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...al settings in which developmental process can and do occur. Moreover, the processes operating in different settings are not independent of each other. To cite a common example, events at home can affect the child's progress in school, and vice versa. Despite the obviousness of this fact, it was not until relatively recently that students of development began to employ research designs that could identify the influences operating, in both directions, between the principal settings in which human development occurs. The term mesosystem has been use to characterize analytic models of this kind (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). The results of studies employing this type of paradigm in relation to the family are summarized below, in the section "Mesosystem Models." Exosystem models. The psychological development of children in the family is affected not only by what happens in the other environments in which children spend their time but also by what occurs in the other settings in which their parents live their lives, especially in a place that children seldom enter—the parents' world of work. Another domain to which children tend to have limited access is the parents' circle of friends and acquaintances—their soci...

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...ternal employment requiring frequent and extended absence from the home. Results from one of the few studies of the developmental effects of this pattern, Tiller's (1958) investigation of Norwegian sailor and whaler families, suggests that the outcomes may be rather different from those observed for children of divorced, separated, or widowed parents. 2 Regarding the basis for the observed sex differences in the effects of maternal employment, the authors speculate as follows: "One possible explanation draws on the recurrent and generally accepted finding in research on early sex differences (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974) that male infants tend to be more physically active from birth and hence require more control and supervision. Full-time work may limit opportunities for such necessary monitoring. Viewed from this perspective, the findings suggest that the reported sex difference in effects of maternal employment derive from the cumulative interaction of familial, organismic, and employment factors evolving in a larger socioeconomic context" (p. 1371). 730 URIE BRONFENBRENNER Giovanni and Billingsley (1970) found that neglect was less frequent among families characterized by strong kinship networks and regul...

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...chool entry, puberty, entering the labor force, marriage, retirement) and nonnormative (a death or severe illness in the family, divorce, moving, winning the sweepstakes). Such transitions occur throughout the life span and often serve as a direct impetus for developmental change. Their relevance for the present review, however, lies in the fact that they can also influence development indirectly by affecting family processes. A more advanced form of chronosystem examines the cumulative effects of an entire sequence of developmental transition over an extended period of the person's life—what Elder (1974, 1985) has referred to as the life course. During the past decade, studies of the impact of personal and historical life events on family processes and on their developmental outcomes have received increasing attention. Several of these investigations have yielded findings of considerable substantive and theoretical significance. These are described, along with other relevant researches employing a chronosystem design, below ("Chronosystem Models"). Family Processes in Context With respect to explicitness and complexity, research paradigms can again be differentiated at three successive level...

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... in Broader Social Contexts Five topics are especially relevant here. Unravelling social class. An essential task is to penetrate behind the label of socioeconomic status to identify the specific 736 URIE BRONFENBRENNER elements of social structure and substance that shape the course and content of human development. This unravelling process requires the decomposition of the typically composite measures of social class into their most common components (occupational status, parental education, and family income). Family's occupational status. In their most recent work, Kohn and his followers (Kohn & Schooler, 1978, 1982, 1983; Miller, Schooler, Kohn, & Miller, 1979, Miller & Kohn, 1983) have used causal modeling techniques in order to demonstrate that the degree of occupational self-direction in the job promotes the development of the worker's intellectual flexibility. But, no evidence is available as yet on how the opportunity for self-direction at work, and the intellectual flexibility that it engenders, relate to parental patterns of child rearing or how these, in turn, affect the behavior and development of the child. A related issue is whether and how parental experiences at work operate through t...

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...ibed styles of upbringing that were more permissive and laid greater stress on the development of interpersonal skills; by contrast, wives of husbands working in entrepreneurial settings were found to be more concerned with individual achievement and striving. A decade later, similar findings based on Miller and Swanson's occupational dichotomy were obtained by Caudill and Weinstein in Japan (1969). The hypothesis that the structure and content of activities in the father's job can influence the family's childrearing values has been investigated by Kohn and his colleagues. In his first study, Kohn (1969) demonstrated that working-class men whose jobs typically required compliance with authority tended to hold values that stressed obedience in their children; by contrast, middle-class fathers expected self-direction and independence, the qualities called for by the demands of their occupation. Occupational values were also reflected in both parents' childrearing practices. Subsequently, Kohn and Schooler (1973, 1978,1982,1983) examined the nature of work in a more finegrained analysis, focusing on the dimension of "occupational self-direction"—the extent to which a job requires complex skills,...

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...here has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than on the associated processes taking place within family and classroom and their joint effe...

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...ch in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than on the associated processes taking place within family and classroom and...

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... of investigators developed, carried out, and researched a variety of intervention programs that had both rehabilitation and prevention as their aims. Although some of the impressive initial gains appeared to attenuate over time (Bronfenbrenner, 1974b), more recent analyses have revealed encouraging longer-term effects. For example, children who were enrolled as preschoolers more than two decades ago subsequently showed significantly higher rates of meeting school requirements than did controls as measured by lower frequency of placement in special education classes and of retention in grade (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, Barnett, Epstein, & Weikart, 1984; Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, 1983; Darlington et al., 1980). Today, preliminary reports of the most recent findings indicate that the same children, as they grew older, were better achievers in school and were more likely to graduate from high school. These experiences, in turn, predicted indexes of subsequent success as measured by such criteria as continuing one's education, being gainfully employed, or having income other than public assistance (Lazar, 1984). Along the same line, follow-up studies of several guaranteedincome experiments conducted in the 1970s have revealed higher ...

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...). Moreover, seldom in either instance is there recognition of the ambiguity of interpretation produced by the failure to use a more sophisticated design. Fortunately, a number of studies, reported below, do employ paradigms that are comparatively advanced on both dimensions and, thereby, produce a correspondingly rich scientific yield. Mesosystem Models Ecology of Family Genetics Studies of twins have typically reported correlations between IQ scores of identical twins reared apart that are quite substantial and appreciably greater than those for fraternal twins reared in the same home. Thus Bouchard and McGue (1981), in their comprehensive review of studies of family resemblance in cognitive ability, report an average weighted correlation of .72 for the former group versus .60 for the latter. Such findings are typically interpreted as testifying to the primacy of genetic influences in the determination of intelligence (e.g., Burt, 1966; Jensen, 1969, 1980; Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975). Underlying this interpretation is the assumption that twins reared apart are experiencing widely different environments, so that the substantial similarity between them must be attributable primarily to their common ...

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.... The hypothesis that the structure and content of activities in the father's job can influence the family's childrearing values has been investigated by Kohn and his colleagues. In his first study, Kohn (1969) demonstrated that working-class men whose jobs typically required compliance with authority tended to hold values that stressed obedience in their children; by contrast, middle-class fathers expected self-direction and independence, the qualities called for by the demands of their occupation. Occupational values were also reflected in both parents' childrearing practices. Subsequently, Kohn and Schooler (1973, 1978,1982,1983) examined the nature of work in a more finegrained analysis, focusing on the dimension of "occupational self-direction"—the extent to which a job requires complex skills, autonomy, and lack of routinization—and its relation to worker's "intellectual flexibility" as measured in a series of standardized tests. Using causal modeling techniques with longitudinal data, the investigators demonstrated that the occupational self-direction of a job could affect one's intellectual flexibility 10 years later. This finding was subsequently replicated in a comparative study including sampl...

