Bronfenbrenner's Childhood In The Other Wes Moore

How is it that two men that come from identical backgrounds end up being completely opposites? Wes Moore takes us back to his childhood growing up, and also introduces us to a character sharing the same name as him, and similarly, the same lifestyle. Both of the young men shared the absence of a father figure, living in poor neighborhoods, bad influences, and lack of education. While reading, we question “how?” and “why?” There is no exact answer to our questions. Inside of “The Other Wes Moore”, two similar tales are told, however, there are two different outcomes. The author, Wes Moore, deals with a lot of obstacles throughout his childhood. The story seems to begin after the death of his father. Following the death, his mother decides to move them into their grandparent’s house in New York, hoping this will make things a little less challenging. However, the neighborhood was not how she remembered. Wes was now witnessing more drug activities and dealing with being enrolled into a new school with a divergent environment. Dissatisfied with his life, he began to care less. His attitude caused his grades to drop and eventually he was placed on academic probation. After Wes’s mom received this news and an incident that

One of the theories that can explain this is Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory. This theory states that development reflects the influence of several environmental systems. There are five environmental systems that are identified within the theory. The microsystem is the setting of an individual, the mesosystem involves relationships and connections between the microsystem and contexts, the exosystem includes links between the social setting in which the individual does not have an active role and the immediate context, the macrosystem involves culture, and the chronosystem consists of patterns and transitions during the life course (Santrock