RESEARCH IN HUMAN DEVELOPMENT, 4(3–4), 203–217
Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Ecological Systems Theory: The Person
in the Center of the Circles
Nancy Darling
Oberlin College
Simplistic presentations of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory focus on
its attention to context. Although this accurately represents the first phase of
Bronfenbrenner’s work, it is argued that the core feature of Bronfenbrenner’s later
work is its attention to the patterning and interrelationship of multiple determinants
of development and on the active role of the developing person. After a review of
key elements of the development of Bronfenbrenner’s work, current research on
parental monitoring and knowledge is discussed as embodying many of the core
elements of systems theory.
Bronfenbrenner’s The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature
and Design (1979) summarized decades of theory and research about the fundamental processes that guide life-span development. Unlike most other recent
statements of theory, Bronfenbrenner’s book did not focus on a specific domain
such as social relations or cognition or biological development. Instead, Bronfenbrenner focused on a scientific approach emphasizing the interrelationship of
different processes and their contextual variation. Although Bronfenbrenner used
this text to develop 50 specific hypotheses concerning developmental processes
from infancy through adulthood, these hypotheses have only rarely been tested.
Rather, the importance of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) The Ecology of Human
Development and his importance in the field of developmental science are
usually summarized in one of two related ways. First, Bronfenbrenner is often
credited with bringing attention to contextual variation in human development
and helping to move developmental psychology from “the science of the strange
behavior of children in strange situations with strange adults for the briefest
possible periods of time” (1977, p. 513) to more “ecologically valid” studies of
Requests for reprints should be sent to Nancy Darling, Psychology Department Severance
Laboratory, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074. E-mail: Nancy.Darling@oberlin.edu
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developing individuals in their natural environment. Second, just as Piaget’s rich
work is often represented in introductory textbooks by a brief table summarizing
his stage theory, Bronfenbrenner’s work is often summarized with a diagram
of “ecological theory.” Flip open almost any introductory textbook on child
development and you will find a figure in which the individual—almost always
a toddler—is seen at the center of a series of concentric circles representing
microsystems, mesosystems, exosystems, and macrosystems. Connecting these
circles are multiple arrows linking contexts within systems (nursery school to
neighborhood) and linking contexts across systems (family to school). It is a busy
and complex world with a passive (and isolated) child at the center. More charitably, ecological systems theory is presented as a theory of human development
in which everything is seen as interrelated and our knowledge of development
is bounded by context, culture, and history.
Although important, neither of these two ideas strikes me as the core of
Bronfenbrenner’s work nor of his ongoing legacy. Rather, I see the core and
promise of Bronfenbrenner’s work within three domains, just now being fully
exploited by developmental scientists. First, the central force in development
is the active person: shaping environments, evoking responses from them, and
reacting to them. Second, a fundamental premise of ecological system theory
is its phenomenological nature: “[I]f men define situations as real they are real
in their consequences” (Thomas & Thomas, 1929, p. 572). Finally, because
different environments will have different affordances and will be responded to
in different ways by different individuals, experienced and objectively defined
environments will not be randomly distributed with regard to the developmental
processes and the individuals one observes within them. Rather, one will find
ecological niches in which distinct processes and outcomes will be observed.
Bronfenbrenner developed these core elements in a series of papers written after
the Ecology of Human Development (e.g., 2001; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998)
in what he described as an important critique and reformulation of ecological
theory and the second phase of his work (Bronfenbrenner, 1999).
As a student of Bronfenbrenner’s, I began this piece by trying to put
his work in context in an effort to understand its developmental history and
to predict its continued growth. Reviewing over six decades of work is a
formidable task, replete with surprises and starts of recognition. A few pieces
stood out as representing key elements of Bronfenbrenner’s thinking: a relatively
early piece on historical variability in social class differences in parenting
(Bronfenbrenner, 1958), a piece on gender differences in the association of
parenting and leadership (Bronfenbrenner, 1961), the series of articles and
then books focusing on cultural variability in socialization (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1970), and of course, the systematic development of ecological systems
theory (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1977, 1979, 2005; Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994;
Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). There were also the surprising flights of
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intellect: a masterful integration of Freudian and social learning theory focusing
on the role of the individual (Bronfenbrenner, 1960), the statistical work (e.g.,
Bronfenbrenner, 1945), and the many articles, reports, and speeches written
advocating social policy changes in support of children and family, including
Head Start.
