This tutorial textbook on child psychology includes chapters by academics in research areas as diverse as evolutionary and cross-cultural psychology, behavioural genetics, social cognition, and media influence on child behaviour.

Research in the field of human social development is moving at an astonishing pace. Within psychology, children's social behaviour has attracted interest from cognitive, social, clinical, and educational psychologists employing a wide variety of techniques that range from conversational analysis to experimental designs. Contributions have also come from beyond the domain of traditional psychology such as evolutionary theorists, behaviour geneticists, cultural anthropologists, and ethologists. This book aims to bring the reader to the cutting edge of this work by including original contributions from those in the very forefront of their discipline. Each contributor has spent years working in their specialist area and the authors have been given the freedom to argue for very different positions on the origins and sequence of children's social competence. The Social Child brings together controversial and sometimes conflicting positions on issues of central importance to society. It considers the likely impact of rising divorce rates and single parenting, how media images affect children's understanding and behaviour, how genes inform development, the role parents have, whether changing sex roles have had an impact on children's social interactions, and the sources from which children acquire behaviour. This book will be relevant to those interested in children's behaviour both professionally (social workers, teachers, educational psychologists, therapists, youth workers) and academically. It can also be used as a textbook for second and third year undergraduates and by postgraduates.

'[T]he text does give to the reader a diverse range of fascinating and well-presented arguments and literature reviews and will be of great interest to students and professionals.' - Review in Infant and Child Development, Vol 8, 1999, by Robin Banjeree, University of Sussex.