Developmental psychology without positivistic pretentions: An introduction to the special issue on historical developmental psychology

Abstract

Emphasizing the importance of understanding children and child development as ‘cultural inventions’, William Kessen urged developmental psychologists to forego ‘positivistic dreaming’. The first section of this paper summarizes Kessen’s central ideas. In the second section the pretensions of positivism (classical nineteenth century positivism as well as twentieth century neo-positivism) are analyzed. The core critique of positivism is based on Poppers falsificationism and the so-called Positivismusstreit within the Frankfurter Schule. Despite those and related fundamental critiques, anti-positivism (such as Kessen’s) does not imply anti-empiricism. One corollary – Although contemporary developmental psychology is dominated by empirical-quantitative approaches, a wider range of philosophical and methodological approaches are called for if the failings of lingering positivism are to avoided. In particular, twenty-first century developmental psychology requires critical thinking about the discipline’s foundations and history, along with deep analyses of how childhood and child development, and the field itself, are historically and culturally embedded (as Kessen asserted). Section 4 concludes with several critical notes regarding, e.g., the predominantly Western orientation of historical studies of child development and the need to recognize the unavoidable normative, moral dimension in the study of human development. The final section provides a brief overview of the papers that comprise this special issue on historical developmental psychology.

Keywords:

• Historical developmental psychology
• positivistic psychology
• analytical empirical approaches
• developmental science
• SRCD

1. Introduction

The often-cited developmental psychologist William Kessen (1925–1999) considered the American child a ‘cultural invention’ (Kessen, 1979). Inter alia, this implies that developmental psychology cannot function fruitfully without historical analysis. And that is what this special issue seeks to demonstrate.

The first section of this introduction focuses on Kessen’s ideas. The second section takes a closer look at the meaning of ‘positivism’, a concept and movement Kessen often considered. In particular, we will assert that it is possible to be an anti-positivist while simultaneously believing that theoretical conceptions must be approached systematically and assessed empirically-analytically as rigorously as possible. In other words, while recognizing - as Kessen did later in his career - that scientific knowledge is always contingent on time and place, scholarly concepts and claims must remain open to empirical inquiry. Conversely, section three elaborates on the view that scientific thinking not only depends on empirical-analytical research, but also requires self-reflection, in particular, critical thinking about a discipline’s foundations and history. Section four concludes with several critical notes as a bridge to brief descriptions of the papers that comprise this special issue.

2. Kessen’s plea

During the (only) ‘International Year of the Child’ (1979), Kessen wrote an influential essay on ‘The American Child and Other Cultural Inventions’ (Kessen, 1979; also Kessel & Siegel, 1983). Among several other central observations Kessen pointed out that:

No other animal species has been cataloged by responsible scholars in so many wildly discrepant forms, forms that a perceptive extraterrestrial could never see as reflecting the same beast. (Kessen, 1983, p. 27)

Understandably scientists who study children wish to continue to pursue what Kessen referred to as a ‘positivistic dream’, in which such multiple variations in the definition of the child are considered the ‘removable [correctible] error of an [as-yet-]incomplete science’ (l.c.). Kessen’s view, however, was that developmental psychologists needed to finally attempt to bridge what he considered the abyss of the positivistic nightmare. This requires them to recognize that the upbringing and development of children, as well as the sciences of developmental psychology and pedagogy, are culturally-historically influenced in significant ways:

For not only are American children shaped and marked by the larger cultural forces of political maneuverings, practical economics, and implicit ideological commitments (a new enough recognition); child psychology is itself a peculiar invention that moves with the tidal sweeps of the larger culture in ways that we understand at best dimly and often ignore. (Kessen, l.c.)

Grounding his position in historical analysis, Kessen suggested that, in the mid-nineteenth century, the United States of America was being prepared, socio-culturally, for the birth of what came to be known as child psychology. Against the background of the industrial revolution, he discussed three cultural-historical changes that have shaped the fundamental principles of developmental psychology through to the present. And while Kessen consequently spoke about American child and developmental psychology, his critique applies to Western culture as a whole, if only because of the dominant influence of North American developmental psychology in the twentieth and even twenty-first century. He did, therefore, delete the adjective ‘American’ (from the title ‘The American Child and Other Cultural Inventions’) in his revisited version in 1983; hence: ‘The Child and Other Cultural Inventions’ (Kessen, 1983).

In Kessen’s analysis, the first cultural-historical change that led to the invention of the modern-day child was the gradual division between the domains of work and family. When women in America between 1830 and 1840 were excluded from the industrial workforce, this division, marked by the walls of the family home, became increasingly impregnable (Kessen, l.c., p. 31). Work was carried out in specialist workplaces (factories) by specialist people (men), and home became a place where one did not work.

