Social Development Across The Lifespan In Diverse Cultur

Child Health And Human Development

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Abstract

In this project, we are investigating ways in which variations among rearing environments (especially as indexed by parental beliefs, values, and practices) affect children's development. In one line of research, we are assessing longitudinally the gender differences in the self-perceptions of two cohorts of seventh to 12th graders so that the antecedents and correlates of different styles of self-perception in adolescence can be explored. Rating themselves in 11 different roles, girls perceived themselves as more affiliative and less negatively affiliative in many roles than did boys, but gender differences in assertion were not reliable and girls' assertiveness did not decline over time. The results contrast with popular claims regarding girls' "loss of voice" in adolescence. Gender differences were context-specific and were more pronounced in ratings of Myself as a boy/girl and Myself with a close same-sex peer. To explore antecedents of these gender differences further, we gave portions of the self-perception battery to a group of Swedish 15-year-olds whose development has been documented systematically since infancy. Analyses of the data are currently under way, but preliminary results suggest few reliable correlates of individual differences in the Swedish sample.