Guest Editorial

Developmental Research, Public Policy, and the

Ecology of Childhood
Urie Bronfenbrenner

Cornell University

In discussions of the relation between sci- You, my colleagues, will of cou

ence and social policy, the first axiom, at least to my defense, suggesting that the
among social scientists, is that social policy ing me for truth and wisdom outsid
should be based on science. The proposition Let me give you some of their qu
not only has logic on its side, but, what is you can judge for yourselves. I k
more important, it recognizes our proper and notes on questions I have been asked
primary importance in the scheme of things. mittee witness or so-called expert
The policymakers should look to us, not only makers, first in government, then in
for truth, but, we must modestly confess, for sector. Here are some of them fro
wisdom as well. In short, social policy needsment.
science.
1. How important is it for a child to be with
its mother during the first 3 years of life?
My thesis in this paper is the converse
2. Given high quality, what difference does
proposition, that, particularly in our field, sci-
full- versus half-day group care make at
ence needs social policy--needs it not to guide different ages?
our organizational activities, but to provide us3. How important is social class mix in
with two elements essential for any scientific group programs for children during the
endeavor-vitality and validity. first 3 years of life?
4. We have had considerable experience in
In defending my counterthesis, let me be- this country with cooperative versus reg-
gin by describing what happens when the first ular nurseries; what has been the effect
axiom is given the sobering test of reality. As on the development of the child?
so often happens, the facts do not conform 5. Can fathers care for young children as ef-
with the theory. At least, they did not in my fectively as mothers?
case. 6. How important are other adults besides
parents?
There was a period, a few years ago,
7. Should school classrooms be age desegre-
when I found myself frequently in gated?
a position
8. What changes
that turned out to be excruciatingly uncom- should be carried out in
our schools todid
fortable. For a while, policymakers actually reduce rapidly rising rates
of dropout, drug addiction, and vandal-
look to me for truth and, what is more
ism? fright-
ening, for wisdom. What I found was that,
9. In the interest of children, what policies
when they asked for truth, there was little Ishould be adopted by
and guidelines
could tell them, at least in answer to the
HUD ques-of Housing and Ur-
(Department
tions they were asking. I felt much better when
ban Development)?
they asked me for wisdom. Here I had quite a
bit to say. But they interrupted These
me questions
with an cameun-from policymakers in
the privateyour
fair question. They asked: "What's sector: evi-
dence?" Something happened that is rare
1. Should in
parents be allowed to bring chil-
my experience: I had nothing to say.dren to work?

This is an abridged version of a paper presented at the President's Symposium, "Interac-

tions among Theory, Research and Application in Child Development," at the annual meeting
of the Society for Research in Child Development, Philadelphia, March 31, 1973. Author's
address: Department of Human Development and Family Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca,
New York 14850.
[Child Development, 1974, 45, 1-5. @ 1974 by the Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.
All rights reserved.]
2 Child Development
2. You have advocated a Fair Part-Time agree that the questions I was asked were in-
Employment Practices Act; what isdeed
the of interest for public policy; but you
effect on the child of having a second
may doubt their relevance for scientific re-
parent work part time rather than full
time? search. If you do, then we differ. I contend
3. How important would it be for our that com- the pursuit of such questions is essential
for the further development of knowledge and
pany to adopt a policy of enabling parents
to be at home when the child comes home theory on the process of human development.
from school? Why essential? Because these questions focus
4. How can television commercials be de- on the impact on the child, both direct and
signed to foster the development of the
indirect, of the enduring environment in which
child?
he lives, or might live if social policies and
5. How should housing developments be de-practices were altered.
signed so as to enhance the psychological
growth of the child? The enduring environment, which we
shall refer to as the child's ecology, consists of
I was, of course, well prepared with sci-
two concentric layers, the first superimposed
entific bases for answering these questions.
uponI the second.
am a conscientious reader of our society's
journals, not to mention Developmental Psy- A. The upper layer and the most visible
chology and Human Development. Still, occa- is the immediate setting actually containing
sionally one has to go farther afield. the Forchild-home, school, street, playground,
example, in answer to the last question, camp, I etc. Every setting, in turn, is viewed
turned to a technical report of the Urban andalong three dimensions: (1) design of physi-
Planning Institute of Nuremberg, Germany. cal space and materials; (2) people, in differ-
The institute had conducted a study of the ing
ef-roles and relationships toward the child;
fect of so-called new towns on the lives of (3) activities in which the people are engag-
children. The research compared the actions ing-both with each other and with the child
of children living in 18 new "model commu- -including the social meaning of these activ-
ities.
nities" with those of youngsters living in
older German cities. As of this writing, copies B. The supporting and surrounding
of the technical report are not yet available layer, in which the immediate setting is em-
in this country; the following are excerpts bedded, limits and shapes what can and does
from a special bulletin to the New York Times
occur within the immediate setting: (1) geo-
(May 9, 1971):
graphic and physical, for example, a housing
In the new towns of West Germany, project in which people live; (2) institutional
amid soaring rectangular shapes of apartment -the social systems which affect what can oc-
houses with shaded walks, big lawns, and cur in the immediate setting. Not just social
fenced-in play areas, the children for whom class, but much more explicit systems such as
much of this has been designed apparently health services and homemaker services. As an
feel isolated, regimented and bored. example of the former, in the USSR a doctor
The study finds that the children gauge and assistant are available on call in each
their freedom not by the extent of open areas neighborhood to make home visits. In accom-
around them, but by the liberty they have to panying the physician on his rounds I learned
be among people and things that excite them that the service was as much psychological as
and fire their imaginations. medical in its function. The doctor's arrival
Children in the older cities seemed en- served as an occasion for introducing the chil-
thusiastic about their surroundings, painting dren, discussing their future, and sharing life's
a great amount of detail into a variety of experiences. In short, the visit functioned as
things they found exciting around them, ac- a family support system. A similar role is per-
cording to those who interpreted their art. formed in England and the Scandinavian
The children in the model communities countries by a publicly supported homemaker
often painted what were considered despair- service. When a member of the family is ill,
ing pictures of the world the adults had or a parent called out of town, one phones
fashioned for them depicting an uninviting, for a helper who can keep the household run-
concrete fortress of cleanliness and order and ning.
boredom.
In Denmark every park and playground
So much for examples. I suspect you will has one or more "park-aunties" who supervise
 Urie Bronfenbrenner 3

