PREFACE

Child Development, the first volume in the Macmillan Psychology Reference Series, is an extensive collection of articles about every facet of child development, ranging from adoption and day care to welfare programs and video games. It focuses on topics that are important for the educated parent, pediatrician, teacher, high school and college student, or anyone else interested in better understanding the how's and why's of a child's development.

The 289 articles are organized in a way that will make the Encyclopedia easily understood and accessible. To do this, we organized the collection by creating four separate types of entries:

Overviews are articles consisting of 3,000 words that provide an in-depth look at a particular topic in child development such as parenting, social development, or child abuse. These articles introduce the reader to all of the important ideas and concepts within the topic and provide an introduction to some of the issues and controversies important to child development specialists.
The second type of article is about 1,500 words long and serves as an introduction to important topics in child development. These are a bit less ambitious than the overviews, including brief discussions about day care, home schooling, and friendship.
Definitions are the third article type. These are 150-word definitions of important terms that should be familiar to anyone interested in child development. Altruism, conservation, and bilingual education are examples of such articles. We created definitions of these terms rather than writing 1,500- or 3,000-word articles because we did not feel it necessary to elaborate on these topics to the same extent.
Biographies are comprised of 400 words and focus on leading characters in the history of child development. These are the men and women who are best known for the lasting and influential effects of their research and writing.

Finally, the appendix is replete with visually interesting and easily understood tables and charts that include topics such as children in various living arrangements, child poverty, and youth participating in volunteer activities.

Each entry is followed by a bibliography.

Who Will Use This Encyclopedia?

This Encyclopedia is for anyone who wants to know more about the field of child development. This includes parents, teachers, professionals in the health fields, such as doctors and nurses, social workers, lawyers, people involved in creating policies that affect children and families, school board members, and high school and college students who are interested in learning more about children or are writing a term paper on an aspect of child development.

The editors emphasized the importance of writing for an educated audience that might not yet be familiar with many of the terms and ideas relevant to understanding a child's development. We tried to make this material informative and approachable, but not overly technical. We hope that we have achieved our goal.

How to Use This Encyclopedia

The topics are organized alphabetically from A to Z. In addition, there are several other ways to locate information.

First, there is an extensive subject index covering every topic mentioned in the Encyclopedia along with corresponding page numbers for that topic. This index is located in the back of the Encyclopedia.

There are also cross-reference terms at the end of the entries. These terms refer to other articles that contain information about the topic. For example, at the end of "Attachment" there is a cross-reference to Parent-Child Relationships.

Who Wrote This Encyclopedia?

The topics in this encyclopedia were selected and organized by Neil J. Salkind and Lewis Margolis (editor and associate editor, respectively), with the help of Mandy Goodnight. Neil J. Salkind is a professor of Psychology and Research in Education at the University of Kansas, while Lewis Margolis is a professor of Public Health at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Mandy Goodnight is a practicing school psychologist in western Kansas.

All of the entries were written by leading experts in their field or those who were under their supervision. Each author was asked to make a specific contribution. The diversity and excellence of the contributors adds an unmistakable flavor of comprehensiveness and authority to the entries. Speaking for all of the editors, it was a pleasure and an honor to have such a distinguished group of scholars contribute to the volume.

Acknowledgments

No book is ever the product of just editors and contributors. Child Development is the result of the hard work put forth by several people. First, we would like to thank Elly Dickason, Publisher, and Jill Lectka, Associate Publisher, at Macmillan for the opportunity to undertake this project. Jill was especially helpful in organizing the team that produced this volume. Second, Shawn Beall was the project manager, and it was because of her flawless organization skills, good nature, and record keeping that we managed to track 289 different articles by almost as many authors. On a daily basis, Shawn was there to answer questions, remind authors of article due dates, and respond to queries about format. We would also like to thank imaging coordinator Dean Dauphinais, permissions associate Julie Juengling, and senior art directors Tracey Rowens and Cindy Baldwin for the page and cover design. Additional thanks goes to managing editor Betz Des Chenes for the time and effort she contributed to writing captions and "putting out fires."

And finally, to our contributors we want to express our heartfelt thanks. The quality and tone of the writing is excellent, especially given the audience to which this volume is addressed. With authors such as these writing about, caring about, and working with children and their families, there is hope for the future and the role that children will play in building a better world.

Neil J. Salkind Lewis Margolis August, 2001