In 1998, Judith Rich Harris became famous since she made a point on the cause of children’s behavior, that “in some key sense, parents don’t much matter—that what’s important is not what children learn inside home but what they learn outside the home (peer influence)” (Malcolm Gladwell, 1998). This point does make sense, because children always have a need to “fit-in”, to have friendships and to gain a sense of belonging from their peer groups. Apparently, learning from their peers can make the process much easier, since people who have common hobbies and share similar values tend to stay together, and that’s usually how a peer group is formed. Considering the generation gap between parents and children, copying the behaviors and thoughts of parents can do no benefit to fulfill the need of peer relationships.
I once had a hard time to join in peer groups since there were not many common topics between my peers and me. My father was fond of politics and history, so we always went to historical sites for trips, while my peers spent time with their parents in different fairgrounds. What they always talked about was different roller coasters and how exciting it was, but I have no experience in roller coasters. Of course I could talk with my peers about my experiences in different historical sites, but who cares? What my peers cared were always pop culture and fun and complaints about teachers.
Peer groups can be essential to help develop social skills of children (teenagers or younger are all influenced by peer culture and rules of peer groups). Clique is one of the main forms of socialization among teenagers, which is defined by common activities or simply friendship (Steinberg, 2013, p. 158) (But how to start a friendship? In many...
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...ncome factor and relocation caused by divorce disrupts kids relationships with peers and make them feel difficult to fit in. And I think compared to peer influence, parents are more important considering kin relationship between generations.
Works Cited
Carlson, Amber. (2012). How Parents Influence Deviant Behavior among Adolescents: An Analysis of their Family Life, their Community, and their Peers - Tags: PARENTAL influences DEVIANT behavior. Retrieved April 1, 2014, from http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/80029517/how-parents-influence-deviant-behavior-among-adolescents-analysis-their-family-life-their-community-their-peers
Gladwell, Malcolm. (1998). Do Parents Matter? Malcolm Gladwell. Retrieved April 1, 2014, from http://gladwell.com/do-parents-matter/
Steinberg, L. (2013). Adolescence (10 edition.). McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.
author Alexander Robbins states: “From the age of five children increasingly exclude peers who don’t conform to group norms. Children learn this quickly. A popular Indiana eighth grader told me ‘I have to be the same as everybody else, or people won’t like me anymore’” (150). The human brain is wired such that children will end friendships with kids that they find different. Robbins finds this behavior to be undesirable saying that it is not only unappealing, but it is a cop-out. In agreement with Robbins, parents across the world, organizations, and teen movies tell society that conformity is bad and that children should not conform to the group, rather they should stand alone and be individuals. However, Solomon Asch’s study may have discovered why this is. He concluded that: “The investigations described in this series are concerned with the independence and lack of independence in the face of group pressure” (1). Asch determines that in the face of pressure people are more apt to conform.
Children create peer groups to gain a sense of belonging and acceptance, alongside with socializing with others who have common interests, jobs, or social positions. At a young age, peer groups show children what is considered acceptable behavior around his or her peers and what is deemed unacceptable behavior. In certain social groups, there are role expectations that people have to be met. When in the peer group, often children will influence each other to engage in appropriate behaviors that can be seen as right or wrong.
Peer groups are different in characteristic and require a customized approach. Nonetheless, at the heart of youths is an intense energy that yearns to connect and explore the surrounding (Goold 435). This makes it easier for the youth to engage in improper habits that have dire repercussions.
Identification with a peer group is a critical part of growing up because even though there is a mix between valuable and invaluable points, no one wants to be left with nobody to help them figure out how they fit in the world and get pass tough times. Peer pressure can have positive impacts and not so good but the postive are too valuable to overpass, leaning us over to conclude that classifying with a circle of close friends are a key factor when going into the real
Moreover, peers is also helps the adolescent in the developmental task because adolescent mostly spent their time with their peers and mostly adolescents share their problems through their peers. Peers give different advices about their experience in that certain problem, surely an adolescent listens to his or her peers. Adolescent and peers mostly have time to spent because of their vacant time, they also share problems. Adolescent and peers share problems in an adolescents period (Mccandles, & Coop, 1979) states that the peer group of friends helps the adolescent in the developmental tasks of establishing independence from the family and the achieving autonomy in the adult world. It offers the adolescent both primary (earned) status and secondary (derived) status as a member of a recognized
...d by their parent's divorce but also have negative side effects later on in adulthood (issue 8 pg 146). Developmental psychologist Hetherington agrees that divorce can be harmful to a child's development but that they ultimately overcome it. Eventually they will overcome it, but this is most likely to happen past stage 6, in middle adult hood after one has decided whether or not they want to spend their life with someone. Erickson's theory of personality development can help one realize the stages which are mostly affected by a parent's divorce. The stages affected are stages 3, initiative versus guilt, stage 4 industry versus inferiority, stage 5, identity versus confusion, and finally intimacy versus isolation. The symptoms of having a broken home might not always be very noticeable until a person is peeled little by little and ready to fix their heavy past.
