Human Growth and Development / Unit 4 HGD 0464 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Goodness of Fit
The idea
Goodness of fit, a concept from Thomas and Chess, is how well an infant's temperament matches the demands and expectations of the environment. An adaptable, curious infant with a parent who loves travel is a high fit; an active, distractible infant with a parent who expects long, settled focus is a low fit. Fit shapes outcomes: difficult infants do better with calm, caring responses rather than power assertion, and slow-to-warm-up infants do better with extra time to adapt.
In practice
The same active, distractible baby thriving with an easygoing parent and struggling under a rigid, quiet household schedule.
Where people slip
The misconception is that temperament is fixed at birth. It is biologically based, but it interacts with experience from the start, and the responses it draws help shape the personality that grows from it. In a long-term follow-up, infants judged easy grew into well-adjusted adults, while those judged difficult were less well adjusted as a group.
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