Second, masculinity and femininity were so strongly separated that two different worlds arose: the ‘ugly aggressive, corrupting, chaotic, sinful and irreligious’ world of men and the ‘sweet, chaste, calm, cultured, loving, protective and godly’ world of women (Kessen, l.c.). This division made women ‘naturally’ and exclusively responsible for the upbringing of and caring for children.

A third change followed from the other two: As children no longer had access to the grown-up professional world and home ‘took on the coloration of mother, hearth and heaven’ (Kessen, l.c.), children became sentimentalized. They were seen as pure, unspoiled, and even ‘heavenly’. Wordsworth’s ‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy’ succinctly expresses this view (Stassijns & van Strijten, 2004, pp. 138, 139). Moreover, the critical importance of early childhood for lifetime development was canonized. Again, Wordsworth is (too) often quoted: ‘The Child is father of the Man’ (l.c. pp. 128, 129).

Kessen’s central message is that these cultural foundations of ‘developmental science’ are generally not recognized as such, i.e., as culturally-historically contingent, and are often even regarded as fundamental laws of nature. As Kessen argued, in developmental psychology the importance of a harmonious family, the significant role of mothers, and the decisive role of early experience in the development of the child are conventionally considered as principles anchored in the laws of nature, for which researchers seek and find empirical evidence. And the now commonplace use of ‘developmental science’ can be seen as a final integration of developmental psychology with ‘science’, and not with the humanities. As a key qualifying corollary, this view overlooks, or at least tends to overlook, any and all alternative conceptions of the child and of development in different historical epochs and socio-cultural contexts. To Kessen, this also means that progress in developmental psychology, i.e., seeking deeper understanding of human development, cannot be achieved by collecting more and more empirical data but, also and as important, has to entail analyzing the basic principles and processes of the field from a cultural-historical perspective (again, as the title of his essay so precisely states: ‘The [American] Child and Other Cultural Inventions’.

To provide a preview of the final sections below – Working within such a philosophical framework, the authors of the papers in this special issue are focused on a particular task: Providing various insightful illustrations of a critical cultural-historical approach to the (‘fundamentals’ of) developmental psychology.

3. Positivistic and empirical-analytical approaches

As signaled above, in Kessen’s view the positivist program was and is fundamentally misguided; he therefore criticized ‘positivistic dreaming’, viz., the assumption that empirical-experimental (human and social) science will yield fundamental facts and universal, timeless principles. Given that the terms positivism and positivistic have long been used by critics of ‘normal science’, examining them further is warranted. In the next subsection, the origin and meaning of the concept of positivism will be discussed, as well as a number of its characteristics that have been subject to criticism and that, therefore connect to the core of Kessen’s position.

As a prefatory note, it is important to underline that the assumptions and goals of positivism can be rejected without implying an opposition to empirical research (as some movements in psychology and pedagogy antithetical to empirical science have asserted). Thus neither Kessen nor we are opposed to systematic and reflective empirical research in (developmental) psychology and pedagogy. On the contrary, whenever possible, and while acknowledging limitations on the possibility of data-collection and certainty of related interpretation, researchers should analyze and reflect on their theoretical assumptions in the context of the most systematic available empirical data. Such a principled stance of vulnerability, or humility, regarding the limits of scientific knowledge – which can be traced back, among others, to the philosopher of science Karl Popper (1902–1994) – will be referred to as an empirical-analytical approach.

3.1. The positivist approach

Positivism is the notion that only the empirical sciences can yield valid knowledge. Positivism asserts that science is solely based on empirical facts and rejects all metaphysical assertions and assumptions. The classical positivism from the nineteenth century merges with the belief in the progress of the Enlightenment, i.e., progress in science will eventually provide solutions to all possible problems (Steel, 1989, p. 99). Positivism emerged from the confrontation of philosophy with the successful modern (physical) sciences and the consequential view that the certain knowledge of empirical science could not be matched by philosophy (or the humanities in general). Already by the end of the eighteenth century philosophy had begun to cede the field of nature to positivistic modern physics and chemistry. And in the nineteenth century the humanities were also gradually redefined as empirical sciences. Positivistic sociology appeared first, promoted by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), considered the ‘father of positivism’ (Bourdeau, 2011); he referred to sociology as ‘social physics’ (Steel, 1989, p. 98). Comte’s positivistic program for sociology was elaborated by his pupil Émile Durkheim (1858–1917).

