Children in Time and Place: Developmental and Historical Insights
Elder, Glen, Jr. and Modell, John and Parke, Ross D. (eds.) (1993).
New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 289 pages. $23.00. ISBN 0521417848.
Paradigm shifts in the social sciences have left us with the sobering realization that none of us has complete purchase on reality. We can only hope for successively better approximations to truth. It is in this spirit, rather than simply adding to the list of contextual variables for inclusion in analyses, that this book should be read.
Edited volumes offer a forum for presentation of ideas for which professional journals often do not allow. Children in Time and Place focuses on a conceptual and methodological problem: psychology has seldom acknowledged that human activity takes place in particular historical circumstances. There are a number of implications, for example, just as the universality of psychological processes cannot be assumed across cultures, neither can it be assumed across historical periods. Furthermore, it must be recognized that formal theories, as well as folk theories, are generated in a historical context. Also, by implication, history helps put contemporary sensibilities, social trends and scientific theories in perspective.
This type of inquiry is, of course, not entirely new. Ironically, this volume neglects its own historical context, or rather reconstructs it in terms of contemporary contextualism. Yet in the mid-1970s, lifespan developmental psychologists were concerned with cohort effects and, as the late Klaus Riegel so aptly put it in the title of an edited volume of that era, “the changing individual in a changing world.” Cohort analysis has proved to be a fruitful heuristic for data analysis; the critique of the context of psychological research and the “subjects” it seeks to measure is a precursor (albeit in a different lineage) to more recent work from a deconstructivist perspective. Yet the contributions I of lifespan developmentalists, which are still provocative and should perhaps be more widely used in developmental studies, are by no means the last word. Consequently, review of the current volume must focus on how successfully the current authors have “pushed the envelope” of inquiry.
As Joachim Woh pointed out regarding “age” as a psychological variable, “history” and “culture” may also be considered marker variables. The meaning of a difference on some measure between members of two cultures or historical eras may be due to contrasting social organizations, cultural practices, belief systems or symbolic representations; most likely the compounded effect of them all. This is where Children in Time and Place goes beyond the earlier lifespan literature. The volume attempts to bring the sensitivities of the best thinking about culture and the ecology of human development to bear on historical differences, while also reflecting uniquely historical sensitivities. It represents the culmination of approximately six years of interdisciplinary work between social historians and developmental psychologists concerned with change across the lifespan.
That the contributions vary widely in how they pursue their task may be unsettling to those who seek an “answer” about how to integrate historical and developmental psychological inquiry. Each reader will undoubtedly like some analyses better than others, perhaps as the disciplinary balance varies. For example, Parke and Stearn's analysis of fathers and child rearing relies heavily on familiar psychological research. Yet considering these data in relation to historical evidence forces us to reassess our expectations and offers challenges to future research. Other chapters present methodological hybrids, weaving together data collected in different ways from vastly different times and locales. For example, Schlossman and Cairns focus on problem girls from Los Angeles in the 1950s and North Carolina in the 1980s to glean insight into change and continuity in frequency, types of offences, expectations of behavior and patterns of social intervention.
A unique strength of this volume is the extent to which it is self-reflective- the final third of the book provides examination of the challenge set and the process of working in an interdisciplinary manner, as well as a meta-critique of the topical treatments in terms of their uses of history.
The editors included tough and thoughtful comments by historian Michael Zuckerman. In questioning the success of the enterprise, he alludes to the possible incommensurability of positivistic social science and the various forms of post-positivistic exegisis. Zuckerman cites the differing values inherent in the psychologist's search for general patterns and the historian's penchant for the particularism which is necessary to capture what it was like to grow up at a specific time in a certain community. Readers who have attempted the integration of qualitative and quantitative inquiry, as I have, will appreciate his concerns.
It is not surprising that well-established developmentalists represented in this volume have not capitulated to a hermeneutically-inclined historian. That they have faced the challenge to their favored modes of inquiry and encouraged further exploration bodes well for the future of the study of child development.
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