URBS 4/581—Selected Topics:  Growing Up in Cities

Notes

 

I.                    Reconnaissance—“It takes a village to raise a child”

a.       My interests

                                                               i.      How do children grow up?

                                                             ii.      What do we want our children to become?  Can we influence that?

b.      Quick overview of the “history of the child”

                                                               i.      Naturalist observation

1.      Wild Boy of Averyon

2.      Darwin’s Diaries

                                                             ii.      Early theories of childhood

1.      GS Hall & children’s play (especially with dolls)

2.      A Binet & children’s intelligence

3.      M Montessori & children’s schooling

                                                            iii.      Children in the environment

1.      Anthropological studies of childrearing

a.       M Mead, Sex and Temperament

b.      Whiting & Child, Child Training and Personality

c.       Sears, Maccoby & Levin, Patterns of Childrearing

2.      Sociological studies of children’s development

a.       L Hoffman, Working Mothers

b.      R Coles, Children of Crisis (5 vols.)

                                                           iv.      Children in the City

1.      T Alexander, Human Development in an Urban Age

2.      NIH (NICH&D), “Children in the Man-Made Environment (1971 & 1973)

3.      Children’s play environments

a.       R Dattner, Design for Play (1969)

b.      M Allen, Planning for Play (1968)

c.       A Bengtsson, Adventure Playgrounds (1972)

4.      Childhood City Newsletter (EDRA

5.      A-M Pollowy, The Urban Nest (1977)

6.      K Lynch, Growing Up in Cities (1977)

7.      International Year of the Child (1979)

8.      UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (1990)

c.       Reflection

                                                               i.      With a few exceptions, blinkered focus on nuclear family and school settings.  But children also experience

1.      foster care/”broken” families/group homes—children in crisis

2.      day care & “substitute” care

3.      Scouts, etc.—early service learning & volunteering

4.      Church—more than just worship

5.      Library

6.      Recreation—formal and informal

7.      “Neighborhood” is sometimes defined as the home range of a child.  But (home) range differs by age & physical ability (in some respects, aged & infirm have similar issues) and stage in family life-cycle

                                                             ii.      Key definitions

1.      “City”—not necessarily “metropolitan”

2.      “Community”—can be neighborhood, town, community of association, etc.

                                                            iii.      A research agenda (1981)

1.      Use of city (more information about the way children really use the city)

2.      Significance of uses (to the child)

3.      Level of intervention

4.      Policy influence (responsive to policy makers’ needs)

                                                           iv.      Possible issues

1.      What are the differences between children’s perceptions & uses of their environments and that of adults?

2.      What is the difference, in behavior and in personality, between children who are raised in high-rises and children who are raised in ground-floor dwellings?  (consider the impact both of density and of physical barriers to movement)

3.      What has been the impact of the automobile on the child’s experience of the city environment?

4.      What is the impact of residential turnover rate on a child’s development?

5.      What are the public health issues related to growing up in cities? (epidemic, nutrition, environmental stressors, etc.)

6.      Who are the role models for children in cities?  What do city children learn from these role models?

 

 

II.                 Studying Children—What is available for working with children?  What are the advantages & disadvantages of each?

a.       Issues in data collection (Driskoll, 2002, pp. 177-179)

                                                               i.      Allocate  sufficient  time

                                                             ii.      Strive for complete,  accurate data

                                                            iii.      Be cost-effective

                                                           iv.      Explore non-traditional data sources

                                                             v.      Document your sources

                                                           vi.      Collect  images as well as words & numbers

                                                          vii.      Distinguish between “facts” and “impressions”

                                                        viii.      Maximize opportunities for participation

b.      Ways of Studying Children (Almy & Cunningham, 1959)

                                                               i.      Observation:  The Basic Way of Studying Children

                                                             ii.      Study Children in  Their Groups (informal observation & sociometric observation)

                                                            iii.      Ask Children  About Themselves (self-report, class discussion, casual conversation, written reports, questionnaires)

                                                           iv.      Study the Way Children Express Themselves (written, oral, dramatic play, role-playing, music, dance, art)

                                                             v.      Study the Child Through Others (Parents as a resource, other informants)

                                                           vi.      Study the Records

c.       Research with Human Subjects:  Children

                                                               i.      For a basic description of the work of the IRB (Institutional Review Board), which oversees research with human subjects, see http://krypton.mnsu.edu/~tony/Human%20Subject%20Research.ppt

                                                             ii.      Children are a protected category of research subjects

1.      They cannot give informed consent to participate in research.  They can (and should be asked for) give assent, but the parent or guardian should be asked for consent.