In the case of psychology, the establishment of the first psychology laboratory by Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920) in Leipzig (in 1879) has conventionally been identified as the beginning of positivistic, i.e., scientific, experimental psychology (Boring, 1950; as the canonical source). But here it is especially worth noting that critical historians have demonstrated how such accounts completely neglected the other deep dimension of Wundt’s work (1900–1920), viz., his Völkerpsychologie studies of phenomena such as language, art, myths and religions, law, culture in historical perspective, and more. (See, e.g., Blumenthal, 1977; Danziger, 1979; Leary, 1979) And it is plausible to see the spirit of the ‘other Wundt’ expressed in the various, emerging-in-the-1990s and now-vibrant forms of ‘Cultural (Developmental) Psychology’, for example, in the rich, paradigm-defining writings and research of Michael Cole (1996), Barbara Rogoff (2003) and Richard Shweder (1994). (See also Goodnow, Miller, & Kessel, 1995).

Comte’s positivistic program of principles was described in his writing about the positive mind (Comte, 1844). That program also demonstrates the strong belief in progress that was intertwined with Comte’s positivism. He believed, for instance, that the rise of the modern sciences was a slow but inevitable process. He formulated the law of the three stages: First, a theoretical stage when the explanation for phenomena is sought in supernatural powers. This is followed by humanity entering a metaphysical stage when the world is explained by referring to abstract principles or essences. Eventually humanity enters a positive stage when it becomes clear that only empirical science can yield real knowledge. At this stage knowledge should be considered as accessible to all and relevant for all daily requirements and needs. Therefore, according to Comte, positivism is inevitable. The law of the three stages is founded on the presumed positivistic law of progress and evolution of human thinking. Delanty and Strydom (2003, p. 14) have extensively described positivism. Assuming access to their writing, we will now further concentrate here on some criticisms of positivism by way of a discussion of Popper’s ideas and the debate within the Frankfurter Schule.¹

Positivists believe that scientific knowledge originates primarily via induction: By systematically observing specific perceptible phenomena one induces general and abstract laws. This, however, is not how it appears to unfold in scientific reality. A fundamental criticism of such a position came in the form of Popper’s falsificationism (Popper, 1935, 1959) and his classic ‘Even if one has seen a hundred white swans, the next one could still be black’. According to Popper, one can only falsify or refute, not ever confirm or prove a posited hypothesis. So ‘all swans are white’, can only be refuted by encountering a black swan. It follows then that one must first posit a certain assumption (hypothesis or H₁) and then try to refute it by rejecting the contrary hypothesis (H₀). And even if this succeeds, the basic hypothesis (H₁) can only be maintained provisionally, and never be lifted to the level of absolute knowledge through observation alone. For Popper, then, there is no pure induction from observation to certain knowledge.

Popper’s description of this logical asymmetry between verification and falsification – hence Conjectures and Refutations (1963) – is a key element in his philosophy of science. It led him to choose falsifiability as the criterion to distinguish science from non- or pseudo-science: A theory can only be genuinely scientific if it is falsifiable. Falsifiability as a demarcation criterion for the distinction between science and un-science therefore led him reject the claims to scientific status of both Marxism and psychoanalysis, given that both theories are not falsifiable.

In summary, Popper made it clear that induction from observation cannot lead to true, universal knowledge, and that all scientific knowledge is temporary and provisional. This is a significant qualification of original positivist pretensions. Popper’s analysis also seriously undermined the notion of inevitable progress. As a consequence, those following Popper’s analysis have little reason to believe that scientific knowledge automatically advances and improves; they also do not have any reason to expect that we will ever be able to solve all social problems purely through knowledge derived via positivistic science. In addition, classical positivism’s assumption that knowledge can be exhaustive and that induction one day will have yielded all important certainties about the universe is, for Popper, an indefensible optimism.

A complementary set of ideas emerged in the 1960s, in the form of a debate in Germany that became known as the ‘Positivismusstreit’ (the Positivism battle); this exchange deepened the critique on positivism. (See Adorno, Albert, & Dahrendorf, 1993; Dahms, 1994) Even though it focused primarily on the methodology and epistemology of sociology, the debate was particularly relevant to positivist claim that science is value-free. The discussion between Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Popper, in particular, focused on this topic. It is noteworthy that both agree that the scientific practitioners are always embedded in cultural history and that their minds, therefore, are pervaded or shaped by this context. According to Popper, however, the ensuing scientific research is meant precisely to determine empirical-analytically the tenability of the claims of the embedded scientific researcher.

For their part, the philosophers of the so-called Frankfurter Schule, with key representatives such as Adorno and Jürgen Habermas (born in 1929), believed that although society as a whole could be analyzed scientifically, value-freedom was an illusion in all respects. The members of the Frankfurter Schule built on the theories of Marx, Hegel, and Freud (as noted, all unscientific in Popper’s view). The fundamental assumption of the was that they could understand the structure of society as a whole and, in principle, identify the conditions to change or entirely alter this structure consistent with certain value assumptions. This approach was thus called Critical Theory. (In the 1960s and 1970s, widespread social criticism from the democratization movements, particularly at universities, was inspired by the Frankfurter Schule publications.)

