Criticism
Although generally well received, Urie Bronfenbrenner’s models have encountered some criticism throughout the years. Most criticism center around the difficulties to empirically test the theory and model and the broadness of the theory that makes it challenging to intervene at an any given level. Some examples of critiques of the theory are:
- Challenging to evaluate all components empirically.
- Difficult explanatory model to apply because it requires extensive scope of ecological detail with which to build up meaning that everything in someone’s environment needs to be taken into account.
- Failure to acknowledge that children positively cross boundaries to develop complex identities.
- Tendency to view children as objects.
- Inability to recognize that children's own constructions of family are more complex than traditional theories account for
- The systems around children are not always linear.
- Preoccupation with achieving "normal" childhood without a common understanding of “normal”
- Fails to see that the variables of social life are in constant interplay and that small variables can change a system
- Misses the tension between control and self-realization in child-adult relationships; children can shape culture
- Underplays abilities, overlooks rights/feelings/complexity
- Gives too little attention to biological and cognitive factors in children’s development
- Does not address developmental stages that are the focus of theories like Piaget’s and Erikson’s.
Read more about this topic: Social Ecological Model
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