Middle Childhood: Self, Morality, and Relationships

This is Unit Eight, part one, on the school-age child's self, identities, emotions, and moral reasoning. Unit Seven closed on learning a second language. Unit Eight turns to the social world of the same years, and to how children judge. Carry one question through this part: when children judge themselves and others, what are they judging by? A child describes and rates herself, reads a friend's snub, and weighs a moral dilemma. At the entry on Kohlberg's critics, the part shows that moral reasoning includes care as well as justice, and that culture shapes the better answer. By the end you will be able to tell self-concept, self-esteem and self-efficacy apart. To name the three most common coping strategies of middle childhood. To explain hostile attribution bias. To place reasoning in Kohlberg's three levels. And to state Gilligan's critique and what the evidence says about it.

Seven entries on competence and the self, ending with three terms that are easily confused.

Erikson's fourth crisis.

HGD 1051 Industry Versus Inferiority

Erikson's fourth crisis, industry versus inferiority, spans the elementary school years: children build a sense of competence through schoolwork, sport, music, friendships and chores, comparing their results with classmates'. Success and encouragement build industry; repeated failure, or being labelled a problem student, can build inferiority.

When inferiority takes hold.

HGD 1052 When Inferiority Takes Hold

Inferiority is linked to social anxiety, fear of negative evaluation and disengagement from school, and trauma or undiagnosed learning and attention difficulties raise the risk: a child with unrecognized dyslexia may decide he is stupid and stop trying. The misconception is that such a child stays inferior; Erikson's crises can be resolved later with support.

How school-age children describe themselves.

HGD 1053 Self-Concept in Middle Childhood

Self-concept in middle childhood becomes realistic, abstract, multifaceted and evaluative, moving from physical facts to traits, abilities and relationships: I'm a good friend, I'm good at gymnastics, and I'm bad at writing. Children also manage self-projection, presenting themselves differently to different audiences.

A measure of self-perception.

HGD 1054 Harter's Self-Perception Profile

Harter's Self-Perception Profile measures children's global self-worth, their overall sense of their own value, along with five specific domains; a child may rate herself high at sport and low at schoolwork while still rating her overall worth highly. A school-aged child, unlike a four-year-old, can separate the ideal self from the actual self.

Comparing oneself with others.

HGD 1055 Social Comparison and the Ideal Self

Social comparison intensifies in middle childhood, across academics, sport and social status, and self-esteem falls as the gap between self-concept and ideal self widens, as when a would-be fastest runner feels worse after a friend wins. Self-esteem generally rises through middle childhood but can dip toward adolescence; warm caregiving predicts higher self-esteem.

Three self terms, kept apart.

HGD 1056 Self-Concept, Self-Esteem, Self-Efficacy

Three self terms are easily confused. Self-concept is what one believes about oneself: the description. Self-esteem is one's evaluation of that self, one's sense of worth. Self-efficacy, Bandura's term, is the belief in one's ability to accomplish a particular task: one's sense of capability. It is about belief, not actual ability, and it is domain-specific. One child knows she is tall, thinks she is a good person, and feels sure she can pass tomorrow's maths test. The misconception is that self-esteem and self-efficacy are the same. They are linked: success in domains a child values feeds both.

Narcissism, and praise.

HGD 1057 Narcissism and Overpraise

Narcissism, an inflated sense of superiority, differs from healthy self-esteem, and Brummelman and Sedikides link it to overpraise and comparison-focused praise, such as telling a child she is better than all the other kids at drawing. The misconception is that praise always builds self-esteem. The researchers favour realistic feedback and unconditional warmth, reported here as their view.

Four entries on identity: gender, race, ethnicity, and the two identities of immigrant children.

Gender in middle childhood.

HGD 1058 Gender Flexibility After Seven

Rigid thinking about gender peaks at about five or six, and flexibility grows from about seven or eight, with less judgement of gender-nonconforming peers, like a nine-year-old who shrugs when a boy takes up ballet. Children know gender norms well and may reinforce or challenge them; seeing genders as equal goes with healthier identities.

