Stollak - Child caregiving and the goals of adult life 1
CHILD CAREGIVING AND THE GOALS OF ADULT LIFE
Gary E. Stollak
Department of Psychology
MichiganStateUniversity
2008
CHILD CAREGIVING AND THE GOALS OF ADULT LIFE
Table of Contents
page
CHAPTER ONE : GOALS 5
CHAPTER TWO: SELF, SELF-ESTEEM, SELF CONCEPT AND IDENTITY 38
CHAPTER THREE: IMPLICATIONS OF THE “CREATIVE” PERSPECTIVE FOR 75
UNDERSTANDING THE GOALS OF CHILD CAREGIVING
AND ADULT LIFE
CHAPTER FOUR: TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE NEEDS AND RIGHTS 80
OF CHILDREN: THE PERSPECTIVES OF MASLOW,
ROGERS AND ERIKSON
CHAPTER FIVE: COALITIONS AND ALLIANCES: DEFINITIONS AND 119 IMPLICATIONS FOR ADULT AND CHILD LIFE
CHAPTER SIX: PUNISHMENT AND OPTIMIZING COMMUNICATIONS: 130
PATHWAYS TO COALITIONS AND ALLIANCES
CHAPTER SEVEN: SOURCES OF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CAREGIVING 149
IN THE EARLY YEARS OF LIFE BASED ON RESEARCH FINDINGS
CHAPTER EIGHT: LOVE AND CHILD CAREGIVING 161
CHAPTER NINE: APPLICATION OF THEORY AND RESEARCH FINDINGS TO 187
SENSITIVITY TO CHILDREN IN THE FIRST YEARS OF LIFE:
BIRTH TO SIX
REFERENCES 255
APPENDIX 266
Values and Virtues 267
Figure 1: Strands of the process by Carl Rogers 272
Figure 2: Possible pathways from a biological drive to actions and experiencing 273
Feeling words 274
Coopersmith: Contributors to self-esteem 275 Gardner: Intelligences 279
Fromm: The objects of love 280
Sternberg: The triangular theory of love – An overview 282
Lee: Love styles 285
Relationship surveys 286
Ainsworth: Four scales for rating adult behavior in encounters with infants and children 300
Baumrind: Categories of child and caregiver behavior 312
Toys 314
Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale 315
PREFACE
I have been interested in theories and research in developmental, personality, and social psychologyfor more than 50 years. I have also been interested in applying various theories and research findings in my work as a clinical psychologist and childcare educator. Equally, if not more important, has been my interest in their possible use in my life as a spouse, parent, and friend.
In this manuscript I comment on what has been written by others, with lengthy—and often eloquent—quotes from many of them so that you can get a clear idea of what they (and I) believe about (a) human nature and some aspects of human history, (b) a wide variety of positive attributes of infants, children, and adults, (c) the constructs self, self-concept, self-esteem, and identity,
(d) personality and social development through the life span, and (e) different objects, styles, and components of love.
The major focus in the following chapters will be not be on how the above areas of interest relate to “normal” development nor will it be on “problematic” development. I hope to provide commentary, perspectives and research evidence that relate to “optimal” development of infants and young children. You will note that I put many terms in italics to indicate that I am concerned about the definitions of them and how different definitions have different implications. I do attempt to point out the complexity of more than a few of the words and concepts social scientists use and attempt to define them in ways that may be useful. I accept that I may not be any clearer than many others.
I hope I have contributed to your understanding of each of these important areas of life and to consider the implications of the possible relationships among these diverse points of view, different theories, and existing research findings on your life goals. I also hope that I have provided suggestions that may help you help those young children who are in our care achieve the goals we have for them and what we may do to help them define and reach their own goals.
“The End
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six
I'm clever as clever,
So I think I'll stay Six
for ever and ever!”
---A. A. Milne (1927)
“Maybe humans, in particular,
do not strive for mastery in order to survive,
but strive to survive
in order to explore and master.”
--- Arthur Aron and Elaine N. Aron (1991)
“Do not devote yourself
entirely to looking for love.
Look for and find your life’s purpose,
and love will find you.”
--- Amy Dickinson (2007)
CHAPTER ONE
GOALS
All of ushave a multitude of very short-term and very long-term wishes and goals.