and organize activities for children. In Eastern

arately. Three-person models are found in the-
Europe, the children's palaces have a largeory (e.g., Parsons and Bales) but rarely in
variety of ongoing programs, conducted by practice. The most common situation involves
two persons-one an adult, often identified
trained and volunteer personnel, appropriate
to children of all ages, and operating after
only as E-and a child significantly referred to
school hours and during weekends and holi- as the S.
days.
3. The term "subject" reflects the fact
But perhaps even more important are that with a few exceptions, the process taking
systems not directly or primarily focused on place is viewed as unidirectional. One is con-
the child-shopping facilities, public transpor- cerned, for example, with the effect of the ex-
tation, parental working hours, traffic regula- perimenter's behavior-or that of the parent,
tions, and a variety of other arrangements and teacher, or therapist-on the child, not the
customs that determine where children can be reverse.

and what activities they engage in with what

kinds of people. In some countries, but not in 4. Inevitably in a two-person mo
our own, such arrangements grow in part out typically in the rare N-person system
tion is limited to direct effects, that
of an explicit national policy on children and
fluence of A on B. There is neither i
family life.
nor, often, possibility of examining h
You will observe that these aspects of the teraction of A with B (mother wi
enduring environment evoked by issues of might be affected by a third party,
public policy are somewhat different from the father, or a second child, a grandpar
environment that typically appears in our sci- teacher. One might call this the secon
entific journals. effect. I have been able to find only
stantial body of research in our field
I will mention but a few of the sharpest cuses on second-order effects. Again,
contrasts.
participant is a stranger. I refer to th
literature on the effect of a strang
1. In questions of public policy, the
interaction of a child with his mother
focus is on the enduring (and thereby famil-
iar) social contexts in which the child lives,
5. Finally, and most important o
or might live, and in which the participants
much of our research the two-person
occupy enduring (and thereby familiar) roles
exists, or is treated as if it existed, in
and engage in activities that have social mean-
from any other social context that c
ing in that setting. Such an orientation stands
pinge on or encompass it.
in contrast to many, but I hasten to add not
all, laboratory situations in which the situation These features so common in our
is ephemeral and unfamiliar, the task not only are hardly characteristic of the sit
unfamiliar but artificial (in the sense that its
which children actually live and deve
social significance is at best unclear), and the
in the family, the day-care center, p
other participants are strangers. In fact, usu-play group, school classroom, or neigh
ally there is only one other participant-a
(a) there are usually more than tw
(b) the child invariably influences t
graduate student, whose prior relationship with
the child is nonexistent, or, if existent, trivial
influence him; (c) The other partic
in character. Indeed, it can be said that muchnot strangers but persons who have e
of American developmental psychology is the roles and relationships vis-a-vis the c
science of the behavior of children in strange
finally, the behavior of all these perso
situations with strange adults. foundly affected by other social sy
which these same persons participate
2. More correctly, we should say the cant roles and relationships, both tow
behavior of a child with one strange adult.
child and each other.
Existing theoretical models in human develop-
ment typically assume a two-person system The contrast between the conditions that
only. This continues to be true even when the
have traditionally prevailed in our experiments
other person is a familiar figure-such asanda those that exist in the child's everyday
parent, teacher, or therapist. Even if more
life situation points up the fact that much of
than one is included in the research (e.g.,
our research has been ecologically invalid. By
mother and father) they are still treated sep-
removing the child from the environment in
4 Child Development
which he ordinarily finds himself and placing only in its direct effect on the child but in its
him in another setting which is typically un- indirect influence on patterns of family and
familiar, short-lived, and devoid of the per- community life), and a host of other ecologi-
sons, objects, and experiences that have been cal circumstances and changes which deter-
central in his life, we are getting only a par- mine with whom and how the child spends
