The Social Child

Research in the field of human social development is moving at an astonishing pace. Within psychology, children's social behavior has attracted interest from cognitive, social, clinical, and educational psychologists employing a wide variety of techniques that range from conversational analysis to experimental designs. Contributions have also come from beyond the domain of traditional psychology such as evolutionary theorists, behavior geneticists, cultural anthropologists, and ethologists. This book aims to bring the reader to the cutting edge of this work by including original contributions from those in the very forefront of their discipline. Each contributor has spent years working in their specialist area and the authors have been given the freedom to argue for very different positions on the origins and sequence of children's social competence. The Social Childbrings together controversial and sometimes conflicting positions on issues of central importance to society. It considers thelikely impact of rising divorce rates and single parenting, how media images affect children's understanding and behavior, how genes inform development, the role parents have, whether changing sex roles have had an impact on children's social interactions, and the sources from which children acquire behavior.