Several themes emerged from even the earliest writings that remained
central throughout Bronfenbrenner’s later work: social and historical context,
the active person, and the impossibility of understanding individual developmental processes in isolation. For example, in “Socialization and Social Class
Through Time and Space,” Bronfenbrenner (1958) attempted to bring coherence
to contradictory evidence concerning the relative warmth and strictness of
middle- and working-class parents. By examining historical time in conjunction
with social class, Bronfenbrenner argued that parenting practices had shifted with
the recommendations of child development experts and pediatricians but that the
adaptation of expert advice was not uniform across society. Because middleclass parents placed greater trust in experts, their practices were closely linked
to patterns of expert advice. The practices of working-class parents shifted more
slowly, lagging behind by 10 to 15 years before moving toward middle-class
norms. As expert advice changed from discipline centered to support centered
and back again, class differences shifted as well. Note the attention played
to identical processes differing in expression in different social and historical
contexts.
Attention to patterning is similarly important in a later piece (Bronfenbrenner, 1961), focusing on gender. Bronfenbrenner again described how what
seemed to be the same processes predicted different outcomes for boys and
girls. Specifically, Bronfenbrenner wrote that “affiliative companionship, nurturance, principled discipline, affection, and affective reward appear to foster
the emergence of leadership in sons but discourage it in daughters” (p. 256).
Bronfenbrenner did not attribute these differences to some inherent quality of
boys and girls (not an uncommon attribution in the early 1960s) nor to the
different socialized needs or expectations of boys and girls (a “nurture”-based
explanation). Rather, Bronfenbrenner interpreted the processes as differing in
effect because their meaning differed for adolescents in the context of dominant
socialization practices. First, Bronfenbrenner noted that the disciplinary practices
used for girls tended to be more “love oriented” than the “punishment-oriented”
discipline practices used for boys. Whereas love-oriented practices tend to induce
high compliance and sensitivity to social cues, punishment-oriented discipline
tends to foster greater independence. Combined with greater overall warmth
of parents toward girls than boys, Bronfenbrenner argued that typical disciplinary practices would move girls toward dependence and attention to adult
standards and boys toward independence and autonomy. In a characteristic use
of evidence taken from disparate research areas, Bronfenbrenner noted that a
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markedly similar pattern can be seen in first-born and later-born siblings and with
similar effect. In conversation, Bronfenbrenner often described the normative
developmental risk to boys as “undertaming”—failure of discipline and inadequate compliance with social norms. For girls, Bronfenbrenner saw the risk as
“overtaming”—failure to foster autonomy and self-expression. Again, the focal
point for Bronfenbrenner was not in the form of discipline nor in the innate
qualities that boys and girls bring to the situation. Instead, the effect of discipline
had to be understood within the context of the parent–child relationship and
dominant cultural conditions. Many years later, Bronfenbrenner (1985) described
the optimal balance of parental behavioral control and emotional support as
varying depending on whether the thrust of society was toward conformity and
control (as in the 1950s) or toward self-expression and rebellion (as in the 1960s).
Again, the balance of discipline and love children experience across contexts
was what Bronfenbrenner (1985) argued determined the association of these
specific proximal processes with specific outcomes. Meaning was created by the
developing person as a product of all their experiences.
Bronfenbrenner’s earliest professional writings (e.g., 1945) were on the
measurement of sociometric status and emphasized the necessity of objective
and detailed measurement of social context to understand the development
of individuals (see Cairns & Cairns, 1995, for an extended discussion of the
relationship of Bronfenbrenner’s early work to ecological systems theory).
This interrelationship of individual development, contextual variability, and
individual difference can be seen in a piece that seems to me to embody
the core of ecological systems theory: a study of cognitive process jointly
conceived by Bronfenbrenner and long-time collaborator Ceci, “‘Don’t Forget
to Take the Cupcakes Out of the Oven’: Prospective Memory, Strategic TimeMonitoring, and Context” (Ceci & Bronfenbrenner, 1985). This is an unusual
piece for Bronfenbrenner. First, it is a true experiment. As such, it is unusual
because Bronfenbrenner typically used nonexperimental or quasi-experimental
models because, as he was wont to say, anything important—families, social
class, temperament—cannot be randomly assigned. Second, the study utilizes a
laboratory setting for half of its observations. Why? Because Ceci and Bronfenbrenner hoped to evoke the atypical behavior of anxious children. Third, the
piece focuses on cognition—specifically, prospective memory—whereas much
of Bronfenbrenner’s writing focused on social development, social relationships,
and competence broadly defined.
