Poverty And Socioeconomical Status Influence The Development Of Children

In this essay, Poverty and SocioEconomical Status (SES) and their role in the development of children and how it is relevant within a schooling environment is discussed. The purpose is to understand the effect and role the influences of ones upbringing and economic status by looking at developmental theory; specifically at the theory developed by Urie Bronfenbrenner to perfectly explain the influence of culture. This essay will define the very meaning of poverty and SES in this context, look into Bronfenbrenner’s emphasis on ecological environments: a series of successive layers that label the different aspects of the environment that influence a child’s development and then show how these three factors play a role in a child’s schooling environment.

It is found in some studies that children from a low-income SES often perform better academically that middle-income children in school (Santrock, 2011). This was often due to the high educational aspirations of the parents. Low-income children who performed well academically often had a parent who was making necessary sacrifices to ensure that they had the necessary support and resources to do well; this can be seen as an incentive for the child to not disappoint their parent and make the sacrifice worth it. It was found that the higher the SES of a family the less concerned the parents were with the child’s academic achievement and more with their emotional and social well-being (Santrock, 2011). This shows that the role of SES is to affect the motivation of the child to do well in

In the microsystem, the direct influences of a child’s schooling can be matters such as a parent’s choice of a schooling institution or the way they teach a child to interact with others in a school environment (Watts, Cockcroft & Duncan, 2009). In the mesosystem the way in which the parents interact with the school, concerning the child may affect his/her quality of education as they may be recommended extra classes and so forth (Watts, Cockcroft & Duncan, 2009). The exosystem can have an indirect effect on the child. For example if a parent’s employment is terminated then the child is no longer able to attend school due to lack of funding (Watts, Cockcroft & Duncan, 2009). In the macrosystem the culture of the society can affect the child, for example in an environment where parents are often not very caring of their children or their education it can have a detrimental effect on the child (Richter & Morrell, 2008). The chronosystem shows how changes over time such as political and economic change, change of employment, residence and change of values will affect the child’s education in either a positive or negative manner (Watts, Cockcroft & Duncan, 2009). Therefore the role of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory is to categorise and display the various factors that can affect a child’s