Racial identity.

HGD 1059 Racial Identity

Racial identity is the sense of self drawn from one's racial background. By five or six children use colour labels accurately, and by ten children of colour can describe stereotypes that affect them. Identities centred on equality and personal uniqueness help children navigate stereotypes, and same-race friends and school environment also matter.

Ethnic identity.

HGD 1060 Ethnic Identity in Middle Childhood

Ethnic identity shifts from physical features at three to five to language, ancestry and culture in middle childhood, and by eight it includes group pride; Puerto Rican children stress cultural events and pride, Chinese American children stress language. By eight, children name the same elements of ethnic identity that adolescents name.

Immigrant children's two identities.

HGD 1061 Immigrant Children's Dual Identities

Immigrant children build both an ethnic and a national identity, like a child who calls herself Mexican at home and Mexican American at school, and groups weigh their identities differently: Portuguese immigrant children ranked gender above ethnicity, Cambodian and Dominican children the reverse. Balancing identities is stressful but often resolves into a multifaceted identity.

Six entries on emotions at school age: regulation, deeper secondary emotions, coping, and the rules for showing feeling.

School as an emotional setting.

HGD 1062 School as an Emotional Setting

US elementary school fills about thirty-three hours a week for about one hundred eighty days a year, with public demands on performance, such as solving a problem at the whiteboard or reading aloud. Such public moments are daily tests of emotional regulation, and of how a child handles being watched.

Emotional intelligence and regulation.

HGD 1063 Emotional Intelligence and Regulation

Emotional intelligence, described by Salovey and Mayer, is monitoring and managing one's own emotions and responding to others'; it is linked to attention, engagement and relationships. A child may use self-talk and deep breaths before a test. Metacognition supports regulation, but regulation stays effortful under stress, and naming emotions underpins it across the lifespan.

Secondary emotions, deepening.

HGD 1064 Other-Evaluative and Self-Conscious Emotions

Michael Lewis's secondary emotions deepen in middle childhood: other-evaluative emotions such as jealousy and compassion, and self-conscious emotions such as pride, guilt and embarrassment, like a nine-year-old's jealousy of a friend's new bicycle lasting for days. Distraction, which worked at four, often no longer works; parents still help children process these emotions.

How children cope.

HGD 1065 Coping Strategies

Children face two kinds of stressors. Transcultural stressors, such as family economic stress, occur across cultures; culture-specific stressors, such as learning a new language or facing discrimination, may call for a bicultural identity. The most common coping strategies in middle childhood are problem-solving, distraction and seeking support: one child worried about a spelling test makes a study plan, a second plays a game, a third asks a parent. Others include avoidance, reframing, self-reliance, opposition and rumination. Coping is positive when it de-escalates, negative when it escalates, as rumination can, and combining strategies to suit the situation works best.

Rules for showing emotion.

HGD 1066 Display Rules

Display rules are culture- and context-specific rules for showing emotion, like a child smiling politely at a disappointing birthday present from her grandmother. By about seven, children infer others' desires and beliefs from their expressions, and they learn to mask their own feelings as well as to read others'.

Gender and emotional expression.

HGD 1067 Gender and Emotional Expression

A meta-analysis by Chaplin and Aldao found very small gender differences in children's emotional expression: girls show more sadness and anxiety, boys more anger, and girls more positive emotion in middle childhood. Differences depend on context, smaller with parents and larger with peers, and they are likely learned.

Four entries on reading other people: hostile attributions, two kinds of shyness, resilience, and caring for others.

Reading an act as hostile.

HGD 1068 Hostile Attribution Bias

Social cognition is understanding others' thoughts and feelings, including reading faces and posture, perspective-taking and empathy. Hostile attribution bias is a pattern in social cognition: reading an ambiguous act as deliberately hostile. A friend walks past without saying hello; one child decides she's ignoring me on purpose, another that maybe she didn't feel well. Across twelve countries, Dodge and colleagues found that this bias predicts aggressive responses. Children with good emotional regulation more often reappraise, and teaching kinder attributions and perspective-taking helps reduce it. Unit twelve returns to attributions under attributional style.

