaged Americans, “old-age” ADL impair-
ments, not infrequently, qualify as problems of midlife (Health United States, 2009).
How far back in development can we trace this accelerated aging path? Unfor-
tunately, based on the fetal programming hypothesis, its roots might emerge in the
womb. Remember from Chapter 2 that low birth weight—which is linked to poverty—
is epigenetically associated with premature heart disease and earlier death. Now recall
from Chapters 4 and 5 that obesity and elevated levels of cortisol (the stress hormone)
are more common among preschoolers at the low end of the socioeconomic scale.
Therefore, the many health-impairing forces linked to early childhood poverty—from
obesity, to chronic anxiety, to being born small—accumulate to increase our allostatic
load, that overall marker of body breakdown signaling disease (Umberson and others,
2014; O’Donovan and others, 2013).
Now compound this with the poisonous adult lifestyle forces linked to poverty—
from social-class differences in smoking (Boykin and others, 2011); to lack of exercise
(who has time to work out if you are working two jobs to survive?); from poor eating
habits (as high-fat foods are less expensive than fish or fresh fruit, what choices would
you make if you had to save every dime?); to the stress-inducing impact of unemploy-
ment or living in crime-ridden neighborhoods.
So far, I’ve spelled out a dismal scenario. But, socioeconomic status involves both
education and income. And, as you will see in Figure 14.3 on the next page, the
educational component of SES looms large in predicting life expectancy, especially
for men (OECD, 2014; Mazzonna, 2014).
Fascinating evidence that education directly affects aging involves research
on telomeres, DNA sequences at the end of our chromosomes. Telomere shorten-
ing is a benchmark of cellular aging, as it shows that a particular cell has reached
senescence and can no longer divide. Among a huge group of U.S. older adults,
researchers found that high school graduates had shorter telomeres than people
who attended college, a difference that was particularly striking among Black men
(Adler and others, 2013; Mazzotti, Tufik, & Andersen, 2013). Therefore, in addition
to (or due to) its other benefits, college can extend our lives!
8 Men
Women 7.0
7
Years of extra life expectancy

6
4
3.5
3 2.7 2.8
1.9 1.9
2
1.3
1.1 1.1 1.1 1.1 1.0
1
0
Sweden Italy EU in Poland Hungary Czech
general Republic
figure 14.3: Life-expectancy gaps between older people with high and low levels of
education in selected European countries in 2010: Notice that, while the size of the gap differs in
interesting ways from nation to nation, depending partly on the given country’s income inequalities, in
the European Union, being well-educated gives people—mainly men—a considerable longevity boost.
Data from: OECD, 2014, p. 19.
Another life extender is close relationships. In one landmark study, researchers

found that caring social connections were as—or more—important than good health
practices in predicting how long people survived (Berkman &
Breslow, 1983).
Being embedded in nurturing communities may explain
“the Hispanic paradox,” the fact that poverty-level U.S. Latinos
outlive low-income Whites (Turra & Goldman, 2007). It
accounts for why loving marriages are correlated with lon-
gevity, too (Choi & Marks, 2013). While caring attachment
figures do everything from encouraging us to eat well (Fried-
© Jose Luis Pelaez, Inc./CORBIS
man, 2014), to insisting we go to the doctor when we are ill,

love stimulates oxytocin production, which, in itself, mutes the
anxiety response to stress (Myers and others, 2014).
Gender, Aging, and Disease

This compelling photo offers Their wider web of social connections could be one reason
one reason for the “Hispanic why women outlive men, sometimes by an incredible decade or more (OECD,
paradox” (the fact that
disadvantaged Latino-heritage 2014). Still, the main reason for women’s superior survival is biological. Having an
adults tend to live a surprisingly extra X chromosome makes females physically hardier at every stage of life.
long time): a culture immersed During adulthood, the main reason for this gender gap can be summed up in one
in intergenerational adoration phrase: fewer early heart attacks. Illnesses of the cardiovascular system (the arteries
and respect. The lesson: As a
caring, involved grandchild of and their pump, the heart) are the top-ranking killers for both women and men. In
any cultural background, you 2014, cardiac arrests accounted for roughly 1 in 6 U.S. deaths (Go and others, 2014).
might be “working” to help However, because estrogen helps to slow the process by which fat deposits clog the
extend a beloved elderly family arteries, men are roughly twice as likely as women to die of a heart attack in midlife
member’s life!
(American Heart Association, 2001).
Their biological susceptibility to early heart attacks means that men tend to
“die quicker and sooner.” For women, the worldwide pattern is “surviving longer
but being more frail” (OECD, 2014; Tareque, Begum, & Saito, 2013; Rohlfsen &
Kronenfeld, 2014; Onadja and others, 2013).
It makes sense that disability is the price of traveling to the lifespan train’s final
stops. However, the phrase “living sicker” applies to women throughout adult life.
During their twenties and thirties and forties, only women experience the physical ail-
ments related to pregnancy and menstruation. As they age, females have higher rates
of arthritis, vision impairments, and obesity—illnesses that produce ADL problems
but (except in the case of obesity) don’t lead to death (Whitson and others, 2010).
This male/ female disability distinction brings me to a statistic called healthy- healthy-life years The number
life years—the age at which we can expect to survive without ADL limitations. of years people can expect to
live without ADL problems.
Notice from Figure 14.4, in the European Union, healthy-life years are much
shorter than overall life expectancy for both sexes. But, if you look just at the
length of the blue bar, notice that elderly men live healthy comparatively longer
than women do. In fact, considering just healthy-life years, EU females’ average
six-year longevity advantage shrinks to a single year! (See OECD, 2014.)
Total life expectancy Healthy life years
Women Men
23.4 France 19.1
22.1 Italy 18.5
20.4 EU 16.8
20.2 Denmark 17.5
Czech
19.2 15.7
Republic
18.1 Hungary 14.3

25 20 15 10 5 0 0 5 10 15 20 25
Years Years
figure 14.4: Life expectancy (blue plus magenta bars) and healthy life years (blue
bar) at 65, for women and men in a few European nations in 2012: Notice that in each E.U.
nation, overall life expectancy at age 65 is considerably longer than the years older people can
expect to live in health. However, the gap between the two measures is wider for women than men.
Bottom-line message: The statistical price of surviving into your older years is disability during the
final years of your life, particularly if you are a female.
Data from: OECD, 2014, p. 19.
INTERVENTIONS: Taking a Holistic Lifespan Disease-Prevention

Approach
How can we increase our healthy-life years and get closer to the biological limit of
life? As I mentioned in Chapter 5, with regard to obesity, one route is to alter our
epigenetic path by changing the environment from day one. Specifically:
• Focus on childhood. As I’ve been stressing throughout this book, we need to prevent
premature births, make inroads in child poverty, and improve early childhood edu-
cation. Now we understand that encouraging teens to enroll in and finish college
can also have health benefits in middle and later life!
• Focus on constructing caring communities. Let’s commit to making cities senior-
citizen friendly (Barusch and others, 2013); and construct walkable, planned com-
munities that allow people to exercise without going to gyms. Let’s build in services
that reach out to isolated neighbors and provide the nurturing social relationships
that extend life.
Finally, let’s appreciate the realities in Figure 14.4. Without minimizing old age’s
emotional benefits, even in the most health-conscious European nations, the price of
living to the upper ends of the lifespan is frequently disease. Given that running for
miles at age 90 is unrealistic, and we are decades from tampering with our DNA, let’s
use our human ingenuity to make the world user-friendly for normally aging people
marching into later life. With this goal in mind, it’s time to confront the conditions
causing ADL problems in the flesh—sensory-motor declines and major neurocogni-
tive disorders, or dementia.

1. When she was in her late fifties, Edna’s doctor found considerable bone erosion and
atherosclerosis during a checkup. At 70, Edna’s been diagnosed with osteoporosis and
heart disease. Did Edna:
a. suddenly develop these diseases?
b. have normal aging changes that slowly progressed into these chronic diseases?
c. have both above events occur?
2. Marjorie has problems cooking and cleaning the house. Sara cannot dress herself or
get out of bed without someone’s help. Marjorie has problems and Sara has
problems.
3. Laura brags that her newborn is likely to live to 120. Using the points in this section,
convince Laura that she is wrong.
4. Nico and Hiromi are arguing about men’s versus women’s health. Nico says that
women are basically “healthier”; Hiromi thinks that it’s men. Explain why both Nico
and Hiromi are each partly correct.
What happens to vision, hearing, and motor abilities as we grow old, and how can we
take action to minimize sensory-motor declines?
Our Windows on the World: Vision

One way aging affects our sight becomes evident during midlife. By their late forties
and fifties, people have trouble seeing close objects. The year I turned 50, this change
struck like clockwork, and I had to buy glasses to read.
presbyopia Age-related midlife Presbyopia, the term for age-related difficulties with seeing close objects, is one
difficulty with near vision, of those classic signs, like gray hair, showing that people are no longer young. When I
caused by the inability of the
lens to bend.
squint to make out sentences, the fact of my age crosses my consciousness. I imagine
students have this same thought (“Dr. Belsky is older”) when they see me struggle
with this challenge in class.
Other age-related changes in vision progress gradually. Older people have special
trouble seeing in dim light. They are more bothered by glare, a direct beam of light
hitting the eye. They cannot distinguish certain colors as clearly or see visual stimuli
as distinctly as before.
What is it like to be undergoing this progression? It can be annoying to ask the
server what the impossibly faint restaurant bill comes to or to fumble your way into a
neighbor’s seat at a darkened movie theater. For me, the most hair-raising experiences
relate to driving at night. Last week, a curve of the highway exit ramp loomed out of
the dark and I was inches from death. But apart from worries about night driving these
problems have little effect on my life.
Unfortunately, this may not be true a decade from now. As Figure 14.5 illustrates,
seeing in glare-filled environments such as a lighted medicine cabinet, or even mak-
ing out the print on a white page, can be a real challenge during the old-old years.
MayaCom/iStock/Getty Images Plus

figure 14.5: How an 85-year-old might see
the world: Age-related visual losses, such as

sensitivity to glare, make the world look fuzzier at
age 80 or 85. So, as these images show, everything
from finding a bottle of pills in the medicine cabinet
to reading the print in books such as this text can be
a difficult task.
These signs of normal aging—presbyopia, problems seeing in the dark, and lens A transparent, disk-
increased sensitivity to glare—are mainly caused by changes in a structure toward shaped structure in the eye,
which bends to allow us to
the front of the eye called the lens (see Figure 14.6). The disk-shaped lens allows see close objects.
us to see close objects by curving outward. As people reach midlife, the transparent
lens thickens and develops impurities, and can no longer bend. This clouding and
thickening not only produces presbyopia, but
also limits vision in dimly lit places where
people need as much light as possible to see. Retina
These changes also make older adults
more sensitive to glare. Notice how, when
sunlight hits a dirty window, the rays scatter
and it becomes impossible for you to see out. Cornea
Because they are looking at the world through Pupil

a cloudier lens, older people see far less well
when a beam of light shines in their eye.
When this normal, age-related lens cloud- Lens
ing becomes so pronounced that the person’s Iris
vision is seriously impaired, the outcome is
Optic nerve
that familiar late-life chronic condition—a
cataract.
The good news is that cataracts are cur-
able. The physician simply removes the
defective lens and inserts a contact lens. The bad news is that the other three figure 14.6: The human
eye: Deterioration in many
top-ranking old-age vision conditions—macular degeneration (deterioration of the structures of the eye contributes
receptors promoting central vision), glaucoma (a buildup of pressure that can to making older adults’ vision
damage the visual receptors), and diabetic retinopathy (a leakage from the blood poor. However, changes in the
lens, shown here, are respon-
vessels of the retina into the body of the eye)—can sometimes permanently impair sible for presbyopia and also
sight. contribute greatly to impaired
dark vision and sensitivity to
INTERVENTIONS: Clarifying Sight glare—the classic signs of
To lessen the impact of the normal vision losses basic to getting old, again, the key “aging vision.”
is to modify the wider world. People should make sure their homes are well lit, but
avoid overhead light fixtures, especially fluorescent bulbs shining down directly on a
bare floor, as these produce glare. They should design appliances with nonreflective
materials and adjustable lighting. Putting enlarged letters and numbers on appliances
will make the stove and computer keyboard easier to use.
Vision problems are a prime cause of ADL impairments because they make
everything from working to walking a challenging task (Wahl and others, 2013). Poor
vision is a risk factor for falling which, as you will see later, is a frightening event in
later life (Ambrose, Paul, & Hausdorff, 2013; Kallstrand-Erikson and others, 2013).
This brings up the social consequences of seriously limited sight: not leaving the
house because you are afraid of falling; suffering the pain of depending on loved ones
for jobs you used to do: “I feel so embarrassed . . . ,” said one man; “. . . I can’t even
change a fuse, and it’s embarrassing, belittling” (quoted in Girdler, Packer, & Boldy,
2008, p. 113). People might experience the uncomfortable feeling of being “overpro-
tected” (meaning infantilized) by well-meaning friends and family.
These fears are well founded. When researchers polled older adults attending
a low-vision clinic, over time, more respondents agreed with comments such as,
“People don’t let me do what I could do for myself” (Cimarolli and others, 2013).
Given this danger, how can loved ones help? Encourage the person to visit a low-
vision center for rehabilitation, because these programs work (Smallfield, Clem, &
Myers, 2013). Consider Jim Vlock, a retired executive whose eyes were literally
opened when he (reluctantly) visited a center for the visually impaired. After an
evaluation, Mr. Vlock emerged laden with devices, from a talking watch, to special-
ized glasses for different tasks, to a computer with an enlarged screen that can “read
for him.” As one center director put it, “Too often we get patients who . . . have lost
their jobs, their wives, their home. . . . Our philosophy is to get patients to do things
for themselves so they can feel fulfilled.” (See Brody, 2010.)
Actually people with vision impairments adopt different creative coping tech-
niques on their own (Schilling and others, 2013)—from rearranging the wider world
(“I make contrasts everywhere”; “I just bought new white mugs so I can see where the
coffee is,” said one woman), to drawing on their positivity skills to see life with new eyes
(“Let me take pleasure in the many things I still can do”). These encouraging findings
explain why even serious vision disorders are not linked to depression in old age (Kiely,
Anstey, & Luszcz, 2013). This is not true of that other important sense—hearing.
Our Bridge to Others: Hearing

It’s natural to worry most about losing our sight in old age. But one study showed
hearing impairments are more prone to produce depression than almost any other
medical problem of later life (Mener and others, 2013). The reason is that hearing
loss can provoke loneliness (Kiely, Anstey, & Luszcz, 2013: Pronk, Deeg, & Kramer,
2013) because it robs us from understanding language, our bridge to other minds.
Poor hearing isolates us from the human world.
Unfortunately, late-life hearing problems are common. They affect 1 in 3 people
in their sixties. By the next decade, the statistics double, to almost 2 out of 3 (Bain-
bridge & Wallhagen, 2014). The figures are particularly alarming for men. Around
the world, males are several times more likely than women to develop hearing losses
in midlife (Belsky, 1999).
One reason is that age-related hearing loss has an environmental cause: exposure
to noise. Men are more likely to be construction workers, ride motorcycles, and go to
NASCAR races. These high-noise environments can provoke hearing handicaps at an
unusually young age. Government regulations mandate hearing protection devices
for workers in noisy occupations, which may partly explain why in recent decades,
U.S. hearing loss rates have stabilized or declined (Bainbridge & Wallhagen, 2014).
Still, from exposing ourselves to the roar of rock concerts to embedding an iPod in
presbycusis Age-related our ear, these statistics are apt to stay stubbornly high as today’s emerging adults travel
difficulty in hearing, into their older years.
particularly high-pitched
tones, caused by the atrophy
Presbycusis—the characteristic age-related hearing loss—is caused by the
of the hearing receptors atrophy or loss of the hearing receptors, located in the inner ear (Yamasoba
located in the inner ear. and others, 2013; see Figure 14.7). This irreversible change, compounded by
Outer ear
Middle ear
Cochlea
(inner ear,
partially uncoiled)
Hair cells
Eardrum
(tympanic membrane)
figure 14.7: The human ear: Presbycusis is caused by the selective loss of the hearing
receptors in the inner ear—called hair cells—that allow us to hear high-pitched tones—so these
changes are permanent.
the neural declines discussed in the previous chapter, affect people’s ability to
quickly process speech as early as midlife (Clinard & Tremblay, 2013). The
receptors coding high-pitched tones are most vulnerable. So, older people have
special difficulties hearing consonants, for instance mistaking the word time
for dime, because these sounds are delivered at a higher pitch (Bainbridge &
Wallhagen, 2014).
Put yourself in the place of someone with presbycusis.
Because of your speech decoding difficulties, listening to
conversations feels like hearing a radio filled with static.
(That’s why older people complain: “I can hear you, but
I can’t understand you.”) Because your impairment has
Copyright © Lon C. Diehl/PhotoEdit – All rights reserved.

been progressing gradually, you may not be sure you have
a problem, thinking, “Other people talk too softly.” If
you are like most hearing-impaired people, you won’t get
a hearing aid (Laplante-Levesque, Hickson, & Worrall,
2010). Hearing aids are expensive and a hassle to manage,
or so you have heard (see McCormack & Fortnum, 2013).
After all, you can hear fairly well in quiet situations. It’s
only when it gets noisy that you can’t hear at all.
Think of the pitch of the background noises surround-
ing you now: the hum of a computer, the sound of a car
motor starting up. These sounds are lower in pitch than speech. This explains why Being in a wheelchair seriously
hearing-impaired people complain about “all that noise.” Background sounds over- compromises anyone’s quality
of life. But this woman’s hear-
power the higher-pitched conversations they need to understand. ing impairment, which makes
Imagine having a conversation with a relative who cannot hear well—having to having a conversation with her
repeat your sentences, needing to shout to make yourself understood. Although you husband practically impossible,
love your grandpa dearly, you automatically cringe when he enters the room. Now, may be even more important in
cutting her off from the outside
imagine that you are a hearing-impaired person who must continually say, “Please world. Moreover, if she is like
repeat that,” and you will understand why this ailment can provoke isolation. Hearing most of older people, she won’t
losses impair our ability to lovingly connect. be using a hearing aid.
INTERVENTIONS: Amplifying Hearing

Because background noise is important in determining how well older people hear,
one solution is to choose your social settings with care. Don’t go to a noisy restaurant.
Avoid places with low ceilings or bare floors, as they magnify sound. Install wall-to-
wall carpeting in the house to help absorb background noise. Get rid of noisy appli-
ances, such as a rattling air conditioner or fan. If a loved one is receptive, you might
mention that assistive devices such as flashing phones might improve his life.
When talking to a hearing-impaired older adult, speak clearly and slowly. Face
the person. Perhaps use gestures so the person can take advantage of multiple sensory
cues (Diederich, Colonius, & Schomburg, 2008). But avoid elderspeak, the tendency
to talk more in exaggerated tones (“HOW ARE YOU, DARLING? WHAT IS FOR
elderspeak A style of
communication used with DINNER TODAY?”).
an older person who seems Elderspeak—a mode of communication we tend to naturally fall into when an
to be physically impaired, older person looks physically (and so mentally) impaired—has unfortunate simi-
involving speaking loudly larities to infant-directed speech. We use simpler phrases and grammar, and employ
and with slow, exaggerated
pronunciation, as if talking to infantile “loving” words, such as darling, that we would never adopt when formally
a baby. addressing a “real” adult (Kemper & Mitzner, 2001). I’ll never forget going out to
dinner with a friend in his late eighties who needed to use a walker, and cringing at
how the 18-year-old server treated this intellectual man like a 2-year-old!
For your own future hearing, the message rings out loud and clear. Avoid high-
noise environments and cover your ears when you pass by noisy places. Why do we
hear so much about the need to exercise, and yet there is a deafening silence about
protecting our hearing? How many of you religiously work out to prevent health
problems like heart attacks but attend rock concerts without a thought? Think of
the noise level at your fitness center. Could the same place where you are going to
improve your health be producing this common age-related disease?
Ironically, the same noisy places that contribute to hearing losses now some-
times offer solutions for the hearing impaired. An assistive device is available in
big city public venues—such as train, bus, and subway stations—that “delivers”
loudspeaker announcements directly to a user’s hearing aid. This microphone-
attached advance, called the hearing loop, makes speech crystal clear by bypassing
the cacophony of background noise. (See Hearing Loop, n.d.). The hearing loop
has now migrated to some community theaters and concert halls, and speaker-to-
listener microphones show promise at amplifying personal conversations, too (see
Aberdeen & Fereiro, 2014).
Still no external hookup can supplant that simple device, the hearing aid. So
what causes the (beautifully named) “ file drawer problem,” the fact that even after
being fitted for a hearing aid, older people, not infrequently, give this device up?
Users complain that hearing aids (being so small) are cumbersome to adjust
(McCormack & Fortnum, 2013). They are difficult to care for (Kelly and others,
© Ole Graf/Corbis
2013). Worse yet, because they don’t completely compensate for the selective losses
I’ve described, they don’t make your hearing perfectly normal . . . which bothers me,
because I’m developing the hearing troubles discussed in this section as we speak.
So if any budding mechanical genius is listening: You’ll benefit humankind, make
Even though this aged woman billions, and most important, help your author, by inventing a perfect hearing aid!
may have spent her life as
a Shakespeare scholar or
a well-known scientist, her Motor Performances
emerging-adult granddaughter
will be tempted to talk to her
Poor hearing causes heartaches when we communicate with older people one-to-one.
frail, tiny grandma in elderspeak. What bothers us when we imagine the general category “old person” lies in the motor
How often have you used this realm. The elderly are so slow!
patronizing type of speech with Slowness puts older people out of sync with the physical world. It can make
a cognitively sharp person in her
eighties or nineties just because
driving or getting across the street a challenging feat. It causes missteps in relation-
she looked as if she might be ships, too. If you find yourself behind an elderly person at the supermarket checkout
impaired? counter or an older driver going 40 in a 65-mile-per-hour zone, notice that your
The huge domed ceilings are awe-

inspiring, but combined with bare floors
and the clatter of commuters, they make
New York City’s Grand Central Station an
acoustic nightmare. However, thanks to
the miracle of the hearing loop, people
can now bypass that background noise
via loudspeaker train announcements
beamed directly to their hearing aids.
© Stuart Monk/Alamy
reaction is to get annoyed. So, age-related slowing alone may help explain
why our fast-paced, time-oriented society has such negative prejudices
against the old.
The slowness that is emblematic of old age is mainly caused by the
loss in information-processing speed that starts decades earlier, in young
adulthood (again described in Chapters 12 and 13). This slowed reaction
time—or decline in the ability to respond quickly to sensory input—affects
every action, from accelerating when the traffic light turns green, to hearing
fast paced conversations, to performing well on a fluid IQ test.
Age changes in the skeletal structures propelling action compound the
slowness: With osteoarthritis, the joint cartilage wears away, making every-
thing from opening a jar to running for the bus an endurance test. With
osteoporosis, the bones become porous, brittle, and fragile, and break eas-
ily. Although men can also develop osteoporosis, women, as is well known,
are more susceptible to this disease. The main reason is that females—
© Ball Miwako/Alamy
particularly slender women—have frailer, smaller bones. With this illness,
the fragile bones break at the slightest pressure and cannot knit themselves
back together. Hip fractures are a special danger. They are a primary reason
for needing to enter a nursing home (Jette and others, 1998).
Actually, as roughly 1 in every 3 older people falls in any given year, hip fractures This British road sign perfectly
are not infrequent in old age. The cost of fall-related injuries in hospitalizations and symbolizes our image of “the
nursing home placement is enough to knock society off its feet—representing at least old”: ADL-impaired; needing
special care; most of all,
0.1 percent of health-care expenditures in the United States and the European Union impossibly slow.
(Ambrose, Paul, & Hausdorff, 2013).
INTERVENTIONS: Managing Motor Problems reaction time The speed at

As the number one risk factor for falling is dizziness (see Olsson Möller and others, which a person can respond
to a stimulus. A progressive
2013), physicians should be careful about over-prescribing medications to older increase in reaction time is
adults. Because gait and balance difficulties make falls more likely, people need to universal to aging.
check out exercise programs focused on improving these skills (such as Tai Chi) osteoporosis An age-related
(Gschwind, Bridenbaugh, & Kressig, 2010). Physical exercise can even somewhat chronic disease in which the
reverse balance, strength, and mobility declines that are moderately severe (Ip and bones become porous, fragile,
others, 2013). and more likely to break.
Osteoporosis is most common
Older people and their loved ones might also take steps to avoid tripping by in thin women and so most
using high-quality indirect lighting (as I mentioned earlier) and low-pile, wall-to- common in females of
wall carpeting in their homes. Put grab bars in places such as in the bathtub, where European and Asian descent.
falls are likely to occur. Install cabinet doors that open to

the touch, and place shelves within easy reach. If a relative
is worried about living independently, urge her to check out
body sensors that signal health care providers if she trips and
falls.
Actually, “lower body” impairments—because they limit
© Peter Hvizdak/The Image Works
mobility—are the number-one barrier to living independently

in later life (Pressler & Ferraro, 2010). Suppose you needed
help standing, and getting to the toilet was a scary balancing
act? Still I know a man who cannot walk—and should be in
a nursing home—whose life was transformed by that simple
assistive device: the medical scooter. The scooter has permit-
ted him to stay in his own home (with a lot of loving family
Medical scooters provide vital
wheels to elderly and disabled support) and given him wheels to travel. It has also saved our government thousands
adults—keeping this man of dollars in institutional care!
physically connected to life. Table 14.1 summarizes the main points of this sensory-motor section, with special
emphasis on highlighting what older adults and their loved ones can do to produce
the right person–environment fit at home. How do the elderly handle that environ-
mental challenge so important to staying independent: driving?
Table 14.1: Age-Related Sensory-Motor Changes and Interventions: A Summary

Changes Interventions
Vision
Problems with seeing • Use strong, indirect light, and avoid using fluorescent bulbs.
in dimly lit places, • Look for home appliances with large letters, nonreflective surfaces, and
sensitivity to glare adjustable lighting.
• Consider giving up driving at night and in the rain.
• If your eyesight becomes severely impaired, go to a low-vision center
for help.
Hearing
Loss of hearing for • Reduce background noise.
high-pitched tones • Speak distinctly while facing the person, but avoid elderspeak.
• Install wall-to-wall carpeting and double-paned windows in a home.
Motor abilities
Slower reaction time • Be careful in speed-oriented situations.
Osteoporosis and • Search out exercise programs focused on improving balance and gait.
osteoarthritis
Gait problems • Install low-pile carpeting to prevent tripping, grab bars, and other
assistive devices at home. (The lighting interventions suggested above
will also help prevent falls.)
Hot in Developmental Science: Driving in Old Age

Imagine that you are an elderly person whose vision problems or lower-body impair-
ments are making driving dangerous. You first stop driving during rush hour. For
years, you have been uncomfortable driving at night and in the rain. But even
though you are aware of having problems, if you are like many older people, you
cannot imagine giving up your car (Lindstrom-Forneri, Tuokko, & Rhodes, 2007).
Abandoning driving means confronting the loss of independent selfhood that you first
gained when you got your license as a teen. Giving up driving might even force you
to abandon your home and enter a nursing home.
Actually, driving is a special concern for the elderly because it involves many
sensory and motor skills. In addition to demanding adequate vision, driving is affected
by hearing losses because we become alert to the location of other cars partly by
their sound (see Munro and others, 2010). To drive well demands having the muscle
strength to push down the pedals and the joint flexibility to turn the wheel. And, as
anyone behind an older driver when the light turns green knows, driving is especially
sensitive to slowed reaction time.
The good news is that older people—more often women than men (Sarkin and
others, 2013; Tuokko and others, 2013)—limit their driving, especially when they
reach the old-old years (Tuokko and others, 2013). Elderly drivers, one video study
showed, pay special attention to the road when they are in heavy traffic and make
left or right turns (Charlton and others, 2013). The bad news is that a small percent
of drivers (roughly 1 in 10 older people in one study) rank their skills as excellent,
even when on-road assessments by examiners show they are unsafe to drive (Wood,
Lacherez, & Anstey, 2013). This may explain why accident rates shoot upward during
the old-old years (Stamatiadis, 1996; see also Ross and others, 2009; see Figure 14.8).
Male
Female
Accident ratio 3.0

per miles
driven
2.5
2.0
figure 14.8: Accident
1.5 rates in U.S. urban areas,
by age and gender: Driving is
1.0 especially dangerous for drivers
age 75 and over. Notice that,
if we look at per person miles
0.5 driven, old-old drivers have
accident rates that outpace
0 those in the other highest-risk
<25 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 65–74 75+ group—teenagers and emerging
Driver’s age adults.
Data from: Stamatiadis, 1996.
Imagine you are a passenger and your 90-year-old uncle

is behind the wheel. When should you be most concerned?
Expect special trouble at complex intersections—which demand
divided attention and complex information processing. For simi-
lar reasons, expect making difficult left turns into traffic to be
Jose Luis Pelaez, Inc./Getty Images/Blend Images
unusually hair-raising (Clarke and others, 2010). Obviously, the

danger accelerates in poor visibility with traffic around (Trick,
Toxopeus, & Wilson, 2010).
What should society do? Our first thought would be to require
yearly license renewals, accompanied by vision tests for people
over 75. Still, a simple eye test will not be enough. With late-life
driving difficulties, reaction-time issues loom large (Martin and
others, 2010). Because the elderly have trouble processing the
changing array of stimuli on the road (Roenker and others, 2003),
Vision problems, hearing difficulties, and especially
to really weed out dangerous drivers, we might need to give each slowed reaction time—all combine to make this 80-year-
older driver neuropsychological tests (Dawson and others, 2010). old a more dangerous driver. Moreover, he will have spe-
Should we rely on relatives or ask physicians to report impaired cial trouble driving in high risk situations.
older drivers? Would you have the courage to rob your uncle of his adult status by
taking away his keys?
None of these interventions speaks to the larger issue: “If I can’t drive, I may have
to leave my home.” We need to redesign the driving environment by putting adequate
lighting on road signs, streets, highways, and, especially, exit ramps. We need to
construct walkable communities, invest in mass transportation, and take other steps
to liberate people from cars. This mandate is mandatory to tackle our global energy
problems, ballooning obesity, and the looming ADL crisis as the baby boomers move
down the highway of later life.
On your way home tonight, think of how to change the driving environment
to provide a better person–environment fit for older adults (and yourself!). This
environmental engineering is crucial when dealing with the most feared condition
of old age: major neurocognitive disorders, or dementia.
1. Roy, who is 55, is having trouble seeing in the dark and in glare-filled environments.
Roy’s problem is caused by the clouding of his cornea/iris/lens. At age 80, when Roy’s
condition has progressed to the point where he can’t see much at all, he will have a
cataract/diabetic retinopathy/macular degeneration, a condition that can/cannot be
cured by surgery.
2. Dr. Jones has just given a 45-year-old a diagnosis of presbycusis. All of the following
predictions about this patient are accurate except (pick out the false statement):
a. The patient is likely to be a male.
b. The patient has probably been exposed to high levels of noise.
c. The patient is at risk for becoming isolated and depressed.
d. The patient will hear best in noisy environments.
3. Your 75-year-old grandmother asks for advice about how to remodel her home to make
it safer. Which modifications should you suggest?
a. Install low-pile carpeting and put grab bars in the bathroom.
b. Put fluorescent lights in the ceilings.
c. Buy appliances with larger numerals and nonreflective surfaces.
d. Put a skylight in the bathroom that allows direct sunlight to shine down on the
medicine cabinet.
e. Get rid of noisy air conditioners and fans.
4. Your state legislature is considering a law to require annual eye exams for drivers
over the age of 75. Explain to the lawmakers why this law may not be effective, and
offer some alternate strategies that could minimize the dangers of needing to drive in
old age.
major neurocognitive
disorder (NCD) (also known
as dementia). The general
term for any illness involving
serious, progressive, usually Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs)
irreversible cognitive Major neurocognitive disorder (commonly known as dementia) is the general label
decline, that interferes with
a person’s ability to live
for any illness that produces serious, progressive, and often irreversible cognitive prob-
independently. (A minor lems that compromise a person’s ability to function. (The framers of the current U.S.
neurocognitive disorder is diagnostic manual, DSM-5, distinguish between a major and minor form of NCD;
the label for a less severe with the minor form, the person has difficulties with memory and thinking that, while
impairment in memory,
reasoning, and thinking
significant, don’t prevent living independently.)
which does not compromise The devastating mental losses produce the total erosion of our personhood,
independent living.) the complete unraveling of the inner self. Younger people can also develop a
neurocognitive disorder if they have a brain injury or an illness such as AIDS.

However—as you will see later—these symptoms are typically produced by two spe-
cific conditions that typically strike in later life.
What is the cognitive decline really like? As you can poignantly see in the Expe-
riencing the Lifespan box, in the earlier stages, people forget basic semantic informa-
tion. They cannot recall core facts about their lives, such as the name of their town or
how to get home. Impairments in executive functions are prominent. A conscientious
person behaves erratically. An extrovert withdraws from the world.
Experiencing the Lifespan: An Insider Describes His Unraveling Mind

Hal is handsome and elegant, a young-looking 69. He and then try to calm down and come back to it. Like, when
warmly welcomes me into his apartment at the assisted- I read, I get confused; but then I just stop and try again a
living facility. Copies of National Geographic and month later. Or the people here: I know them by face, by
Scientific American are laid out in stacks. Index cards list sight, but I cannot get that focus down to memorize any
his daughters’ names and phone numbers, and provide names. I remember things from when I was five. It’s what’s
reminders about the city and the state where he lives. happening now that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Hal taught university chemistry for years. When his mind As we walk to my car after this interview, Hal’s daughter
began to unravel, he learned that he had the illness fills me in:
whose symptoms he graciously describes:
My father seems a lot happier now that he is here. The
I first noticed that I had a problem giving short speeches. problem is the frustration, when he tries to explain things
You have a blank and like . . . what do I put in there. . . . and I can’t understand and neither of us connects. Then
I can speak. You are listening to me and you don’t hear any he gets angry, and I get angry. My father has always been
pauses, but if you get me into something. . . . I just had a very intellectual person, so feeling out of control is
one of these little pauses. I knew what I wanted to say and overwhelming for him. . . . He has days where he gets
I couldn’t get into it, so I think a little bit and wait and try paranoid, decides that there is a conspiracy out for him.
to get around to it. I know it’s there . . . but where do I use It’s tiny things. A letter came to the wrong place and he
it? . . . It’s ups and downs; and then one day you are in a went down and exploded at the people at the desk. For
deep valley. You can’t get tied up in the hills and valleys me the worst thing is remembering how my father was.
because they just lead you around and it makes you more You expect a certain response from him and you get this
frustrated than ever. . . . If I can’t get things, I just give up strange response. It’s like there’s a different person inside.
As the symptoms progress, every aspect of thinking is affected. Abstract reasoning

becomes difficult. People can no longer think through options when making decisions.
Their language abilities are compromised. People cannot name common objects,
such as a shoe or a bed. Judgment is gone. Older adults may act inappropriately—
undressing in public, running out in traffic. They may wander aimlessly and behave
recklessly, unaware that they are endangering their lives.
When these diseases reach their later stages, people may be unable to speak
or move. Ultimately, they are bedridden, unable to remember how to eat or even
swallow. At this point, complications such as infections or pneumonia often lead to
death.
The Dimensions of These Disorders

How long does this devastating decline path take? As you will see later, there is an
in-between period between experiencing moderate memory problems and having
full-blown symptoms. So it’s sometimes hard to clearly define when a major neuro-
cognitive disorder actually begins. The deterioration progresses at different rates from
person to person and varies depending on the specific disease. But in general, these
illnesses deserve the label chronic disease. On average, the time from diagnosis until
death is approximately 4 to 10 years (Rabins, 2011; Theis & Bleiler, 2011).
The good news is that these devastating mental impairments

Men
Risk 25 are typically illnesses of advanced old age. Among the young-
(percentage) Women
old, the prevalence of these diseases is in the single digits. Over
20
age 85, 1 in 3 people are destined to develop memory problems
15 this severe (see Figure 14.9). While these statistics are alarming,
notice the small silver lining here. Most older adults do survive
10 sound in mind well into the old-old years.
5
Neurocognitive Disorders’ Two Main Causes
65 75 85 What conditions produce these terrible symptoms? Although
Age there is a host of rarer late life diseases, typically the older person
will be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or vascular dementia
figure 14.9: Estimated risks for major or some combination of those two illnesses.
neurocognitive disorder in a major U.S. study, Vascular neurocognitive disorder (also called vascular
by age and sex: The good news is that our chance of dementia) involves impairments in the vascular (blood) system,
getting a major neurocognitive disorder by age 65 is or network of arteries feeding the brain. Here, the person’s cogni-
minuscule. The bad news is that, by age 85—especially
for females—the risk accelerates.
tive problems are caused by multiple small strokes.
Date from: Alzheimer’s Association, 2009. Neurocognitive disorder due to Alzheimer’s disease (typi-
cally called Alzheimer’s disease) directly attacks the core struc-
ture of human consciousness, our neurons. With this illness,
the neurons wither away and are replaced by strange wavy
structures, called neurofibrillary tangles, and, as you can see in
this photo, thick, bullet-shaped bodies of protein, called senile
plaques.
Vascular problems—because they limit the brain’s blood
supply—promote this neural loss (Strand and others, 2013; Vuo-
rinen and others, 2013). So, when an 85- or 90-year-old person
Martin M. Rotker/Science Source
develops this condition, small strokes plus Alzheimer’s changes

typically work together to produce the mental decline (Theis &
Bleiler, 2011).
As you just saw, the number-one risk factor for developing
any major neurocognitive disorder is being old-old. But there is
a genetic marker that raises the chances of getting Alzheimer’s
This magnified slice of the brain showing the senile
plaques (dark circles) provides a disturbing window into disease. Roughly 15 percent of the U.S. population possesses
the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. two copies of the APOE-4 marker. Being in this unlucky group
roughly doubles the chance of a person’s getting ill during the
young-old years (Blacker & Lovestone, 2006).
vascular neurocognitive This breakthrough in the genetics of Alzheimer’s poses a dilemma. Children
disorder (also known as who have witnessed a parent develop this illness are (no surprise) terrified of the
vascular dementia). A type of
age-related neurocognitive disease. Knowing they don’t have the genetic marker would ease their minds.
disorder caused by multiple But having the APOE-4 allele does not mean that a person will definitely get ill.
small strokes. It only shows that person is at higher risk. Would you decide to be tested? The
neurocognitive disorder due answer, if you are like many people, might hinge on whether there are strategies
to Alzheimer’s disease (or to ward off the blow. Where are we in terms of preventing and treating Alzheimer’s
Alzheimer’s disease). A type disease?
of age-related neurocognitive
disorder characterized by
neural atrophy and abnormal
by-products of that atrophy,
Targeting the Beginnings: The Quest to Nip Alzheimer’s
such as senile plaques and in the Bud
neurofibrillary tangles.
The main front in the war to prevent Alzheimer’s centers on a protein called amy-
neurofibrillary tangles Long, loid, a fatty substance that is the basic constituent of the senile plaques. According
wavy filaments that replace
normal neurons and are to much—but not all—current scientific thinking, the amyloid-laden plaques are
characteristic of Alzheimer’s central to producing the cortical decay (Theis & Bleiler, 2011). Efforts to dissolve
disease. the plaques in Alzheimer’s patients have not worked. The challenge is to stem
this amyloid cascade before the damage has occurred and people show symptoms of senile plaques Thick, bullet-
the disease. like amyloid-laden structures
that replace normal neurons
This means early diagnosis is crucial. But since scientists cannot look into the and are characteristic of
brain to see the individual neurons, as of this writing there is no definitive medical Alzheimer’s disease.
test showing the person is getting ill. The current way of diagnosing Alzheimer’s is to:
(1) Look for a history of steady mental deterioration (rapid mental confusion signals
a state called delirium which, in the elderly, may be due to anything from medication
side effects to a heart attack); (2) rule out other physical and psychological causes; and
(3) explore the person’s performance on neuropsychological tests.
Older adults diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment are centrally important in
this research goal. These people show serious learning impairments but have yet to
cross the line to Alzheimer’s disease. Not everyone with mild cognitive impairment
makes the transition to Alzheimer’s. In fact some people—those open to experience,
with cognitively enriching lifestyles—can improve (Sachdev and others, 2013). How-
ever, a good fraction (roughly 1 in 2 people) develops the illness within a few years
(Theis & Bleiler, 2011).
The fact that the APOE-4 marker strongly predicts developing mild cognitive
impairment may explain its link to full blown Alzheimer’s (Brainerd and others,
2013). Other clues that a person is on the road to this illness are gait changes,
walking more slowly (Verghese and others, 2013; Hausdorff & Buchman, 2013),
and having difficulties with complex IADL activities, such as finding
your way in unfamiliar places (see Reppermund and others, 2013).
Once we have clear “biomarkers” of incipient Alzheimer’s, scientists
can work on developing medicines that might stop the disease in its
tracks.
In the meantime, is there anything you and I can do? Adopting a
heart-healthy diet is an excellent policy because, as I’ve been suggesting,
cardiovascular problems are closely linked to cognitive loss. Although
Alzheimer’s is an equal-opportunity illness, affecting everyone from
scholars on down, being well educated offers people a cognitive reserve
to buffer the decline (Roberson, 2013; Crowe and others, 2013). (Another
reason to stay in college!) Because enriching maze running challenges
stimulate neurogenesis in elderly rats (Speisman and others, 2013), it’s
Joel Rafkin/Photo Edit

possible that providing mental exercise might help stave off some neural
declines.
What clearly does improve cognitive function in middle-aged and
elderly people is physical exercise (see Benedict and others, 2013).
Interestingly, exercise may slow accelerated plaque formation in the very These seventy-something
group most susceptible to Alzheimer’s—adults with the APOE marker (Head and dancers in the photo you
others, 2011). So, if I had to vote, my number-one candidate for an anti-Alzheimer’s first saw at the beginning of
strategy would be physical exercise. Even if it doesn’t help our species construct new Chapter 12 are not only likely
to see themselves as young,
brain cells, at a minimum, going to the gym or walking will help with the vascular but their favorite activity may
component of this illness (and, of course, help prevent the lower-body problems that actually help prevent Alzheimer’s
are such a threat to independent living in later life). disease!
INTERVENTIONS: Dealing with These Devastating Disorders

What about those Alzheimer’s drugs we see advertised on TV? Unfortunately,
their effects, put charitably, are minor at best (Rabins, 2011). With this illness,
the main interventions are environmental. They involve providing the best
disease–environment fit for the person and helping the second casualties of these
diseases—caregivers.
FOR THE PERSON: USING EXTERNAL AIDS AND MAKING LIFE PREDICTABLE AND
SAFE. Creative external aids such as using note cards can jog memory when
people are in the earlier stages of Alzheimer’s. It helps to put shoes right next to
socks or the coffee pot by the cup, and verbally remind the person what to do.
A prime concern is safety. To prevent people from wandering off (or driving off!),
double-lock or put buzzers on doors. Deactivate dangerous appliances, such as
the stove, and put toxic substances, such as household cleaners, out of reach.
Many nursing homes feature specialized “memory units,” with living environ-
ments designed to promote cognitive capacities and staff skilled in dealing with
this disease. At every stage of the illness, the goals are to (1) protect people and
keep them functioning as well as possible for as long as possible and (2) be caring
and offer loving support.
So far, I have mainly discussed what others can do for these devastating
impairments—as if the diseases had magically evaporated a human being. This
assumption is wrong. The real profiles in courage are the people in the early stages
of Alzheimer’s who get together to problem-solve and offer each other support. What
does it feel like to be losing your inner self? We already got insights from Hal in the
Experiencing the Lifespan box on page 433. Now let’s read what other people with
early Alzheimer’s have to say:
Well, the first word that comes to my mouth is fear; becoming an infant, incon-
tinence, not knowing who you are . . . I can go on and on, with those kinds of
expressions.
(quoted in MacRae, 2008, p. 400)
Outsiders can compound this terror when they develop their own memory
problem—centering on the label and forgetting the human being. A woman named
Bea vividly described this situation when she was first told her diagnosis:
The last person who interviewed me was the neurologist. He was very indifferent
and said it was just going to get worse. . . . Health-care professionals need to be
compassionate. . . . There but for the grace of God go I.
(quoted in Snyder, 1999, pp. 17–18)
Can people use their late-life positivity skills to act efficaciously in the face of their
disease? Read what a man named Ed had to say:
Life is a challenge . . . I am alive and I’m going to live life to the best I can. (If) people
want to (say) oh what’s the point in living? Well, they’ve stopped living. . . . you only get
one chance and this is it. Make the most of it.
Another man named Gorman went even further:

This early diagnosis has given me time to enjoy the life I have now. . . .: A beautiful
sunset, a tree in the spring, the rising sun. Yes, having Alzheimer’s has changed my life;
it has made me appreciate life more. I no longer take things for granted.
Can older adults with Alzheimer’s give us other insights into what it means to
be wise? Judge for yourself, as you read what a loving dad named Booker said about
the cycle of life:
I’m blessed to have a wonderful daughter. I sent her to . . . school and college and
now she takes care of all of my business. . . . I’m in her hands. I’m in my baby phase
now, so to speak. So sometimes I call her “my mumma.” . . . Yes, she’s my mumma
now. [Booker smiled appreciatively.] . . . She’s my backbone. She’s such a blessing
to me.
(quoted in Snyder, 1999, p. 103)
FOR THE CAREGIVER: COPING WITH LIFE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN. Imagine your
beloved father or spouse has Alzheimer’s or another irreversible cognitive disorder.
You know that the illness is permanent. You helplessly witness your loved one deterio-
rate. As the disease progresses to its middle stage, you must deal with a human being
who has turned alien, where the tools used in normal encounters no longer apply.
The person may be physically and verbally abusive, wake and wander in the night.
When the 24/7 symptoms produce total role overload (Infurna, Gerstorf, & Zarit,
2013), you face the guilt of putting your loved one in a nursing home (Graneheim,
Johansson, & Lindgren, 2014). Or, you decide to put your own life on hold for years
and care for the person every minute of the day.
What strategies do people use to cope? One study with African American care-
givers revealed that people rely on their faith for solace: “This is my mission from
God” (Dilworth-Anderson, Boswell, & Cohen, 2007). Others turn to the Alzheimer’s
caregiver support groups and Internet chat rooms for advice: “She seems to get worse
during the night.” “What works for you?” “My husband hit me the other day, and I
was devastated.” “Keep telling yourself it’s the illness. People with these illnesses can’t
help how they act.”
Another key lies in relishing the precious moments together you have left:
(Tom and Jane, married for 63 years, who were being interviewed about the illness)
sat close to one another on the couch . . . and shared a great deal of smiles and
giggles … and at times it felt they were the only people in the room . . . Although
the stories Jane told did not always make sense, her eyes lit up whenever a question
was asked about her marriage to Tom . . . What cannot be easily captured on paper
were the warm interactions . . . The investigators felt privileged to be part of such
a rich process in which one couple had the opportunity to share the story of their
relationship together.
(quoted in Daniels, Lamson, & Hodgson, 2007, p. 167)
Yes, dealing with a loved one with these disorders is embarrassing (Montoro-
Rodriguez and others, 2009). It’s stressful and depressing, too. But this life
experience offers its own redemption sequence. Caregivers often report having
a heightened sense of mastery after confronting this stress (Infurna, Gerstorf, &
Zarit, 2013). They get a firsthand lesson in what is really important in life. One
woman summed up her journey of self-awareness like this: “What it’s done
for me, Alzheimer’s, is . . . to give me a whole new life” (quoted in Peacock
and others, 2010, p. 648). (Table 14.2 summarizes these messages in a list of
caregiving tips.)
Until this point, I’ve been exploring how older people and their loved ones can
personally take action to promote the best person–environment fit when old-age frail-
ties strike. Now, let’s look at what society is doing to help.
Table 14.2: Tips for Helping People with Cognitive Disorders

1. Provide clear cues to alert the person to the surroundings, such as using note cards and labeling
rooms and objects around the home (for example, use a picture of the toilet and tub at the door
to the bathroom); use strong, contrasting colors to highlight the difference between different
rooms in the house.
2. Protect the person from getting injured by double-locking the doors, turning off the stove, and
taking away the keys to the car.
3. Offer a highly predictable, structured daily routine.
4. Don’t take insulting comments personally. Try to understand that “it’s the disease talking.”
5. Remember that there is a real person in there. Respect the individual’s personhood.
6. Try to see the silver lining; this is a time to understand what’s really important in life, to grow as
a person and show your love.
7. Definitely join a caregiver support group—and contact the Alzheimer’s Association
(http://www.alz.org).

