Emotional and Social Development of African American Children

Abstract

Concerns about the development of African American children living in poverty most often center on academic, behavioral, and emotional functioning. Efforts to understand and to remedy thege concerns are giving rise to explorations of social and emotional development. Social development refers to the growth of abilities and dispositions that are the basis of emotional adjustment and competence in meeting the demands of the social environment. It includes the development offavorable personal, ethnic, and gender identities, emotion regulation, prosocial behavior, and a capacity for intimate relations. As this research progresses, attention to the role of culture and social context (e.g., poverty and racism) in development is unavoidable. Clearly, developmental research is less than illuminating if itfails to consider variations in the ability offamilies', schools', and neighborhoods' to provide protective and nurturing environments conducive to healthy development of children. Accordingly, the role of socioculturalfactors as sources of risk and resilience constitute an important area of scholarly inquiry regarding the social and emotional development ofAfrican American children.