Children, Family and Communities sample

Understanding the child in context: An ecological approach to child development

Introduction

One of the most vigorous debates between developmental psychologists early in the twentieth century concerned the extent to which children are a product of their genetic makeup or the environment in which they grow up. This is known as the ‘Nature vs Nurture’ debate. Psychologists asked: do children arrive in the world pre-programmed to look, live, and behave in certain ways based on their genetics (‘nature’ or biological determinism)? Or are children sponges, empty vessels ready to absorb the influences of people and places in their lives, to have their characters shaped and their world views influenced by those who raise them (‘nurture’ or social conditioning)? There are very few developmental psychologists who would now argue exclusively for either side of the debate. It is well understood that children are born with their own innate characteristics; however, these characteristics and their expression are influenced by the environments in which each child lives (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000; Wexler, 2006). Rather than ‘Nature vs Nurture’, it is more accurate to understand the developing child in terms of ‘Nature and Nurture’ or ‘Biology and Environment’.

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The focus of this book is on the interaction between a child and their environment or context. Throughout the chapters of this book, we explore overarching questions such as: How do the circumstances and social conditions of a child’s life influence their learning, behaviour and growth? What aspects of their environment play a role in children’s development? What role do children play in shaping their environments? Environments are dynamic and always shifting in response to global forces and the individuals (including children) that interact with them. For this reason, it is not helpful to think of children as hapless victims of external forces. Children are critical actors in their own development and are engaged in decision making and influencing the environments in which they live (James & Prout, 1997; Matthews, 2007).

This first chapter is designed to set the scene and provide a theoretical basis for the chapters that follow. Much of the chapter is dedicated to a description of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory. Bronfenbrenner’s theory is arguably the most well-known and widely used theory of child development in context. It is a foundational theory that provides a helpful framework. It is not without its critics, with much of this critique focused on the traditional Anglo-American values and assumptions that underpin Bronfenbrenner’s writings and justifications. Some of these criticisms will be discussed below. However, as this theory is ever evolving, it is valuable in that it requires us to stretch our thinking beyond a child’s biology and family environment to understand the impact on children and families of social conditions, public policy, culture and global movements.

Ultimately, the role of all professionals who work with children is to create environments in which children have every opportunity to thrive. Defining the specifics around what it means to thrive is likely to differ depending on cultural context and values. However, the domains of the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth (ARACY) ‘Nest’ framework provide a helpful starting point (ARACY, 2014). According to ARACY, to thrive children need:

• to feel loved and safe

• to have their material basic needs met

• to have their physical, developmental, psychosocial and mental health needs met

• opportunities to learn

• opportunities to participate in the community and have their voices heard

• a positive sense of culture and identity.

Achieving the above requires the commitment not only of parents and those who interact directly with the child but also of employers, social policy designers, politicians and advocacy organisations. It is the responsibility of us all.

Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory of child development

Developmental psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner rose to prominence in the 1970s with the publication of his ecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). Building on the work of other great theorists such as Vygotsky (1978), Bronfenbrenner conceptualised developing children in relation to their social, physical and psychological environment. This was a new approach at a time when developmental psychologists were primarily studying child development in laboratory settings. Bronfenbrenner, his colleagues and students have continued to revise and refine his theoretical model over the last fifty years in response to research and thinking within the field of developmental science. The theory was extended in 1994 as the bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994) to incorporate the child’s ‘genetic potential’ into the theoretical framework. The term ‘bioecological’ is intended to capture the interplay between inherited characteristics, and the environmental contexts in which a child learns and grows. The work of Bronfenbrenner and his colleagues has been highly influential in both practice and theory, providing an important perspective on children’s lives within their families and communities.

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Figure 1.1 is a diagrammatic representation of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model. It seeks to capture the interconnected systems and contextual structures that influence the life of a child, with the developing child at the centre. As you examine the diagram, please imagine that each circle within the diagram is layered onto the next. The outer layers form a foundation that permeates across the other systems. For example, culture is part of the outer circle, not because it is conceptualised as sitting a long way from the child or as less important than elements that are depicted as closer to the child. Quite the opposite. Culture sits in the outside layer because it infiltrates and has influence on all other layers, including the day-to-day lives of children in their most immediate environments.

