Children are sociable from birth onwards. Give a brief account of the evidence that supports this claim and discuss its possible implications for social development.

Authors Avatar
Children are sociable from birth onwards. Give a brief account of the evidence that supports this claim and discuss its possible implications for social development.

The experiences of our childhood are seen as a central part of our development. As children, our characters are developed through interaction within a social world; by living and learning in a world of other people we become aware of, and learn to accept, the way others are, while also developing our own self and personality. In order to tackle the question that children are sociable from birth onwards and to be able to discuss the possible implications of this on social development, we must first define the terms 'sociable' and 'social development'. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, sociable is defined as 'fitted for or liking the society of other people, being ready and willing to talk and act with others'. Social development, however, is split into two parts: firstly, to be socially developed we must become integrated into the social world by becoming accepted members of society, establishing and maintaining relationships with others. Moreover, we also have to be differentiated from the social world, having our own individual behaviour and thoughts. Both the integrating and differentiating process in social development are equally essential to operate successfully in the world. Therefore, in this essay we will first look at how psychologists have argued that children are sociable from birth onwards, we will then progress this by discussing the implications of this for social development. Finally, we will sum up with a conclusion.

Research has suggested that children are sociable from birth onwards; within a matter of weeks they begin to respond to objects and people around them, making every effort to interact through vocalization, change of behaviour, smiling or crying. The way babies try to interact with their environment enforces the idea that they are trying to initiate and enforce social contact. According to Wolff (1969, pg 33,chap 2), the newly born child stimulates interaction with their carers by a number of different methods. Crying is just one form used to signal the carer to come nearer and engage in interaction. Also smiling, which Darwin (1872, pg 33, chap 2) showed acts as a strong social signal for maintaining contact with the carer. Facial expressions, that may initially be endogenous, will very quickly become exogenous smiling in response to familiar faces, this then stimulates and reinforces further contact. The infants' sociability is seen in their initiation of interaction and attempts to maintain social contact. Through this social interaction, adults develop a nurturing feeling toward the infant and thus accept it into their society. This was expanded through Fantz' research (1961, pg 34, chap 2) which showed how babies held a preference for facial shapes at very early stages in their development proving that children's attention is focused onto the human face. This again helps them to adapt to their social world. Decasper and Fifer (1980, pg 34, chap 2) further developed this work by showing how babies also preferred human voices, especially those of their own mothers, and were able to develop their own behaviour in order to hear their mother's voice. This line of work showed further evidence for early abilities in the babies to discriminate social cues from their environment. So, we can deduce that, even from an early age, a baby immediately tries to interact with other human beings, especially their carers, and also changes their behaviour in order to continue this interaction. This produces sociable reactions allowing the baby to fit themselves into the society around them, thus proving that babies are sociable from birth onwards.
Join now!


However, to operate successfully in this world, children need to develop both the integrating and differentiating process of social development. We have shown how children are sociable from birth onwards and this can have a number of possible implications. In order to be integrated into the world, children have to become accepted members of society and establish relationships with others. Children do this with their preferences for social stimuli through which they begin to cope with the demands of the social world and become integrated into it. We dealt with many issues concerning how children do this in ...

This is a preview of the whole essay