Two kinds of shyness.

HGD 1069 Anxious and Regulated Shyness

Western parents tend to worry about shyness more than Chinese or other Asian parents, and researchers distinguish anxious shyness from regulated, culturally adaptive shyness. Among children of Asian immigrants, anxiously shy children were lonelier and more excluded than regulated-shy peers. The misconception is that every shy child needs fixing.

Resilience in middle childhood.

HGD 1070 Resilience in Middle Childhood

Resilience, in Masten's definition, is successfully adapting to stressful events, and a positive attachment to at least one caregiver is a key support, like one steady, warm grandparent who listens every day. Strong emotional regulation and healthy relationships also support resilience in children.

Empathy, sympathy, and altruism.

HGD 1071 Empathy, Sympathy and Altruism

Empathy is sharing another's feeling as well as understanding it; sympathy is awareness of another's feeling with a wish to help; altruism is kindness at a cost to oneself, such as stopping a game to help. Altruism is linked to theory of mind, friendship and belonging.

Four entries on moral reasoning, from Piaget's broken cups to Kohlberg's levels and his critics. The opening question is answered here.

Piaget on moral judgement.

HGD 1072 Piaget's Moral Judgement

Piaget asked children who was naughtier: a child who broke one cup sneaking a cookie, or one who broke several by accident. From about five to ten, rules are fixed and authority unquestioned; from about eleven, morality weighs intentions and fairness. The misconception is that Piaget found young children judge by intentions; he placed that at about eleven.

The Heinz dilemma.

HGD 1073 The Heinz Dilemma

Kohlberg extended Piaget's work with moral dilemmas. In the best known, Heinz's wife is dying and he cannot afford the drug that might save her; the druggist charges ten times his cost, and Heinz steals it. Kohlberg scored the reasoning, not the verdict: either answer can reflect any level.

Kohlberg's three levels.

HGD 1074 Kohlberg's Three Levels

Kohlberg described three levels, each with two stages. Preconventional reasoning, typical under about ten, rests on avoiding punishment and on gaining reward or exchange: he'll go to jail. Conventional reasoning rests on social approval and rules: stage three seeks to be seen as good, and stage four upholds laws to maintain social order: a good husband would, but the law says no. Postconventional reasoning rests on internal principles, the social contract and universal ethics: life matters more than property. Conventional reasoning is typical of older children, adolescents and most adults. Exam items about what others will think, or about obeying the law, expect the conventional level.

The payoff: Kohlberg's critics.

HGD 1075 Kohlberg, Gilligan and Culture

Kohlberg's theory drew two lasting criticisms, and they answer this part's question. Carol Gilligan, once his research assistant, argued that his mostly male samples biased the theory against women, and she proposed an ethic of care, centred on relationships and responsibility, beside Kohlberg's ethic of justice, centred on rights and principles. The critique changed the questions the field asked. The evidence on sex differences, though, is modest: a meta-analysis by Jaffee and Hyde found only small differences, and concluded that care does not belong mainly to women or justice to men. The second criticism concerns culture: Chinese children judged lying to promote group harmony more acceptable than Canadian children did. What survives is the broader point: moral reasoning includes care as well as justice, and the better answer can depend on what a culture values.

Look at what you can now do. You can tell self-concept, the description, from self-esteem, the sense of worth, and self-efficacy, the belief that one can do a particular task. You can name the three most common coping strategies: problem-solving, distraction and seeking support. You can explain hostile attribution bias, reading an ambiguous act as deliberate, and say that it predicts aggression across cultures. You can place reasoning in Kohlberg's levels: punishment and reward, then approval and law, then internal principles. And you can state Gilligan's ethic of care, and that the evidence shows only small sex differences in moral orientation. Part two turns to friendship.