Essays
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Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Refugee Youth in Resettlement - Kia‐Keating, Maryam
The global refugee crisis has reached unprecedented levels in scale and severity. Refugee youth face adversities at every phase of their experience; however, compared to premigration and migration, far less is understood about postmigration factors impacting well‐being. An overemphasis on traumatic stress has led to a gap in the research on resilience, protective, and promotive factors during resettlement. In contrast to a deficit model, the socioecological framework provides a holistic understanding of individual functioning. It is vital for future research to utilize a socioecological framework to highlight protective and promotive factors and inform policy and prevention efforts that target contextual and macro‐level processes that can benefit refugee youth development. Participatory, human‐centered, and empowerment approaches are emergent strategies that view and treat refugee youth populations as equitable partners, building their agency to move toward social action and help lead the efforts in reducing health disparities and supporting refugee resilience in resettlement. -
Family Relationships and Development - Grusec, Joan E.
Family relationships take different forms, with each form affecting development in a different way and requiring a different kind of parenting intervention. In this essay I begin by reviewing different approaches that have been taken to understanding social and affective outcomes of parenting and how each focuses on one particular kind of relationship. I then discuss central concepts including the importance for successful socialization of the internalization or the taking over of parental values and attitudes as one's own. Some current research is addressed, including (i) the investigation of control and how it can be exercised in such a way that it does not threaten children's autonomy and, therefore, their willingness to comply with parental directives; (ii) investigation of the many interactions between parenting and variables having to do with characteristics of the child and the context in which socialization takes place; and (iii) concern with the impact of different kinds of parental sensitivity on specific aspects of children's behavior. Finally, some key issues for future research are discussed. These include increased attention to the direction of effect between child and parent behavior, continuing attempts to understand how control is most effectively administered, and a focus on understanding the nature of interactions between genes and parenting in the developmental process. -
Motherhood - Hinde, Katie
Motherhood is fundamentally the state of being a mother. In mammals this manifests as behaviorally nurturing and physiologically nourishing one's young. The state of motherhood requires substantial and dramatic changes in the mother's behavior, brain, and body. Moreover among humans, motherhood occurs within a familial, socioeconomic, and cultural context. Among many animals, to become a mother marks the transition to a new stage of life, from a period dedicated to growth and development to a period of sexual maturity and productivity. Considering trade‐offs within and across the stages of the life course, known as life history theory, is essential to understand motherhood. Moreover, the interests of the mother and the infant overlap, but are not identical, leading to conflicts of interest. Here we will consider established and emerging topics of investigation into motherhood—from the neuron to the society—and directions for the future. -
Positive Developments During the Transition to Adulthood - Noam, Gil G.
The transition into adulthood, that phase between childhood and adulthood that we traditionally term adolescence, has undergone a rapid evolution in meaning. Our concept of the definition of what makes an adolescent has certainly changed since the seminal work of Erik Erikson. The boundaries of adolescence have been pushed both earlier, with puberty rates falling in the past two decades for girls even younger than 10 and extending for serious brain researchers to ages 25 and even 30. With the definition of adolescence potentially expanding from 7‐ to 30‐year‐olds, an over 20‐year age gap, it is no wonder that the unifying construct of adolescence is in trouble. This essay address the foundational research that laid the groundwork for our modern conception and understanding of emerging adulthood as differentiated from adolescence and full adulthood. It will review current thinking in this area and introduce a developmental process theory (DPT) that exposes the positives of our evolved definition of adulthood, as well as discuss avenues for further research and growth in this area. -
Sibling Relationships and Development - Campione‐Barr, Nicole
Although research on sibling relationships has been far less frequent than research on other close relationships such as parent–child, peer, and romantic partner relationships, researchers have found siblings to be important for the development of social competence as well as positive and negative adjustment. In addition, the sibling relationship is considered the longest lasting relationship across the life span and it serves unique developmental functions. This essay briefly describes foundational research on the influence of dyadic structural variables, relationship dynamics, and sibling influences on adjustment; outlines cutting‐edge research within the field on the contexts of family ethnicity, developmental period, and important processes and influences on relationship dynamics; and discusses key issues for future research such as expanding to under‐studied ethnic groups (e.g., Native American and Asian‐American families), family structures and contexts (e.g., adoption, single‐parents by choice, gay/lesbian parents), and mechanisms for relationship influence. Expanding the field to incorporate such research questions will likely require sibling researchers to examine findings from research on other important, close relationships, as well as collaboration of researchers from a variety of psychological disciplines as well as in the fields of sociology, neuroscience, genetics, anthropology, and human development and family studies.