What makes Ceci and Bronfenbrenner’s (1985) article explicitly ecological in
its theoretical core? The goal of the study was to further understand prospective
time monitoring (how does one remember to do something in the future?). In
the first phase of the study, children were brought to a university laboratory and
paid to bake cupcakes. Two assessments of cognitive process were collected:
a traditional one (checking the clock) and an ecologically valid measure of
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cognitive functioning in the world of childhood: video game scores. In the
contrasting condition, children were paid to bake cupcakes at home by their
brothers or sisters, and identical assessments were made. The hypothesis was
simple: Children in the laboratory would be relatively more anxious and thus
employ a time-monitoring strategy sure to work (checking the clock frequently)
but cognitively costly (low video game scores). At home, where anxiety was
relatively low, children would use a more efficient cognitive strategy that was
somewhat more risky: checking the time frequently at the beginning of the baking
period to calibrate their internal clock, trusting their internal clock until they
sensed that the baking period was ending, then checking the time frequently at
the end. Ceci and Bronfenbrenner’s hypothesis was partially supported. Although
there was a main effect for context (children checked the clock more frequently
and had lower video game scores in the laboratory than at home) there was also
that most Bronfenbrennerian of results: a statistical interaction. Although girls
evinced anxious time monitoring in the laboratory, boys did not. Why? In the
second phase of study, Ceci and Bronfenbrenner explored a hypothesis rooted
in the meaning of the task in the historical context of mid-1980s childhood:
Girls cared about burning cupcakes, but boys did not. Although the laboratory
setting could successfully be used to induce anxiety for girls who were asked to
perform a task that was socially meaningful to them, this manipulation did not
work for boys. The second task boys and girls performed involved cars: children
were asked to charge batteries at home and in the laboratory. Here, the gender
difference disappeared.
THE PERSON AT THE CENTER
This design is what Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1983) described as a “personprocess-context model” in which variability in a developmental process was
studied as a function of context (home/garage:laboratory) and person (gender).
Critically, the gender difference was seen to derive not from some biological
difference in males and females but from the different meaning the task had for
males and females. In this, it is similar to Bronfenbrenner’s early work (e.g.,
Bronfenbrenner, 1961). Thus the cupcake study was both phenomenological in its
orientation and had, at its center, the person. The person, and not the environment,
is the center of later iterations of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of development (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Ceci, 1994; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998).
To some extent this reflects acceptance by mainstream researchers of many of
Bronfenbrenner’s critiques of the decontextualized study of development and the
plethora of ecologically sensitive and contextually grounded studies instigated
in response to Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) work. Bronfenbrenner’s concerns for the
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field of development had moved on. Bronfenbrenner (2005) was now worried
that researchers had lost the developing person in their study of context.
One major thrust of bioecological systems theory, especially in its later iterations, was on the understanding of genetic influences on development. Going
back to Anastasia’s (1958) prescient discussion of gene expression and environmental influence, Bronfenbrenner and colleague Ceci (1993, 1994) had written
two important papers focusing on the processes underlying genetic expression in
developmental context. These papers, which had explored a series of hypotheses
about developmental processes, attempted to integrate the newer and more
sophisticated models of genetics with the more nuanced picture of development
and the environment expressed in ecological systems theory. Bronfenbrenner
and Ceci (1993, 1994) had focused on process: how, and under what conditions,
are genetically based individual differences expressed? A central concept in this
work was the notion of developmentally instigative characteristics (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998): characteristics of the person that evoke differential
responses from the environment or differential reactions to it. Bronfenbrenner
and Ceci (1993, 1994) are widely credited with instigating a series of developmentally sensitive studies focusing specifically on the question of differential
expression of genetic characteristics in different environments.
