Researchers present findings at child development meeting
By Diane Swanbrow
News and Information Services
Several U-M researchers presented their latest research findings on
children from infancy to late adolescence at the biennial meeting of the
Society for Research in Child Development, held March 30—April 2
in
Indianapolis.
The research projects included:
Friends of the opposite sex: In grade school, girls play with
girls, boys play with boys and the twain seldom meet. Only 21 of 723
third- and fourth-graders studied by psychologist Jeffrey Parker and
colleagues said their best friends were members of the opposite sex. These
children did less well academically and were less popular with peers than
all but one other group of classmates&emdash;children who said they had no
friends at all. Another 60 children had friends of both genders. "These
kids were like peer leaders in some ways," Parksr says. "They were
somewhat iconoclastic, but they had high self-esteem and were
well-regarded socially and academically. Because cross-sex friendships are
so unusual in childhood, we tend to think they're unhealthy." But another
school of thought suggests that more cross-gender friendships in childhood
will lead to better long-term communication between males and females.
What teen-age boys have in common with middle-aged women:
Women usually have larger social networks than do men of the same age,
according to psychologist Toni Antonucci. Teen-age boys are the exception,
with 10 people in their circle of friends, compared with only 8 for
teen-age girls. Mid-life women have the fullest social lives of any group,
with an average of 12 people in their social network compared with 10 for
mid-life men. Antonucci's findings are based on a random sample of 1,703
Detroit-area residents between the ages of 8 and 93. While a growing body
of research documents the positive effects of social relations, Antonucci
finds that for mid-life women, already stretched thin juggling family and
job, a large social circle may be too much of a good thing. "The more
people women have in their inner circle," she says, "the unhappier they
tend to be."
To live at home or not to live at home: For
young adults, that isn't really the question, according to psychologists
Connie Flanagan and Eric Anderman. They studied 192 college students who
lived at home with mom and dad while others their age were getting their
first taste of adult independence in campus apartments or dorms. Some of
the students who lived at home had more psychological problems than
others, they found. What the maladjusted undergrads had in common was that
their parents had pressured them to live at home and allowed them very
little autonomy and independence. "These parents gave their sons and
daughters very little breathing space," Flanagan says. Undergrads who
lived at home because they wanted to, for reasons that included
convenience and money, and who came and went pretty much as they pleased,
were much better adjusted psychologically, even though their parents may
have wanted them to move out.
The war within the family:
More than three million U.S. children growing up in violent homes are at
high risk of developing an array of behavior disorders and psychological
effects, from elevated levels of anxiety and stress to depression and low
self-esteem. But psychologist Sandra Graham-Bermann reports that children
who have a positive relationship with a friend, sibling, relative or
teacher do better than children who are isolated, trapped within the
war-zone that is their family. "In the war within the family, the
injuries are many, and they're psychological as well as physical," says
Graham-Bermann, who chaired an SRCD symposium on the impact of domestic
violence on children and parenting. "Emotional abuse, coercion and various
kinds of stress often accompany physical violence."
Graham-Bermann recently received a $400,000 grant from the Centers for
Disease Control and Injury Prevention to study the effectiveness of a
10-week intervention program she developed for battered mothers and their
children.
Who's been sleeping in the family bed? Japanese
children and African American children are more than three times as likely
to sleep with their parents as white American children ages six months to
four years, according to pediatrician Betsy Lozoff, director of the Center
for Human Growth and Development. Lozoff and colleagues conducted
cross-cultural studies of co-sleeping and other sleep practices among
families with young children in the United States, Italy and Japan. They
found that 58 percent of the Japanese and African American children
studied slept with their parents three or more nights a week, compared
with 42 percent of the Italians, 19 percent of the white U.S. children
overall and just 16 percent of white children who were breast-fed for six
months or more. Lozoff and colleagues believe these differences in sleep
practices reflect the varying emphases different cultures place on
independence vs. interpersonal connectedness.