Bio Ecological Model of Human Development

Bio ecological Model of Human Development
Mary Cowles
SOC 312 Child, Family & Society
Steven Peters
12/16/2011

Bio ecological Model of Human Development The bio ecological model of human development has four basic systems. The four basic systems are macrosystems, exosystems, microsystems, and mesosystems. I will summarize the four systems and how the influences have on a child's development. I will describe how the four systems in the model differ from oneother. I will provide examples of the four systems of their relationships and interactions with one another. A microsystem: a relationship and activity that experienced by a developed person in immediate environments like family, school, peer group, community and media. Family provides affection, nurturance, and opportunities. School is a formal learning environment. Peer groups help with experiences in independences, companionship, support, cooperation, and a role to take. Community helps children learn how to do by watching people work. Media helps provided the view of the world. Mesosystem: an interrelationship and linkage between two or more person in a microsystem that compromise of connections between immediate environments likes a child's home and school. The impact on a child depends on the number of interrelationships. Exosystem: a setting that children do not participate, but it does affect one of their microsystems. Also, their external environmental setting indirectly affects the development like a parent's workplace. An example: a low-income family would have to get food stamps, Medicaid, and or TANF. My family is part of this system because my family gets food stamps and Medicaid. We had to fight for the help though. Macrosystem: a society and subculture that belongs to a developing person with certain beliefs, lifestyles, interactions, and changes in their live that consist of a larger cultural context of national economy, political culture, and subculture. Examples of macrosystems are family planning services and affordability of contraceptives which can influence teen pregnancy and birth rates. Young women are taking to the Planned Parenthood in their area to get birth control pills to prevent teenage pregnancy. According to Hall; there are two classifications of macrosystems; low and high context. Low-context macrosystem concise of progress, practicality, competition, and rationality. Examples: communication and relationships of social and natural environment. High-context macrosystem are concise of group identity, tradition, intuitiveness, and emotionality. Example of high-context macrosystem is adaptively. The ecological model's most basic unit of analysis in the microsystem is the immediate settings, including role relationships and activities. Microsystem mostly of the family, but as they grow and are exposed to day care, preschool classes, and neighborhood playmates, the system becomes more complex. Microsystems are dynamic contexts for development because of the bi-directional influences individuals impart on each other. Many micro-level determinants of health affecting early child development investigated and proposed. Factors like nutrition, shelter, hygiene, stimulation, support, attachment, and parenting style, investigated and correlated with later outcomes. The relative quality and/or quantity can have either positive or negative effects on health. On a practical level, the amount of parent involvement in the child's education related to children's educational achievement (Canadian Council on Social Development, 1997), and the specific language and cultural practices of the family, such as the amount of time spent reading together (Bus, van IJzendoorn, & Pellegrini, 1995) can have effects on the development of individual capacities. Similarly, family arrangement, constitution, and the amount of contact with extended family can affect child development through the kinds of interactive opportunities these arrangements provide (Hernandez, 1997). There are also two of the most important factors of children's social functioning are parents' psychiatric health and marital status. These two factors explain much of the variability in children's social and emotional competence (Goodman, Brogan, Lynch, & Fielding, 1993; Kershner & Cohen, 1992; Kochanska & Kuczynski, 1991; Miller, Cowan, Cowan, Hetherington, & Clingempeel, 1993). The risk factors associated with behavioral and emotional disorders in children linked to parental variables such as single parenthood, marital separation, young motherhood, poor family relations, and maternal mental health symptoms (Sameroff & Fiese, 2000; Williams, Anderson, McGee, & Silva, 1990). The presence of one or more of these risk factors compounds the risk for poor social functioning of children. The mesosystem: the second of Bronfenbrenner's environmental layers, and refers to the interrelationships among different microsystem levels, such as home, school, and peer group settings. For instance, what happens at home influences at school and in turn what are in the school environment will likely influence family interactions? Specifically, parents' involvement within the school in conjunction with teachers' involvement with families represent mesosystem functioning. In addition, the community expected to affect distal family processes, and a family's ability to provide the necessary support for their child. He will also focus on factors such as physical safety, problems in the neighborhood, and neighbors and examine their links to children's prosaically skills. The third environmental layer of the model in the exosystem consists of the contexts that children cannot a part of but does influence their development. For example, decisions by the school boards and parents' workplaces do not include the child but may influence and impact the child's development. A school board sets the educational policies that can relevant to the child reflective of exosystem influences. The school board would adopt a policy that states that children with disabilities go into special classes. This may affect that child's academic and social progress. The policies do set by parents' employers' maybe impact a child's development. Where parent's leaves may not allow flexible work hours may not an option. Parents' availability to their child can influence a child's development (Fagan & Wise, 2001; Thomas & Grimes, 1995). The outer layer of the ecological model in the macrosystem layers composed of the cultural source that influences most of the child's immediate experience but impacts the child through attitudes, practices, and convictions shared in society. The most distant or macro-level wealth of the nation or region and how the wealth distributed among the people. The variables can be more distant because there effects are more outrages. The individual and population level of the environmental predictor of health and developmental outcomes because some of the measure of relative affluences socio-economic status. According to the National Forum on Health: Determinants of Health Working Group Synthesis report (1997), child poverty, unemployment, youth underemployment, involuntary retirement, labor force restructuring, cuts in social programs, decreases in real income, income inequities, the disintegration of communities as we once knew them, single parenthood, and the ever-increasing pressures of work on families and all factors that determine population health. The more equitable a society, the more widely shared feelings of self-esteem and control, the more empowered its members, and the better overall health status. Conclusion, we have yet to confront the reality that the growing chaos in the lives of our children, youth, and families today simultaneously pervades too many of the principal settings in which we live our daily lives in the family, health care systems, child care arrangements, peer groups, schools, neighborhoods, the workplace, and means of transportation and communication between them.

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