A detailed analysis of the influence of ecological systems theory on behavioral genetics is beyond me. Others have written more cogently on that highly
technical subfield of development than I would dare to undertake. Instead, I
discuss an area that was the focus of some of Bronfenbrenner’s early work
(e.g., 1958) and one of his most enduring personal and intellectual interests: the
study of parenting. Although there has been a great expansion in the number of
studies that have compared the association of parenting on child outcomes across
different “social addresses” (i.e., ethnicity, family structure, etc.; Bronfenbrenner
& Crouter, 1983), Bronfenbrenner did not consider these studies to be important
applications of ecological systems theory because such studies only rarely focus
on why processes differ across contexts (as Steinberg, Darling, & Fletcher, 1995,
cogently described). Bronfenbrenner was not interested in whether the developmental consequences of parenting vary as a function of context (he knew they
did); he was interested in why.
The data available rarely allowed insight specific enough to satisfy Bronfenbrenner. For example, one recurring example Bronfenbrenner cites in his writings
is research by Drillien (1964) that showed that the extent to which good parenting
(responsiveness) buffers low birth weight infants against problem behavior
varies as a function of environmental risk (social class). Bronfenbrenner (1999)
distinguished between proximal processes that promoted positive development
from those that protected youth from the negative influence of developmentally
disruptive processes. In addition, Bronfenbrenner hypothesized that the power
of proximal processes varied depending on characteristics of the individual and
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the environment as well as the developmental outcome. In Drillien’s study, for
example, high socioeconomic status (SES) children were less likely to evince
problem behaviors than were low-SES children, but maternal responsiveness
was more strongly associated with problem behaviors in low-SES families than
in middle or high-SES families. Bronfenbrenner (1999) used this study to illustrate several points in addition to the fact that person, process, environment,
and time are all represented within the design. First, Drillien’s work was used
as example of why it is critical to distinguish between context and process
and to differentiate hypotheses made about each. Second, these findings were
used as an example of how proximal processes that function as buffers will be
most effective in the presence of risk, just as eyeglasses are only effective for
those of us with poor vision. Bronfenbrenner also used this example to argue
that child problems are both more prevalent and more severe in poor quality
environments and thus garner greater parental attention and more focused effort,
making responsiveness more effective in low-SES environments. In this case, it
is important to note that the main environmental influence on behavior problems
is seen to be negative (low SES). Parental responsiveness is seen to disrupt the
negative processes that occur in low-SES environments on a negative outcome.
When looking at other outcomes and other processes, Bronfenbrenner’s predictions differed. Hypothesizing that proximal processes that promote development
will be most effective in environments with many resources, Bronfenbrenner
turned to parental monitoring.
PARENTAL MONITORING
Parental monitoring refers to parents’ efforts to gain knowledge of children’s
and adolescents’ behavior. Monitoring is one of the most consistent predictors of
both positive child development and the avoidance of problem behavior (Crouter
& Head, 2002) and is a key element of effective parenting. As early investigators of monitoring stated succinctly, “discipline and reinforcement cannot be
applied to behaviors of which parents are not aware” (Patterson & StouthamerLoeber, 1984, p. 1301). In an impressive programmatic line of research extending
several decades, researchers have documented (a) the association of parental
monitoring with reduced levels of problem behavior and higher levels of adultapproved activities, (b) the processes through which low parental monitoring
is associated with membership in high-risk peer groups, and (c) the processes
through which association with deviant peers reinforces antisocial behavior (e.g.,
Dishion, Patterson, Stoolmiller, & Skinner, 1991; Dishion, Spracklen, Andrews,
& Patterson, 1996; Shortt, Capaldi, Dishion, Bank, & Owen, 2003).
In a secondary analysis of existing data, Bronfenbrenner (1999) focused
on variability in the association of monitoring with academic performance
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as a function of family type (two biological parents, single-parent mother,
or mother and stepfather) and maternal education. Because Bronfenbrenner
(1999) focused on academic performance, monitoring is defined here as a
promotive proximal process fostering a positive developmental outcome. Using
this example, Bronfenbrenner made two points. First, and in contrast to the
Drillien (1964) example, the association of monitoring with academic performance is strongest in higher resource families (those with two biological parents).
Second, the benefits of monitoring are amplified for those families with particularly high resources: two parent families in which mothers had more than
a high school education. For Bronfenbrenner, this suggested that promotive
processes would have the greatest effect on positive outcomes in environments
with the greatest resources and for individuals who had the greatest ability to
take advantage of those resources. Thus characteristics of the individual, the
process, the environment, and the outcome were all necessary to predict the
expected patterning of findings. In addition, Bronfenbrenner emphasized that
processes operating at each of these levels could not be looked at independently
of one another: Their interrelationship needed to be respected. It is essential to
understanding the thrust of the bioecological model that variability in the association of processes and outcomes observed in different contexts and for different
people be lawful, not random. Explaining this variability using specific, generalizable, principles was the goal of the model. Bronfenbrenner’s hypotheses were
complex because the systems he was modeling were complex as well.