1. Your grandmother has just been diagnosed with a major neurocognitive disorder.
Describe the two disease processes that typically cause this condition.
2. Mary, age 50, is terrified of getting a neurocognitive disorder. Which statement can
you make that is both accurate and comforting? (Pick one.) a. Don’t worry. These con-
ditions are typically illnesses of the “old-old” years. b. Don’t worry. Scientists can cure
these conditions when the illnesses are caught at their earliest stages.
3. You are giving a status report to a Senate Committee on biomedical efforts to prevent
Alzheimer’s disease. First, target the main research problem scientists face. Then,
offer a tip to the worried elderly senators about a strategy that might help ward off the
illness.
4. Mrs. Jones has just been diagnosed with early Alzheimer’s disease. Her relatives might
help by:
a. taking steps to keep her safe in her home.
b. encouraging her to attend an Alzheimer’s patient support group.
c. treating her like a human being.
d. doing all of the above.
Options and Services for the Frail

Elderly
Imagine you are in your seventies, and cooking and cleaning are difficult. You have
trouble walking to the mailbox or getting from your car to the store. You start out
by using selection and optimization. You focus on your most essential activities. You
spend more time on each important life task. You are determined to live indepen-
dently for as long as possible. But you know that the time is coming when you will
enter Baltes’s full-fledged compensation mode. You will need to depend on other
people for your daily needs. Where can you turn?
Setting the Context: Scanning the Global Elder-Care Scene

For most of human history, older people would never confront this challenge. Families
lived in multigenerational households. When the oldest generation needed help,
caregivers were right on the scene.
Today, however, this support network is fraying in some of the collectivist countries
historically most committed to family care (Qu, 2014). In affluent Japan, nursing
home care is becoming common. In China, young people have rapidly adopted
Western individualistic lifestyles, as they move from the villages to the cities to find
work. The government’s one child policy in particular has left Chinese elderly fearful
of what will happen when they need old-age help (Gustafson & Baofeng, 2014). So,
the East is turning to the West for models of societal elderly care.
The Scandinavian countries offer some of our best examples of the elder care
advanced Western societies can provide (Rodrigues & Schmidt, 2010). In Sweden,
Norway, and Denmark, government-funded home health services swing into opera-
tion to help impaired older people “age in place”—meaning stay in their own homes.
Innovative elderly housing alternatives dot the countryside—from multigenerational
villages with a central community center providing health care to small nursing facili-
ties with attractive private rooms (Johri, Beland, & Bergman, 2003). Because their
care is free and government funded, Scandinavian older adults don’t need to face that
anxiety-ridden question of “can I afford to get help?”
Alternatives to Institutions in the United States Medicare The U.S. govern-

ment’s program of health
In the United States, we do have these worries. The reason is that Medicare, the U.S. insurance for elderly people.
health insurance system for the elderly, pays only for services defined as cure-oriented. alternatives to
It does not cover help with activities of daily living—the very services such as cooking institutionalization
or cleaning or bathing that might keep people out of a nursing home when they are Services and settings
having trouble functioning in life. designed to keep older
people who are experiencing
What choices do older people in the United States and other developed nations age-related disabilities that
have instead of going to a nursing home? Here are the main alternatives to institu- don’t merit intense 24-hour
tionalization that exist today: care from having to enter
nursing homes.
• A continuing-care retirement community is a residential complex that provides continuing-care retirement
different levels of services from independent apartments to nursing home care. community A housing option
Continuing care provides the ultimate person–environment fit. Residents arrive characterized by a series
in relatively good health and then get the appropriate type of care as their physical of levels of care for elderly
residents, ranging from
needs change. With this type of housing, older adults are purchasing peace independent apartments to
of mind. They know where they will be going if and when they need nursing assisted living to nursing
home care. home care. People enter the
community in relatively good
• An assisted-living facility is designed for people who have ADL limitations, but health and move to sections
not impairments that require full-time, 24-hour care. Assisted living—which has where they can get more
mushroomed in popularity—offers care in a less medicalized, homey setting. care when they become
disabled.
Residents often have private rooms with their own furniture. These settings do not
have the overtones of an institutional “old-age home” (Phillips & Hawes, 2005; assisted-living facility A
housing option providing
Yamasaki & Sharf, 2011). care for elderly people who
have instrumental ADL
• Day-care programs are specifically for older people who live with their families.
impairments and can no
Much like its namesake for children, adult day-care provides activities and a place longer live independently
for an impaired older person to go when family members are at work. Because this but may not need a nursing
service allows relatives to care for a frail parent at home without having to give up home.
their other responsibilities—day care puts off the need for a nursing home (Cho, day-care program A service
Zarit, & Chiriboga, 2009). for impaired older adults
who live with relatives, in
• Home health services help people age “in place” (at home). Paid caregivers come which the older person
to the house to cook, clean, and help the older adult with personal care activities spends the day at a center
offering various activities.
such as bathing.
home health services
With their enriching activities and services and social contacts, assisted-living and Nursing-oriented and
continuing-care facilities can be marvelous settings in which to spend the final years housekeeping help provided
of your life. (“It’s like permanently living on a cruise ship,” gushed a friend). However, in the home of an impaired
older adult (or any other
older people must sometimes be unwillingly pushed by family members to move to impaired person).
these places (Koenig and others, 2014). Why?
One reason is that leaving home means shedding one’s
prized possessions, robbing people of the identity and memo-
ries attached to “real life” (Wiles and others, 2012). Moving
can activate fears of losing privacy (Crisp and others, 2013).
Yes, you won’t have the scary experience of struggling to make
it all alone, but you still can feel lonely, especially since you
may confront the same poisonous group-status hierarchies you
Keith Brofsky/Photodisc/Getty Images
had to deal with during your preteen years (Ayalon & Green,
2013; Schafer, 2013). (Unfortunately, human nature doesn’t
change!)
Most important, in the United States, older people only
have the option of moving to continuing care if they are
wealthy—not even middle class (see Coe & Boyle, 2013). Can’t
we devise innovative, low-cost frail-elder-care alternatives that
don’t involve moving and help people who have some ADL It’s tempting menus can make continuing care delicious
places for wealthy older adults to spend their last years
problems but don’t require that ultimate setting—the nursing of life—provided you can tolerate the social “risk” of not
home? being invited to sit at this dinner table.
Nursing Home Care

Nursing homes, or long-term-care facilities, provide shelter and services to people
with basic ADL problems—individuals who do require 24-hour caregiving help.
Although adults of every age live in nursing homes, it should come as no
surprise that the main risk factor for entering these institutions is being
very old. The average nursing home resident is in his—or, I should say,
her—late eighties and nineties. Because, as we know, females live sicker
into advanced old age, women make up the vast majority of residents in
long-term-care (Belsky, 2001).
What causes people to enter nursing homes? Often, a person arrives
after some incapacitating event, such as breaking a hip. Given that these
diseases require such daunting 24/7 care, roughly half of the nursing
home population has some neurocognitive disorder such as Alzheimer’s
disease.
In predicting who ends up in a nursing home, both nature and nur-
ture forces are involved. Yes, the person’s biology (or physical state) does
Photodisc/Getty Images; inset: Eye of Science/Science Source
matter. But so does the environment: specifically, whether a network of

attachment figures is available to provide care. Does the older adult have
several family members and/or a friend willing to take the person in? The
more places (and people) a frail person has “in reserve” to provide help,
the lower the risk of that individual’s landing in long-term care (Kasper,
Pezzin, & Rice, 2010).
Just as the routes by which people arrive differ, residents take differ-
ent paths once they enter nursing homes. Sometimes, a nursing home is
a short stop before returning home. Or it may be a short interlude before
death. Some residents live for years in long-term care.
The simple act of going down You might be surprised to learn who is paying for these residents’
steps can be an ordeal when care in the United States. Because people start out paying the costs out of their
people have ADL impairments. own pockets and “spend down” until they are impoverished, Medicaid, the U.S.
Imagine being this woman and
health-care system specifically for the poor, finances our nation’s nursing homes.
knowing that, because of your
osteoporosis (graphically shown
in the small image at the lower Evaluating Nursing Homes
left), any misstep might land you
in a nursing home.
Nursing homes are often viewed as dumping grounds where residents are abused or
left to languish unattended until they die. How accurate are these stereotypes?
Many times, the generalizations are unfair. Nursing homes may offer perks from
beauty parlors to private rooms. Residents often appreciate their newfound feelings of
safety after moving (Nakrem and others, 2013). A strong movement is afoot to make
nursing homes homey and “person centered,” just as any other retirement home
(Bishop & Stone, 2014).
We still have far to go. In one poll, more than one-half of industry experts ranked
the quality of U.S. nursing homes as “fair” or “poor” (Miller, Mor, & Clark, 2010).
In an alarming Michigan survey, 1 out of 5 family members reported that, yes, their
impaired relative had suffered some nursing home abuse (Conner and others, 2011).
(As you might imagine, “difficult” residents—that is, those with behavior problems
and/or the totally physically incapacitated—are most at risk here.)
It’s also difficult to erase the efficacy-eroding liabilities intrinsic to institutional
nursing home/long-term- life. Imagine sharing a small room with a stranger and needing to eat the food the
care facility A residential facility serves at predetermined hours (Kane, 1995–1996). Nursing home residents
institution that provides can’t just decide to lie in bed or refuse to take a medicine. Their every action—from
shelter and intensive
caregiving, primarily to older
sitting in a chair to being taken to the toilet—is dependent on the workers providing
people who need help with care. As one frustrated new resident named Luis put it: “I would say to my friends,
basic ADLs. don’t go there. Go to jail instead” (quoted in Johnson & Bibbo, 2014, p. 60).
My discussion brings up the front-line nursing home caregivers—the certified certified nurse assistant or
nurse assistant or aide. Just as during life’s early years, caregiving at the upper end aide The main hands-on care
provider in a nursing home
of the lifespan is low-status work. Nursing home aides, like their counterparts in day- who helps elderly residents
care centers, make poverty-level wages. Facilities are chronically understaffed (Teeri with basic ADL problems.
and others, 2008). So, even when an aide loves what she does, the job conditions can
make it difficult to provide adequate care. Having worked in long-term care, I can
testify that residents are sometimes left lying in urine for hours. They wait inordinately
long for help getting fed. One reason is that it can take hours to feed the eight or so
people in your care when dinner arrives!
Still, even some highly experienced nurses gravitate to this “low status” work.
As one Swedish nurse explained: “Your relationship with the patients is completely
different when you see them for years. . . . As a new nurse, your focus is on medical
and technical skills. But, elderly care is so much more” (adapted from Carlson and
others, 2014, pp. 764–765). Read what Jayson, a mellow, 6-foot-tall, 200-pound giant
had to say about his job at a Philadelphia nursing home:
At first I was put off by the smells. . . . Then I got moved to the Alzheimer’s unit . . . and
I found this to be like . . . the best task I ever had. . . . If you just come in here and say,
“Okay, I got a job to do and I’m just doing my job,” . . . then you’re in the wrong field.
. . . When somebody here dies, we all talk, we say how much we miss the person. . . .
Some of them cry. . . . Some of them go to their funerals. . . . I actually spoke at some
of the funerals. . . . I say how much this person meant to me.
(quoted in Black & Rubinstein, 2005, pp. S-4–6)
For Jayson, who—after being shot and lingering near death—reported seeing
an angel visit him in the form of a little old man, his career is a calling from God.
He is flourishing in this consummately generative job. What about nursing-home
residents? Can people get it together within this most unlikely setting? For uplifting
answers, check out the Experiencing the Lifespan box.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Getting It Together in the Nursing Home

A few years ago, I attended an unforgettable memorial internal changes that she had been incapable of before.
service at a Florida nursing home. Person after person She began to look at her past and see how her experi-
rose to eulogize this woman, a passionate advocate who ences had shaped her poor sense of self and then to
had worked with immense self-efficacy to make a differ- see her inner strengths. She and I formed a very close
ence in her fellow residents’ lives. Then Mrs. Alonzo’s son relationship.
told his story. He said that he had never really known his
So then she decided to work on becoming closer to her
mother. When he was young, she became schizophrenic
children. She had been aloof as a mother, and she told
and was shunted to an institution. Then, at age 68,
me that once her younger child had asked her to say that
Mrs. Alonzo entered the nursing home to await death. It
she loved her and she couldn’t get the words out. Now, at
was only in this place, where life is supposed to end, that
age 89, she called this daughter, told her that she did love
she blossomed as a human being.
her and that she was sorry she couldn’t say it before. Her
If you think that this story of emotional growth is unique, daughters said that I had presented them with a miracle,
listen to this friend of mine, a psychologist who, like the loving mother they always wanted. My patient made
Jayson, finds her generativity in nursing home work: friends on the floor and became active in the residents’
My most amazing success entered treatment two years council. In the time we saw one another she used to tell me,
ago. This severely depressed resident had had an abu- “I never believed I could change at this age.”
sive marriage and suffered from enduring feelings of As she finished her story, my friend’s eyes filled with
powerlessness and low self-esteem. I think that being tears: “My patient died a few months ago, and I still miss
sent to our institution allowed this woman to make the her so much.”
A Few Concluding Thoughts

Dealing with ADL impairments is a vital social challenge facing our rapidly aging
world. As you now know, we can’t count on science to magically cure the disabili-
ties inherent to surviving beyond our “expiration date.” We need to prepare for our
looming baby-boomer ADL crisis right now!
Our personal challenge, as you learned in these later-life chapters, is to live fully
as long as we are alive. The Experiencing the Lifespan box you just read highlights
the fact—again—that yes, it is possible to flourish even in a nursing home. It under-
lines the importance of close attachments in promoting a meaningful life. Plus,
the story of this woman who got it together in the nursing home enriches Erikson’s
masterful ideas that have guided our lifespan tour: It’s never too late to accomplish
developmental tasks that we may have missed. People can find their real identity (or
authentic self), fulfill their generativity, and so reach integrity in their final months
of life!
In the next chapter, I’ll continue this theme of inner development and also stress
the crucial importance of making connections with loved ones as I focus directly on
life’s endpoint—death.

1. You are a geriatric counselor, and an 85-year-old woman and her family come to your
office for advice about the best arrangement for her care. Match the letter of each
item below with the number of the suggestion that would be most appropriate if this
elderly client:
a. is affluent, worried about living alone, and has no ADL problems.
b. has ADL impairments and is living with her family—who want to continue to care
for her at home.
c. has instrumental ADL impairments (but can perform basic self-care activities), can
no longer live alone, and has a good amount of money.
d. has basic ADL impairments.
e. is beginning to have ADL impairments, lives alone, and has very little money (but
does not qualify for Medicaid).
(1) a continuing-care retirement facility
(2) an assisted-living facility
(3) a day-care program
(4) a nursing home
(5) There are no good alternatives you can suggest; people in this situation must
struggle to cope at home.
2. Joey and Jane realize that their mother needs to go a nursing home. Which two
likely comments can you make about this mother’s situation—and nursing homes in
general?
a. No one in the family is available to take their mom in.
b. Medicare will completely cover their mom’s expenses.
c. The quality of the facilities to which their mom will go may vary greatly.
d. The staff at their mom’s nursing home will almost always hate their jobs.
3. Devise some creative strategies to care for the frail elderly in their homes.
SUMMARY
Tracing Physical Aging older people must exercise and modify their homes to reduce
the risk of falls.
Normal aging changes progress into chronic disease and finally,
during the old-old years, may result in impairments in activi- Although the elderly drive less often, accident rates rise sharply
ties of daily living (ADL) problems, either less incapacitating among drivers over age 75. Solutions to the problem, such as
instrumental ADL problems or basic ADL problems—troubles mandatory vision tests over a certain age, may not work so well,
with basic self-care. as driving involves many sensory and motor skills. Modifying the
driving environment and especially developing a car-free society
Futuristic gurus predict that we are about to extend our maximum are critical challenges today.
human lifespan (about a century), especially because underfeed-
ing can extend the maximum life span of rats. But gerontolo-
gists believe this goal is unlikely, because the cascade of faults Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs)
involved in human aging ensure that our bodies must give out at Major neurocognitive disorder (also known as dementia) is the
about the century mark. label for any illness involving serious irreversible declines in cog-
Socioeconomic status predicts how quickly we age and die, nitive functioning. The two illnesses causing these symptoms are
as shown by the wide life expectancy differences between the neurocognitive disorder due to Alzheimer’s disease, defined by
developed and developing worlds. The socioeconomic health neural atrophy accompanied by senile plaques and neurofibril-
gap refers to the fact that—within each nation—people who lary tangles, and vascular neurocognitive dementia, caused by
are affluent live healthier for a longer time. A variety of forces, small strokes. These diseases typically erupt during the old-old
starting in early childhood, make poverty a risk factor for early years and progress gradually, with the person losing all func-
disability and death. Education and close attachments enhance tions. The APOE-4 marker predicts developing Alzheimer’s dis-
longevity and health. ease at a relatively younger age.
Gender also affects aging, with males dying at younger ages To prevent the accumulation of the plaques, scientists are study-
of heart attacks and women surviving longer but being more ing people with mild cognitive impairment and looking for risk
disabled. While females are biologically primed to live longer, factors that foreshadow getting ill. Today, Alzheimer’s cannot be
considering healthy-life years, women only do slightly better prevented or cured, although physical exercise may help ward
than men. Although physical problems are the predictable price off its onset. The key is to make environmental modifications to
of living far into old age, improving children’s lives and construct- keep the person safe—and understand that older adults with
ing caring communities may have dramatic health payoffs during these problems are still people. Caregivers’ accounts and the
adult life. testaments of people in Alzheimer’s early stages offer profiles in
human courage.
The classic age-related vision problems—presbyopia (impair- Options and Services for the Frail
ments in near vision), difficulties seeing in dim light, and prob- Elderly
lems with glare—are caused by a rigid, cloudier lens. Modifying Although, traditionally, older people lived in multigenerational
lighting can help compensate for these losses. Cataracts, the households, with a built-in family support network for when
endpoint of a cloudy lens, can be easily treated, although the they became frail, even societies historically most committed to
other major age-related vision impairments can cause a more family care (such as China and Japan) now need Western options
permanent loss of sight. Don’t overprotect visually impaired for dealing with disabled older adults. In the United States,
loved ones. Encourage people to visit a low vision center for help. the major alternatives to institutionalization—continuing-care
The common old-age hearing impairment presbycusis may be retirement communities, assisted-living facilities, day-care
emotionally more troubling than vision problems because it lim- programs, and home health services—are typically fairly costly
its a person’s contact with the human world. As exposure to noise and not covered by Medicare. We need services to help people
promotes this selective loss for high-pitched tones, men are at with disabilities who are not wealthy and do not need the intense
higher risk of having hearing handicaps, especially at younger care of a nursing home.
ages. To help a hearing-impaired person, limit low-pitched back- Being female, very old, and not having loved ones to take the
ground noise and speak distinctly—but avoid elderspeak, the person in are the main risk factors for entering nursing homes,
impulse to talk to the older person like a baby. For your own or long-term-care facilities. While nursing homes vary in quality,
future hearing, protect yourself against excessive noise. Hearing and are improving, they still don’t typically provide high-quality
aids, unfortunately, are less user-friendly and effective than we care. Even though the certified nursing assistant or aide, the
might hope. main caregiver, is poorly paid, people can get tremendous grati-
“Slowness” in later life is due to age-related changes in reaction fications from nursing home work. Society needs to prepare for
time and skeletal conditions such as osteoarthritis and osteo- an onslaught of ADL problems as the baby boomers enter their
porosis (thin, fragile bones). Osteoporosis is a special concern old-old years. People can develop as human beings even in a
because falling and breaking a hip is a major reason for entering nursing home, and reach every Eriksonian milestone during their
a nursing home. As mobility is crucial to late-life independence, final years—or months—of life.
KEY TERMS
normal aging changes, p. 418 healthy-life years, p. 423 vascular neurocognitive continuing-care retirement
chronic disease, p. 418 presbyopia, p. 424 disorder, p. 434 community, p. 439
ADL (activities of daily living) lens, p. 425 neurocognitive disorder due assisted-living facility,
problems, p. 418 to Alzheimer’s disease, p. 439
presbycusis, p. 426
p. 434 day-care program, p. 439
instrumental ADL problems, elderspeak, p. 428
p. 418 neurofibrillary tangles, p. 434 home health services, p. 439
reaction time, p. 429
basic ADL limitations, p. 418 senile plaques, p. 434 nursing home/long-term-care
osteoporosis, p. 429
socioeconomic health gap, Medicare, p. 439 facility, p. 440
major neurocognitive disorder
p. 420 alternatives to certified nurse assistant or
(NCD), p. 432
institutionalization, p. 439 aide, p. 441
Tracing Physical Aging Sensory-Motor Changes

1. b 1. lens; cataract; can
2. Marjorie has instrumental ADL problems, and Sara has basic 2. d
ADL problems. 3. a, c, and e. (Suggestions b and d will make grandma’s
3. Tell Laura that physical aging has such complex causes that eyesight worse.)
finding any single life-extension intervention will be virtually 4. Tell the lawmakers that relying just on an eye exam won’t
impossible. Moreover, even if we can replace individual be effective because driving is dependent on many sensory
body parts, such as our heart, other vital organs such as our and motor skills. Suggest sponsoring bills to change roads
kidneys are programmed to wear out. The fact that only a tiny by putting adequate lighting on exit ramps, more traffic
percentage of twenty-first-century babies is projected to live signals at intersections (especially left-turn signals), and
to 100 makes it unlikely that her child—or any child—can live exploring other ways to make the driving environment
to 120. more age-friendly. Most important, foster initiatives that
4. Nico and Hiromi are both correct, because although women don’t depend on driving: Invest in public transportation.
live longer (meaning that they must be healthier), they Give tax incentives to developers to embed shopping
also live “sicker” (meaning that they are more apt to be ill) in residential neighborhoods, and encourage creative
throughout adulthood. alternatives to cars.
Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs) Options and Services for the Frail Elderly
1. The illnesses are neurocognitive disorder due to 1. a, 1; b, 3; c, 2; d, 4; e, 5
Alzheimer’s disease, involving the deterioration of the 2. a and c
neurons and their replacement with senile plaques and
3. Here, you can use your own creativity. My suggestions:
tangles, and vascular neurocognitive disorder, which
(1) Institute a program whereby people get cash incentives
involves small strokes. (Grandma—not infrequently—may
to care for frail elders in their homes. (2) Build small,
have both illnesses.)
intergenerational living communities, with a centrally located
2. a home option specifically for the frail elderly. Residents
3. The main problem scientists face is diagnosing cognitive who buy houses here would commit to taking care of the
problems before they progress to the disease stage—so that older adults in their midst. (3) Set up a Craigslist-type Web
we can develop treatments to ward off the illness. Tell the site, matching older people with a room to spare with area
worried senators that they should start a fitness regimen college students in need. Young people would live rent-free
now! While we don’t have definitive evidence, there are in exchange for helping the older person with cooking and
strong hints that exercise may help stave off Alzheimer’s shopping. (4) Establish a national scholarship program
disease. (perhaps called the “Belsky Grant”!) that would pay your
4. d tuition and living expenses if you commit to caring for frail
elders in the community.
© Image Source Plus/Alamy
Epilogue
Now that we have reached the end of our lifespan journey, it’s time to focus on
life’s final chapter (death) and reflect on what we’ve learned.
Chapter 15–Death and Dying is actually a perfect finale to this lifespan tour,
because, not only does this milestone end our personal lives, but death is the
PART VII
one milestone that occurs at every life stage. How have death attitudes and
practices changed throughout history, and what do people (and their grieving
loved ones) feel as they deal with this final “act” of life? How has the health-
care system approached the terminally ill, and what can we do to make dying
more humane? These issues lead into that contemporary ethical issue: strate-
gies for taking control of when we die.
In Final Thoughts, I’ll take a very short step back to scan the high points of the
journey as a whole. After you read the top four trends that stood out for me in
surveying the research, take some time to think about what struck you most
forcefully in reading this book.
447
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Setting the Context
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A Short History of Death

The Dying Person

Kübler-Ross’s Stages of Dying:
Description and Critique
The More Realistic View: Many
Different Emotions; Wanting Life
to Go On
Hospice Hopes
In Search of a Good Death
SCIENCE: Evolving Ideas About
Grieving
A Small, Final Note on Mourning
a Child
The Health-Care System

What’s Wrong with Traditional
Hospital Care for the Dying?
INTERVENTIONS: Providing
Superior Palliative Care
Unhooking Death from Doctors
and Hospitals: Hospice Care
Hospice Team
The Dying Person: Taking

Control of How We Die
Giving Instructions: Advance
Directives
Deciding When to Die:
Active Euthanasia and
Physician-Assisted Suicide
A Looming Social Issue:
Age-Based Rationing of Care
Death and Dying
I was getting in the car to drive to work when Amy screamed, “Stewart! Come listen
to the news!” We figured out pretty quickly that it came in right about the floor where
she worked, the 96th. By the time the tower came down, we knew for sure that she
died. With a normal death, you prepare for the grieving process. With a shocking
death, it hits you by surprise. My wife was about to give birth to our first child, and
my mother had plane tickets to come down on Friday. You get into the part of it where
you mentally play back the events. Mom (typical, for her) had gone into work early so
she could leave for a dentist appointment. If she’d been a less responsible person, she
would not have been there at 8:46. The other weird part of it is, like, the whole country
feels they own pieces of this tragedy and need to constantly remind you about it. So
it doesn’t go away.
My mom didn’t have young children, but she was looking forward to retirement,
to being a grandmother, and so she was cheated of all those things. Not only did she
die in this horrible way—she died at an unacceptably early age.
...
In his seventies, my father seemed immortal. While he often joked about being an “old
man,” he had no major infirmities. At age 81, mortality hit. For a few months, Dad had
been listless—not his old self, looking old. Then came the unforgettable call: “The
doctor says that it’s cancer of the liver. Jan, I’m going to die.”
Because medicine never admits defeat, the plan was three rounds of chemo-
therapy, punctuated by “recovery” at home. The doctor said, “Maybe we can lick this
thing,” but the treatments were agonizing. Worse yet, recovery never happened. My
father got weaker. After a few months, he could barely walk. Then, before going into
the hospital for the third round, my mother called: “Last night we cried together and
decided not to continue. We’re calling in hospice. I think it’s time for you to come
down.” My father had two more weeks to live.
A day or two before you die, you slip into a coma. It’s the preceding week or two
that lasts for years. Everyone has been summoned to bustle around a train that can-
not be derailed. Yes, you can talk, but what do you say? My father was never a verbal
man. Then, as if on cue, the disease picks up speed. From the wheelchair to becoming
bedridden, the voice that mutates into a whisper, followed by waiting . . . for what?
You force yourself to be at the bedside when the breathing gets slow and rattled, but
you are terrified. You have never seen a dying person. You don’t know how things will
go. Above all, you hope that things go quickly. You can’t stand to see your father suffer
anymore.
M
y father died in the “normal” life. The kind of death Stewart’s mother
late-twentieth-century way. Al- faced on September 11 was horrifying,
though we knew nothing about unexpected—totally outside the norm.
how people die, we had plenty of time How does death really happen today, com-
to plan for the event. Dad’s death came pared to dying in centuries past?
at the “right” time, at the end of a long
449
450 PART VII Epilogue
Pathway 1: Death occurs suddenly

Examples: heart attack in a person who seems healthy,
Setting the Context
any accidental death Today, as Figure 15.1 suggests, our pathways to death take
different forms (Field, 2009). As happened most dramatically
in the World Trade Center tragedy, roughly 1 out of every 6
or 7 people in developed nations dies without warning—as a
Pathway 2: Death occurs after steady decline result of an accident or, more often, of a sudden, fatal, age-
Examples: cancer diagnosed in an advanced stage, ALS
related event, such as a heart attack or stroke (Enck, 2003; see
the red line in Figure 15.1). My father’s death fit the pattern
when illnesses such as cancer are discovered at an advanced
stage. Here, as the blue line shows, a person is diagnosed with
Pathway 3: Dying is a long and erratic process a fatal disease and steadily declines.
Examples: congestive heart failure, cancer that repeatedly The prolonged, erratic pattern, shown in yellow, is the
goes into remission and comes back, AIDS most common dying pathway in our age of extended chronic
disease. After developing cancer—or, like my husband, con-
gestive heart failure (see the Experiencing the Lifespan Box,
on page 455)—people battle that condition for years, helped
by medical technology, until death occurs.
TIME So today, deaths in affluent countries typically occur
slowly. They are dominated by medical procedures. They
have a protracted, uncertain course (Field, 2009; Harris and
figure 15.1: Three pathways to death: Although some others, 2013). For most of human history, people died in a
people die suddenly, the pattern in blue and especially that different way.
in yellow are the most common pathways by which people
die today.
A Short History of Death

She contracted a summer cholera. After four days she asked to see the village priest,
who came and waited to give her the last rites. “Not yet, M. le Curé, I’ll let you
know when the time comes.” Two days later: “Go and tell M. le Curé to bring me
Extreme Unction.”
(reported in Walter, 2003, p. 213)
As you can see in this nineteenth-century description of the death of a

French peasant woman, before modern medicine, death arrived quickly.
People let nature take its course. There was nothing they could do. Dying
was familiar, predictable, and normal. It was embedded in daily life (Wood &
Williamson, 2003).
According to the historian Philippe Ariès (1974, 1981), while life in the
© Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works
Middle Ages was horrid and “wild,” death was often “tame.” Famine, child-
birth, and infectious disease ensured that death was an expected presence
throughout the lifespan. People died, as they lived, in view of the community
and were buried in the churchyard in the center of town.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, death began to move
off center stage when—because of fears about disease—villagers relocated
burial sites to cemeteries outside of town (Kastenbaum, 2004). Then, a more
dramatic change took place during the early twentieth century, when medi-
For most of human history, death was ever
cal science successfully waged war against disease. The conquest of many
present—“up close and personal”—and infectious illnesses moved dying toward the end of the lifespan, relocating it
occurred in the midst of normal life. Here to old age (Field, 2009). Today, with 3 out of 4 deaths in the United States
is an eighteenth-century painting entitled occurring among people over age 65 (and often happening in our eighties
“The Dying Request,” in which a dying
young woman is offering her final words to
and nineties), the actors in the death drama are often a marginal, atypical
her spouse. group—nothing like you or me.
As modern medicine took over, the scene of death shifted to hospitals and
nursing homes. So the act of dying was disconnected from life. Because hospitals
billed themselves as places of recovery, death became a symptom of scientific failure
CHAPTER 15 Death and Dying 451
(see Risse & Balboni, 2013). When people took their last breaths, embedded in the
recesses of intensive care, health-care workers quickly erased all signs of death’s pres-
ence, as they shrouded the body and shipped it to be spruced up in the funeral home
(Kastenbaum, 2004). According to one social critic, by the mid-twentieth century,
death had become the new “pornography”—disgusting, abnormal, never seen or
talked about (Gorer, 1965).
In recent decades, society has shifted course. First, doctors did a total turn-
around from the practice of concealing a devastating diagnosis—never mentioning, for
instance, the “C word”—in favor of telling people, “Yes, it’s cancer, and there is not
much we can do.” (Now that we can meticulously track each symptom on the Internet,
physicians foolish enough not to be upfront about a patient’s illness might be charged
with malpractice or worse!) During the last 15 years, our health-care system has fully
confronted the reality that “yes, people die,” by developing structures to ease our pas-
sage through the terminal phase of life (Risse & Balboni, 2013). We urge everyone
to do their part, by documenting in writing how they want their final act to proceed.

While mainstream society stresses full disclosure and actively planning for our
“final act,” death attitudes differ from group to group even in the developed
world. To demonstrate this point, let’s scan the practices of a culture for whom
dying remains up close and personal, but death is never openly discussed: the
Hmong.
The Hmong, persecuted for centuries in China and Southeast Asia, migrated to
North America after the Vietnam War and number close to a million U.S. residents
today. According to Hmong tradition, mentioning dying “will unlock the gate of
evil spirits,” so when a person enters the terminal phase of life, no one is permitted
to discuss that fact. However, when death is imminent,
the family becomes intimately involved. Relatives flock
around and dress the ill person in the traditional burial
garment—a black robe or suit. After death arrives, they
lovingly wash and groom the corpse, preparing it to be
viewed.
If, contrary to Hmong custom, the person dies in a
hospital, it’s crucial that the body not be immediately sent
to the morgue. The family congregates at the bedside to
wail and caress the corpse for hours. Then, after a lav-
ish four-day funeral ceremony, during which the body
remains in view, the deceased is lovingly dressed in warm
clothing to guard against the cold, and the feet are encased
in special blue shoes for the journey to the next world. At
the gravesite, the coffin is reopened for a final viewing Darren Hauck/Getty Images
before being permanently closed (Gerdner and others,

2007). Could you participate in these activities, by giving
your relative the hands-on care that the Hmong and other
societies routinely provided throughout history to prepare
loved ones for the grave?
In this chapter, I’ll explore what dying is like in the twenty-first-century West, an Even today, small pockets of
the U.S. population adopt an
age of open communications, extended chronic disease, and new attention to provid-
intensely hands-on approach to
ing quality end-of-life care. First, I’ll examine the feelings of the dying person; then, death. Here, you can see phase
turn to the health-care system; and then, return to the person to tackle those touchy one in the carefully orchestrated
issues related to controlling the timing of when we die. As you just saw with the days-long Hmong funeral
ceremony—the body, dressed in
Hmong, however, it’s crucial to remember that—just as dying pathways differ—with
its traditional garments, being
death and dying in general, diversity is the main theme. We all bring unique, equally caressed by distraught family
valid perspectives to that ultimate event of human life. members.

1. Imagine that you were born in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Which
statement about your dying pathway would not be true?
a. You would probably have died quickly of an infectious disease.
b. You would have died in a hospital.
c. You would have seen death all around you from a young age.
d. You would probably have died at a relatively young age.
2. If you follow the typical twenty-first-century pattern, as you approach death, you can
expect to decline (quickly/slowly and erratically) due to (an accident/an age-related
chronic disease).
3. Ella says today we live in a death-denying society. Amanda argues, “That’s not true.
We are paying far more attention to the experience of dying than in the past.” Who is
apt to be most correct, and why?
The Dying Person

How do people react when they are diagnosed with a fatal illness? What are their
emotions as they struggle with this devastating news? The first person to scientifically
study these topics was a young psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
Kübler-Ross’s Stages of Dying: Description and Critique

While working as a consultant at a Chicago hospital during the 1960s, Kübler-Ross
became convinced that the health-care system was neglecting the emotional needs of
the terminally ill. As part of a seminar, she got permission to interview dying patients.
Many people, she found, were relieved to talk about their diagnosis and knew that
their condition was terminal, even though the medical staff and family members had
made valiant efforts to conceal that fact. Kübler-Ross published her discovery that
open communication was important to dying people in On Death and Dying, a slim
best-seller that ushered in a revolution in the way we treat the terminally ill.
Kübler-Ross’s stage theory Kübler-Ross (1969), in her stage theory of dying, originally proposed that we
of dying The landmark progress through five emotions in coming to terms with death: denial, anger, bargain-
theory, developed by
ing, depression, and acceptance. Let’s now briefly look at each emotional state:
psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-
Ross, that people who When a person first gets some terrible diagnosis, such as “You have advanced lung
are terminally ill progress cancer,” her immediate reaction is denial. She thinks, “There must be a mistake,”
through five stages in and takes trips to doctor after doctor, searching for a new, more favorable set of tests.
confronting their death:
When these efforts fail, denial gives way to anger.
denial, anger, bargaining,
depression, and acceptance. In the anger stage, the person lashes out, bemoaning her fate, railing at other
people. One patient may get enraged at a physician: “He should have picked up my
illness earlier on!” Others direct their fury at a friend or family member: “Why did
I get lung cancer at 55, while my brother, who has smoked a pack of cigarettes a day
since he was 20, remains in perfect health?”
Eventually, this emotion yields to a more calculating one: bargaining. Now, the
person pleads for more time, promising to be good if she can put off death a bit.
Kübler-Ross (1969) gives this example of a woman who begged God to let her live
long enough to attend the marriage of her oldest son:
The day preceding the wedding she left the hospital as an elegant lady. Nobody would
have believed her real condition. She . . . looked radiant. I wondered what her reaction
would be when the time was up for which she had bargained. . . . I will never forget the
moment she returned to the hospital. She looked tired and somewhat exhausted and
before I could say hello, said, “Now don’t forget I have another son.”
(1969, p. 83)
Then, once reality sinks in, the person gets depressed and, ultimately, reaches
acceptance. By this time, the individual is quite weak and no longer feels upset, angry,
or depressed. She may even look forward to the end.
Kübler-Ross deserves enormous credit for alerting us to the fact that there is a
living, breathing person inside the diagnosis “terminal cancer” or “end-stage heart
disease.” The problem is that her original ideas were embraced in a rigid, simplistic
way. Here are three reasons why we cannot take this theory as the final word about
death:
TERMINALLY ILL PEOPLE DO NOT ALWAYS WANT TO DISCUSS THEIR SITUATION.
Although she never intended this message, many people read into Kübler-Ross’s
theory the idea that all patients want to talk about impending death. This is emphati-
cally not true (Baile, Aaron, & Parker, 2009; Carlander and others, 2011; Shih and
others, 2009). When researchers ask fatally ill patients about how they feel about
discussing death, they find that people broach this subject selectively and reluctantly.
As one woman said: “They’re scary subjects and . . . we don’t want to touch on it
too much. . . .” (quoted in McGrath, 2004, p. 836). Patients avoid these discussions
because they believe others won’t want to hear: “I try to be open but . . . many people
. . . can’t manage it. They withdraw” (quoted in Saeteren, Lindström, & Nåden, 2010,
p. 815). Sometimes, they shy away from these conversations
to protect loved ones and themselves: “My sister is good but
I couldn’t load off onto her, she would just break. . . . I’ve
got as much as I can cope with. So I can’t get her upset . . .
and then have . . . to calm her down” (quoted in McGrath,
2004, pp. 837, 839).
The bottom line is that people who are dying behave
just as when they are living (which they are!). They are
leery about bringing up painful subjects. People don’t shed
their sensitivity to others and feelings about what topics are
appropriate to discuss when they have a terminal disease.
Actually, as life is drawing to a close, preserving the quality
Asiaselects/Getty Images
of our attachment relationships is a paramount agenda—
and this, as you will see, is a message I will highlight
throughout this chapter.
NOT EVERY PERSON OR FAMILY FEELS IT’S BEST TO SPELL
OUT “THE FULL TRUTH.” As you saw earlier with the Having loved ones pray by a
bedside can offer solace and a
Hmong, the idea that we must inform terminally ill patients about their condition sense of connection during a
is also not universally accepted. Yes, in our individualistic society, people say they person’s final days. But to be
are interested in knowing the facts: “Information is important,” said one Swedish really sensitive, this woman’s
woman with cancer. “Even if you have a short time left, you have to plan this time” family would also need to
respect her privacy, taking their
(quoted in Saeteren, Lindström, & Nåden, 2010, p. 814). But they may not want cues from her as to whether
doctors to get specific when the prognosis is dire (Baile, Aaron, & Parker, 2009; she really wanted to discuss
Innes & Payne, 2009). Families go further: “Don’t tell my loved one anything at impending death.
all!” Here is how one social worker described how she reacted when she received
this plea from loving sons:
Hurting and sad (after learning their mom’s diagnosis of inoperable cancer), . . . The
older sons rushed to the clinic to make me privy to the decision. . . . “Our mother doesn’t
know anything and that’s how we want to keep it.” I could see their behavior as denial
and discuss the western ethic of patient responsibility. But . . . I knew their children
were protecting their mother from what they saw as worse than death: The expectation
of nearing death.
(quoted in Kannai, 2008, pp. 146–147)
As this sensitive woman realized, the approach that Kübler-Ross and our culture
spells out as caring can sometimes be unloving, insensitive, and rude.
PEOPLE DO NOT PASS THROUGH DISTINCTIVE STAGES IN ADJUSTING TO DEATH.
Most important, Kübler-Ross’s theory is wrong! People facing death do not progress
emotionally in a stage-to-stage, cookie-cutter way. In fact, uncritically accepting
Kübler-Ross’s stages can be dangerous if it encourages us to distance ourselves from
dying loved ones (Kastenbaum, 2004). Instead of understanding that becoming
depressed is a reasonable reaction when facing a life-threatening illness, if friends
and family see this feeling as “a phase,” they might view this response as somehow
not real. It’s perfectly understandable for an ill person to get angry when others
respond insensitively or don’t call; but if we view this response through the lens of
stage theory, we might dismiss these natural feelings of hurt as “predictable” signs of
the anger stage.
Therefore, experts view Kübler-Ross’s contributions with mixed emotions. Yes,
she pioneered an important topic. But her theory encouraged its own insensitivity to
the terminally ill (Kastenbaum, 2004).
The More Realistic View: Many Different Emotions;

