Families have psychology {family, psychology}. Before the 17th century, people older than three to seven were like adults, did same activities as adults, and dressed the same as adults. In 17th century, thinkers and clergymen emphasized children's specialness and innocence. Children should receive education in morals, manners, and attitudes. Family formality is less now, as respect for children as people has grown.
Intimate, intense, and identification relations can end by separation or by disruption from within or without {alienation, psychology}|. People that experience social or cultural alienation can become activists, social dropouts, non-conformists, school dropouts, or juvenile delinquents.
In USA, potty training {toilet training}| begins at 9 to 12 months and ends at 18 months, when maturation makes control possible. Parents should not use coercion, start too early, or use too much punishment.
Offspring {children, family} continue family line, achieve immortality for parents, provide labor source, contribute to family survival, and are investments for future. Wanted children have parents that believe in their beauty, goodness, and creativity and believe that love and education can control children's energy, sexuality, and changes.
law
Parents must protect and support their children and educate them, in accordance with state law, until they reach majority. In some states, parents must send qualified children to college and pay their expenses, even past majority age. States can require support after majority if child has disability, has retardation, or cannot care for himself or herself.
Emancipation ends parental duties toward child.
Some states do not require that parents support children away from home, if they have consented to support them at home.
baby
Parents typically do not immediately feel love for newborn child. Loving and protective attitude develops through social interaction between infant and parents. Babies that are irritable, sick, difficult to feed, or hard to pacify can cause love not to develop. Parents can feel rejection if baby is unresponsive or seldom smiles. Infant behavior often makes parents feel inadequate.
In different cultures, babies can have schedules or immediate satisfaction, adults can talk a lot or a little to baby, and one mother or many women can tend baby.
first-born child
First-born child faces higher standards, has only adult models, has better world model, has high anxiety at second child's birth, and has more dependence, more guilt, more conformity, less aggression, more achievement, more sensitivity, less sociableness, and more carefulness.
youngest child
The youngest in family is typically the most-active and independent.
Before majority, child can marry, be in military service, or have full-time job {emancipation}|. Emancipation ends parental duties toward child.
Children can have chronic bed-wetting {enuresis}.
age greater than legal age {majority, age}|.
People can freely engage in sexual relations after reaching age {consent age} {age of consent}|.
age less than legal age {minority, age}|.
Parenting {parents} has properties.
parental behavior
Parental behavior can show love, affection, and warmth, or hostility and rejection. It can exercise control and authoritarianism, or allow autonomy and freedom. It can be permissive or restrictive. It can be possessive and involved or detached. Parents are more authoritarian in lower social classes.
Parents that show affection and allow autonomy tend to have children that are active, bossy, high in self-esteem, high in achievement, friendly, and confident.
Parents that are affectionate and in control tend to have children that have high esteem, are dependent, are not aggressive, and conform.
Parents that are hostile and restrictive tend to have children that are hostile, have low confidence, have low achievement, and are withdrawn.
Parents that are hostile and permissive tend to have children that are aggressive, have poor self-control, are delinquent, have low confidence, and have low achievement.
mother
Children with no mother have poor language skills and social relations, but their memory and motor skills are normal.
same-sex parent
Absence of a same-sex model is a factor in delinquency and poor school attendance.
Mother or father can seek affection and security from child {anxious attachment}. Such parent typically alternates abruptly from concern to hostility and had difficult childhood.
Sexual behavior {sexual activity} can persist into seventies or eighties.
Men are most active sexually, and the most interested in sex, from late teens through twenties. Male sexual responsiveness declines from late twenties onwards. In fifties and sixties, sexual-arousal vasocongestive responses become less, sexual desire remains high, and urgency to ejaculate upon sexual arousal diminishes.
Women's sexual responsiveness and interest increases to peak in middle thirties and can stay for next thirty years. Hormonal changes cause vagina-wall thinning and drying after 50.
People can bare body private parts in front of other people {frotteur} {exhibitionist}|.
Sexual practices between adults and children {pedophilia}| are harmful to child development.
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Date Modified: 2022.0225