2.      They are, by definition, vulnerable subjects and so the investigator bears a special responsibility to protect them from harm.

                                                            iii.      If you will be doing research with children,

1.      you must complete a Human Subjects Review form, available at http://www2.mnsu.edu/graduate/facstaff/proposalguidelineshtml.htm

2.      If your project qualifies, you might also want the Level I Review checklist, available at http://www2.mnsu.edu/graduate/facstaff/irbLevel1Checklist.pdf

3.      a full description of MSU’s IRB is available from MSU’s Office of Research at http://www2.mnsu.edu/graduate/facstaff/irbForms.shtml 

d.      Secondary Data (Driskoll, 2002, pp. 180-194)

                                                               i.      Maps & photographs

                                                             ii.      Visual survey/photogrid

                                                            iii.      Physical environment data

                                                           iv.      Social & economic information

                                                             v.      Political, legal, & cultural information

                                                           vi.      Historical information

                                                          vii.      See Children’s Defense Fund. (2003)  Kids Count Databook.  Available on Web at http://www.cdf-mn.org/PDF/KidsCountData_03/DataBook_2003.pdf

e.       Interviews

                                                               i.      Fred Hill, “Lives & Times of urban  adolescents”  Activities which are reported the most are not necessarily enjoyed the most.

                                                             ii.      Inappropriate for younger children (5-6 year-olds find them awkward) or abstract concepts (“poverty”) (Mauthner, 1997). 

1.      Explore abstract subjects through concrete examples (“I feel happy/sad…” cards, or photos of situations).

2.      Let child set the agenda (don’t ask too many questions—listen instead)

3.      Useful to ask child to describe specific events (and then probe for meaning)

4.      Pay attention  to level of language used and euphemisms (children use different ones)

                                                            iii.      Focus Groups can be particularly useful with younger children, especially if they already know (and like) each other (Mauthner, 1997).

1.      This technique puts them in a situation that is already familiar—talking together—and makes them less self-conscious. 

2.      It structures the interview around themes rather than question-and-answer. 

3.      Gender and age composition are important issues (older children and males tend to dominate conversation).

f.        Participant Observation

                                                               i.      Particularly useful with younger children (Mauthner, 1997).  Permits both observation and unstructured inquiry.

                                                             ii.      Key issues (Fine & Sandstrom, 1988)

1.      Role of researcher

2.      Trust

3.      Adult-role-related ethical issues

4.      Knowing the  culture

                                                            iii.      Guided tours (Ladd, 1970)

                                                           iv.      Drawings & interviews (Moore, 1980)

g.       Controlled Observation

                                                               i.      Can be useful source of information, provided observer is not seen as “lurking.”

                                                             ii.      Provides  information on how many do what where, but does not provide interpretation of the behavior.

h.       Structured Activities

                                                               i.      Drawings

1.      Elkisch (1945)—“It is assumed that expressions of younger children (in drawings) are less disguised” (p. 27).  Criteria for coding for psychological impact include:

a.       Rhythm/Rule (flexibility vs. uniformity)

b.      Complex/Simple (differentiation vs. primitive)

c.       Expansion/Compression (contact potential—exploration vs. isolation)

d.      Integration/Disintegration (order vs. chaos)

e.       Realism/Symbolism (world  of objects vs. inner world)

2.      Lystad (1974)—coding drawings and stories for content

a.       Setting

                                                                                                                                       i.      Orientation (reality/fantasy)

                                                                                                                                     ii.      Treatment of subject (matter-of-fact/humorous)

                                                                                                                                    iii.      Characteristics of locale (urban/suburban/rural; near natural features like water, forest, etc.)