Wanting Life to Go On
People who are dying do get angry, bargain, deny their illness, and become
depressed. However, as one psychiatrist argues, it’s more appropriate to view
these feelings as “a complicated clustering of intellectual and affective states,
some fleeting, lasting for a moment, or a day” (Schneidman, 1976, p. 6). Even
when people “know” their illness is terminal, the awareness of “I am dying” may
not penetrate in a definitive way (Groopman, 2004; Saeteren, Lindström, &
middle knowledge The idea Nåden, 2010). This emotional state, called middle knowledge, is highlighted
that terminally ill people can in this description of Rachel, a 17-year-old who knew she had end-stage cystic
know that they are dying
yet at the same time not
fibrosis.
completely grasp or come to Rachel said . . . that when she is to die, she wanted to be here in Canuck Place (the
terms emotionally with that hospice), surrounded by friends and family . . . and the nurses and doctors that can help
fact. her feel not scared. And then she said “but I have another way that I’d like to die . . .
sitting on my front porch wrapped in an afghan in a rocking chair and my husband
holding my hand.”
(Liben, Papadatou, & Wolfe, 2008, p. 858)
Moreover, as Rachel’s final heart-wrenching comment suggests, when people

realize that they are close to death, an emotion that often burns strong is hope
(Groopman, 2004; Innes & Payne, 2009). If people are religious, their hopes
may hinge on divine intervention: “God will provide a miraculous cure.” Others
pin their hopes on meditation, alternative therapies, or exercise. Another source
of hope—as Kübler-Ross suggested—is the idea that the medical predictions
can be wrong: “True, I have that diagnosis, but I know of cases where a doctor
told a person with my illness she had six months left and she has been living for
10 years.”
Hope, as you can see in the Experiencing the Lifespan box, doesn’t mean hop-
ing for a cure. It may mean wishing you survive through the summer, or live to see
your wife’s book published, and not be bedridden before you die. It can mean hoping
that your love lives on in your family, or that your life work will make a difference in
the world. (Remember, that’s what being generative is all about.) Contrary to what
Kübler-Ross implies, even reaching acceptance has nothing to do with abandoning
hope. People can understand—“I’m dying”—and still have many future goals and
plans.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Hospice Hopes
It started on a trip to Washington—David’s favorite city. can do.” We left the hospital that beautiful late spring after-
“Something is different with my body. I got out of breath noon to await death.
when I took a walk around the mall.” Then came the diag-
nosis: “You have congestive heart failure. Because your Those last few days turned into more than 9 months. With
heart muscle is enlarged, fluid is accumulating around your the help of just one pill to control his symptoms, David got
lungs and legs. But with our medicines, you can almost much better. He was able to spend that summer and most
certainly live—with restrictions—for some time.” of the fall walking around on his own. On the December day
we finally needed to order a hospital bed, I served chili and
During the next few years when my husband’s body became chocolate chip cookies for dinner. Then, David just closed
badly bloated, we periodically entered the hospital, to his eyes and died.
drain off the fluid and accumulate another cocktail of pills.
Then, in May 2012, due to a side effect of the medicine, My husband’s hope in hospice had been to live through the
my husband went into kidney failure, and we rushed to summer, enjoying nature and spending time sitting with
the hospital again. Just as the frantic staff was poised to me by the pool. He wanted to be alive to hold the third edi-
transfer David to endure another heroic intervention, our tion of this book, due in November, in his hands. He hated
cardiologist entered the room: “I’m referring your husband the idea of being bedridden during his final days. Hospice
to hospice,” he tersely stated. “There is nothing more we granted David all three of his final wishes.
Heart failure epitomizes that common twenty-first-century pathway to

death. Patients have good days and bad days. They live for years in the shadow
of death. Although extended, ultimately fatal, chronic illnesses can strike at any
age (recall, for instance, the earlier quote relating to cystic fibrosis), most often,
as with my husband, they occur on time in terms of our social clock, in our older
years.
Drawing on Erik Erikson’s theory, we might predict that facing death in our teens
or early adult life is uniquely difficult. How can you reach integrity, or the sense you
have fulfilled your life goals if you have not found your identity, mastered intimacy,
or discovered your generative path? Because death is so appropriate at their life stage,
older people don’t show the classic avoidance to death-
related words and phrases apparent even during middle
age (De Raedt, Koster, & Ryckewaert, 2013). What do
we mean by having an appropriate death?
In Search of a Good Death

Insights come from turning to religious sources. From
the Old Testament (Spronk, 2004) to Hindu traditions
(Gupta, 2011), religions agree that death should be
celebrated after a long life. Death should be peace-
Twin Design/Shutterstock
ful and sudden, explaining why violent deaths, like

suicides or murders, are especially repellent, and why
people universally reject the idea of being “tortured”
by medical technology at the end of life (Enguidanos,
Yonashiro-Cho, & Cote, 2013). Death is “best” when it
occurs in the “homeland” (not far away), accounting for why—around the globe— Deprived of life as a husband and
father at an off-time age seems
people prefer to die surrounded by their loved ones, and reject the sanitized, imper-
totally “against nature” and
sonal dying that takes place in intensive care (Prevost & Wallace, 2009; Shih and unfair—making this man’s death
others, 2009). in his thirties impossibly sad.
A good death came to my grandmother, one

beautiful summer day. Grandma, at age 98, was just
beginning to get slightly frail. One afternoon, before
preparing dinner for her visiting grandchildren and
great-grandchildren (which she insisted on doing),
she got in her car to drive to the hairdresser and—
on leaving the driveway—was hit by an oncoming
car. Of the eight people involved in the accident,
©Mary Evans Picture Library/The Image Works
no one was hurt but Grandma, who was killed

instantly. They said she never felt any pain.
Given that our chances of being killed instantly
at our doorstep, without frailties at the limit of
human life, are almost nil, how can we expand on
the above criteria to spell out specific dimensions of
a good death? One psychologist offers the following
guidelines (Corr, 1991–1992):
The principle that good
1. We want to minimize our physical distress, to be as free as possible from debili-
deaths must occur “near the
homeland” is embedded in tating pain.
many religious traditions. This
nineteenth-century depiction
2. We want to maximize our psychological security, reduce fear and anxiety, and
shows a Hindu funeral feel in control of how we die.
ceremony, with the deceased
making his final passage 3. We want to enhance our relationships and be close emotionally to the people
surrounded by loving community we care about.
members while being carried
ceremoniously to the grave. 4. We want to foster our spirituality and have the sense that there was integrity and
purpose to our lives.
Minimize pain and fear; be close to loved ones; enhance spirituality; feel that
life has meaning—these are the themes from the studies that poll caregivers about the
qualities involved in a loved one’s “good death” (Downey and others, 2010; Karlsson &
Berggren, 2011; Leung and others, 2010; Shih and others, 2009). Yes, a strong religious
faith can offer people peace in their final days (Braam,
Klinkenberg, & Deeg, 2011). But it’s not necessary to
believe in an afterlife or any religion. Actually, in one
study, the main dimension that was related to feeling
comfortable about dying was having a sense of pur-
pose in life (Ardelt & Koenig, 2006).
So again, Erikson seems right in saying that
the key to accepting death is fulfilling our life tasks
and, especially, our generative missions. And in
Erikson’s (1963) poetic words, appreciating that
one’s “individual life is the accidental coincidence
of . . . one lifecycle within . . . history” (p. 268) can
be important in embracing death, too:
Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
Barbara turned on the lamp. . . . Her eyes were

sunken and her skin was pale. It would not be long,
I thought. . . . “Are you afraid?” I asked. “You know,
not really,. . . . I have strange comforting thoughts. . . .
When fear starts to creep up on me, I conjure up the
Right before going into surgery
idea that millions and millions of people have passed away before me, and millions more
and unexpectedly dying, Joan
Rivers signaled to her daughter
will pass away after I do . . . I guess if they all did it, so can I.”
(and broadcast to the world via (Groopman, 2004, pp. 137–138)
youtube) that she had reached
integrity—when she said, “If I die
What are your priorities for a good death? Table 15.1 offers an expanded check-
I have no regrets, because I’ve list based on the principles in this section, to help you evaluate your top-ranking
loved every minute of this life!” death goals.
Table 15.1: Evaluating Your Priorities for a Good Death: A Checklist
When you think about dying, rank how important each of these criteria might be to you as: (1) of
utmost importance; (2) important, but not primary; or (3) relatively unimportant.
1. Not being a burden to my family.
2. Being at peace with death—that is, not being anxious about dying.
3. Not being in physical pain.
4. Having control over where I die—that is, being able to choose whether to die at
home or in the hospital.
5. Having control over how I die—that is, being able to choose whether to be kept alive
through medical interventions or to die naturally. Being able to end my life if I am
terminally ill and in great pain.
6. Feeling close to my loved ones.
7. Feeling close to God.
8. Feeling that I have fulfilled my mission on earth or made a difference in the world.
Do your top-ranking priorities for dying tell you anything about your priorities for living?
Hot in Developmental Science: Evolving Ideas About Grieving

Death is just the first chapter in the survivor’s ongoing life story. Although I discussed
bereavement in the widowhood section in Chapter 13, let’s now focus on how
both psychologists and the public expect that universal experience to proceed (see
Jordan & Litz, 2014; Penman and others, 2014).
In the first months after a loved one dies, people are absorbed in mourning,
crying; perhaps having trouble eating and sleeping. They might be ruminating
about their loved one, carrying around reminders, sharing stories, looking through
photos, focusing on the person’s last days. Some people literally sense their loved
one’s physical presence in the room (Keen, Murray, & Payne, 2013). Then, after
about six months, we expect mourners to recover in the sense of reconnecting to
the world (Jordan & Litz, 2014). People still care deeply about their loved one.
The person’s memory can be evoked on special times such as anniversaries. But
this mental image becomes incorporated into the mourner’s identity as that person
travels through life.
Grief patterns, however, are shaped by each society’s unique norms (Neimeyer,
Klass, & Dennis, 2014). Some cultures expect people to pine for decades. In others,
mourners are supposed to adopt a stoic stiff upper lip. There are variations in grieving
in our society, too. Sometimes, people do their mourning before a person’s death, such
as when the doctor refers a loved one to hospice or after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s dis-
ease. While we are tempted to accuse these people of being callous (“She went to that
persistent complex
party right after her mother died! She hasn’t even been crying much!”), you might bereavement-related
be surprised to know it’s “normal” to not have intense symptoms even during the first disorder, or prolonged grief
few months after a significant other dies (Boerner, Mancini, and Bonanno, 2013). Controversial new diagnosis,
But suppose it’s been more than a year and your bereaved relative still cries con- appearing in the most recent
versions of the Western
tinually, feels life is meaningless, and seems incapable of constructing a new life. Can psychiatric disorder manuals,
grieving last overly long? in which the bereaved
Very cautiously, the framers of our Western psychiatric diagnostic manuals answer person shows intense
yes. When the person’s symptoms continue unabated or become more intense after symptoms of mourning with
no signs of abatement, or
6 months to a year, and that individual shows no signs of reconnecting with the
an increase in symptoms
world, mental health workers can diagnose a condition labeled persistent complex 6 months to a year after a
bereavement-related disorder, or prolonged grief. loved one’s death.
This new diagnosis is controversial, in part because it risks reclassifying that

normal life event called mourning as a pathological state. Furthermore, aren’t some
deaths so “bad” that prolonged grief is normal—for instance, if a loved one died
violently, or due to murder or suicide, or you have the tragedy of outliving your
child?
A Small, Final Note on Mourning a Child

When I worked in a nursing home, I realized that a child’s death can be more upset-
ting than any other loss. It doesn’t matter whether their “baby” dies at age 6 or in
his sixties, people have special trouble coping with that unnatural event (Hayslip &
Hansson, 2003). While people do eventually construct a fulfilling life, in one study,
even after 4 years, many bereaved parents still showed symptoms of prolonged grief,
continually yearning for their child (McCarthy and others, 2010).
A child’s death may evoke powerful feelings of survivor guilt: “Why am I still
alive?” If the death occurred suddenly due to an accident, there is disbelief and
possibly guilt at having failed in one’s mission as a parent: “I couldn’t protect my
baby!” (See Cole & Singg, 1998.) If the death was expected—for instance, a child
died of cancer—parents have still lost their futures. They must cope with their anger
that an innocent son or daughter had to suffer, unfairly robbed of life. The problem is
that a child’s death can never be really “good,” because this off-time event shakes our
worldview of the universe as predictable and fair (Neimeyer, Klass, & Dennis, 2014).
When a child has inoperable cancer and seems to understand that he is dying, does
it help for parents to discuss death with this daughter or son? To explore this question,
Swedish researchers interviewed every family who had lost a child to cancer in that
country over several years (Kreicbergs and others, 2004). No parent who reported hav-
ing a conversation about death with an ill daughter or son had
any regrets. In contrast, more than half of the mothers and fathers
who believed that their child understood what was happening but
never discussed this topic felt guilty later on.
Other research has a similar message: If parents feel satis-
fied that they said goodbye to their child, this helps lessen the
pain. Moreover, not discussing what is happening can produce
Design Pics RF/Leah Warkentin/Getty Images
enduring regrets:
“I wish I had him back so that we could hug and kiss and say
goodby” (said one anguished mother). “We never said good-bye.
We faked the whole thing. . . . I just feel there was no ending, no fin-
ish . . . Yet he never took the lead . . . he never said, ‘Ma, I’m dying.’”
(quoted in Wells-di Gregorio, 2009, p. 252).
What else helps grieving parents cope? In this situation, it

helps not to sever the attachment bond to your child.
Unless she can restore her I talk to her . . . every night. . . . I just say . . . I’m so sorry for what you had to go through,
sense of life as predictable this
but mommy is so proud of you.
mother may find herself locked
in prolonged grief—as the death I’d . . . get his ashes and sit . . . and rock. I’ll . . . kiss his little container thing and try to
of a child can rank as life’s most say good night to him every night when I go to bed.
devastating event. (quoted in Foster and others, 2011, pp. 427, 428, 429, 432)
Another bereaved parent in a South American study went further:

A month had gone by since Matais’s death and I went to the hospital to give encourage-
ment to a mother whose son was dying. . . . This is the way I honor Matais. There I meet
him; there I feel him present. I immortalized him by working as a volunteer. Matais is
immortalized in the things I do, in the good, in the beautiful things.
(Adapted from Vega, Rivera, & González, 2014, p. 171)
Actually, experts believe the key to recovering from terribly unfair deaths depends
on finding new meaning in one’s disrupted life story, and so restoring the idea that
the universe is predictable and fair (Neimeyer, Klass, & Dennis, 2014). Grieving
parents report they turned the corner when they used their tragedy as a redemption
sequence to help keep their child’s memory alive. Some families find solace in donat-
ing their sons’ or daughters’ organs to help others survive, or they may adopt a child’s
life passions, for instance by deciding to agitate for environmental change. As in the
example above, parents may devote their lives to counseling families with an ill child
(Vega, Rivera, & González, 2014). People transform bad deaths into love by working
at suicide hotlines, or establishing websites to crusade against drunk driving, agitating
for better fire safety laws, creating beautiful art-work, or simply marching in protest
against any death they view as unfair.
Jac, my reference checker for

this book, helped turn her
boyfriend’s suicide into a
redemption sequence by coun-
Jacqueline Mitchell
seling survivors of this tragedy

Eileen Wallach
and producing works of art in a

Nashville program, “Your Heart
in Art.”
These examples have lessons for all of us in surviving bereavement. Give your
loved one a good life. Provide the best possible death. Draw on your loss to grow as a
person and enrich other people’s lives.
Table 15.2 expands on the topic of bad death by exploring another off-time
loss—children’s grief.
Table 15.2: Bereavement at an Off-Time Age: Tips for Understanding Mourning

During Childhood
Tip 1: Look to the child’s developmental stage. While infants and toddlers cannot grasp the concept
of death, losing a primary caregiver at this age can affect the attachment response. Preoperational
preschoolers are also too young to grasp the concept that death is permanent, but their egocentric
thinking may produce guilt that they caused their loved one to die through their bad thoughts. Temper
tantrums, sleep disturbances, and regressing to more babyish behavior are common responses to
experiencing a caregiver’s death at this age. Finally, after reaching concrete operations—around age
9 or 10—children are capable of grasping the finality of death, and begin to mourn in the traditional
sense. At this age, and especially adolescence, complicated bereavement responses center around
acting-out behaviors and internalizing symptoms such as nonsuicidal self-injury and depression.
Tip 2: Look to the child’s life situation. Most children are resilient, coping with the death of a loved
one without showing any signs of prolonged grief. But symptoms of complicated bereavement are more
likely when the death is sudden or violent, the child is already emotionally fragile, and the person’s
family life is unstable. The risk of long-term problems also accelerates when the young person has
experienced multiple life losses. Moreover, because at this age upsetting feelings cannot be channeled
into a redemption sequence, especially after losing a parent during childhood, mourning may naturally
occur in extended fits and starts, with fresh waves of grief appearing during milestone events years
later, such as when the person graduates from college, gets married, or becomes a parent.
Tip 3: Interventions should involve a multifaceted, community-centered approach. In helping
children mourn in a healthy way, everyone—from teachers to siblings to peers—can play a vital role.
The keys are to listen sensitively, offer emotional support and, rather than “ignoring” the trauma,
allow the child to openly discuss and process the feelings of loss.
Information is from Barnard, Moreland, and Nagy, 1999; Christ, 2000; Baker & Sedney, 1996; Humphrey & Zimpfer, 2007,
and McCarthy & Jessop, 2005.
This next section explores how the health-care system is doing in providing
people for the best possible death.

1. Sara is arguing that Kübler-Ross’s conceptions about dying are “fatally flawed.” Pick
out the argument she should not use to make her case (that is, identify the false
alternative):
a. People who are dying do not necessarily want to talk about that fact.
b. People do not go through “stages” in adjusting to impending death.
c. People who are dying simply accept that fact.
2. If your uncle has recently been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, he should feel
(many different emotions/only depressed/only angry), but in general, he should have
(hope/a lot of anger).
3. Jose says he feels comforted that his beloved uncle had a good death. Which
statement is least likely to apply to this man:
a. Jose’s uncle died peacefully after a long life.
b. Jose’s uncle was religious.
c. Jose’s uncle died surrounded by loving attachment figures.
d. Jose’s uncle felt he had achieved his missions in life.
4. Imagine you are a psychologist, and a patient comes to your office suffering
from prolonged grief. Based on this section, in a sentence, describe your main
treatment goal.
The Health-Care System

How does the health-care system deal with death? Let’s first take a critical look at stan-
dard hospital terminal care and then explore the new health-care options designed to
tame twenty-first-century death.
What’s Wrong with Traditional Hospital Care for the Dying?

Most of us will die in a hospital (Prevost & Wallace, 2009). But social scientists
have known for a half-century that the traditional hospital approach to dying has
flaws. Consider the findings of this groundbreaking 1960s study in which sociologists
entered hospitals and observed how the medical staff organized “the work” of terminal
care (Glaser & Strauss, 1968).
The researchers found that, when a person was admitted to the hospital, nurses
and doctors set up predictions about what pattern that individual’s dying was likely to
dying trajectory The fact follow. This implicit dying trajectory then governed how the staff acted.
that hospital personnel The problem was that dying trajectories could not be completely predicted.
make projections about the
particular pathway to death
When someone mistakenly categorized as “having months to live” was moved to
that a seriously ill patient a unit in the hospital where she was not monitored, this mislabeling tended, not
will take and organize infrequently, to hasten death. An interesting situation happened when someone was
their care according to that expected to die soon and then lived on. Doctors might call loved ones to the bedside
assumption.
to say goodbye, only to find that the person began to improve. This “final goodbye”
scenario could play out time and time again. The paradox was that if dying was “off
schedule,” living might be transformed into a negative event!
One patient who was expected to die (quickly) had no money, but started to linger indef-
initely (being paid for as a charity patient in the hospital). The money problem, however,
created much concern among both family members and the hospital administrators. . . .
The doctor continually had to reassure both parties that the patient (who lived for six
weeks more) would soon die; that is, to try to change their expectations back to “certain
to die on time.”
(Glaser & Straus, 1968, pp. 11–12)
The bottom line is that deaths don’t occur according to a programmed timetable.
Hospitals are structured according to the assumption that they do. This incompatibility
makes for a messy dance of terminal care.
Unfortunately, since this research was conducted, the situation has not changed.
According to one review of hospital records spanning 1996 to 2010, the odds of
health-care workers accurately predicting the date of a patient’s dying were only fifty-
fifty (Phillips, Halcomb, and Davidson, 2011). So families still suffer the trauma of
being caught “off guard” when faced with that event (Wells-di Gregorio, 2009). When
dying proceeds according to schedule (or as expected), health-care personnel classify
the death as “good.” As one resident in a study reported: “I felt good that he died in
a comfortable way. . . . I guess I just knew it would happen in 24 hours so it doesn’t
come as a shock” (quoted in Good and others, 2004, p. 944). When trajectories are
mislabeled, the death is defined as “bad”: “She came in for a bone marrow trans-
plant to cure her [cancer] . . . and got pulmonary toxicity and died” (p. 945). Good
deaths happen when there is smooth communication between the medical team
and patients’ families. Bad deaths are rife with disagreements, anger, and hurt (see
Wells-di Gregorio, 2009). In fact, because of the potential for miscommunication, tra-
ditional hospital dying may be more turbulent in the twenty-first century than before.
One reason is that, today, patients do not spend weeks or months in a hospital.
They often enter this setting when they are within days of death. Therefore, the
health-care professionals on the death scene may not be emotionally
involved with the person (Good and others, 2004). They may have
little understanding of patients’ and families’ needs.
Disagreements between members of the health-care team add to
this problem. Physicians make the final decisions about treatments;
but nurses, the frontline caregivers, know the patient’s and family’s
© Mark Richard/PhotoEdit
wishes best. Nurses may want to advocate for dying patients but be
afraid of being disciplined if they speak up (Thacker, 2008; Yu &
Chan, 2010). Compounding these professional conflicts are issues
related to living in our multicultural society (Wells-di Gregorio,
2009). Suppose the attending doctor on the floor where your rela-
tive is dying is a recent immigrant from Beijing or Bangladesh, or your parents only How can doctors relate to
immigrant women anxiously
speak Spanish or Swahili. How can everyone really communicate at this intensely
awaiting news about their ill
emotional time? loved ones? Issues like these
What underlies these conflicts is our quantum leap death-defying technologies. loom large as hospital personnel
Physicians can offer nutrition to people through a tube into the stomach, bypassing struggle to do the right thing
for families of dying patients in
the body’s normal signal to stop eating in preparation for death. They put patients
our contemporary multicultural
on ventilators, machines that breathe for the person, after the lungs have given out. society.
Caring doctors may agonize about using these heroic measures (Liben, Papadatou, &
Wolfe, 2008). But their mission to cure can make it difficult to resist the lure of the
machines:
We were realizing that we were going to hurt him [a 40-year-old lung cancer patient who
had had multiple surgeries and several strokes] if we . . . kept trying to keep a body alive
that was not wanting to be alive. And everyone figured “what the heck, give it a shot.”
(quoted in Good and others, 2004, p. 945)
Today, medical workers are faced with agonizing ethical choices: How long
do you vigorously wage war against death, and when should you say, “enough is
enough”? Shifting from the cure-at-all-costs mode can be difficult. To paraphrase
one expert, it’s like “deciding to play baseball while the football game is in full swing”
palliative care Any (Chapple, 1999). Understanding that we can never take the mess out of dying, just as
intervention designed not to we can never take the mess out of living, let’s now look at how the traditional health-
cure illness but to promote
dignified dying.
care system is taking action to tame contemporary death.
end-of-life care instruction INTERVENTIONS: Providing Superior Palliative Care
Courses in medical and
nursing schools devoted to Palliative care refers to any strategy designed to promote dignified dying. Palliative
teaching health-care workers care includes educating health-care personnel about how to deal with dying patients;
how to provide the best modifying the hospital structure; or providing that well-known alternative to dying in
palliative care to the dying. a hospital, hospice care. Let’s scan these interventions one by one.
palliative-care service A
service or unit in a hospital Educating Health-Care Providers
that is devoted to end-of-life
care.
In recent decades, end-of-life care instruction has become a frequent component of
medical and nursing training. Courses cover everything from the best drugs to control
pain without “knocking the person out” to the ethics of withdrawing
treatment. Instruction may involve hands-on experiences such as hav-
Rob Melnychuk/Stockbyte/Jupiter Images/Getty Images
ing medical students visit terminally ill patients in hospices (Gadoud

and others, 2013) or workshops in which student nurses personally
imagine what it is like to die (Liu and others, 2011).
We need to do more (Smith & Hough, 2011). In one hospital
survey, although nurses reported dealing with death on a daily basis,
fewer than half said they had formal training in end-of-life care within
the previous three years (Thacker, 2008). Doctors want more guid-
ance in how to discuss negative prognoses since they are naturally
reluctant to convey the message, “There isn’t much we can do”
(Smith & Hough, 2011).
Imagine being this doctor The result of this anxiety is that we sometimes get physicians who (perhaps out
and knowing the terminally ill of their own fear) decide to take Kübler-Ross’s concept of “honesty” literally, saying,
patient whose chart you are
reading is about to ask, “What “Your illness is terminal,” and then bolting from the room. Or health-care providers
is my prognosis?” Wouldn’t it persist in carrying out painful, futile treatments for far too long. Luckily, however, we
be helpful to have some end-of- have a hospital structure designed to ease these difficult discussions, a mainstream
life care instruction during your medical alternative devoted to promoting the best possible death.
training to guide you about how
best to respond?
Changing Hospitals: Palliative-Care Units
A palliative-care service is a special unit or service that is devoted to end-of-life
care within a traditional hospital setting. Here, certain groups of inpatients—for
instance, old-old people with multiple chronic illnesses and people with advanced
cancer—have their care managed by a team of providers trained in when to shift from
“football to baseball mode” (recall the analogy mentioned
earlier). Patients enrolled in the palliative-care service are not
denied cure-oriented interventions (Bonebrake and others,
2010). However, as their illness becomes terminal, the vigor of
life-prolonging treatments shifts to providing the best possible
“comfort care.”
Families give palliative care high marks, compared to
traditional end-of-life care (García-Pérez and others, 2009).
These services are “cost-effective” (Meier & Beresford, 2009).
Robin Nelson/Photo Edit Inc.
Moreover—unlike what some readers may fear—having

this unit at a hospital doesn’t make death more likely when
patients enter that institution’s care (Cassel and others, 2010).
So, by the first decade of the twenty-first century, many major
medical centers in the developed world provided palliative-
Palliative-care services, with their focus on pain control care services (Dobbins, 2007).
and letting patients spend their final days in a more natural The global view, however, is bleak. Even in affluent
setting, provide an alternative to dying in the medicalized
recesses of intensive care. In this palliative-care unit, a nurse
nations—such as Canada—experts estimate that only 1 in
is taking the blood pressure of a patient who has had a 4 terminally ill people has access to hospital-based pallia-
stroke and is suffering from end-stage heart disease. tive care (Shariff, 2011). Of the roughly one million human
beings who die each week worldwide, a large fraction spend their final days in
agony, without even over-the-counter medicines to control their pain (Clark, 2007).
State-of-the art, hospital-based palliative-care services are a welcome trend. But it
still seems unfair to ask health-care professionals to embrace the enemy. Physicians in
particular may shy away from dying patients because facing them means they failed
in their mission to cure. Therefore, the most humane way to promote dignified dying
might be to remove that act from the doctors with their cure-oriented focus and death-
defying machines.
Unhooking Death from Doctors and Hospitals: Hospice Care

This is the philosophy underlying the hospice movement, which gained momentum hospice movement A
in the 1970s, along with the natural childbirth movement. Like birth, hospice activ- movement, which became
widespread in recent
ists argued, death is a natural process. We need to let this process occur in the most decades, focused on
pain-free, natural way (Corr, 2007). providing palliative care to
Hospice workers are skilled in techniques to minimize patients’ physical discom- dying patients outside of
fort. They are trained in providing a humanistic, supportive psychological environ- hospitals and especially on
giving families the support
ment, one that assures patients and family members that they will not be abandoned they need to care for the
in the face of approaching death (Monroe and others, 2008). terminally ill at home.
In many developed nations, hospice care is mainly delivered in a freestanding
facility called a hospice. The main focus of the United States hospice movement is
on providing backup care that allows people to die with dignity at home. As occurred
with my husband, and as you can read in the Experiencing the Lifespan box below,
multidisciplinary hospice teams go into the person’s home, offering care on a part-
time, scheduled, or daily basis. They provide 24-hour help in a crisis, giving family
caregivers the support they need to allow their relative to spend his final days at home.
Their commitment does not end after the person dies: An important component of
hospice care is bereavement counseling.
Experiencing the Lifespan: Hospice Team

What is hospice care really like? For answers, here are them give their loved one this experience. Sometimes, the
some excerpts from an interview I conducted with the primary caregiver can’t bear to keep the person at home to
team (nurse, social worker, and volunteer coordinator) the end. We respect that, too.
who manages our local hospice.
The whole thing about hospice is choice. Some people
Usually, we get referrals from physicians. People may have a want to talk about dying. Others just want you to visit,
wide community support system or be new to the area. Even ask about their garden, talk about current affairs. We take
when there are many people involved, there is almost always people to see the autumn leaves, to see Santa Claus. Our
one primary caregiver, typically a spouse or adult child. main focus is: What are your priorities? We try to pick up on
that. We had a farmer whose goal was to go to his farm one
We see our role as empowering families, giving them the
last time and say goodbye to his tractor. We got together a
support to care for their loved ones at home. We go into
big tank of oxygen, and carried him down to his farm. We
the home as a team to make our initial assessment: What
have one volunteer who takes a client to the mall.
services does the family need? We provide families train-
ing in pain control, in making beds, in bathing. A critical We keep in close touch with the families for a year after,
component of our program is respite services. Volunteers providing them counseling or referring them to bereave-
come in for part of each day. They may take the children ment groups in the community. Some families keep in con-
out for pizza, or give the primary caregiver time off, or just tact with notes for years. We run a camp each summer for
stay there to listen. children who have lost a parent.
Families will say initially, “I don’t think I can stand to do We have an unusually good support system among the
this.” They are anxious because it’s a new experience they staff. In addition to being with the families at 3 a.m., we call
have never been through. At the beginning, they call a one another at all times of the night. Most of us have been
lot. Then, you watch them gain confidence in themselves. working here for years. We feel we have the most meaning-
We see them at the funeral and they thank us for helping ful job in the world.
Entering a U.S. hospice program is simple. It requires a physician to certify that

the person is within six months of death. Home hospice care is less expensive than
traditional end-of-life care (Bentur and others, 2014). Because Medicare fully covers
this service, U.S. hospice is available to people on every rung of the economic ladder
(Sengupta & others, 2014).
As you can see in Figure 15.2, in recent decades, the U.S. hospice movement has
mushroomed. By 2009, roughly 2 in 5 U.S. deaths occurred in hospice care. What is
the hospice experience really like?
2,000,000
1,560,000
1,500,000 1,450,000
Patients served by hospice
1,300,000
1,060,000
1,000,000 885,000
700,000
figure 15.2: Patients 540,000
served by hospice in the 450,000
500,000
United States, 1984–2009: 340,000
Notice that the number of 210,000
246,000
167,000 181,000
people enrolling in hospice grew 100,000
exponentially, especially during
the first decade of the twenty- 0
first century. 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2009
Data from: National Hospice and Year
Palliative Care Organization, 2011.
Charting the U.S. Hospice Experience

Imagine that your doctor has just made the pronouncement: “I’m referring your
spouse or parent to hospice. There is nothing more we can do.” You must simulta-
neously deal with the shock of grieving and embark on a difficult, uncharted path.
Passionate to offer your loved one this final demonstration of love, you are incredibly
anxious about what lies ahead. What can you expect about the person’s pathway to
death?
The answer partly depends on the illness. If the disease is cancer, expect a more
precipitous decline. With congestive heart failure or pulmonary disease, the transi-
tion to serious ADL problems is apt to be slower during the next days and weeks.
Some people enter hospice bedridden and spend their final days comatose. Others,
like my husband, are fully alert and able to perform basic ADL activities until their
last moments of life (Harris and others, 2013). This variation partly explains why,
although the average hospice stay is roughly two weeks, 1 in 10 U.S. patients spends
close to a year in hospice care (Sengupta and others, 2014).
This uncertainty is scary, but your main fear is seeing your loved one suffer. The
box full of medications you just got from the hospice team is frightening. Without any
nursing training, will you be able to control your family member’s pain?
Actually, issues relating to pain control rank among hospice caregivers primary
concerns: People worry about leaving the person in agony, or they may fear that
that final dose of morphine hastened death (Oliver and others, 2013; Kelley and
others, 2013). As one person reported: “She (dying loved one) has chronic pain.
The morphine was in an unusual bottle and I was afraid to give her too much or too
little and the dropper wasn’t working. It was very scary” (quoted in Kelley and others,
2013, p. 679).
These worries are not unrealistic. In one survey, 2 out of 3 U.S. hos-
pice providers cited medication management as their most problematic
issue. One in three reported frequently encountering problems in this
area as they struggled to help families provide care (Joyce & Lau, 2013).
Charting the Barriers to Hospice

This discussion brings up the hurdles to hospice. As I mentioned
earlier, hope is the main emotion people feel when facing a terminal
disease. Entering hospice means confronting the reality, “I am going
to die.” Family members are naturally reluctant to bring up hospice,
because they, too, may want to urge undergoing that one last curative
intervention that allows a loved one to survive.
The same reluctance applies to the hospice gatekeeper—the physi-
cian. As I alluded to earlier, doctors find it difficult to “give up” on a
patient they may have treated for months or years (Marmo, 2014). So,
it makes sense that physicians often refrain from mentioning hospice
until patients’ last weeks of life, even when the ill person might have
benefitted from this service for months (Snyder and others, 2013).
Another impediment relates to everyone’s misconceptions about
hospice care. People are not aware that patients can still receive curative
interventions after entering hospice, or that it’s possible to survive for
months in hospice with a fairly good quality of life (see the Experiencing
the Lifespan box on page 455). Particularly, minority groups may not
understand that in the United States, Medicare pays for hospice (Frey and others, 2013) Although this caregiving wife
or realize that hospice care occurs at home (Enguidanos, Yonashiro-Cho, & Cote, 2013). probably wouldn’t have it any
other way, deciding on home
African Americans may cling to aggressive cure-oriented treatments, out of a lifelong fear hospice care is apt to evoke
that traditional medicine has done them wrong (Johnson and others, 2013). Residents of scary feelings: Will I be able to
rural areas may not have access to hospice teams (Lynch, 2013). control my beloved husband’s
Even when patients are aware that their illness is fatal, they may be less than pain?
thrilled to have loved ones care for them during their final weeks of life. Imagine
being totally taken care of by your family when you have a terminal disease. You
don’t have any privacy. Loved ones must bathe you and dress you; they must care for
your every need. You may be embarrassed about being seen naked and incontinent;
you may want time alone to vent your anguish and pain. In a hospital (or inpatient
hospice), care is impersonal. At home, there is the humiliation of having to depend
on the people you love most for each intimate bodily act.
Most importantly, care by strangers equals care that is free from guilt. As I
described earlier in this chapter, when people are approaching death, they often want
to emotionally protect their loved ones—to shield them from pain. Witnessing the
toll that your disease is taking on your family may multiply the pain of dying itself.
This explains, why, in a rare interview study conducted with people receiving
inpatient hospice care in Australia, patients’ main worries centered around loved
ones. Yes, people said, moving to hospice signaled a depressing step closer to death.
But they were relieved to no longer be burdening their families: “My husband is very
quiet. . . . If he feels he cannot cope, I would rather be in here if that gives him a
chance to come here, spend some time and then go home and get his head together,”
reported one woman. A man appreciated the privacy involved in getting care from
strangers. “It’s going with a little bit of dignity . . . and not in a mess, . . . and not
being a frightening sight to those who are sitting there” (quoted in Broom & Kirby,
2013, p. 504).
This need to preserve dignity (or face) with one’s family, may explain why U.S.
hospice programs are rejected among the very cultural group historically most com-
mitted to family care. When researchers polled Chinese heritage elderly living in
San Francisco, people reacted with horror when they learned hospice involves care
at home. One woman summed up the general feelings when she said, “If I am dying
I become very grumpy; it’s a good idea to send me to a nursing home” (quoted in
Enguidanos, Yonashiro-Cho, & Cote, 2013, p. 996).
Table 15.3 summarizes these section points in “a pros and cons of home care”
chart. Now that I have surveyed the health-care options, it’s time to continue our
search for a “good” twenty-first-century death by returning to the dying person.
Table 15.3: Home Deaths: Pros and Cons

The case against dying at home
1. No worries about family members not being able to control your pain.
2. No fear of burdening your family with your care.
3. Privacy to vent your feelings, without family members around.
4. Avoiding the embarrassment of depending on loved ones for help with your intimate body
functions.
The case in favor of dying at home
1. Avoiding having life-prolonging machines used on you.
2. Spending your final days surrounded by the people you care about most.
3. Spending your final days in the physical setting you love best.
Given these considerations, would you prefer to meet death at home?

1. In a sentence, describe to a friend the basic message of the classic research describing
the various dying trajectories discussed on pages 480–481.
2. Based on this section, which statement most accurately reflects doctors’ reactions
to the terminally ill? (Pick one.) (a) Doctors are insensitive to dying patients’ needs,
or (b) Doctors feel terribly upset when a patient is dying, but may feel forced to use
modern technologies to “prolong” death.
3. Carol’s husband has just been referred to hospice. If this couple lives in the United
States, you can predict (pick FALSE statement):
a. Carol will be caring for her spouse at home.
b. If Carol’s spouse has heart disease, he may decline more slowly than if he has cancer.
c. Carol may be terribly worried about her ability to control her husband’s pain.
d. Carol will spend a good deal of money on hospice care.
4. Melanie is arguing that there’s no way she will die in a hospital. She wants to end her
life at home, surrounded by her husband and children. Using the information in this
section, convince Melanie of the down side to spending her final days at home.
The Dying Person: Taking Control

of How We Die
In this section, I’ll explore two strategies people can use to control their final pas-
sage and so promote a “good death.” The first is an option that our society strongly
encourages: People should make their wishes known in writing about their treatment
preferences should they become mentally incapacitated. The second approach is
controversial: People should be allowed to get help if they want to end their lives.
Giving Instructions: Advance Directives

An advance directive is the name for any written document spelling out instructions advance directive Any written
with regard to life-prolonging treatment when people are irretrievably ill and cannot document spelling out
instructions with regard to
communicate their wishes. There are four basic types of advance directives: two that life-prolonging treatment
the individual drafts and two that are filled out by other people, called surrogates, if individuals become
when the ill person is seriously mentally impaired. irretrievably ill and cannot
communicate their wishes.
• In the living will, mentally competent individuals leave instructions about their
living will A type of advance
treatment wishes for life-prolonging strategies should they become comatose or directive in which people
permanently incapacitated. Although people typically fill out living wills in order spell out their wishes for life-
to refuse aggressive medical interventions, it is important to point out that this sustaining treatment in case
document can also specify that every heroic measure be carried out. they become permanently
incapacitated and unable to
• In a durable power of attorney for health care, individuals designate a specific communicate.
person, such as a spouse or a child, to make end-of-life decisions “in their spirit” durable power of attorney
when they are incapable of making those choices known. for health care A type
of advance directive in
• A Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order is filled out when the sick person is already which people designate a
mentally impaired, usually by the doctor in consultation with family members. specific surrogate to make
health-care decisions if they
This document, most often placed in a nursing home or hospital chart, stipulates become incapacitated and
that, if a cardiac arrest takes place, health-care professionals should not try to revive are unable to make their
the patient. wishes known.
• A Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) order is specific to nursing homes. It specifies that, Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)
order A type of advance
during a medical crisis, a mentally impaired resident should not be transferred to directive filled out by
a hospital for emergency care. surrogates (usually a doctor
in consultation with family
Advance directives have an admirable goal. Ideally, they provide a road map so members) for impaired
that family members and doctors are not forced to guess what care the permanently individuals, specifying that
incapacitated person might want. However, there are issues with regard to these if they go into cardiac arrest,
efforts should not be made
documents too. to revive them.
One difficulty is that people are naturally reluctant to think about their death
Do Not Hospitalize (DNH)
(Ko & Lee, 2014). Do you or your parents have an advance directive? Even in the order A type of advance
Netherlands, where people can choose to take their lives, less than 1 in 10 people directive put into the charts
does (as reported in van Wijmen and others, 2014). of impaired nursing home
The good news is that most older adults in the United States now have advance residents, specifying that in
a medical crisis they should
directives, a quantum leap from the situation a decade ago (Silveira, Wiitala, & not be transferred to a
Piette, 2014). But minorities and low-income elderly are particularly leery of filling hospital for emergency care.
out these documents (Ko & Lee, 2014). Imagine, for instance, that you are an Afri-
can American and well aware of the sordid history of health discrimination against
your group. Would you want to write a document telling medical personnel what
not to do?
There are also serious problems with the most well-known advance directive,
the living will. Because living wills are vague, these documents are subject to misin-
terpretations (Cicirelli, 2007): Does “no aggressive treatments” mean not putting in
the feeding tube that has allowed my aunt to survive for 4 years after brain surgery?
When your grandma wrote she wanted “No heroic measures,” what exactly did she
mean?
While we might think the solution would be to come up with specific checklists
(“I don’t want to be on a ventilator, but I do want a feeding tube”), can we expect
people to make these detailed decisions? How many of you really know what being
on a ventilator or having a feeding tube entails? Moreover, while you might say “no
heroic measures” if you are healthy, your decisions are apt to be different when you
are battling a fatal disease. Therefore, the best strategy is to have a series of evolving
discussions with loved ones, and then choose a designated family member who, in
consultation with the physician, makes the final choice (see, McMahan and others,
2013; van Wijmen & others, 2014).
This means the best advance directive is a durable power

of attorney for health care. Granted, deciding on a single
family member to carry out one’s wishes can lead to jeal-
ousy. (“Why did Mom choose my brother and not me?”) It
doesn’t ensure mistakes won’t occur. Suppose after giving
your “so called” reliable daughter power of attorney, that child
elopes with a money-grubbing third husband and you realize
you made the wrong choice? Still, having a defined proxy—
IuriiSokolov/iStock/Getty Images Plus
but making sure to sit down and discuss your wishes with
the family—can reduce the conflicts when you believe that
Mom’s suffering should not be prolonged, while your brother
insists that treatment continue at all costs. These sibling
disagreements are tailor-made to poison family relationships
for years (or life).
Experts advise this older woman By now, some readers may be getting uneasy, not about
to regularly have these frank keeping people alive too long, but about the opposite problem—letting them die too
conversations with her family as soon. Let’s ratchet up the anxiety as we move to the next step in the search for death
she prepares her durable power
of attorney for health care.
with dignity: helping people take their own lives.
Deciding When to Die: Active Euthanasia

and Physician-Assisted Suicide
Dr. Cox, a British rheumatologist, had a warm relationship with Mrs. Boyles, who had
been his patient for 13 years. Mrs. Boyles was terminally ill, in excruciating pain and
begged Dr. Cox to end her life: “Her pain was . . . grindingly severe. . . . [It] did not
respond to increasingly large doses of opioids. Dr. Cox had reassured her that she would
not be allowed to suffer terrible pain during her final days but was unable to honor that
pledge. . . . As an act of compassion, he injected two ampoules of potassium chloride (a
fatal drug). . . . The patient died a few minutes later peacefully in the presence of her
(grateful) sons. . . .” Then the ward sister, out of a sense of duty . . . reported the action
to the police. Told to “disregard the doctor’s motives” but only rule on his “intent to
kill,” a jury . . . convicted Dr. Cox “amid scenes of great emotional distress in the court.”
(as reported in Begley, 2008; quotes are from pp. 436 and 438)
How do you feel about this doctor’s decision, the reaction of his nurse, and the jury’s
judgment? If you were like many people in Great Britain, you would have been out-
raged, believing that Dr. Cox was a hero because he acted on his mission to relieve
human suffering rather than follow an unjust law (recall Kohlberg’s post-conventional
stage, in Chapter 9).
Let’s first make some distinctions. Passive euthanasia, withdrawing potentially
life-saving interventions, such as a feeding tube, is perfectly legal. (That’s what
advance directives specify.) But the step Dr. Cox took qualified as active euthanasia—
taking action to help a person die. Active euthanasia is illegal in every nation except
Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. However, as of this writing (early 2015)
passive euthanasia a variation on active euthanasia called physician-assisted suicide is legal in Switzer-
Withholding potentially land, Oregon, Montana, Vermont, and Washington State. Under strict conditions, at
life-saving interventions that
a terminally ill patient’s request, physicians can prescribe a medication the individual
might keep a terminally ill
or permanently comatose can personally take to bring on death.
patient alive. As the judge in the above trial spelled out, the distinction between the two types
active euthanasia A deliberate of euthanasia lies in intentions (Dickens, Boyle, & Ganzini, 2008). When we with-
health-care intervention that draw some heroic measure, we don’t specifically wish for death. When doctors give a
helps a patient die. patient a lethal dose of a drug or, as in physician-assisted suicide, prescribe a lethal
physician-assisted suicide A substance for a terminally ill person, they want that individual to die.
type of active euthanasia in Although active euthanasia is almost universally against the law, surveys suggest
which a physician prescribes
practices that hasten death do routinely occur (Chambaere and others, 2011; Seale,
a lethal medication to a
terminally ill person who 2009). To take a classic example, doctors may sedate a dying patient beyond the point
wants to die. required for pain control, and so “accelerate” that person’s death (Cellarius, 2011).
Polls show increasingly widespread public acceptance of active euthanasia in Western

E.U. nations over the past 30 years. But this is not the case in Central and Eastern
Europe, where significant fractions of citizens still believe terminating the lives of
people is never justified (Cohen and others, 2013). Why?
One reason is that killing violates the principle that only God can give or take a
life. So the fact that in Central and Eastern Europe people are more apt to be reli-
gious partly explains this East–West attitude split. Apart from religious considerations,
there are other reasons to be leery about taking this step.
Critics fear that legalizing euthanasia may open the gates
to allowing doctors and families to “pull the plug” on people
who are impaired but don’t want to die (Verbakel & Jas-
pers, 2010). Even when someone requests help to end his
life, a patient might sometimes be pressured into making
that decision by unscrupulous relatives who are anxious to
get an inheritance and don’t want to wait till the person
dies. Governments might be tempted to push through eutha-
AP Photo/Richard Sheinwald
nasia legislation to spare the expense of treating seriously
disabled citizens—offering another possible reason why resi-
dents living in more authoritarian, less democratic Eastern
European nations are more apt to oppose this idea (Cohen
and others, 2013).
Older people, unfortunately, are apt to be against physician-assisted dying, based During the 1990s, Dr. Jack
on personal encounters: “She (my niece) thought that I should be euthanized,” Kevorkian ignited a nationwide
controversy when he reported
reported one horrified woman. “And she actually said to me (when I was ill), ‘if you
having helped many termi-
were my dog I would shoot you to put you out of your misery’” (Malpas and others, nally ill patients die and made
2014, p. 356). numerous media appearances
Another issue relates to where to draw the line. Should we allow people to kill proudly showing off this “suicide
machine.” For reasons discussed
themselves when they have a painful chronic condition, but may not be fatally ill?
in the text, many people reacted
Suppose the person is simply chronically depressed. Can permitting suicide ever be with horror; Dr. Kevorkian was
an ethically acceptable choice (see Berghmans, Widdershoven, & Widdershoven- dubbed “Dr. Death,” and he
Heerding, 2013; Gillett & Chamberlain, 2013; Wittwer, 2013)? was sentenced to serve time
in prison for second-degree
There are excellent arguments on the other side. Should patients be forced to
murder!
unwillingly endure the pain and humiliation of dying when physicians have the
tools to mercifully end life? Knowing the agony that terminal disease can cause, is
it humane to stand by and let nature take its course? Do you believe that legalizing
active euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is a true advance in caring for the
dying or its opposite, the beginning of a “slippery slope” that might end in sanction-
ing the killing of anyone whose quality of life is impaired?
A Looming Social Issue: Age-Based Rationing of Care

There obviously is an age component to the “slippery slope” of withholding care.
As I suggested earlier, people with DNR or DNH orders in their charts are typi-
cally elderly, near the end of their natural lives. We already use passive euthanasia
at the upper end of the lifespan on a case-by-case basis, holding off from giving
aggressive treatments to people we deem “too frail.” Should we formally adopt
the principle “don’t use death-defying strategies” for people after they reach a
certain age?
Daniel Callahan (1988), a prominent biomedical ethicist, argues that the answer
must be yes. According to Callahan, there is a time when “the never-to-be-finished
fight against death” must stop. Let’s now read Callahan’s arguments in favor of
age-based rationing of care
age-based rationing of care: The controversial idea that
society should not use
1. After a person has lived out a natural lifespan, medical care should no longer be
expensive life-sustaining
oriented to resisting death. While stressing that no precise cutoff age can be set, technologies on people in
Callahan puts this marker at around the eighties. This does not mean that life at their old-old years.
this age has no value, but rather that when people reach their old-old years, death
in the near future is inevitable and this process cannot be vigorously defied.
2. The existence of medical technologies capable of extending the lives of elderly
persons who have lived out a natural lifespan creates no presumption that the
technologies must be used for that purpose. Callahan believes that the proper
goal of medicine is to stave off premature death. We should not become slaves
to our death-defying technology by blindly using each intervention on every
person, no matter what that individual’s age.
Age-based rationing of health care is poised to become an important developed
world issue as the baby boomers flood into later life, and governments grapple with
the astronomical health-care costs involved in keeping frail elderly people alive
for years. As I mentioned in Chapter 14, we cannot count on medical miracles to
cure the many physical problems that are the downside to living to our eighties and
beyond.
Do you think Callahan is “telling it like it should be” from a logical, rational
point of view, or do his proposals give you chills? Should we rely on markers such as
life expectancy or quality of life to allocate who does or doesn’t deserve to get care?
Whatever your answer to these compelling questions, you might notice that this
chapter is devoted to one core lifespan concern. As we approach death, our life comes
full circle, and we care only about what mattered during our first year of life—being
connected to the people we most love. True, self-efficacy is important. But, when we
come right down to it, attachment trumps everything else!

