Social Interactions in the Home and the Development of Young Children's Conceptions of the Personal

Abstract

Observations and interviews of 20 middle-class 3- and 4-year-olds and their mothers were conducted to examine the emergence of the personal domain. Interviews with children showed that 3- and 4-year-olds make a conceptual distinction between personal, and moral or conventional issues. Interviews with mothers indicated that they viewed it as important for young children to have freedom of choice over personal issues to develop a sense of autonomy and individuality. Observations in the home revealed that mothers tended to give direct social messages to children about moral, conventional, and prudential events, and were more likely to give indirect social messages in the form of offered choices to children in response to personal issues. Mothers were more likely to negotiate with children over personal than other social events. These data revealed a pattern of social interactions concordant with event domain, which included a reciprocal system along the border between the personal and the conventional.

Children's experiences of democracy, participation, and trust in school

“…These sorts of school rules could be seen as conflicting with what the pupils think should be a matter of personal choice and preferences. As prior research within the domain theory tradition has demonstrated, children are less accepting of adults' constraint when it is used to control their actions in the personal sphere than they are when adult authority is applied to moral or conventional actions (e.g., Nucci, Killen, & Smetana, 1996;Nucci & Weber, 1995;Tisak & Tisak, 1990). In addition, dissonance between teachers' explanations and actions also evokes critical engagement among pupils.…”

Young children consider individual authority and collective agreement when deciding who can change rules

“…This context resembles some cases in prior work where children face simple choice based on a personal preference (Chernyak & Kushnir, 2013;Chernyak, Kushnir, Sullivan & Wang, 2013;Kushnir, Gopnik, Chernyak, Seiver, & Wellman, 2015;Nucci & Weber, 1995). So we expect children to treat the arbitrary game as a personal preference rather than a set of rules, thus they should reason that the individual playing the game has the freedom to change the game at will.…”

“…Indeed, young children distinguish between contexts where parents and teachers are legitimate authorities regulating rules (e.g. in the case of moral rules), and contexts where they have personal authority or autonomy to make their own decisions (Laupa & Turiel, 1993;Nucci & Weber 1995). At around the same age, children can reason that even a child has authority over things they own, and that authority enables them to make decisions about who can possess an object and who determines what the object is for (Friedman & Neary, 2008;Nancekivell, Van de Vondervoort, & Friedman, 2013;Nancekivell & Friedman, 2014).…”

Morality, intentionality and intergroup attitudes

“…To extend the findings of Nucci and Weber (1995) to examine the school context, Killen and Smetana (1999) observed preschool classrooms and conducted interviews with children regarding ongoing moral, conventional, and personal events. Killen and Smetana (1999) drew from previous literature to identify activities which it could be expected that adults would provide, or children would assert, personal choices during school, including what to do during activity time, what to eat and who to sit next to during lunch time, and where to sit during circle time (De Vries & Zan, 1994;Smetana & Bitz, 1996).…”