The discussions that emerged during the Positivismusstreit made it clear that the value-freedom as claimed by positivism should at least be qualified. Such an analysis underlines that scientific researchers are members of a community whose work is shaped by the wider society’s values. As a key corollary, these values play a role in their theoretical and methodological choices and commitments. For his part, Popper thought that falsificationism would provide the critical means to subject the tenability of theoretical claims to empirical-analytical test; and that, in turn, could always lead to the refutation of the claims. And the Frankfurter Schule believed that they could understand and modify social value patterns and dynamics. However, contrary to classical positivism’s assumption that objective observations and logical induction guarantee value freedom, both did not deny – indeed, acknowledged – that values play a role in science. While Popper aimed to subject value-laden theoretical notions to scrutiny via falsificationism, the Frankfurther Schule sought to respond ‘critically’ to these values.

As a final note in this section, it is worth emphasizing that the account above is an abbreviated, selective account of the critique of positivism. Among other strands (emerging especially in the 1960s): Thomas Kuhn’s analysis of scientific ‘paradigms’ and ‘revolutions’, and Michael Polanyi’s discussion of ‘personal knowledge’ and ‘the tacit dimension’ (See Kessel, 1969).

3.2. The empirical-analytical approach

Whereas Adorno (1993) invented the term ‘Positivismusstreit’, Popper objected to the term as he did not want to call himself a positivist. Or, more accurately, he objected being considered (even) a neo-positivist.

Neo-positivism had originated during the period of the Wiener Kreis. The Wiener Kreis (1920–1938) referred to a group of philosophers and scientists who gathered around Moritz Schlick (1862–1936). Key figures included the economist Otto Neurath (1882–1945), and the philosophers Friedrich Waismann (1896–1959) and Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970). Often present but not a formal member of the group, Popper deviated from key points of the logical positivism or logical empiricism promoted by the group. Rejecting metaphysics and epistemology as useless, the Wiener Kreis sought to unify science by making use of a common scientific language, symbolic logic. Eschewing such a common core language, Popper described his own approach as critical rationalism. The term ‘critical’ is rather ambiguous: The Frankfurter Schule uses it to refer to social criticism; Popper wished to (critically) determine which theories were tenable and which were not.

Thus Popper criticized both classical positivism and the neo-positivism of the Wiener Kreis. Contrary to the positivistic tradition, he believed that all science is partial (and always incomplete); that scientific knowledge does not automatically advance but often has to take apparent detours; and that science cannot ever produce complete understanding and the solution of all social issues. He also agreed with the Frankfurter Schule that the theories and hypotheses of a scientist are can never be value-free in the sense that they are unconnected with the everyday lived environment (of the scientific community). But contrary to the Frankfurter Schule, Popper deemed it possible to refute untenable assumptions and hypotheses via falsification, not as in the tradition of positivism via induction. In essence, his falsificationism is an empirical-analytical tool: It aims to examine and refute hypotheses and predictions by making use of empirical data.²

Conducting path-breaking empirical-analytical research on infants, Kessen in fact established his reputation in the American behaviorist tradition, a paradigm that more than any other institutionalized positivist assumptions in mainstream psychology.³ He was thus certainly aware of the importance of the empirical-analytical tradition. Later in his scholarly career, however, and based in part on his own study of historical sources (Kessen, 1965), Kessen sought to understand how the practice of developmental psychology and of theorizing in general was linked to the cultural history in which it was, and is, embedded. For him, and us, such self-critical understanding is the only way to preclude assumptions and views about children that are, as Kessen underlined, variable across cultural space and historical time being mistakenly considered natural, universal phenomena.

In a related vein, we suggest that scientific questions can only be answered in a meaningful way at the level of organization of the phenomenon being studied. We borrow this conception of ‘level of organization’ from the Dutch psychologist, Johannes Linschoten (1964). In a distinctive way, he made clear that questions at one level of organization cannot be answered by data at a different level of organization, at least not without losing relevance and understanding. As a corollary, Kessen’s plea for historical understanding of the child and of child development implies that gathering and analysing only quantifiable data, we will miss essential understanding of the historical and cultural embeddedness of child development. Because the complexity and the time scale of historical phenomena call for a different level of organization than that of the individual child in the here-and-now (to be studied exclusively via experimental approaches), the study of cultural historical embeddedness of human development requires different methods and analyses.