Attitudes

MACROSYSTEM

EXOSYSTEM

MESOSYSTEM

MICROSYSTEM

t H e in D ivi DUAL

Chronosystem

Patterning

socio-historical conditions

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All human beings are born with their own genetic potential, and each child brings their genetic potential to the settings into which they live. Bronfenbrenner theorised that the process of development was to actualise this genetic potential. The individual child’s characteristics will interact with their environment—no two children will respond to the same environment in the same way. Both the child and the environment will be influenced by each other.

FIGURE 1.1 Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Model

Case study: Ali and his environment

Ali is a three-year-old boy who has been diagnosed as having developmental delay. He is not a good sleeper and screams for long periods of time through the night. His parents have been involved with early intervention professionals and are working closely with a speech therapist who is giving the family activities to support Ali’s eating and language development.

Ali’s development has been influenced by his environment: Ali is being given every opportunity to reach his potential because he has access to early intervention services and because his parents are incorporating therapeutic strategies into his daily routines. He is safe and cared for.

Ali is in turn shaping his environment: One parent has decided to leave work because it has been hard to balance work with caring for Ali through the night and incorporating his therapy into the day. This, along with the cost of early intervention services, has impacted the family financially, and they have delayed purchasing their own home.

Another important concept aligned with the work of Bronfenbrenner is the developmental niche (Super & Harkness, 1986). A developmental niche is created when individuals actively seek out an environment and other people who are a match in some way with their own characteristics. Two important ideas for child development arise from considering the developmental niche. The first is that the relationship between the environment and the child is mutual, reinforcing the idea that children shape the environments in which they grow. The second is the recognition that children are raised in cultural environments, and their development is inextricable from their acquisition of culture.

Case study: Iris’s developmental niche

Iris is an eight-year-old girl who loves gymnastics. At school she spends as much time as she can playing on the sports equipment. Her motor and coordination skills are developing rapidly, and her progress fuels her interest and obsession with doing flips and cartwheels on the balance beam. Because of Iris’s interest and talent, the school has invested in more gymnastics equipment, and the teachers ensure that the equipment is supervised and available for the children to use most lunchtimes. Iris’s teacher is concerned that Iris is falling behind her peers in mathematics and has started using gymnastic activities as a way to encourage Iris’s understanding of mathematical concepts and using time on the equipment as a reward for sustained effort in maths. As a result, Iris is directly influencing her environment. Whenever Iris has a choice of activity, she heads to the gymnastics equipment. She likes to play with the other children who also use the equipment, and she loves to test her skills against them. In so doing, Iris has constructed her own developmental niche—she has been influential in creating a context that is comfortable for her and supports aspects of her development.

Box 1.1

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There is a wide range of individual differences in children, and much to be learned from the science of genetics and epigenetics about inheritable characteristics and the ways in which genetic and environmental factors interact to create our individuality (Lester et al., 2016; Naumova et al., 2016). Children can be born susceptible to some behaviours, health conditions, or talents, and these susceptibilities can be ‘switched on’ or ‘switched off’ by particular factors in the environment. For example, participation in a chaotic and poor-quality early childhood care setting may switch on a genetic susceptibility for behavioural difficulties in a child. These

Box 1.2

difficulties may not have emerged to the same extent if the child was in a high-quality care setting (Pluess & Belsky, 2009, 2010).

Environmental influence can span generations. For example, the offspring of people who have experienced famine are more likely to have a genetic propensity to store body fat (Pembrey et al., 2006). The environment of their predecessors has switched on susceptibility for weight gain. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to delve further into the fascinating world of epigenetics. However, it is important to acknowledge that even the genes we are born with will be influenced in their expression by the environments in which we live.

