Social and Emotional Development

Social and emotional development in early childhood is the biggest topic on the Child and Family Blog
When social and emotional development has proceeded well in early childhood, children develop self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Our science brief on social and emotional development shows how this aspect of child development evolves from parents and babies gazing at each other through to the development of morality. Discover more research and findings in the social and emotional development articles below.

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The essential aspects of being human arise through relations with other people, particularly parents. Children learn things like the fear of spiders and snakes and stereotypes from their parents. Breaking the cycles of racial bias and violence starts at home by talking to children about racism.

Also important is how parents and caregivers relate to each other. A parent is more likely to parent harshly if his or her co-parent is not supportive. The impact of poverty tends to be lessened if parents share and cooperate in caregiving. When parents share care more, one parent can compensate for deficiencies in another’s parenting.

Parental influences on social and emotional development

Parents influence the social and emotional development of their children in a multitude of ways: showing gratitude, demonstrating kindness and talking about emotions, getting along well, demonstrating justice at home, showing “mind mindedness,” supporting empathy during toddlerhood, and encouraging volunteering and discussing politics at home.

Negative aspects of parenting can undermine healthy social and emotional development: harsh parenting (which occurs in all cultures), corporal punishment (the impacts of which are not alleviated by parental warmth), parental conflict, being overbearing and controlling, giving inflated praise, parenting competitively, and family instability (which affects boys more and has double the impact of poverty).

Other influences

A huge array of other factors influence children’s social and emotional development: culture, siblings (who play a particular role in some cultures), play, peers, children’s characteristics, blindness and deafness, prior adverse experiences of mothers and fathers, poverty, parents’ mental illness (particularly if the other parent is absent or not supportive), having less wealth than neighbors, children’s experiences of discrimination, parents’ experiences of discrimination, parents’ work stress, and neighborhoods with high population turnover.

Non-traditional families

There is no evidence that social and emotional development is undermined in non-traditional families. Children adopted by gay fathers are more likely to show strong attachment than are children of heterosexual couples. Children raised by lesbian mothers show less gendered behavior. Children adopted by same-sex couples do just as well as children adopted by heterosexual couples. It is the stress experienced by bisexual parents, not other factors, that affects child development.

Fathers

Fathers, just like mothers, have a key role in the social and emotional development of their children. They help children develop social skills. The quality of the father-daughter relationship directly affects girls’ exposure to friends’ risky sexual behavior. Children who trust their fathers more behave better than those who trust their fathers less. Fathers’ gender beliefs make more difference to a child’s aggression than mothers’ gender beliefs.

Social and Emotional Development

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Articles 9 of 214