In a similar spirit: The anthropologically informed, ethnographically sophisticated developmental psychologist whose research entails making observations of and conducting conversations with children (and their families) in diverse cultures seeks to capture those in field notes that, in the best case, serve as the basis for rich, meaningful narratives about the meanings of child behavior and experience in such contexts. Such plausible stories cannot be replaced by exclusive quantitative analysis of isolated variables. This illustrates Lischoten’s caution: To gain understanding of local knowledge and dynamics at the level of cultural complexity, research calls for subtle stories and not purely quantitative analyses and models based on a certain conception of the natural sciences.

The empirical-analytically minded researcher thus tries to find the most precise answer possible at the level of complexity that defines or represents the problem focus of the research. Even if that most precise answer is in the form of a verbal explanation, it is still possible and even necessary to try to test the tenability of a hypothesis by examining opposing hypotheses (as a non-numerical, verbal form of Popperian falsification).

What we are advocating is best considered ‘methodological liberalism’, which implies that, in adopting an empirical-analytical approach, the researcher seeks to collect and fit data at the level of the organization of the object of study, and that these data are analyzed as accurately as possible. If possible, and where appropriate, researchers derive and analyse data using numbers/statistics; but if this is not possible at the given level of organization, or meaningful in the context of the problem being studied, then the researcher should turn positively to narratives. As suggested above: At some levels of organisation mathematical models are not feasible or even desirable, so narrative accounts are preferable. But even then it is possible to profit from Popper’s falsification ideal: The goal should always be to search systematically for a convincing, possibly conclusive argument that is in conflict with the conclusion. It is, for example, acceptable within modern psychology to test statistically whether a mathematical model is ‘fitting’. Popper might have regretted this, for such an approach is the opposite of his falsificationism. However, even within such a ‘model-fitting’ research approach, respect could be paid to Popper’s falsificationism by systematically exploring alternative, contrasting models.

In summary, even though – humbly echoing Kessen – we are anti-positivists, we too are not opposed to empirically-oriented developmental psychology. Our view is that developmental psychology should be empirical-analytical in overall methodology while recognizing and accepting that empirical data cannot, indeed should not, be more exact than appropriate for the level of organization of the studied phenomenon. Among other things, this means that research methods can be qualitative or quantitative; that while data collection and analysis seek to be as exact and detailed as possible, sometimes they will – indeed should – consist of the systematic interpretation of texts and citations, other times of statistical data derived via measurements. Indeed, over the past couple of decades clear signs have emerged that qualitative methods, of various kinds, are being accepted as both legitimate and important forms of developmental inquiry (Jessor, Colby, & Shweder, 1996; Kessel, 2013; Weisner, 2005) and psychology more broadly (Bevan & Kessel, 1994; Josselson, 2017; Packer, 2004; Willig & Rogers, 2008).

4. Principles and history

In the previous sections, drawing on an admittedly shorthand review of some previous ideas from the philosophy of science that undermined positivism, we have attempted to delineate some of our ‘pluralistic’ methodological and epistemological convictions. As a corollary, we suggest it is still all too simplifying and seductive to take classical, Newtonian physics as a model for the study of human and social phenomena. Given different levels of organization (that is, different levels of complexity of phenomena studied), we need to continue to develop, adapt, and accept a variety of different methodologies, i.e., many forms of descriptive-analytic narrative approaches as well as ‘conventional’ experimental-statistical methods. Nor can there be a simple formula for making insightful decisions about which method is best suited to the topic, issue, and level of organization at hand. And more: A critical scientific discipline will strive to be knowledgeable about its own history and engaged in self-critical reflection on its foundations.

It is therefore of great and immediate importance that developmental psychology focuses on questions that deal with the foundations and history of the field. This is more urgent than gathering ever more ‘empirical’ data and adding ever more ‘empirical’ papers to myriad journals. It is particularly essential to establish understanding of the discipline’s intellectual and institutional context, rather than only accumulating further fragmented and complicating, or worse, simplifying knowledge. To that end, in our view critical historical analysis is essential. As the papers in this special issue make clear, past and present (and future) empirical research on child behavior and experience is intricately connected with the history of theories and assumptions about children and their development. Moreover, self-critical knowledge of the history of the discipline itself can help prevent the reinvention of the wheel or, to adapt another metaphor, simply (and misleadingly) placing old wine in shiny new bottles. While research practice within the discipline requires defined empirical-analytical methodology (both qualitative and quantitative), study of the structure and nature of the discipline requires extended contemplation, analysis, and critical thinking, especially about its past as embedded in the present and future. (Below we address the central question of how, where, and by whom such analysis and thinking are best conducted.)