Another interesting body of research literature important for understanding the development of individual children and the impact of environment is from the field of neuroscience. In essence, we learn from neuroscience that nurturing and stimulating environments will support healthy brain development. Brain architecture is comprised of neurons that transmit information throughout the body to and from the brain. Babies are born with almost all the neurons they will ever have already present (Oppenheimer et al., 2013). The brain forms complex circuits of connections or pathways between neurons that are essential for information to flow throughout the brain and body (Stiles & Jernigan, 2010).

The environment can have a profound influence on how the brain develops and the complexity of these circuits. The formation and refinement of neural networks occurs when synapses are stimulated over and over. By repeating a particular thought or action, the pattern of neural connections is stabilised and strengthened, or ‘hard-wired’ in the brain. It becomes an efficient, permanent pathway that allows signals to be transmitted quickly and accurately. One example of this might be a parent who takes every opportunity to count with their young child, whether it be when putting apples into a bag at the grocery store, or when putting toys away at home. The child becomes able to count quickly without a lot of concentration or deliberate thought.

In contrast, those cells and connections that are used less often are removed by cell death and synaptic ‘pruning’—often referred to as a competitive ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ mechanism (Singer, 1995). Early sensory and stimulating experiences have a powerful effect on brain organisation, and changes that occur early in life can be long-lasting. Positive emotional stimuli (e.g., baby handling, responsive gaze, talking to the infant, and responding sensitively to an infant’s emotional cues and level of arousal) contribute to healthy synaptic connections.

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The brain can also grow atypically as an adaptation to adverse early environments. The brains of young children who experience chronic and severely stressful conditions are being flooded by the stress hormone cortisol for an extended period. This can have a toxic effect on the brain. While the effects are not irreversible depending on subsequent life experiences, there is good evidence that early environmental adversity is associated with neural network abnormalities in areas of the brain responsible for memory, attention, impulsiveness, and behavioural regulation and control (Hart & Rubia, 2012). In short, our environments have a significant impact on the development of the brain across the lifespan.

Bronfenbrenner was interested in the mechanisms for actualising genetic potential for a child (Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994). He was interested in how environmental and individual factors interacted, and the mechanisms and processes involved. This is important to understand because it can inform thinking about how to create environments that support the best possible outcomes for children. Bronfenbrenner proposed that the key mechanisms were ‘proximal processes’ that take place in the microsystem. He described proximal processes as the engines of development (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000).

mi CR os Y stem

To quote from Bronfenbrenner and Morris (1998, p. 996):

Throughout the life course, human development takes place through the process of progressively more complex reciprocal interaction between an active biopsychological human organism and the persons, objects and symbols in its immediate external environment.

The microsystem consists of the face-to-face settings in which children are involved such as in the family home, the school or early childhood education and care setting, the playgroup, the doctor’s office, or the family’s place of worship. Settings influence children, not only through their physical features and activities but also through the personalities, behaviours, and belief systems of the people in those settings. One example is that a family might choose, based on an aspect of their family identity, a playgroup that provides an environment of shared cultural practice and language (Townley, 2022). Another example is a family system where one child in the family is neurodiverse. Ideally, the microsystem adapts to support the development of both the neurodiverse child and the other children in the family. All members of the family develop skills, relationships, and behaviours that allow the family to thrive (Bachraz & Grace, 2009).

Bronfenbrenner and Evans emphasised the importance of connection and consistent relationships in the life of a child and across the lifespan (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). They argued that healthy development requires strong mutual attachment with someone committed to the child’s wellbeing. Most children form mutual attachments with parents or carers. As children grow, new significant relationships may form beyond the family. Any relationships characterised by mutual commitment to the other’s wellbeing will support a child’s ongoing healthy development.

Case study: Environments and genetic potential

Ruth’s story illustrates the reinforcement of genetic potential through proximal processes. Ruth was born with an innate musical ability. She loved to sing songs as a toddler and started asking her parents if she could have piano lessons from an early age (P—person). Her parents owned a piano and valued musical ability. They could afford piano lessons for Ruth as soon as she was big enough for her fingers to stretch across the keys (C—context). She practised every day with the support of her parents (P—process) and by adolescence was an accomplished pianist (T—time). Ruth’s innate musical potential may not have been recognised or achieved in a different family context.

