Ideas and information gathered from eight monthly seminars focusing on issues related to rights of youths are presented here. The topics that are covered are as follows: what it means to be regarded as a person, a definitive look at moral and legal rights, adult and youth rights, the rights of youth to be regarded as persons in schools and in…

This review of early childhood research examines what has been accomplished in the field and what questions now need to be answered. Project Head Start has had the effect of helping developmental psychology to become more comprehensive and less ethnocentric than previously. Developmental psychologists are now studying infants and toddlers and the…

Papers presented at a Loyola University Symposium, part of a series on human growth and development, are published in this volume. The papers are: (1) "Some Aspects of Operations," by Jean Piaget; (2) "Operational Thought and Social Adaptation," by Peter H. Wolff; (3) "Fundamental Education," by Rene A. Spitz; (4)…

The proceedings of the University Affiliated Program's Second Special Interdisciplinary Seminar, concerning Piagetian theory, are presented. The opening session dealt with the question "Can Piaget's Theory Provide a Better Psychometry?", C. E. Meyers, speaker. Among the papers reprinted in the proceedings from the afternoon program of…

A study of the advantages and disadvantages of various types of infant care provided by someone other than the mother is presented. Problems listed as occurring in intervention programs include: maternal-child attachment, individual differences among infants, planning problems, and emotional-social development. Types of intervention studied are:…

This final report describes the development and evaluation of a parent education program, the Houston Parent Child Development Center in Houston, Texas. Funded by the Office of Child Development the Houston Model was especially developed to meet the needs of low income Mexican American families with preschool children. Major components of the…

Social changes in Sweden have engendered concrete problems for young people. For example, an extensive government-sponsored day care system has left many youth longing for social contacts with adults. The Swedish society is giving material welfare higher priority than social welfare. Possible solutions are discussed. (RM)

This report details findings of the eighth annual (2003-2004) national survey of the attitudes and plans of American adolescents. Participating in the telephone survey was a nationally representative sample of 1,003 students aged 13 to 18, in ninth through twelfth grade. The report summarizes findings "at a glance" and discusses findings…

A study of research was conducted to determine how welfare and work policies enacted in 1996 targeted at low-income parents have influenced their adolescent children. Using meta-analytic techniques, the research synthesis integrates survey data collected from parents in eight studies of 16 different welfare and employment programs, focusing on…

This special Kids Count report examines the well-being of Arkansas' children, focusing on opportunities for children for arts education, physical education, and recreation; the report also links statistics on education and aesthetics with students' reading scores. The statistical portrait is based on 23 indicators of child well-being in six…

Noting that the perception of increased real violence in the country has created an inhospitable setting for pretend violent play, this book recounts the experiences of children in a kindergarten and first-grade classroom over the course of one year, focusing on the role of violent fantasy play. The book illustrates how the teacher, with 8 years…

War and violence are part of day-to-day life for many of the world's children. This book explores the lives of the children of Cambodia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and inner-city Chicago. Through research on the psychological and developmental effects of trauma in early life and interviews with children in war zones…

This book describes an ethnographic study of cultural routines involved in enculturating children into Kpelle society in West Africa. The study focused on: (1) playforms such as pretend play; and (2) adult-guided activities such as apprenticeship. Chapter 1 of the book, "Studying Child Development in Kpelle Society," introduces the…

This report compares results from the 1997 national study of the current attitudes of American teenagers with similar 1974, 1983, and 1996 surveys. Participating were 334 students between 14 and 18 years of age, from households representative of the national population in geographic distribution, population density, household size, age of…

The pessimists' view is that the U.S. family is collapsing; on the other hand, optimists view it is as merely diversifying. Too often, both camps begin with an ahistorical, static notion of what the family was like before the contemporary period. Noting that the actual complexity of our history gets buried under the weight of an idealized image,…