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...nity environment and mental test scores. Moreover, community factors appeared to exert a stronger influence than intrafamilial variables (median r of .41 vs. .26). Vatter acknowledges, however, that his design did not permit adequate control for migration effects, because his follow-up study did not include all of the original cases, and it was impossible to identify and reanalyze Time 1 data for the Time 2 sample.3 Chronosystem Models The impact of a single life transition on family processes and the development of the child is well illustrated in the work of Hetherington and her colleagues (Hetherington, 1981; Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1978), which traced the progressive impact of divorce on the mother-child relationship and the child's behavior in school. The disruptive effects of separation reached their peak 1 year afterward and declined through the second year, although the divorced mothers never gained as much influence with the child as their married counterparts wielded. Two of Hetherington's findings illustrate the power of exosystem forces in influencing family processes. First, the mother's effectiveness in dealing with the child was directly related to the amount of support received fro...

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...ere strikingly similar to Elder's results from a longitudinal study in the United States. Turning from the problematic to the constructive aspects of the child's behavior, Schneewind and his colleagues also examined the environmental and personality antecedents of children's creativity and social extravertedness as measured in psychometric tests. In both instances, a key intervening environmental variable was the family's social network. Moreover, in contrast to most American studies in which social networks are viewed as support systems influencing the family (e.g., Cochran & Brassard, 1979; Crnic et al., 1983; Crockenberg, 1981), Schneewind et al. (1983) interpreted social networks as a product of an expressive and stimulating climate within the family. This stimulating atmosphere also emerged as a major determinant both of the child's creativity (especially in girls) and social involvement (especially in boys), including establishment of the children's own social networks and their engagement in group and extracurricular activities. Research Gaps and Opportunities From the scientist's perspective, perhaps the most important function of a review of existing knowledge in a particular area is to ide...

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...one assumes a hereditarian proclivity for criminal behavior, or particular forms of mental disorder. The possibility exists, however, that the biological predisposition may be of a more general order. The issue could be resolved by examining the nature of variation and behavior patterns exhibited by persons of identical genetic constitution in different contexts. In reviewing the research literature, I have been able to find only one investigation that examines the career lines of discordant cases. In a study of psychiatric disorders among foster home-reared children of schizophrenic mothers, Heston (1966) reports that nonschizophrenic offspring tended to be persons of unusual creativity and competence. Unfortunately, there are a number of flaws in the study design. More rigorous investigations of this kind, encompassing positive as well as negative outcomes, would not only help define the scope of genetic predispositions but also elucidate the operation of both intra- and extrafamilial environments in shaping alternative courses of psychological development for persons of similar genetic endowment. Child rearing processes in adoptive families. In a series of publications, Scarr and her associa...

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...emales and were less responsive to the moderating effect of increased parental control or monitoring. Family and School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on ...

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...emales and were less responsive to the moderating effect of increased parental control or monitoring. Family and School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on ...

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...s the unstable personality of the parent, particularly the father, that gives rise to tension both in the marital relationship and the parent-child dyad. Across generations, it is disturbance in either of these family relationships that leads to the development of an unstable personality in the child as an adult. In recent years, a number of developmental studies employing a life course perspective have yielded important research results. Some, like the researches of Scarr, Mortimer, and Pulkkinen, have already been mentioned. An additional example appears in the work of Furstenberg and Gunn (Furstenberg, 1976; Furstenberg & Brooks-Gunn, in press). These investigators have shown that, contrary to conclusions drawn from previous research, teenage pregnancy does not necessarily lead to academic and personal failure in the rest of a woman's life. A special strength of the second volume is its emphasis on the feasibility of alternative pathways that could be provided through the development of appropriate policies and programs. Although the advantages of a chronosystem model are best achieved within the framework of a longitudinal design, important benefits can also be gleaned from cross-sectional stud...

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...ional sample in Germany, were strikingly similar to Elder's results from a longitudinal study in the United States. Turning from the problematic to the constructive aspects of the child's behavior, Schneewind and his colleagues also examined the environmental and personality antecedents of children's creativity and social extravertedness as measured in psychometric tests. In both instances, a key intervening environmental variable was the family's social network. Moreover, in contrast to most American studies in which social networks are viewed as support systems influencing the family (e.g., Cochran & Brassard, 1979; Crnic et al., 1983; Crockenberg, 1981), Schneewind et al. (1983) interpreted social networks as a product of an expressive and stimulating climate within the family. This stimulating atmosphere also emerged as a major determinant both of the child's creativity (especially in girls) and social involvement (especially in boys), including establishment of the children's own social networks and their engagement in group and extracurricular activities. Research Gaps and Opportunities From the scientist's perspective, perhaps the most important function of a review of existing knowledge in a parti...

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...economic context" (p. 1371). 730 URIE BRONFENBRENNER Giovanni and Billingsley (1970) found that neglect was less frequent among families characterized by strong kinship networks and regular church attendance. The authors conclude the "among low-income people, neglect would seem to be a social problem that is as much a manifestation of social and community conditions as it is of any individual parent's pathology" (p. 204). Corroborative data come from a large-scale correlational analysis of child abuse reports and socioeconomic and demographic information for the 58 counties in New \brk State (Garbarino, 1976). In the investigator's words, "a substantial proportion of the variance in rates of child abuse/maltreatment among New "Vork State counties. . . was found to be associated with the degree to which mothers do not possess adequate support systems for parenting and are subjected to economic stress." (p. 185) Subsequent research in this sphere has continued to focus almost exclusively on mothers of young children, particularly mothers in specially vulnerable groups such as teen-age mothers, single-parent mothers, or families living in poverty. In general, these studies revealed that support was m...

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...ned invincible and developed into competent and autonomous young adults who worked well, played well, loved well, and expected well" (p. 3). A major environmental factor that distinguished this group from their socioeconomically matched "nonresilient" controls was a low number of chronic, stressful life events experienced in childhood and adolescence, and the presence of an informal multigenerational network of kin. The Hawaiian research also validated in a longitudinal design a pattern of reversing sex differences previously detectable only in fragmented fashion from cross-sectional designs (Hetherington, 1972,1981; Hetherington & Deur, 1971). Through the first decade of life, boys appeared to be substantially more vulnerable than girls both to biological and environmental insult; during the second decade of life, however, the pattern was reversed. Boys seemed now more prepared for the demands of school and work. . . girls were now confronted with social pressures and sexual expectations that produced a higher rate of mental health prob3 Similar findings were reported in an earlier study by Clausen and Kohn (1959). The correlations between neighborhood characteristics and the development of psychia...

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...vily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than on the associated processes taking place within family and classroom and their joint effects on children's lear...

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... physical and mental energy. In the same year, Heath (1977) studied the effects of this phenomenon and reported that it had a "narrowing effect" on men who had little time for nonwork activities, including spending time with their children. Work absorption tended to generate guilt and increased irritability and impatience in dealing with the child. Two studies have gone a step further to demonstrate the interaction between work and family as a two-way system, with "spillover," in both directions, of tensions, satisfactions, and modes of interaction (Crouter, 1984; Piotrkowski, 1979). Finally, Bohen and Viveros-Long (1981) exploited an experiment of nature to investigate the impact of flexible work hours (flexitime) on family life. They compared two federal agencies engaged in similar work and staffed by similar personnel, but differing in arrangement of working hours. In one agency the employees worked a conventional schedule from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; in the other, they could choose to arrive within a 2- hr range in the morning and adjust their leaving time accordingly. The results of the experiment were somewhat ironic. Measures of family strain and participation in home activities showed a significant dif...