Researchers strongly influenced by Bronfenbrenner began to apply his models
to understanding parenting. Working within an ecological systems perspective,
Fletcher, Darling, and Steinberg (1995) moved away from the then current
thinking of family and peer influences as oppositional to one another. Rather,
Fletcher et al. (1995) argued that understanding the influence of parental
monitoring on adolescent substance use required an understanding of the joint
association of parents and peers in conjunction with the current status of the
child. Specifically, Fletcher et al. (1995) sought to predict how adolescents who
were at different points in the transition to substance use (nonusers, experimenters, and regular users) would be differentially influenced by parental
monitoring and peer substance use. Following Bronfenbrenner’s (1970) argument
concerning the power of confluent influences, Fletcher et al. (1995) argued
that parental monitoring would be most influential on change in substance
use when peer groups were heterogeneous with regard to substance use. In
particular, Fletcher et al. (1995) argued that the adolescents of high-monitoring
parents would move toward their non-substance-using friends. The adolescents
of low-monitoring parents would move toward their substance-using friends. In
this case, parental monitoring was used to predict a negative outcome and, as
predicted, had the strongest association with substance use in a high-risk social
context.
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THE ACTIVE ADOLESCENT
At the time it was published, the Fletcher et al. (1995) piece was unusual in
reflecting significant attention to variation in the monitoring process as a function
of context (peer substance use) and individual characteristics (gender and current
substance use). However, this work came under sharp criticism because it was
based on the implicit assumption that parental monitoring was an attribute of
the parent and not of the parent–child relationship (e.g., Stattin & Kerr, 2000).
Especially problematic in this regard was the fact that parental monitoring was
measured in terms of adolescents’ perception of parental knowledge (“how much
do your parents know ”). In other words, rather than asking adolescents about
the efforts their parents made to track and gain knowledge of their behavior,
these and other researchers asked adolescents what their parents knew about
their activities. It seemed to be assumed that such knowledge reflected parents’
efforts to seek out such information or at least attend to it when it was shared.
Although the dyadic nature of parents’ knowledge acquisition was explicitly
acknowledged, the role of parents as active agents in the socialization process
was emphasized (the Fletcher et al., 1995, title, “Parental Monitoring and Peer
Influences on Adolescent Substance Use,” illustrates this point clearly.) The
adolescent was implicitly modeled as a passive agent influenced by parents and
peers.
Stattin and Kerr (2000) made this model explicit by comparing the strength
of the associations between parental control, parental inquiry, and voluntary
disclosure of information by the adolescent with parental knowledge and
adolescent outcomes. Stattin and Kerr concluded that the primary source of
variability in parental knowledge were individual differences in adolescents’
voluntary disclosure and not variability in either parental solicitation or parental
control. Thus, adolescents’ control of information, and not parental efforts, drove
differences in knowledge. Stattin and Kerr argued that previous interpretations
of the association between parental knowledge and positive adolescent development had erroneously concluded that it resulted from parental monitoring.
Instead, Stattin and Kerr interpreted the central underlying process to be one of
adolescents’ willingness to disclose information to parents. Note particularly the
emphasis on the monitoring process rather than monitoring as a status or social
address.