1. Your mother asks you whether she should fill out an advance directive. Given what
you know about these documents, what should your answer be?
a. Go for it! But fill out a living will.
b. Go for it! But you need to regularly discuss your preferences with each of us and
complete a durable power of attorney.
c. Avoid advance directives like the plague because your preferences will never be
fulfilled.
2. Latoya and Jamal are arguing about legalizing physician-assisted suicide. Jamal is
furious that this practice is not legal and feels that “people should have the right to
die.” Latoya is terribly worried about formally institutionalizing this practice. Using
the points in this section, first make Jamal’s case, and then support Latoya’s argument.
3. Poll your class: How would your fellow students vote if they were on the jury deciding
Dr. Cox’s case? If you were the ward nurse, would you have reported this doctor’s
decision to the police?
SUMMARY
chronic condition for a prolonged time. Before modern medicine

The Dying Person people died quickly and everyone had hands-on experience with
Today, we have three major pathways to death: People die sud- death. Then, during most of the twentieth century, medical science
denly, without warning; they steadily decline after being diagnosed relocated dying to hospitals, and people avoided talking or think-
with a fatal disease; and, most often, they battle an ultimately fatal, ing about death.
In recent decades, Western attitudes have changed. Doctors leaves much to be desired. Communication problems among
now openly discuss potentially fatal diagnoses, and society has patients, families, and medical personnel, along with the fact
health-care alternatives devoted to easing people’s passage to that medical technologies can extend life beyond the time the
death. We also urge everyone to discuss their end-of-life prefer- body “wants” to die, increase the potential for undignified
ences, although talking about death is still forbidden in some hospital deaths. Interventions to provide better palliative care
cultural groups. include: (1) offering end-of-life care instruction to health-care
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, in her stage theory of dying, proposed personnel; (2) establishing hospital-based palliative-care ser-
that people pass through denial, anger, bargaining, depres- vices; and (3) removing the scene of dying from hospitals to
sion, and acceptance when they learn they have a fatal disease. the hospice.
However, we cannot take this landmark theory as the final truth. The U.S. hospice movement offers backup services that allow
Not every person wants to talk about impending death. Some- families to let their loved ones spend their final months dying
times it may be best not to be totally honest about a loved one’s naturally, at home. Family caregivers can expect different trajec-
dire prognosis. Most important, terminally ill people feel many tories to death depending on the person’s illness. They confront
different emotions—especially hope. Rather than emotionally scary issues relating to pain control. Difficulties relating to label-
approaching death in “stages,” patients may experience a state ing patients as dying and simple lack of awareness are other
called middle knowledge, both knowing and not fully compre- hurdles to hospice care. Home deaths may not be the best choice
hending their fate. Even in the face of accepting death, dying if attachment-related issues such as not burdening loved ones
people still have life goals. matter most to people facing a fatal disease.
Biblical accounts showcase the defining qualities of good
deaths: It’s best to die at peace after a long life, surrounded by
our loved ones. Specifically, people want to die relatively free of
The Dying Person: Taking Control
pain and anxiety, feel in control of how they die, and end their of How We Die
lives feeling close to their attachment figures. Believing that we Advance directives—the living will and durable power of attor-
have fulfilled our purpose in living and appreciating that death ney for health care, filled out by the individual in health, and the
is part of the universal human cycle of life is also important in Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) and Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) orders,
accepting death. filled out by surrogates when the person is mentally impaired—
Our culture has clear conceptions about normal mourn- provide information about whether to use heroic measures when
ing. After an initial period spent absorbed with their loss, we individuals cannot make their treatment wishes known. The best
expect people to recover emotionally after about a year. When advance directive is the durable power of attorney, in which a
mourners still show intense symptoms after this time, they can person gives a specific family member decision-making power to
now be diagnosed with a controversial mental health condi- decide on end-of life care.
tion called persistent complex bereavement-related disorder, With active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, physi-
or prolonged grief. However, prolonged grief may be normal cians move beyond passive euthanasia (withdrawing treatments)
when parents face that off-time event, the death of a child. to actively promote the deaths of seriously ill people who want
In this worst-case example of a bad death, it helps to openly to end their lives. Paramount among the objections to legalizing
discuss dying (if that child knows he or she is terminally ill) and active euthanasia is the idea that we may open the door to killing
say goodbye to one’s son or daughter. Keeping the child alive people who don’t really want to die.
in spirit helps mute the pain. Transforming the death into a
A related issue is age-based rationing of care, whether to hold
redemption sequence allows grieving adults to restore a sense
off on using expensive death-defying technologies with people
of life as predictable and fair.
who are old-old. At this moment, age-based rationing of care is
poised to move center stage in Western nations, as the massive
The Health-Care System baby boom cohort enters their elderly years. The timeless mes-
A classic study of dying trajectories showed that because sage of this chapter—and the book—is that love (or, in devel-
dying doesn’t proceed according to a “schedule” but medical opmental science terminology, our attachments) is at the core
personnel assume it does, the way hospitals manage death of human life.
KEY TERMS
Kübler-Ross’s stage theory of dying trajectory, p. 460 living will, p. 467 passive euthanasia, p. 468
dying, p. 452 palliative care, p. 462 durable power of attorney for active euthanasia, p. 468
middle knowledge, p. 454 end-of-life care instruction, health care, p. 467 physician-assisted suicide,
persistent complex p. 462 Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) p. 468
bereavement-related palliative-care service, p. 462 order, p. 467 age-based rationing of care,
disorder, or prolonged Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) p. 469
hospice movement, p. 463
grief, p. 457 order, p. 467
advance directive, p. 467
Setting the Context 4. Your goal is to restore the person’s sense of meaning in life,
1. b ideally by helping that individual transform her loss into a
redemption sequence.
2. slowly and erratically; an age-related chronic disease
3. Amanda, because today we openly discuss death, and are The Health-Care System
making efforts to promote dignified dying.
1. Although medical personnel set up predictions about
how patients are likely to die, death doesn’t always go
The Dying Person according to schedule—so these prognostications are
1. c often wrong!
2. many different emotions; hope 2. b
3. b 3. d
4. Here’s what you might say to Melanie: Would you feel can’t decide when our lives should end. Plus, it’s cruel to
comfortable about burdening your family 24/7 with the torture fatally ill people, forcing them to suffer fruitless,
job of nursing you for months or having them manage the unwanted pain when we can easily provide a merciful death.
health crises that would occur? How would you feel having Latoya’s argument: I’m worried that greedy relatives might
loved ones see you naked and incontinent—would you pressure ill people into deciding to die “for the good of the
want that to be their last memory of you? Wouldn’t it be family” (that is, to save the family money). I believe that
better to be in a setting where trained professionals could legalizing physician-assisted suicide leaves the door open
competently manage your physical pain? to governments deciding to kill people when they think the
quality of their life is not good. Furthermore, only God can
The Dying Person: Taking Control of How We Die take a life!
1. b 3. Here your answers may vary in interesting ways. Enjoy the
2. Jamal’s case: We are free to make decisions about how discussion!
to live our lives, so it doesn’t make logical sense that we
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Final Thoughts
We are done!!!!! Revising this book has been thrilling. I’ve gotten a birds-eye view
of the research strides developmental scientists have made within just a few years.
In these past three years, I’ve witnessed human development mature into vigorous
midlife. So, bear with me as I take one last page to summarize four personal top
pick new research trends.
Trend Number One: Developmental science is a truly global research field.

Until recently, lifespan research was fairly uni-dimensionally focused on
the United States. Now, our studies have expanded to the world. From the
path-breaking European findings on day care, attachment, and, especially,
emerging adulthood, to the impressive Canadian and Australian longitudinal
research exploring adult life, scientists from every developed nation have emerged
as leaders in our field. Moreover, no longer are Western research teams studying
people from India or China or Iran. Now, developing world scientists are chiming
in as full participants in our field.
Trend Number Two: Developmental scientists are tracking the roots of later
development into very early life.
Another exciting advance relates to epigenetics—the elegant studies suggesting
events in utero and our earliest years may help program development well into old
age. Now, we know graphically that preschool poverty or stress may increase our
mid-life allostatic load. We understand that our obesity pathway may be partly set
in motion during the first year of life. At the same time, we realize more firmly that
development occurs at every life stage.
Trend Number Three: Developmental scientists understand that living can be

immensely fulfilling at the upper ends of life.
This brings up the studies exploring positive human development—in particular,
the heartening research demonstrating that emotional growth occurs well into
later life. No longer can we accept the gloom and doom idea that older people are
unhappy or that the physical losses of aging extend to people’s emotional lives. Not
only are older people—even into their eighties—happy, scientists are homing in on
the interpersonal and societal forces that make for a fulfilling old age (and happy
human life!).
Trend Number Four: Developmental scientists are making landmark strides in

exploring the biology of human development.
At the same time, we know far more about the biological forces shaping behavior—
from the studies tracking cortisol, or oxytocin, to the explosion of research using the
fMRI and tentative findings suggesting there may be environment-sensitive genes. As
I’ve mentioned, this biologically oriented research is in its infancy. The complexity
of development can never be reduced to hormones, slices of DNA, or single brain
parts. Still, who knows what insights we might have about genetics and the brain in
the next few years!
475
A
A-not-B error: In Piaget’s framework,
such as growth of body hair, skin
changes, and sexual desire. Glossary
a classic mistake made by infants adult attachment styles: The different
in the sensorimotor stage, whereby ways in which adults relate to
babies approaching age 1 go back romantic partners, based on Mary
to the original hiding place to look Ainsworth’s infant attachment
for an object even though they have styles (Adult attachment styles are
seen it get hidden in different place. classified as secure, preoccupied/
accommodation: In Piaget’s theory,
ambivalent insecure, or avoidant/ amniocentesis: A second-trimester
enlarging our mental capacities to dismissive insecure). procedure that involves inserting
fit input from the wider world. adult development: The scientific a syringe into a woman’s uterus to
study of the adult part of life. extract a sample of amniotic fluid,
acculturation: Among immigrants,
which is tested for a variety of genetic
the tendency to become similar advance directive: Any written
in attitudes and practices to the and chromosomal conditions.
document spelling out instructions
mainstream culture after time spent amniotic sac: A bag-shaped, fluid-
with regard to life-prolonging
living in a new society. filled membrane that contains and
treatment if individuals become
insulates the fetus.
achievement tests: Measures that irretrievably ill and cannot
evaluate a child’s knowledge in communicate their wishes. analytic intelligence: In Robert
specific school-related areas. Sternberg’s framework on successful
age-based rationing of care: The
intelligence, the facet of intelligence
active euthanasia: A deliberate controversial idea that society should involving performing well on
health-care intervention that helps a not use expensive life-sustaining academic-type problems.
patient die. technologies on people in their old-
old years. animism: In Piaget’s theory, the
active forces: The nature-interacts-
preoperational child’s belief that
with-nurture principle that our age discrimination: Illegally laying off inanimate objects are alive.
genetic temperamental tendencies workers or failing to hire or promote
and predispositions cause us to anorexia nervosa: A potentially
them on the basis of age.
actively choose to put ourselves into life-threatening eating disorder
specific environments. ageism: Stereotypic, intensely characterized by pathological dieting
negative ideas about old age. (resulting in severe weight loss and,
ADL (activities of daily living) problems:
in females, loss of menstruation)
Difficulty in performing everyday age norms: Cultural ideas about the
and a distorted body image.
tasks that are required for living appropriate ages for engaging in
independently. ADLs are classified particular activities or life tasks. anxious-ambivalent attachment:
as either basic or instrumental. An insecure attachment style
age of viability: The earliest point at characterized by a child’s
adolescence-limited turmoil: Antisocial which a baby can survive outside intense distress when reunited with a
behavior that, for most teens, is the womb. primary caregiver after separation.
specific to adolescence and does not
persist into adult life. aggression: Any hostile or destructive Apgar scale: A quick test used to assess
act. a just-delivered baby’s condition by
adolescent egocentrism: David
measuring heart rate, muscle tone,
Elkind’s term for the tendency of allostatic load: An overall score of
respiration, reflex response, and color.
young teenagers to feel that their body deterioration gained from
actions are at the center of everyone summing how a person functions artificialism: In Piaget’s theory, the pre-
else’s consciousness. on multiple physiological indexes. operational child’s belief that human
Allostatic load predicts cognitive beings make everything in nature.
adoption study: Behavioral genetic
research strategy, designed to performance during adult life. assimilation: In Jean Piaget’s theory, the
determine the genetic contribution alternatives to institutionalization: first step promoting mental growth,
to a given trait, that involves Services and settings designed to involving fitting environmental input
comparing adopted children with keep older people, who do not to our existing mental capacities.
their biological and adoptive parents. merit intense 24-hour care and are assisted-living facility: A housing
adrenal androgens: Hormones experiencing age-related disabilities, option providing care for elderly
produced by the adrenal glands that from having to enter nursing people who have instrumental ADL
program various aspects of puberty, homes. impairments and can no longer live
G-1
G-2 Glossary
independently but may not need a autobiographical memories: experience, conscientiousness,

nursing home. Recollections of events and and agreeableness—that underlie
experiences that make up one’s life personality.
assisted reproductive technology (ART):
history.
Any infertility treatment in which the binge eating disorder: A newly labeled
egg is fertilized outside of the womb. autonomy: Erikson’s second eating disorder defined by recurrent,
psychosocial task, when toddlers out-of-control binging accompanied
attachment: The powerful bond of by feelings of disgust.
confront the challenge of
love between a caregiver and child understanding that they are separate
(or between any two individuals). biracial or multiracial identity: How
individuals. people of mixed racial backgrounds
attachment in the making: Second average life expectancy: A person’s come to terms with who they are as
phase of Bowlby’s attachment fifty-fifty chance at birth of living to people in relation to their heritage.
sequence, when, from 4 to 7 months a given age. birth defect: A physical or
of age, babies slightly prefer the
avoidant/dismissive insecure attachment: neurological problem that occurs
primary caregiver.
A standoffish, excessively disengaged prenatally or at birth.
attachment theory: Theory formulated style of relating to loved ones. blastocyst: The hollow sphere of cells
by John Bowlby centering on the
avoidant attachment: An insecure formed during the germinal stage in
crucial importance to our species’ preparation for implantation.
survival of being closely connected attachment style characterized by
with a caregiver during early a child’s indifference to a primary body mass index (BMI): The ratio of
childhood and being attached to a caregiver at being reunited after weight to height; the main indicator
separation. of overweight or underweight.
significant other during all of life.
axon: A long nerve fiber that usually boundaryless career: Today’s most
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
conducts impulses away from the common career path for Western
(ADHD): The most common
cell body of a neuron. workers, in which people change
childhood learning disorder in the
jobs or professions periodically
United States, disproportionately
affecting boys, characterized by
B during their working lives.
inattention and hyperactivity at babbling: The alternating vowel and breadwinner role: Traditional concept
home and/or at school. consonant sounds that babies repeat that a man’s job is to support a wife
with variations of intonation and and children.
authoritarian parents: In the
pitch and that precede the first words.
parenting-styles framework, a type bulimia nervosa: An eating disorder
of child-rearing in which parents baby-proofing: Making the home safe characterized by at least biweekly
provide plenty of rules but rank for a newly mobile infant. cycles of binging and purging (by
low on child-centeredness, stressing inducing vomiting or taking laxatives)
baby boom cohort: The huge age in an obsessive attempt to lose weight.
unquestioning obedience. group born between 1946 and 1964.
authoritative parents: In the bully-victims: Exceptionally
basic ADL problems: Difficulty in aggressive children (with
parenting-styles framework, the performing essential self-care externalizing disorders) who
best possible child-rearing style, in activities, such as rising from a repeatedly bully and get victimized.
which parents rank high on both chair, eating, and getting to the
nurturance and discipline, providing toilet. bullying: A situation in which one or
both love and clear family rules. more children (or adults) harass or
behavioral genetics: Field devoted target a specific child for systematic
autism spectrum disorders (ASDs): to scientifically determining the abuse.
Conditions characterized by role that hereditary forces play in
persistent, severe, widespread social determining individual differences C
and conversational deficits; lack of in behavior.
interest in people and their feelings; caregiving grandparents: Grandparents
bidirectionality: The crucial principle who have taken on full responsibility
and repetitive, restricted behavior
patterns, such as rocking, ritualized that people affect one another, or for raising their grandchildren.
that interpersonal influences flow in
behavior, hypersensitivity to sensory centering: In Piaget’s conservation
both directions.
input, and a fixation on inanimate tasks, the preoperational child’s
objects. A core characteristic of Big Five: Five core psychological tendency to fix on the most visually
these disorders is impairments in predispositions—neuroticism, striking feature of a substance and not
theory of mind. extraversion, openness to take other dimensions into account.
Glossary G-3
cephalocaudal sequence: The develop- clear-cut attachment: Critical human universal learning benchmarks
mental principle that growth occurs attachment phase, from 7 months and emphasizing teaching through
in a sequence from head to toe. through toddlerhood, defined by scaffolding, problem solving, and
separation anxiety, stranger anxiety, communication skills.
cerebral cortex: The outer, folded
and needing a primary caregiver
mantle of the brain, responsible for concrete operational thinking: In
close.
thinking, reasoning, perceiving, and Piaget’s framework, the type of
all conscious responses. clique: A small peer group composed cognition characteristic of children
of roughly six teenagers who have aged 8 to 11, marked by the ability
certified nurse assistant or aide:
similar attitudes and who share to reason about the world in a more
The main hands-on care provider activities. logical, adult way.
in a nursing home who helps elderly
residents with basic ADL problems. co-sleeping: The standard custom, conservation tasks: Piagetian tasks
in collectivist cultures, of having a that involve changing the shape of
cervix: The neck, or narrow lower child and parent share a bed. a substance to determine whether
portion, of the uterus.
cognitive behaviorism (social learning children can go beyond the way
cesarean section (c-section): A method theory): A behavioral worldview that substance’s visually appearance
of delivering a baby surgically that emphasizes that people learn and understand that the volume is
by extracting the baby through by watching others and that our retained.
incisions in the woman’s abdominal thoughts about the reinforcers consummate love: In Robert
wall and the uterus. determine our behavior. Cognitive Sternberg’s triangular theory of
child development: The scientific
behaviorists focus on charting and love, the ideal form of love, in
study of development from birth modifying people’s thoughts.
which a couple’s relationship
through adolescence. cohabitation: Sharing a household involves all three of the major facets
in an unmarried romantic of love: passion, intimacy, and
childhood obesity: A body mass index
relationship. commitment.
at or above the 95th percentile com-
pared to the U.S. norms established cohort: The age group with whom contexts of development:
for children in the 1970s. we travel through life. Fundamental markers, including
cohort, socioeconomic status,
child maltreatment: Any act that colic: A baby’s frantic, continual
culture, and gender, that shape
seriously endangers a child’s crying during the first three months
how we develop throughout the
physical or emotional well-being. of life caused by an immature
nervous system. lifespan.
chorionic villus sampling (CVS):
continuing-care retirement community:
A relatively risky first-trimester collaborative pretend play: Fantasy
play in which children work A housing option characterized by
pregnancy test for fetal genetic
together to develop and act out the a series of levels of care for elderly
disorders.
scenes. residents, ranging from independent
chromosome: A threadlike strand of apartments to assisted living to
DNA located in the nucleus of every collectivist cultures: Societies nursing home care. People enter
cell that carries the genes, which that prize social harmony, the community in relatively good
transmit hereditary information. obedience, and close family health and move to sections where
connectedness over individual they can get more care when they
chronic disease: Any long-term illness achievement. become disabled.
that requires ongoing management.
Most chronic diseases are age- commitment script: In Dan conventional level of morality: In
related and are the endpoint of McAdams’s research, a type of Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory,
normal aging changes. autobiography produced by highly the intermediate level of moral
generative adults that involves reasoning, in which people respond
circular reactions: In Piaget’s childhood memories of feeling to ethical issues by considering the
framework, repetitive action- special; being unusually sensitive need to uphold social norms.
oriented schemas (or habits) to others’ misfortunes; having a
characteristic of babies during the strong, enduring generative mission corporal punishment: The use
sensorimotor stage. from adolescence; and redemption of physical force to discipline a
sequences. child.
class inclusion: The understanding
that a general category can Common Core State Standards: correlational study: A research strategy
encompass several subordinate Transformative U.S. public that involves relating two or more
elements. school changes, spelling out variables.
G-4 Glossary
creative intelligence: In Robert developmental disorders: Learning dose–response effect: Term referring
Sternberg’s framework on successful impairments and behavioral problems to the fact that the amount (dose) of
intelligence, the facet of intelligence during infancy and childhood. a substance, in this case the depth
involved in producing novel ideas or and length of deprivation, determines
developmentalists: Researchers and
innovative work. its probable effect or impact on the
practitioners whose professional
person (In the orphanage studies, the
cross-sectional study: A interest lies in the study of the
“response” is subsequent emotional
developmental research strategy that human lifespan. and/or cognitive problems).
involves testing different age groups developmental systems perspective:
at the same time. Down syndrome: The most common
An all-encompassing outlook on
chromosomal abnormality, causing
crowd: A relatively large teenage peer development that stresses the need
intellectual disability, susceptibility
group. to embrace a variety of theories,
to heart disease, and other health
and the idea that all systems and
crystallized intelligence: A basic facet of
problems as well as distinctive
processes interrelate.
physical characteristics, such as
intelligence, consisting of a person’s
deviancy training: Socialization of a slanted eyes and stocky build.
knowledge base, or storehouse of
young teenager into delinquency
accumulated information. durable power of attorney for health
through conversations centered on care: A type of advance directive
cyberbullying: Systematic harassment performing antisocial acts. in which people designate a
conducted through electronic media. specific surrogate to make health-
disorganized attachment: An insecure
attachment style characterized by care decisions if they become
D responses such as freezing or fear incapacitated and are unable to
when a child is reunited with the make their wishes known.
day-care center: A day-care
primary caregiver in the Strange dying trajectory: The fact that
arrangement in which a large
Situation. hospital personnel make
number of children are cared for at
a licensed facility by paid providers. divided-attention task: A difficult
projections about the particular
pathway to death that a seriously ill
memory challenge involving
day-care program: A service for patient will take and organize their
memorizing material while
impaired older adults who live with care according to that assumption.
simultaneously monitoring
relatives, in which the older person
something else. dyslexia: A learning disorder that is
spends the day at a center offering characterized by reading difficulties,
various activities. DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid): The
lack of fluency, and poor word
material that makes up genes,
decentering: In Piaget’s conservation recognition that is often genetic in
which bear our hereditary
tasks, the concrete operational origin.
characteristics.
child’s ability to look at several
dimensions of an object or dominant disorder: An illness that a
E
substance. child gets by inheriting one copy of
the abnormal gene that causes the early childhood: The first phase
deinstitutionalization of marriage: disorder. of childhood, lasting from age 3
The decline in marriage and the through kindergarten, or about age 5.
emergence of alternate family forms Do Not Hospitalize (DNH) order: A
type of advance directive put into Early Head Start: A federal program
that occurred during the last third of
the charts of impaired nursing that provides counseling and other
the twentieth century.
home residents, specifying that, services to low-income parents and
dendrite: A branching fiber that in a medical crisis, they should children under age 3.
receives information and conducts not be transferred to a hospital for eating disorder: A pathological
impulses toward the cell body of a emergency care. obsession with getting and staying
neuron. thin. The two best-known eating
Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order: A
depth perception: The ability to see type of advance directive filled out disorders are anorexia nervosa and
(and fear) heights. by surrogates (usually a doctor in bulimia nervosa.
consultation with family members) egocentrism: In Piaget’s theory, the
developed world: The most affluent
for impaired individuals, specifying preoperational child’s inability to
countries in the world.
that if they go into cardiac arrest, understand that other people have
developing world: The more efforts should not be made to revive different points of view from their
impoverished countries of the world. them. own.
Glossary G-5
elderspeak: A style of communication executive functions: Any frontal-lobe fertilization: The union of sperm and
used with an older person who ability that allows us to inhibit our egg.
seems to be physically impaired, responses and to plan and direct our
fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS): A
involving speaking loudly and with thinking.
slow, exaggerated pronunciation, as cluster of birth defects caused by
experience-sampling technique: the mother’s alcohol consumption
if talking to a baby.
A research procedure designed during pregnancy.
embryonic stage: The second stage of to capture moment-to-moment
prenatal development, lasting from experiences by having people fetal programming research: New
week 3 through week 8. carry pagers and take notes describing research discipline exploring the
their activities and emotions impact of traumatic pregnancy
emerging adulthood: The phase of life
whenever the signal sounds. events and intense stress on
that begins after high school, tapers
producing low birth weight,
off toward the late twenties, and is externalizing tendencies: A
devoted to constructing an adult life. obesity, and long-term physical
personality style that involves acting
on one’s immediate impulses problems.
emotion regulation: The capacity to
and behaving disruptively and fetal stage: The final period of
manage one’s emotional state.
aggressively. prenatal development, lasting
empathy: Feeling the exact emotion seven months, characterized by
extrinsic career rewards: Work that is
that another person is experiencing. physical refinements, massive
performed for external reinforcers,
end-of-life care instruction: Courses in such as pay. growth, and the development of the
medical and nursing schools devoted brain.
extrinsic motivation: The drive to take
to teaching health-care workers how
an action because that activity offers fine motor skills: Physical abilities
to provide the best palliative care to
external reinforcers such as praise, that involve small, coordinated
the dying.
money, or a good grade. movements, such as drawing and
epigenetics: Research field exploring writing one’s name.
how early life events alter the outer
cover of our DNA, producing lifelong
F flow: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s
changes in health and behavior. face-perception studies: Research term for feeling total absorption
using preferential looking and in a challenging, goal-oriented
episodic memory: In the memory-
habituation to explore what very activity.
systems perspective, the most fragile
young babies know about faces.
type of memory, involving the recall fluid intelligence: A basic facet of
of the ongoing events of daily life. fallopian tube: One of a pair of slim, intelligence, consisting of the ability
pipelike structures that connect the to quickly master new intellectual
Erikson’s psychosocial tasks: In Erik
ovaries with the uterus. activities.
Erikson’s theory, each challenge
that we face as we travel through the family day care: A day-care Flynn Effect: Remarkable and steady
eight stages of the lifespan. arrangement in which a neighbor rise in overall performance on IQ
or relative cares for a small number tests that has been occurring around
ethnic identity: How people come to
of children in her home for a fee. the world over the past century.
terms with who they are as people
relating to their unique ethnic or family watchdogs: A basic role of
food insecurity: According to U.S.
racial heritage. grandparents involving monitoring
Department of Agriculture surveys,
younger family members’ well-being
eudaimonic happiness: Well-being the number of households that
and intervening to provide help in
defined as having a sense of report needing to serve unbalanced
cases of crisis.
meaning and life purpose. meals, worrying about not having
family–work conflict: A situation in enough food at the end of the
evocative forces: The nature-interacts-
which people—typically parents— month, or having to go hungry due
with-nurture principle that our
are torn between the demands of to lack of money (latter is severe food
genetic temperamental tendencies
family and work. insecurity).
and predispositions evoke, or
produce, certain responses from fantasy play: Play that involves formal operational stage: Jean Piaget’s
other people. making up and acting out a fourth and final stage of cognitive
scenario; also called pretend play. development, reached at around age
evolutionary psychology: Theory or
worldview highlighting the role that fertility rate: The average number 12, and characterized by teenagers’
inborn, species-specific behaviors of children a woman in a given ability to reason at an abstract,
play in human development and life. country has during her lifetime. scientific level.
G-6 Glossary
frontal lobes: The area at the germinal stage: The first 14 days preschoolers aged 3 to 5 from low-
uppermost front of the brain of prenatal development, from income families prepare for school.
responsible for reasoning and fertilization to full implantation.
healthy-life years: The number of
planning our actions. gerontology: The scientific study of years people can expect to live
the aging process and older adults. without ADL problems.
G
gestation: The period of pregnancy. hedonic happiness: Well-being
“g”: Charles Spearman’s term for defined as pure pleasure.
a general intelligence factor that gifted: The label for superior
intellectual functioning holophrase: First clear evidence of
he claimed underlies all cognitive
characterized by an IQ score of language, when babies use a single
activities.
130 or above, showing that a child word to communicate a sentence or
gang: A close-knit, delinquent peer ranks in the top 2 percent of his age complete thought.
group. Gangs form mainly under group. home health services: Nursing-
conditions of economic deprivation; oriented and housekeeping help
gonads: The sex organs—the ovaries
they offer their members protection provided in the home of an
in girls and the testes in boys.
from harm and engage in a variety impaired older adult (or any other
of criminal activities. goodness of fit: An ideal parenting impaired person).
strategy that involves arranging
gender-segregated play: Play in which children’s environments to suit their homogamy: The principle that
boys and girls associate only with temperaments, minimizing their we select a mate who is similar to
members of their own sex—typical vulnerabilities and accentuating us.
of childhood. their strengths. homophobia: Intense fear and dislike
gender schema theory: Explanation grammar: The rules and word- of gays and lesbians.
for gender-stereotyped behavior arranging systems that every human hormones: Chemical substances
that emphasizes the role of language employs to communicate released in the bloodstream that
cognitions; specifically, the idea meaning. target and change organs and
that once children know their own Great Recession of 2008: Dramatic tissues.
gender label (girl or boy), they loss of jobs (and consumer hospice movement: A movement,
selectively watch and model their spending) that began with the which became widespread in recent
own sex. bursting of the U.S. housing decades, focused on providing
gene: A segment of DNA that
bubble in late 2007. palliative care to dying patients
contains a chemical blueprint for gross motor skills: Physical outside of hospitals and especially on
manufacturing a particular protein. abilities that involve large muscle giving families the support they need
movements, such as running and to care for the terminally ill at home.
generativity: In Erikson’s theory, the
jumping. hostile attributional bias: The
seventh psychosocial task, in which
growth spurt: A dramatic increase
tendency of highly aggressive
people in midlife find meaning
in height and weight that occurs children to see motives and actions
from nurturing the next generation,
during puberty. as threatening when they are
caring for others, or enriching actually benign.
the lives of others through their guilt: Feeling upset about having
work. According to Erikson, when HPG axis: The main hormonal
caused harm to a person or about
midlife adults have not achieved having violated one’s internal system programming puberty; it
generativity, they feel stagnant and involves a triggering hypothalamic
standard of behavior.
without a sense of purpose in life. hormone that causes the pituitary
gland to secrete its hormones, which
genetic counselor: A professional who H in turn cause the ovaries and testes
counsels parents-to-be about their to develop and secrete the hormones
habituation: The predictable loss
own and/or their children’s risk of that produce major body changes.
of interest that develops once a
developing genetic disorders, as well stimulus becomes familiar; used to
as available treatments. explore infant sensory capacities and I
genetic testing: A blood test to
thinking.
identity achievement: An identity
determine whether a person Head Start: A federal program status in which the person decides on
carries the gene for a given genetic offering high-quality day care at a a definite adult life path after
disorder. center and other services to help searching out various options.
Glossary G-7
identity constancy: In Piaget’s theory, industry versus inferiority: Erik intergenerational equity: Balancing
the preoperational child’s inability Erikson’s term for the psychosocial the needs of the young and old. It
to grasp that a person’s core “self ” task of middle childhood involving is often regarded to as the idea that
stays the same despite changes in managing our emotions and U.S. government entitlements, such
external appearance. realizing that real-world success as Medicare and Social Security,
involves hard work. “over-benefit” the elderly at the
identity diffusion: An identity status in
expense of other age groups.
which the person is aimless or feels infant-directed speech (IDS): The
totally blocked, without any adult simplified, exaggerated, high- internalizing tendencies: A personality
life path. pitched tones that adults and style that involves intense fear, social
children use to speak to infants that inhibition, and often depression.
identity foreclosure: An identity status
in which the person decides on an function to help teach language. intimacy: Erikson’s first adult task,
adult life path (often one spelled out infant mortality: Death during the involving connecting with a partner
by an authority figure) without any first year of life. in a mutually loving relationship.
thought or active search. intrinsic career rewards: Work that
infertility: The inability to conceive
identity: In Erikson’s theory, the life provides inner fulfillment and allows
after a year of unprotected sex.
task of deciding who to be as a person people to satisfy their needs for
(Includes the inability to carry a
in making the transition to adulthood. creativity, autonomy, and relatedness.
child to term.)
identity statuses: James Marcia’s four intrinsic motivation: The drive to act
information-processing approach:
categories of identity formation: based on the pleasure of taking that
A perspective on understanding
identity diffusion, identity action in itself, not for an external
cognition that divides thinking
foreclosure, moratorium, and reinforcer or reward.
into specific steps and component
identity achievement. in vitro fertilization: An infertility
processes, much like a computer.
imaginary audience: David Elkind’s treatment in which conception
initiative versus guilt: Erik Erikson’s occurs outside of the womb; the
term for the tendency of young
term for the preschool psychosocial developing cell mass is then inserted
teenagers to feel that everyone
task involving actively taking on life into the woman’s uterus so that
is watching their every action;
tasks. pregnancy can occur.
a component of adolescent
egocentrism. inner speech: In Vygotsky’s theory,
the way in by which human beings K
immigrant paradox: The fact that
despite living in poverty, going to learn to regulate their behavior and kangaroo care: Carrying a young baby
substandard schools, and not having master cognitive challenges, through in a sling close to the caregiver’s
parents who speak the language, silently repeating information or body. This technique is most useful
many immigrant children do far talking to themselves. for soothing an infant.
better than we might expect in school. insecure attachment: Deviation Kübler-Ross’s stage theory of dying:
implantation: The process in which a from the normally joyful response The landmark theory, developed by
blastocyst becomes embedded in the of being united with a primary psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,
uterine wall. caregiver, signaling problems in the that people who are terminally
caregiver–child relationship. ill progress through five stages in
income inequality: The gap between confronting their death: denial,
the rich and poor within a nation. instrumental ADL problems: Difficulty
anger, bargaining, depression, and
Specifically, when income in performing everyday household acceptance.
inequality is wide, a nation has a few tasks, such as cooking and cleaning.
very affluent residents and a mass of integrity: Erik Erikson’s eighth L
disadvantaged citizens. psychosocial stage, in which elderly language acquisition device (LAD):
individualistic cultures: Societies that people decide that their life missions Chomsky’s term for a hypothetical
prize independence, competition, have been fulfilled and so accept brain structure that enables our
and personal success. impending death. species to learn and produce
intellectual disability: The label for
language.
induction: The ideal discipline style for
socializing prosocial behavior, involv- significantly impaired cognitive learned helplessness: A state that
ing getting a child who has behaved functioning, measured by deficits in develops when a person feels
hurtfully to empathize with the pain behavior accompanied by having an incapable of affecting the outcome of
he has caused the other person. IQ of 70 or below. events, and gives up without trying.
G-8 Glossary
lens: A transparent, disk-shaped maximum lifespan: The biological modeling: Learning by watching and
structure in the eye, which bends to limit of human life (about 105 imitating others.
allow us to see close objects. years).
moratorium: An identity status in
life-course difficulties: Antisocial mean length of utterance (MLU): The which the person actively seeks out
behavior that, for a fraction of average number of morphemes per various possibilities to find a truly
adolescents, persists into adult life. sentence. solid adult life path. A mature style
of constructing an identity.
lifespan development: The scientific means–end behavior: In Piaget’s
study of development through life. framework, performing a morpheme : The smallest unit of
different action to achieve a meaning in a particular language—
little-scientist phase: The time
goal—an ability that emerges in for example, boys contains two
around age 1 when babies use
the sensorimotor stage as babies morphemes: boy and the plural
tertiary circular reactions to actively
approach age 1. suffix s.
explore the properties of objects,
experimenting with them like median age: The age at which 50 multiple intelligences theory: In
“scientists.” percent of a population is older and Howard Gardner’s perspective on
50 percent is younger. intelligence, the principle that
living will: A type of advance
there are eight separate kinds of
directive in which people spell Medicare: The U.S. government’s
intelligence—verbal, mathematical,
out their wishes for life-sustaining program of health insurance for interpersonal, intrapersonal,
treatment in case they become elderly people. spatial, musical, kinesthetic, and
permanently incapacitated and
memory-systems perspective: A naturalist—plus a possible ninth
unable to communicate.
framework that divides memory into form, called spiritual intelligence.
longitudinal study: A developmental three types: procedural, semantic, myelination: Formation of a fatty
research strategy that involves testing and episodic memory. layer, encasing the axons of neurons.
an age group repeatedly over many
menarche: A girl’s first menstruation. This process, which speeds the
years.
transmission of neural impulses,
low birth weight (LBW): A body menopause: The age-related process, continues from birth to early
weight at birth of less than occurring at about age 50, in which adulthood.
5 1/2 pounds. ovulation and menstruation stop due
to the decline of estrogen.
N
M micronutrient deficiency: Chronically
inadequate level of a specific natural childbirth: A general term for
major neurocognitive disorder (NCD)
nutrient important to development labor and birth without medical
(also known as dementia) The general
and disease prevention, such as interventions.
term for any illness involving
serious, progressive, usually Vitamin A, Zinc, and/or Iron. naturalistic observation: A
irreversible cognitive decline, that middle childhood: The second measurement strategy that involves
interferes with a person’s ability phase of childhood, covering the directly watching and coding
to live independently. (A minor elementary school years, from about behaviors.
neurocognitive disorder is the label age 6 to 11. nature: Biological or genetic causes
for a less severe impairment in
middle knowledge: The idea that
of development.
memory, reasoning, and thinking
which does not compromise terminally ill people can know that neonatal intensive care unit (NICU):
independent living.) they are dying yet, at the same time, A special hospital unit that treats
not completely grasp or come to at-risk newborns, such as low-birth-
marital equity: Fairness in the “work”
terms emotionally with that fact. weight and very-low-birth-weight
of a couple’s life together. If a
babies.
relationship lacks equity, with one miscarriage: The naturally occurring
partner doing significantly more loss of a pregnancy and death of the nest-leaving: Moving out of a
than the other, the outcome is fetus. childhood home and living
typically marital dissatisfaction. independently.
mnemonic technique: A strategy for
mass-to-specific sequence: The aiding memory, often by using neural tube: A cylindrical structure
developmental principle that large imagery or enhancing the emotional that forms along the back of the
structures (and movements) precede meaning of what needs to be embryo and develops into the brain
increasingly detailed refinements. learned. and spinal cord.
Glossary G-9
neurocognitive disorder due old-age dependency ratio: The fraction palliative-care service: A service or
to Alzheimer’s disease (or of people over age 60 compared to unit in a hospital that is devoted to
Alzheimer’s disease): A type of age- younger, working-age adults (ages 15 end-of-life care.
related neurocognitive disorder to 59). This ratio is rising dramatically paradox of well-being: The fact that
characterized by neural atrophy as the baby boomers retire. despite their physical and mental
and abnormal by-products of that old-old: People almost age 80 and losses, the elderly report being just
atrophy, such as senile plaques and older. as happy or happier than the young.
neurofibrillary tangles.
on time: Being on target in a parental alienation: The practice
neurofibrillary tangles: Long, wavy culture’s timetable for achieving among divorced parents of
filaments that replace normal adult life tasks. badmouthing a former spouse, with
neurons and are characteristic of the goal of turning a child against
Alzheimer’s disease. operant conditioning: According to the
that person.
traditional behavioral perspective,
neuron: A nerve cell. the law of learning that determines parent care: Adult children’s care for
non-normative transitions: Unpredict- any voluntary response. Specifically, their disabled elderly parents.
able or atypical life changes that we act the way we do because we parenting style: In Diana Baumrind’s
occur during development. are reinforced for acting in that way. framework, how parents align on
nonsuicidal self-injury: Cutting, osteoporosis: An age-related chronic two dimensions of child-rearing:
burning, or purposely injuring disease in which the bones become nurturance (or child-centeredness)
one’s body to cope with stress. porous, fragile, and more likely to and discipline (or structure and rules).
break. Osteoporosis is most common passive euthanasia: Withholding
normal aging changes: The universal,
in thin women and females of potentially life-saving interventions
often progressive signs, of physical
European and Asian descent. that might keep a terminally ill or
deterioration intrinsic to the aging
process. ovary: One of a pair of almond- permanently comatose patient alive.
shaped organs that contain a permissive parents: In the parenting-
normative transitions: Predictable
woman’s ova, or eggs. styles framework, a type of
life changes that occur during
development. overextension: An error in early child-rearing in which parents
language development in which provide few rules but rank high
nursing home/long-term-care facility: A on child-centeredness, being
young children apply verbal labels
residential institution that provides extremely loving but providing little
too broadly.
shelter and intensive caregiving, discipline.
primarily to older people who need overregularization: An error in early
language development, in which Persistent Complex Bereavement-
help with basic ADLs.
young children apply the rules Related Disorder, or prolonged grief:
nurture: Environmental causes of Controversial new diagnosis,
for plurals and past tenses even to
development. appearing in the most recent
exceptions, so irregular forms sound
nurturer father: Husband who actively like regular forms. versions of the Western psychiatric
participates in hands-on child care. disorder manuals, in which the
ovulation: The moment during a bereaved person shows intense
woman’s monthly cycle when an symptoms of mourning with no
ovum is expelled from the ovary. signs of abatement, or an increase in
O
ovum: An egg cell containing the
symptoms 6 months to a year after a
object permanence: In Piaget’s loved one’s death.
genetic material contributed by the
framework, the understanding
mother to the baby. personal fable: David Elkind’s term
that objects continue to exist even
for the tendency of young teenagers
when we can no longer see them, oxytocin: The hormone whose produc-
to believe that their lives are
which gradually emerges during the tion is centrally involved in bonding,
special and heroic; a component of
sensorimotor stage. nurturing, and caregiving behaviors in
adolescent egocentrism.
our species and other mammals.
occupational segregation: The
person–environment fit:The extent to
separation of men and women into
which the environment is tailored to
different kinds of jobs. P
our biological tendencies and talents.
off time: Being too late or too early in palliative care: Any intervention In developmental science, fostering
a culture’s timetable for achieving designed not to cure illness but to this fit between our talents and the
adult life tasks. promote dignified dying. wider world is an important goal.
G-10 Glossary
phoneme: The sound units that preattachment phase: The first phase private pensions: The major source
convey meaning in a given of John Bowlby’s developmental of nongovernmental income
language—for example, in English, attachment sequence, during the support for U.S. retirees, in which
the c sound of cat and the b sound first three months of life, when the individual worker and employer
of bat. infants show no visible signs of put a portion of each paycheck
attachment. into an account to help finance
physician-assisted suicide: A type
of active euthanasia in which preconventional level of morality: In retirement.
a physician prescribes a lethal Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory, the proactive aggression: A hostile or
medication to a terminally ill person lowest level of moral reasoning, destructive act initiated to achieve
who wants to die. in which people approach ethical a goal.
issues by considering the personal
Piaget’s cognitive developmental theory: procedural memory: In the memory-
punishments or rewards of taking a
Jean Piaget’s principle that from systems perspective, the most
particular action.
infancy to adolescence, children resilient (longest-lasting) type of
progress through four qualitatively preferential-looking paradigm: A
memory; refers to material, such
different stages of intellectual research technique to explore
as well-learned physical skills, that
growth. early infant sensory capacities and
we automatically recall without
cognition, drawing on the principle
placenta: The structure projecting conscious awareness.
that we are attracted to novelty and
from the wall of the uterus during prefer to look at new things. prosocial behavior: Sharing, helping,
pregnancy through which the
and caring actions.
developing baby absorbs nutrients. preoccupied/ambivalent insecure
attachment: An excessively clingy, proximity-seeking behavior: Acting to
plastic: Malleable, or capable of needy style of relating to loved ones. maintain physical contact or to be
being changed (used to refer to
preoperational thinking: In Piaget’s close to an attachment figure.
neural or cognitive development).
theory, the type of cognition proximodistal sequence: The
positivity effect: The tendency for characteristic of children aged developmental principle that growth
older people to focus on positive 2 to 7, marked by an inability to occurs from the most interior parts
experiences and screen out negative step back from one’s immediate of the body outward.
events. perceptions and think conceptually.
puberty rite: A “coming of age”
postconventional level of morality: In presbycusis: Age-related difficulty in ritual, usually beginning at some
Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory, the hearing, particularly high-pitched event such as first menstruation,
highest level of moral reasoning, tones, caused by the atrophy of the
in which people respond to ethical held in traditional cultures to
hearing receptors located in the
issues by applying their own moral celebrate children’s transition to
inner ear.
guidelines apart from society’s adulthood.
rules. presbyopia: Age-related midlife
puberty: The hormonal and physical
difficulty with near vision,
postformal thought: A uniquely changes by which children become
caused by the inability of the lens to
adult form of intelligence that sexually mature human beings and
bend.
involves being sensitive to different reach their adult height.
preschool: A teaching-oriented group
perspectives, making decisions
based on one’s inner feelings, and setting for children aged 3 to 5. Q
being interested in exploring new primary attachment figure: The qualitative research: Occasional
questions. closest person in a child’s or developmental science
adult’s life. data-collection strategy that
power assertion: An ineffective
socialization strategy that involves primary circular reactions: In Piaget’s involves interviewing people
yelling, screaming, or hitting out in framework, the first infant habits to obtain information which
frustration at a child. during the sensorimotor stage, cannot be quantified on a
centered on the body. numerical scale.
practical intelligence: In Robert
Sternberg’s framework on primary sexual characteristics: Physical quantitative research: Standard
successful intelligence, the facet of changes of puberty that directly developmental science data-
intelligence involved in knowing involve the organs of reproduction, collection strategy that involves
how to act competently in real- such as the growth of the penis and testing groups of people and
world situations. the onset of menstruation. using numerical scales and statistics.
Glossary G-11
quickening: A pregnant woman’s first resilient children: Children who one’s efforts to that person’s
feeling of the fetus moving inside rebound from serious early life trau- competence level.
her body. mas to construct successful adult lives.
school-to-work transition: The change
reversibility: In Piaget’s conservation from the schooling phase of life to
R
tasks, the concrete operational the work world.
reaction time: The speed at which a child’s knowledge that a specific
Seattle Longitudinal Study: The
person can respond to a stimulus. A change in the way a given substance
definitive study of the effect of
progressive increase in reaction time looks can be reversed.
aging on intelligence, led by
is universal to aging.
role: The characteristic behavior K. Warner Schaie, involving
reactive aggression: A hostile or that is expected of a person in a simultaneously conducting and
destructive act carried out in response particular social position, such as comparing the results of cross-
to being frustrated or hurt. student, parent, married person, sectional and longitudinal studies
worker, or retiree. carried out with a group of Seattle
recessive disorder: An illness caused
volunteers.
by inheriting two copies of the role conflict: A situation in which a
abnormal, disorder-causing gene. person is torn between two or more secondary circular reactions: In
major responsibilities—for instance, Piaget’s framework, habits of the
redemption sequence: In Dan
parent and worker—and cannot do sensorimotor stage lasting from
McAdams’s research, a characteristic
either job adequately. about 4 months of age to the baby’s
theme of highly generative adults’
autobiographies, in which they role confusion: Erikson’s term for a
first birthday, centered on exploring
describe tragic events that turned failure in identity formation, marked the external world.
out for the best. by the lack of any sense of a future secondary sexual characteristics:
adult path. Physical changes of puberty
reflex: A response or action that
is automatic and programmed by role overload: A job situation that that are not directly involved in
noncortical brain centers. places so many requirements reproduction.
or demands on workers that it secular trend in puberty: A century-
rehearsal: A learning strategy in
becomes impossible to do a good long decline in the average age at
which people repeat information to
job. which children reach puberty in the
embed it in to memory.
role phase: In Murstein’s theory, the developed world.
reinforcement: Behavioral term for
final mate-selection stage, in which secure attachment: Ideal attachment
reward.
committed partners work out their response when a child responds with
rejecting-neglecting parents: In future life together. joy at being united with a primary
the parenting-styles framework, caregiver; in adulthood, the genuine
rooting reflex: Newborns’
the worst child-rearing approach, intimacy that is ideal in love
automatic response to a touch
in which parents provide relationships.
on the cheek, involving turning
little discipline and little
toward that location and beginning secure (adult) attachment: The
nurturing or love.
to suck. genuine intimacy that is ideal in
relational aggression: A hostile or
rough-and-tumble play: Play that love relationships.
destructive act designed to cause
involves shoving, wrestling, and selective attention: A learning
harm to a person’s relationships.
hitting, but in which no actual harm strategy in which people
reliability: In measurement is intended; especially characteristic manage their awareness so as to
terminology, a basic criterion of a of boys. attend only to what is relevant
test’s accuracy wherein scores must
ruminative moratorium: When a young and to filter out unneeded
be fairly similar when a person
person is unable to decide between information.
re-takes a test.
different identities, becoming
selective optimization with
REM sleep: The phase of sleep emotionally paralyzed and highly
compensation: Paul Baltes’s three
involving rapid eye movements, when anxious.
principles for successful aging
the EEG looks almost like it does
(and living): (1) selectively
during waking. REM sleep decreases S focusing on what is most important,
as infants mature.
scaffolding: The process of (2) working harder to perform well
representative sample: A group that teaching new skills by entering in those top-ranking areas, and
reflects the characteristics of the a child’s zone of proximal (3) relying on external aids to cope
overall population. development and tailoring effectively.
G-12 Glossary
self-awareness: The ability to observe agenda is to pin down the basics of social referencing: A baby’s checking
our actions from an outside frame of physical reality. back and monitoring a caregiver
reference and to reflect on our inner for cues as to how to behave while
separation anxiety: Signal of clear-cut
state. exploring; linked to clear-cut
attachment when a baby gets upset
self-conscious emotions: Feelings of
attachment.
as a primary caregiver departs.
pride, shame, or guilt, which first Social Security: The U.S.
serial cohabitation: Living
emerge around age 2 and show the government’s national retirement
capacity to reflect on the self. sequentially with different partners
support program.
outside of marriage.
self-efficacy: According to social smile: The first real smile,
cognitive behaviorism, an internal sex-linked single-gene disorder: An
occurring at about 2 months of age.
belief in our competence that illness, carried on the mother’s X
predicts whether we initiate chromosome, that typically leaves socioeconomic health gap: The
activities or persist in the face of the female offspring unaffected but disparity, found in nations around
failures, and predicts the goals that has a fifty-fifty chance of striking the world, between the health of the
we set. each male child. rich and poor.
self-esteem: Evaluating oneself as sexual double standard: A cultural socioeconomic status (SES): A basic
either “good” or “bad” as a result code that gives men greater sexual marker referring to status on the
of comparing the self to other freedom than women. Specifically, educational and—especially—
people. society expects males to want income rungs.
to have intercourse and expects
self-report strategy: A measurement Socioemotional Selectivity Theory:
females to remain virgins until they
having people report on their A theory of aging (and the
marry and be more interested in
feelings and activities through lifespan) put forth by Laura
relationships than having sex.
questionnaires. Carstensen, describing how the
shame: A feeling of being personally time we have left to live affects our
self-soothing: Children’s ability,
usually beginning at about 6 months humiliated. priorities and social relationships.
of age, to put themselves back to Specifically in later life, people
single-gene disorder: An illness
sleep when they wake up during focus on the present and prioritize
caused by a single gene.
the night. being with their closest attachment
social-interactionist perspective: An figures.
semantic memory: In the memory- approach to language development
systems perspective, a moderately specific learning disorder: The label
that emphasizes its social function,
resilient (long-lasting) type for any impairment in language
specifically that babies and
of memory; refers to our ability to or any deficit related to listening,
adults have a mutual passion to
recall basic facts. thinking, speaking, reading,
communicate.
writing, spelling, or understanding
semantics: The meaning system of a
social clock: The concept suggesting mathematics.
language—that is, what the words
that we regulate our passage through
stand for. spermarche: A boy’s first ejaculation
adulthood by an inner timetable
senile plaques: Thick, bullet-like
of live sperm.
telling us which activities are
amyloid-laden structures that appropriate for certain ages. stimulus phase: In Murstein’s theory,
replace normal neurons and the initial mate-selection stage,
are characteristic of Alzheimer’s social cognition: Any skill related
in which we make judgments
disease. to understanding feelings
about a potential partner based
and negotiating interpersonal
sensitive period: The time when a on external characteristics such as
interactions.
body structure is most vulnerable appearance.
to damage by a teratogen, socialization: The process by which
Stimulus-Value-Role Theory: Murstein’s
typically when that organ or children are taught to obey the
mate-selection theory suggest that
process is rapidly developing or norms of society and to behave in
similar people pair up and that our
coming “on line.” socially appropriate ways.
path to commitment progresses
sensorimotor stage: Piaget’s first stage social networking sites: Internet sites through three phases (called the
of cognitive development, lasting whose goal is to forge personal stimulus, value-comparison, and role
from birth to age 2, when babies’ connections between users. phases).
Glossary G-13
stranger anxiety: Beginning at about synchrony: The reciprocal aspect thin ideal: Media-driven cultural idea
7 months of age, when a baby grows of the attachment relationship, that females need to be abnormally
wary of people other than a primary with a caregiver and infant thin.
caregiver. responding emotionally to each
toddlerhood: The important
other in a sensitive, exquisitely
Strange Situation: Mary Ainsworth’s transitional stage after babyhood,
attuned way.
procedure to measure attachment from roughly 1 year to 2 1/2 years
at age 1, involving planned syntax: The system of grammatical of age; defined by an intense
separations and reunions with a rules in a particular language. attachment to caregivers and
caregiver. an urgent need to become
T independent.
stunting: Excessively short stature in
a child, caused by chronic lack of telegraphic speech: First stage of traditional behaviorism: The
adequate nutrition. combining words in infancy, in original behavioral worldview
which a baby pares down a sentence that focused on charting and
“storm and stress”: G. Stanley Hall’s to its essential words. modifying only “objective,”
phrase for the intense moodiness, visible behaviors.
temperament: A person’s
emotional sensitivity, and risk-taking
characteristic, inborn style of traditional stable career: A career
tendencies that characterize the life
dealing with the world. path in which people settle into
stage which he labeled adolescence.
their permanent life’s work in
teratogen: A substance, such as
successful intelligence: In Robert their twenties and often stay with
alcohol, that crosses the placenta
Sternberg’s framework, the optimal the same organization until they
and harms the fetus.
form of cognition involving having retire.
a good balance of analytic, creative, terminal drop: A research
Triangular Theory of Love: Robert
and practical intelligence. phenomenon in which a dramatic
Sternberg’s categorization of love
decline in an older person’s scores
sucking reflex: The automatic, relationships into three facets:
on vocabulary tests and other
spontaneous sucking movements passion, intimacy, and commitment.
measures of crystallized intelligence
newborns produce, especially when When arranged at the points of a
predicts having a terminal disease.
anything touches their lips. triangle, their combinations describe
tertiary circular reactions: In Piaget’s all of the different kinds of adult
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS):
framework, “little-scientist” love relationships.
The unexplained death of an activities of the sensorimotor stage,
apparently healthy infant, often trimester: One of the 3-month-long
beginning around age 1, involving
while sleeping, during the first year segments into which pregnancy is
flexibly exploring the properties of
of life. divided.
objects.
swaddling: The standard Western true experiment: The only research
testes: Male organs that
infant calming technique of strategy that can determine that
manufacture sperm.
wrapping a baby tightly in a blanket something causes something else;
or other garment. testosterone: The hormone involves randomly assigning people
responsible for the maturation of to different treatments and then
sympathy: A state necessary for reproductive organs in men as well looking at the outcome.
acting prosocially, involving feeling as hair and skin changes during
upset for a person who needs help. twentieth-century life expectancy
puberty and for sexual desire in both
revolution: The dramatic increase
synapse: The gap between the sexes.
in average life expectancy that
dendrites of one neuron and theory: Any perspective explaining occurred during the first half of the
the axon of another, over which why people act the way they twentieth century in the developed
impulses flow. do. Theories allow us to predict world.
synaptogenesis: Forming of
behavior and also suggest how to
twin/adoption study: Behavioral
connections between neurons at the intervene to improve behavior.
genetic research strategy that
synapses. This process, responsible theory of mind: Children’s first involves comparing the similarities
for all perceptions, actions, and cognitive understanding, which of identical twin pairs adopted into
thoughts, is most intense during appears at about age 4, that other different families, to determine
infancy and childhood but people have different beliefs and the genetic contribution to a given
continues throughout life. perspectives from their own. trait.
G-14 Glossary
twin study: Behavioral genetic V Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children

