Grandparents raising their own Grandchildren Essay

Grandparents raising their own Grandchildren - Essay Example (Bold, M, Gladys J. Hildreth & Ronald A Fanning 1999) The socialization theory, like some other theories of social control, also holds that pro-social family processes like the house rules and the inherent attachment resulting from a family setting, do affect growing children's behaviour and character. The Group Socialization Theory states that children's peer groups affect the behavior and learning patterns of the children more than the influence exerted by their families or genetics. Social control in growing children can be said to operate through direct control, indirect control, satisfaction of needs, and internalized control. Direct control has to do with parental supervision and monitoring, while indirect control is the interaction of growing children's beliefs and attachment. For example, children will try not to jeopardize their family relationship by not disappointing their parents or grandparents. Growing children also seek for satisfaction of their needs, and if a child is not emotionally satisfied within the family, the child seeks intimacy and support from his peers. One important implication of this and other models is the timing of family management practices and how these affect later peer choices. Poor attachment, monitoring, and supervision in the preadolescent phase will surface later in an adolescent's choice of peers (Oxford, Harachi et al. 2001). According to Judith Harris, "the psychological characteristics a child is born with become permanently modified by the environment" (Harris 1995, p. 482) Some people are of the opinion that there are two main developments in the field of psychology as a whole that need to be better assimilated in socialization work. The first is the attack on the trait (or nature) theory, and it is argued that socialization research can survive this attack only if it becomes more concerned with structural developmental change in its dependent variables. Second, the impact of the "cognitive revolution" is assessed, and the paper argues that more attention must be given to the ways in which children process inputs from socialization agents, and developmental changes in processing capacities. Finally, it is urged that research attention must be focused on the conditions which sustain the effective performance of socialization agents. (http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED112283&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED112283) For many decades now, there has been an ongoing conjunctive effort to clearly distinguish between the roles of nature and nurture in human development, and this has eventually led to some of the most provocative discoveries and psychological advances in the twentieth century. In his book, Stephen Pinker noted that "for many decades psychologists have looked for the causes of individual differences in cognitive ability and in personality. The conventional wisdom has been that such traits are strongly influenced by parenting practices and role models." (Pinker, S.