Children's Autonomy, Social Competence, and Interactions With Adults and Other Children

Autonomy is a recognized goal of development. The primary developmental work on autonomy has focused on self-concept, identity, and personal agency. Recently, researchers have extended this work by examining connections between children's autonomy and interpersonal development, including studying the ways in which the development of autonomy is connected to children's methods of conflict resolution, their social knowledge, their social competence with peers, their socio-emotional knowledge, and their social coordination. Traditionally, autonomy and social development have been located in disparate research literatures. One goal of this volume is to bring together the work of researchers who have investigated autonomy and social development and the links between the two. Two themes have guided this endeavor: First, what are the means by which adults foster autonomy in children? And second, how does the development of autonomy bear on the social and interpersonal aspects of development? Included is the work of researchers who have studied the multitude of ways in which autonomy emerges out of adult-child negotiation and the ways in which it is connected to children's development of positive modes of social interaction and social competence.