4.1: The Ecology of Child Development
● The Truman show is a 1998 science fiction comedy drama film of an ordinary man that
grew up in an ordinary life but was actually a tv set with actors and his whole world was
fabricated
● A custom world of your own
○ What would one need to include to build a simulated world perfect to grow up in?
● Ecosystems and influence
○ The whole is greater than some of its parts. Things affect other things. Changing
one can result in adjustments in others. Some influences are not immediate but
instead affect things that affect things directly. That is, they are indirect.
● Growing up in different times
○ Settings for child development can change with time
○ In any given society, beliefs, values, customs, technologies, and social
circumstances change over time with consequences for childrens’ development
○ Beliefs about children and childhood in particular differ from one historical period
to another. It can even change within a decade
○ For example, not long ago in North America, it was thought that picking up a
crying or a fussy baby would make them spoiled and demanding. Today, this is
considered a sign of positive and responsive caregiving
● Historical shifts in views of children
○ Children as little adults
■ Before the 16th century, people did not give much thought to children or
their special needs
■ During medieval times, there was no understanding of childhood as a
unique period of life and children were considered miniature adults
■ They were not provided with special toys or clothes and they were not
educated or cared for in ways that considered their intellectual abilities
and limitations
■ In art, children were depicted as having adult-like body proportions
wearing elegant and fine adult like clothing and engaging in serious
minding activities
■ It was not uncommon for children as young as 3 to be entrusted with the
care of babies. 3 years olds make poor caregivers and children in their
care often died due to inattention or inability to intervene appropriately
when problems arose
■ It was also relatively common for parents to leave infants and young
children entirely alone and unsupervised for extended periods of time
while they did chores or worked in the fields
○ Protestant reformation
■ It was associated with harsher child rearing practices which followed from
the belief that children were born in original sin.
, ■ In contrast to the medieval Catholic Church, Protestant denominations
generally held that the original sin could not be washed away by baptism
and that salvation would be possible only through obedience and
submission to authorities
■ Because obedience naturally requires a suppression of individual goals
and desires, parents were advised to adopt practices that would
encourage compliance and limit arousal.
■ Even as late as the 1900s, child rearing manuals urged parents to wage
war on their children’s sinful and rebellious nature.
■ Masturbation and thumb sucking were a special concern because they
were involved in “dangerous pleasures” that could easily grow beyond
control
■ Mother’s were encouraged to use a variety of physical restraints such as
tying their children's feet to opposite sides of the crib to prevent thighs
from rubbing together and pinning the sleeves of their nightshirts to
prevent them from touching themselves
● Industrialization
○ Industrialization transformed the context in which children develop in three major
ways
○ Schooling and/ or factory work came to replace the family farm as the child’s
primary social obligation
○ Birth rates dropped significantly altering family relationships between parents and
their children and between siblings
○ Death rates dropped
○ With increased schooling, children became economic burdens rather than assets
so family size began to shrink
○ Increased schooling for girls by hoping to make possible new opportunities for
women to work outside the home reduced family size beyond reducing the birth
rate
○ Girls’ education contributed to the declining death rates because it resulted in
mothers being more knowledgeable about how to ensure healthy development in
their infants and children
○ Child labor- young kids worked up to 12 hours and in hazardous conditions
○ Child labor laws were eventually formed
● Teen media use
○ Recent trends in teen media use
■ Teens are using various screens nearly 7.5 hours a day (does not include
time spent on screens for school or homework)
■ The amount of time teens spent watching online videos between 2015
and 2019 doubled
■ Between 2015 and 2019, the number of teens who reported watching
online videos every day jumped from 34% to 69%. BUT the number of
, teens reporting watching TV live on a TV set dropped from 48% in 2015
to 24% in 2019
■ During the same period social media usage has remained relatively
steady
■ Youtube is the most used social media app among the teens in 2019,
followed by instagram and snapchat
■ Tiktok became the fastest growing new app for American teens in 2019.