research strategy, designed to (WISC): The standard intelligence
determine the genetic contribution validity: In measurement test used in childhood, consisting of
of a given trait, and involves terminology, a basic criterion for a different scales composing a variety
comparing identical twins with test’s accuracy involving whether of subtests.
fraternal twins (or with other that measure reflects the real-
world quality that it is supposed to working memory: In information-
people).
measure. processing theory, the limited-capacity
gateway system containing all of
value-comparison phase: In Murstein’s the material that we can keep in
U theory, the second mate-selection awareness at a single moment. The
U-shaped curve of marital satisfaction:
stage, in which we make judgments material in this system is either
The most common pathway of about a partner on the basis of processed for more permanent storage
marital happiness in the West, in similar values and interests. or lost.
which satisfaction is highest at the vascular neurocognitive disorder (also working model: In Bowlby’s theory,
honeymoon, declines during the known as vascular dementia): A type of the mental representation of a
child-rearing years, then rises after age-related neurocognitive disorder caregiver allowing children over age
the children grow up. caused by multiple small strokes. 3 to be physically apart from that
ultrasound: In pregnancy, an image very low birth weight (VLBW): A primary attachment figure.
of the fetus in the womb that body weight at birth of less than
helps to date the pregnancy, assess 3 1/4 pounds. Y
the fetus’s growth, and identify young-old: People in their sixties and
visual cliff: A table that appears to
abnormalities. seventies.
“end” in a drop-off at its midpoint;
umbilical cord: The structure used to test for infant depth youth development program: Any after-
that attaches the placenta to the perception. school program or structured activity
fetus, through which nutrients outside of the school day that is
are passed and fetal wastes are
W devoted to promoting flourishing in
removed. teenagers.
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale
underextension: An error in early
(WAIS): The standard test to
language development in which
measure adult IQ, involving verbal
Z
young children apply verbal labels
and performance scales, each zone of proximal development (ZPD): In
too narrowly.
of which is made up of various Vygotsky’s theory, the gap between
undernutrition: A chronic lack of subtests. a child’s ability to solve a problem
adequate food. totally on his own and his potential
widowhood mortality effect: The
knowledge if taught by a more
uterus: The pear-shaped muscular elevated risk of death among
accomplished person.
organ in a woman’s abdomen that surviving spouses after being
houses a developing baby. widowed. zygote: A fertilized ovum.
Abbasi-Shavazi, J., Mohammad J., &
McDonald, P. (2008). Family change
in Iran: Religion, revolution, and the
longitudinal association between ado-
lescents’ self-esteem and the frequency
versus enjoyment of involvement in
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Note: Page numbers followed by f indicate figures; those followed by t indicate tables.
A Ancis, J. R., 336, 337 Bal, P. M., 349