                                                                                                                                   iv.      Locale in relation to main character of work (home/school/work; in community/outside community)

b.      Actors

                                                                                                                                       i.      Type of actor (human/animal/inanimate/supernatural)

                                                                                                                                     ii.      Type of human involvement (with sibling, parent, family/with other adults/with other children; child alone; adult alone/with other adults)

                                                                                                                                    iii.      Racial or ethnic characteristics

                                                                                                                                   iv.      Type of animal involvement (pets/zoo animals/predators/domestic animals)

                                                                                                                                     v.      Type of supernatural involvement (good/bad guys)

                                                                                                                                   vi.      Main character (child/other child/adult/animal/inanimate/supernatural being)

                                                                                                                                  vii.      Affect shown among characters (positive/negative/both)

                                                                                                                                viii.      Complexity of main figure (one action/ambivalence or more than one process)

                                                                                                                                   ix.      Activity of main figure (action only/action & thought/thought only)

c.       Needs of actors

                                                                                                                                       i.      Basic needs (physiological/safety/love—of people or of animals/independence & freedom/achievement & strength)

                                                                                                                                     ii.      Problems in solving needs (physical/psychological threats)

                                                                                                                                    iii.      Life passages (birth/puberty/marriage/old age/death)

                                                                                                                                   iv.      Needs in relation to self (concern with self alone/self & others/others alone)

d.      Means  of satisfying needs

                                                                                                                                       i.      Social institutions involved (political/economic/leisure/familial/religious/educational)

                                                                                                                                     ii.      Cognitive relationships (rational/irrational)

                                                                                                                                    iii.      Affective relationships (intimate/apart)

                                                                                                                                   iv.      Goal orientation (individual/group goals)

                                                                                                                                     v.      Stratification (hierarchical/non-hierarchical)

                                                                                                                                   vi.      Manner in which needs are met (self-direction/conformity to norms)

                                                                                                                                  vii.      Sex-related activity (girl/boy/boy-girl/none)

                                                                                                                                viii.      Age-related activity (child as child/adult; adult as adult/child)

e.       Satisfaction of needs

                                                                                                                                       i.      Satisfactions (success due to self/others; failure due to self/others)

                                                                                                                                     ii.      View  of self (positive/mixed/negative)

                                                                                                                                    iii.      View of people’s capabilities in the world (control own  lives/controlled by others)

                                                                                                                                   iv.      View of world in general (friendly/uncertain/hostile)

3.      Meaning of images can change with the times (Gondor & Gondor, 1969)—“sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

4.      John Dean, “Housing Design & Family Values”—Asking people what they want, they will overlook wants that are currently satisfied.  Drawing forces them to fill these in.

5.      Muscovitch, “Child’s  Perception of the Neighborhood” (CMHC, 1980)  6-9 year-olds:

a.       Schools show up as important (but not central, even when planned to be)

b.      So do playgrounds

c.       Shopping with parents is also high

d.      Difference in play between s/f and m/f areas

6.      Galia Weiser “City streets:  The child’s image as a basis for design,” Innovation in Play Environments, PF Wilkinson, ed..  NY:  St. Martin’s Press, 1980.   

a.       “My street” ranges from 50-150 meters (no age given). 

b.      Space is defined by large elements (houses & trees) which are drawn schematically in 2 dimensions, and defined by small-scale elements (fences, edge of sidewalks, garden, grass, signposts, garbage cans, and flowers) which are described in 3 dimensions.

c.       Space is drawn circularly (or in an elipse, if dominated by a main street).

                                                             ii.      Doll play (Brower)

1.      time-consuming, difficult to codify

 

 

III.             Theories of Development—No one is born completely formed.  Just as the human body goes through major changes in the progress toward adulthood, so does the human personality.  What are the stages and dimensions of psychological development toward adulthood?

a.       Overview:  In our culture, childhood (in retrospect) is imagined to have been a time of innocence, both for the individual (all children are born good, and fall from grace later) and for society (society and life were so much simpler “back in the day”).  The English critic, Raymond Williams, wrote a book about this (Country and City).  At his father’s funeral, he overhead people saying how much simpler things were back when his father was a boy.  So Williams went back to the literature of his father’s youth, and found the authors writing about how things were so much simpler back in their fathers’ time.  He traced an unbroken line of reminiscence of “simpler times” going all the way back to Piers Plowman (and he speculated that he could have traced it all the way back to Adam and Eve, had the literature still been extant).  

 

But the scholarly literature is much more nuanced.  Each stage of development has its own agenda, its own typical challenges and failures and triumphs; life never is, nor ever was, “simple.” 

 

b.      Key theorists

                                                               i.      Sigmund Freud (1856-1939):  Freud’s is primarily a theory of emotional development.  In  his theory, the child is born with a mass of instinctual energy (which he called the “id”—Latin for “it”).  The work of society is to tame—break, if you will—this animal instinct and civilize it, for it is by civilizing that we become human (in the psychological sense).  The uncivilized Wild Boy of Averyon, while genetically human, was not a human person. 

