Chapter 1: Introduction The strengths and resilience of African American single mothers has historically changed families and communities for the better. However, African American single mothers are often a vulnerable population at risk for poor physical and mental health with negative outcomes outweighing both their female and male counterparts (Hatcher, Rayens, Peden, & Hall, 2012). There has been numerous race comparative self-esteem studies and research on the effects of single parenthood on child and adolescent self-esteem. Yet few studies focus on the factors that impact both positive and negative self-esteem exclusively in African American mothers apart from their children. Most of what we know about the self-esteem of African Americans …show more content…
When fathers are not around to share the child care or provide financially, the full responsibility falls on the mother, increasing the overwhelming demands of this obligation (Youngblut, Brady, Brooten, & Thomas, 2000). Smith, Oliver, and Innocenti (2001) found that low levels of social support are associated with high levels of parenting stress, increased anger towards the children, and increased psychological distress or depression, all of which adversely affect parenting. Waldfogel, Craigie, and Brooks-Gunn (2010) concluded that consistent parenting quality, such as sensitivity and responsiveness, are lower in low-income mothers because of the mismatch between the multiple demands and access to fewer resources. The inability to provide the sensitivity and responsiveness has a direct effect on children?s healthy development. In particular, low-income African American mothers are often less responsive, engage in fewer teaching opportunities with their children during the day, and are more likely to engage in physical punishment as opposed to inductive reasoning (Bradley, Corwyn, McAdoo, & Garcia Coll, …show more content…
This theory illustrates ?how the environment impacts human development" (Bronfenbrenner, 1986, p. 723) as a result of a number of influences such as social networks, poverty, oppression, and discrimination. Sontag (1996) stated that the Ecological Theory highlights the multiple influences on the development of the individual and family. The model includes four subsets: (1) Microsystem, (2) Mesosystem, (3) Exosystem, and (4) Macrosystem. The microsystems are the contexts of everyday life (i.e. social supports: family, school, and neighborhood). The mesosystem is a system of microsystems, or the inter-relations among the major settings containing the developing person at a particular point in his/her life (i.e. interactions between family, schools, mother?s income, poverty). The exosystem is the extension of the mesosystem embracing other formal and informal social structures that do not contain the developing person, but within which other events occur that indirectly influence processes with the immediate structure in which the developing person lives (Bronfenbrenner, 1977). An exosystem could be work, the mass media, or informal social networks. The macrosystem is the overarching institutional patterns of culture or subculture, such as the economic, educational, legal, medical, mental health, and political systems (Bronfenbrenner,
59 percent of African American households in Maryland in 2009 consist of only one parent. Both the author and the other Wes grew up without a father figure. Graduation rate of 66.7 percent for Baltimore City Schools
Children of color are over-represented in single-parent households with fifty-five percent of Black children and thirty-one percent of Hispanic children being raised in a single-parent household. (Vespa). The lessons parents will teach their son or daughter help provide the children with the skills and traits that will prepare them for adulthood. When one parent is missing, more specifically the father, the effect has an everlasting feel to
The dynamic systems theory is holistic in that a person’s development is due to diverse relationships instead of isolated variables (DeRobertis, 2011, p. 8). The dynamic systems theory also has three main features: the focal system, the subsystem, and the suprasystem. The focal system is the primary attention or focus, which are usually families or individuals, while the subsystem is the smaller internal components of the focal point. (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2011, p. 37). The suprasystem, on the other hand, is the external or outside factors of the focal system (Robbins et al., 2011, p.38).
EFFECTS OF FATHERLESSNESS IN BLACK COMMUNITIES: The effects of an absent father on the black community is critical to understand the current state of Black America, the growth of a community, the incarceration rates, dropout rates of black children, poverty rates, etc. In the beginning, when a child is born, they don’t get the ability to choose who their parents are; children are simply born to two parents. This is the beginning of their lives, birth. Learning where the chain effect begins is how we understand the systematic oppression facing the community now.