60% of TikTok users are ages 16 to 24
■ In 2015, 67% of teens ages 13 to 18 had their own smartphone. By 2019,
the number climbed to 84%
○ Pornography
■ Online pornography is paricularly problematic becuase of its ready
availability
■ No one knows for sure, but there are an estimated 4.2 million
pornographic websites globally. 12% of the total of all websites
■ On average, American children first encounter pornography on the web at
age 11
■ Researchers suggest that exposure to pornography can make children
more tolerant to agression towards women as well as more accepting of
premarital sex
● Covid-19 pandemic
○ We do not yet know how growing up during this time is affecting children. We can
assume that it’s affecting some children differently than others
● Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological model
○ He conceptualizes the environment as a set of nested structures, each side the
next, like a set of Russian dolls. Each structure represents a different level of
influence on development
○ A child
■ Imbedded at the center of multiple levels of influence
■ The individual characteristics of the child interact with the environmental
influences present at various levels. The different levels vary in how
immediate their effects are. He emphasizes that at every level from the
intimate context of the child’s nuclear family, the general culture in which
the child lives has an impact on the child’s development
■ He calls the various levels environmental systems to emphasize the
complexity and interconnectedness of what goes on. He gives them
distinct levels
○ Microsystem influences
■ Activities, roles, and relationships in which the child directly participates
over time
■ It also includes the physical environment of child development
■ Peers and friends
, ● Children have direct contact with peers and friends so it is
considered a microsystem
■ Parents
■ Grandparents
■ Siblings
■ Coaches
■ Teachers
○ Bidirectionality
■ Agents influence children and children influence agents in turn
○ Mesosystems
■ It encompasses the connections between the various microsystems such
as families, peers, and schools
■ He thought that the way various microsystems intersect is just as
important as each microsystem itself
■ Supportive relations among these contexts can benefit the child and
abrasive or disjointed connections can present challenges
■ Parent-peers mesosystem
● Represents the intersection of parents with peers
● Do parents know and like their child’s friends?
● Do peers like the child’s parents?
● Does the peer group have the same or opposite values of the
parents?
● Same language and behavior?
● Generally, parents share the values of the child’s friends and
usually like those friends.
● How parents mesh with peers is important because parents play
several key roles in supporting success with peers.
● Parents differ in the extent to which they feel they should play an
active role in their child’s friendships, teach their child social skills,
and arrange and manage their child’s opportunities for peer
interaction
■ Teacher-peers mesosystem
■ Parent-teachers mesosystem
● Represents the intersection of these two groups of socialization
and agents
● Do they respect each other?
● Do they have the same expectations of the child?
● Is the child’s religious background compatible with the teacher's
views?
● For a child whose family is separate from the dominant culture,
school’s can have an alienating effect on them
● The Truman show is a 1998 science fiction comedy drama film of an ordinary man that
grew up in an ordinary life but was actually a tv set with actors and his whole world was
fabricated
● A custom world of your own
○ What would one need to include to build a simulated world perfect to grow up in?
● Ecosystems and influence
○ The whole is greater than some of its parts. Things affect other things. Changing
one can result in adjustments in others. Some influences are not immediate but
instead affect things that affect things directly. That is, they are indirect.
● Growing up in different times
○ Settings for child development can change with time
○ In any given society, beliefs, values, customs, technologies, and social
circumstances change over time with consequences for childrens’ development
○ Beliefs about children and childhood in particular differ from one historical period
to another. It can even change within a decade
○ For example, not long ago in North America, it was thought that picking up a
crying or a fussy baby would make them spoiled and demanding. Today, this is
considered a sign of positive and responsive caregiving
● Historical shifts in views of children
○ Children as little adults
■ Before the 16th century, people did not give much thought to children or
their special needs
■ During medieval times, there was no understanding of childhood as a
unique period of life and children were considered miniature adults
■ They were not provided with special toys or clothes and they were not
educated or cared for in ways that considered their intellectual abilities
and limitations
■ In art, children were depicted as having adult-like body proportions
wearing elegant and fine adult like clothing and engaging in serious
minding activities
■ It was not uncommon for children as young as 3 to be entrusted with the
care of babies. 3 years olds make poor caregivers and children in their
care often died due to inattention or inability to intervene appropriately
when problems arose
■ It was also relatively common for parents to leave infants and young
children entirely alone and unsupervised for extended periods of time
while they did chores or worked in the fields
○ Protestant reformation
■ It was associated with harsher child rearing practices which followed from
the belief that children were born in original sin.
, ■ In contrast to the medieval Catholic Church, Protestant denominations
generally held that the original sin could not be washed away by baptism
and that salvation would be possible only through obedience and
submission to authorities
■ Because obedience naturally requires a suppression of individual goals
and desires, parents were advised to adopt practices that would
encourage compliance and limit arousal.
■ Even as late as the 1900s, child rearing manuals urged parents to wage
war on their children’s sinful and rebellious nature.
