Sunday, April 8, 2012
Argument: Parents or Peers?
On page 109, Shenk cites Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner as saying that "on average, parents and peers will turn out to have complementary roles" in a child's development (109). According to Gardner, parents tend to be more important for education, discipline, responsibility, orderliness, and other ways of interacting with authority figures. On the other hand, peers play a large role in areas of learning how to cooperate with others. Do you agree with Gardner and Shenk that parents and peers have equal roles in a child's development, or do you believe that one side has a larger influence than the other? Will being able to cooperate with people rather than respond well to authority help in the future or vice-versa? Use examples from the book or your own experiences to explain your position.
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Parents and peers do not have equal roles in a child's development; parents and are significantly more influential on a child's development than his or her peers. In the early years of a child's life (years 0-3), the child goes through incredibly important mental development. Close Interaction between parental figures is essential during the first three years of life in order to obtain normal development. Close parent-child interaction in these formative years is also necessary for optimal intelligence and understanding of language. In the book "The War Against the Family," William Gairdner delineates that children between the ages of 0-3 needs a parent to be there and be responsive to the child in a sensitive manner. In addition, studies have shown that "neurological foundation for problem solving and reasoning are largely established by age 1" and that the"number of words an infant
ReplyDeletehears each day from an attentive, engaged person is the single most important predictor of later intelligence, school success and social competence" (Sheila Kippley, The Crucial First Three Years). This clearly demonstrates how children will grow up to be most capable if they are raised by attentive, caring adults. In addition, the first three years of life are essential for developing positive bonds and attachment with ones parents. According to teacher.sholastic.com, during this short time period, "bonding experiences must be present in order for the brain to develop normally". If a child suffers from neglect during this time period and misses these bonding experiences, the child can lose the capacity for or have much more difficulty in achieving and maintaining meaningful relationships for the rest of their lives. In fact, Gairdner referred to kids who haven't formed attachments and bonds to their mothers by the age of three as "sociopaths in the making" (Gairdner, The War Against the Family). These unattached children could be far less capable of feeling empathy, maintaining relationships, and operating in a social environment than a child who had positive bonding experiences with its parent.
Peers can not make up for the potential damage that neglectful parents can possibly cause to their children. In fact, the damage caused by neglectful parents can easily hinder the child’s ability to make friends and be positively affected by peers. Missing out on this crucial time period of development because of ones parents could cause indeterminate years of social and mental strife because the child failed to develop mentally, socially, and intellectually at a normal pace.
Laura Perlman (laura4@comcast.net)
I agree with Laura, I believe that the role parents play have lot more influence on the children overall. But sometimes, the role that peers play can have more influence on the children too. This all depends on the children’s age. When babies are born, they don’t know anything and can’t do anything. So parents have to take care of them. Teaching them common sense and nurturing them have lots of influence on the children. But when these children get to ages around 9~18, they spend more time with friends than with parents. At these ages, peers have lot more influence than parents. Peers can have more influence on the children because of peer pressure and puberty. Lots of researches and data has proven that if you have friends who smoke, drink, or do other bad things, you have higher chance to get into these things too. There is a experiment that Garfield Bester did that involves the influence of peers and parents for teenagers. When you see the result section, at that age, it looks like that peers have more influence than the parents. Children with peer influences was better at those ages both for boys and girls. This shows that peer influence plays an important role too. (http://www.ajol.info/index.php/saje/article/viewFile/44139/27654.). But overall, I think that most of the important life skills that you need to live is better to be learned by parents than their friends.
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