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Peter’s story illustrates the disruption of genetic potential. Peter was a talkative child who laughed often and loudly. His favourite activity was to make up and perform plays for his family (P—person) who cheered and encouraged his creativity. Peter’s family changed when his parents started to struggle with their relationship and argue a lot (C—context). The more this happened on a regular basis (T—time) the more Peter retreated. He spent his free time in his room (P—process) and became an introverted young man who no longer sought attention or engaged in performances.

Proximal processes are the activities that individuals engage in as they learn and develop. They could be as simple as patting a child to soothe them to sleep, or as complex as preparing a family meal together. The effectiveness of proximal processes in influencing developmental

outcomes varies depending on the following: the process, the person who is engaging with the activity, the context in which the activity is taking place, and the amount of time that is given to the activity. Bronfenbrenner referred to this as the process-person-contexttime (PPCT) model of developmental outcomes (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). For Bronfenbrenner, the optimal development path of a child towards actualising their genetic potential is unlocked through regularly repeated effective proximal processes operating in their social ecology, leading to competence. Conversely, he argues that optimal development can be hampered by weak proximal processes, leading to dysfunction. Proximal processes remain a useful way for us to understand how to support children’s development, although it is important to bear in mind that what is considered ‘competent’ or ‘dysfunctional’ may vary from one cultural context to the next.

mesos Y stem

The mesosystem is made up of the interrelationships between different settings within the microsystem. For example, the microsystem of many children includes home and school. Children’s development will be influenced by the extent to which the behaviour, expectations, and values of the people in the two environments are similar or different and by how they are perceived by the children. If, for example, children experience school values and routines completely different from home values and routines, they may find school very difficult and potentially retreat from the learning opportunities it offers. On the other hand, a close match between the values of school and home is likely to lead to smooth transitions between the two settings and enhanced engagement in school-based learning. Where the child moves into a new microsystem with a person who has been present with them in another microsystem, this also contributes to a smooth transition.

e X os Y stem

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The exosystem includes the settings in which the child is not directly involved but that, nonetheless, affect the child and are affected by the child. Some examples are parents’ workplaces, parents’ social networks, social welfare systems and programs, and local councils. To illustrate, a child may not directly participate in a parent’s workplace yet may influence parental decisions about work, and the child will feel the effects of changes in parental work conditions including income, working hours and stress as the result of work. The exosystem also impacts on the proximal processes in a child’s life. For example, council decisions about the maintenance of local parks will influence the extent to which children and their families are able to engage safely and regularly in outdoor play and activities. Lack of access to safe outdoor spaces is also likely to impact negatively on the development of local connections and friendship networks.

m ACR os Y stem

The macrosystem refers to broad societal or cultural contexts that impact across all the other systems. The macrosystem incorporates the sets of values or cultural belief systems around which life in a society is organised. These values are passed on through families, schools, religious institutions and other social and government institutions.

The influence of culture on proximal processes

Rocco’s story provides an example of how cultural expectations can vary for children in different contexts. This can lead to incongruence across settings which may be confusing for children and also for the adults involved if they do not seek to understand the cultural values and expectations that characterise children’s interactions in other parts of their life.

Rocco lives with his mum, dad and older brother. He spends two days a week with his Nonno while his parents are at work and he goes to daycare for three days a week. He loves playing with Nonno, particularly when they build the train track all over the floor or do drawing with Nonno’s big collection of pens and pencils. When his mum comes to pick him up, she sometimes says, ‘Let’s help Nonno pick up all these toys’ and Nonno says, ‘No, I can do it. It’s time for you to go home and have dinner’. At daycare, Rocco used to like playing dress-ups, but the buttons were too hard for him to do up and the teacher seemed annoyed when he asked for help. He also used to get into trouble for not tidying the clothes away afterwards, so he stopped playing in the dress-up corner. Sometimes the other children say that Rocco is a baby at daycare because he is messy when he eats with spoons and forks. He keeps forgetting to wash his hands in the bathroom and his shoelaces are always coming undone. When he is with Nonno he gets a lot more help with eating, dressing and washing, and Nonno says that he loves to do these things for his grandson.