Due to vast societal changes in the American 20th and 21st centuries, intimate life, from the perspective of the most recent generations, has evolved drastically. American youth has grown up in diverse households, witnessed the deterioration of gender roles, and have been effected by the longevity of today’s educational system. “The Social Construction of Sexuality” by Steven Seidman narrows in on the youth’s role in hook up culture, intimacies after college, and intimacy and parenthood among the poor. Hooking up is a type of temporary connection, often involving erotic intimacy, but minimal obligations and commitments (Seidman, 145). This behavior and expression of intimacy has replaced the dating culture in college and stems from the idea
This example and analysis gives merit to the idea in the theory which states that we are not mere recipients of the experiences we have when socializing with people in our micro system environment, but we are contributing to the construction of said environment. The second system in the ecological systems theory is The Mesosystem: This is defined as the system comprising of the links between two or more microsystems in a child’s life for example the classic relationship between the home microsystem and school’s microsystem Bronfenbrenner strongly believed that a child’s development is likely to be successfully progressed by strong and supportive links been microsystems. For example it was deduced that a child’s ability to learn at school depends on the quality of teaching that is provided by their and also on the amount of value to which parents allot to scholastic activities and consult or interact with their child’s teachers (Gottfried,Fleming, & Gottfried, 1998; Luster & McAdoo, 1996; Schulting, Malone, & Dodge,
Although both cultures hold high aspirations for their children, they adopt very different approaches to parent involvement. “African-American parents believed strongly in home and school-based involvement and attempted to intervene inside their children 's schools. While social class within the African-American community seemed to influence this pattern, African Americans were far more likely to seek school-based involvement” (Diamond, Wang, & Gomez, 2006) Every culture develops set patterns of child rearing practices and that what is perceived to be good parenting in one culture may be regarded as maladaptive in another culture. In both the Haitian culture as well as the African American culture this was not the case.
"Daughters of single parents are 53% more likely to marry as teenagers, 164% more likely to have a premarital birth, and 92% more likely to dissolve their own marriages. All these intergenerational consequences of single motherhood increase the likelihood of chronic welfare dependency. " Teenagers and the ones which will become young parents may continue the cycle that their father started with not being involved in their life. Fathers have a special bond needed by their children. The way that a father plays and interacts with his child throughout different stages of life, teaches children valuable life-long lessons.
Even in interracial environments such as schools, that interracial contact with whites did not negatively affect Blacks’ self-esteem. The above findings are especially pertinent to the study of African American women and self-esteem. Black women were once predicted to have low self-esteem because scholars thought they internalized demeaning messages of themselves and measured themselves against a white
The bioecological model of human development is defined as “the phenomenon of continuity and change in the biopsychological characteristics of human beings, both as individuals and as a group” (Brofenbrenner and Morris, 2006). This model of development has four defining properties: 1) Process, 2) Person, 3) Context and 4) Time. Process is the core of the model and involves the interaction between the individual and the environment, termed proximal processes. These proximal processes primarily drive human development but its influence on human development varies, depending on the characteristics of the Person, the Context and Time
It is about the interactions between two different parts of a person 's microsystem. The mesosystem is where a person 's or individual microsystems does not function independently, but are interconnected and assert influence upon one another. One aspect of child 's mesosystem would be the relationship between child or person’s parents and teachers. Parents usually take an important role when it comes to a child’s school, such as being available when they are called up for parent/teacher consultations and they can also volunteer in helping a teacher in a classroom activities. This will encourage a child to build up a positive impact on his/her development because the different elements of his/her microsystem are working together to make a child understand.
Next layer in the circle is the Mesosystem which is a system which looks at the connects between a child’s home and their school as it will build up into a life as if home life is at risk then school life can be affected as well if a child is having to move home then it also means moving school so they are not only losing their actual family but also the family they have built while in the neighbourhood and school. When putting it into practical life, home life with effect how a young person is able to focus when in class so if a young person is going through a family breakdown then they will often find it hard to focus on work because they are thinking about what will be there for them when they get home. Next is the Exosystem which is where young people are affected by the wider society around them, if a child has grown up in a setting where a child may be seeing their family or sibling within a setting then they can be influenced by the family but there also hold the influence of their friends life and neighbourhoods, they are influenced by many things throughout their life. There is the importance of looking at it within setting, and this is highly affected as if a child is moving areas then they will often have to create a new family of friend which can be hard for young people who may not find it easy to communicate other easily.
Different social roles such as employees and citizens are at the various stages of the life-course. The social ecological theory suggests that there is an immediate and larger environment that influences the overall learning of an individual. Bronfenbrenner has presented five levels of environment, which include microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and choronosystem. (Ban, et.al.,
My topic that I am researching, parent engagement discusses the important affects of parent involvement academically. An argument for parent engagement is low income diverse families have no involvement in their child 's learning. A counter argument for parent engagement is parent involvement doesn 't benefit children academically.
Urlue Bronfenbrenner has developed the ecological system theory to explain how everything in a child. Bronfenbrenner has labeled different aspects or the levels that the environment influence the children’s development. Bronfenbrenner has labeled the four theory’s microsystem, mesosystem, ecosystem, and macrosystem. The macrosystem is a small immediate that the environment of the child lives in. The children of microsystem include any relationships or organizations that interact with their immediate family, caregivers, school, and the daycare.