The Next 50 Years: Considering Gender as a Context for Understanding Young Children’s Peer Relationships

The study of children’s peer relationships has been well represented within the pages of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly. Particularly over the last decade, the pace of publishing studies on peer relationships has increased. Despite this upswing in interest in peer relationships, significant gaps remain. In this article, we focus on a particularly overlooked and significant area of peer relationships, namely, the role of sex-segregated peer interactions and how these relate to development in early childhood. We review why this topic is important for researchers to consider and highlight promising directions for research that we hope will appear in future volumes of Merrill-Palmer Quarterly

The Relations of Children’s Dispositional Prosocial Behavior to Emotionality, Regulation, and Social Functioning

The purpose of this study was to examine the relations of a measure of children’s dispositional prosocial behavior (i.e., peer nominations) to individual differences in children’s negative emotionality, regulation, and social functioning. Children with prosocial reputations tended to be high in constructive social skills (i.e., socially appropriate behavior and constructive coping) and attentional regulation, and low in negative emotionality. The relations of children’s negative emotionality to prosocial reputation were moderated by level of dispositional attentional regulation. In addition, the relations of prosocial reputation to constructive social skills and parent-reported negative emotionality (for girls) increased with age. Vagal tone, a marker of physiological regulation, was negatively related to girls’ prosocial reputation

Promoting optimal parenting and children’s mental health : a preliminary evaluation of the How-to Parenting Program

Parenting quality is widely accepted as a primary predictor of children’s mental health. The present study examined the effectiveness of a parenting program in fostering optimal parenting and child mental health. The selected program was How to talk so kids will listen & listen so kids will talk (How-to Parenting Program). This program was selected because its content corresponds closely to what the parenting style literature suggests is optimal parenting (i.e., includes structure, affiliation and autonomy support). Eleven groups of six to twelve parents were conducted in 7 local grade schools. The program, offered by two trained leaders, consisted of eight weekly sessions and taught a total of 30 skills. A total of 82 parents completed questionnaires both prior to and after the program. Participants’ children between eight and 12 years old (N = 44) completed questionnaires at school, at both assessment points. Repeated measures ANOVAs using parent reports indicated that structure, affiliation and autonomy support were increased after the program, compared to baseline. The level of child internalizing and externalizing problems also decreased significantly. Importantly, children reports confirmed that parental autonomy support increased from pre to post-test and child-reported well-being improved as well. The preliminary evidence from this pre-test versus post-test repeated measures design suggests that the How-to Parenting Program is effective in improving parenting style and in promoting children’s mental health and that future evaluation research examining the potential of this program is warranted

Early Adolescence and Prosocial/Moral Behavior I: The Role of Individual Processes

In this introductory article, the purpose of the special issue on prosocial and moral development during early adolescence is presented. This issue is the first of two special issues and focuses on the role that individual processes play in influencing young adolescents’ prosocial and moral development. Presented also is a new meta-analysis of data on age and gender differences in prosocial behavior with particular focus on early adolescence. It was found that prosocial behavior during adolescence rarely has been studied, but that there are general increases in prosocial behavior during this time when compared with early age periods. Moreover, gender differences in prosocial behavior (favoring girls) increase during this time. A relatively short review of the individual mechanisms by which these changes occur follow. A call for more research and suggestions for future directions in this research also is provided

Early Adolescence and Prosocial/Moral Behavior II: The Role of Social and Contextual Influences

This is the second installment of the special issue on prosocial and moral development in early adolescence. This issue focuses on social and contextual processes in young adolescents’ prosocial and moral behaviors. In this introductory article, a brief review of the research on parents or family, peers, school environment, culture, and nationality as correlates of prosocial and moral development was presented. The research indicates that the social context plays an important role in prosocial and moral development. However, research on the social and contextual correlates of prosocial and moral development in early adolescence is at an embryonic stage. Research is needed that integrates analyses of individual and social contextual processes to fully understand prosocial and moral development. Moreover, more sophisticated design and assessment procedures and research with racially or ethnically diverse samples are needed. It is hoped that researchers focus more attention on the positive processes and behaviors associated with the various social contextual transitions in early adolescence

Socialization of Children’s Vicarious Emotional Responding and Prosocial Behavior: Relations With Mothers\u27 Perceptions of Children\u27s Emotional Reactivity

We examined mother-child emotion-related interactions and how these interactions related to mothers’ perceptions of children’s emotional reactivity. Mothers of 49 kindergartners and 54 2nd graders told their children 2 stories about distressed others. Children’s emotional, physiological, and prosocial responses were also obtained. Mothers rated children’s tendencies to become emotional when exposed to distressed others. For kindergartners, mothers’ perceptions of children’s emotional reactivity were positively related to her use of positive facial expressions. Mothers’ perceptions of 2nd graders’ emotional reactivity were inversely related to maternal responsiveness. For both age groups, children’s skin conductance was inversely related to helpfulness. These findings suggest that mothers may “adjust” their interactions with their children based on their perceptions of children’s emotional tendencies

Parents’ Reactions to Elementary School Children’s Negative Emotions: Relations to Social and Emotional Functioning at School

This study addressed the role of specific parenting practices in children’s expression of emotion and social competence. The specific objective was to examine the relations of parents’ reactions to children’s negative emotions with children’s social and emotional competence at school and to explore the moderating role of children’s dispositional emotionality in this relation. A diverse sample of first to fourth graders was observed at school; teachers reported on children’s social competence and affect, and parents reported on their reactions to their children’s negative emotions and the intensity of children’s negative emotions. Parental problem-focused reactions were positively related to socioemotional competence for boys but negatively associated for girls. Parental punitive/minimizing reactions were associated with low socioemotional competence. Moderating effects were obtained for emotion-focused (comforting) parental reactions: Children prone to intense negative emotions were especially low in socioemotional competence if their parents reported using high or average levels of these reactions

Young Children’s Negative Emotionality and Social Isolation: A Latent Growth Curve Analysis

Recently there has been increasing interest in the role that emotionality plays in children’s social functioning. In this paper, we examined changes in preschool- ers’ tendencies to play alone as a function of their dispositional negative emo- tional intensity (DNEI). Additionally, we examined changes in expressed nega- tive emotion. The solitary play and expressed negative emotions of 94 children (mean age50.5 months) were observed for 3 months. Teachers completed a measure of DNEI. Growth curves revealed that children high in DNEI evidenced increasing rates of solitary play and decreasing rates of expression of negative emotions. Children high in DNEI were initially higher in observed emotional intensity. Findings suggest that children who have difficulty regulating negative emotions increasingly become isolated from peers