Child Development Historical Context Paper

Child Development Historical Context Paper

Read the following page to learn about the historical context.  Also notice that there are interactions between the historical context and the economic context.   Studying the historical context, and applying the terms to yourself, will help you complete Module 1/Chapter 1 Assignment.

The Historical Context – THE COHORT EFFECT

One important context that is sometimes mistaken for age is the cohort effect. A cohort is a group of people who are born at roughly the same period in a particular society. Cohorts share histories and contexts for living. Members of a cohort have experienced the same historic events and cultural climates which have an impact on the values, priorities, and goals that may guide their lives.

Children Collecting Old Tires for Rubber During WWII

Wikimedia Commons (Links to an external site.)

Consider a young boy’s concerns as he grows up in the United States during World War II. What his family buys is limited by their small budget and by a governmental program set up to ration food and other materials that are in short supply because of the war. He is eager rather than resentful about being thrifty and sees his actions as meaningful contributions to the good of others. As he grows up and has a family of his own, he is motivated by images of success tied to his past experience (and based on his socio-cultural context): a successful man is one who can provide for his family financially, who has a wife who stays at home and cares for the children, and children who are respectful but enjoy the luxury of days filled with school and play without having to consider the burdens of society’s struggles. He marries soon after completing high school, has four children, works hard to support his family and is able to do so during the prosperous postwar economics of the 1950s in America. But economic conditions change in the mid-1960s and through the 1970s. His wife begins to work to help the family financially and to overcome her boredom with being a stay-at-home mother. The children are teenagers in a very different social climate: one of social unrest, liberation, and challenging the status quo. They are not sheltered from the concerns of society; they see television broadcasts in their own living room of the war in Vietnam and they fear the draft. And they are part of a middle-class youth culture that is very visible and vocal. His employment as an engineer eventually becomes difficult as a result of downsizing in the defense industry. His marriage of 25 years ends in divorce. This is not a unique personal history, rather it is a story shared by many members of his cohort. Historic contexts shape our life choices and motivations as well as our eventual assessments of success or failure during the course of our existence.

What is your Cohort?

Consider your cohort. Can you identify it? Does it have a name and if so, what does the name imply? To what extent does your cohort shape your values, thoughts, and aspirations? (Some cohort labels popularized in the media for generations in the United States include Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Generation M.)

In the video below, we can see how the historical context has had an influence on Generation X compared to Generation Z:  

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For extra study, you may be interested in the watching the video & learning about longitudinal study & it’s focus on cohort of children born in the same year.  It is interesting to identify various influences of contexts in the video:  

Chapter 1 Assignment – Instructions

After reading about the Historical Context & watching the videos in Module 1, “Historical Context,” answer the following questions:   

Identify Your Cohort:  What year were you born?  Identify which cohort are you in according to the videos you watched in Module 1 ? (Such as: Gen X, GenY ,Gen Z, Baby Boomer etc).   

Analyze your cohort effects:   What do you have in common with others your age due to the years you were raised?    (Music, television, clothing, technology, specific world events, etc) & what common beliefs does your generation have related to the time period in which you were raised? Explain.

What was the technology like as you were growing up?  How about social media?  How did the technology you had influence your development? (My mom only had radio growing up- no TV & my grandma was born in 1910, just as cars were becoming more popular.  What technology did you have?  )

Analyze & give an example of how your historical context (your cohort) had an impact at least one of the following developmental domains:

physical development (physical health/ nutrition or physical growth),

cognitive development (learning, academic work, school skills, education)

social development (forming positive social & peer relationships)  &

emotional development (emotional well-being & positive self-esteem) .

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