John Newson

Elizabeth Newson

This book is about the lives of 11-year-old children growing up in a Midlands city in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. Based on interviews with their parents, it describes family life at the time, as well as the experiences, hopes and concerns of the children as they themselves become adolescents. The book reflects upon the changes that occur for children in the transitional period between childhood and adolescence. It looks at the friendship patterns of eleven-year-olds, their special interests and activities and how they spend their leisure time as well as describing the children’s worries and concerns as perceived by their parents. It also considers family life and parental issues in the context of children’s growing independence and their developing sexual maturity. Originally written in the 1980’s but recently discovered and published now for the first time, this is the fifth book in the series of long-term investigations of child up-bringing, by John and Elizabeth Newson, distinguished child psychologists at the University of Nottingham. Their research began in the late 1950s when the cohort of children was a year old; their mothers were subsequently interviewed at intervals as the children grew up. This fifth volume draws links between the material from interviews with parents when their sons and daughters were seven, eleven, sixteen and nineteen years, and also invites comparison with the lives of children growing up now. The final chapter reviews the book series and the Newsons’ research programme. This exceptional book will be of interest to psychologists and other academics interested in child development, as well as professionals involved in work with children and adolescents such as teachers, doctors, nurses and social workers. It also has great historical significance with its potential for comparisons between the lives of children and adolescents now with those growing up some 50 years ago.

Growing up in the 1970s

Childhood into Adolescence

Although psychologists by training, John and Elizabeth Newson have more aptly been described as pioneers in social ecology; they work from the conviction that the causes and the consequences of child-rearing attitudes can fruitfully be investigated only in the framework of the total social environment in which they occur. This book continues their analysis of child rearing in an English urban setting. To this project the Newsons have brought the rigorous research techniques of their scientific background; but they do not undervalue the practical experience of parenthood which has taught them to distrust the magical short cuts to "understanding" child development offered by the various theoretical schools of thought. They believe that much of the theory-building has been premature and that there is an urgent need for detailed descriptive studies of how parents do in fact treat their, children and, equally important, how children treat their parents: the constant two-way interaction through which the pattern of family life is evolved. The four-year-old child has been much discussed from the angle of nursery school education: this book breaks new ground in its description of nursery-age children in the much more basic and intimate context of the home. Written without recourse to unnecessary technical jargon, it will be of absorbing interest to every intelligent parent and indeed to anyone looking for new insights into the working of our society. For teachers, doctors, nurses, and all whose profession it is to work with young children or with their families, it will be both essential and enjoyable reading. John Newson and Elizabeth Newson in addition to this book are authors of The Family and the Handicapped Child: A Study of Cerebral Palsied Children in Their Homes and Infant Care in an Urban Community. They were professors of psychology at the University of Nottingham.

John Newson

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