Name
Aaron, J., 453
Abbasi-Shavazi, J., 330
Abbassi, V., 235
Andel, R., 373
Andero, A. A., 206
Anders, T., 83
Balboni, M. J., 451
Balk, D. E., 410
Ball, E., 78–79
Index
Abbate-Daga, G., 247 Andersen, M. L., 421 Ball, H., 85
Abbott, D. A., 299 Anderson, D., 382t Ball, H. L., 86
Abdi, R., 207 Anderson, J. W. ., 110 Ballard, R. H., 211
Abdou, C. M., 44 Anderson, P. M., 277 Ballesteros, S., 398
Aberdeen, L., 428 Anderson, R., 139 Baltes, B. B., 374
Abrahams, S. W., 78 Andrews, J. A., 242 Baltes, M. M., 373 Beijers, C., 49
Abrams, D., 392 Andrews, T., 78 Baltes, P. B., 369, 373 Beijers, R., 78, 86t
Abramson, L. Y., 172 Andriot, A. L., 56 Baltys, I. H., 365, 366 Beiner, S. F., 379
Abu-Akel, A., 162t Anestis, M. D., 271 Banducci, A. N., 209 Bejcek, J., 299
Abubakar, A., 79 Angel, J. L., 412 Bandura, A., 13, 14 Beland, F., 438
Acevedo, B. P., 334 Angel, R. J., 412 Bangerter, L. R., 378 Bell, A. S., 154, 156
Acevedo-Polakovich, I. D., 303 Angelini, V., 365t Banks, M. S., 88 Bellinger, D., 47t
Ackerman, R., 240 Annerbäck, E.-M., 208 Barahmand, U., 207 Belsky, D. W., 140, 142
Adachi, P. C., 277 Anschutz, D. J., 245 Barber, B. K., 282 Belsky, J., 19, 51, 113, 115, 123,
Adair, L. S., 139, 242 Anstey, K. J., 365t, 426, 431 Barclay, L., 78 129, 140, 142, 239, 340,
Anusic, I., 410 341, 345
Adams, G. A., 390, 404, 407 Barkin, S., 206
Anzman-Frasca, S.., 141 Belsky, J. K., 315, 380, 420,
Adams, J., 344 Barkley, R. A., 154, 155 426, 440
Adi-Japha, E., 162 Apperly, I. A., 160 Barnard, P., 459t Bem, S. L., 187
Adler, N., 421 Appleyard, K., 208 Barnes, C. A., 394 Ben Shlomo, S., 378
Adolph, K. E., 91 Archambault, K., 273 Barnes, G. M., 268 Benas, J. S., 245
Aghajanian, A., 330 Archibald, A. B., 232, 236 Barnes, K., 382 Benedict, C., 435
Agrawal, A., 17 Ardelt, M., 365t, 456 Barnett, M. A., 127 Beneventi, H., 215t
Ahnert, L., 122, 123 Ardila, A., 369 Barnett, S. M., 202 Bengtson, V. L., 7
Ainsworth, M. D. S., 111, 112, Arendell, T., 343 Baron, I. S., 65 Benjet, C., 206
113, 318 Ariès, P., 5, 6, 450 Baron-Cohen, S., 162 Benner, A. D., 268
Aknin, L. B., 176 Aristotle, 260, 266 Barratt, R., 141 Benoit, A., 241
Aksan, N., 126 Arnett, J. J., 6, 282, 293, 294, Barrett, E. S., 334
304 Benson, P. L., 274
Alatupa, S., 191 Barrett, M., 253, 253f
Arnsberger, P., 208 Bentur, N., 464
Albert, I., 410 Barry, H., III., 232
Aron, A., 334 Berberich-Artzi, J., 162
Alderson, K. G., 318t Barry, R. A., 113, 124, 320
Arthur, M. B., 347 Beresford, L., 462
Alderson, R. M., 154 Bartels, J. M., 216
Asch, D. A., 63 Berg, C. A., 368
Aldred, H. E., 36 Bartlett, J. D., 208
Asendorpf, J. B., 305 Bergeman, C. S., 18, 410
Alexander, G. M., 186 Barusch, A. S., 423
Asghar, S., 141 Bergen, M. R., 334
Ali, M. M., 251 Bassok, D., 120
Asher, S. R., 188 Berger, A., 154
Allan, L. J., 391 Bates, G. W., 364
Åström, J., 338 Berger, C., 272
Allemand, M., 360 Bauer, J. J., 309
Atchley, R., 407 Berger, S. E., 91
Allen, J. P., 273, 362 Bauermeister, J. A., 314
Attanucci, J., 265 Berggren, I., 456
Allen, T. D., 349
Baumeister, R. F., 174 Bergh, C., 248
Allen, W., 307 Augustus-Horvath, C. L., 248
Baumgartner, S. E., 318t Berghmans, R., 469
Allendorf, K., 330 AVERT, 47
Baumrind, D., 200, 201, 206 Bergman, H., 438
Allison, C. M., 242 Avis, N. E., 382t
Bava, S., 275t Bergsma, A., 365t
Alloway, R. G., 151 Ayalon, L., 439
Baxter, J., 337 Berk, L. E., 150
Alloway, T. P., 151 Ayers, T. S., 410
Bayl-Smith, P. H., 406 Berkman, L., 422
Almas, A. N., 127 Azmitia, M., 302
Bayliss, A. P., 89 Berko, J., 158
Almeida, D. M., 400
B Bayrampour, H., 50 Berkowitz, R. I., 139
Alper, M. M., 57
Baddeley, A. D., 151 Beach, D. R., 152 Berlin, L. J., 111, 112, 208
Alzheimer’s Association, 434f
Bagwell, C. L., 188 Beach, S. H., 208 Bernard, J. Y., 78
Amarasinghe, J. M., 155
Baibazarova, E., 50 Beach, S. R., 335 Berry, D., 120, 122
Amato, P. R., 209, 211, 328,
Baile, W. F., 453 Beaver, K. M., 273 Bersamin, M., 251
337, 338
Baillargeon, R., 97, 97f Becker, S. P., 155, 188 Berthelsen, D., 122
Ambrose, A. F., 426, 429
American Heart Association, Bainbridge, K. E., 426, 427 Becker-Blease, K. A., 204 Berzin, S. C., 298
422 Baker, F. C., 278 Beckmann, C. R. B., 43 Best, J. R., 151, 153
American Psychiatric Baker, J. E.; Sedney, M. A. ., Begley, A. M., 468 Beyers, W., 297
Association, 162 459t Begum, S., 422 Beyonce, 245
Amso, D., 152 Baker, L. R., 320 Behboodi-Moghadam, Z., 57 Bhattacharya, G., 309
Anakwenze, U., 119 Bal, E., 162 Behrens, K. Y., 112 Bianchi, S., 343, 345
NI-1
NI-2 Name Index
Bianchi, S. M., 332, 344f, 347, 350 Boykin, S., 421 Burns, R. A., 400 Central Intelligence Agency, 9,
Bibbo, J., 440 Boyle, D. E., 186 Burr, A., 402, 407 66, 340f, 420
Biggs, S., 409 Boyle, J. M., 468 Burt, K. B., 129 Chadwick, R., 62
Binstock, R. H., 408, 409 Boyle, M. A., 439 Burzette, R. G., 305 Chambaere, K., 468
Birch, H. G., 113, 129 Braam, A. W., 456 Bushnell, I. W. R., 89 Chamberlain, J., 469
Birren, B. A., 4 Bradbury, T. N., 332, 333 Bute, J. J., 57 Champagne, M. C., 303
Birren, J. E., 4 Bradley, R. H., 273 Butkovic, A., 359 Chan, A., 188
Bisconti, T. L., 410 Brainerd, C. J., 435 Buttelmann, D., 136 Chan, S., 461
Bishop, C. E., 440 Brame, R., 268 Buttenheim, A. M., 63 Chang, H. H., 64
Bissada, A., 208 Bramen, J. E., 275t Butterworth, P., 332 Chang, J. P., 202
Björk, S., 344, 345 Bramesfeld, K. D., 338 Byatt, N., 48 Chang, Y., 371
Bjorklund, D. F., 43, 77, 149, Brand, S., 278 Byles, J. E., 400 Chao, R. K., 282
152, 182, 183, 186 Brandtstädter, J., 400 Bynner, J. M., 302 Chapple. H. S., 462
Black, H. K., 441 Branje, S. J. T., 281, 314 Chapron, C., 57
Blacker, D., 434 Bratko, D., 359 C Charles, M., 351
Blake, W., 221 Braver, S. L., 210f, 211 Cabeza, R., 397 Charles, S., 400
Blakemore, S., 267 Breen, A. V., 271 Cacioppo, J. T., 312 Charles, S. T., 400
Blakemore, S.-J., 160, 275t Bregman, H. R., 313 Calhoun, L. G., 410 Chaudhuri, J., 202
Blanchard-Fields, F., 361, 361f Brendgen, M., 188 Call, J., 136 Chein, J., 275
Blank, R. H., 64 Breslow, L., 422 Callahan, D., 469 Chen, C., 273
Blatney, M., 194 Bretherton, I. ., 110, 115 Calvo, E., 407 Chen, E., 118
Blattman, A. J., 160 Bridenbaugh, S. A., 429 Campbell, B. C., 249 Chen, E. S. L., 187
Bleidorn, W., 360 Bridges, J. S., 358 Campbell, I. G., 278 Chen, H., 245
Bleiler, L., 433, 434, 435 Brière, F. N., 273 Campos, J. J., 92 Chen, P., 182
Bloch, L., 335 Briere, J., 208 Canavarro, M. C., 56 Chen, W., 209
Blomeyer, D., 268 Briley, D. A., 360 Canter, A. S., 214 Chen, X., 170, 172
Blood, R. O., 332 Brimhall, A. S., 338 Caplan, A. L., 64 Chen, Y., 159
Blum, D., 108 Brines, J., 352 Cappell, K. A., 394f Cheng, D., 49
Blyth, D. A., 241, 242 Britton, M. L., 298 Cappelli, P., 347 Cherlin, A. J., 328, 390
Boden, J. M., 181 Brkovic, I., 359 Carlander, I., 453 Chernyak, N., 177
Bodenmann, G., 337 Brock, R. L., 336 Carlson, A. G., 138, 210 Chertkow, H., 162
Boehm, S., 406 Brodhagen, A., 204 Carlson, E., 441 Chess, S., 113, 129
Boehmer, U., 63 Brody, G. H., 208 Carnes, B., 419, 420 Chi, I., 377
Boerner, K., 411, 412, 457 Brody, J. E., 426 Carnevale, A., 307, 307f Child Trends Data Bank, 283
Bohlin, G., 115 Brom, S. S., 398 Caron, S. L., 56, 58, 249 Chinsky, J. M., 152
Boisvert, J. A., 248 Bronfenbrenner, U., 22 Carr, D., 411, 412 Chiriboga, D. A., 439
Bokemeier, J., 405 Bronstein, P., 345 Carretti, B., 393 Chisolm, M. S., 49
Boldy, D., 426 Brooks-Gunn, J., 119, 232, 236, Carroll, J. S., 299 Chiu, C., 310
Bonanno, G., 411, 412, 457 240, 242, 243, 277, 286 Carstensen, L. L., 373, 398, 399, Cho, J., 406
Bonanno, R. A., 193 Broom, A., 465 400 Cho, S., 439
Bonebrake, D., 462 Brotman, L. M., 128 Carter, R., 241 Cho, Y., 282
Boone, M. S., 247 Brown, S., 407 Cartwright, C., 338 Choi, H., 422
Boonpleng, W., 139, 140 Brown, S. L., 330 Case, K., 219 Choi, K. H., 410
Booth-LaForce, C., 191 Brown, T. A., 246 Case, R., 151 Choi, Y., 202
Bopp, M., 139 Brown, W. B., 286 Casey, B. J., 267, 267f Chomsky, N., 99
Borella, E., 393, 398 Brownlee, J. ., 122 Cashmore, J., 211 Christ, G. H., 459t
Boris, N. W., 111, 112 Bruch, H., 406 Caskie, G. I. L., 368, 369 Christakis, N., 412
Borko, H., 220 Bruner, J. S., 149 Caspi, A., 24, 140, 142, 360 Christensen, J., 163
Bornehag, C.-G., 208 Bryan, D. M., 341, 345 Cassel, J. B., 462 Christensen, K. Y., 236
Bosmans, G., 159 Buber, I., 377 Castel, A. D., 154 Christopher, C., 128
Boswell, G., 437 Buchman, A. S., 435 Castellanos-Ryan, N., 241 Churchill, W., 203–204, 218
Bottiroli, S., 391 Buck, K. A., 272 Cattell, M. G., 412 Chua, A., 202
Botwinick, J., 368, 369f Bugental, D. B., 397 Caudle, K., 267, 267f Chuang, S., 125
Boulton, T., 63 Buhl, H. M., 295 Cauffman, E., 273, 276 Chung, J. M., 304, 305
Bouma, E. C., 271 Bukowski, W. M., 189 Caulfield, L., 79 Chung-Hall, J., 172
Bourke, A., 254 Bulik, C. M., 247 Ceausescu, N., 115 Ciarrochi, J., 284
Bowers, E. P., 277 Bundy, D. A., 217 Cecchini, M., 81 Cicchetti, D., 208
Bowker, J. C., 170 Burchinal, M., 206, 207 Ceci, S. J. Cicirelli, V. G., 467
Bowlby, J., 15–16, 84, 109, 113, Bureau, J.-F., 273 Cellarius, V., 468 Cillessen, A. H. N., 179, 266,
409 Burkam, D. T., 212, 212f, 213 Centers for Disease Control and 272
Bowler, D. M., 163 Burkard, C., 398 Prevention, 6, 139, 140, Cimarolli, V. R., 426
Bowman, P. J., 366 Burnett, S., 275t 154, 418, 418f, 419 Claes, M., 241
Name Index NI-3
Clark, D., 463 Craig, L., 345 De St. Aubin, E., 362, 363t Dixon, R. A., 393, 396, 403
Clark, E., 339 Craik, F. I. M., 393, 395 de Weerth, C., 78, 86t Dmitrieva, J., 273
Clark, M., 440 Craik, F. M., 393 De Wilde, K. S., 48, 49 Doane, L. D., 278
Clarke, D. D., 431 Cramer, P., 305 Dean, D., 297, 304 Dobbins, E. H., 462
Class, Q. A., 50, 50f Crawford, A. M., 192 Dean, D. C., 74, 101 Dodge, K. A., 179, 181, 208
Claxton, S. E., 314 Crick, N. R., 181 Dean, R. S., 49 Dolcos, F., 397
Clearfield, M. W., 119 Crisp, D. A., 439 Deardorff, J., 242 Donaghue, N., 79
Clem, K., 426 Crittenden, A., 343 Deary, I. J., 216 Donnellan, M. B., 305
Clerkin, S. M., 154 Crone, E. A., 275t Deater-Deckard, K., 179, 180, Doucet, S., 88
Climo, J. J., 379 Crosnoe, R., 120, 295 192, 204 Douglas, P. S., 84
Clinard, C. G., 427 Crouch, J. L., 208 DeCasper, A. J., 88 Douglas, S. J., 343
Coall, D. A., 377 Crouter, A. C., 273, 281, 297 Deci, E. L., 222 Douglass, R., 80
Coe, N. B., 439 Crowe, M., 435 Deeg, D. H., 426 Dovis, S., 154
Cohen, J., 469 Crum, M., 401 Deeg, D. J. H., 456 Dowling, E. M., 23, 277
Cohen, M. D., 437 Crumley, J. J., 398 DeFillippi, R. J., 347 Downey, L., 456
Cohen, O., 210 Csikszentmihalyi, M., 269, DeFries, J. C., 17 Dozeman, E., 400
Cohen, P., 296, 296f 270f, 279, 281, 304–305, DeGarmo, D. S., 211 Drago, F., 348
Cohen, P. N., 351 305–306, 306f, 371 Degnan, K. A., 127, 180, 191, Draper, H., 379
Cohen-Zion, M., 278 Culbert, K. M., 245 192
Draper, P., 239
Coie, J. D., 179 Cummins, R., 374 Del Giudice, M., 41
Driver, J., 335
Cole, B., 458 Curby, T. W., 138 Delevi, R., 318t
Drouin, M., 318t
Cole, E. R., 246 Cushen, P. J., 162 Deligiannidis, K. M., 48
Drum, M. L., 238
Cole-Lewis, H. J., 50 Cyr, C., 320 Deller, J., 406
Duberstein, P. R., 359
Coleman, S. J., 244, 254 DeMaris, A., 121
Dubois, R., 86
Coleman-Jenson, A., 80 D Dement, W. C., 83f
Duckworth, K., 308
Coley, R. L., 122 Daddis, C. ., 281 Dempster, F. N., 151
Duffy, D., 64
Collignon, O., 75 Dahl, M. S., 352 Den Dulk, L., 350
Duffy, R. D., 348
Collins, R. L., 187, 251 Dahl, R. E., 236, 268, 269, 275, Deng, Y., 284, 286
275t Dumas, L., 81
Collinson, C., 405, 406 Denham, S. A., 177, 189
Damaraju, E., 74 Dumontheil, I., 160
Colonius, H., 428 Deniz Can, D., 101, 101f
Danckert, S. L., 393 Duncan, G. J., 119
Colrain, I. M., 278 Dennis, C., 78
Duncan, L. E., 364
Colwell, M. J., 185 Daniel, B., 172, 174, 175 Dennis, M. R., 457, 458
Dunedin Multidisciplinary
Compian, L., 245 Daniels, K. J., 437 Dennis, N. A., 393
Health and Development
Conger, R. D., 305 Daniels, N., 365t Dennissen, J. J. A., 305 Research Unit, 28
Conner, T., 440 Danziger, S., 295 Deoni, S. L., 78 Dunfield, K. A., 175
Connolly, J., 298, 314 Darwiche, J., 57–58 DePalma, R., 254 Dunifon, R., 377
Connor, J. L., 50 Darwin, C., 4 Desmarais, S., 381 Dunifon, R. E., 140
Cook, C. R., 192 Dasen, P. R., 148 Devine, R. T., 160 Dunn, J., 183, 184
Cook, T. D., 284, 286, 308 David, P., 335 DeVos, J., 97f Dunn, M. G., 350
Cooney, T. M., 372 Davidson, A. L., 283 Dew, J., 328, 341 Dunphy, D. C., 283
Coontz, S., 328, 343 Davidson, P. M., 461 DeWall, C. N., 181 Duvander, A., 350, 351f
Cooper, H., 221, 222 Davies, A. R., 347 Diamanti, A., 246 Dwairy, M., 201
Cooper, M., 247 Davila, J., 320 Diamond, A., 24, 152 Dweck, C. S., 174–175, 221
Cooper, P., 113 Davis, A. M., 139 Diamond, M. C., 373 Dwyer, D. S., 251
Coplan, R. J., 170 Davis, A. S., 49 Diamond, M. O., 45, 59
Cornwell, T., 140 Dawes, M., 272 Díaz-Morales, J. F., 278 E
Corr, C. A., 456, 463 Dawson, J. D., 431 Dibble, J. L., 318t E., W., 154, 155
Corsaro, W. A., 183, 184, 185 De Beni, R., 393 Dickens, B. M., 468 Easterbrooks, M. A., 208
Coryn, R., 273 De Forrest, R. L., 397 Dickerson, B. J., 332 Eborall, H., 49
Costa, P., 358–359 De Goede, I. H. D., 281 Diederich, A., 428 Eccles, J. S., 242, 268, 359
Costos, D., 240 de Hollanda Souza, D., 162 Diego, M., 82 Economic Policy Institute, 9,
Côté, J. E., 295, 302 De La Rue, L., 193 Dietrich, J., 314 304
Cote, S., 455, 465, 466 De Marco, A. C., 298 Dietz, P. M., 48 Edin, K., 332
Cotterell, J., 283, 284, 285 de Mello, C. B., 154 Diez, V., 202 Edison, T., 191
Courtney, M., 382t de Mol, J., 297 Dijkstra, J. K., 272, 273 Edwards, J. N., 332
Cowan, C. P., 113, 341 De Preter, H., 406 Dilworth-Anderson, P., 437 Eidelman, A. I., 82
Cowan, P. A., 113, 206, 341 De Raedt, R., 455 Dinella, L. M., 187 Eisenberg, N., 176, 177
Cox, K. S., 359 De Ridder, S., 252 Dingemans, E., 406, 407 Eisner, E. W., 217, 219
Coy, K. C., 125 de Schipper, E. J., 122 DiRenzo, M. S., 347 Ekerdt, D. J., 406, 407, 408
Cozzarelli, C., 320 De Schipper, J. C., 122 DiRosa, M., 380 Elder, G. H., 24
Crade, M., 41 de Silva-Sanigorski, A. M., 139, Dishion, T. J., 179, 188, 285 Elder, G. R., 295
Craig, I. W., 17 140 Dix, T., 272 Elkind, D., 262, 265–266
NI-4 Name Index
Elliot, S., 243, 249, 254 Finer, L. B., 250 Furler, K., 316 Gilboa, S., 350
Ellis, B. J., 129 Fingerman, K. L., 204, 400 Furstenberg, F. F., 295, 296, Giletta, M., 271
Ellwood, M., 78 Finkel, D., 17, 373 306, 308 Gillett, G., 469
Elsaesser, C., 193 Finkelhor, D., 204 Fuwa, M., 347, 350 Gilligan, C., 265
Elwert, G., 412 Finkelstein, L. M., 349 Gilman, R., 270, 277
Emerson, S. D., 391 Fischer, D. H., 6, 391 G Ginsburg, H., 263
Fishman, T., 390 Gadoud, A., 462 Giordano, P. C., 251, 252, 331
Enck, G. E., 450
Fitzgerald, S. T., 405 Gagne, M. H., 206 Girdler, S., 426
Engle, S., 307
Fitzpatrick, C., 151 Gähler, M., 209 Glaser, B. G., 460, 461
English, T., 399
Fitzpatrick, M. J., 187 Gajewski, P. D., 398 Glass, L. A., 216
Englund, M. M., 268
Fivush, R., 159 Gajic-Veljanoski, O., 286 Glenn, C. R., 271
Enguidanos, S., 455, 465, 466
Fjell, A. M., 394 Gal-Oz, E., 412 Glenn, N., 332
Ennis, G. E., 398
Flanagan, C. A., 277 Gala, J., 312 Go, A. S., 422
Epstein, R., 278, 335
Flavell, J. H., 21, 94, 147, 152, Galinsky, E., 347, 407 Godinet, M. T., 208
Erber, J. T., 393
262, 263 Gana, K., 399 Godino, L., 56
Erikson, E. H., 20, 84, 124, 178,
300, 301, 311, 363, 364, Fleming, M., 248 Ganzini, L., 468 Godleski, S. A., 179
402, 402t, 456 Fletcher, G. O., 335 Gao, Y., 180 Goldberg, A., 340, 341
Erikson, J., 20 Flower, K. B., 78 García Coll, C., 202 Goldberg, W. A., 84, 86t
Erulkar, A., 286 Flynn, J. R., 19, 216 García-Pérez, L., 462 Golden, L., 347
Espelage, D. L., 189, 193 Fok, W., 420 Gardner, D. S., 406, 407 Golden, P., 405
Espeset, E. M. S., 246 Fonseca, A., 56 Gardner, H., 217 Goldman, J. G., 244, 254
Espinoza, P., 247 Fontaine, A. M., 295, 297 Gardner, M., 277 Goldman, N., 422
Etaugh, C. A., 358 Forbes, E. E., 273 Garey, A. I., 343 Goldner, J., 277
Etezadi, S., 401 Forbush, K. T., 247 Garriga, A., 209 Goldschmidt, A. B., 247
Etten, M., 382 Ford, D. H., 23 Gartstein, M. A., 125 Golombok, S., 345
Evans, A. D., 160 Forster, S., 155 Gasper, J., 272, 277 Gomez, V., 316
Evans, G. W., 118, 118f Fortnum, H., 427, 428 Gates, B., 307 González, R., 458, 459
Everette, T. D., 332 Foss, K. A., 78 Gath, A., 52 Gooch, D., 154, 215t
Evertsson, M., 350 Fossen, R. S., 348, 349 Gatrell, C. J., 350 Good, E., 245
Foster, D., 62 Gatz, M., 373 Good, M.-J. D., 461
F Foster, R. E., 207 Gau, S. S., 202 Goodlin-Jones, B., 83
Fabes, R. A., 177, 185, 187 Foster, T. L., 458 Gaultney, J. F., 278 Gooldin, S., 59
Fabian, J., 276 Fothergill, A., 121, 122 Gavin, J., 246 Gopnik, A., 97
Facio, A., 314 Fowler-Brown, A. G., 140 Gazelle, H., 193 Gordon-Larsen, P., 139
Faeh, D., 139 Fox, J., 317 Ge, X., 237, 271f Gordon-Messer, D., 318t
Fahs, B., 337 Fox, N. A., 127 Geary, D. C., 138 Gore, T., 86
Fairchild, H., 247 Fox, S. E., 74–75 Geers, A. L., 333 Gorer, G., 451
Families and Work Institute, 347 Foynes, M. M., 207 Geiser, C., 361, 361f Gothe, K., 393
Farber, N., 331 Fraley, R. C., 320 Genevie, L. E., 342, 343 Gottman, J., 335, 336
Farley, M., 339 Francis, D. A., 254 Gentile, K., 59 Gould, E., 118
Farmer, T. W., 243 Franklin, B., 5 Gentzler, A. L., 297 Gould, L. A., 206
Farroni, T., 89 Frans, E. M., 163 George, L. K., 365t Goveas, J. S., 398
Fauth, R. C., 286 Freeman, M. P., 48 Geraci, L., 397 Gowen, L. K., 245
Feeney, J. A., 318, 320, 336, 341 Freeman, S., 380 Gerber, E. B., 123 Graber, J. A., 232, 236, 242, 243
Feinberg, I., 278 French, D. C., 170 Gerdner, L. A., 451 Graber, M., 97f
Feinstein, L., 268 French, K. E., 138 Germo, G. R., 85 Graham, J., 156
Feixa, C., 233 Freud, S., 14–16, 77, 304, 371 Gershoff, E. T., 206 Graneheim, U. H., 437
Feldman, R., 82 Freund, A. M., 361, 361f Gerson, M.-J., 340 Gratwick-Sarll, K., 246
Fenelon, A., 410, 411, 412 Frey, K. S., 171 Gerstorf, D., 398, 437 Green, V., 439
Ferber, R., 85 Frey, R., 465 Gervain, J., 100 Greenberger, E., 273
Fereiro, D., 428 Friedman, D., 394, 396 Gest, S. D., 272, 284 Greene, D., 221
Ferguson, E. D., 202 Friedman, E. M., 422 Gestsdottir, S., 273 Greenfield, E. A., 204, 207
Ferland, P., 56, 58 Friedmann, N., 214 Gettler, L. T., 334 Greenfield, P. M., 148, 249, 282
Fernandez, M., 88 Frink, B. D., 347 Geurts, S. A. E. ., 122 Greenhaus, J. H., 347
Ferraro, K. F., 430 Frischen, A., 89 Ghassabian, A., 154 Gribble, K. E., 420
Field, M. J., 450 Frisén, A., 248 Gibb, B. E., 245 Griffin, B., 406
Field, N. P., 412 Frye, A. A., 299, 304, 305f Gibbins, S., 88 Griffith, K., 223
Field, T., 82 Fu, S.-Y., 382t Gibson, M. A., 377 Grigorenko, E. L., 213, 217,
Fifer, W. P., 88 Fuligni, A. J., 298 Gibson-Davis, C. M., 330, 331, 219
Fincham, F. D., 335 Fuller, B., 202 332 Grob, A., 316
Findler, L., 378 Fung, H. H., 399 Giedd, J. N., 75, 76t, 275t Groen, Y., 176
Finegood, D. T., 140 Funk, L. M., 381 Gilbert-Barness, E., 48 Groeneveld, M. G., 122
Name Index NI-5
Groopman, J. E., 454, 456 Hasselhorn, M., 151 Hirschfield, P. J., 272, 277 Ito, M., 36
Grossbaum, M. F., 364 Hausdorff, J. M., 426, 429, 435 Hodgson, J., 437 Ito, Y., 344
Grossmann, I., 375, 375f Hawes, C., 439 Hoff-Ginsberg, E., 100, 101 Ivy, L., 204
Grube, J. W., 251 Hawk, C. K., 162 Hoffman, M. L., 177 Iwanski, A., 305
Gschwind, Y. J., 429 Hawkins, A., 56 Hofstede, G., 10 Izumi-Taylor, S., 344
Guan, S. A., 282 Hawley, P. H., 191 Hohmann-Marriott, B., 338
Guardino, C. M., 44, 50 Hay, P., 246 Holland, L. A., 246 J
Guendelman, S., 78 Hayflick, L., 419, 420 Holman, E. A., 362 Jaccard, J., 241
Guerra, N. G., 180, 192, 193 Haynes, M., 337 Holmes, J. G., 316 Jackson, T., 245
Guerri, C., 275 Hayslip, B., Jr., 379, 458 Holmes, T. H., 409 Jacquet, S. E., 316, 317t
Gueta, G., 221 Hayward, C., 245 Holmqvist, K., 248 Jaffe, J., 45, 59
Gunderson, E. A., 175 Hazan, C., 318 Holt, A., 215 Jaffee, S. R., 209
Gunther Moor, B., 266 Healey, D. M., 154, 156 Hoogman, M., 154 James, S. L., 338
Gupta, R., 455 Healthychildren.org, 200 Hoover, E., 309 James, W., 88, 90
Gustafsson, P. A., 208 Healy, E., 64 Hopko, D. R., 400 Jamieson, R. D., 365t
Guttmacher Institute, 243, 250, Hearing Loop, 428 Hopper, J., 337 Jang, H., 222
250f, 251, 253, 253f Heatherton, T. F., 162t Horhota, M., 398 Janosz, M., 273
Heaven, P. C. L., 284 Hough, C. L., 462 Janson, S., 208
H Hecht, A., 371, 374, 375 Houghton, L. A., 50 Jaspers, E., 469
Ha, J.-H., 410, 412 Hehman, J. A., 397 House, A. N., 202 Jedd, K. E., 119
Haase, C. M., 335 Helfand, M., 250 House, B. R., 175 Jelinek, M., 194
Habermas, T., 159 Helson, R., 359, 362, 365t, 367 Houts, R. M., 239 Jenkins-Guarnieri, M. A., 313
Haddad, E., 273 Hemar-Nicolas, V., 141 Hoyer, W. J., 374 Jensen, A. R., 217
Hadden, B. W., 320 Henderson, R. C., 206 Hrdy, S. B., 5, 6 Jensen, C., 163f
Hagestad, G. O., 377 Hendriksen, J. G. M., 154 Hu, S., 295, 299, 310 Jensen, H., 48
Hahn, H. M., 85 Hendry, L. B., 295, 297 Huang, H., 48 Jensen, J. F., 335
Hahn-Holbrook, J., 78 Hengartner, M. P., 209 Huddleston, J., 237 Jenson, W. R., 181, 339
Hakoyama, M., 378 Henkens, K., 404, 406, 407 Hughes, C., 160, 184 Jernigan, T. L., 41, 74, 75, 76t
Hakvoort, R. M., 82 Henry, J., 370 Hughes, D. K., 316, 317t Jessop, J., 459t
Halcomb, E., J., 461 Henry, J. D., 400 Hughes, M. L., 397 Jette, A. M., 429
Hall, G. S., 4, 6, 260, 266 Henry, L. A., 215t Huijts, M., 371 Jimenez, M. A., 412
Hall, S., 208 Hensler, B. S., 215t Hulme, C., 154, 155 Johansson, A., 437
Halperin, J. M., 154, 156 Heo, J., 407 Hülsheger, U. R., 348 John, O. P., 359, 362, 367
Halpern-Meekin, S., 314 Hepach, R., 175, 176 Humaidan, P., 57 Johns, M. M., 314
Haltigan, J. D. ., 112 Herdt, G., 234, 249 Humer, Ž., 344
Johnson, B. D., 313
Hamlin, J. K., 98, 99 Hernandez-Reif, M., 82 Humphrey, G. M., 459t
Johnson, J., 307
Hampson, S. E., 360 Hernández–Martínez, C., 49 Hungerford, T. L., 404
Johnson, J. A., 391
Hamvas, L., 206 Herrenkohl, T. I., 208 Hunt, C. K., 380
Johnson, K. M., 59
Hank, K., 377 Herrera, D. E., 277 Hunt, T. K., 247
Johnson, K. S., 465
Hansson, R. O., 458 Herrera, F., 57 Hurks, P. P. M., 154
Johnson, M., 295
Harbourne, R. T., 92 Herrnstein, R. J., 217 Hurst, C., 348
Johnson, R. A., 440
Harden, K. P., 241 Hersh, R. H., 264, 264t Hurt, T. R., 335
Johnson, R. J., 394
Harkness, S., 171 Hershey, D. A., 404 Huston, T. L., 316
Johnson, R. W., 408
Harley, K., 159 Hertwig, R., 377 Hutchinson, D. M., 245
Johnson, V. E., 381, 382
Harlow, C. M., 109 Hertzog, C., 27, 398 Hutchison, S., 380
Harlow, H., 108 Johnston, L. D., 268, 269f
Hess, T. M., 370, 398 Hutteman, R., 360
Harraway, J. A., 49 Johri, M., 438
Hesse-Biber, S., 246 Huttenlocher, P. R., 41f, 47t
Harrell, W. A., 248 Joinson, C., 242
Hetherington, E. M., 337 Hvas, L., 382t
Harriger, J. A., 245 Jokhi, R. P., 55
Heuer, C. A., 140 Hwang, S.-L., 154
Harrington, R., 44 Jones, B. K., 366, 367
Hewitt, B., 337 Hwang, W., 312
Harris, J. R., 204, 282 Jonkmann, K., 361
Hickson, L., 427 Hyde, A., 243, 249
Harris, P., 450, 464 Jordan, A. H., 457
Higher Education Research Hyde, J. S., 242, 341
Harris, T. S., 209 Institute, 304 Hymel, S., 193 Jorgensen, B. S., 365t
Harrist, A. W., 122 Hill, E. A., 101 Hymowitz, K., 7 Joseph, R. M., 162
Hart, H. M., 364, 366 Hill, J. P., 281 Jowett, A., 313
Harter, S., 170, 171, 172, 173f, Hill, L. G., 190, 193 I Joyce, B. T., 465
175, 221, 244 Hill, P. L., 360, 362, 402 Infurna, F. J., 437 Jozwiak, N., 410
Hartup, W. W., 188 Hill, P. S., 84 Ingersoll-Dayton, B., 410 Juarascio, A. S., 246
Hasher, L., 394 Hinde, R. A. ., 109 Innes, S., 453, 454 Judge, T. A., 348
Hashimoto-Torii, K., 49 Hinduja, S., 193 Ip, E. H., 429 Julian, M. M., 116
Haskett, M. E., 209 Hinshaw, S. P., 154 Iqbal, Z., 44 Jung, C. G., 356, 381
Haslam, N., 282 Hipwell, A. E., 250 Israel, S., 28 Jurkowski, J. M., 141
NI-6 Name Index
K Kim, J., 180, 208 Kronenberg, M. E., 204 Lawrence, D. H., 251
Kagan, J., 113, 123, 127, 205 Kim, M., 282 Kronenfeld, J. J., 422 Lawrence, E., 320, 336
Kahn, R. L., 417 Kim, P., 118, 118f Krstev, S., 48 Lawson, G. W., 63
Kalil, A., 119, 140 Kim, S., 114, 128 Kübler-Ross, E., 452, 454 Lay, K., 379
Källstrand-Eriksson, J., 426 Kim, S. U., 420 Kuh, G. D., 310 Leavitt, J. W., 61
Kalmijn, M., 339 Kim, S. Y., 202 Kuhl, P. K., 101, 101f Lecanuet, J. P., 88
Kamble, S., 374 Kim, Y. B., 420 Kuhlmeier, V. A., 175 Lee, A., 406
Kamp Dush, C. M., 314, 340, King, M. L., 365, 366 Kuhn, B. R., 206 Lee, B., 208
341 Kinniburgh-White, R., 338 Kuhn, D., 263 Lee, C., 344
Kandler, C., 360 Kins, E., 297 Kulik, L., 377 Lee, E. A. E., 187, 191
Kane, R. A., 440 Kinsella, K., 390f Kuntz, K. J., 272 Lee, E. H., 202
Kanfer, R., 349 Kippersluis, H., 421 Kunze, F., 406 Lee, H. J., 420
Kannai, R., 453 Kirby, E., 465 Kurz, T., 79 Lee, J., 240, 467
Kapadia, S., 312 Kirkham, N., 152 Kushlev, K., 340, 342, 342t Lee, K., 160
Kaplan, A., 221 Kiselica, M. S., 45 Kushnir, T., 177 Lee, V. E., 212, 212f, 213
Karen, R., 15, 108 Kitahara, M., 84 Kusner, K. G., 335 Lee, Y., 233, 234, 236, 237,
Karimpour, R., 272 Kitzinger, S., 36, 61 238, 239
Karlamangla, A. S., 372, 372f Klass, D., 457, 458 L Lee Thoeny, A., 155
Karlsson, C., 456 Kleinplatz, P. J., 383 La Greca, A. M., 284, 285f Leeming, D., 78, 79
Karney, B. R., 332, 333, 350 Kliegel, M., 398 Labbok, M. H., 78 Leicht, K. T., 405
Karni, E., 55, 56 Kliegl, R., 393 Labouvie-Vief, G., 305, 374 Leichtentritt, R. D., 210
Karns, J. T., 78, 86 Klinkenberg, M., 456 Labs, K., 410 Lenroot, R. K., 275t
Kashy, D. A., 320, 340, 341 Kloep, M., 295, 297 Lacherez, P. F., 431 Lenz, A. S., 248
Kasper, J. D., 440 Klonsky, E. D., 271 Lachman, M. E., 7, 358 Leppänen, P. H. T., 215t
Kastenbaum, R., 450, 451, 452, Klusmann, D., 334 Lacourse, E., 241 Lepper, M. R., 221
454 Kluwer, E. S., 350 Ladd, G. W., 193 Lerner, R. M., 4, 23, 272, 273,
Kato, K., 17 Knaack, A., 126, 128 Ladis, K., 365t 274, 277
Katz, I., 221 Knaak, S., 78 LaFontana, K. M., 266, 272 Lerner-Geva, L., 381
Katz-Wise, S. L., 341 Knight, B. G., 380 Lagattuta, K., 160 Leshno, M., 55, 56
Kawachi, I., 365t Knitzer, J., 123 Lai, P., 59, 399 Lessard, G., S., 211
Kazdin, A. E., 206 Knox, M., 206 Laible, D. J., 150 Lester, B. M., 81
Keating, D. P., 181 Knutson, B., 399 Lainpelto, K., 209 Leung, A. K., 310
Keaton, S. A., 406 Ko, E., 467 Lamb, M., 122, 123 Leung, F., 273
Keefe, M. R., 81 Kochanska, G., 113, 114, 120, Lamb, M. E., 345 Leupp, K., 352
Keel, P. K., 246, 247 124, 125, 126, 128, 177, Lamson, A. L., 437 Leve, L. D., 128
Keen, C., 457 194 Landerl, K., 215t Levenson, R. W., 335
Kefalas, M., 332 Koenig, C. S., 456 Landor, A., 250 Leventhal, T., 119, 286
Keijsers, L., 281 Koenig, T. L., 439 Lane, J. D., 162 Levine, A., 297, 304
Keirse, M. C., 63 Koerner, S. S., 380 Lang, F. R., 391 Levine, C. G., 295
Keller, J. R., 347 Kogan, A., 335 Lang, M. E., 340 Levitt, P., 74–75
Keller, M. A., 86t Kohlberg, L., 187, 263, 265 Langer, E. J., 393 Lewin-Bizan, S., 270, 273
Kelley, M., 464 Kokot-Kierepa, M., 382t Langley, C., 345 Lewis, A. D., 273, 277
Kellman, P. J., 88 Komarraju, M., 309 Lansford, J. E., 181 Lewis, J. M., 200
Kelly, J., 337 Konner, M., 5, 6 Lanz, M., 295 Lewis, S. P., 271
Kelly, J. B., 337 Kooij, D. M., 349 Laplante-Levesque, A., 427 Li, F., 208
Kelly, T. B., 428 Koolschijn, P. C., 275t Larson, G. A., 138 Li, L., 348
Kelmanson, I., 81 Kopala-Sibley, D. C., 361, 361f Larson, R., 269, 270f, 279, 281 Li, W., 348
Kemper, S., 428 Kornhaber, M., 223 Larson, R. W., 274 Li, Y., 272, 313
Kempler, D., 392 Kornrich, S., 352 Larsson, H., 154, 156 Liben, S., 454, 461
Kennison, R. F., 370 Koster, E. W., 455 LaRusso, M. D., 277 Libnawi, A., 162
Kenyon, D. B., 380 Kot, F. C., 308 Larzelere, R. E., 206 Lickenbrock, D. M., 126
Keren, E., 314 Kozol, J. ., 119, 120 Latifah, Queen, 245, 246 Lieberman, A. F., 209
Kerpelman, J. L., 297 Krajewski, K., 151 Latner, J. D., 141 Liem, J. H., 299, 304, 305f
Kevorkian, J., 469 Kramer, B. J., 381 Latz, S., 84, 86 Liew, J., 176, 177
Keyes, K. M., 49 Kramer, S. E., 426 Lau, D. T., 465 Light, R. J., 310
Keys, C. L., 270 Krampe, R. T., 373 Laukkanen, J., 202 Lightfoot, C., 268
Kiang, L., 298, 303 Kreicbergs, U., 458 Lauritson, M. B., 163f Lilgendahl, J. P., 359, 362, 366,
Kidd, K. K., 213 Kreider, R. M., 200 Lavadera, A. L., 210 367
Kiely, K. M., 426 Kreppner, J., 116 Lavezzi, A. M., 86 Lilienfeld, S. O., 411
Kiiski, J., 209 Kressig, R. W., 429 Lavner, J. A., 332, 333 Lillard, A. S., 185
Killewald, A., 351 Kretsch, N., 241 Lawler, M., 244, 245 Lillie-Blanton, M., 119, 120
Kim, B., 84 Kroger, J., 263, 302 Lawn, J. E., 42 Lim, S. L., 282
Name Index NI-7
Lin, M., 273 Madsen, S. A., 57 McAnally, H. M., 159 Michaels, M. W., 343
Lin,Y., 59 Maggs, J. L., 268 McCabe, D. P., 394 Michalczyk, K., 151
Lincoln, A., 204 Magnuson, K., 120 McCann, R. M., 406 Miche, M., 358
Lindblad, F., 209 Magnusson, D., 241, 242 McCarthy, J. R., 459t Midei, A. J., 208
Lindenberger, U., 397 Mailick, M. R., 162 McCarthy, M. C., 458 Mikaeili, N., 207
Lindgren, B., 437 Malacrida, C., 63 McCarthy, M. M., 234 Mikels, J. A., 400
Lindsey, E. W., 185 Males, M., 270 McClintock, M. K., 234, 249 Mikkelsen, A. T., 57
Lindström, U. Å., 453, 454 Malin, H., 281 McCloskey, L. A., 208 Mikulincer, M., 320
Lindstrom-Forneri, W., 430 Mallard, S. R., 50 McCord, J., 285 Milkie, M. A., 332, 343, 345,
Linver, M. R., 277 MaloneBeach, E. E., 378 McCormack, A., 427, 428 347, 350
Lipton, R. B., 238 Malpas, P. J., 469 McCrae, R., 358–359 Miller, B. J., 140
Literte, P. E., 303 Manassis, K., 192 McCreight, B. S., 45 Miller, D., 172, 174, 175
Litz, B. T., 457 Mancini, A. D., 457 McDaniel, M. A., 398 Miller, D. A., 318t
Liu, Y. C., 462 Mandler, J. M., 98t McDonald, K. L., 188 Miller, E. A., 440
Locke, J., 6 Manfra, L., 157 McDonald, P., 330 Miller, G. E., 118
Lodder, J., 371 Manning, W. D., 251, 252, 330, McDonough, I. M., 395 Miller, L., 400
Loftus, J., 56 331, 332 McElderry, D., 243 Miller, P., 119
Logan, R. L., 362 Marcia, J. E., 300–301 McElwain, N. L., 115 Miller, P. H., 151, 153
Logis, H. A., 272 Margolies, E., 342, 343 McFarlane, T., 247 Miller, W. D., 119, 120
Lonardo, R. A., 284 Marieb, E. N., 37 McGeown, K. ., 116 Miller-Cribbs, J. E., 331
Longmore, M. A., 251, 252, Mark Welch, D. B., 420 McGill, B. S., 344, 345 Mills, K. L., 267
331 Markey, C. N., 315 McGrath, A., 48 Mills, R., 208
López-Guimerà, G., 245 Markey, P. M., 315 McGrath, P., 453 Miniño, A. M., 61
Lorber, M. F., 206 Marks, N. F., 422 McGuffin, P., 17 Minois, G., 391
Lorenz, K., 108 Marlier, L., 88 McHale, S. M., 273, 281, 297 Mintz, S., 5, 6, 260
Lou, V. Q., 378 Marmo, S., 465 McIntosh, H., 277 Miranda, R., 303
Loukas, A., 277 Marques, S., 392 McKay, A., 253, 253f Mirecki, R. M., 338
Lovestone, S., 434 Marsiglio, W., 339 McKenna, J., 86t Misigoj-Durakovic, M., 140
Lovett, S., 41 Martin, A. J., 277 McLaughlin, K. A., 116 Mistry, J., 202
Lowenstein, A. E., 120, 121 Martin, C. L., 185, 187 McLaughlin-Volpe, T., 392 Mitchell, E. M., 139
Lowenstein, L. F., 210 Martin, J. A., 62, 201 McLeskey, J., 220 Mitzner, T. L., 428
Lozoff, B., 84, 86 Martin, J. F., 365t McMahan, R. D., 467 Modell, J., 260
Lu, P. H., 394 Martin, K. A., 244, 250, 252, McNally, S., 377 Modin, B., 191
Lucas, R. E., 410 254 McNeely, C. A., 282 Moehler, E., 127
Luciana, M., 275t Martin, P., 122, 431 McNiel, M. E., 78 Moffitt, T. E., 140, 142, 274
Luhmann, M., 361, 361f Martin-Matthews, A., 411 McNulty, J. K., 320 Mohammad, J., 330
Lui, J. L., 155 Martinelli, P., 397 McPherson, B. J., 187 Moilanen, K. L., 250
Lui, P. R., 202 Martins, M. V., 57 McPherson, S., 335 Molden, D. C., 175
Lundgren, J. D., 140 Martinussen, M., 302 Mead, G. H.., 160 Moll, K., 215t
Lundy, B. L., 162 Maruna, S., 364 Mebert, C. J., 181f Molloy, L. E., 272, 284
Luo, L., 393 Marysko, M., 127 Meeus, W., 302 Monahan, K. C., 273
Luo, S., 318t Massaccesi, S., 89 Meeus, W. H. J., 281 Mond, J., 246
Luong, G., 400 Masten, A. S., 129, 204, 274t Mehler, J., 100 Mongrain, M., 361, 361f
Masters, W. H., 381, 382 Mehta, N., 113 Monroe, B., 463
Luszcz, M. A., 426
Masuda, A., 247 Meier, D. E., 462 Montemurro, B., 337
Luttikhuis, H. G. M. O., 141
Mather, C., 61 Melby-Lervåg, M., 155 Montepare, J. M., 392
Luyckx, K., 302, 308
Mathews, S., 221 Melendez, M. C., 297 Montoro-Rodriguez, J., 437
Lynch, S., 465
Matovic, D., 400 Melendez, N. B., 297 Mooney, A., 344
Lynne-Landsman, S. D., 242
Matthijs, K., 331, 331f Melinder, A., 159 Moore, C., 160, 176
Lynskey, M. T., 17
Matton, A., 141 Mellor, D., 244 Moore, M. K., 89
Lyubomirsky, S., 340, 342,
342t May, J. S., 273 Meltzoff, A. N., 89 Mor, V., 440
Mayberry, M. L., 189 Menard, J. L., 82 Morack, J., 402
M Mayer, F. B., 159 Mence, M., 128 Moradi, B., 245
Määttä, K., 209 Mayeux, L., 179 Mendle, J., 236 Moreland, I., 459t
Maccoby, E. E., 185, 186, 201, Maynard, A. E., 148 Mendonça, M., 295, 297 Morgan, E. M., 297, 313
205 Mayr, U., 397 Merrick, J. C., 64 Morgan, H. J., 320
Mace, R., 377 Mayseless, O., 314 Merrill, D. M., 380 Morgan, J. K., 273
Macek, P., 299 Mazzonna, F., 421 Merth, T. N., 140 Morgano, E., 284, 286
Mackinnon, S. P., 316 Mazzotti, D. R., 421 Merz, E. M., 380 Morris, A. M., 340
MacMillan, H. L., 207 McAdams, D. P., 302, 309, 362– Messer, D. J., 215t Morris, R., 214, 215t
MacRae, H., 436 363, 363t, 364, 366, 367 Metz, E., 277 Morrissey, T. W., 140
Madigan, S., 115 McAlister, A. R., 140, 161 Meuwly, N., 313t Morselli, D., 365
NI-8 Name Index
Mortelmans, D., 406 Nelson, S. K., 340, 342, Osofsky, J. D., 209 Peck, S. C., 268
Mortimer, J. T., 349 342t Ostrov, J. M., 179, 189 Pedersen, N., 373
Moskey, E. G., 249 Nepomnyaschy, L., 331 Ostrove, J. M., 364 Pedersen, N. L., 17
Mosko, S., 86t Neugarten, B., 298 Ott, J. C., 365t, 367 Peiro, J., 407
Moss, E., 113, 320 Neumark, D., 407, 408 Ott, M. A., 253 Pelham, W. E., Jr., 154, 155
Mother Theresa, 365 Neupert, S. D., 209 Otterman, G., 209 Pellegrini, A. D., 43, 77, 182,
Moulaert, T., 409 Newcomb, A. F., 188 Overall, N. C., 335 183, 184, 185, 186
Mowen, T. J., 202 Newman, K. L., 406 Owens, E. B., 154 Pelts, M D., 313
Muehlenkamp, J. J., 271 Newman, S., 119 Oxford, M. L., 191 Penelo, E., 247
Mueller, C. M., 175 Newton, E. K., 175 Peng, K., 303
Muise, A., 381 Newton, N., 364 P Penman, E. L., 457
Mullan, K., 345 Newton, N. J., 364, 365, 366 Pace, C. S., 113 Peper, J. S., 236
Müller-Oehring, E. M., 394 Ng, J., 247 Packer, T. L., 426 Pérez-Edgar, K., 127
Mulvaney, M. K., 181f Ng, R., 399 Paechter, C., 336 Perkins, E. A., 382
Munnell, A. H., 404 Ngige, L. W., 232 Paek, H.-J., 187 Perner, J., 160
Munro, C. A., 431 NICHD Early Child Care Pagani, L. S., 151 Perren, S., 193
Munroe, R. L., 43 Research Network. ., 122 Paikoff, R. L., 243 Perrig-Chiello, P., 380
Murphy, K. R., 155 Nichols, T. R., 242, 243 Palkovitz, R. J., 340 Perrone-McGovern, K. M., 347,
Nicolopoulou, A., 183 Palladino, G., 260 350
Murphy, S., 220
Nielsen, J., 352 Palley, E., 121 Perry, A. R., 345
Murray, A., 377
Nielsen, L., 359, 399 Pandit, M., 335 Perry, S. L., 312
Murray, A. L., 64
Nikulina, V., 208 Paolitto, D. P., 264, 264t Perry, W., 309
Murray, C., 332, 457
Nisbett, R. E., 221 Papadatou, D., 454, 461 Persike, M., 290, 290f, 308
Murray, C. A., 217
Nixon, E., 244, 245 Parackal, M. K., 49 Peskin, J., 160
Murray, K. T., 125
Noller, P., 336 Parackal, S. M., 49 Peterson, B. E., 364
Murray, L., 113
Nomaguchi, K., 202 Peterson, C. C., 160, 161
Murray, S. L., 316, 336 Paradis, L., 240
Petraglia, F., 57
Murstein, B. I., 315 Nomaguchi, K. M., 121 Parent, A.-S., 233, 234, 238
Petts, R. J., 274
Must, A., 242 Normand, S., 155 Parent, M. C., 245
Pezzin, L. E., 440
Musulkin, S., 309 Norris, D. J., 122 Parham-Payne, W., 332
Pfinder, M., 49
Muzik, M., 208 Norwood, S. J., 247 Paris, R., 206
Pharo, H., 273
Muzio, J. N., 83f Park, D. C., 395
O Phelan, P., 283
Myers, A., 426 Park, I. J. K., 282
Oas, P. T., 206 Philbin, J. M., 250
Myers, A. J., 422 Park, Y. S., 282
Oberauer, K., 393 Philibert, R. A. ., 113
Myers, L. L., 247 Parker, A. C., 112
Obradović, J., 129 Phillips, C. D., 439
Parker, K. J., 118
O’Brien, K. M., 350 Phillips, D. A., 120, 121, 121f
N Parker, P. A., 453
Oddo, S., 162t Phillips, J. L., 461
Nåden, D., 453, 454 Parkes, A., 251
O’Donovan, A., 421 Phinney, J. S., 303
Nagy, J., 459t Parkes, C. M., 409
OECD, 421, 422, 422f, 423, Piaget, J., 20, 21–22, 93, 94, 96,
Nakrem, S., 440 Parkinson, P., 211
423f 142–148, 151, 221, 261,
Nappi, R. E., 382t Pasco Fearon, R. M., 115, 239 262, 262f, 374
Nash, G., 215t Ofen, N., 394, 396 Pascual, M., 275 Piaget, L., 94, 96, 145
National Center for Children in Okado, Y., 209 Pascuzzo, K., 320 Pickett, K., 365t, 367
Poverty (NCCP), 118 Okun, M. A., 407 Patall, E. A., 221, 222 Pierce, L., 352
National Center for Health Oldehinkel, A. J., 271 Patchin, J. W., 193 Piette, J., 467
Statistics, 307, 390, 418 O’Leary, S. G., 206 Pate, M., 206 Pike, R., 171
National Center on Education Oliver, D. P., 464 Patrick, J. H., 379 Pinker, S., 196, 206, 209, 365t
Statistics, Fast Facts, 306, Olmsted, M. P., 247
307f Patrick, M. E., 268 Pinquart, M., 115, 122, 123,
Olshansky, S., 419, 420 Patterson, C. J., 341 202, 407
National Down Syndrome
Society, 51, 52 Olsson Möller, U., 429 Paul, A. M., 49, 50, 55 Pitzer, L. M., 204
National Health and Nutrition Olthof, T., 178 Paul, G., 426, 429 Plomin, R., 17, 18, 19
Examination Survey, 137 Olweus, D., 193 Paul, I. M., 141 Pluess, M., 51, 113, 123, 129
Natsuaki, M., 271f Olympia, D., 339 Paulus, M., 176 Pnevmatikos, D., 152
Natsuaki, M. N., 127 Omar, H., 243 Paulussen-Hoogeboom, M. C., Poirier, F. E., 136
Naughton, F., 49 Onadja, Y., 422 119 Polanco-Roman, L., 303
Nazaré, B., 56 Oncel, S., 57 Pavarini, G., 162 Poortman, A. R., 337
Neff, L. A., 333 Onrust, S., 411 Payne, K. K., 330 Pope, N. D., 381
Negele, A., 159 Ontai, L. L., 122 Payne, S., 453, 454, 457 Porfeli, E. J., 349
Negriff, S., 275t Opper, S., 263 Peach, H. D., 278 Porter, M., 332
Neimeyer, R. A., 457, 458 Orellana, M. F., 282 Peacock, S., 437 Posner, J.-A., 340
Nelson, C. A., 74–75 O’Rourke, N., 333 Peake, S. J., 267 Potocnik, K., 407
Nelson, K., 100, 159 Osborn, J. L., 317 Pearman, A., 398 Potter, D., 209
Nelson, L. J., 294 Osecka, T., 194 Pearson, D. A., 155 Potts, M., 63
Name Index NI-9
Poulin, F., 188, 281, 285 Reissman, C., 334 Roseth, C. J., 180 Santesso, D. L., 101
Poulin, M., 27, 27f Reppermund, S., 435 Ross, G., 149 Santo, J. B., 402, 407
Powers, S. M., 410 Resett, S., 314 Ross, L. A., 431 Sarkin, A., 431
Poyer, H., 246 Reskin, B., 351 Rosti, R. O., 163 Sarkisian, N., 407
Prager, I. G., 393 Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., 394, 394f, Roth, J. L., 277 Sasson, I., 410, 411
Prakash, K., 170 395 Roth, S. L., 23 Sattler, J. M., 214
Prata, N., 63 Rey-Casserly, C., 65 Rothenberg, J. Z., 406, 407 Saudino, K. J., 125
Pratt, A. K., 374 Reynolds, P., 64 Rothermund, K., 400 Sauer, P. J. J., 141
Preßler, A., 151 Reznick, J. S., 206, 207 Rothman, R., 223 Savage, C. L., 44
Pressler, K. A., 430 Rhodes, R. E., 430 Rousseau, J. J., 6 Savin-Williams, R. C., 312
Preston, S. H., 78 Rice, J. B., 440 Roussotte, F., 49 Savishinsky, J., 408
Preville, M., 410 Richard, C., 86t Rovine, M., 340, 341 Saxon, S. V., 382
Prevost, S. S., 455, 460 Richards, T., 101, 101f Rowe, D. C., 17 Sayegh, P., 380
Priess, A., 341 Ridgway, A., 155 Rowe, E., 138 Sayer, L. C., 344f
Prinstein, M. J., 284, 285f Riegel, K. F., 372 Rowe, G., 394 Sayfan, L., 160
Prinz, R. J., 126 Riegel, R. M., 372 Rowe, J. W., 417 Scales, P. C., 274
Pronk, M., 426 Riksen-Walraven, J. M., 78, 86t, Rowe, M. L., 75 Scarr, S., 19, 204
Pryor, J. H., 299, 304 122 Royal College of Obstetricians Schaal, B., 88
Pudrovska, T., 331 Rilling, J. K., 115 and Gynaecologists Schaan, B., 411
Puhl, R. M., 140, 141 Rinehart, M. S., 45 [RCOG]., 49 Schafer, K. J., 244
Pungello, E. P., 120 Rispoli, K. M., 115 Rubin, K. H., 188 Schafer, M. H., 439
Pushkar, D., 401, 402, 407 Risse, G. B., 451 Rubin, M., 379 Schaie, K. W., 368, 369, 369f,
Rivera, M. S., 458, 459 Rubinstein, R. L., 441 372
Q Rivers, J., 456 Ruble, D. N., 171, 185, 187 Schellinger, K., 124
Qu, Y., 380, 438 Roalson, L. A., 277 Rulison, K. L., 272, 284 Scheres, A., 155
Roberts, A., 245 Runions, K. C., 181, 193 Schetter, C. D., 44, 50
R Roberts, A. L., 163 Rusbult, C. E., 316 Schilling, O. K., 426
Rabin, J. S., 162t Robertson, S. C., 400 Rushton, J. P., 217 Schindler, I., 407
Rabins, P. V., 433, 435 Robinson, J. C., 221, 222 Russell, V. M., 320 Schirduan, V., 219
Rackin, H., 330, 332 Robinson, J. P., 344f Rutledge, M. S., 404 Schlegel, A., 232
Rahe, R. H., 409 Robinson, J. R., 343, 345 Rutter, H., 140 Schlinger, H. D., 217
Rahman, A., 44 Robles, T. F., 333 Ryan, J. J., 216 Schmid, G., 81
Raich, R. M., 247 Rochkind, J., 307 Ryan, R. M., 222 Schmidt, A. E., 438
Raj, A., 63 Rodham, K., 246 Ryan-Krause, P., 155 Schmidt, L. A., 101
Raja, R., 170 Rodin, J., 393 Rybash, J. M., 374 Schmied, V., 78
Rambaran, A. J., 273 Rodkin, P. C., 180, 189, 190t, Ryckewaert, R., 455 Schneider, B. L., 304–305
Ramsay, S. M., 64 191, 272 Ryeng, M. S., 302 Schneidman, E., 454
Ranta, M., 314 Rodrigues, R., 438 Schoen, A., 244
Rao, N., 187 Rodriguez, C. M., 206 S Scholte, R., 188, 193
Rapaport, S., 55, 56 Roehlkepartain, E. C., 274 Saarni, C., 177 Schomburg, A., 428
Rapee, R. M., 245 Roenker, D. L., 431 Sabey, A. K., 335 Schoon, I., 308
Rapport, M. D., 155 Roeser, R. W., 242 Sabik, N. J., 246 Schramm, D. G., 209
Ratner, D., 295 Rofail, M., 378, 379 Sachdev, P. S., 435 Schreiner, L. A., 309, 310
Ratner, N. B., 101 Roffwarg, H. P., 83f Sadegh-Nobari, T., 119, 120 Schroeder, R. D., 202
Rau, B., 390, 404, 407 Rogers, C., 401 Saenz, J., 186 Schueler, C. M., 126
Rauer, A. J., 314, 335 Rogoff, B., 149 Saeteren, B., 453, 454 Schuengel, C., 380
Raver, C. C., 119 Rohlfsen, L. S., 422 Saffran, J. R., 101 Schulz, M. S., 333
Ray, B., 296 Roisman, G. I., 189 Sagi, A., 113, 114, 114f Schulze, H. J., 380
Raz, S., 64 Rojas-Flores, L., 202 Sahin-Hodoglugil, N. N., 63 Schut, H., 411
Reales, J. M., 398 Rollock, D., 202 Saito, Y., 422 Schwartz, C. E., 127
Reczek, C., 331 Romano, E., 181 Sakuta, Y., 393 Schwartz, S. J., 302
Redd, L., 220 Romeo, R. D., 271 Salmela-Aro, K., 314 Schwartz-Mette, R. A., 179, 187
Reddy, V., 125 Romer, D., 277 Samimi, P., 318t Scrimgeour, M. B., 177
Reese, E., 159, 160 Roodin, P., 374 Samson, D., 160 Scrimsher, S., 149
Reeve, J., 222 Roosevelt, E., 191 Samson, R. D., 394 Seale, C., 468
Regan, P., 78–79 Roosevelt, F. D., 6, 404 Sánchez, B., 298 Sebastian, C., 266
Reif, J. A., 315 Rorie, M., 277, 285 Sánchez-Mora, C., 154 Sebastián-Enesco, C., 175
Reijneveld, S. A., 208 Rose, A. J., 179, 187, 188 Sánchez-Villegas, A., 141 Seery, M. D., 362
Reimer, J., 264, 264t Rose, J., 64 Sandberg, L., 382, 383 Seiffge-Krenke, I., 290, 290f,
Reimer, K., 265 Rosenblum, K. E., 149 Sandberg-Thoma, S. E., 314 297, 298, 308
Reiser, L. W., 237, 241 Rosenfield, R. L., 238 Sandler, I. N., 210f, 211, 410 Self-Brown, S. R., 221
Reiss, D., 359 Rosenthal, M., 162 Santella, R. M., 64 Seligman, M. P., 364
NI-10 Name Index
Selman, R. L., 277 Singg, S., 458 Spinath, F. M., 19 Sullivan, H. S., 188
Seltzer, J. A., 337 Sinnott, J. D., 374 Spronk, K., 455 Sullivan, S. J., 400
Sengupta, M., 464 Sjörs, G., 64 Sroufe, L. A. ., 113 Sun, S. S., 238
Sercombe, H., 278 Skinner, B. F., 12–13, 99–100 St. James-Roberts, I., 80, 81, 85 Sung-Chan, P., 141
Serman, N., 248 Skinner, D., 206, 207 Stafford, L., 335 Super, C. M., 171
Serour, G. I., 57 Skogli, E. W., 155 Staikova, E., 155 Super, D. E., 347
Settersten, R. A., 296 Skoog, T., 242, 242f Stamatakis, E. E., 139 Surra, C. A., 316, 317t
Seymour, F., 338 Skoranski, A. M., 141 Stamatiadis, N., 431, 431f Susser, E. E., 49
Shafer, E. F., 350 Slater, A., 89, 90 Standing, K., 350 Sussman, S., 284, 304
Shafer, K., 338 Slaughter, V., 160 Stange, J. P., 159 Sutherland, O., 271
Shager, H., 120 Slavin, R. E., 222 Stanley, S. M., 335 Sutin, A. R., 359, 360
Shahaeian, A., 161 Slevec, J., 381 Stark, R., 154 Sutton, S., 49
Shakespeare, W., 260, 266 Slobin, D. I., 158 Stark, T. H., 273 Švab, A., 344
Shalev, I., 28 Smallfield, S., 426 Stattin, H., 241, 242 Svaldi, J., 248
Shamay-Tsoory, S., 162t Smart, A., 155 Stebbins, H., 123 Svedin, C.-G., 208
Shanahan, M. J., 359 Smetana, J. G., 125, 284 Steele, S., 162 Svensson, B., 208
Shapero, B. G., 208 Smith, A. K., 127 Steger, M. F., 348 Swann, W. B., 174
Share, M., 377 Smith, A. R., 275 Steiger, A. E., 360 Swicegood, G., 331, 331f
Sharf, B. F., 439 Smith, B. T., 370, 398 Stein, A., 120, 121 Swift, H. J., 392
Shariff, M. J., 462 Smith, C. V., 320 Stein, J. A., 245 Swinburn, B. A., 139, 140
Sharts-Hopko, N. C., 36 Smith, E. O., 136 Stein, J. H., 237, 241 Syed, A., 302
Shaver, P., 318 Smith, G., 49 Steinberg, L., 239, 267, 268, Syme, M. L., 382
Shaver, P. R., 320 Smith, G. R., 380 275, 276, 281 Syracuse-Siewert, G., 315
Shaw, D. S., 273 Smith, J., 204, 340, 341, 369 Steinhausen, H., 163f
Shaw, G. B., 316 Smith, J. P., 78 Steinmayr, R., 221 T
Shaw, H., 247 Smith, L., 462 Sternberg, R. J., 213, 217, 218, Tadmor, C. T., 303
Shaywitz, B. A., 214, 215t Smith, M. E., 158 219, 306, 333, 333f, 368 Tager-Flusberg, H., 162
Shaywitz, S. E., 214, 215t Smith, P. K., 184 Stetler, C. A., 398 Talmi, A., 124
Shdaimah, C., 121 Smith, R. L., 179, 187 Stetsenko, A., 150 Tambalis, K. D., 139
Shearer, C. L., 281 Smith Slep, A. M., 206 Stevens, B., 88 Tamborini, C. R., 407
Sheehan, A., 78 Smock, P. J., 332 Stevens, N., 188 Tanner, J. L., 6, 294
Shelden, R. G., 286 Smolak, L., 245 Stewart, A., 206 Tanner, J. M., 233, 233f, 235f,
Sheldon, K. M., 374 Stewart, A. J., 364 236, 237f, 238f
Smolucha, F., 183
Sheridan, A., 84, 85 Stewart, D. E., 286 Tareque, M. I., 422
Smolucha, L., 183
Shi, J., 405, 406, 407 Sticca, F., 193 Tarrant, R. C., 78
Snarey, J. R., 264
Shih, F., 453, 455, 456 Stice, E., 247 Taumoepeau, M., 160
Snowling, M., 154
Shing, Y. L., 394, 396 Stiles, J., 41, 74, 75, 76t Taveras, E. M., 141
Snyder, L., 436
Shirai, Y., 380 Stipek, D. J., 221 Taylor, A., 245
Snyder, S., 465
Shoaib, A., 246 Stolk, R. P., 141 Taylor, C. A., 206
Soares, C., 382t
Shochat, T., 278 Stoltenborgh, M., 207 Taylor, J. L., 162
Social Security Monthly
Shonkoff, J. P., 121f Statistical Snapshot, 405 Stone, R., 440 Taylor, R., 248
Short, M. A., 278 Soderberg, L., 49 Stout, M., 277 Taylor, Z. E., 177
Shulman, E. P., 276 Soderlund, G., 155 Strand, B. H., 434 Tedeschi, R. G., 410
Shulman, S., 298, 314 Soenens, B., 178, 222 Strauss, A. L., 460, 461 Teeri, S., 441
Sibley, M. H., 272 Solmeyer, A. R., 273 Stremler, R., 84 Teitler, J., 331
Sieswerda-Hoogendoorn, T., Son, J., 380 Striegel-Moore, R. H., 247 Telzer, E. H., 90, 278
208 Sonuga-Barke, E. J. S., 154, Strier, R., 345 Terplan, M., 49
Sikstrom, S., 155 155, 156 Stringer, K. J., 297 Terry, P., 379
Silveira, M. J., 467 Soric, M., 140 Stroebe, M., 411 Teskereci, G., 57
Silventoinen, K., 238 Sossou, M.-A., 412 Stroebe, W., 411 Teti, D. M., 84, 85
Silver, R., 27, 27f Soto, C. J., 365t Strohl, J., 307, 307f Tetlock, P. E., 303
Silver, R. C., 362 Soussignan, R., 88 Strohmeier, D., 191 Thacker, K. S., 461, 462
Silverman, W. K., 241 Souza, J., 63 Stronach, E. P., 208 Thakar, M., 335
Silverstein, M., 339, 377 Sowell, E., 49 Stunkard, A. J., 139 Thaler, N. S., 151
Silvetti, M., 154 Spangler, G., 273 Sturaro, C., 191 Thapar, A., 154
Simion, F., 89 Spear, L. P., 269 Styne, D., 233, 234, 236, 237, The, N. S., 139
Simmons, R. G., 241, 242 Spearman, C., 216 238, 239 Theis, W., 433, 434, 435
Simon, T., 399 Specht, J., 360, 361, 361f Suanet, B., 339 Thiessen, E. D., 101
Simons, D. A., 206, 207 Speisman, R. B., 435 Suárez-Orozco, C., 282 Thomaes, S., 175, 178
Simonton, D. K., 370, 371f Spencer, S. V., 188, 189 Subrahmanyam, K., 249 Thoman, E. B., 82, 82f
Simpson, J. A., 115, 335 Spense, A., 294t Subramanian, S. V., 412 Thomas, A., 113, 129
Sims, M., 378, 379 Spinath, B., 221 Sullivan, A. R., 410, 411, 412 Thomas, J. R., 138
Name Index NI-11
Thompson, E. H., 381 U Vianna, E., 150 Wender, P. H., 155

