childhood?
8.4.1
Ecological Systems Theory
This chapter introduces the evidence around the associations between various factors in childhood and social, emotional and behavioural problems in early to middle childhood. The current study takes much of its theoretical basis from developmental psychology. Developmental sciences aim to examine how people change over time. No two people develop in exactly the same way however, even if raised in the same home, and so developmental science is involved with the study of both normative development (the typical patterns of change) and ideographic development (individual difference in patterns of change) (Shaffer & Kipp, 2013). Indeed, the current study examines both the overall patterns of social, emotional and behavioural development in Glasgow City children, and individual variations within that.
Developmental psychology started by examining infant and child development, but this has now expanded to cover the whole of the life course. Developmental psychology encompasses a variety of different theories. One of the most
prominent theories still discussed in developmental psychology is Urie
Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (EST) (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). EST theorises that different layers of environmental factors all have overlapping
52 influences on child development. These layers were coined in Orville Brim’s seminal paper on Macro-structural influences on child development (Brim, 1975). The layers are as follows:
1. Micro-system – this is the immediate setting containing the child e.g. the home, class or school;
2. Meso-system – this comprises the relationships between two or more settings e.g. the interactions between family, school and the child’s peers;
3. Exo-system – these are the informal and formal social structures surrounding the micro- and meso-systems, such as the neighbourhood and social support networks;
4. Macro-systems – these are the over-arching cultures and sub-cultures e.g. the social or educational systems.
This model has evolved over the years into its latest form – the bioecological model (Bronfenbrenner, Morris, Damon, & Lerner, 1998). The bioecological model is defined in the form of three statements:
1. Throughout the life course, human development takes place through
processes of progressively more complex reciprocal interaction between an active, evolving bio-psychological human organism and the persons, objects and symbols in its immediate external environment. To be effective, the interaction must occur on a fairly regular basis over extended periods of time. Such
enduring forms of interaction in the immediate environment are referred to as proximal processes.
2. The form, power, content and direction of the proximal processes producing
development vary systematically as a joint function of the characteristics of the developing person, the environmental context - both immediate and more
remote - in which the processes are taking place, and the social continuities and changes occurring over time throughout the life course, and the historical
period during which a person has lived; and, of course, the nature of the developmental outcomes under consideration.
53 3. In order to develop – intellectually, emotionally, socially and morally – a
human being, whether adult or child, requires – for all of them – the same thing: active participation in progressively more complex interaction with persons with whom he or she develops a strong, mutual, irrational attachment, and who, over time, become committed to each other’s well-being and
development, preferably for life.
(Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000)
This approach fits the current analysis and methodology, as it assumes that no one level of effect operates in isolation, but rather that children’s development is simultaneously affected by various different environments, such as the school, home, and their peer group (Bronfenbrenner, 1999). The model also proposes that the environmental influences may affect one child differently from another, depending on the characteristics which they bring to the equation
(Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000).
Proposition 3 is rooted in attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969; Ainsworth, 1969), which has demonstrated profound effects of the child’s attachment to a primary caregiver and child social and emotional development. Attachment theory
proposes that the earliest attachment relationships are the first experiences of emotional closeness, and that these relationships present prototypes for close relationships throughout life, both in terms of couple relationships and parenting (Bowlby, 1969). A child’s attachment is largely influenced by their primary caregiver sensitivity to responding to their needs. Four attachment styles have been identified, each with their own symptoms and consequences. These were demonstrated in Mary Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedures (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978). A securely attached child will explore his/her surroundings while their carer is present and may display upset when their carer leaves the room, but is happy when their carer returns. Anxious-resistant
insecure attachment (also known as ambivalent attachment) is characterised by the child showing little interest in exploring while the carer is present and being wary of strangers. If the carer leaves the room, the child is often highly
distressed and ambivalent when they return. The third type is the anxious- avoidant insecure attachment. In this case the child will explore little and will avoid or ignore the carer and show little emotion when the carer leaves or
54 returns. Ainsworth and Bell believed that this lack of emotion was actually a mask for their distress. The final type of attachment is
disorganised/disorientated attachment, whereby the child displays fear, contradictory behaviours or affects occurring simultaneously or sequentially, such as jerky movements, freezing or disassociation (Ainsworth et al., 1978). The consequences of poor attachment have been greatly explored, both in childhood and later life. Variations in attachment have been associated with behaviour problems, any psychiatric diagnosis, personality differences in later life, anxiety in adolescence, and with body dissatisfaction in women with eating disorders (Warren, Huston, Egeland, & Sroufe, 1997; Troisi et al., 2006; Bowlby, 1969; Sroufe, 2005). However, Sroufe warns that it is not right to think of
attachment as causing certain outcomes, but that attachment is critical because of its place in initiating pathways of development and because it is related to so many important developmental functions, such as emotional regulation and arousal moderation (Sroufe, 2005). Furthermore, Sroufe points out that anxious attachment does not inevitably lead to psychopathology (Sroufe, Carlson, Levy, & Egeland, 1999), and it is likely that this is where Bronfenbrenner’s person- environment fit model may come in: that it is both the environmental context, including the close early relationships and on-going care of parents/carers, and the characteristics of the individual that may lead to atypical development (Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000).
This theory has been further developed by Belsky, who proposed that some children are more malleable than others. Previous theories had assumed that all children were equally affected by sensitive and insensitive care-giving, for example. However Belsky argued that this was not the case and that children were either of a ‘fixed’ or ‘plastic’ type. Fixed children may be strongly predisposed to develop secure or insecure attachments, no matter what environment they find themselves in, whereas plastic children may be more sensitive to the environment and their development is shaped accordingly. Belsky named this Differential Susceptibility theory (Belsky, 1997). In the last ten years, this has been augmented by Boyce and Ellis’ ‘biological sensitivity to context’, which suggests that children with heightened stress reactivity may have increased biological sensitivity to their environment (Ellis & Boyce, 2008).
55 The current study explores the social, emotional and behavioural development of individual children in the context of their wider environment, in light of Bronfenbrenner’s theory. Proximal influences, such as current Looked After status and current level of home area deprivation, will be taken into account in the models as well as more distal factors, such as Looked After status and area deprivation at preschool. Different levels of the child’s environment will also be explored where possible: for example, at the micro-system, ethnicity, Looked After status and the school attended will be examine; at the Exosystem, the level of area deprivation in which a family lives will be explored and arguably, a potential ‘Glasgow Effect’ – this unexplained variance particular to Glasgow City- may be part of the Macrosystem. Due to its reliance on administrative data this study does not contain any information on the mesosystem, which would have been interesting to collect, for example information about parental involvement in school or the parent-teacher relationship may explain some differences in development.
8.4.2
Overview of factors associated with social,
emotional and behavioural development
There are a wide range of factors which have been associated with social, emotional and behavioural development in recent years, though this evidence base is less well developed and less consistent than that around children’s cognitive development. At the individual level, child gender is one of the
strongest factors associated with social, emotional and behavioural development (Cohen et al., 1993; Sterba et al., 2007). There is also evidence around the relationship between such difficulties and ethnicity, having Looked After status (i.e. being under the supervision of the state), living in a household with low income or with multiple deprivation, as well as the type of parenting a child experiences (Green et al., 2005; Dooley & Stewart, 2007). Genetic heritability of disorders is also an important area with an increasing body of evidence (McLoyd, 1998). The child’s school may be associated in two separate ways. Firstly, the school itself may play a role in promoting positive social, emotional and
behavioural difficulties, giving children who have difficulties greater support and encouraging a warm and caring environment. Furthermore, at this age, school constitutes the primary friendship group for the majority of children. They may thus be influenced by the difficulties (or absence of difficulties) that their peers
56 may have, as well as the background characteristics that their peers may bring into the friendship (Aviles, Anderson, & Davila, 2006; Carpiano, Lloyd, &
Hertzman, 2009).
At a third level, the characteristics of the area and community in which the child lives may be associated with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. This may be due to the level of deprivation in an area as a whole, or the levels of crime and violence on the one hand, or social support and community
engagement on the other. The area in which the child lives and the child’s school are not normally completely overlapping, but nor are they usually
exclusive. This means that they must both be assessed in order to calculate their independent contribution to explaining differences in social, emotional and behavioural development (Church II, Jaggers, & Taylor, 2012; Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Sealand, 1993) .
The literature regarding the associations between social, emotional and
behavioural development at each of these levels will now be explored in detail.