■ Masturbation and thumb sucking were a special concern because they
were involved in “dangerous pleasures” that could easily grow beyond
control
■ Mother’s were encouraged to use a variety of physical restraints such as
tying their children's feet to opposite sides of the crib to prevent thighs
from rubbing together and pinning the sleeves of their nightshirts to
prevent them from touching themselves
● Industrialization
○ Industrialization transformed the context in which children develop in three major
ways
○ Schooling and/ or factory work came to replace the family farm as the child’s
primary social obligation
○ Birth rates dropped significantly altering family relationships between parents and
their children and between siblings
○ Death rates dropped
○ With increased schooling, children became economic burdens rather than assets
so family size began to shrink
○ Increased schooling for girls by hoping to make possible new opportunities for
women to work outside the home reduced family size beyond reducing the birth
rate
○ Girls’ education contributed to the declining death rates because it resulted in
mothers being more knowledgeable about how to ensure healthy development in
their infants and children
○ Child labor- young kids worked up to 12 hours and in hazardous conditions
○ Child labor laws were eventually formed
● Teen media use
○ Recent trends in teen media use
■ Teens are using various screens nearly 7.5 hours a day (does not include
time spent on screens for school or homework)
■ The amount of time teens spent watching online videos between 2015
and 2019 doubled
■ Between 2015 and 2019, the number of teens who reported watching
online videos every day jumped from 34% to 69%. BUT the number of
, teens reporting watching TV live on a TV set dropped from 48% in 2015
to 24% in 2019
■ During the same period social media usage has remained relatively
steady
■ Youtube is the most used social media app among the teens in 2019,
followed by instagram and snapchat
■ Tiktok became the fastest growing new app for American teens in 2019.
60% of TikTok users are ages 16 to 24
■ In 2015, 67% of teens ages 13 to 18 had their own smartphone. By 2019,
the number climbed to 84%
○ Pornography
■ Online pornography is paricularly problematic becuase of its ready
availability
■ No one knows for sure, but there are an estimated 4.2 million
pornographic websites globally. 12% of the total of all websites
■ On average, American children first encounter pornography on the web at
age 11
■ Researchers suggest that exposure to pornography can make children
more tolerant to agression towards women as well as more accepting of
premarital sex
● Covid-19 pandemic
○ We do not yet know how growing up during this time is affecting children. We can
assume that it’s affecting some children differently than others
● Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological model
○ He conceptualizes the environment as a set of nested structures, each side the
next, like a set of Russian dolls. Each structure represents a different level of
influence on development
○ A child
■ Imbedded at the center of multiple levels of influence
■ The individual characteristics of the child interact with the environmental
influences present at various levels. The different levels vary in how
immediate their effects are. He emphasizes that at every level from the
intimate context of the child’s nuclear family, the general culture in which
the child lives has an impact on the child’s development
■ He calls the various levels environmental systems to emphasize the
complexity and interconnectedness of what goes on. He gives them
distinct levels
○ Microsystem influences
■ Activities, roles, and relationships in which the child directly participates
over time
■ It also includes the physical environment of child development
■ Peers and friends
, ● Children have direct contact with peers and friends so it is
considered a microsystem
■ Parents
■ Grandparents
■ Siblings
■ Coaches
■ Teachers
○ Bidirectionality
■ Agents influence children and children influence agents in turn
○ Mesosystems
■ It encompasses the connections between the various microsystems such
as families, peers, and schools
■ He thought that the way various microsystems intersect is just as
important as each microsystem itself
■ Supportive relations among these contexts can benefit the child and
abrasive or disjointed connections can present challenges
■ Parent-peers mesosystem
● Represents the intersection of parents with peers
● Do parents know and like their child’s friends?
● Do peers like the child’s parents?
● Does the peer group have the same or opposite values of the
parents?
● Same language and behavior?
● Generally, parents share the values of the child’s friends and
usually like those friends.
● How parents mesh with peers is important because parents play
several key roles in supporting success with peers.
● Parents differ in the extent to which they feel they should play an
active role in their child’s friendships, teach their child social skills,
and arrange and manage their child’s opportunities for peer
interaction
■ Teacher-peers mesosystem
■ Parent-teachers mesosystem
● Represents the intersection of these two groups of socialization
and agents
● Do they respect each other?
● Do they have the same expectations of the child?
● Is the child’s religious background compatible with the teacher's
views?
● For a child whose family is separate from the dominant culture,
school’s can have an alienating effect on them