Bronfenbrenner’s model could be criticised for not capturing well the experiences of children and families in a multicultural society. He developed his theory in the United States at a time when culture was understood to be fairly homogenous. He states that:

Within a given society or social group, the structure and substance of micro-, meso-, and exosystems tend to be similar, as if they were constructed from the same master model, and the systems function in similar ways. (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, p. 8).

However, due to global migration patterns, Australia, like many countries, is now a ‘super-diverse’ society (Meissner & Vertovec, 2015) with people from over 300 different cultural or ethnic ancestries, 26 per cent of people born overseas, a further 21 per cent having one or more parents born overseas, and 21 per cent speaking a language other than English at home (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2017). Australia is a nation of settler immigrants and First Peoples. Children live in families situated in one or more cultures, and they all spend time in microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem where a number of cultures are present.

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Cultural practices are incorporated into a child’s personal sense of identity through the proximal processes of everyday life. Culture is embedded within the Process and Context elements of the PPCT model and, in this way, culture influences the nature of the environment and the responses of the people around the child. According to Bronfenbrenner, expectations about behaviour for children have a cultural and social basis and are constantly reinforced in daily activities and discussions. For example, cultural values may influence families to respond to children differently and accept different behaviours depending on gender or the birth order of siblings. The internalisation of culture also influences the ways in which the developing child thinks and behaves.

A super-diverse multicultural society usually has one culture that is dominant over others. In Australia this is Anglo-centric whiteness (Moreton-Robinson, 2004). Families who have a cultural background different from the dominant culture may feel that the macrosystem is not aligned or is hostile to their culture. While their family culture

permeates and influences their microsystem proximal processes, some of their mesosystem, and any decisions they have control over in the exosystem, their family culture does not shape elements of the macrosystem including political structures, policy decisions, and broad societal expectations. These are shaped by the dominant culture. Such incongruence between family values and practices and the systems and social expectations that surround them may be particularly evident in its impact on the mesosystem.

An example can be found in the research of Trudgett and Grace (2011) who interviewed Australian Indigenous parents of young children about their engagement with early childhood education and care services. Many families expressed a lack of trust in the early childhood services and worried that their ways of knowing and being would not be respected in this context. The families were concerned that the early childhood environments would reinforce mainstream cultural values and undermine Indigenous values.

Bronfenbrenner’s model would be enhanced by greater recognition that the lives of children and families may be influenced by multiple cultural contexts. Many families have to balance different cultural value systems and practices, and they may prioritise the ways of one culture above another in different contexts. For example, a family might choose to prioritise their Vietnamese culture in their decisions about parenting and the routines of the home but adopt an Anglo-Australian approach to the education of the children. Contrary to the way that Bronfenbrenner talks about culture, there is not necessarily one permeating culture across all aspects of a child’s life.

The COVID pandemic is an example of an event in the macrosystem that has impacted all other systems. In Australia, the COVID global pandemic resulted in periods of time where many microsystem sites such as childcare, schools, libraries, and play areas in parks were closed, and children could not visit extended family members. Events in the exosystem resulted in many parents working from home or not working at all. Constant handwashing, testing for the COVID virus, and media messages about case numbers and vaccinations led to changed practices and increases in anxiety levels for many. The changes to routines and proximal processes were sometimes beneficial, and sometimes not, and we won’t understand their full impact for many years.