5. Concluding discussion

The fact that Kessen referred to the child as a ‘cultural invention’ might be taken to mean he was suggesting that children are not (also) biological beings. We should realize, however, that, via his title and related analysis, Kessen sought to provoke self-critical reflection. In effect, he wanted to wake up those he saw as mainstream and misguided ‘positivistic dreamers’. The child is also a cultural invention, a product of the ‘Zeitgeist’. Kessen challenges developmental psychologists to be critically aware of their (normative) concepts of the child, concepts which they absorb, reinforce, and reify in their own theories and methods, influenced by the socio-cultural zeitgeist, and which they are inclined to regard and present as empirically established, universal, value-free laws of nature.

Consider the example of the decisive role of early experience, an assumption often adhered to in the nineteenth century, consistent with the sentimentalized child image of that century. It is at least debatable how decisive early experiences are; but it is comforting to adhere to this view, in part because, as Kagan (1984) asserted, it dovetails with and reinforces the convictions of the wider public. He argued that developmental psychologists find it hard to consider contra-indications seriously and prefer to keep adhering to the notion of early determinism. For him, defending this absolute early determinism is as intelligent as Ptolemy ‘proving’ that the earth is the stable center of the universe (Kagan, 1984, p. XI). Of course, in light of many findings since 1984, early experience and education are undoubtedly important. But Kagan objected, in our view appropriately, to overgeneralizing and overvaluing early development as uniquely causal in determining life course outcomes. In essence, Kagan wanted researchers to refrain from uncritically adopting general culturally-shaped assumptions, concluding that ‘We celebrate empirical science because it corrects pleasing, but not always accurate, intuitions.’ (l.c., p. X).

It is important that the celebration of empirical science does not lapse into a positivistic tendency in the sense that we have described here. So, although this may be a primarily rhetorical point, why is it that it has recently become de rigueur to emphasize that we are engaged in developmental science? For one thing, what does that imply about the (ir)relevance of multi-dimensional disciplines such as anthropology and history for shedding light on the complexities of human development in rich and diverse socio-cultural contexts? And on the same theme: When child developmental inquiry was institutionalized (in North America) in the 1920s. It was explicitly seen as a multi- or even inter-disciplinary endeavor. Only later (primarily in the post-World-War II era) did it come to be regarded and practiced as developmental psychology; moreover, one specific conception and form of the discipline, viz., ‘experimental’ and, in essence, positivistic (Kessel, 2009). Is there now meaningful movement away from that restrictive, uni-disciplinary perspective? Perhaps. (See our concluding comments.)

Our view of what empirical-analytical research should be seems to dovetail with what Kagan proposed when he wrote that ‘The Vienna philosophers went too far in their accommodation to the new discoveries in physics . . .’ (l.c., p. XIII). Consistent with what we suggested earlier about the Wiener Kreis, Kagan serves to illustrate that Kessen’s critical, post-positivist chords are being echoed and amplified by many (developmental) psychologists. (See Bronfenbrenner, Kessel, Kessen, & White, 1986; Brown & Cole, 2001; Kessel, 1983) And that includes the authors of the papers in this issue (as we hope will be evident).

An important closing question is whether Kessen’s critique and the contributions in this special issue are unduly oriented towards the West, or global North. While these papers, for practical reasons of manageability, are primarily focused on trends in Europe and the United States, we suggest that the analyses and understanding emerging from the study of the history of childhood – exemplified by the contributions here – can be generalized to other continents and regions.

Stearns’ book about Childhood in World History (2006) is an instructive example. Because, however reluctant and careful he is in generalizing Western developments to the rest of the world, Stearns nevertheless makes it clear that contemporary globalization reflects general trends regarding the changing contexts of child and family life. In particular, the transition from agricultural to modern societies – such as first occurred after the Enlightenment in Europe and North America – offers a number of discernible general patterns. For example, children who no longer contribute to the workforce but go to school to learn what is now considered relevant for their future functioning in the community or society; also, children who have fewer siblings and will die at an early age much less frequently than previously. And while the order and causal relationships between these dynamic changes may differ at different locations in the world and at different points in time, such patterns do indeed occur worldwide.

As another example, Stearns believes that the emphasis on the striving for children’s happiness has also become a global tendency which is subtly interlinked with these other patterns. Thus, the decrease of child mortality and increase in health care, as well as increased welfare, allows more room for concerns about ‘happiness’ (Stearns, 2010, 2011).

