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Lois Murphy and her collaborators in this new book The Widening World of Childhood: Paths Toward Mastery document and demonstrate the individualness, resourcefulness and struggle of children in their process of meeting the “out-thereness” of life. The aim of the book is “to initiate the study of children's own efforts to cope with their own day to day problems.” Dr. Murphy's group has observed these children in various situations such as pediatric examinations, parties, accidents, and rides to and from their examining areas. Some of these same children were studied earlier by Escalona and Leitch* and an effort is made to correlate the earlier data with those reported here.
Coping, the key concept of the book, is defined as pointing to “the process, the steps or sequences through which the child comes to terms with a challenge or makes use of an opportunity.” Coping devices are ways of using existing resources. They emphasize individual styles of using these resources. Through the study of coping the authors try to understand this unique path of thirty-two pre-school-age children. Coping is considered active when it changes the environment and passive when the environment determines the device, method, and process; constructive when oriented to meet a challenge, and defensive when directed toward reinstituting old conditions. It may be simple, a reflex response; or complex, involving combinations of resources and methods.
Each child has his own ways of handling a situation. His “style” has correlations with many different variables. Children of Westchester County and New York City, for example, rarely use the whole room, and confine their arrangement of toys to definite limits. Children of fathers more facile with their hands tend to use objects more carefully. The mother-child interaction is important. Most mothers allow their children time to find their own way. Some however tend to scold and say “don't be a baby.” In such cases the child's methods are affected. One