This process of civilizing works through guilt (externally imposed rules) and shame (internalizing those rules).  The realization that there are rules that one must follow—in other words, learning—Freud calls the “superego” (not in the sense of “superior ego,” but in the sense of “that which stands above the ego”). 

The result of the taming of the raw animal spirit by the discipline of civilizing rules (i.e., the conflict between the id and the superego) is the “ego” (Latin for “I”).  The ego is the conscious self—batted about between the id (raw emotion and desires) and the superego (sense of responsibility and guilt) and trying to make sense of it all.

This process follows a natural and normal (albeit painful and chaotic) process. 

·        In the beginning, the child simply acts to satisfy needs and wants—when hungry, the baby cries until fed; when full, the baby fills the diaper.  Freud calls this the “oral” stage, since the major activity at this time focuses on the mouth (eating, crying, etc.)  The child at the breast does not differentiate between the mother and the self—it is all one thing.

·        In time, the mother (for Freud, it is always the mother who first socializes the child, since it is the mother who nurses the child) teaches the child s/he needs  to learn self-control—to wait to get fed, to control bowels and bladder, etc. Freud calls this the “anal” stage, since learning to control the bowels is the difficult, but ultimately gratifying, task of this stage.  In this stage, the “good” mother of the oral stage becomes a “bad” mother who frustrates the child’s desires to persevere in oral-stage satisfactions.

·        Having developed a superego (having learned control), and therefore having developed an ego (a sense of the “I”—and the “not-I”), the it dawns on the child that there are other people in the world than oneself—not only is there a mother who is sometimes good and sometimes evil, but there is a father who is trying to get between the child and the mother. This jealousy of others Freud calls the “Oedipal” stage (after the Greek story of Oedipus, the King of Thebes, who killed his father and married his mother), after the primordial experience of jealousy that every boy child experiences (initially, Freud did not pay much attention to the female side of this equation, although Freud and his students later dubbed it the “Electra” complex, after the Greek story of the young women who revenged her father’s death by killing her mother).

·        Having learned to control the physical body and to control his emotions, the boy passes into a stage that Freud called “latency” (because there are no major crises).  This is a stage of consolidating the gains of the previous stages, and deepening one’s knowledge.  This is the stage of “childhood,” and continues until the stage of puberty, when the child explores and develops an adult form of sexual behavior and expression.

I have, of course, oversimplified.  But this gives the broad outlines, which will make it easier to make sense of the reading from Freud’s lectures.

                                                             ii.      Erik Erikson (1902-1994):  Erikson started out as a student of Freud, but broke with him fairly early on. Erikson was more interested in the social side of human development (in fact, some would argue that the interpretation I gave above of Freud sounds suspiciously like Erikson).  He described 8 stages in the development of “man” (nonsexist language had not become common yet when Erikson was writing), going from birth through old age and death.  Each of the stages is marked by a specific “task” which has to be mastered—or, failing that, will carry forward a basic personality weakness into each of the following stages until the missed task is finally (if ever) completed.  As a result, Erikson’s stages carry both a “positive” and a “negative” face.  It is also significant that Erikson sees the process of development continuing throughout adulthood (although each stage takes longer to complete), rather than stopping with the resolution of puberty (as in Freud).

 

Erikson’s description of the eight stages (in the assigned reading) is written in fairly clear language, and you do not need me restate it.

 

                                                            iii.      Jean Piaget (1896-1980):  Piaget was a Swiss psychologist (he started out as a naturalist) who was interested in the stages of cognitive development.  He began almost all of his work by observing his own children as they developed (he was trained as a naturalist, remember).  He used those observations to develop hypotheses, which he subjected to “thought experiments” (“experience pour voir,” as he called them in French—“experiments to see”) and then turned into classic experimental designs with random samples of children.  With Freud and Erikson, it was possible to move from one stage into another without necessarily having solved the challenges posed by the prior stage.  In Piaget’s system, the only way it is possible to move to the next  stage is by successfully solving the challenge of the present stage—each successive stage builds  on the learning from the previous stage; it is not possible to skip stages, nor (under normal circumstances) to revert to a prior stage once a later stage is mastered.