Bronfenbrenner

Bronfenbrenner An example of how my development has been influenced as Bronfenbrenner suggests is growing up with both parents working long shifts and not being around much when I was a young child; this falls into daily environment or microsystem. It also falls into the mesosystem or connection of all the microsystems influencing a child because with my parents absent, I was left to make alot of decisions in my own and was very shy causing me to be behind in social skills in school. Another example of how my development has been influenced is by the neighborhood I grew up in. It is a rural area, but because it is a small town with limited activities for youth, it was easy to fall in with the wrong crowd. Therefore impacting other aspects of my life such as school and family relationships. My strongest influences were the people around me, good and bad. I remember certain teachers that made me feel like I could do anything and encouraged me to do so and other teacher that made me feel like I would never be successful with anything and discouraged me to even try. The different people I became friends with impacted my life in both positive and negative ways by some showing me real friendship and some putting me in positions to have bad things happen. To this day, at age 29, these experiences and people have all influenced my development as a child and adult, creating the person I am today. “ Although Bronfenbrenner has acknowledged the influence of biology (genes) has begun to integrate it into his theory, he is still criticized for not emphasizing biology enough. In addition, although ecological theory does a good job explaining environmental connections, there is scant mention of cognitive factors. ” Nature or genetic make-up is referred to by others for example, Rothbart, who theorized that children can inherit personality traits like shyness from their parents and is still apparent even if the child is adopted by people who are not shy. “ McGuffin, Owen and Farmer, reported that a person’s chance of developing Schizophrenia is 10 times greater than normal if a parent was schizophrenic. The chance of developing schizophrenia if your identical twin has it is about 50/50. In conclusion, the strengths of genetic verses environmental factors are unmeasurable. Witt, G. A., & Mossler, R. A. (2010).[Adult Development and Life Assessment]. San Diego, CA. Bridgepoint Education, Inc. Bronfenbrenner(2004) Rothbart, McGuffin, Owen and Farmer(1995)