tial picture both of the child and his environ- his time: for example, the fragmentation of
ment. As a result, the potentialities of each to the extended family, the separation of residen-
influence the other may be substantially tial and business areas, the disappearance of
greater than we have thus far seen. neighborhoods, zoning ordinances, geographic
and social mobility, child labor laws, moon-
Perhaps at this point a clarification is in
order. I do not wish to be misunderstood. I lighting, supermarkets, welfare policies, age
segregation, the growth of single-parent fam-
am not contending that research which is not
ilies, the abolition of the apprentice system,
ecologically valid cannot be valid scientifically.
consolidated schools, commuting, the working
There are many investigations, not only in
mother, the delegation of child care to special-
laboratories but also outside them, which do
ists and others outside the home, urban re-
not meet the criteria I have outlined, but
newal, or the existence and character of an
which are of critical importance for our sci-
explicit national policy on children and fami-
ence-and even for social policy. Much bio- lies.
logical research is a case in point. I am not
arguing against other kinds of research. I pro- 8. Existing theoretical models, to the ex-
pose only that we need ecological studies as tent that they include ecological variables,
well if our science is to continue to move for- tend to define them as sociological givens
ward. rather than as structural elements that are
modifiable. For example, with a little ingenu-
Moreover, the requirement of ecological ity, one could alter, on a randomized basis,
validity does not rule out experiments in the
such factors as the exposure of a family to
laboratory, provided the enduring aspects of
television, the availability of different forms of
the child's environment, especially what
income maintenance, the presence of children
George Herbert Mead called the "significant
others" in his life, are brought into the labora-
in the world of work-or even housing ar-
rangements, work schedules, or opportunities
tory setting and engaged in activities that bear
for part-time jobs-and then gauge the impact
some meaningful relationship to their roles.
of such variations on patterns of interaction in
To resume our delineation of the ecolog- family, school, or peer group, and, thereby,
ical approach: on various aspects of the child's psychological
development.
6. Existing theoretical models in human
development typically focus attention on pro- We have now come the full circle and
cesses occurring within a single setting (e.g., returned to our starting point-issues of social
family, day-care center, classroom, peer policy as points of departure for the identifi-
group). An ecological orientation points to the cation of significant theoretical and scientific
additional importance of relations between questions concerning the development of the
systems as critical to the child's development human organism as a function of interaction
(e.g., the interaction between home and with its enduring environment-both actual
school, family and peer group). and potential.
7. Present theoretical orientations tend In conclusion, let me make clear that I
to be limited to those ecological systems that make no claim for originality in proposing this
actually contain the child himself (e.g., fam- theoretical perspective. Rather, I have brought
ily, preschool, classroom, peer group); they together various elements, or combinations of
seldom include the adjacent or encompassing them, scattered over time and topic in the pub-
system which may in fact determine what can lished literature of the past few years. It is my
or cannot occur in the more immediate con-
purpose to identify these elements, consolidate
text. Such encompassing systems include the them, and consider the implications of the
nature and requirements of the parents' work, emerging framework for the direction and de-
characteristics of the neighborhood, transpor-
tation facilities, the relation between school sign of future research in human development.
and community, the role of television (not It is to work in this area that I intend to
 Urie Bronfenbrenner 5

commit myself during the next several years. happy to hear from you and to arrange for the
If there are others who find themselves gravi- continuing exchange of ideas and conduct of
tating in the same direction and who would cooperative research efforts. But however you
choose to work, may I aid and abet any in-
like to participate in the difficult task of clari-
fying theory and developing and carrying out clination you may have for adventure in the
appropriate research designs, I would be most study of human development in context.