What are the goals in your life? Would you like to “stay Six, for ever and ever”? Most of us, older than six, may not only wish to have fun, be happy and carefree as often (and as long) as possible, but also wish to be productive, to be helpful, and to find daily life filled with spirituality …and love. Do you want to “find your life’s purpose”? Do you want to “strive to survive in order to explore and master”? What do you want to explore and master? Most of us wish to live out the values and virtues and morals we were taught. Psychologist Steven Pinker, in a January 12, 2008 column in the New York Times noted that morality is
close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. We seek it in our friends and mates, nurture it in our children, advance it in our politics and justify it with our religions. A disrespect for morality is blamed for everyday sins and history’s worst atrocities.
Many may have a wish to become self-actualized, to achieve fulfillment or enlightenment, to possess wisdom, to experience pure consciousness or nirvana. Who does not wish for “victories” in our daily endeavors? Many of us want power and the ability to control others…for good or ill. Some long for wealth, some want fame. We may also wish to spend as much time as possible creating beauty or working toward creating a just world. Many may wish to know (or they believe that they already know) God’s will and engage in activities in life that they know (or hope) will result in blessings and bliss after death.All of us wish for faith, hope, and love…and maybe more than anything else, love.
Over the past several thousand years there have been innumerable proposals for pathways to achieve one or more of the above and other life goals. These have included, for many, learning to act in ways to indicate that their love of life, of self, partners, God, and neighbors led and leads them to an enlargement of their own self, the acknowledgement of the personal dignity of others, and contributing to laws that provide and protect civil rights and a wide variety of freedoms. Some, over the millennia, with different values and goals, have acted in ways that led and continues to lead them, often under the leadership of others, to the appropriation and destruction of other people’s land and property, and to the enslavement, imprisonment, and death of tens of thousands, and even tens of millions.
There have also been ever-increasing improvements in technologies that have contributed to ever-increasing knowledge, most recently of the genome, the structure, chemistry, and dynamics of individual cells and the relationships among the cells of living systems, and our knowledge of the physical environment we all share. This knowledge has already and will likely continue to contribute to the extension in the length of life, the health, and the life satisfaction, of those now alive and yet to be born—hopefully throughout the world. This knowledge has already affected and will continue to contribute to psychological, sociological, economic, educational, cultural, even political changes that significantly affect the long-term goals, purposes and pathways of adult life and the goals we have for our children.
My focus here is on a narrow set of these wishes, goals and pathways and provide what I hope are useful descriptions and examinations of various perspectives that may contribute to a greater understanding of their origins. I provide some analysis of words and constructs such as “competence,”“self-esteem,”“secure attachment,”“identity,”“alliances,” and “love.” I will also provide some recommendations, derived from my reading of the perspectives of Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Erik Erikson and others, and from research in child development, for child caregiving that may help infants and young children to actualize their fullest individual and human “potential.”
One goal, for many, is to “know thyself”;a recommendation that has been first attributed to several Greek philosophers, including, according to Plato, Socrates. To accomplish this, one may also agree with another observation attributed to Socrates; “An unexamined life is not worth living.” What are some of the components of this goal and pathway? I am among many who believe that they include the ability to (a) label and discriminate among feelings including the similarities and differences between feelings such as jealousy and envy, shame and guilt, liking and loving; (b) understand, as much as possible, how our words and actions derive from specific thoughts, images, feelings and motives; (c) understand the differences between a need and a wish and the differences in actions we take to gratify each; and (d) understand how specific events in one’s life influence choices and actions in the present and expectations for the future. It is assumed that the more we examine our thoughts and feelings, our choices and actions, and reflect on their origins and reasons for their consistency or changes over time, the more satisfying and meaningful will be our lives. Most of us would wish that our children would be able to achieve these goals, too. We may also wish that they and we have high “self-esteem,” a positive “self-concept,” a satisfying and committed “identity,” each of which may be contributors to, and the results of, an examined life and the “knowing” of one’s “Self.”
For example, what contributes to the development of high self-esteem and how might it be of help through life? Stanley Coopersmith (1961) wrote:
First and foremost is the amount of respectful, accepting, and concerned treatment that an individual receives from the significant others in his life. (emphasis mine.) In effect, we value ourselves as we are valued, and this applies to extensions of ourselves as well as the more centrally experienced aspects of our self-images. Our successes generally bring us recognition and are thereby related to our status in the community. They form the basis in reality for self-esteem and are measured by the material manifestations of success and by indications of social approval. These indices of success and approval will not necessarily be interpreted equally favorably by all persons.
