The 21st century has been an amazing era for the liberties of both men and women in the Western world. In comparison to the past, today people have more liberties, including voting rights for women, birth control, etc. It is undoubtedly the case that any lover of liberty alone would want to live in this era rather than the past. However, we have to ask a question that might challenge or at least make us question whether this era of liberty has been all that great. The traditional family unit has seen massive changes, social norms as well as morals are constantly changing. We have to ask whether this radical change is either beneficial or harmful to the next generation, for humans are not just defined by a static act of existence as a collective, but also by their progeny. To assess how good or bad the situation today is, I will be looking at least five things which contribute to the development of children in our age. Those five things include violent media exposure, same-sex parents and same-sex marriage in general, family and individual socialization, coaching children and teachers on how to problem solve together, and finally rhesus monkeys and how social isolation effects them.
Parents can influence children’s behavior, for example, violent media. In research conducted by McQuarrie and Caporino, they attempt to measure how much a caregiver impacts their child’s news media exposure. A focus group interview with 6 caregivers and children from 6-14 years of age was used as the sample (McQuarrie & Caporino, 2018). Data from a second sample of 702 caregivers recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk, the findings were then submitted to an exploratory factor analysis. Caregiver Responses to Youth Media Exposure (CRYME) was used in this process. The results are interesting, showing preparation for psychometric support for the use of the CRYME to look how parents behaviors could predict outcomes of children’s exposure to violence in the media. The researches weakness is relying too much on the past caregiver report and is further weakened by how much parents monitor and have awareness of their own behavior and online data collection procedures. With this knowledge, parents can now fully prepare for how to deal with violent media by talking with the child about the media in an open and realistic manner, restricting access to media and using media itself to teach children safety behaviors.
Family interaction as well as individual social interaction is important for the psychological development of children. In this research by Scrimgeour, Davis, & Buss. one hundred and twenty five two to five year old children and their parents were recruited through newspaper birth announcements, flyers posted at daycares, and a database of local families interested (Scrimgeour, Davis, & Buss. 2016). The researchers went about conducting this study by investigating leveraged mother-reports, physiological, and observational data to examine children’s positive social development from ages 2 to age 4. What they found was that the development of positive social behavior happens across the toddler and preschool years. Maternal emotion socialization (ES) strategies and children’s parasympathetic regulation have each been shown in positive behavior, but are rarely looked at together. This article adds to our knowledge of how families and children have effects of said children’s positive promotion of friendship and social development. Parents can now more effectively treat their kids with respect and realize their relationship has an effect on their kids social development. Children and parents alike should also be aware that interacting with others themselves is important for positive social behavior and development.
Coaching and teaching children is important, especially in reaction to difficult problems or situations. Showing this was another study, by Conners-Burrow, N., Patrick, T., Kyzer, A., and McKelvey, L. who use a sample of one hundred and thirty nine teachers of toddlers and they were looked at to show how child’s social and emotional development fair the use of REACH (Conners-Burrow, Patrick, Kyzer & McKelvey. 2017). What is REACH? It is training and coaching intervention designed to reduce children having to deal with problems themselves and elevates how teachers and parental figures in general help children deal with difficult problems and situations which in turn helps social and emotional development. The evaluation involved a one-group, pre–post-test design. Observational and survey data collection took place prior to the start of the REACH program and 6 months later, after completion of the last REACH teacher workshop. The observations were designed to allow the people taking place in research to observe changes in the way teachers interacted with children in their care as well as generalized changes in children’s behavior. The papers main findings included massive positive changes in the sensitivity of teachers’ interactions with kids in class, and increased teacher use of social and emotional supports like teachers being involved in teaching children how problems with other children should be dealt with. Further increases in children’s positive behaviors and small but significant decreases in verbal aggression were found. We can also see teachers sensitivity more specifically in speaking to children in warm tones, getting down on their level, paying attention to the children, listening attentively to the children. This research adds to our knowledge of how teachers or any parental figure for that matter should take into account how to teach children to deal with difficult problems and fights with other children. REACH itself encourages teachers to not use “quick fixes” for kids with challenging behaviors, using videos of teachers interacting with their students to educate the teachers.
