Find and find friends

Author: Yu Yiqun
Editor-in-Chief: Li Lin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-06-01
Features:
Excerpt: It has been observed that in addition to school, class, and team groups, today's only-child students also have numerous spontaneous peer groups. These peer groups play various roles and have multiple impacts on the integration of school organizations and the shaping of only-children's personalities, hence attracting increasing attention from the fields of education and sociology. To provide a systematic understanding of the concept and theories of only-children's peer groups, this paper aims to organize and summarize the relevant information.
### 1. What Are Only-Children's Peer Groups?
#### 1.1 The Concept of a Group
Only-children, from birth to adulthood, cannot live in isolation from groups such as family, school, and workplaces. They grow up gradually under the influence and constraints of these groups. To understand the concept of only-children's peer groups, one must first grasp the concept of "group." What is a group? Social psychology research indicates that a group refers to a community of people who are organized in a specific way due to certain shared psychological or social reasons, engaging in activities and mutually influencing and restricting one another. It is sometimes also called a "team." Although a group is composed of individuals, not every crowd of individuals can be termed a group, such as passengers on a bus or onlookers on a street. They do not have interdependence, interaction, or significant mutual influence. A group, however, should possess the following characteristics: its members share common goals and needs, have a certain structural form that places members in specific relationships, ensuring frequent interaction and the completion of shared tasks; it has its own plans and psychological tendencies, which influence and affect its members; there is exchange of information regarding thoughts, emotions, and interests; and there is a sense of group identity. Based on these characteristics, we can classify school, class, team, clubs, and peer groups as groups.
#### 1.2 Only-Children's Peer Groups
Given the above understanding of the concept of a group, we can define only-children's peer groups as communities among only-children, bound together by relatively stable and close relationships. Referring to the characteristics of a group, we believe that only-children's peer groups typically exhibit the basic features of primary social groups, such as relatively high frequency of social interaction among members, rapid and in-depth information communication, a certain degree of group identity within the group, strong expectations for mutual help, and the spontaneous emergence of multiple core roles.
#### 1.3 Classification of Only-Children's Peer Groups
The classification of only-children's peer groups can be made at both a macro level (relating to school, class, team, and club groups) and a micro level. At the macro level, they can be divided into formal and informal groups. Only-children's social activities are primarily carried out through two channels: formal and informal. Formal social activities refer to public, specific, and obligatory activities that only-children engage in within groups according to plans and goals. Informal social activities mainly refer to spontaneous exchanges of thoughts, emotions, and interests among only-children. Correspondingly, groups can also be divided into formal and informal categories based on their role in only-children's social activities.
### Postscript:
Writing this book has been a long-standing aspiration of mine. Since leaving university over a decade ago and delving into the field of adolescent research, particularly the study of only-children—a field full of allure—I have been contemplating this topic and collecting relevant materials. However, due to a twist of fate, I ended up writing books such as How to Cultivate Children's Sound Character and The 21st Century Citizen Passbook—Strategies for Only-Children's Social Adaptation. Well, they seem to have prepared a broad perspective and vision for the research and writing of this book. Coincidentally, in the first half of 1996, I applied for a humanities and social sciences project from the Beijing Municipal Philosophy and Social Sciences Planning Office and the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, and the topic was approved. This finally allowed me to dedicate dedicated time and effort to conduct in-depth and systematic research. The completion of this book is a testament to the care and support of many predecessors, teachers, colleagues, and family members. Special thanks are due to Professor Wang Dianqing, Director of the Beijing Institute of Oriental Ethics, and Professor Pei Dina, Director of the Institute of Educational Science at Beijing Normal University and a doctoral supervisor, for their meticulous review and evaluation of this manuscript, which they highly praised.
Professor Wang Dianqing remarked: "Today's only-children will be the backbone of Chinese society in the 21st century. Their quality will determine whether they can support their families, establish themselves in society, and contribute to the prosperity of the nation and its people. Therefore, this book holds outstanding practical significance and strategic value."
He further noted the following distinct features of the book:
1. It provides a solid research and elaboration on the personality characteristics, structure, types, and the social environment and conditions that shape only-children.
2. It offers a thorough analysis and theoretical summary of the definition, classification, functions, and values of only-children's peer groups.
3. It conducts empirical research on the general characteristics, types, activities, interaction methods, and group cores of only-children's peer groups from multiple perspectives and levels, which is the most compelling part of the manuscript.
4. It examines special groups of only-children who commit mistakes or crimes, based on a large amount of data and typical cases, which is sufficient to alert parents, teachers, and society at large.
5. It applies the latest achievements in education and psychology to explore the intrinsic links between only-children as individuals and as groups, as well as the patterns and shaping of their sound character, contributing to the theoretical development of current only-children research.
Professor Pei Dina stated: "This manuscript places the study of only-children's personality within the context of peer relationships for systematic analysis, scientifically distinguishes between formal and informal group relationships, and emphasizes the need to study the influence and role of informal peer groups on the formation of only-children's personality. This breaks the long-standing framework of solely studying only-children through formal school education and family education, opening up new perspectives for current only-children research in China. In this sense, this is a manuscript with a novel angle, high aspirations, and pioneering significance. It not only provides a reference for formulating targeted education policies for only-children but also offers important practical guidance for school and family education."
She further praised: "The manuscript has a reasonable structure and clear guiding principles, emphasizing the integration of ideological depth, scientific rigor, theoretical soundness, and practical applicability. It combines theoretical research with empirical investigations while addressing issues from sociological, psychological, and pedagogical perspectives, giving the book a certain novelty. The language is fluent, making it highly readable and engaging."
These evaluations have deeply encouraged me. I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude here.
Additionally, my wife, Wang Jun, bore a heavier burden of raising our young child so that I could focus on researching this topic and writing this manuscript. Strangely enough, during the time I was writing the manuscript, our young child managed to change his lively, mischievous habits and became quiet and obedient, rarely disturbing me. Without the understanding and support of both her and our child, this manuscript might not have been completed. I am deeply grateful for this.
Special thanks are also due to the chief editor, Li Lin, whose enthusiasm led to the publication of this manuscript. I also extend my gratitude for her diligent efforts in editing the manuscript.
Yu Yiqun
April 6, 1999
Beijing, Ganjiakou