In this chapter, we provide a brief history of attachment research, probably one of the more fascinating stories in modern developmental psychology. We then summarize the main concepts, ideas, and research on attachment through the progressive answering of a set of eight basic questions. We then turn our attention to parenting, and how parents’ interaction with their offspring influences children’s development. Before we do, however, we examine more closely the logic of parenting from an evolutionary perspective.

The bulk of this chapter is devoted to the family as part of a dynamic system that includes the child, but also the community and the larger society. In the latter part of the chapter we examine the role of formal schooling, neighborhoods, and media, especially online media, as socializing agents for children and adolescents.

In this chapter, we examine several aspects of children’s lives with their peers. Following ethologist Robert Hinde’s classification, social behaviors are described in terms of interactions, relationships, and groups. In a first section, we examine children’s peer interactions and relationships, including friendships. We then examine the dynamics of peer groups. Next, we look at a phenomenon that has been of great interests to psychologists, educators, and parents, that of antisocial behavior, specifically aggression. Prosocial behaviors, including comforting, sharing, and helping, also have developmental histories and are the topics of the next section. We conclude the chapter by looking at the development of moral reasoning and moral behavior, topics that have important theoretical, psychological, and practical implications.

In this chapter, we examine the foundations of the development of social cognition—how children come to understand themselves and others. We begin by looking at the development of theory of mind – how children come to understand that people’s behavior is influenced by their beliefs and desires. We then examine the development of social learning, the acquisition of social information and behavior, which is responsible for humans’ ability to transfer information with such high fidelity from one person (and generation) to another. We then examine the development of the self, including self-concept, self-esteem, and self-efficacy. We conclude the chapter by looking at a related topic, identity formation in adolescence, including the development of ethnic identity.

In this chapter, we look at some other factors as foundational to development as genetics, specifically cultural contexts. First of all, we focus on defining what is meant by culture and explaining why it is so relevant to understanding children and human development. Second, we describe Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory and Vygotsky’s Sociocultural theory, two of the theories that have examined more carefully the role of contexts and culture in human development. Finally, we show how human thinking is culturally shaped in the context of guided participation and apprenticeship in thinking, and present the four challenging and famous questions proposed by ethologist Niko Tinbergen to understand human behavior from a truly comprehensive point of view.

This chapter begins with an overview of the major changes in physical size and proportions and the nature of developmental changes in physical growth. We also examine factors that influence growth and discuss the problem of childhood obesity. We then shift our focus to one of the most important and drastic periods of change in the life span—adolescence and the onset of sexual maturity. We next look at aspects of children’s motor development, examining both gross and fine motor changes in children’s abilities to control their bodies. We then devote a relatively large section to the development of perhaps the body’s most important organ—at least from a psychological perspective—the brain, which is expanded in later chapters.

This chapter is mostly devoted to the development of emotion in infancy, childhood, and adolescence. We follow this with a look at the closely related topics of temperament and personality and their development. We also examine when emotions sometimes get the better of children, causing excessive stress, anxiety, and depression.