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logikitty's review against another edition
3.0
This textbook was not what I expected for something that was updated and republished in 2019. I read this for an upper division course in child and adolescent development at my university, and I was frankly disappointed that we read it. The book is good for an introduction to social development, but certainly sad when it comes to advanced theory and making intersectional connections to today's times (which I suppose is what I was expecting in my class). The authors describe general theoretical frameworks that child and adolescent development covers and then go into various forms of social development using the theoretical framework's lens to explain. They use age-old theories to describe development which, in some cases are "universal" but there are many glaring exceptions, of course, for those who do not develop 'typically'.
What I felt was deeply missing from the book were three things: connections to social issues that are relevant to today's social conversations (how politics are impacting child and adolescent dev and how gendered language and gender expectations impact child and adolescent dev, to name a couple), queer voices and the impact of the queer experience (for children and parents), and even just ONE mention about neurodivergent children and adolescents and how their understanding of the world impacts their social development. Everything was about typically developing kids or kids with high ACE scores (which generally leads to poor long term outcomes like delinquency), 'moms' and 'dad's, 'boys' and 'girls' development...It's tiring to hear and see the same old song and dance in these textbooks with gendered and heteronormative language and examples. I expect better from textbooks published in 2019.
What I felt was deeply missing from the book were three things: connections to social issues that are relevant to today's social conversations (how politics are impacting child and adolescent dev and how gendered language and gender expectations impact child and adolescent dev, to name a couple), queer voices and the impact of the queer experience (for children and parents), and even just ONE mention about neurodivergent children and adolescents and how their understanding of the world impacts their social development. Everything was about typically developing kids or kids with high ACE scores (which generally leads to poor long term outcomes like delinquency), 'moms' and 'dad's, 'boys' and 'girls' development...It's tiring to hear and see the same old song and dance in these textbooks with gendered and heteronormative language and examples. I expect better from textbooks published in 2019.
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