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...cipation in decision-making. The effects of family and school processes were greater than those attributable to socioeconomic status or race. Exosystem Models In modern, industrialized societies, there are three exosystems that are especially likely to affect the development of the child, primarily thorough their influence on family processes. 728 URIE BRONFENBRENNER The first of these is the parents' workplace, the second parents' social networks, and the third community influences on family functioning. Family and Work In their review of research on the effects of parental work on children, Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1982) pointed out that, until very recently, researchers have treated the job situation of mothers and fathers as separate worlds having no relation to each other and, presumably, leading to rather different results. For mothers, it was the fact of being employed that was thought to be damaging to the child, whereas for fathers it was being unemployed that was seen as the destructive force. Because of this "division of labor," the principal research findings in each domain are most conveniently summarized under separate headings. Parental Employment and Family Life The first studies in this sphere ...

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... of investigators have employed research designs that take into account changes over time not only within the person but also in the environment and—what is even more critical—that permit analyzing the dynamic relation between these two processes. To distinguish such investigations from more traditional longitudinal studies focusing exclusively on the individual, I have proposed the term chronosystem for designating a research model that makes possible examining the influence on the person's development of changes (and continuities) over time in the environments in which the person is living (Bronfenbrenner, 1986a). The simplest form of chronosystem focuses around a life transition. Two types of transition are usefully distinguished: normative (school entry, puberty, entering the labor force, marriage, retirement) and nonnormative (a death or severe illness in the family, divorce, moving, winning the sweepstakes). Such transitions occur throughout the life span and often serve as a direct impetus for developmental change. Their relevance for the present review, however, lies in the fact that they can also influence development indirectly by affecting family processes. A more advanced form of chronosys...

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...sed parental control or monitoring. Family and School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than on the associa...

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...however, did predict the child's curriculum placement (measured on a continuum from vocational-commercial courses to college preparation), as well as the young person's involvement in school activities. The latter finding, however, held only for white students, not for blacks. Note that even in this study, no data are available on the parents' behavior, which constitutes a critical link in the postulated causal chain. A closer approximation of the processes involved appears in a longitudinal research conducted by Mortimer and her colleagues (Mortimer, 1974, 1975, 1976; Mortimer & Kumka, 1982; Mortimer & Lorence, 1979; Mortimer, Lorence, & Kumka, 1982). Applying Kohn's theoretical schema in a reanalysis of panel study data, the investigators were able to demonstrate a strong tendency for sons to choose an occupation similar to their fathers', as denned along dimensions of work autonomy and the function of work activities. The most effective transmission of occupational value and choice occurred under a combination of a prestigious parental role model and a close father-son relationship. Mortimer's most recent study (1986) establishes the mediating role of the family in adult development by documenting that...

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...mplated change. They experienced "traditional practices of ward management" (p. 75) in which parents were restricted to weekly visiting periods of two hours each. The experimental group, admitted during the succeeding period, could receive visits from parents at any time. Parents were also encouraged to participate in ward care. Greater emotional distress was observed among the children in the control group, both before and as late as a year after discharge from the hospital. The Family and Day Care As pointed out by Belsky and his colleagues in a series of comprehensive reviews (Belsky 1985; Belsky & Steinberg, 1978; Belsky, Steinberg, & Walker, 1982), researchers on day care have limited themselves almost exclusively to the direct effects on the child while neglecting possibly even more powerful influences on family processes. In his most recent review of the few studies that depart from this pattern, Belsky (1985) qualifies previous more optimistic assessments regarding effects of infant day care on the formation of mother-infant attachment. After analyzing several recent investigations, Belsky (1984) concludes as follows: These new data lead me to modify conclusions that have been arrived at in past r...

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... of investigators have employed research designs that take into account changes over time not only within the person but also in the environment and—what is even more critical—that permit analyzing the dynamic relation between these two processes. To distinguish such investigations from more traditional longitudinal studies focusing exclusively on the individual, I have proposed the term chronosystem for designating a research model that makes possible examining the influence on the person's development of changes (and continuities) over time in the environments in which the person is living (Bronfenbrenner, 1986a). The simplest form of chronosystem focuses around a life transition. Two types of transition are usefully distinguished: normative (school entry, puberty, entering the labor force, marriage, retirement) and nonnormative (a death or severe illness in the family, divorce, moving, winning the sweepstakes). Such transitions occur throughout the life span and often serve as a direct impetus for developmental change. Their relevance for the present review, however, lies in the fact that they can also influence development indirectly by affecting family processes. A more advanced form of chronosys...

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...sosystem Models Ecology of Family Genetics Studies of twins have typically reported correlations between IQ scores of identical twins reared apart that are quite substantial and appreciably greater than those for fraternal twins reared in the same home. Thus Bouchard and McGue (1981), in their comprehensive review of studies of family resemblance in cognitive ability, report an average weighted correlation of .72 for the former group versus .60 for the latter. Such findings are typically interpreted as testifying to the primacy of genetic influences in the determination of intelligence (e.g., Burt, 1966; Jensen, 1969, 1980; Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975). Underlying this interpretation is the assumption that twins reared apart are experiencing widely different environments, so that the substantial similarity between them must be attributable primarily to their common genetic endowment. A mesosystem model calls this assumption into question on the ground that, even though they are not living in the same home, the twins may share common environments in other settings. To test this assumption, Bronfenbrenner (1975) recalculated correlations based on subgroups of twins sharing common environ...

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...els Ecology of Family Genetics Studies of twins have typically reported correlations between IQ scores of identical twins reared apart that are quite substantial and appreciably greater than those for fraternal twins reared in the same home. Thus Bouchard and McGue (1981), in their comprehensive review of studies of family resemblance in cognitive ability, report an average weighted correlation of .72 for the former group versus .60 for the latter. Such findings are typically interpreted as testifying to the primacy of genetic influences in the determination of intelligence (e.g., Burt, 1966; Jensen, 1969, 1980; Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975). Underlying this interpretation is the assumption that twins reared apart are experiencing widely different environments, so that the substantial similarity between them must be attributable primarily to their common genetic endowment. A mesosystem model calls this assumption into question on the ground that, even though they are not living in the same home, the twins may share common environments in other settings. To test this assumption, Bronfenbrenner (1975) recalculated correlations based on subgroups of twins sharing common environments as follo...

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...ienced "traditional practices of ward management" (p. 75) in which parents were restricted to weekly visiting periods of two hours each. The experimental group, admitted during the succeeding period, could receive visits from parents at any time. Parents were also encouraged to participate in ward care. Greater emotional distress was observed among the children in the control group, both before and as late as a year after discharge from the hospital. The Family and Day Care As pointed out by Belsky and his colleagues in a series of comprehensive reviews (Belsky 1985; Belsky & Steinberg, 1978; Belsky, Steinberg, & Walker, 1982), researchers on day care have limited themselves almost exclusively to the direct effects on the child while neglecting possibly even more powerful influences on family processes. In his most recent review of the few studies that depart from this pattern, Belsky (1985) qualifies previous more optimistic assessments regarding effects of infant day care on the formation of mother-infant attachment. After analyzing several recent investigations, Belsky (1984) concludes as follows: These new data lead me to modify conclusions that have been arrived at in past reviews in order to underscore the p...