It is by living up to aspirations in areas that he regards as personally significant that the individual achieves high self-esteem. Thus experiences are interpreted and modified in accord with the individual’s values and aspirations. Success and power and attention are not directly and immediately perceived but are filtered through and perceived in the light of personal goals and values. The fourth factor is the individual’s manner of responding to devaluation. Persons may minimize, distort, or entirely suppress demeaning actions by others as well as failures on their own part. They may reject or discount the right of others to judge them or, conversely, they may be highly sensitive or aware of other people’s judgments. This ability to defend self-esteem reduces the experience of anxiety and helps to maintain personal equilibrium. (emphasis mine.) In the study of how the personality functions, this ability to maintain self-esteem in the face of negative appraisals and discomfiture has been described by such concepts as controls and defenses. These terms refer to the individual’s capacity to define an event filled with negative implications and consequences in such a way that it does not detract from his sense of worthiness, ability, or power. (1961, p. 37)
Much more about self-esteem in Chapter Two.
Then there is the question of who and what children are for in our lives. How do they contribute to our goals and our life satisfaction? What do we want from them and for them? How do we know whether and which of our words and actions and the activities and events from the moment of their conception, help to achieve our goals for them and for them to achieve their own goals?
James Fowler (1981) wrote that while driving to participate in a workshop on faith, he pulled over to the shoulder of a road and stopped and spent forty minutes reflecting, for the first time, on his own answers to the same questions that he was about to pose to others and that he had posed to many others in his life as a theologian.
What are you spending and being spent for? What commands and receives your best time, your best energy?
What causes, dreams, goals or institutions are you pouring out life for?
As you live your life, what power or powers do you fear or dread? What powers do you rely on and trust?
To what or who are you committed in life? In death?
With whom or what group do you share your most sacred and private hopes for your life and for the lives of those you love?
What are those most sacred hopes, those most compelling goals and purposes in your life? (p.3)
All of us, as we grow older probably do stop, periodically, and examine as he did, “the structure of values, the patterns of love and action, the shape of fear and dread and the direction of hope and friendship” in our lives. How do we help those we care about and care for understand the words in these questions and help them answer these questions for themselves? Let me focus first on what we want from our children and for them and what they want from us. This will be followed by speculation about how they are related to our own goals as younger and older adults.
Freeman Dyson, who, in reference not to children but to weapons, wrote:
We shall not succeed in dealing with the political and technical problems of controlling our weapons until we have agreed upon a coherent concept of what weapons are for….
There are endless debates about when our national weapons are to be used for offensive or for defensive purposes. There are equally heated debates about the conditions under which we, as individuals, can obtain, possess, and use weapons to defend ourselves, family, friends, and others, from those who would harm and rob us. But how do we decide who should own weapons and arms? How do we decide what is responsible use of them? Should everyone have the right to “bear” arms? Is ownership a “right” never or at most, minimally, to be interfered with by the state? If it is a “privilege,” who decides who may own them and decides on their “proper” use? Does the state have the right to grant ownership of arms to only those with the agreed upon requisite knowledge and skills regarding their use? Under what conditions does the state have the right to prevent someone from ever legally owning arms? (1984; p.1)
Regarding an equally critical issue in our present and for the foreseeable future: should every one have the right to “bear” children? Is “ownership” of a child a “right” never or only under “extreme circumstances” to be interfered with by the state? If it is a “privilege,” who decides who may own them and decides on their “proper” use? Does the state have the right to grant “ownership” of children only to those with the agreed upon requisite knowledge and skills regarding their “use”? Paraphrasing Dyson, under what conditions does the state have the right to prevent someone from ever legally “bearing” and “owning” children?
Why do most of the world’s women bear children? Why do most of the world’s men want to be fathers? Why do most of world’s adults expend a significant amount of energy and resources caring for children—and for such long periods of time? Bernard Bloom (1987) in The Closing of the American Mind wrote:
The children can say to their parents: ‘You are strong, and we are weak. Use your strength to help us. You are rich, and we are poor. Spend your money on us. You are wise, and we are ignorant. Teach us.’ But whyshould mother and father want to do so much, involving so much sacrifice without any reward? (p. 197).
What are the rewards of child bearing and child caregiving?
I believe that we will not resolve the “political and technical problems” regarding children and their welfare until we have agreed upon a coherent concept of who and what children are for, what we want from them, and what we want for them.
In one attempt to address these issues, a cross-national value of children study was undertaken (Hoffman, 1987) to explore the needs that children satisfy for parents and the goals parents have for their children by asking married men and women in eight countries questions such as the following: