Applying Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Theory to Children Living in Poverty and Low Ses in South Africa

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Children living in high-poverty communities compared to their counterparts living in low-poverty communities are disadvantaged in many ways that can impair in their developmental process. On his research on Socioeconomic disadvantage and Child development McLoyd (1998) argued that the negative effects of being socioeconomically disadvantaged are not only materialistic to children. However most parents living in low SES have been found out to having tendencies of exhibiting authoritarian parenting style as a result of the living conditions faced.

In a developmental environment like this falls within the microsystem and as shown that relations between the parent and developing child can determine the outcome of the child’s relationship with the outside world. This ultimately results in children developing avoidant attachment relationships with their parents and being classified to possess a difficult child type of temperament. Children at this stage make fewer friends in their neighbourhood and they are rarely optimistic about starting school and often cry on their first time encounter with the outside world, Bronfenbrenner (1994)

Advancing to the mesosystem stage, children living in households with low family income with some of the traits listed above tend to have negative outcomes in terms of schooling. This is because schools in high-poverty communities are mostly under resourced in terms of the number of educators and support to learners at school, thus leading to children being less motivated to work hard or even have a positive outlook on life and finally end up bunking school. In some cases, depending on the overall child’s personal capabilities of development an encounter with teachers that are caring and supportive, the child’s development is likely to change as time goes on because the child now begins to receive positive treatment compared to at home thus eliciting positive traits the child might be possessing, Brooks-Gunn and Duncan(1997)

The exosystem which consists of influences that indirectly influences the developing child, (Jackson et al 2000) writes on how the fluctuation of the economy affects black single mothers in low wage jobs. Among the important findings in this study is that when the economy inflates, the number of hours casual work increase considerably as they seek to maximise the value of their earnings and this less time spend with their young. An exosystem such as an economy can have undesirable ramifications to the development of a child as now the mother will spend less time with the child resulting in the child feeling lonely, unloved and unworthy. The child will less likely give that much focus into schooling as they will not see the point of schooling and seeing as a positive activity because at home they do not feel appreciated.

While the pri