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... behavior. Taking advantage of the unusually complete multigenerational demographic and health statistics available in Denmark, Hutchings, and Mednick (1977) compared the incidence of criminal offenses for males adopted early in life and for their biological and adoptive fathers. Among adopted men for whom neither father had a criminal record, 12% had a criminal record of their own. If either the biological or the adoptive father had a criminal record, the rate rose appreciably (21% and 19%, respectively). If both fathers had recorded offenses, the proportion jumped to 36%. An American study (Crowe, 1974) reported a more precise multiplicative effect; among adult adoptees whose mothers had a criminal record, the only ones who had criminal records themselves were those who had spent considerable time in institutions or foster homes prior to adoption. This effect was independent of age of adoption, because children transferred at the same ages directly from the biological to the adoptive family did not have criminal records later in life. Crowe's research provides a telling example of how a rather complex mesosystem effect can be demonstrated by applying a fairly simple social address model. The...

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...sed parental control or monitoring. Family and School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than on the associa...

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...tting relationships set forth in the opening paragraph of this section. Of particular importance are investigations of feedback effects from school experience to family functioning. Family and children's work experience. The developmental effects of this important life transition are only beginning to receive the attention they deserve. The gap in knowledge is all the more striking given the fact that, according to recent figures, about half of all American high school students engage in some form of paid employment. Moreover, a pioneering series of studies (Greenberger & Steinberg, in press; Greenberger, Steinberg, & Vaux, 1981; Steinberg et al., 1982) has shown that, contrary to the expectations and recommendations of several blue ribbon panels (e.g., National Commission on \buth, 1980; President's Scientific Advisory Commission, 1979), such job involvement, rather than furthering the development of responsibility, diminishes the adolescent's involvement in the family and school, increases use of cigarettes and marijuana, generates cynical attitudes toward work, and encourages acceptance of unethical work practices. From this perspective, the role of the parents in influencing the timing, selection, and interpretat...

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...pics are especially relevant here. Unravelling social class. An essential task is to penetrate behind the label of socioeconomic status to identify the specific 736 URIE BRONFENBRENNER elements of social structure and substance that shape the course and content of human development. This unravelling process requires the decomposition of the typically composite measures of social class into their most common components (occupational status, parental education, and family income). Family's occupational status. In their most recent work, Kohn and his followers (Kohn & Schooler, 1978, 1982, 1983; Miller, Schooler, Kohn, & Miller, 1979, Miller & Kohn, 1983) have used causal modeling techniques in order to demonstrate that the degree of occupational self-direction in the job promotes the development of the worker's intellectual flexibility. But, no evidence is available as yet on how the opportunity for self-direction at work, and the intellectual flexibility that it engenders, relate to parental patterns of child rearing or how these, in turn, affect the behavior and development of the child. A related issue is whether and how parental experiences at work operate through the family to influence the selection, timing, and ps...

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... durECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 727 ing the first year. The effect for day care was greater than that for maternal employment. The Family and the Peer Group In the middle 1960s and early 1970s, a series of studies, conducted both in the United States and other countries (Bronfenbrenner, 1967; Bronfenbrenner, Devereux, Suci, & Rodgers, 1965; Devereux, 1965, 1966; Devereux, Bronfenbrenner, & Rodgers, 1969; Rodgers, 1971), demonstrated powerful and often opposite effects of parental and peer influences on the development of children and youth. Especially instructive is the comparative investigation by Kandel and Lesser (1972), who found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importance of the interface between family and peer group has been corroborated in studies focusing on the antecedents of antisocial behavior in adolescence and the entrapment of youth in juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and substance use (Boehnke et al., 1983; Gold & Petronio, 19...

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...abilitation and prevention as their aims. Although some of the impressive initial gains appeared to attenuate over time (Bronfenbrenner, 1974b), more recent analyses have revealed encouraging longer-term effects. For example, children who were enrolled as preschoolers more than two decades ago subsequently showed significantly higher rates of meeting school requirements than did controls as measured by lower frequency of placement in special education classes and of retention in grade (Berrueta-Clement, Schweinhart, Barnett, Epstein, & Weikart, 1984; Consortium for Longitudinal Studies, 1983; Darlington et al., 1980). Today, preliminary reports of the most recent findings indicate that the same children, as they grew older, were better achievers in school and were more likely to graduate from high school. These experiences, in turn, predicted indexes of subsequent success as measured by such criteria as continuing one's education, being gainfully employed, or having income other than public assistance (Lazar, 1984). Along the same line, follow-up studies of several guaranteedincome experiments conducted in the 1970s have revealed higher levels of school achievement by children of families in the randomly ...

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...ailable in most communities, (p. 11) An additional study by Thompson, Lamb, and Estes (1982) lends support to Belsky's caveat. These investigators report data from a middle-class sample showing that stability of secure attachment between 12 and 19 months was lower among infants placed in day care or whose mother had returned to work durECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 727 ing the first year. The effect for day care was greater than that for maternal employment. The Family and the Peer Group In the middle 1960s and early 1970s, a series of studies, conducted both in the United States and other countries (Bronfenbrenner, 1967; Bronfenbrenner, Devereux, Suci, & Rodgers, 1965; Devereux, 1965, 1966; Devereux, Bronfenbrenner, & Rodgers, 1969; Rodgers, 1971), demonstrated powerful and often opposite effects of parental and peer influences on the development of children and youth. Especially instructive is the comparative investigation by Kandel and Lesser (1972), who found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction i...

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...periencing help and comfort, primarily from the immediate family and relatives, felt less stress and had more positive attitudes toward themselves and their babies (Aug & Bright, 1970; Colletta, 1981, 1983; Colletta & Gregg, 1981; Colletta and Lee, 1983; Mercer, Hackley, & Bostrom, in press). In the realm of maternal behavior, mothers receiving higher levels of social support responded more quickly when their infants cried (Crockenberg, 1984a, 1984b) and provided more adequate caretaking behavior (Epstein, 1980; Wandersman&Unger, 1983). With respect to the behavior of the children themselves, Furstenberg & Crawford (1978) has documented effects of family support on the child's social and emotional development. Working with a predominantly black sample of teen-age mothers, he found that children of mothers who continued to live with their families of origin experienced fewer behavior problems, showed less antisocial behavior, and scored higher on cognitive tests than did children of teenage mothers who lived alone without adult relatives. A more differentiated picture of sources of external support, stress, and their interaction emerges from a study by Crnic and his colleagues (1983). These investigators devise...

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...lends support to Belsky's caveat. These investigators report data from a middle-class sample showing that stability of secure attachment between 12 and 19 months was lower among infants placed in day care or whose mother had returned to work durECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 727 ing the first year. The effect for day care was greater than that for maternal employment. The Family and the Peer Group In the middle 1960s and early 1970s, a series of studies, conducted both in the United States and other countries (Bronfenbrenner, 1967; Bronfenbrenner, Devereux, Suci, & Rodgers, 1965; Devereux, 1965, 1966; Devereux, Bronfenbrenner, & Rodgers, 1969; Rodgers, 1971), demonstrated powerful and often opposite effects of parental and peer influences on the development of children and youth. Especially instructive is the comparative investigation by Kandel and Lesser (1972), who found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importance of the interface between family and peer group ...

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...anish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importance of the interface between family and peer group has been corroborated in studies focusing on the antecedents of antisocial behavior in adolescence and the entrapment of youth in juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and substance use (Boehnke et al., 1983; Gold & Petronio, 1980; Jessor, 1986; Kandel, 1986;Pulkkinen, 1983a, 1983b). Particularly revealing are three recent investigations that have used more sophisticated designs to reveal the interplay between family structure and functioning on the one hand, and indexes of peer group deviance on the other. Thus Dornbusch and his colleagues (1985) first show that, with effects of socioeconomic status held constant, adolescents from mother-only households are more likely than their age-mates from two-parent families to engage in adult disapproved activities (such as smoking, school misbehavior, and delinquency). They then demonstrate that a key pr...