Stattin and Kerr’s (2000) critiques of the monitoring field caused a fundamental shift in the focus of the monitoring literature. Note, for example, the
change in titles of three pieces by one prominent monitoring researcher, separated
by just over a decade: “Parental Monitoring and Perceptions of Children’s
School Performance and Conduct in Dual- and Single-Earner Families” (Crouter,
MacDermid, McHale, & Perry-Jenkins, 1990), “Conditions Underlying Parents’
Knowledge About Children’s Daily Lives in Middle Childhood: Between- and
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Within-Family Comparisons” (Crouter, Helms-Erikson, Updegraff, & McHale,
1999), and “Parental Monitoring and Knowledge of Children” (Crouter & Head,
2002). First, Stattin and Kerr’s (2000) distinction between the product of a parent
and adolescent behavior (parental knowledge) and the process itself (monitoring)
is clear. Second, and consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s calls for change within
the field (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998), the cutting edge of research
had moved from documenting the association of monitoring with child outcomes
to trying to understand why what had been called parental monitoring and was
now being called “parental knowledge” was associated with more positive child
outcomes. The center of this debate was the extent to which parental knowledge
resulted from attributes of the parent, attributes of the child, or both (see, e.g.,
Brody, 2003; Capaldi, 2003; Fletcher, Steinberg, & Williams-Wheeler, 2004;
Kerr & Stattin, 2003). The extent to which the child was the driving force of the
robust correlations between monitoring and child outcomes was a key part of this
debate. Although Stattin & Kerr’s work has been more strongly influenced by
the related holistic-interactionist perspective (Magnusson & Stattin, 1998) than
by ecological systems theory per se, research stemming from this critique was
strongly influenced by researchers directly or indirectly linked with ecological
systems theory (e.g. Crouter, Darling, Steinberg, and Fletcher).
Like all aspects of parenting, appropriate monitoring practices vary with the
developing person’s developmental status and risk proneness. As children move
into adolescence, a shift occurs in the relative importance of the monitoring of
immediate and proximal child behaviors and the delayed monitoring of behaviors
distant from the parent in both time and space (Patrick, Snyder, Schrepferman,
& Snyder, 2005). In the course of this transformation, parents’ knowledge of
their adolescents’ activities becomes increasingly dependent on adolescents’
willingness to disclose information to parents. Parental knowledge is reciprocally related to adolescents’ involvement in problem behavior (Laird, Pettit,
Bates, & Dodge, 2003; Laird, Pettit, Dodge, & Bates, 2003): One reason that
adolescents whose parents know more about their lives are less involved in
problem behavior is that adolescents have less to hide. In careful studies in
which parental knowledge has been assessed by independently asking parents
and adolescents about adolescent whereabouts, activities, and behaviors, parents
whose knowledge of their adolescents’ lives results from adolescent voluntary
disclosure rather than from questioning or other sources are more knowledgeable
about their adolescents’ lives (Crouter, Bumpus, Davis, & McHale, 2005).
Further, these differences in knowledge have consequences in terms of subsequent declines in risky behavior.
New and exciting areas of monitoring research have examined the sources
of parent knowledge, the reciprocal nature of parent–adolescent exchanges, and
the consequences these differences have for adolescent outcomes. Another area
of current research focuses even more specifically on contextual variability
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in adolescents’ decisions to disclose and the processes underlying disclosure.
This research puts adolescents’ beliefs at its center. Although some adolescents
disclose more information to parents than others, there are areas of their lives
that almost all adolescents keep from their parents. In a series of studies, my
colleagues and I have investigated both between-adolescent and issue-specific
differences in the decision to disclose information to parents, the association of
both parenting and adolescent disclosure with parental knowledge, and the association of parenting and adolescent beliefs with adolescent obedience. Results
have indicated that adolescents’ decision to fully disclose information in case
of disagreement, and not agreement with parents per se, is associated with
adolescent reports of higher parental knowledge (Darling, Cumsille, Caldwell,
& Dowdy, 2006). Further, and complimentary to the findings of others,
Darling et al. (2006) found that adolescents who were least involved in parentdisapproved behaviors were less likely to disclose to parents and that those whose
parents were authoritative were most likely to fully disclose to parents and were
also less likely to lie overtly rather than shade the truth or partially disclose.
Work currently underway (Darling, Cumsille, Peña-Alampay, & Coatsworth,
2007) suggests that different aspects of parenting are relatively more or less
important in adolescent disclosure and parental knowledge depending on cultural
context. For example, higher parental monitoring is associated with greater
parental knowledge only in Chile and the Philippines but is unassociated with
knowledge in the United States after controlling for other parent and adolescent
attributes. In contrast, parental warmth is a strong predictor of knowledge in the
United States, whereas it is not associated with knowledge in the Philippines.
These cultural differences are not explained by normative differences in adolescents’ beliefs that parents have the right to set rules nor in adolescents’ beliefs
in their own obligation to obey. Although the hypothesis is currently untested, I
speculate that these differences stem from the larger social context: specifically
in adolescents’ interpretations of their parents’ motivations in setting rules and
in the larger peer culture.