Thompson, E. J., 382 Udry, J. R., 186, 249 Victor, S. E., 271 Wenk, E., 271f
Thompson, R., 344 Uhrlass, D. J., 245 Vida, M., 268 Werner, N. E., 190, 193
Thompson, R. A., 175 Uji, M., 202 Virmani, E. A., 122 Werth, B., 38
Thompson, S. D., 122 Umberson, D. J., 331, 410, 411, Visconti, K. J., 272 Wertz, D. C., 61
Thompson, V., 330 421 Vlock, J., 426 Wertz, R. W., 61
Thompson-Brenner, H., 248 Umemura, T., 114 Volk, H. E., 163 Wexler, M., 54
Thorne, A., 297 UNICEF (United Nations Volkmar, F., 163 Wexler, N., 54, 55
Thurston, E. C., 278 Children’s Fund), 79, 79f, Volling, B. L., 345 Wheeler, L. A., 210f, 211
286, 287 Whitaker, E. A., 405
Tiggemann, M., 381 Volpe, L. E., 86
Urban, J. B., 273 Whitby, E. H., 55
Timko, C. A., 246, 247 Volpin, N., 210
Urbszat, D., 247 White, B. A., 180
Tipper, S. P., 89 von der Lippe, A., 115
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics., White, J., 219
Tipsord, J. M., 179, 188 7 von Hippel, W., 400
Tobin, E., 318t Von Raffler-Engel, W., 36, 46, White, L., 332
U.S. Census Bureau, 7
Tomasello, M., 136 49 Whitebook, M., 123
U.S. Department of Health and
Tomlinson, M., 113 Human Services, 129, von Stumm, S., 359, 372 Whiteman, S. D., 297
Tontsch, C., 155 419f Votruba-Drzal, E., 120 Whiting, J. B., 339
Toomey, R. B., 303 U.S. Department of Labor, 351 Vouloumanos, A., 100 Whitney, M. P., 82, 82f
Top 10 Best Dating Sites, 312 Utz, R. L., 411 Vredenburgh, D. J., 348, 349 Whitson, H. E., 423
Uusiautti, S., 209 Vreeswijk, C. M., 45 Whitton, S. W., 338
Tordera, N., 407
Vuorinen, M., 434 Widdershoven, G., 469
Torff, B., 219
Toril, P., 398
V Vygotsky, L. S., 149–150, 157, Widdershoven-Heerding, I., 469
Vaaler, M. L., 78 160 Widom, C. S., 208
Tornello, S., 341
Valentino, K., 159 Wiik, K. L., 116
Touchette, E., 247 W
van Aken, C., 179 Wiitala, W., 467
Toxopeus, R., 431 Waasdorp, T. E., 180, 190f, 192
van Aken, M. A. G., 305 Wilcox, W. B., 328, 341
Tracy, S. K., 286 Wadsworth, B. J., 21
Van Bauwel, S., 252 Wiles, J. L., 439
Trainor, L. J., 101 Wagner, J., 304, 305
van Dalen, H. P., 404 Wiley, J., 162
Tran, S. P., 274 Wagner, T., 277
Van der Heijden, B. M., 406– Wilkinson, R., 365t, 367
Tremblay, K. L., 427 407, 408 Wahl, H., 426 Williams, D. M., 163
Trentowska, M., 248 van der Pas, S., 339 Waldinger, R. J., 333 Williams, K., 78, 79
Triana, M., 351 Van Dijck, J., 8, 9 Waldron, N. L., 220 Williamson, J. B., 450
Triandis, H. C., 10 van Dijk, G. P., 371 Waldron, V. R., 378 Williamson, R. A., 177
Trick, L. M., 431 van Dulmen, M. M., 314 Wallace, J. B., 455, 460 Willis, S. L., 368, 369, 372
Trikkaliotis, I., 152 van Geel, M., 282 Wallhagen, M. I., 426, 427 Willoughby, T., 277, 278
Troll, L. E., 377 van Harmelen, A. L., 298 Walsh, J. L., 251 Wilson, A. C., 316
Trollinger, L. J., 232 van IJzendoorn, M. H., 113, Walter, T., 450 Wilson, D., 431
Trommsdorff, G., 176, 410 114, 114f Walton, K. E., 305, 360 Wilson, S. M., 232
Troop-Gordon, W., 187, 191, Van Looy, D., 406 Walvoord, E. C., 238 Wilson, T., 272
272 van Selm, M., 406–407, 408 Wang, H., 299 Wilson, T. W., 154
Trudel, G., 382 van Steenbergen, E. F., 350 Wang, M., 125, 405, 406, 407 Wiman, A. M., 247
Tsai, Y., 59 van Tilburg, T. G., 339 Wang, S., 154 Wimmer, H., 160
Tsiaras, A., 38 van Wijmen, M. S., 467 Warber, K. M., 317 Windsor, T. D., 332, 365t, 400
Tucker-Drob, E. M., 360 Vanassche, S., 331, 331f Ward, L. M., 246 Winsler, A., 150, 157
Tudge, J., 149 Vandell, D. L., 121, 122 Warr, M. ., 270 Wise, D., 204
Tufik, S., 421 Vanickova, J., 299 Warren, C. S., 244, 248 Witkow, M. R., 303
Tulving, E., 395 Vansteenkiste, M., 178, 222 Warren, M. P., 240 Wittwer, H., 469
Tummers, L. G., 350 Vasiliadis, H., 410 Washington, G., 5 Witvliet, M., 190, 193, 272
Tuokko, H., 430, 431 Vasunilashorn, S., 410 Waterman, A. S., 302 Wöhrmann, A. M., 406
Turcotte, J., 394 Vaughn, L. M., 78 Watson, J. B., 12, 108 Wolchik, S. A., 410
Turiano, N. A., 402 Vazsonyi, A. T., 182 Watson, L. B., 336, 337 Wolf, A. W., 84, 86
Turkheimer, E., 17, 216 Vedder, P., 282 Wattis, L., 350 Wolfe, D. A., 208
Turkington, C., 57 Veenstra, R., 286 Webster, G. D., 320 Wolfe, D. M., 332
Turkle, S., 8 Vega, P., 458, 459 Wedding, D., 49 Wolfe, J., 454, 461
Turner, H. A., 204 Velkoff, V. A., 390f Weer, C. H., 347 Wood, D., 149
Turra, C. M., 422 Verbakel, E., 469 Weibel-Orlando, J., 377 Wood, J. M., 431
Tuschen-Caffier, B., 248 Verghese, J., 435 Weinstein, R. S., 123 Wood, W. R., 450
Twenge, J. M., 304 Verhoeven, M., 128 Weisfeld, G., 233 Wood-Barcalow, N. L., 248
Tyler, A., 223 Versey, H. S., 364 Weisskirch, R. S., 318t Woodruff, K., 208
Tylka, T. L., 248 Verweij, E., 55 Weitz, R., 381 Woodward, C. V., 371, 374, 375
Tynes, B., 249 Vespa, J., 200, 200f, 329, 329f Wells-di Gregorio, S. W., 458, World Health Organization, 81
Tzischinsky, O., 278 Vialle, W., 284 461 Worrall, L., 427
NI-12 Name Index
Wray-Lake, L., 281 Y Young, S., 155 Zelinski, E. M., 370

Wright, F. L., 371 Yamasaki, J., 439 Youniss, J., 277 Zerbe, K., 248
Wright, M. O., 204 Yamasoba, T., 426 Yu, H. C., 283 Zeskind, P. S., 81
Wrzus, C., 399 Yancey, G. A., 312 Yu, H. U., 461 Zettergren, P., 191
Yancey, S. W., 312 Yudell, M., 163, 164 Zhan, J.-Y., 153
Wu, C., 282
Yancura, L. A., 377 Zhou, Z. G., 312
Wurtele, S. K., 206, 207
Yang, C. K., 85 Z Zimmer-Gembeck, M. J., 250
Wymbs, B. T., 154, 155 Zaichkowsky, L. D., 138
Yang, P., 64 Zimmerman, M., 314
Wynn, K., 98 Zakharia, R., 243 Zimmermann, P., 273, 305
Yap, S. Y., 410
Yates, M., 277 Zanjani, F. A. K., 368 Zimpfer, D. G., 459t
X Zantinge, E. M., 407
Yerkes, M. A., 350 Ziol-Guest, K. M., 119
Xia, Y. R., 312 Zarit, S. H., 437, 439
Yeung, E. W., 407 Zoccolotti, P., 214
Xie, H., 272 Yeung, W. J., 295, 299 Zavattini, G. C., 113 Zuberi, D., 119
Xu, F., 160 Yonashiro-Cho, J., 455, 465, 466 Zayas, V., 115 Zubriggen, E. L., 297
Xu, H., 49 You, J., 273 Zeanah, C. H., 111, 112 Zucker, A. N., 364
Xu, L., 377 Young, L. M., 374 Zelenko, M., 83 Zuroff, D. C., 361, 361f
Note: Page numbers followed by f indicate figures; those followed by t indicate tables.
Subject
Index
A thriving during, 273–274 age of menarche among, 234
abstraction trying teens as adults and, 276 body image concerns among,
formal operational thinking adolescence-limited turmoil, 274 245–246
and, 266–267 adolescent egocentrism, generativity of, 366
in neurocognitive disorders, 265–266 interracial dating by, 312
433 adolescent relationships, puberty timetable of, 238
abuse. See child maltreatment 279–286 spanking among, 206
acceptance, as stage of dying, connecting in groups and, terminal illness and, 465
452, 453 282–286
transition to intercourse
accommodation, in cognitive with peers, 250–251, 267 among, 250 allostatic load
developmental theory, 21 separating from parents and, African nations. See also specific childhood poverty and, 421
acculturation, 205, 282 279–282, 280f countries executive function related to,
achievement tests, 213 adolescent sexuality, 248–254 age of menarche in, 234 372, 372f
acne, in puberty, 237 age of first intercourse and, maternal mortality in, 63 alternatives to
250f, 250–251 institutionalization, for
active euthanasia, 468–469 puberty timetable of, 238
contemporary trends in, 253, elders, 439
active forces, 18–19 age. See also life expectancy;
253f altruism, in middle adulthood,
activities of daily living (ADLs), lifespan; specific age
sex education and, 243–244, groups 361, 361f
418–419
253–254 Alzheimer’s disease, 434
problems with, 418–419, of beginning of sexual desire,
sexual desire and, 249 249 caring for parents with, 380
419f, 442
sexual double standard and, changes in intelligence with, with Down syndrome, 51
vision problems and, 426
252–253 368–374, 369f
ADHD. See attention-deficit/ efforts to prevent, 434–435
sexual partners and, 251 changing personal priorities
hyperactivity disorder interventions for, 435–437,
(ADHD) adoption studies, 17 and, 398–399 437t
ADLs. See activities of daily adrenal androgens, puberty of first intercourse, 250f, memory loss in, 396
living (ADLs) and, 234 250–251
Amazon, puberty rites in, 233
adolescence, 229–257 adult attachment styles, growth in generativity with,
318–320, 341 amniocentesis, 56
body image issues during, 364
adult development, 4 amniotic sac, 42, 42f
244–248 intelligence changes related
adult roles, 294 to, 370–371 amygdala, face perception in
brain during, 278 infancy and, 89–90
cognitive development developmental systems of marriage, 298–299, 314
approach to, 326 amyloid, 434–435
during, 258–279 maternal, Down syndrome
adulthood, 292–415. See also and, 52 anal stage, 15
context for, 260–261, 261t
emerging adulthood; median, 390 analytic intelligence, 218
delinquent groups and, late adulthood; middle
284–286 of puberty, decline in, 233f, androgens, sexual desire and,
adulthood; young 249
depression during, 242, 271 233–234
adulthood
retirement, 404 anemia, sickle cell, 53t
drug use during, 268, 269t allostatic load and executive
age discrimination, 406–407, anesthesia, for childbirth, 62t
emotional intensity during, function during, 372, 372f
269f, 269–271, 271f 408 anger, as stage of dying, 452
attachment styles during,
formal operational stage 318–320, 341 age norms, 298 animism, 145, 148
during, 21t, 93t, 143t, changing conceptions of, 7–8 age of viability, 42 anorexia nervosa, 246, 247
261–262, 262t, 266–267 co-residing during, 298, age-based rationing of care, A-not-B error, 96
global perspective on, 286–287 298t 469–470 antibiotics, teratogenic effects
identity versus role confusion depression during, 398, 410, ageism, 391 of, 47t
stage during, 20, 20t, 300, 453 age-related disease, low birth antidepressants, teratogenic
300t generativity and happiness weight and, 64 effects of, 47t, 48
physical changes during, during, 364–365, 365t aggression, 179–182 anti-psychotic drugs, teratogenic
235–237, 237f parenthood during. See in highly aggressive children, effects of, 47t
puberty and. See puberty fathers; mother(s); 180–182 anti-seizure drugs, teratogenic
recognition as life stage, 6, motherhood; parenthood; hostile attributional bias and, effects of, 47t
260, 278 parenting styles 181–182, 286 anxiety
relationships during. See relationships during. See proactive, 179, 180t in early-maturing girls, 242
adolescent relationships love; marriage; parent-
reactive, 179, 180t, 191 during pregnancy, 50
risk taking during, 267–269, child relationships;
relationships relational, 179, 180t separation, 110
268t, 269f
roles during, 294, 326 aging. See also late adulthood social, 191, 193–194
sexuality during. See
adolescent sexuality search for identity during. normal, 418 stranger, 110
social sensitivity during, See identity physical, 418f, 418–424, anxious-ambivalent attachment,
266–267, 267f theory of mind during, 370 419f 111, 112f, 318
stereotypes about, 261t tips for flourishing during, agreeableness, 359 Apgar scale, 63
“storm and stress” during, 6, 376t AIDS. See HIV/AIDS APOE-4 marker, 434, 435
260, 273 work during. See careers; work alcohol use applied behavioral analysis, for
thinking during, 261–266, advance directives, 467–468 in adolescence, 268, 268t ASDs, 163
262t African Americans teratogenic effects of, 49 apprentice programs, 308
SI-1
SI-2 Subject Index
Argentina, age of marriage in, autobiographical memories, natural childbirth and, 61, brain imaging
314 159–160 62t impulsivity and, 267
arranged marriages, 311–312, autonomy, 124 placental expulsion and, 60 late adulthood memory
330, 335 adolescent push for, 280–281 threats at, 61 deficits and, 394f,
arrests, of adolescents, 268, 270, intrinsic motivation and, birth defects, 46–56 394–395
271f 222, 223t chromosomal problems and, prenatal, 55
ART. See assisted reproductive loss of, in old age, 430–432, 51–52 breadwinner role, 344, 345
technology (ART) 431f genetic disorders and, 52–55, breast development, 236, 240
artificialism, 145–146 as psychosocial task, 20, 20t 53t breast-feeding, 78–79
artistic personality type, 349t autonomy versus shame and interventions for, 55–56 breech birth, 61
ASDs. See autism spectrum doubt stage, 20, 20t, 124t teratogens and, 46, 47t, Britain, emerging adulthood
disorders (ASDs) average life expectancy, 6–7, 7f 48–51 in, 297
Asian Americans timeline of, 56
avoidant attachment, 111, 112f, bulimia nervosa, 246, 247
dating of people of other 318 bisexual persons, sexual identity
ethnic groups by, 312 bullying, 192–194
avoidant/dismissive insecure of, 313
puberty timetable of, 238 prevention of, 193
attachment, 318, 319 Blacks. See African Americans
terminal illness and, 465–466 bully-victims, 192
axons, 74, 74f blastocyst, 39, 39f, 40
assimilation, in cognitive BMI. See body mass index
developmental theory, 21 C
B (BMI)
assisted reproductive technology CACFP. See Child and Adult
babbling, 100, 100t body image, 244–248
(ART), 58f, 58–59 Care Food Program
babies. See infancy; newborns eating disorders and, (CACFP)
assisted-living facilities, 439 246–247, 247t
Babinski reflex, 77f calorie restriction, lifespan and,
atherosclerosis, 418 gender differences in 420
baby boom cohort, 5
attachment, 107, 108–117 concerns about, 244–246
“Decade of Protest” and, 7 Canada
child care and, 121 improving, 248
retirement and, 405, 407 child abuse in, 207
clear-cut, 110 body mass index (BMI), 139
baby talk, 101 infant feeding in, 78
context for, 108–109 early puberty and, 238–239
baby-proofing, 92 palliative care in, 462
early-childhood poverty and, body weight. See childhood
“Back to Sleep” campaign, 86 obesity; weight self-criticism in middle
119
“bad” crowds, 284–286 adulthood in, 361, 361f
later relationships and boundaryless careers, 347
bargaining, as stage of dying, cardiovascular disease, gender
mental health related to, boys. See males; entries
452–453 difference in, 422
115, 341 beginning with term
basic ADL problems, 418, 419, gender careers, 304–311. See also work
love relationships and,
318–320, 341 419f Bradley method, 62t boundaryless, 347
milestones of, 109–110 basic trust, as psychosocial task, brain changes in, 347
stability of, genetics of, 20, 20t ADHD and, 154 college education for,
115–116 basic trust versus mistrust stage, 308–310, 309t
adolescent, 278
styles of, 111, 111f, 112f, 20, 20t, 84t flow and, 305–306, 306f,
amygdala of, 89–90
318–320, 341, 411–412 Beacon Elementary School, 220 309–310
cerebral cortex of, 74, 136f,
synchrony of, 112–113 behavioral genetics, 16–18, 22t gender work roles and,
136–137
universality of, 113–114, 114f 350–352, 351f
behaviorism, 12–14, 22t development of. See brain
attachment in the making, 110 happiness and success in,
attachment and, 108–109 development
348–350
attachment response, 15–16 cognitive, 13–14 face perception in infancy
high goals for, 304
lack of, 116 reinforcement and, 12–13 and, 89–90
marriage and, 314, 350–352
attachment styles, 111, 111f, traditional, 12 frontal lobes of, 136f,
112f 136–137, 154, 394 matching to personality,
Belgium, emerging adulthood 348–349, 349t
adult, 318–320, 341 in, 297 neural pruning and, 74, 274,
275t optimal workplace and,
reactions to widowhood and, bidirectionality, 18
plasticity of, 75 349–350
411–412
of education, 149 in public health, 80
attachment theory, 15–16, 22t sensitivity to stress,
of relationships, 18, 202, 342 depression and, 271 school-to-work transition
attention, selective, 152, 152f,
Big Five traits, 358–362 sudden infant death and, 308
154
binge eating disorder, 246–247 syndrome (SIDS) and, 86 self-esteem and emotional
attention-deficit/hyperactivity
binge-drinking, 49 theory of mind and, 162t growth during college and
disorder (ADHD),
beyond and, 304–305, 305f
154–156 biracial identity, 303 brain development, 41, 41f
stable, 347
interventions for, 155–156 birth, 60–63 child maltreatment and, 208
stimulating, maintaining
audience, imaginary, 266 Bradley method for, 62t in childhood, 136f, 136–137
cognitive abilities and,
Australia breech, 61 during infancy, 74–76, 76t 372–373
fatherhood role in, 344 cesarean section and, 62t, language development tips for finding, 309t
positivity effect in, 400 62–63 related to, 101, 101f
without college degree,
resilience of personality in, dilation and effacement and, low birth weight and, 64 306–308, 307f
361, 361f 60, 60f neural pruning and, 74, 274, caregivers. See also fathers;
authoritarian parents, 201 Lamaze technique for, 61, 275t mother(s); parent(s)
authoritative parents, 201, 202 62t prenatal tests and, 55 for Alzheimer’s disease
autism spectrum disorders maternal death and, 61 social cognition and, 136 patients, interventions for,
(ASDs), 162–164, 163f medical interventions for, 62t teratogens and, 46, 48 436–437
Subject Index SI-3
for elderly parents, 379–381 mourning death of a child cognitive development. See also about puberty, 243
grandparents as, 379 and, 458–459 intelligence; language; about terminal illness,
obesity during. See language development; 453–454
other attachments of, 113,
childhood obesity memory(ies); thinking communities, caring, 423
114f
physical development in adolescence, 258–279 companionate marriages, 334
synchrony in attachment
and, 112 during, 137–142 in childhood, 142–156 concrete operational stage, 21t,
caregiving grandparents, 379 preoperational stage during, in infancy, 93–99 93t, 142, 143t, 146–147,
caring communities, 423 21t, 93t, 142–146, 143t, Piaget’s stages of, 93–98, 147t
147–148 142–148, 143t self-awareness and, 171
cataracts, 425
social cognition during, 136 cognitive developmental theory, conditioning, operant, 12–14
categorization, in infancy, 98t
zone of proximal 21t, 21–22, 22t
cell phones, 9 conflict management,
development during, 149f, cognitive disorders. See friendships and, 189
centering, 143 149–150 neurocognitive disorders
conscientiousness, 359–360
central Europe. See also specific childhood obesity, 139–142 (NCDs)
countries as Big Five trait, 359
consequences of, 140–141 cohabitation
attitudes toward euthanasia education and, 359–360
epigenetics of, 140 rise in, 329t, 329–330
in, 469 growth of, during young
preventing, 141–142 serial, 329
cephalocaudal sequence, 41, 90, adulthood, 305
roots of, 140 in southern Europe, 295
91, 137 conservation tasks, 143, 148
size of epidemic, 139f, cohorts, 5–9
cerebral cortex, 74 consummate love, 334
139–140 baby boom, 5, 7, 407
development of, 136f, contexts of development, 5–11
136–137 children, favorite, of mothers, changing conceptions of
for adolescence, 260–261, 261t
342–343 adult life and, 7–8
certified midwives, 62t for attachment, 108–109
China changing conceptions of
certified nurse assistants (aides), childhood and, 5–6 cohort and, 5–9
441 elder care in, 438
changing conceptions culture and ethnicity and,
cervix, 36, 37f marriage in, 298–299 10, 10f
of later life and, 6–7, 7f
cesarean section, 62t, 62–63 parenting style in, 202 for death and dying, 450, 450f
cross-sectional studies and,
child abuse. See child chorionic villus sampling 27–28 for emerging adulthood,
maltreatment (CVS), 55 Great Recession of 2008 295–296
Child and Adult Care Food chromosomal disorders, 51–52 and, 9 gender and, 10–11, 11t
Program (CACFP), 81t chromosomes, 38, 38f on-line relationships and, for home, 200, 200f
child care, 120–123, 121f sex, 38, 38f, 51 8–9 for late adulthood, 390f,
attachment and, 121 telomeres of, 421 colic, 81 390–392, 392t
choosing, 123, 123t chronic disease collaborative pretend play, 183 for marriage, 328–332, 329f
development and, 121–122 death due to, 455 collectivist cultures, 10 for middle adulthood, 358
quality of, 122–123 fetal programming research adolescent-parent for parenthood, 340, 340f
child custody, divorce and, on, 51 relationships in, 280, 282 of pregnancy, 36
210–211 gender differences in, caring for elderly parents for puberty, 232–234
child development, 4 422–423 in, 380 for retirement, 404–405
child maltreatment, 207–209 in late adulthood, 418 family in, 294, 298
for school, 212f, 212–213
consequences of, 208–209 life expectancy and, 7 learning by observation in,
socioeconomic status and, 9
interventions against, 209 149
terminal drop and, 372 continuing-care retirement
risk factors for, 208 view of adulthood in, 294
chronic diseases communities, 439
childbed fever, 61 college education
HIV/AIDS as, 47t, 63 control intervention, 26
childbirth. See birth income and, 307
circular reactions, 93–94, 95t, conventional level of morality,
childhood, 132–167. See also 96, 110 inner growth during, 264, 264t
early childhood; middle 309–310
class inclusion, 143–144 conventional personality type,
childhood lack of, careers and, 306– 349t
classroom learning, 219–224. 308, 307f
abuse during. See child See also education; cooing, 100, 100t
maltreatment tips for succeeding in college
school(s) corporal punishment, 206. See
brain development during, and, 309t, 309–310
Common Core State also spanking
136f, 136–137 commitment
Standards and, correlational studies, 25, 26
changing conceptions of, 5–6 223–224 marital satisfaction and, 335,
cortisol, during pregnancy, 50
child care and, 120–123, 336, 337t
intrinsic and extrinsic co-sleeping, 85, 86t
121f motivation and, 221–222 of teachers, 220
counseling, genetic, 55
cognitive development lessons for teachers and, 223t in triangular theory of love,
333, 333f, 334 couvade, 43
during, 142–156 successful schools and, 220
commitment script, 366 crawling, 91, 92
concrete operational stage
clear-cut attachment, 110 creative intelligence, 218
during, 21t, 93t, 142, Common Core State Standards,
143t, 146–147, 147t, 171 cliques, 283 223–224 creativity, age and, 370–371,
context for, 136–137 cocaine, teratogenic effects of, communication. See also 371f
47t language; language creeping, 91
experience of dying during,
458 cognition. See also thinking development; speech crime(s)
information-processing gender schema theory and, in adolescence, 281 arrests of adolescents for,
perspective on, 151–156 187 with elderly people, 428 268, 270, 271f
motor abilities during, 138t, social. See social cognition marital happiness and, committed by adolescents,
138–139 cognitive behaviorism, 13–14 335–336 punishment for, 276
SI-4 Subject Index
crime(s) (cont.) death and dying, 448–473 despair, integrity versus, power-assertion. See power
delinquent groups and, advance directives and, 401–402, 402t assertion
284–286 467–468 developed-world nations. See spanking and, 181, 206–207
cross-sectional studies, 27–28 age-based rationing of care also specific countries disease. See also chronic
crowds, 283–286 and, 469–470 infertility in, 57 disease; health, physical;
“bad,” 284–286 of child, mourning, 458–459 socioeconomic status of, 9 infectious diseases; specific
disorders
gangs as, 286 child’s experience of, 458 developing-world nations. See
also specific countries age-related, deprivation in
kinds of, 284, 285f context for, 450, 450f
womb and, 51
purpose of, 283–284 cultural variations and, 451 basic values of, 10
disorganized attachment, 111,
crowning, 60 euthanasia and, 468–469 infertility in, 57
112f, 115
crying good death and, 455–456, malnutrition in, 79f,
divided-attention tasks, 393, 431
457t, 461 79–80, 81t
during infancy, 80–82, 87t divorce, 209–211, 211t,
grieving and, 457–458 socioeconomic status of, 9
soothing and, 81–82 337–338
history of, 450–452 stunting in, 79, 79f
crystallized intelligence, 369, custody and visitation and,
370, 371f hospice care for, 463–466, development. See also specific 210f, 210–211
464f types of development
terminal drop in, 372 emotional growth following,
infant mortality and, 65f, adult, 4 337–338
c-section, 62t, 62–63
65–66 of brain, 41, 41f impact on children,
cuddling, 82, 110
maternal mortality and, 61, 63 cephalocaudal sequence of, 209–210, 211t
culture(s). See also specific
middle knowledge and, 41, 90, 91, 137 in Iran, 330
groups and countries
454–455 child, 4 DNA. See deoxyribonucleic acid
adolescent-parent
relationships and, 280, palliative care for, 462–463 contexts of. See contexts of (DNA)
282 physician-assisted suicide development Do Not Hospitalize (DNH)
attitudes toward obesity and, and, 468, 469 lifespan, 4 orders, 467
141 as play theme, 184 mass-to-specific sequence of, Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)
child maltreatment and, risk of, widowhood and, 410 41, 91, 138 orders, 467
207 SIDS and, 86 proximodistal sequence of, doctors. See health-care
collectivist. See collectivist 40, 91 providers; physicians
of spouse, 409–412
cultures developmental disorders, dominant disorders, 52, 53t, 54
stage theory of, 452–454
death and dying and, 451 48–49. See also dopamine, ADHD and, 154
terminal drop and, 372 intellectual disability
fatherhood role and, 344, dose-response effect, 116
traditional hospital care for, ASDs as, 162–164, 163f
345 double standard, sexual,
460–462
fear of birth defects and, 46 developmental scientists. See 252–253
“Decade of Protest,” 7 developmentalists
formal operational thinking doubt, autonomy versus, 20,
decentering, 143 developmental systems
and, 267 20t, 124t
deinstitutionalization of approach, 22–24, 23f
individualist. See doulas, 61, 62t
marriage, 328–332, 329f to adult roles, 326
individualistic cultures Down syndrome, 51–52
delinquent groups, 284–286 to attachment, 113, 114f
“of connectivity,” 9 driving, in old age, 430–432,
delirium, in Alzheimer’s disease, to caring for elderly parents,
parenting styles and, 202 431f
435 380
puberty and, 232–233 drugs. See illicit drug use;
dementia. See Alzheimer’s to reactions to widowhood,
response to menarche and, medications
disease; neurocognitive 411–412
240 disorders (NCDs) Dunedin Multidisciplinary
retirement and, 408 to relationships, 341 Health, 28 and
dendrites, 74, 74f
risks linked with early to sleep during infancy, 84 Development Study
denial, as stage of dying, 452
maturing in girls and, developmentalists, 3 durable power of attorney for
242, 242f Denmark health care, 467, 468
lifespan development and, 4–5
scaffolding and, 149 elder care in, 438 dying. See death and dying
research strides made by, 475
spanking and, 206 emerging adulthood in, 295 dying trajectory, 460
deviancy training, 285
theory of mind and, 162t deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), 38 dyslexia, 214–215, 215t
diabetic retinopathy, 425
widowhood and, 412 epigenetics and. See ear(s). See hearing
dialectic behavior therapy,
epigenetics
custodial grandparents, 379 for eating disorders, 248 early childhood
dependent variables, 27f
custody, divorce and, diethylstilbestrol (DES), fantasy play during, 183–184
210–211 depression (economic). See teratogenic effects of, 48 information-processing
Great Depression
cutting, during adolescence, difficult babies, 113 guidelines for, 153t
270–271 depression (emotional)
dilation, 60 initiative versus guilt stage
CVS. See chorionic villus in adolescence, 242, 271 during, 20t, 171t, 171–172
disabilities
sampling (CVS) cognitive decline associated poverty during, 117–120
intellectual. See intellectual
cyberbullying, 193 with, 398
disability psychosocial task of, 20t
cystic fibrosis (CF), 53t dying and, 453
in late adulthood, 400–401
cytomegalovirus, teratogenic in early-maturing girls, 242 E
learning, 214
effects of, 47t gender differences in, 271 Early Head Start, 120
discipline. See also parenting
widowhood and, 410 styles early puberty, 238–239
D depth perception, in infancy, authoritative, for adolescents, eastern Europe. See also specific
dating, 312 90, 90f 273 countries
day-care centers, 121 DES. See diethylstilbestrol (DES) harsh, temperament evoking, attitudes toward euthanasia
day-care programs, 439 desire, sexual. See sexual desire 180–181, 181f in, 469
Subject Index SI-5
easy babies, 113 teratogens during, 46 supports to aid memory and, adolescent-parent
eating. See also food; emerging adulthood, 294t, 396–397 relationships in, 280
malnutrition; 294–325 teratogenic effects of toxins fertility rates in, 340, 340f
undernutrition careers during. See careers; in, 47t maternal mortality in, 63
during infancy, 76–80, 87t, work timing of puberty and, 239 median age in, 390
141 context for, 295–296 environment-sensitive genes, retirement in, 404
eating disorders, 246–247, 247t end point of, 298–299 19–20 working hours in, 347
ecology, 22–24, 23f entry point for, 296–298 epidural anesthesia, for euthanasia, 468–469
economics. See financial issues; childbirth, 62t
generativity during, 364 evocative forces, 18
Great Recession of epigenetically programmed
2008; income; poverty; identity during, 300t, evocative process, parenting
pathways, 19–20
socioeconomic status 300–303 styles and, 202
epigenetics, 20
(SES) love during. See love; evolutionary psychology,
marriage of child maltreatment, 16, 22t
education. See also classroom 208
learning; school(s) mental health during, adolescent mind and, 275
304–305 of childhood obesity
bidirectionality of, 149 eating in infancy and, 77
epidemic, 140
college, 307, 308–310, 309t recognition of, as life stage, 6 social cognitive capacity and,
fetal programming research 136
conscientiousness and, emotion(s). See also and, 51
359–360 socioemotional executive functions, 151–156
development episiotomy, 62t
early-childhood poverty and, ADHD and, 154–156
fluctuating, widowhood and, episodic memory, 395f, 395–396
119 adolescent storms and, 273
410 equity
emerging adulthood and, allostatic load and, 372, 372f
295 in infancy, 106–131 intergenerational, 408–409
ASDs and, 162
about end of life, for health- intensity of, during marital, 341
conscientiousness and,
care workers, 462 adolescence, 269f, Erikson’s psychosocial stages, 359–360
Head Start and, 120 269–271, 271f 20, 20t, 22t, 84t
divided-attention tasks and,
in Iran, 330 management of, friendships in adolescence, 20, 20t, 300, 394
and, 189 300t
life expectancy and, emotion regulation and, 170
420–421, 422f related to pregnancy, 44 in early childhood, 20t, 171t,
growth of, during young
self-conscious, 125 171–172
mate finding and, 331–332 adulthood, 305
self-esteem and emotional in infancy, 20, 20t, 84t
national youth program inhibition and, 152–153
implemented during growth during college and in late adulthood, 20t,
in neurocognitive disorders,
Great Depression and, beyond and, 304–305, 401–402, 402t
433
260 305f in middle adulthood, 20, 20t,
rehearsal and, 152
preschools and, 120 emotion regulation, 170 363, 363t
selective attention and, 152
school-to-work transition problems with, at-risk teens in middle childhood, 171t,
172 exercise
and, 308 and, 272
in toddlerhood, 20, 20t, 124t for ADHD, 156
self-esteem and emotional emotional child abuse, 207
in young adulthood, 20t, lack of, childhood obesity
growth during college emotional support, friendship
311t and, 140
and, 304–305, 305f and, 188
erogenous zones, 15 to slow development of
sex, 243–244, 253–254 empathy, 176 Alzheimer’s disease, 435
socioeconomic status and. employment. See careers; work estrogens
staying cognitively smart and,
See socioeconomic status empty nest, marital satisfaction menopause and, 381–382 371, 373
(SES) and, 332 puberty and, 234 existential intelligence, 218
universal, 6 end-of-life care instruction, 462 ethics expectations, of mothers, 342
Efé people, attachment among, endometrium, 36, 37f care for the dying and,
114, 115 experience. See also life
entrepreneurial personality type, 461–462 experience
effacement, 60 moral judgment and, 263–
349t openness to, 359, 372
ego, 14–15 265, 264t
environment. See also nature experience-sampling technique,
egocentrism versus nurture issue in research, 27 269, 304
adolescent, 265–266 changing to increase healthy- ethnic identity, 302–303 experiments, true,
in Piaget’s theory, 146, 148 life years, 423–424 ethnicity. See also culture(s); 26–27, 27f
ejaculation, first, 241 epigenetics and. See specific groups externalizing tendencies, 170,
El Salvador, parenting style in, epigenetics attitudes toward obesity and, 172–173, 173t, 174t
202 IQ and, 216 141 in early-maturing girls,
elder care, 438–442 noise exposure and hearing dating and, 312 241–242
alternatives for, in United and, 426 face perception in infancy in highly aggressive children,
States, 439 parenting styles related to, and, 89–90 180–181
context for, 438 204–205 identity and, 302–303 in rejected children, 191
in nursing homes, person-environment fit and, transition to intercourse and, extinction, 12, 13
440–441 19 250 extraversion, 359
elderly people. See late pregnancy and, 46, 47t, in United States, 10, 10f extrinsic career rewards, 349
adulthood 48–51 ethology, attachment and, 108 extrinsic motivation, classroom
elderspeak, 428 puberty and, 234, 235f eudaimonic happiness, 364 learning and, 221–222
electronic fetal monitors, 62t reactions to widowhood and, Europe. See also specific exuberance
elopements, in India, 330 412 countries and regions of in highly aggressive children,
embryonic stage, 40, 40f school, puberty and, 243 Europe 180–181
SI-6 Subject Index
exuberance (cont.) fertilization, 36–39 gangs, adolescent, 286 DNA and, 38. See also
in toddlerhood, 126–127, genetics of, 38, 38f Gardner’s multiple intelligences epigenetics
128, 128t in vitro (IVF), 58 theory, 218 of eating disorders, 247
eyes. See vision process of, 36–38 gay males environment-sensitive genes
same-sex relationships and, and, 19–20
reproductive systems and,
F 36, 37f 312–314, 313t epigenetics and. See
face perception, in infancy, sexual identity of, 313 epigenetics
fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), 49
88–90 gender. See also females; of fertilization, 38, 38f
fetal monitors, electronic, 62t
Facebook, 8, 9 males genes and, 19–20, 38, 38f
fetal programming research,
grandparents’ use of, 378 51, 421 impact of, 10–11, 11t parenting styles related to,
romance and, 317–318, 318t gender differences 204–205
fetal stage, 41f, 41–42, 42f
fall(s), avoiding, 429–430 in adolescent-parent puberty and, 234, 235f
financial issues. See also
fallopian tubes, 36, 37f income; poverty; relationships, 281 puberty timetables and, 238,
socioeconomic status in aggression, 179, 239
family(ies). See also fathers;
grandparent(s); (SES) 182, 189 resilient children and, 204
grandparenthood; divorce and, 337 in ASDs, 163 geriatric population. See late
mother(s); parent(s); during pregnancy, 44 in body image concerns, adulthood
parenting styles 244–246 German measles, teratogenic
retirement and, 404–406, 408
stereotypes about, 328t in chronic disease, 422–423 effects of, 46, 47t
fine motor skills, 138
work and, 347, 350–351 in depression, 271 Germany
Finland, age of marriage in, 314
family day care, 121 in disability, 423 apprentice programs in, 308
first trimester, 43
family watchdogs, 377 in eating disorders, 247 Hitler Youth and, 300
flow
family-leave policies in grandparenthood, 378 resilience of personality in,
careers and, 305–306, 306f 361, 361f
fathers’ involvement in child in life expectancy, 422
care and, 345 in college, 309–310 retirement in, 404
love and, 334 in play, 185–187
working women and, 350 germinal stage, 39f, 39–40
marital satisfaction and, 334 in prosocial behavior,
family-work conflict, 350 176, 177 gerontology, 4
fantasy play, 183–184 fluid intelligence, 369–371, gestation, 42. See also
371f in puberty timetable,
FAS. See fetal alcohol syndrome 237, 238f pregnancy; prenatal
(FAS) in late adulthood, 393 development
in reactions to widowhood,
fathers, 344–345 Flynn effect, 216, 370 411–412 Ghana, grandmothers in, 377
actions of, 344–345 focused attachment, 110 sexual double standard and, gifted children, 214
breadwinner role of, 344, 345 food. See also eating; eating 252–253 girls. See females; entries
disorders; malnutrition; in sports-related activities, beginning with term
feelings about pregnancy of, 45 undernutrition 138 gender
involvement with children in ADHD, 155 in work and careers, glare, sensitivity to, 425
of, 345
inadequate. See malnutrition; 350–352, 351f glaucoma, 425
as nurturers, 344 undernutrition gender schema theory, 187 gonads, 234. See also ovaries;
parenting skills of, child food insecurity, 80, 119 gender-segregated play, 185–187 testes
mental health and, 210f,
210–211 Food Stamp Program, 81t gene(s), 38, 38f good death, 455–456, 457t, 461
reaction to miscarriage of, 45 formal operational stage, 21t, APOE-4, 434, 435 goodness of fit, 129
93t, 143t, 261–262, 262t, government-sponsored programs
favorite children of, 342–343 environment-sensitive, 19–20
266–267 (U.S.)
females. See also mother(s); generativity, 362–367
abstract reasoning in, Medicaid, 440
entries beginning with adult happiness and,
266–268 Medicare, 408, 439, 464, 465
term gender 364–365, 365t
egocentrism in, 265–266 nutritional, 81t
chances of remarriage for, age differences in, 364
338 moral judgment in, Social Security, 404–405,
263–265, 264t childhood memories and,
conception and birth of, 38 366–367 408
Freud’s psychosexual stages, 15 youth program implemented
early-maturing, 241–243 McAdams’s Generative
“friends with benefits,” 251 during Great Depression
infertility in, 57 Concern Scale and, 363t,
friendships, 188–189 363–364 and, 260
lesbian, 312–314, 313t
core qualities of, 188 as psychosocial task, 20, 20t grades, as external reinforcers,
menstruation and, 233f, 221
233–234, 236, 240, functions of, 188–189 redemption sequences and,
381–382, 382t widowhood and, 410–411 366 grammar, 99
physical changes of puberty frontal lobes generativity versus stagnation Grand Central Station, hearing
in, 235–236, 237f stage, 20, 20t, 363, 363t loop in, 429
ADHD and, 154
physiological hardiness of, 10 genetic counselors, 55 grandparent(s)
development of, 136f,
pregnancy and. See 136–137 genetic disorders, 52–55, 53t caregiving, 379
pregnancy late adulthood memory genetic testing, 55 custodial, 379
reproductive system of, 36, 37f deficits and, 394 genetics. See also gene(s); grandparenthood, 377–379
retirement of, 405 frustration-aggression heritability; nature versus grasping reflex, 77, 77f
sexuality in middle hypothesis, 179 nurture issue Great Depression
adulthood and, 381–383, of ADHD, 154, 155 national youth program
382t, 383t G of Alzheimer’s disease, 434, implemented during, 260
fertility, puberty and, 236, 237 g factor, 216–217 435 Social Security and, 404
fertility rates, 340, 340f gametes, 38 behavioral, 16–18, 22t Great Recession of 2008, 9
Subject Index SI-7
career goals and, 304 dying trajectory and, home health services, 439 immigrant paradox, 282
retirement and, 405 460–461 homogamy, 315, 317, 317t, implantation, 39, 39f
working hours and, 347 end-of-life care instruction 331–332, 360 impulsivity, in adolescence,
for, 462 homophobia, 313 267
Greece, emerging adulthood
in, 295 ethical choices faced by, homosexuality. See bisexual in vitro fertilization (IVF), 58
death and, 461–462 persons; gay males; income. See also financial issues;
grieving. See mourning
hospice care provided by, lesbians poverty; socioeconomic
gross motor skills, 138 463–466, 464f hormones, 36. See also status (SES)
groups, adolescent, 282–286 physician-assisted suicide estrogens; oxytocin; college education and, 307
cliques as, 283 and, 468, 469 testosterone gender differences in, 351
crowds as, 283–286 working in nursing homes, ovulation and, 36 during retirement, 404–405,
delinquent, 284–286 441 during pregnancy, 43 408
growth, emotional health-care system puberty and, 234 income inequality, 8–9
during college, 304–305, age-based rationing of care sexual desire and, 249 independent variables, 26, 27f
305f and, 469–470
hospice movement, 463–466, India, marriage in, 312,
following divorce, death and dying and. See 464f 330–331
337–338 death and dying
hospital care, for death and individual differences
growth, physical healthy-life years, 423, 423f dying, 460–462 in puberty timetables,
in adolescence, 235–236 hearing hostile attributional bias, 238–239
in childhood, 137 aging and, 426–428, 427f, 181–182 in theory of mind,
430t antisocial peer groups and,
in infancy, 90 160–162, 162t
in infancy, 88t 286
low birth weight and, 64 individualistic cultures, 10
hearing aids, 427, 428 HPG axis, puberty and, 234
growth spurt, 235 adolescent-parent
hearing loop, 428, 429 human chorionic gonadotropin relationships in, 280, 282
in boys, 236 (HCG), 43
heart attacks, gender difference view of adulthood in, 294, 295
in girls, 235–236 in, 422 Hunger Winter, 50 induction, 177
guilt hedonic happiness, 364 Huntington disease (HD), 53t, industry, as psychosocial task,
initiative versus, 20t, 171t, “Heinz dilemma,” 263–264, 54 20, 20t
171–172 264t
industry versus inferiority stage,
prosocial behavior and, 178 helplessness, learned, 172 I 171t, 172
hemophilia, 53t id, 14, 15 infancy, 72–124. See also
H Hereditary Disease Foundation, identity, 300t, 300–303 newborns
habituation, 88 54 ethnic, 302–303 attachment during. See
happiness heritability. See also genetics Marcia’s identity statuses entries beginning with
in career, 348–350 of IQ, 19 and, 300–302 term attachment
after divorce, 337–338 of personality, 360 as psychosocial task, 20, 20t basic trust versus mistrust
herpes, teratogenic effects of, sexual, 313 stage during, 20, 20t, 84t
eudiamonic, 364
47t identity achievement, 301 birth and. See birth
friendship and, 410–411
hip fractures, 429 identity confused people, brain development during,
hedonic, 364
Hispanic/Latino Americans 313–314 74–76, 76t
of marriage, 320, 332–333,
body image concerns among, identity constancy, 145 categorization during, 98t
335–336, 340–341
245–246 child care and, 120–123, 121f
in middle adulthood, identity diffusion, 300, 301
364–365, 365t conception of intelligence cognitive development
identity foreclosure, 301
among, 213 during, 93–99
in old age, keys to, identity statuses, 300–302
dating of people of other context for, 74–76
401–402, 402t identity versus role confusion
ethnic groups by, 312 crying during, 80–82, 87t
in retirement, 407 stage, 20, 20t, 300, 300t
longevity of, 422 Early Head Start during, 120
HCG. See human chorionic IDS. See infant-directed speech
gonadotropin (HCG) puberty timetable of, 238 (IDS) eating during, 76–80, 87t,
Hitler Youth, 300 141
HD. See Huntington disease illicit drug use
(HD) HIV/AIDS growth during, 90
in adolescence, 268, 269t
Head Start, 120 maternal mortality and, 63 language development
teratogenic effects of, 47t
teratogenic effects of, 47t during, 99–102
health, mental. See mental illness. See also chronic disease;
Hmong culture, death and malnutrition during, 79f,
health disease; health, physical;
dying and, 451 79–80, 81t
health, physical. See also infectious diseases; specific
Holland disorders memory during, 98t
chronic disease; disease;
infectious diseases; specific age of marriage in, 314 terminal, 453–454. See also motor development during,
disorders death and dying 91–92
Hunger Winter in, 50
malnutrition and, 79, 80 imaginary audience, 266 sensorimotor stage during,
Holland’s six types of 21t, 93t, 93–96, 95t, 143t
socioeconomic health gap personality, 348–349, 349t imitation, 13
and, 420–422, 422f sleeping during, 82f, 82–86,
holophrase stage, 100, 100t immigrant(s). See also specific
87t
staying cognitively smart and, home, 200–212. See also fathers; immigrant groups
socioemotional development
371–372, 372f mother(s); parent(s); acculturation of, 205, 282
during, 106–131. See also
widowhood and, 410 parenting styles adolescent-parent entries beginning with
health-care providers context for, 200, 200f relationships among, 282 term attachment
advance directives and, leaving. See nest-leaving death and dying and, 451 sudden infant death
467–468 home deaths, 465–466, 466t parenting styles of, 202 syndrome during, 86
SI-8 Subject Index
infancy (cont.) mental stimulation and, median age in, 390 retirement and. See retirement
synchrony in attachment 372–373 working women in, 350 stereotypes about, 392t
and, 112–113 postformal thought and. See jobs. See careers; work as unhappiest time of life,
temperament during, postformal thought 400–401
112–113 practical, 218 K vision during, 424–426,
understanding of numbers staying cognitively smart and, kangaroo care, 81–82 425f, 430t
during, 98t 371–374 widowhood during,
kinesthetic intelligence, 219
vision during, 88–90 Sternberg’s views on, 409–412
Kohlberg’s stages of moral
infant massage, 82 217–218 young-old, 390
judgment, 263–265, 264t
infant mortality, 65f, 65–66 successful, 218 Latinos. See Hispanic/Latino
Kübler-Ross’s stage theory of
infant-directed speech (IDS), intelligence tests. See IQ tests dying, 452–454 Americans
101 intentions, infant social !Kung San people, infant care laws
infectious diseases cognition and, 98–99 among, 81 banning corporal
childbed fever, 61 intercourse, first, age of, 250f, kwashiorkor, 80 punishment, 206
HIV/AIDS, 47t, 63 250–251 on child custody, 210
labor, 60, 60f. See also birth
life expectancy and, 7 intergenerational equity, on child maltreatment
408–409 reporting, 209
teratogenic effects of, 46, 47t L
internalizing tendencies, 170, punishment for adolescent
inferiority, industry versus, 171t, 172–173, 173t LAD. See language acquisition
172 device (LAD) crimes and, 276
in rejected children, 191 lead, teratogenic effects of,
infertility, 56–59 Lamaze technique, 61, 62t
interpersonal intelligence, 218 47t
interventions for, 58f, 58–59 language
interracial dating, 312 learned helplessness, 172
information processing brain plasticity and, 75
intimacy, 311. See also love learning
ADHD and, 154–156 inner speech and, 157
in triangular theory of love, classroom. See classroom
driving and, 431 333, 333f, 334 language acquisition device learning
information-processing (LAD), 99
intimacy versus isolation stage, passion to learn and
approach 311t language development, language development
to cognitive development, 99–102, 157–158, 158t and, 99–100
intrapersonal intelligence, 218
97, 151–156 brain development related to,
intrinsic career rewards, 349 social, body image concerns
guidelines for, to early and 101, 101f and, 245–246
middle childhood, 153t intrinsic motivation
milestones of, 100t, learning disabilities, 214
on memory, 394f, 394–395 classroom learning and,
100–102, 101f lens, of eye, 425, 425f
221–222
prosocial behavior and, passion to learn and, 99–100
flow and, 306 leptin, puberty and, 234
176–177 late adulthood, 388–445
investigative personality type, lesbians
inhibition, 152–153 ageism and, 391
349t same-sex relationships and,
initiative versus guilt stage, 20t, as best time of life, 399–400
IQ tests, 213–214, 214f, 312–314, 313t
171t, 171–172
216–217. See also caring for elderly parents sexual identity of, 313
inner speech, 157
intelligence and, 379–381 libido, 15
insecure attachment, 115
changing scores with age, changing conceptions of, life expectancy
insecurely attached children, 368–369, 369f 6–7, 7f
111, 112f average, 6–7, 7f
Flynn effect and, 216, 370 changing personal priorities
institutionalization of Down syndrome babies,
reliability and validity of, during, 398–399 51–52
of babies, attachment and, 216–217 context for, 390f,
116 dying trajectory and, 460
self-doubt and, 397–398 390–392, 392t
for elders, alternatives to, 439 education and, 421, 422f
WAIS, 368, 369f, 369–370 driving during, 430–432,
instrumental ADL problems, emerging adulthood and,
WISC, 213–214, 214f 431f 295
418, 419, 419f
Iran elder care services for, lifespan limit and, 419–420
integrity, in old age, 401–402, 438–442
402t child abuse in, 207 marital status and, 333
infertility in, 57 happiness in, keys to,
integrity versus despair stage, median age and, 390
401–402, 402t
401–402, 402t marriage in, 330 socioeconomic health gap
hearing during, 426–428,
intellectual disability maternal mortality in, 63 and, 420–422, 422f
427f, 430t
in Down syndrome, 51 Ireland, infant feeding in, 78 twentieth-century revolution
integrity versus despair stage
IQ scores and, 214 isolation, intimacy versus, 311t in, 6–7, 7f
during, 20t, 401–402, 402t
low birth weight and, 64 Italy life experience
keys to happiness during,
intelligence, 368–374, 369f. See cohabitation in, 295 401–402, 402t genetic potential and, 19
also IQ tests emerging adulthood in, 295 living arrangements for, 439 Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s
age-related changes in, median age in, 390 perspectives on, 150t
memory during, 392–398,
370–371 IVF. See in vitro fertilization 402–403 life extension research, 420
analytic, 218 (IVF) motor performance during, life-course difficulties, 274
creative, 218 428–430, 430t lifespan
crystallized, 369, 370, 371f J neurocognitive disorders limit to, 419–420
fluid, 369–371, 371f, 393 Japan during, 432–438 maximum, 7
Gardner’s multiple caring for elderly parents old-old, 390 lifespan development, 4
intelligences and, 218 in, 380 physical aging during, context and. See contexts of
health and, 371–372, 372f co-sleeping in, 85 418f, 418–424, 419f development
heritability of, 19 fatherhood role in, 344 psychosocial task of, 20t little-scientist phase, 94, 110
Subject Index SI-9
living arrangements government-sponsored medical scooters, 430 middle adulthood, 356–385