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...the moderating effect of increased parental control or monitoring. Family and School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than...

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...e extent to which work made demands on one's physical and mental energy. In the same year, Heath (1977) studied the effects of this phenomenon and reported that it had a "narrowing effect" on men who had little time for nonwork activities, including spending time with their children. Work absorption tended to generate guilt and increased irritability and impatience in dealing with the child. Two studies have gone a step further to demonstrate the interaction between work and family as a two-way system, with "spillover," in both directions, of tensions, satisfactions, and modes of interaction (Crouter, 1984; Piotrkowski, 1979). Finally, Bohen and Viveros-Long (1981) exploited an experiment of nature to investigate the impact of flexible work hours (flexitime) on family life. They compared two federal agencies engaged in similar work and staffed by similar personnel, but differing in arrangement of working hours. In one agency the employees worked a conventional schedule from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; in the other, they could choose to arrive within a 2- hr range in the morning and adjust their leaving time accordingly. The results of the experiment were somewhat ironic. Measures of family strain a...

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...ped into competent and autonomous young adults who worked well, played well, loved well, and expected well" (p. 3). A major environmental factor that distinguished this group from their socioeconomically matched "nonresilient" controls was a low number of chronic, stressful life events experienced in childhood and adolescence, and the presence of an informal multigenerational network of kin. The Hawaiian research also validated in a longitudinal design a pattern of reversing sex differences previously detectable only in fragmented fashion from cross-sectional designs (Hetherington, 1972,1981; Hetherington & Deur, 1971). Through the first decade of life, boys appeared to be substantially more vulnerable than girls both to biological and environmental insult; during the second decade of life, however, the pattern was reversed. Boys seemed now more prepared for the demands of school and work. . . girls were now confronted with social pressures and sexual expectations that produced a higher rate of mental health prob3 Similar findings were reported in an earlier study by Clausen and Kohn (1959). The correlations between neighborhood characteristics and the development of psychiatric disorders were greater in la...

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...ldren has led to investigations that are more diversified. For example, a recent compilation by Walter (1981,1982) fills two volumes with welldesigned studies by more than a score of investigators representing a variety of theoretical orientations. The European work is distinguished not only for its quantity, but also for the comparative sophistication of the research paradigms that have been employed. Whereas American studies have been confined almost exclusively to social address models documenting associated differences in the behavior of children (Barker & Schoggen, 1973; Garbarino, 1976; Hollingshead, 1949), European investigations have focused on variations in socialization processes arising in different types of communities or neighborhoods defined by their particular physical and social characteristics. For example, in the first volume of Walter's Region and Sozialisation, Bargel and his associates (1981) developed the concept of "Soziotope" for classifying types of residential areas. They then applied their taxonomy both to rural and urban districts in the West German state of Nordhessen in order to demonstrate that particular styles of child rearing are associated with contrasting forms of ...

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...elling social class. An essential task is to penetrate behind the label of socioeconomic status to identify the specific 736 URIE BRONFENBRENNER elements of social structure and substance that shape the course and content of human development. This unravelling process requires the decomposition of the typically composite measures of social class into their most common components (occupational status, parental education, and family income). Family's occupational status. In their most recent work, Kohn and his followers (Kohn & Schooler, 1978, 1982, 1983; Miller, Schooler, Kohn, & Miller, 1979, Miller & Kohn, 1983) have used causal modeling techniques in order to demonstrate that the degree of occupational self-direction in the job promotes the development of the worker's intellectual flexibility. But, no evidence is available as yet on how the opportunity for self-direction at work, and the intellectual flexibility that it engenders, relate to parental patterns of child rearing or how these, in turn, affect the behavior and development of the child. A related issue is whether and how parental experiences at work operate through the family to influence the selection, timing, and psychological content of...

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... a better marital adjustment, and a more positive attitude toward their pregnancy. Support from the husband was more effective than that from friends, neighbors, or relatives outside the home. Studies conducted of families with young infants revealed that low family support evoked maternal attitudes of hostility, indifference, and rejection of the infant (Colletta, 1981), whereas mothers experiencing help and comfort, primarily from the immediate family and relatives, felt less stress and had more positive attitudes toward themselves and their babies (Aug & Bright, 1970; Colletta, 1981, 1983; Colletta & Gregg, 1981; Colletta and Lee, 1983; Mercer, Hackley, & Bostrom, in press). In the realm of maternal behavior, mothers receiving higher levels of social support responded more quickly when their infants cried (Crockenberg, 1984a, 1984b) and provided more adequate caretaking behavior (Epstein, 1980; Wandersman&Unger, 1983). With respect to the behavior of the children themselves, Furstenberg & Crawford (1978) has documented effects of family support on the child's social and emotional development. Working with a predominantly black sample of teen-age mothers, he found that children of mothers who continue...

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...udes of hostility, indifference, and rejection of the infant (Colletta, 1981), whereas mothers experiencing help and comfort, primarily from the immediate family and relatives, felt less stress and had more positive attitudes toward themselves and their babies (Aug & Bright, 1970; Colletta, 1981, 1983; Colletta & Gregg, 1981; Colletta and Lee, 1983; Mercer, Hackley, & Bostrom, in press). In the realm of maternal behavior, mothers receiving higher levels of social support responded more quickly when their infants cried (Crockenberg, 1984a, 1984b) and provided more adequate caretaking behavior (Epstein, 1980; Wandersman&Unger, 1983). With respect to the behavior of the children themselves, Furstenberg & Crawford (1978) has documented effects of family support on the child's social and emotional development. Working with a predominantly black sample of teen-age mothers, he found that children of mothers who continued to live with their families of origin experienced fewer behavior problems, showed less antisocial behavior, and scored higher on cognitive tests than did children of teenage mothers who lived alone without adult relatives. A more differentiated picture of sources of external support, ...

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...ificant difference favoring flexitime for only one group of families—those without children. One proposed explanation is that flexitime arrangements did not go far enough to meet the complex scheduling problems experienced by today's parents. A second interpretation suggests that the flexible time may have been used for activities outside the home unrelated to childrearing, such as recreation, socializing, or moonlighting. Unfortunately, no data were available to verify either hypothesis. Maternal Employment and the Family As documented in three recent reviews (Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1982; Hoffman, 1980, 1983), an analysis of research in this sphere reveals a consistent contrast, summarized in the following passage: By 1980 there had accumulated an appreciable body of evidence indicating that the mother's work outside the home tends to have a salutary effect on girls, but may exert a negative influence on boys . . . The results indicate that daughters from families in which the mother worked tended to admire their mothers more, had a more positive conception of the female role, and were more likely to be independent. . . None of these trends was apparent for boys. Instead, the pattern of fin...