time

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Bronfenbrenner was very interested in the concept of time, and introduced the terms microtime, mesotime, and macrotime. Microtime refers to the continuity or discontinuity of episodes of proximal processes. Mesotime refers to the frequency of these episodes across broad time intervals, such as weeks and months. Macrotime, or the ‘chronosystem’, refers to the changing expectations and events within the larger society (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). Just as individuals change over time, so do contexts. Developmental and historical changes need to be included in any model of the interrelationships between people and their context. The effects on context of an individual’s development over mesotime can be seen, for example, in changing parenting approaches to behaviour management according to the age of their child. A two-year-old who throws her dinner onto the floor is likely to get quite a different reaction from her parents compared to an eight-year-old who does the same thing. Historical influences also change the environmental context and its impact on children and their families. These are often referred to as ‘cohort effects’. For example, public opinion about women’s involvement in the paid workforce when their children are very young is changing rapidly in Australia, a cultural change that both influences and is influenced by

social policy. While it was once common for middle-class mothers to provide full-time care at home for their young children, it is now widely accepted that many mothers will be engaged in paid employment during their child’s prior-to-school years. This shift in cultural norms has meant that a child’s day-to-day experience of care may include several formal and informal non-parental care settings, quite a different developmental context for children from middle-class families compared to fifty years ago (Galinsky et al., 2011).

Bronfenbrenner also acknowledged within his writings, the importance of transitions within childhood—the birth of a sibling, starting school, the death of a family member, divorce of parents, or commencement of puberty—and the role of appropriate and supportive proximal processes during these pivotal times.

Case study: The role of time in learning

The first word Holly learnt to say was ‘No’ and she used this word emphatically whenever possible. As Holly grew, her parents observed that she was very stubborn, that she refused to share, and threw tantrums whenever she did not get her own way. Her mother, Sue, joked that Holly was just like her grandfather, who had always been a difficult man to get along with. Holly’s parents became worried when teachers at the preschool explained that Holly did not seem to have any friends and that she was often angry with the other children. Sue decided to spend more time playing with Holly—just the two of them—so that Holly could practise turn-taking. For at least half an hour on most days (microtime), they would play together and Sue would show Holly how to take turns. Sue also modelled kind language and problem solving when the game did not go Holly’s way. Sometimes their daily play sessions could not occur because Sue was required to spend longer hours at work (mesotime), but Sue and Holly were able to play most days over a three-month period. When Sue saw that Holly’s skills were improving, she began to invite other children over to play with Holly. Over time, Holly’s practice at home, along with her ongoing maturation (macrotime) and increased opportunities for interaction with other children (mesotime), led to improved social skills and the establishment of friendships.

F in AL t H o U g H ts on BR on F en BR enne R’ s t H eo RY

Bronfenbrenner’s theory is the most well-known, and arguably the most comprehensive, of theoretical models to capture the layers of contextual influence on the development of a child, and the interrelationships among environmental factors and individual child characteristics. His work has had a significant and far-reaching impact on thinking about the interactions between people and contexts. However, he is not the only theorist within this space. His notion of proximal processes shares some similarity with elements of other theories, such as ‘guided participation’ (Vygotsky, 1978), Wenger’s (1998) model of development through participation in communities of practice, and ecocultural theory, which argues for daily activities and routines as the critical units of analysis in understanding child development and family wellbeing (Gallimore et al., 1989; Weisner, 2002). Rogoff (2003) framed a theory of how children develop in their cultural context with a similar emphasis on how key cultural messages are learnt through participation in everyday rituals and activities.

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In his later writing, Bronfenbrenner and his colleagues expressed concern about what they perceived to be an increasing level of disarray or ‘chaos’ in society. Bronfenbrenner and Evans (2000) pointed to increased rates of divorce, neighbourhood violence, parents experiencing significant pressure to work long hours, unpredictability in the routines of

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daily life, and poor coordination between the settings in which children engage, including home and school. They argued that an increasing level of social chaos could lead to a general decline in concern for the wellbeing of others and a breakdown in social development. Crucially, they suggested that a chaotic and inconsistent environment does not support positive outcomes for children, something they saw as the principal developmental challenge of the modern world.