Thus, while the majority of the papers of this special issue are primarily focused on elements of Western culture, we should emphasize that this is not an unintended expression of a form of ethnocentrism but, rather, because historical trends in the West are also unfolding in other parts of the world as a function of modernization processes (Koops & de Winter, 2011). Moreover, as powerfully illustrated by the Keller and Vicedo papers in this issue, a reciprocal process is underway, where both historical and culturally-informed scholarship prompt a critical perspective on core, deeply-entrenched mainstream assumptions and theories. In their case, the focus is on attachment theory and research; a parallel process is now underway regarding the presumed ‘word gap’, i.e., supposed consequential deficiencies in the verbal environments of poor children, including those in contexts outside the North America and Europe, compared to their more affluent peers. (See Avineri & Johnson, 2015; Miller & Sperry, 2012)

The articles collected in this special issue will, we hope, encourage further (self-)critical historical research, further contributions to what might be called Historical Developmental Psychology (Koops & Elder, 1996). That, in turn, reflects two related and fundamental features of what a generative post-positivist paradigm entails: First, affirmative recognition that (developmental) psychology is, at root, a ‘moral science’ (White, 1983a), where normative assumptions are embedded, more or less explicitly, in both theory and practice, and most fundamentally in the very notion(s) of ‘development’ itself (White, 1983b). And second:

An historical [developmental] psychology involves, … in the first place, an awareness of the historicity of the very norms that are dominant in a given culture or within a given science at a given time. In the second place, an historical [developmental] psychology takes seriously the variety of culturally and socially operative factors that go into the very constitution of such norms, whether of childhood, or of cognitive development [or of social development], and at the same time an historical [developmental] psychology is aware or critically self-aware of the status of its own operative norms and methods of inquiry … An historical [developmental] psychology is thus, necessarily, a normative psychology, not only in the descriptive sense of studying prevalent or historical norms, but also in the critical sense of rejecting and proposing norms. (Wartofsky, 1983, p. 189; see also, Bronfenbrenner et al., 1986, p. 1227)

And this follow-up passage powerfully underlines our overall theme (on the critical role of historical developmental psychology, and psychologists):

[None of this means] we can’t get started until we all agree on the norms. But it puts the determination and critique of norms right in the ballpark as a concern of actual psychological theory and psycho logical practice. [This] doesn’t mean every psychologist has to do so every day or say it as a little prayer every morning. But it means that it [the determination and critique of norms becomes an integral part of the field … and not some after-hours, cracker-barrel stuff you do when the real psychologists aren’t around … which is its usual status. That is, consideration of norms has to become integral to the field such that those who are doing it are in touch with those who aren’t, making them aware of it and so percolating the field. (op cit., p. 219)

All of which, we believe, both reinforces and honors Bill Kessen’s plea for a cultural-historical approach to the study of child and human development (Kessel, 1991).

6. Brief overview of the papers in this issue

We are pleased to record that this special issue originated in Ann Arbor, Michigan on 12–14 May 2016 in a symposium on ‘Historical Perspectives on Child Development: Implications for Future Research’ organized by then-still-in-place History Committee of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD). In essence the following papers are the written, final versions of the symposium presentations by members of the Committee and other guests. Appreciative of the Society’s support for that event, we conclude this introduction with the following Socratically-intended comments.

At least in its current stated strategic goals (Sherrod, 2016), SRCD – perhaps the most influential organization of its kind – is signaling commitments to some of the suggestions we have made here. As a noteworthy example, it has declared the goal of returning to its, and the field’s, multi/inter-disciplinary roots. Similarly, there is announced emphasis on seeking understanding of the cultural and contextual dimensions of human development, with a presumed greater receptivity to qualitative forms of inquiry still more widely practiced in disciplines such as cultural and linguistic anthropology and history; also, a recent, loosely-related focus on ‘social justice’. And there are some signs of a recognition that relationships, both institutional and intellectual, between the global north and south need to become more reciprocal, where theories, methods and findings are open to critique and fundamental revision from outside–the-mainstream perspectives. (See, e.g., Dawes, 2016; Kessel & Lukowski, 2016; Verma, 2016)

How will these commitments be institutionally enacted, most notably in the planning and review processes for both SRCD’s highly sought-after biennial meetings and its visible, high-impact journals? For a range of reasons, including the understandable inertial dynamics of large professional-scientific organizations, our view is that only time will tell how deep and consequential such projected philosophical and substantive shifts will be.

In particular, and again for a combination of reasons, we are skeptical – though hopeful – that the Society and the field as a widespread whole will create significant space for the kind of critical historical-developmental scholarship that these papers so persuasively represent. Such space would signal recognition, for example, that twenty-first Century ‘history’ is far from being a single, stand-alone ‘discipline’ but, instead, variously engages issues at the intersection of culture, society, politics and both epistemology and moral philosophy.

So will we get to the stage when, in Wartofsky’s perennially challenging words, ‘[the determination and critique] of norms [are] integral to the field such that those who are doing it are in touch with those who aren’t, making them aware of it and so percolating the field’? Seeing such self-critical engagement with normative and moral (and political) questions as akin to a final post-positivist frontier for developmental inquiry (at least in our professional lifetimes), and inspired by these papers, we will strive to keep hope alive!