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...ifying to the primacy of genetic influences in the determination of intelligence (e.g., Burt, 1966; Jensen, 1969, 1980; Loehlin, Lindzey, & Spuhler, 1975). Underlying this interpretation is the assumption that twins reared apart are experiencing widely different environments, so that the substantial similarity between them must be attributable primarily to their common genetic endowment. A mesosystem model calls this assumption into question on the ground that, even though they are not living in the same home, the twins may share common environments in other settings. To test this assumption, Bronfenbrenner (1975) recalculated correlations based on subgroups of twins sharing common environments as follows: 1. Among 35 pairs of separated twins for whom information was available about the community in which they lived, the correlation in Binet IQ for those raised in the same town was .83, for those brought up in different towns, .67. 2. In another sample of 38 separated twins, the correlation for those attending the same school in the same town was .87, for those attending schools in different towns, .66. 3. When the communities in the preceding samples were classified as similar versus dissimilar on the...

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...esponsive to the moderating effect of increased parental control or monitoring. Family and School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of...

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...press-a, in press-b; Tietjen & Bradley, 1982). In the area of attitudes, Tietjen and Bradley (1982) found that mothers who had access to stronger social networks during their pregnancy reported lower levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, a better marital adjustment, and a more positive attitude toward their pregnancy. Support from the husband was more effective than that from friends, neighbors, or relatives outside the home. Studies conducted of families with young infants revealed that low family support evoked maternal attitudes of hostility, indifference, and rejection of the infant (Colletta, 1981), whereas mothers experiencing help and comfort, primarily from the immediate family and relatives, felt less stress and had more positive attitudes toward themselves and their babies (Aug & Bright, 1970; Colletta, 1981, 1983; Colletta & Gregg, 1981; Colletta and Lee, 1983; Mercer, Hackley, & Bostrom, in press). In the realm of maternal behavior, mothers receiving higher levels of social support responded more quickly when their infants cried (Crockenberg, 1984a, 1984b) and provided more adequate caretaking behavior (Epstein, 1980; Wandersman&Unger, 1983). With respect to the behavior of the c...

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...ment, and a more positive attitude toward their pregnancy. Support from the husband was more effective than that from friends, neighbors, or relatives outside the home. Studies conducted of families with young infants revealed that low family support evoked maternal attitudes of hostility, indifference, and rejection of the infant (Colletta, 1981), whereas mothers experiencing help and comfort, primarily from the immediate family and relatives, felt less stress and had more positive attitudes toward themselves and their babies (Aug & Bright, 1970; Colletta, 1981, 1983; Colletta & Gregg, 1981; Colletta and Lee, 1983; Mercer, Hackley, & Bostrom, in press). In the realm of maternal behavior, mothers receiving higher levels of social support responded more quickly when their infants cried (Crockenberg, 1984a, 1984b) and provided more adequate caretaking behavior (Epstein, 1980; Wandersman&Unger, 1983). With respect to the behavior of the children themselves, Furstenberg & Crawford (1978) has documented effects of family support on the child's social and emotional development. Working with a predominantly black sample of teen-age mothers, he found that children of mothers who continued to live with their fam...

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...ol were affected. The mother's childrearing values, however, did predict the child's curriculum placement (measured on a continuum from vocational-commercial courses to college preparation), as well as the young person's involvement in school activities. The latter finding, however, held only for white students, not for blacks. Note that even in this study, no data are available on the parents' behavior, which constitutes a critical link in the postulated causal chain. A closer approximation of the processes involved appears in a longitudinal research conducted by Mortimer and her colleagues (Mortimer, 1974, 1975, 1976; Mortimer & Kumka, 1982; Mortimer & Lorence, 1979; Mortimer, Lorence, & Kumka, 1982). Applying Kohn's theoretical schema in a reanalysis of panel study data, the investigators were able to demonstrate a strong tendency for sons to choose an occupation similar to their fathers', as denned along dimensions of work autonomy and the function of work activities. The most effective transmission of occupational value and choice occurred under a combination of a prestigious parental role model and a close father-son relationship. Mortimer's most recent study (1986) establishes the mediati...

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...differences previously detectable only in fragmented fashion from cross-sectional designs (Hetherington, 1972,1981; Hetherington & Deur, 1971). Through the first decade of life, boys appeared to be substantially more vulnerable than girls both to biological and environmental insult; during the second decade of life, however, the pattern was reversed. Boys seemed now more prepared for the demands of school and work. . . girls were now confronted with social pressures and sexual expectations that produced a higher rate of mental health prob3 Similar findings were reported in an earlier study by Clausen and Kohn (1959). The correlations between neighborhood characteristics and the development of psychiatric disorders were greater in large cities than in smaller ones. ECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 733 lems in later adolescence. . . often control of aggression appeared to be one of the major problems for the boys in childhood, dependency became a major problem for the girls in adolescence . . . In spite of the biological and social pressures which in this culture appeared to make each sex more vulnerable at different times, more high-risk girls than high-risk boys grow into resilient young adults, (pp. 153-154) The r...

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...w their school-age children during the work week. The job of discipline fell to the mother, and the shortage of time shared by both parents produced family conflicts over what to do with that time. A subsequent study (Landy, Rosenberg, and Sutton-Smith, 1969) examined the impact on daughters of the fathers' working on a night shift. The daughters of men so employed showed significantly lower scores in tests of academic achievement.1 Kanter (1977) introduced the concept of "work absorption" to describe the extent to which work made demands on one's physical and mental energy. In the same year, Heath (1977) studied the effects of this phenomenon and reported that it had a "narrowing effect" on men who had little time for nonwork activities, including spending time with their children. Work absorption tended to generate guilt and increased irritability and impatience in dealing with the child. Two studies have gone a step further to demonstrate the interaction between work and family as a two-way system, with "spillover," in both directions, of tensions, satisfactions, and modes of interaction (Crouter, 1984; Piotrkowski, 1979). Finally, Bohen and Viveros-Long (1981) exploited an experiment of na...

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...o found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importance of the interface between family and peer group has been corroborated in studies focusing on the antecedents of antisocial behavior in adolescence and the entrapment of youth in juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and substance use (Boehnke et al., 1983; Gold & Petronio, 1980; Jessor, 1986; Kandel, 1986;Pulkkinen, 1983a, 1983b). Particularly revealing are three recent investigations that have used more sophisticated designs to reveal the interplay between family structure and functioning on the one hand, and indexes of peer group deviance on the other. Thus Dornbusch and his colleagues (1985) first show that, with effects of socioeconomic status held constant, adolescents from mother-only households are more likely than their age-mates from two-parent families to engage in adult disapproved activities (such as smoking, school misbehavior, and delinquency). They then demonstrate...

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...'s childrearing values, however, did predict the child's curriculum placement (measured on a continuum from vocational-commercial courses to college preparation), as well as the young person's involvement in school activities. The latter finding, however, held only for white students, not for blacks. Note that even in this study, no data are available on the parents' behavior, which constitutes a critical link in the postulated causal chain. A closer approximation of the processes involved appears in a longitudinal research conducted by Mortimer and her colleagues (Mortimer, 1974, 1975, 1976; Mortimer & Kumka, 1982; Mortimer & Lorence, 1979; Mortimer, Lorence, & Kumka, 1982). Applying Kohn's theoretical schema in a reanalysis of panel study data, the investigators were able to demonstrate a strong tendency for sons to choose an occupation similar to their fathers', as denned along dimensions of work autonomy and the function of work activities. The most effective transmission of occupational value and choice occurred under a combination of a prestigious parental role model and a close father-son relationship. Mortimer's most recent study (1986) establishes the mediating role of the family in adult devel...

