210 Developmental Psychology
laid down. His parents have determined whether he is to grow
into a happy person, a whining, complaining neurotic, an
overbearing slave driver, or one whose every move in life is
controlled by fear.” What was most damaging, according to
Watson, was too much “mother love.” Watson’s advice on
how to run an efficient, no-nonsense household, in which in-
fants were fed and napped on schedule like efficient little ma-
chines, and no time was lost nor bad habits created by hugging
and kissing, had a widespread influence on American parents.
In spite of his maturationalist leanings, Gesell, too, was a
prolific and influential voice in the “advice to parents” move-
ment. Over a period of 40 years, Gesell and his colleagues
(Gesell & Ilg, 1946; Gesell, Ilg, & Ames, 1956) offered not
only normative guidelines to help parents anticipate the
developmental trajectories of their children but also specific
advice concerning child-rearing tactics, toys, and tomes for
children of different ages (see Clarke-Stewart, 1978, 1998).
The outreach efforts of both Watson and Gesell were consis-
tent with the tenor of the time and the American belief that the
new developmental science could and should be harnessed to
improve the lives of children.
To summarize, this period of our history was best charac-
terized as a battle among theoretical titans. A science of
development had clearly been launched, but there was little
agreement about the theoretical details.
THE ERA OF EXPANSION (1940–1960)
In the third period of our history, developmental psychology
returned to the fold of mainstream psychological thinking, as
it had been at the turn of the century. Major strides were
achieved by extending the basic tenets of learning theory to
the puzzles of development.
Fusing Learning Theory and Psychoanalysis
Classic learning theory, which dominated American psychol-
ogy from the 1930s through the 1950s, was creatively com-
bined with Freud’s theory of development to generate a new
era of research and theorizing in child psychology. At Yale,
several young psychologists, including John Dollard, Neal
Miller, Leonard Doob, Robert Sears, and later anthropologist
John Whiting, combined forces to fuse Hullian learning
concepts with Freudian psychoanalytic theory (e.g., Dollard,
Doob, Miller, Mowrer, & Sears, 1939). Their goal was to
translate Freud’s propositions into testable form by recasting
them in learning-theory terms. Freud had provided the focus
of the research on such issues as aggression, sex typing,
and dependency; Hull provided the learning mechanisms,
such as primary and secondary drives, drive reduction,
and stimulus-response associations. In one example of the
learning-psychoanalytic fusion, the Yale psychologists pro-
posed that infants’ early attachment to their mother derived
from the association of the mother with reduction of the
hunger drive through feeding. Mothers, in short, assumed
secondary reinforcement value as a result of being paired
with hunger reduction for the infant. Decades of effort fol-
lowed, in which these researchers sought to evaluate the
relations between early child-rearing practices and later per-
sonality development. Such Freudian-based concerns as the
timing of weaning and toilet training and whether the infant
was bottle- or breast-fed dominated the scientific activity
(Sears, 1944, 1975).
The major paradigm for this era is illustrated by the
classic study of child rearing organized by Robert Sears and
his colleagues Eleanor Maccoby and Harry Levin (Sears,
Maccoby, & Levin, 1957). These investigators interviewed
over 300 mothers about their child-rearing practices (wean-
ing, toilet training, discipline) and the child’s behavior
(aggression, dependency, sex roles, moral development).
Modest relations between child-rearing practices and child
outcomes were found in this and related studies (Sears,
Rau, & Alpert, 1966; Sears, Whiting, Nowlis, & Sears, 1953;
Whiting & Child, 1953), but the enterprise as a theoretical
guide was largely unsupported. Not only were the funda-
mental hypotheses probably incorrect, but the methods
themselves came under serious criticism (M. R. Yarrow,
Campbell, & Burton, 1964). Critics noted not only that con-
structs were poorly defined but also that the basic method of
using mothers’ recall of their earlier practices was fraught
with error. As Robbins (1963) showed, mothers often report
child-rearing practices that are more in agreement with cur-
rent “experts” than they are with their actual practices. Al-
though the enterprise served to bring theoretical rigor to the
study of development and move us beyond description to
learning-based explanations of development, the theoretical
limitations of the Freudian framework were bound to doom
their efforts.An Operant OrientationAnother extension of learning theory that emerged during
this era was operant learning theory. This approach was de-
veloped by B. F. Skinner (1904–1990) at Harvard Univer-
sity. In contrast to Hullian theory, with its drive-centered
focus, Skinner’s theory emphasized contingent reinforce-
ment of behavior as the central learning mechanism.
Although Skinner was not a developmental theorist, his