Since Bronfenbrenner developed his theories, other theoretical perspectives have emerged that have challenged Bronfenbrenner’s view of an ideal world as stable, culturally homogenous, and heteronormative. Post-structuralism argues that there is no universally understood way to live, no one truth about human development, but rather competing discourses in the ways that we understand the world. Family structure is no longer assumed to take the form of a traditional nuclear family with a mother, father and biological children. There is increasing recognition that families come in diverse forms, including blended families, intercultural families, LGBTQ+ families, and families in which the children are not biologically related to the adults in the family. The complexity of information and learning that children encounter is undoubtedly more extensive and more complex. It is important to think about Bronfenbrenner’s concern that the world is becoming more chaotic, and to break down what this means for children. There may be some ways in which increasing complexity is very positive, such as in greater acceptance of diversity or increased understanding of global issues. On the other hand, if increasing chaos takes the form of increased violence in our communities or widening social inequities, this is concerning for child development. Bronfenbrenner was sweeping in his observation that society was changing and that those changes were creating a more chaotic world that was not conducive to child development. We argue that complex environments are not necessarily chaotic and may, in fact, support positive child outcomes, particularly as this relates to the acceptance of diversity, the empowerment of women, and opportunities for children and young people to actively participate in civil discourse.

Implications for policy and practice

Creating environments in which children thrive requires engagement and commitment at every level of social ecology. Global organisations, such as the United Nations, have a vital role to play in influencing the ways in which children and childhoods are viewed and valued at the macro-system level. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989 was a landmark document acknowledging children as equal members of the ‘human family’ with ‘inherent dignity’ and ‘inalienable rights’ and providing a set of international standards intended to guide the treatment of children.

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The principles of the UNCRC have been influential in Australia and are slowly being embedded within national and state legislation and policy. For example, the Early Years Learning Framework (DEEWR, 2009) explicitly incorporates the convention into early childhood curriculum (AHRC & ECA, 2015), and the National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children (2021–2031) (DSS, 2021) recognises the importance of children’s voice and participation in decision making when they have been impacted by abuse or neglect. The first National Children’s Commissioner was appointed in 2012. However, there is still a tendency to confine discussion and policy relevant to children to areas specific to children such as education. This demonstrates a lack of understanding of the ways in which

all elements of the ecology inextricably interact. We argue for consideration of the child in every government policy: in housing policy, in employment and productivity policy, in migration policy, and so on. A socio-ecological view supports the requirement of all policies to consider their impact on children, directly or indirectly.

At the practice level, Bronfenbrenner’s approach calls on us to acknowledge and understand the complexities and layers of influence that exist within a child’s life. The PPCT model provides a mechanism through which to exert positive influence, giving deliberate attention to the people, processes, contexts, and time that shape routines and daily activities. The model provides us with a framework to question what is happening in the life of a child and to influence the elements that can be influenced positively.

Most of the criticism of Bronfenbrenner’s theory focuses on the limitations of his model in capturing the experiences of multicultural people and super-diverse communities. As researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, we can begin to address this gap by, at the very least, acknowledging that for many people their macrosystems are nuanced and sometimes contain elements that are incongruent. This can cause challenges as the macrosystem flows back through the exosystem, mesosystem, and microsystem. Complexity is not necessarily negative, it is simply modern life and, as such, needs to be understood and considered in all issues of policy and practice.

The structure of this book

This first chapter has provided a brief introduction to the theoretical framework of the book, the importance of understanding children in context, and the utility of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory in understanding the layers of contextual influence. The second chapter is also introductory. It reviews major research approaches to the study of context and its effects on child development. The rest of the book follows a structure broadly based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 discuss child characteristics that interact with the contexts in which children live. Chapters 7 through to 11 explore different face-to-face contexts in which children develop and the consequences for children, their families, and their communities. Chapters 12 to 17 focus on the broader cultural and systemic issues that influence child development.

The topics for the chapters of this book were selected based on their prominence in discussion and debate in the Australian context. In this way, we hope to provide readers with an account of many current issues affecting the development of children in Australia and report on some ways forward to ensure that children have every opportunity to thrive.

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Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) & Early Childhood Australia (ECA). (2015). Supporting young children’s rights: Statement of intent (2015–2018). https://humanrights.gov.au/ sites/default/files/supporting_young_children_ rights.pdf

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