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...investigation by Kandel and Lesser (1972), who found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importance of the interface between family and peer group has been corroborated in studies focusing on the antecedents of antisocial behavior in adolescence and the entrapment of youth in juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and substance use (Boehnke et al., 1983; Gold & Petronio, 1980; Jessor, 1986; Kandel, 1986;Pulkkinen, 1983a, 1983b). Particularly revealing are three recent investigations that have used more sophisticated designs to reveal the interplay between family structure and functioning on the one hand, and indexes of peer group deviance on the other. Thus Dornbusch and his colleagues (1985) first show that, with effects of socioeconomic status held constant, adolescents from mother-only households are more likely than their age-mates from two-parent families to engage in adult disapproved activities (such as smoking, school misbehavior, an...

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...fluenced by subsequent family processes, and therefore can be interpreted primarily as unidirectional in its effects. Second, as revealed in the work of Tulkin and others, education appears to be an important source for parents' conceptions of the nature and capacities both of the child and of the parent at successive stages of the child's life. A more complete understanding of the connection between parental schooling and family perceptions is clearly in the interest of both developmental science and of educational policy and practice. Family income. As this author has pointed out elsewhere (Bronfenbrenner, 1982,1984,1986), income plays an especially telling role in American family life because, to a greater extent than in other modern industrialized societies, the resources and services required for sustaining the health and well-being of family members and furthering the development of the child are dependent on the family's financial resources. This issue becomes critical to families that are chronically poor or in which the principal breadwinner becomes unemployed. Because of the magnitude of the resultant effect on children, this issue is given separate consideration in the final section of this...

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... of investigators have employed research designs that take into account changes over time not only within the person but also in the environment and—what is even more critical—that permit analyzing the dynamic relation between these two processes. To distinguish such investigations from more traditional longitudinal studies focusing exclusively on the individual, I have proposed the term chronosystem for designating a research model that makes possible examining the influence on the person's development of changes (and continuities) over time in the environments in which the person is living (Bronfenbrenner, 1986a). The simplest form of chronosystem focuses around a life transition. Two types of transition are usefully distinguished: normative (school entry, puberty, entering the labor force, marriage, retirement) and nonnormative (a death or severe illness in the family, divorce, moving, winning the sweepstakes). Such transitions occur throughout the life span and often serve as a direct impetus for developmental change. Their relevance for the present review, however, lies in the fact that they can also influence development indirectly by affecting family processes. A more advanced form of chronosys...

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...ren. The focus differs from that of most studies of the family as a context of human development, because the majority have concentrated on intrafamilial processes of parent-child interaction, a fact that is reflected in Maccoby and Martin's (1983) recent authoritative review of research on family influences on development. By contrast, the focus of the present analysis can be described as "once removed." The research question becomes: How are intrafamilial processes affected by extrafamilial conditions? Paradigm Parameters In tracing the evolution of research models in developmental science, Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1983) distinguished a series of progressively more sophisticated scientific paradigms for investigating the impact of environment on development. These paradigms provide a useful framework for ordering and analyzing studies bearing on the topic of this review. At the most general level, the research models vary simultaneously along two dimensions. As applied to the subject at hand, the first pertains This review is based on a longer background paper prepared at the request of the Human Learning and Behavior Branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in connection with th...

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...l. As its name indicates, the next and last process paradigm adds a new, third element to the system. Although the process-context model represented a significant advance over its predecessors, it was based on an unstated assumption—namely, that the impact of a particular external environment on the family was the same irrespective of the personal characteristics of individual family members, including the developing child. The results of the comparatively few studies that have employed a triadic rather than solely dyadic research paradigm call this tacit assumption into question. Research by Crockenberg (1981) illustrates both the model and its message. Working with a middle-class sample, she found that the amount of social support received by mothers from their social network when their infants were 3 months old was positively related to the strength of the child's attachment to its mother at one year of age. The beneficial impact of social support varied systematically, however, as a function of the infant's temperament. It was strongest for mothers with the most irritable infants and minimal for those whose babies were emotionally calm. In addition, the author emphasizes that "the least irritabl...

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...amb, and Estes (1982) lends support to Belsky's caveat. These investigators report data from a middle-class sample showing that stability of secure attachment between 12 and 19 months was lower among infants placed in day care or whose mother had returned to work durECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 727 ing the first year. The effect for day care was greater than that for maternal employment. The Family and the Peer Group In the middle 1960s and early 1970s, a series of studies, conducted both in the United States and other countries (Bronfenbrenner, 1967; Bronfenbrenner, Devereux, Suci, & Rodgers, 1965; Devereux, 1965, 1966; Devereux, Bronfenbrenner, & Rodgers, 1969; Rodgers, 1971), demonstrated powerful and often opposite effects of parental and peer influences on the development of children and youth. Especially instructive is the comparative investigation by Kandel and Lesser (1972), who found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importanc...

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...evelopment may lie "not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents," and the behavior that can be prevented is family interaction—"the talks, the games, the family festivities, and arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed" (p. 170). The trouble with this seemingly authoritative conclusion ECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 737 is that it is based almost entirely on subjective opinion. To be sure, the opinion has subsequently been echoed in two necessarily brief reviews of research on television's role in family life (Garbarino, 1975; Dorr, 1981). But, insofar as I have been able to determine, the only empirical study that has examined the effect of television on patterns of family interaction is the pioneering research of Maccoby, published more than three decades ago (1951). Her principal conclusion: "The nature of the family social life during a program could be described as 'parallel' rather than interactive, and the set does seem quite clearly to dominate family life when it is on" (p. 428). Given the massive expansion of the medium in the interim, it is clearly time to follow up on Maccoby's lead, employing research models that ...

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...16% for those over 65 (Bronfenbrenner, 1986b, c). The effects of the current economic trend are already being reflected in research findings (Farran & Margolis, 1983; Steinberg, Catalano, & Dooley, 1981). For example, Steinberg and his colleagues studied the impact of unemployment on 8,000 families in California in a longitudinal design. Analyses of data over a 30-month period revealed that increases in child abuse were preceded by periods of high job loss, thus confirming the authors' hypothesis that "undesirable economic change leads to increased child maltreatment" (p. 975). More recently, Farran and Margolis (1983) have reported yet another more subtle but no less insidious impact of parental job loss. In families in which the father had been unemployed for several months, children exhibited a significant increase in susceptibility to contagious diseases. The authors offered two explanations for these effects: (a) reduced use of preventative health services because of income loss and (b) the greater vulnerability of children to contagious diseases in response to increased family stress. As this author has written elsewhere: It is the irony and limitation of our science that the greater the harm done to ...

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...ision for child development may lie "not so much in the behavior it produces as the behavior it prevents," and the behavior that can be prevented is family interaction—"the talks, the games, the family festivities, and arguments through which much of the child's learning takes place and his character is formed" (p. 170). The trouble with this seemingly authoritative conclusion ECOLOGY OF THE FAMILY 737 is that it is based almost entirely on subjective opinion. To be sure, the opinion has subsequently been echoed in two necessarily brief reviews of research on television's role in family life (Garbarino, 1975; Dorr, 1981). But, insofar as I have been able to determine, the only empirical study that has examined the effect of television on patterns of family interaction is the pioneering research of Maccoby, published more than three decades ago (1951). Her principal conclusion: "The nature of the family social life during a program could be described as 'parallel' rather than interactive, and the set does seem quite clearly to dominate family life when it is on" (p. 428). Given the massive expansion of the medium in the interim, it is clearly time to follow up on Maccoby's lead, employing research...

