ABSTRACT
Social competencies, such as smiling at the right time, understanding what “no” means, or clearly expressing one’s needs, develop over time. How this happens is of great importance from multiple perspectives. Qualities of development are crucial in human society, both for individuals and for individuals’ social groups. Social development research asks how social competencies grow by considering processes and outcomes of biological, psychological, and social systems. In historical terms, the science of social development has evolved at a brisk pace. Although seminal research on the effects of parenting began in the 1920s, research on parenting hit its empirical stride only in the 1950s. In a further step toward encompassing a broader developmental system, transactional processes between children and parents had been recognized conceptually from early in the history of research on parenting. A set of constructs known collectively as temperament became a major complement to the parenting environment in social development research.