Consistent with the main theme of this collection, Steven Mintz (Why history matters: Placing infant and child development in historical perspective) underscores the importance of systematic knowledge about how conceptions of childhood vary across social time and space. In the process, he demonstrates how such understanding helps rebut myths, undercuts linear views of progress (and thus ‘development’), and sheds light on often misunderstood long-term trends and processes.

With a focus on changing social views and standards regarding children and emotions, Peter Stearns (Children and emotions history) provides a detailed case study of the overall themes underlined by Mintz. He examines, in socio-cultural context, two major changes in American approaches (around 1800 and in the 1920s), as well as possible explanations for shifts in specific emotions (e.g., happiness and shame). In a more ‘meta’ mode, he considers complexities in discussing changes or continuities in children’s emotions, and reflects on the possibilities for connections between historical and psychological approaches.

As a complement to Stearns’ paper, Paul Harris (Emotion, imagination and the world’s furniture) considers how a particular conception of emotions that emerged in the late nineteenth century was uncritically embedded in the work of subsequent generations of psychologists (at least in Europe and North America). Highlighting that conception’s heavily evolutionary-biological underpinnings, he then examines two species-specific qualities of human emotions, where culture and imagination are central. Finally, he suggests that such a framework would be generative in considering connections between the history of emotions and their development in children.

Focusing on how John Bowlby’s and Mary Ainsworth’s ethological theory of attachment was received in different disciplinary communities, Marga Vicedo (Putting attachment in its place: Disciplinary and cultural contexts) makes two essential points: From Margaret Mead’s 1950s anthropological-critique onwards, cultural challenges to the theory’s central assumptions (e.g., of universality) have been essentially ignored. And second, that such a (dys)functional dynamic can be best explained in terms of different disciplinary paradigms – philosophical and methodological, positivist and not. She thus provides an insightful illustration of some of the themes presented above, not least how fine-grained historical-archival research can shed illuminating light on major areas of ‘mainstream developmental science’.

Heidi Keller (Cultural and historical diversity in early relationship formation) complements both Vicedo’s paper and, again, parts of the ‘post-positivist’ view presented above. Drawing on the work of cultural psychologists and anthropologists, as well as context-attuned developmental psychologists (herself included), she reviews how caregiving/socialization beliefs and patterns vary, consequentially, across changing sociocultural environments and historical time. She concludes with reflections on how the often-assumed contradiction between cultural-historical specificity and universality, e.g., in the realm of attachment and overall early relationship formation, can be overcome. As a corollary, she too illustrates how historical and developmental analysis can and should be two sides of the same analytic coin.

Lassonde’s focus (Authority, disciplinary intimacy & parenting in middle-class America) is on historical shifts, from the mid-19th-century through to the present, in beliefs and childcare advice regarding appropriate styles of parenting. Examining such topics as views regarding corporal punishment and its presumed link to authoritarianism, his analysis emphasizes the importance of understanding changing dynamics in wider socio-cultural-political contexts, not least for critically locating the contingent views of developmental ‘experts’ (during various periods). And although the patterns he discerns are based in the United States, that sort of analytic principle and goal is no less important for work elsewhere, i.e., historical-developmental research (on ‘parenting’) that can yield a picture of differences and similarities across time and space(s).

As a broad complement to Lassonde’s paper, Sandin (The parent: A cultural invention. The politics of parenting) explores how – in Sweden in the twentieth century – beliefs, practices, and policies regarding the relative roles of parents and social institutions in fostering and protecting children were significantly shaped by the philosophy of the wider welfare state. He analyzes how government policies and (interventionist) practices both reflected and reified assumptions, for example, about limited parental responsibility, especially in relation to children seen as competent, individual agents with adult-like rights; such assumptions were, in turn, tied to certain notions of ‘developmental well-being’ and reinforced by certain international conventions.

In the end, then, the harmonious sounding of some distinctly Bill Kessen-like themes!

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A detailed discussion of all these ideas, and those in the previous section, is contained in Koops (2016), notably chapter 1.

2 Such an empirical-analytical approach remains a core element of the methodology of contemporary psychology. To give an example, in the second half of the twentieth Century Dutch (and European) psychology was totally redefined by De Groot’s classic book (1961; English translation 1969), whose prescriptive methodology was largely based on the ideas of Popper. (See Busato, 2014 for a description of the effect of De Groot’s work.).

3 Kessen was not alone in forcefully rejecting psychology’s positivist-behaviorist paradigm in which he made his early, widely-recognized contributions. Sigmund Koch serves as another compelling, still-relevant example. (See Finkelman & Kessel, 1999; Leary, 2001).