In today’s political climate, same-sex marriage is hotly debated, especially in the context of raising children. Research itself goes under criticism of not being conclusive, this study is an example of this. The information this study finds is that same-sex families actually have little to no difference than that of straight families. The study which was conducted by Meezan, W., and Rauch, J. are forced to deal with small sample sizes from fewer than twenty five children raised in lesbian and gay homes. Even in comparative studies less than thirty children are used, making it hard to tell the difference between the studies. Three things were found in the study. Children raised in same-sex environments show no differences in cognitive abilities, behavior, general emotional development, or more specific areas of emotional development like self-esteem, depression, or anxiety. There is no evidence that children of lesbian and gay parents are confused about their gender identity, either in childhood or adulthood, or that they are more likely to be homosexual. Lesbian mothers, and gay fathers (about whom less is known), are much like other parents, as the study says (Meezan & Rauch. 2005). However, the evidence is not conclusive according to the authors, which say that there is evidence to support same-sex children do as well as heterosexual families and evidence to show they do not. With this knowledge, it is important to acknowledge that one can find many studies to support political opinions. In reality, research is utterly inconclusive and no facts have been reached.
Human interaction is important for child psychological development. In research conducted by Griffin and Harlow, they tried to find how socially deprived monkeys faired against monkeys with partial isolation. The researchers used 12 rhesus monkeys as a sample. There was an isolation area with four areas: the feeding box, the living area, the test area, and the vent area (Griffin & Harlow. 1966)They were removed from their mothers soon after birth and placed in the feeding box where only humans fed and changed their diapers. The monkeys with only partial isolation were placed in cages with no interaction with other monkeys but they could see and hear them. The results are horrifying to say the least. One of isolated monkeys actually died of starvation by refusing food entirely. Not only this, they experienced withdrawals when removed from the isolation area they were accustomed to after birth. The reasons for this according to the researchers is that the isolation area had much less differing environment than the controlled group of partially isolated monkeys. With this useful information, it seems obvious social interaction in children is needed. Imagine if children were placed in these situations that these monkeys were, the effects would seem horrifying! Children need to be in social situations from birth and onward, in order to develop properly and parents should let them experience a variety of different environments because of this.
It seems the answer to the earlier question of the development of children situation, it depends! As we can see with the first article, violent media exposure does effect how children develop and the use of CRYME shows that parents do indeed have influence over how children react to violent media, but it should be noted that the article relies on retrospective caregiver reports, held back to the methodological apparatuses of every individual caregiver. This means that there is no universal method by which the data is collected, and is at best an amalgamation of various different people and methodologies at work. The next article tries to explore how toddlers and preschoolers develop pro-social behaviors, and here we see that although maternal socialization is of prime importance, individual social interaction is just as important for pro-social development in children. Same sex-marriage and same sex-couples also seem to have an effect on the development of children, but it is hard to pin down how studies of such kind accurately represent the situation at hand. The problem is not whether or not the studies are conclusive, the very legitimacy of the studies and methodologies themselves are well open for debate and discussion. As such, one should tread these matters with as much importance, care and understanding, while keeping a level head and further investigating these matters in order to come up with better methodologies that will help us actually see the picture before opinion on conclusions. Rehsus monkeys can also be used to see how we should treat our children. More specifically in how parents should let their children socialize from birth to some degree. Finally, REACH was also used to figure out how parenting figures could influence conflict solving skills in children. Overall, it was a successful study, finding that children’s pro social behavior increased and small verbal aggression decrease. In conclusion, today is a great time period to raise children depending on the country you are raising them in, as we are able to assess to the best of our ability what problems a child and his or her family would face when raising them up. Whether we can attest our age to have a comparative upper hand over the past ages in terms of raising children seems to be a question that is far from any conclusion.