cohabitation as, 295, 329t, programs to combat, in medical workers. See health-care context for, 358
329–330 United States, 81t providers generativity versus stagnation
co-residing and, 298, 298t during infancy, 79f, 79–80, 81t Medicare, 408, 439 stage during, 20, 20t, 363,
for elders, 439 during pregnancy, 50–51 hospice care and, 363t
living wills, 467 Maori people, co-sleeping 464, 465 grandparenthood during,
among, 86 medications 377–379
longitudinal studies, 28–29
Marcia’s identity statuses, for ADHD, 155, 156 intelligence during, 368–376
long-term-care facilities, 440–441
300–302 parent care during, 379–381
love teratogenic effects of, 47t
marital equity, 341 personality during, 358–367
attachment theory and, meditation, for eating disorders,
marriage, 328–339 248 sexuality during, 381–383,
318–320
age of, 298–299, 314 memory(ies) 382t, 383t
consummate, 334
arranged, 311–312, 330, 335 autobiographical, 159–160 middle childhood
context for search for,
311–312 career and, 314, 350–352 brain imaging and, 394f, industry versus inferiority
commitment to, 335, 336, 394–395 stage during, 171t, 172
evaluating relationships and,
321, 321t 337t childhood, of generative information-processing
communications in, 335–336 adults, 366–367 guidelines for, 153t
Facebook romance and,
317–318, 318t companionate, 334 divided-attention tasks and, Middle East. See also specific
393 countries
flow and, 334 context for, 328–332, 329f
episodic, 395f, 395–396 adolescent-parent
homogamy and, 315, 317, deinstitutionalization of,
relationships in, 280
317t, 331–332, 360 328–332, 329f frontal lobes and, 394
middle knowledge, 454–455
same-sex, 313 divorce and, 337–338 in infancy, 98t
mild cognitive impairment, 435
maturity and, 361 finding partners for, 312 information-processing
approach to, 151, 394f, milk, human, 78–79
potential partners and, 312 happiness of, 320, 332–333,
335–336 394–395 mind, theory of. See theory of
romantic, 334 mind
homogamy and, 315, 317, in late adulthood, 392–398,
same-sex relationships and, minorities. See culture(s);
317t, 331–332, 360 402–403
312–314, 313t ethnicity; entries
same-sex, 313 memory-systems perspective
stimulus-value-role theory beginning with term
satisfaction in, 332–333, 335, on, 395f, 395–396
and, 315–317 gender; specific groups
336, 337t in neurocognitive disorders,
timing of finding, 314 miscarriage, 43
second or third, 338–339 433
triangular theory of, 333f, from male point of view, 45
shared values and, 315 procedural, 395f, 395–396
333–334 mistrust, basic trust versus, 20,
stepchildren and, 338–339 semantic, 395f, 395–396
following widowhood, 412 20t, 84t
successful, core attitudes in, strategies to aid, 396–398
young people’s self-esteem MLU. See mean length of
and, 305 335, 336, 337t working, 151, 154, 394 utterance (MLU)
low birth weight, 64 transition to parenthood and, memory-systems perspective, mnemonic techniques, 396–397
340–341 395f, 395–396
disease and death in modeling, 13
adulthood related to, 421 triangular theory of love and, men. See males; entries beginning
Monaco, life expectancy in, 420
333f, 333–334 with term gender
moral judgment, in
M U-shaped curve of marital menarche, 236
adolescence, 263–265,
satisfaction and, 332–333 declining age of, 233f, 264t
macular degeneration, 425
widowhood and, 409–412 233–234
major neurocognitive disorders, moratorium, 300, 301
432 Masai people, puberty rites of, puberty rites and, 233
ruminative, 302
233 menopause, 381–382, 382t
males. See also fathers; entries morning sickness, 43
beginning with term massage, of infants, 82 menstruation, 240
morphemes, 157, 158t
gender mass-to-specific sequence, 41, onset of, 233f, 233–234
91, 138 mortality. See death and dying
chances of remarriage for, mental health
mate(s). See love; marriage mother(s)
338 authoritative parenting and,
maternal age, Down syndrome breast-feeding by, 78–79
conception and birth of, 38 202
and, 52 divorced, poverty and, 209
domination of marriage of, in childhood rejection and, 191
Iran, 330 maturity, personality and, favorite children of, 342–343
in emerging adulthood,
gay, 312–314, 313t 360–362, 361f, 362t 304–305 infant sleep and, 84
infertility in, 57 maximum lifespan, 7 father’s parenting and, 210f, time devoted to child care
Mayan people, learning by 210–211 by, 343, 345f
miscarriage and, 45
observation among, 149 infant attachment and, 115 unmarried, 329–330, 331
physical changes of puberty
in, 236–237, 237f McAdams’s Generative Concern widowhood and, 410 working, 120–123, 121f,
Scale, 363t, 363–364 350–352
reproductive system of, 36, mental retardation. See
37f mean length of utterance intellectual disability motherhood, 341–344, 342t
(MLU), 157 expectations and, 343
sexuality in middle mental stimulation, staying
adulthood and, 381, means-end behavior, 94–95 cognitively smart and, inner experience of, 342–343
382–383, 383t media 372–373 stress and, 343–344, 344f
societal attitudes toward age of first intercourse and, 251 mercury, teratogenic effects motivation
earnings of, 351 body image concerns and, of, 47t extrinsic, classroom learning
malnutrition 245–246 methamphetamine, teratogenic and, 221–222
in developing-world nations, median age, 390 effects of, 47t intrinsic. See intrinsic
79f, 79–80, 81t Medicaid, 440 micronutrient deficiencies, 79 motivation
SI-10 Subject Index
motor development parent-child relationships Norway P

in childhood, 138t, 138–139 and, 297 elder care in, 438 pain control, hospice care and,
in infancy, 91–92 neural pruning, 74, 274, 275t emerging adulthood in, 295 464–465
low birth weight and, 64 neural tube, 40, 40f infant feeding in, 78 palliative care, 462–463
motor performance, aging and, neurocognitive disorders NSCW. See National Survey of paradox of well-being,
428–430, 430t (NCDs), 432–438 the Changing Workforce 399–400
mourning attempts to prevent, 434 (NSCW) parent(s). See also fathers;
during childhood, 459t causes of, 434 numbers, understanding of, in mother(s); entries beginning
dimensions of, 433–434, 434f infancy, 98t with term parenting
of death of a child, 458–459
due to Alzheimer’s disease. nurses. See health-care providers alienation from, at-risk teens
widowhood and, 457
See Alzheimer’s disease and, 273
multiple intelligences theory, 218 nursing homes, 440–441
interventions for, 435–437, attachment relationship
multiracial identity, 303 nurture, 12. See also
437t between, 113, 114f
environment; genetics;
musical intelligence, 218 authoritarian, 201
major and minor, 432 nature versus nurture issue
myelin sheath, 136 authoritative, 201, 202
vascular, 434 nurturer fathers, 344
development of, 274–275 children’s relationships
neurofibrillary tangles, 434 nutrition. See eating; food; food
erosion during late insecurity; malnutrition; with. See parent-child
adulthood, 394 neurons, 40, 74, 74f relationships; entries
neuropsychological tests, undernutrition
myelination, 74 beginning with term
in Alzheimer’s disease, nutrition programs, 81t attachment
435 children’s sleep problems
N O
neuroscience. See also brain; and, 83–84
National Health and Nutrition brain imaging obesity
Examination Survey co-sleeping and, 85, 86t
(NHANES), 139 late adulthood memory in childhood. See childhood discussion of puberty with,
deficits and, 394 obesity 243
National Health Interview
Survey (NHIS), 418 neuroticism, 358 fetal programming research divorce of, 209–211, 211t
neurotransmitters on, 51
National Institute of Child elderly, caring for, 379–381
Health and Human ADHD and, 154 low birth weight and, 64
nest-leaving and, 296–298
Development (NICHD), risk taking in adolescence socioeconomic status and,
overweight, children of, 140
child care studies of, 121, and, 275 421
122 permissive, 201
New Zealand, co-sleeping in, object permanence, 95–96
National Survey of the 86 rejecting-neglecting, 201
observation, naturalistic, 25, 26t
Changing Workforce newborns, 63–66. See also resilient children and,
occupational segregation, 351 203–204
(NSCW), 347 infancy Oedipus complex, 15 risk factors for child abuse
Native Americans, Vista School infant mortality and, 65f,
and, 220 off time, for achieving adult life and, 208
65–66
tasks, 298 separating from, 279–282,
natural childbirth, 61, 62t kangaroo care for, 81–82
old-age dependency ratio, 408 280f
naturalist intelligence, 218 low birth weight and very low
older adults. See late adulthood socialization by. See
naturalistic observation, 25, 26t birth weight, 64–65
old-old, 7, 390 socialization
nature, 12 neonatal intensive care unit
and, 64 marital status of, 333 of teens, tips for, 275t
nature versus nurture issue,
12–22. See also preterm or premature, 64 Olweus Bully Prevention training of, for ADHD, 155
environment; genetics; Program, 193 parent care, 379–381
reflexes of, 77, 77f
heritability on time, for achieving adult life parental alienation, 210
swaddling, 81
aggression and, 180 tasks, 298 parent-child relationships
testing of, 63
brain plasticity and, 75 on-line dating, 312 at-risk teens and, 273
NHANES. See National
functioning during later life Health and Nutrition on-line relationships, 8–9 bidirectionality of, 202,
and, 416 Examination Survey openness to experience, 359, 372 342
intelligence and, 216 (NHANES) operant conditioning, 12–14 crawling and, 92
language development and, NHIS. See National Health of sucking, 77 nest-leaving and, 297
99–100 Interview Survey (NHIS) oral stage, 15, 77 parenthood, 340–346. See
parenting styles and, 204–205 NICHD. See National Institute orphanages, attachment and, 116 also fathers; mother(s);
social shyness and, 191 of Child Health and motherhood
Human Development osteoarthritis, 429
Navajo Kinaalda, puberty rites checklist of advice for, 346t
(NICHD) osteoporosis, 429
of, 233 choosing not to become a
Nigeria, puberty in, 232 ovaries, 36, 37f, 234 parent and, 340, 340f
NCDs. See neurocognitive
disorders (NCDs) noise exposure, hearing and, overextensions, 158, 158t context for, 340, 340f
neglect, 207 426 overregularization, 158, 158t generativity and, 365
rejecting-neglecting parents nondisjunction, 51 overweight, early puberty and, stepchildren and,
and, 201 non-normative transitions, 4 238–239 338–339
neonatal intensive care unit, 64 nonsuicidal self-injury, 270–271 ovulation, 36, 37 transition to, 340–341
Nepal, undernourished children norm(s), age, 298 ovum(a), 36, 37, 37f, 38 unmarried, 329–330, 331
in, 139 normal aging changes, 418 age of, Down syndrome parenting
nest-leaving, 296–298 normative transitions, 4 and, 52
ADHD children and,
becoming adult and, northern Europe. See also oxytocin 154–155
297–298, 298t specific countries attachment and, 115 biological parenthood and,
in northern Europe, 295 emerging adulthood in, 295 stimulation by love, 422 66
Subject Index SI-11
divorce and, 337 physical changes preattachment phase, 109 protection, friendship and,
father’s skills at, child mental during adolescence, preconventional level of 188–189
health and, 210f, 210–211 235–237, 237f morality, 264, 264t proximity-seeking behavior, 109
shaping of, by children, 18 during childhood, 137–142 preferential-looking paradigm, proximodistal sequence, 40, 91
parenting styles, 200–203, 201f in late adulthood, 418f, 88 psychoanalysis, 15
cultural differences in, 202 418–424, 419f pregnancy, 42–45. See also psychoanalytic theory,
variation in, 201–202 physical child abuse, 207 prenatal development 14–15, 22t
passion physician(s). See health-care context of, 36 psychosexual stages, 15
aging and, 382–383, 383t providers emotions related to, 44 psychosocial stages. See Erikson’s
in triangular theory of love, physician-assisted suicide, 468, infertility and, 56–59 psychosocial stages
333f, 333–334 469 preventing childhood obesity psychosocial tasks, 20, 20t, 22t
passive euthanasia, 468 Piaget’s cognitive developmental and, 141 puberty, 232–244
theory, 93–98, 142–148, stress during, 45, 45t, 50, 50f
past-talk conversations, 159 celebration of, 233
143t timeline of, 57
PCBs, teratogenic effects of, 47t communication about, 243
placenta, 40 trimesters of, 42–44
peer(s). See also friendships context for, 232–234
expulsion of, 60 premature newborns, 64
adolescent groups and, declining age of, 233f,
plaques, in Alzheimer’s disease, prenatal development, 39–42,
282–286 233–234
434–435 46–56. See also pregnancy
age of first intercourse and, hormones and, 234, 235f
plasticity, of brain, 75 chromosomal disorders and,
250–251 minimizing distress due to,
play, 182–187 51–52
risk taking and, 267 243–244
fantasy, 183–184 embryonic stage of, 40, 40f
socialization and, 204–205 physical changes in,
fathers’ involvement in, 345 fetal stage of, 41f, 41–42, 42f 235–237, 237f
peer group socialization,
immigrant parent-child gender differences in, genetic disorders and, 52–55, reactions to, 240–243
relationships and, 282 185–187 53t timetable of, individual
pensions, private, 405 impact of, 185 genetic testing and, 55 differences in, 238–239
perception pretend, collaborative, 183 germinal stage of, 39f, 39–40 puberty rites, 232–233
of depth, in infancy, 90, 90f promotion of social cognition prenatal testing and, 55–56 pubic hair, in girls, 236
by, 139 principles of, 40–41
of faces, in infancy, 88–90 public health, career in, 80
rough-and-tumble, 182 teratogens and, 46, 47t,
perimenopause, 381 punishment. See also discipline;
social cognition and, 139 48–51 parenting styles
permissive parents, 201
popularity, 189–191, 190f, 190t timeline of, 56 for adolescent crimes, 276
persistent complex bereavement-
related disorder, or academic and personal costs prenatal tests, 55–56, 57 corporal, 206. See also
prolonged grief, 457–458 of, 272 preoccupied/ambivalent spanking
personal fable, 266 relational aggression and, insecure attachment,
189–190, 190f 318, 319 Q
personality, 170–182, 358–367
Portugal, emerging adulthood preoperational stage, 21t, 93t, qualitative research, 29
aggression and, 179–182, 180t
in, 295, 297 142–146, 143t, 147–148 quantitative research, 29
Big Five traits and, 358–362
positivity effect, 399–400 ideas about substances in, quickening, 43
career success and, 143–144, 144f
postconventional level of
348–349, 349t
morality, 264, 264t perceptions about people in, R
caring for elderly parents 146–146
postformal thought, 374–376 race. See culture(s); ethnicity;
and, 380
feeling orientation of, 375 presbycusis, 426–428, 427f specific groups
finding a mate and, 315–316
question-driven nature of, presbyopia, 424 radiation, teratogenic effects
generativity and, 362–367
375 preschools, 120 of, 47t
heritability of, 360
relativism of, 374–375 pretending, 183–184 random assignment, 26
Holland’s six types of,
poverty preterm newborns, 64 reaching, in infancy, 92
348–349, 349t
divorce and, 209 primary attachment figure, 109 reaction time, 429
maturity and, 360–362, 361f,
362t early childhood. See poverty, primary circular reactions, 94, reactive aggression, 179, 180t,
early-childhood 95t 191
mental health in emerging
adulthood and, 304–305 influence of, 24 primary sexual characteristics, reactive attachment disorder,
prosocial behavior and, among older adults, 408 235 116
175–178 poverty, early-childhood, private pensions, 405 reading, dyslexia and,
random life events shaping, 117–120 proactive aggression, 179, 180t 214–215, 215t
362 later development and, 118f, procedural memory, 395f, realistic personality type, 349t
self-awareness and, 171 118–120 395–396 recessions. See Great Recession
self-esteem and, 171–175, prevalence of, 118, 118f professors, 309–310 of 2008
173t, 174t power assertion progesterone, 43 recessive disorders, 52, 53f
stress handling and, 50 ADHD and, 154–155 prolonged grief, 457–458 reciprocity, marital happiness
personality problems, of parents, aggression and, 180–181, prosocial behavior, 175–178 and, 336
child abuse and, 208 181f basis of, 176–177 recreational drugs
person-environment fit, 19 limiting, 205 individual and gender adolescent use of, 268, 268t
phallic stage, 15 timing of puberty and, 239 variations in, 176 teratogenic effects of, 47t
phonemes, 157, 158t toddler temperament and, shame versus guilt and, 178 redemption sequences, 366,
physical aging, 418f, 418–424, 128, 128t socialization and, 177, 178, 381, 437
419f practical intelligence, 218 178t reflexes, 77, 77f
SI-12 Subject Index
rehearsal, 152 true experiments as, 26–27, scaffolding, 149–150 divorce and, 337–338
reinforcement, 12–13 27f Common Core State enhancing, 174–175
reinforcers resilience Standards and, 223–224 improving, for eating
external, grades as, 221 in childhood, 203–204 of study skills, 153 disorders, 248
intrinsic and extrinsic career in middle adulthood, 361, Scandinavia. See also specific low, eating disorders and, 247
rewards as, 349 361f countries self-esteem, 171–175
rejected children, 189–191, of widowed people, 411 elder care in, 438 assessment of, 172, 173f
190f, 190t resilient children, 203–204 retirement in, 404 career success and, 348
aggression in, 181–182 retirement, 404–409 unmarried motherhood in, distortions of, 172–174, 173t,
help for, 193–194 age discrimination and, 331 174t
rejecting-neglecting parents, 406–407, 408 schemas, 21, 143 love and, 305
201 context for, 404–405 school(s), 212–224 of mother, child’s
relational aggression, 179, delay of, 405–406 classroom learning and. temperament and, 342
180t desire for, 407 See classroom learning psychosocial tasks and, 171t,
parental alienation as, 210 in Germany, 404 context for, 212f, 212–213 171–172
popularity and, 189–190, happiness in, 407 early-maturing girls and, realistic, promoting, 174–175
190f income during, 404–405, 242–243 self-injury, nonsuicidal, 270–271
relationships, 182–194 408 intelligence and IQ tests and, self-report strategy, 25, 26t
adolescent. See adolescent life during, 407t, 407–408 213–219 self-soothing, 83, 84t, 84–85
relationships marital satisfaction and, 332 multiple intelligences theory semantic memory, 395f, 395–396
adult theory of mind and, and, 219 semantics, 158, 158t
in United States, 404–406
370 nurturing, for adolescents, Senegal, age of menarche in, 234
retirement age, 404
bidirectionality of, 18, 202, 277–278
retirement communities, senile plaques, 434
342 sex education in, 243–244,
continuing-care, 439 seniors. See late adulthood
bullying and, 192–194 253–254
reversibility, 143 sensitive periods, 46
evaluating, 337t size of, adolescent crowds
risk taking, adolescent, and, 284 sensorimotor stage, 21t, 93t,
friendships and, 188–189 267–269, 268t, 269f 93–96, 95t, 143t
successful, 220
infant attachment and, 115, by at-risk teens, 273 circular reactions in, 93–94,
341 school-to-work transition, 308
peers and, 267 95t
life expectancy and, 422 scientific reasoning, 262f,
role(s), adult, 294 early thinking in, 94–95
262–263
nutrition and, 139 role conflict, 350 object permanence in, 95–96
Seattle Longitudinal Study,
parent-child. See parent-child caregiving grandparents and, sensory development. See also
368–369, 369f
relationships 379 hearing; vision
second marriages, 338–339
play and. See play role confusion, identity versus, in infancy, 88t, 88–90
second trimester, 43
popularity and, 189–191 20, 20t, 300, 300t separation anxiety, 110
secondary circular reactions, 94,
romantic. See love; marriage role overload, 350 serial cohabitation, 329
95t, 96, 110
same-sex, 312–314, 313t role phase, in Murstein’s mate- secondary sexual characteristics, service-learning classes, 277
reliability, of IQ tests, 216 selection theory, 315 235 SES. See socioeconomic status
religion, dating and, 312 Romanian orphanages, secular trend in puberty, 233f, (SES)
REM sleep, 83, 83f attachment and, 116 233–234 severe food insecurity, 80
remarriage, 338–339 romantic love, 334 secure attachment, 115 sex chromosomes, 38, 38f
representative samples, 25 rooting reflex, 77, 77f securely attached adults, abnormal number of, 51
repression, 159 rough-and-tumble play, 182 319–320 sex-linked single-gene
rubella, teratogenic effects of, securely attached children, 111, disorders and, 52, 53t, 54
reproductive systems, 36, 37f
46, 47t 112f, 318 sex education
research
ruminative moratorium, 302 seeing. See vision need for, 243–244
adoption studies in, 17
Russia, fertility rate in, selective attention, 152, 152f relevant to adolescents,
critiquing, 29 340, 340f ADHD and, 154 253–254
emerging trends in, 29 Russian orphanages, attachment selective optimization with sex-linked single-gene disorders,
ethics in, 27 and, 116 52, 53t, 54
compensation
fetal programming, 51 sexual arousal, 234
to aid information
qualitative, 29 S processing, 373–374, 374t ovulation triggered by, 37
quantitative, 29 sacrificing to aid memory, 396–397 in triangular theory of love,
strides made by generativity and, 364 self-conscious emotions, 125 333f, 333–334
developmentalists, 475 marital happiness and, 336 sexual child abuse, 207
self-consciousness, adolescent,
twin studies in, 17 safety, for infants, 92 266 sexual desire
twin/adoption studies in, 17, same-sex relationships, self-criticism, in middle in adolescence, 249
18, 19 312–314, 313t adulthood, 361, 361f aging and, 382–383, 383t
research methods, 25–30 fathers’ caregiving in, 345 self-development, friendship sexual double standard, 252–253
correlational, 25, 26 marriage, 313 and, 189 sexual identity, 313–314
cross-sectional, 27–28 parenthood and, 340, 341 self-doubt, IQ tests and, sexual intercourse, first, age of,
longitudinal, 28–29 samples, representative, 25 397–398 250f, 250–251
naturalistic observation as, “sandwich generation,” 380 self-efficacy sexuality
25, 26t satisfaction, in marriage, career success and, 348 adolescent. See adolescent
self-reports as, 25, 26t 332–333, 335, 336, 337t cognitive behaviorism and, 14 sexuality
Subject Index SI-13
divorce and, 337–338 Social Security, 404–405, 408 sperm, 37, 38 risks linked with early
in middle adulthood, social skills, low birth weight spermarche, 233, 241 maturing in girls and,
381–383, 382t, 383t and, 64 242, 242f
spiritual intelligence, 218
shame social smile, 109 working women in, 350
spouses. See love; marriage
autonomy versus, 20, 20t, social-interactionist perspective, stage theory of dying, 452–454 Swedish Twin/Adoption Study
124t on language development, of Aging, 17, 18, 19
stagnation, generativity versus,
prosocial behavior and, 178 100 swimming reflex, 77f
20, 20t, 363, 363t
shyness socialization, 125f, 125–126 Switzerland, altruism in middle
stepchildren, 338–339
social rejection and, 191 cultural differences in, 149 adulthood in, 361, 361f
stepping reflex, 77f
in toddlerhood, 126–127 into delinquency, 285 sympathy, 176
stereotypes
sickle cell anemia, 53t enhancing self-efficacy and, synapses, 74
about adolescence, 261t
175 synaptic loss, in elderly brain,
SIDS. See sudden infant death about families, 328t
syndrome (SIDS) gender-segregated play and, 394
187 about late adulthood, 392t
sight. See vision synaptogenesis, 74, 136
inhibition as goal of, 153 about work, 328t
similarity, friendship and, 188 synchrony, in attachment,
peers and, 204–205 Sternberg’s successful 112–113
single mothers, 329–330, 331 intelligence, 217–218
prosocial behavior and, 177, syntax, 157–158
poverty and, 209 stimulus phase, in Murstein’s
178, 178t
single-gene disorders, 52–55, 53t mate-selection theory, 315
socioeconomic health gap, T
Skype, grandparents’ use of, 378 420–422, 422f stimulus-value-role theory,
tabula rasa, 6
sleep 315–317
socioeconomic status (SES), taste sense, in infancy, 88t
during infancy, 82f, 82–86, 8–9. See also education; “storm and stress,” 6, 260, 273.
See also adolescence Tay-Sachs disease, 53t, 54
87t financial issues; income;
poverty Strange Situation, 111, 111f teachers, successful, 220
REM, 83, 83f
birth problems related to, 66 stranger anxiety, 110 teenagers. See adolescence
teens’ need for, school day
and, 278 emerging adulthood and, 296 stress telegraphic speech, 100, 100t
Slovakia IQ scores and, 216 brain sensitivity to, telomeres, 421
fatherhood role in, 344 longevity and, 420–421, 422f depression and, 271 temperament
risks linked with early obesity and, 421 caring for elderly parents of child, mother’s self-esteem
maturing in girls and, and, 380–381 and, 342
pregnancy and, 44, 66
242, 242f child abuse and, 208 childrearing to suit, 128–129
reading readiness and, 212,
slow to warm up babies, 113 212f family, timing of puberty evoking harsh discipline,
and, 239 180–181, 181f
smell sense, in infancy, 88t transition to intercourse and,
250 of motherhood, 343–344, in infancy, 112–113
smile, social, 109
344f teratogens, 46, 47t, 48–51
smoking, teratogenic effects of, socioemotional development,
30, 169–197. See also during pregnancy, 45, 45t, basic principles of, 46, 48
48–49
personality; relationships 50, 50f
SNAP. See Supplemental measurement issues and,
reduction in, in late 49–50, 50f
Nutrition Assistance emotion regulation and, 170
adulthood, 400
Program (SNAP) in infancy, 106–131. See also medicines and recreational
resilient children and, 204 drugs as, 48–49
social anxiety attachment
“storm and stress” and, pregnancy as programmer of
prevention of, 193–194 socioemotional selectivity
6, 260, 273. See also old age and, 50–51
in rejected children, 191 theory, 398–399
adolescence
social clock, 298–299 Socratic techniques, 224 terminal drop, 372
stunting, 79, 79f
social cognition South Africa terminal illness. See also death
substance abuse
life expectancy in, 420 and dying
attachment and, 110 in adolescence, 268, 268t,
puberty rites in, 233 discussing, 453–454
autism spectrum disorders 269t
and, 162–164, 163f southern Europe. See also tertiary circular reactions, 94,
fetal alcohol syndrome due
specific countries 95t
autobiographical memories to, 49
and, 159–160 emerging adulthood in, 295 test(s)
teratogenic effects of,
brain development and, 136 fertility rates in, 340, 340f 47t, 49 achievement, 213
in childhood, 159–164 Spain success, in career, 348–350 genetic, 55
in infancy, 98–99, 110 cohabitation in, 295 successful intelligence, 218 IQ, 213–214, 214f, 216–217
play and, 139 emerging adulthood in, 295 sucking, operant conditioning neuropsychological, in
spanking, 181, 206–207 of, 77 Alzheimer’s disease, 435
theory of mind and,
160–162, 161f spatial intelligence, 218 sucking reflex, 77, 77f prenatal, 55–56, 57
social exclusion, 189–191, 190f, Special Supplemental Nutrition sudden infant death syndrome testes, 37, 234, 236
190t Program for Women, (SIDS), 86 testosterone
aggression in, 181–182 Infants, and Children superego, 15 gender-segregated play and,
social learning, body image (WIC), 81t Supplemental Nutrition 186–187
concerns and, 245–246 specific learning disorders, 214 Assistance Program marital status and, 334
social learning theory. See speech. See also language; (SNAP), 81t puberty and, 234
cognitive behaviorism language development; swaddling, 81 texting, 9
social networking sites, 8–9. See elderspeak as, 428 Sweden Thailand, maternal mortality
also Facebook; Twitter infant-directed, 101 elder care in, 438 in, 63
social personality type, 349t inner, 157 emerging adulthood in, 295 thalidomide, teratogenic effects
social referencing, 110 telegraphic, 100, 100t fatherhood role in, 344 of, 46, 47t
SI-14 Subject Index
theories, 12–24. See also specific traditional behaviorism, 12 unmarried motherhood in, WIC. See Special Supplemental
theories traditional stable careers, 347 331 Nutrition Program for
age-linked, 20–22 transition(s) universal education, 6 Women, Infants, and
attachment, 15–16, 22t to intercourse, 250f, 250–251 unmarried parenthood, 209, Children (WIC)
behavioral genetic, 16–18, non-normative, 4 329–330, 331
22t widowhood, 409–412
normative, 4 U-shaped curve of marital
behaviorist, 12–14, 22t satisfaction, 332–333 grieving and, 457
to parenthood, 340–341
developmental systems uterus, 36, 37f mourning and, 409–411
school-to-work, 308
perspective and, 22–24,
23f triangular theory of love, 333f, vulnerability to problems
V
evolutionary psychological, 333–334 and, 411–412, 412t
validity, of IQ tests, 216–217
16, 22t trimesters, 42–45 widowhood mortality effect, 410
value-comparison phase, in
nature versus nurture true experiments, 26–27, 27f Murstein’s mate-selection WISC. See Wechsler
question and, 12–20 trust theory, 315 Intelligence Scale for
psychoanalytic, 14–15, 22t basic, as psychosocial task, variable(s), 25 Children (WISC)
theory of mind, 160–162, 161f 20, 20t dependent, 27f
of adults, 370 friendship and, 188 wisdom, 218, 375, 375f
independent, 26
autism spectrum disorders twentieth-century life variable reinforcement women. See females; entries
and, 162 expectancy revolution, schedules, 13 beginning with term
collaborative pretend play 6–7
vascular neurocognitive gender
and, 183 twin studies, 17
disorders, 434
consequences and roots of, twin/adoption studies, 17, 18, 19 work, 347–352. See also careers
very low birth weight, 64
160 Twitter, 8 context for, 347–348
viability, age of, 42
individual differences in, 2-year-old food caution, 77
victims, of bullying, 192 family and, 347
160–162, 162t
thin ideal, 244, 247 vision job changes and, 347
U
thinking aging and, 424–426, 425f, 430t job insecurity and, 347
ultrasound, prenatal, 55
adolescent, 261–266, 262t aids for, 425–426
umbilical cord, 42, 42f stereotypes about, 328t
concrete operational, 21t, brain plasticity and, 75
underextensions, 158, 158t transition from school to, 308
93t, 142, 143t, 146–147, visitation, divorce and, 210–211
undernutrition, 139
147t, 171 Vista School, 220 working hours and, 347
in young children, 79
formal operational, 21t, 93t, visual cliff, 90, 90f working memory,
143t, 261–262, 262t, United States
visual cortex, 74, 75 151, 394
266–267 adolescent-parent
relationships in, 280 vitamin deficiencies, teratogenic ADHD and, 154
in infancy, 94–95
effects of, 47t
in neurocognitive disorders, age of marriage in, 314 working models, 110
433 voice change, in puberty, 237
altruism in middle adulthood
vulnerabilities, child abuse and, workplace, optimal,
postformal. See postformal in, 361, 361f
thought 208 349–350
child care in, 120–123
preoperational, 21t, 93t, elder care in, 439–441 X
142–146, 143t, 147–148 W
emerging adulthood in, 295, X chromosome, 38, 38f
scientific reasoning and, wages. See income
296, 296f, 297
262f, 262–263 WAIS. See Wechsler Adult sex-linked single-gene
ethnicity in, 10, 10f
sensorimotor, 21t, 93t, Intelligence Scale (WAIS) disorders and,
fatherhood role in, 344
93–96, 95t, 143t walking, development of, 52, 53t, 54
food insecurity in, 80 90–91
third marriages, 338–339
government-sponsored Wechsler Adult Intelligence
third trimester, 44 Y
programs in. See Scale (WAIS), 368, 369f,
thought. See thinking government-sponsored Y chromosome, 38, 38f
369–370
tobacco use, teratogenic effects programs (U.S.) young adulthood
of, 48–49 Wechsler Intelligence Scale
infant mortality in, 65f, for Children (WISC),
toddlerhood, 107, 124–129 65–66 intimacy versus isolation
213–214, 214f
autonomy versus shame and life expectancy in, 6–7, 7f stage during, 311t
weight. See also childhood
doubt stage during, 20, life expectancy of Down marriage during, 328–339
obesity
20t, 124t syndrome babies in, birth, low, 64–65, 421 parenthood during, 340–346
child care and, 120–123, 51–52
121f early puberty and, 238–239 psychosocial task of, 20t
maternal mortality in, 61
Early Head Start during, 120 of parents, children’s weight
median age in, 390 work during, 347–352
and, 140
exuberance during, 126–127, nutrition programs in, 81t well-being. See also happiness young-old, 7, 390
128, 128t
poverty in, impact of, paradox of, 399–400 youth development programs,
shyness during, 126–127 117–120, 118f
socialization during, 125f, western Europe. See also specific 277
puberty timetable of, 238 countries
125–126
recommendations for alcohol attitudes toward euthanasia
temperamentally friendly
during pregnancy in, 49
Z
childrearing during, in, 469
remarriage in, 338 zone of proximal development
128–129 Western societies. See
retirement in, 404–405, 408 (ZPD), 149f, 149–150
toxoplasmosis, teratogenic individualistic cultures;
effects of, 47t spanking in, 206 specific countries zygote, 39, 39f

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Publisher: Rachel Losh

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015942394

© 2016, 2013, 2010, 2007 by Worth Publishers

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

Janet spent her thirties in New York

PART I The Foundation ................................................................. 1

Chapter 1 The People and the Field 3

Chapter 2 Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth 35

PART II Infancy .................................................................................... 71

Chapter 3 Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development 73

Chapter 4 Infancy: Socioemotional Development 107

PART III Childhood .......................................................................... 133

Chapter 5 Physical and Cognitive Development 135

Chapter 6 Socioemotional Development 169

Chapter 7 Settings for Development: Home and School 199

PART IV Adolescence .................................................................... 229

Chapter 8 Physical Development 231

Chapter 9 Cognitive and Socioemotional Development 259

PART V Early and Middle Adulthood ........................... 291

Chapter 10 Constructing an Adult Life 293

Chapter 11 Relationships and Roles 327

Chapter 12 Midlife 357

Chapter 13 Later Life: Cognitive and Socioemotional Development 389

Chapter 14 The Physical Challenges of Old Age 417

PART VII Epilogue .......................................................................... 447

Chapter 15 Death and Dying 449

Final Thoughts 475

Name Index NI-1

Subject Index SI-1

PART I The Foundation ....................................................................... 1

Chapter 1 The People and the Field ...................................................... 3

Setting the Context 5

Chapter 2 Prenatal Development, Pregnancy, and Birth ............. 35

PART II Infancy ....................................................................................... 71

Chapter 3 Infancy: Physical and Cognitive Development ............ 73

Basic Newborn States 76

HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: SIDS 86

Sensory and Motor Development 88

Chapter 4 Infancy: Socioemotional Development ....................... 107

Toddlerhood: Age of Autonomy and Shame and Doubt 124

PART III Childhood ............................................................................. 133

Chapter 5 Physical and Cognitive Development ........................... 135

Two Types of Motor Talents 138

INTERVENTIONS: Limiting Overweight 141

Cognitive Development 142

Chapter 6 Socioemotional Development .......................................... 169

Chapter 7 Settings for Development: Home and School ........... 199

INTERVENTIONS: Lessons for Readers Who Are Parents 205

PART IV Adolescence ........................................................................ 229

Chapter 8 Physical Development ....................................................... 231

Individual Differences in Puberty Timetables 238

Body Image Issues 244

Chapter 9 Cognitive and Socioemotional Development ............ 259

HOT IN DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE: A Potential Pubertal Problem, Popularity 272

PART V Early and Middle Adulthood .................................... 291