Social and Personality Development: Infancy Through Adolescence

Rating:
Summary: A thorough (but dated 1983) review...
Review: William Damon wrote this book 20 years ago, when he was at Clark University. It is a comprehensive and well-written account of social and personality development: individuality, the origins of self in infancy, childhood; peer relations and the development of prosocial behavior; adult-child relations; adolescent social relations; and consolidation of adolescent identity. He is a thoroughly academic writer, comprehensive and fluent in various theories of child development as well as the experimental and observational literature that supports or examines the theories and his commentary.

The only drawback is that this is a dated review, published twenty years ago. A lot has happened in terms of infant-parent and child-parent interaction, degradation of the culture (TV, etc.), and children's personality. Nevertheless, this is a good start, and worth the read...

Damon is now at Standford University/Hoover Institution, which seems very well deserved, given how fluent this book is (and so early in his career). Other books by Damon on Amazon.com promise good reading, also, including Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence (1995), and The Moral Child (1990).

Rating:
Summary: A thorough (but dated 1983) review...
Review: William Damon wrote this book 20 years ago, when he was at Clark University. It is a comprehensive and well-written account of social and personality development: individuality, the origins of self in infancy, childhood; peer relations and the development of prosocial behavior; adult-child relations; adolescent social relations; and consolidation of adolescent identity. He is a thoroughly academic writer, comprehensive and fluent in various theories of child development as well as the experimental and observational literature that supports or examines the theories and his commentary.

The only drawback is that this is a dated review, published twenty years ago. A lot has happened in terms of infant-parent and child-parent interaction, degradation of the culture (TV, etc.), and children's personality. Nevertheless, this is a good start, and worth the read...

Damon is now at Standford University/Hoover Institution, which seems very well deserved, given how fluent this book is (and so early in his career). Other books by Damon on Amazon.com promise good reading, also, including Greater Expectations: Overcoming the Culture of Indulgence (1995), and The Moral Child (1990).