Peer group is defined as a group of people who are linked by common interests, equal social positions, and usually similar age. Example of peer group from the movie are the different units of policemen hanging with each other, and the different gangs based on where you live/your community and how much you have in common with that specific
“In middle childhood, 30% of a child’s social interactions involve peers, compared to 10% in early childhood” (Blume, 2010). Children place a large importance on friendship more when they grow older. In early childhood, friendships are associated with a particular activity. During middle childhood, children focus more on bonds and trust when it comes to making friends. Children start to use selective association meaning that children start to pair off with people that have the same interests as them. Sociable kids are attracted to other sociable kids and children who are shy tend to get left behind.
One of the greatest aspects of one’s life is the friendships made throughout the years. Friends are there to help comfort, laugh with, ward off loneliness, and to build up connections between other people. Amongst these attributes, friends at a young age help children to “build trust in people outside their families and consequently help lay the groundwork for healthy adult relationships (Stout, 2013, para. 14).” However, with the introduction of technology brings along social medi...
The loss of a parent can cause loss in knowledge, skills, and resources from the parents. They loose such things as support from the parent in finances, emotions, and care. Children tend to have a harder time dealing with a divorce the more divorces their parents go through. The better the parents adjust to these losses, the better the children will adjust, and the fewer problems that will come about. When the child is in a single parents home, there is usually a loss of money and therefore, resources. This can lead to the child being jealous of other children and having lower self esteem.
Teachers and peers Teachers played a huge role in my development because I started preschool at the age of two, so I spent a lot of time in some sort of classroom setting and interacted with the teachers. When I was younger a lot of times I preferred to be around the teachers, mostly because being an only child at the time, that was all I was used to. There were times when I did interact with my peers. Most of the time I spent was with my cousin because we had the same class. Once I was old enough to start kindergarten I was confident that it was going to be a cake walk. I met a group of friends and was excelling in class. However, my friends and I had a very hard time getting along, so we were later separated. Throughout my childhood I recall bouncing between several different types of friend groups, from the “cool clique”, to the
Adolescence is, for the most part, about fitting in. Most everybody wants friends and wants to feel like they are a part of a social group. Young childhoods are spent meeting new people and making friends that share your common interests. However, in the teenage years, it gets a lot more complicated. Some people will start to leave their old friends for newer, “cooler” ones, and start to wear new clothing to make themselves popular. Everyone wants to fit in, and some people will make more of an effort to do so than others. In middle school specifically, cliques and social groups start forming. This is the time when teens and pre-teens figure out who they are and start to fit in with their friends.
These types of social groups can make a person feel left out or humiliated. Some cliques will “jeer at others, humiliate people or choose to exclude” others (“How Cliques Make Kids Feel Left Out.” ). Excluding a person could make them sit away from the group and feel isolated. Cliques are formed and separated from everyone else due to different reasons. They can separate due to race, gender, and social class. This group can also be caused by a feeling of homophily, to stick around people that share a common interest, which affects the process of “peer selection and socialization” (Goodwin). Cliques could also separate themselves through popularity. A group of people may look at themselves as “’cooler’ or better than others” (“Friends, Cliques and Peer Pressure | Barnardos Ireland.”).This type of judging could affect the way other groups look at themselves and others. Teenagers in different cliques from one another “tend to inflate the positive qualities of their own crowd” while as well as “exaggerat[ing] ...
Peers can have a positive influence on each other. They can and do act as positive role models and demonstrate appropriate social behaviors. You might admire a friend who is always a good sport and try to be more like him or her. The ability to develop healthy friendships and peer relationships depends on a t...
“The main consequence of saying no to negative peer pressure is not just withstanding "The heat of the moment," as most adults think. Rather, it is coping with a sense of exclusion as others engage in the behavior and leave the adolescent increasingly alone. It is the loss of the shared experience. Further, the sense of exclusion remains whenever the group later recounts what happened. This feeling of loneliness then becomes pervasive but carries an easy solution -- go along with the crowd.”