In this chapter, Benokratis talked about the variations in parenting across the country. She began by examining the three major theories of child development, and then moved on to the challenges and misconceptions new parents face. She also discussed the differences in parenting style across race, class, and sexuality. Her main theme across the chapter was that child rearing styles vary depending on the amount of support and control given to the child. She finished the chapter by discussing several new issues in child care, including internet addiction and the general effect of multimedia on child development.
New thing learned:
I hadn't thought much about this before, but the idea that you have to learn how to parent from interacting with your child is very intuitive. Yet I was really surprised to realize that the depiction of parenting is so far from this idea. Now that I think about it, the idea of simply "knowing what to do" is all over TV and movies, not to mention self-help books.
Discussion topic:
I thought that the ideas put forth in Mead's Social Self theory were very interesting, but contradict many things that psychology has learned about how our brains work. Based on what I've seen in my Social Psych class, tabula rasa doesn't seem to hold true. We are born with innate social reactions, automatically shying away from certain images that evolution has told us are dangerous, like snakes. I was wondering if anyone had similar (or differing) thoughts on it.
I think with most of these ideas, they are not all encompassing. If you look closely at any of these theories, they in some way or another seem to fall short or not be able to adequately analyze all issues of child development. Overall, it is interesting that he has a completely social view on something, when there is a lot of conflicting evidence to that topic.
ReplyDeleteKarl Wahlen
I think there's a good mix of topics that do and don't fall under the tabula rasa for newborns. Things like beliefs and attitudes I would see as being no predisposition for because they develop as the infant grows and experiences things. I don't think Mead is saying this, but a tempting way to look at his theory is that an infant is not an overall blank slate, but a blank slate for everything specifically in terms of societal behaviors, beliefs, etc, since it doesn't know about society yet, if that makes sense.
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