A relatively unique focus of this line of research has been the central role it
places on adolescents’ beliefs in the legitimacy of parental authority. As children
become adolescents, their beliefs that parents have legitimate authority over their
behavior and that they are obliged to obey parents decline, and they define more
and more issues within the personal domain. Adolescents differ in the extent
to which they believe parents have legitimate authority over different aspects
of their lives (e.g., personal issues such as what types of videos they watch,
prudential issues such as drinking, or multidomain issues such as spending time
with friends parents do not approve of). These individual differences appear
to be relatively consistent in early, middle, and late adolescence (Cumsille,
Darling, Flaherty, & Martínez, 2006). Adolescents who believed their parents
have legitimate authority over specific issues and that they themselves were
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obliged to obey parents were more likely to obey them (Darling, Cumsille,
& Martínez, 2007) and more likely to disclose when they believed they and
their parents disagreed with one another (Darling et al., 2006). The presence of
parental rules also made a difference. Adolescents were more likely to partially
disclose when their parents had made explicit rules about the issue at hand than
when they had not. Adolescent beliefs in the right of parents to control particular
issues were especially important predictors of disclosure when adolescents were
more involved in problem behavior (Darling et al., 2006). In these studies,
processes have been measured from the perspective of multiple family members,
variability in parent and adolescent characteristics are explicitly modeled, and
both overt behavior (rule setting) and the interpretation of behavior (beliefs) are
seen as potential influences on family processes and adolescent outcomes.
The current active state of research on parental monitoring and knowledge
clearly reflects many of the concerns Bronfenbrenner articulated in his later
models of bioecological systems theory (e.g., 2001). First, there is a joint focus
on process and on development and on change in processes across a major
developmental transition. In particular, parental monitoring moves from direct
to more distal sources of information. Paired with adolescents’ increased desire
for autonomy and decreased belief in the legitimacy of parental authority across
domains, the ability of parents to gain information about their children becomes
increasingly dependent on the children themselves. This active role of the developing child as a fundamental engine of their own development is consonant with
the basic principals and focus of bioecological systems theory. Research in these
lines includes work on the contextual variability in the monitoring process both
between and within persons (e.g., Darling et al., 2007), on individual differences
in the importance of monitoring in different environments (Brody, 2003; Patrick
et al., 2005), and on unfolding processes across time (Laird, Pettit, Dodge, et al.,
2003). In fact, the focus is not on monitoring or knowledge per se but on the
sharing of information between parents and children and on the processes that
facilitate this sharing and translate knowledge into effective socialization. The
type of implicitly unidirectional work on parental monitoring common only 10
years ago is simply no longer publishable in major journals.
There is clearly much more work to do. Although it has long been known
that parental monitoring and knowledge is associated with positive adolescent
outcomes, such as academic performance (Crouter & Head, 2002), the focus of
current research in this area is on negative behavior. Does adolescent disclosure
really explain why kids whose parents know a lot about their activities do well
in school? Or is some other mechanism at work? In addition, in the rush to
understand the influence of person and process, researchers have neglected the
early core of the ecological model: context. Following Bronfenbrenner’s (1999)
predictions, one might argue that parental knowledge would be most strongly
associated with problem behavior (a) in high-risk environments and (b) for youth
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215
who are open to parental socialization. When predicting the strength of association of parental knowledge with positive aspects of development (social skills,
friendships with prosocial peers, good academic performance), one might predict
a stronger association in high-resource environments. Finally, technology such
as cell phones and the Internet may be fundamentally changing the monitoring
process just as monitoring may have changed dramatically from the 1960s to the
present as family structure and work patterns have changed. These hypotheses—
like many others Bronfenbrenner proposed—have yet to be systematically
tested.
There are many reasons for the shift in research on parental knowledge and
monitoring, only some of which can be directly linked to Bronfenbrenner’s
work, influential though it has been in the development of many researchers
in this area. Two other factors—the availability of well-designed, multimethod,
multisource, longitudinal data sets and the development of sophisticated statistical tools for modeling complex reciprocal relationships—must also be credited.
Alone, however, these tools and these resources could not be used as they have
been without the rich conceptual groundwork developed over the decades by
Bronfenbrenner, his contemporaries, and colleagues. As Bronfenbrenner (1979)
wrote in the opening lines of The Ecology of Human Development, we stand on
the shoulders of giants.
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