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(Positive) power to the child: The role of children's willing stance toward parents in developmental cascades from toddler age to early preadolescence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2015

Grazyna Kochanska ,
Sanghag Kim  and
Lea J. Boldt
Grazyna Kochanska*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
Sanghag Kim
Affiliation:
Hanyang University
Lea J. Boldt
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Grazyna Kochanska, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242-1407; E-mail: grazyna-kochanska@uiowa.edu.
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Abstract

In a change from the once-dominant view of children as passive in the parent-led process of socialization, children are now seen as active agents who can considerably influence that process. However, these newer perspectives typically focus on the child's antagonistic influence, due either to a difficult temperament or aversive, resistant, negative behaviors that elicit adversarial responses from the parent and lead to future coercive cascades in the relationship. Children's capacity to act as receptive, willing, even enthusiastic, active socialization agents is largely overlooked. Informed by attachment theory and other relational perspectives, we depict children as able to adopt an active willing stance and to exert robust positive influence in the mutually cooperative socialization enterprise. A longitudinal study of 100 community families (mothers, fathers, and children) demonstrates that willing stance (a) is a latent construct, observable in diverse parent–child contexts, parallel at 38, 52, and 67 months and longitudinally stable; (b) originates within an early secure parent–child relationship at 25 months; and (c) promotes a positive future cascade toward adaptive outcomes at age 10. The outcomes include the parent's observed and child-reported positive, responsive behavior, as well as child-reported internal obligation to obey the parent and parent-reported low level of child behavior problems. The construct of willing stance has implications for basic research in typical socialization and in developmental psychopathology as well as for prevention and intervention.

Type
Special Section Articles
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 27 , Issue 4pt1 , November 2015 , pp. 987 - 1005
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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