ABSTRACT
The four papers in this section outline a holistic, conceptual perspective useful for studying black children and their families. These approaches provide important extensions of the developmental perspective. Social researchers need to consider black child development as it is influenced by socio-historical, cultural, life course and ecological imperatives. How these imperatives affect black children's personalities differs, depending on individual life stage. Together, the papers in this section provide a comprehensive orientation to guide empirical research on child development generally, and black child development in particular.
