What Observation Studies Can Tell Us About Single Child Play Patterns, Gender, and Changes in Chinese Society

Abstract

Our study focused on Chinese children’s play patterns in two different Chinese capitals: Chengdu—the capital of Sichuan in southwest China and Hohhot—the capital of the autonomous Inner Mongolia region in northern China. Unlike child psychologists working in China, who prefer survey instruments organized around parent and teacher interviews, the authors relied primarily upon behavioral observations. Their study is based on naturalistic observations of children in different age cohorts interacting in a variety of social contexts. It draws on a social ecology approach to examine the role of social setting, social class, and regional variation on children’s interaction style. The authors wanted to link their findings to both Four Cultures and Six Cultures studies. To that end they adopted a behaviorist approach that used similar methodology to code children’s interactions. They sought to identify the frequency of particular types of children’s interactions that ranged from types of aggressive and dominance displays, cooperative and altruistic acts, to the frequency of acts of retaliation to aggressive act(s). In Chengdu they coded 342 acts; while 120 Hohhotian acts were coded for a total of 462 interaction episodes. Their study is designed to incorporate both analytical perspectives—observation and interviews—to provide a more nuanced commentary on the potential significance of Chinese children’s playful interactions.

Modeling children’s moral development in postwar Taiwan through naturalistic observations preserved in historical texts

“…As age increased, boys were less likely to tattle on others, but they were also more likely than girls to become the targets of tattling. Our study therefore reveals a more complex picture of sex differences in aggression than prior observational or self-report studies on Chinese children 48 , 58 . Girls’ tactics are especially interesting: Tattling can help mitigate conflicts while asserting oneself, through seeking help from external authority.…”

“…Mainstream anthropology scholarship, including the Wolfs’ own works 45 , 50 , emphasized gender socialization ideology in Chinese culture, i.e., girls submitting to boys, rather than actual experience in childhood, therefore assumed a passive role of girls. Aligned with that gender ideology, the scant observational research of contemporary urban Chinese children found that boys displayed more dominance than girls 48 . This contrast might have resulted from differences in study design, that our data are based on a much more extensive fieldwork with a larger sample size, or that our study employed a more rigorous and sophisticated statistical approach.…”

“…In this regard, we will address three focal questions after comprehensively modeling all the behavioral data we coded: First, children’s leadership dynamics: How do children mobilize themselves into group activities, enact norms, impart moral knowledge, or establish authority in the process? The Wolfs’ works hardly ever examined this topic, but we found it ubiquitous in children’s everyday play, therefore including behaviors such as leading (non-coercive) and scolding (moral criticism) into our coding scheme, in addition to dominating (coercive) examined in the scarce observational research on Chinese children 48 . Second, age-related trends: Margery Wolf noted that, in this traditional Chinese community where age is an important factor in social hierarchy, caregivers used harsher discipline on older children but a more lenient approach towards younger children, as younger children were assumed to have little capacity for moral reasoning 45 .…”

Demographic factors impact children’s moral development in postwar Taiwan: Modeling naturalistic observations from historical texts

“…As age increased, boys were less likely to tattle on others, but they were also more likely than girls to become the targets of tattling. Our study therefore reveals a more complex picture of sex differences in aggression than prior observational or self-report studies on Chinese children 54,55 . Girls' tactics are especially interesting: Scolding and tattling can help mitigate conflicts while asserting oneself, with the former invoking one's own authority and the latter seeking external authority.…”

The Mischievous, the Naughty, and the Violent in a Taiwanese Village: Peer Aggression Narratives in Arthur P. Wolf's "Child Interview" (1959)

“…One important question is why Child Interview data did not show significant influences of age and gender on peer aggression. Gender and age differences in children's aggressive acts have been found in observational research on Han children in contemporary China (Jankowiak, Joiner, and Khatib 2011) as well as other cultures, such as those studied in SCS (Whiting and Edwards 1973) and its extension (Whiting and Edwards 1988). According to Margery Wolf (1978), gender and age were important factors in parental discipline in this community: local people saw ages 6 and 7 (about the median age of this Child Interview sample), when parental discipline becomes stricter, as a time of abrupt change, with parents clearly favoring boys over girls.…”