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...l and Lesser (1972), who found that Danish adolescents and youth, in contrast to American teenagers, paradoxically exhibited both greater independence from and closer and warmer relationships with their parents and other adults as opposed to peers, with a corresponding reduction in antisocial behavior. More recently, the developmental importance of the interface between family and peer group has been corroborated in studies focusing on the antecedents of antisocial behavior in adolescence and the entrapment of youth in juvenile delinquency, alcoholism, and substance use (Boehnke et al., 1983; Gold & Petronio, 1980; Jessor, 1986; Kandel, 1986;Pulkkinen, 1983a, 1983b). Particularly revealing are three recent investigations that have used more sophisticated designs to reveal the interplay between family structure and functioning on the one hand, and indexes of peer group deviance on the other. Thus Dornbusch and his colleagues (1985) first show that, with effects of socioeconomic status held constant, adolescents from mother-only households are more likely than their age-mates from two-parent families to engage in adult disapproved activities (such as smoking, school misbehavior, and delinquency). They th...

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...nd School Research in this sphere has been heavily one-sided. Although there have been numerous investigations of the influence of the family on the child's performance and behavior in school, as yet no researchers have examined how school experiences affect the behavior of children and parents in the home. Several studies, however, have explored how the relation between these two settings might affect children's behavior and development in school environments (Becker & Epstein, 1982; Bronfenbrenner, 1974; Burns, 1982; Collins, Moles, & Cross, 1982; Epstein, 1983a, 1984; Hayes &Grether, 1969; Henderson, 1981;Heyns, 1978; Lightfoot, 1978; Medrich et al., 1982; Smith, 1968; Tangri & Leitsch, 1982). Smith's study (1968) is especially noteworthy. She carried out a planned experiment involving a series of ingenious strategies for increasing home-school linkages that brought about significant gains in academic achievement in a sample of approximately 1,000 elementary pupils from low-income, predominantly black families. Almost all of these investigations, however, including Smith's, have focused on techniques of parent involvement rather than on the associated processes taking place within family and c...

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..., presumably, leading to rather different results. For mothers, it was the fact of being employed that was thought to be damaging to the child, whereas for fathers it was being unemployed that was seen as the destructive force. Because of this "division of labor," the principal research findings in each domain are most conveniently summarized under separate headings. Parental Employment and Family Life The first studies in this sphere appeared in the late 1930s and dealt with the impact on the family of the father's loss of a job during the Great Depression (Angell, 1936; Cavan & Ranck, 1938; Komarovsky, 1940; Morgan, 1939). The husband's unemployment resulted in a loss of status within the family, a marked increase in family tensions and disagreements, and a decrease in social life outside the home. At the same time, the father became increasingly unstable, moody, and depressed. In these early studies, no reference was made to any effects of these disruptive processes on the children; the latter were treated simply as participants playing secondary roles in the family drama. It was not until the 1970s that Elder (1974) began his exploitation of archival data to trace the life course of "Children ...

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...re likely to graduate from high school. These experiences, in turn, predicted indexes of subsequent success as measured by such criteria as continuing one's education, being gainfully employed, or having income other than public assistance (Lazar, 1984). Along the same line, follow-up studies of several guaranteedincome experiments conducted in the 1970s have revealed higher levels of school achievement by children of families in the randomly assigned experimental groups compared to their controls (Salkind, 1983). Also, a post hoc analysis of pregnant mothers participating in the WIC Program (Kotelchuck, 1983) showed that the treatment group had achieved the desired objective of increasing birth weight and reducing infant mortality as compared to findings for a carefully matched control group. That beneficial effects of community-based maternal care programs can extend into the realm of mother-child relations is indicated by the results of nurse home-visiting programs conducted with pregnant mothers at risk (Olds, 1983). Along with increased birth weight of babies born to teenage mothers, the experimental group, compared with carefully matched controls, showed a reduction in verified cases of child...

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...ticized on technical grounds by proponents of the hereditarian view (e.g., Jensen, 1973), but as a research paradigm it broke new ground. In the late 1930s, Skeels and his colleagues (Skeels & Dye, 1939; Skeels et al., 1938; Skodak & Skeels, 1949) published the first stage of what was to become a classical longitudinal study (Skeels, 1966). The investigators compared mental development of children brought up from an 726 URIE BRONFENBRENNER early age in adoptive families and in a control group of youngsters raised by their biological parents. Building on earlier work in this area (Burks, 1928; Leahy, 1935), the investigation is important in three respects. First, following Burks, the researchers demonstrated, and took into account, the influence of selective placement (the tendency of children of more intelligent biological parents to be placed in more advantaged adoptive homes). Second, Skeels and his associates showed that, while parentchild correlations in intellectual performance were appreciably higher in biological families than in adoptive families, the mean IQ of the adopted children was 20 points higher than that of their natural parents. This phenomenon has since been replicated both ...

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... this problem is the previously mentioned longitudinal study by Pulkkinen (Pitkanen-Pulkinnen, 1980; Pulkinnen, 1982). Geographic mobility was one of the components in Pulkkinen's index of the instability of the family environment. This index, in turn, proved to be a major predictor of the child's subsequent development in adolescence and early adulthood. Although, to this writer's knowledge, no reliable figures exist for the United States on the frequency of moves among families with children, it seems likely that the incidence is quite high in certain occupations, for example, the military (McCubbin, Dahl, & Hunter, 1976). The much-needed studies in this area should take into account both the direct and indirect effects on the child of simultaneous disruption of established patterns of relations within the peer group, the school, and the family, as well as the subsequent processes of rebuilding linkages in the new location. Of special significance in this regard is the experience of newly immigrant families, particularly those who come from, and enter into, markedly contrasting environments with respect to values, customs, and socioeconomic conditions. Television and the family. In terms of research, this are...

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...t makes inner-city life stressful for some families in some circumstances. Personally, I would see this as the most important needed direction for future research." Finally, whereas the indirect effects of urban residence appear to be negative for social and emotional development, particularly in young children, there is evidence that the direct influence of the city environment may be beneficial for intellectual development among older children. The principal support for this conclusion comes from a two-stage investigation carried out in rural and urban areas of Switzerland. The first study (Meili & Steiner, 1965) was conducted with 11-year-old school children. The researchers found that performance in both intelligence and achievement tests increased as a direct function of the amount of industry and traffic present in the area. The relationship was still significant after controlling for social class, but the influence of the latter variable was more powerful than that of locality. Four years later, in a follow-up study, Vatter (1981) undertook to investigate the nature of the more immediate influences accounting for this result. Drawing on earlier work by Klineberg (1935, 1938) and Wheeler (1942), V...

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...Hetherington's findings illustrate the power of exosystem forces in influencing family processes. First, the mother's effectiveness in dealing with the child was directly related to the amount of support received from third parties such as friends, relatives, and especially her exhusband. Second, the disruptive effects of divorce were exacerbated in those instances in which the separation was accompanied by the mother's entry into the work force. The potentially destabilizing impact of extrafamilial transitions on intrafamilial processes is elegantly demonstrated in a doctoral dissertation by Moorehouse (1986). This researcher employed a two-stage model in order to investigate how stability versus change over time in the mother's work status during the child's preschool years affected patterns of mother-child communication, and how these patterns in turn influenced the child's achievement and social behavior in the first year of school. The complex nature of the feedback systems operating in the family-workplace-school interface is illustrated by the following seemingly paradoxical sequence of findings; 1. As reflected by grades and teacher ratings, the children experiencing the greatest difficulty...