The exosystem in Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model represents environments that indirectly influence an individual’s development, despite the person not being directly involved in these settings. The bioecological model is Bronfenbrenner’s own later revision of the theory, centred on the everyday interactions that drive development.
It encompasses external contexts and events that affect the individual’s immediate environment, such as a parent’s workplace, community organizations, or local government policies (Bronfenbrenner, 1986).
These indirect influences still shape development. They show how factors far outside someone’s daily experience can reshape their life circumstances and opportunities.
For instance, a parent’s job loss can affect a child’s home life and educational resources. Changes in local education policy can have the same effect on a student’s learning environment. The student has no say in that decision.
By examining these indirect influences, we gain insight into the wider societal and institutional factors that shape human development.
The exosystem matters because it reveals how external forces operate. These forces shape the contexts in which people grow and develop, showing how personal and societal systems are interconnected.
Key Takeaways
- Definition: the exosystem covers settings a child never enters directly, like a parent’s workplace, that still shape them by changing the microsystems they do take part in.
- Indirect effect: the child never meets these settings first-hand, so their influence only reaches the child by changing the people and places closest to them.
- Workplace example: the classic case is a parent’s employer, whose flexible-hours or leave policies change how present and how stressed a parent is at home.
- Wider examples: extended family, school boards, local government, community organisations, social services, and mass or social media all count as exosystem influences.
- Digital debate: newer theory adds “virtual microsystems” for online spaces, since children now interact with them directly rather than only from a distance.
- Bigger model: the exosystem is one of five nested systems in Bronfenbrenner’s original theory, later folded into his bioecological model centred on everyday interactions.
Examples of the Exosystem in Ecological Systems Theory
The exosystem environments do not directly include the child, but they impact the child’s immediate surroundings.
Here are some examples:
Parents Workplaces and Policies
Workplace policies regarding parental leave, flexible work hours, and work-from-home options can significantly affect a child’s development.
For instance, a company offering flexible working hours allows parents more time with their children, positively impacting the child’s emotional development and family relationships.
On the other hand, a stressful work environment with limited flexibility can lead to a parent being more irritable at home, indirectly affecting the child.
The child is never present for this.
This is the exosystem’s defining mechanism at work: the child never sets foot in the workplace, but the policy still reaches them by reshaping everyday interaction with their parent.
Beyond a parent’s workplace, several other parts of the wider community shape a child’s life indirectly, without the child ever taking part in them directly:
- Extended family: grandparents, aunts and uncles sit outside a child’s immediate microsystem but still shape their upbringing through their relationship with the immediate family.
- Local community organisations: childcare centres, community centres and healthcare providers affect a child indirectly by changing the quality of resources available to their family.
- School board decisions: choices about school closures, curriculum and funding reach the child indirectly, by changing the quality of education and resources on offer.
- Social services and support systems: welfare programmes, affordable housing and healthcare access shape a child’s development by changing their family’s economic stability and well-being.
- Mass media and social media: the content, values and norms these channels promote shape how a child understands the world, relationships and themselves, even without direct use.
- Local government policies: decisions on housing, transport and public safety indirectly shape a child’s development by changing the quality of their physical environment and access to resources.
Strengths of the Exosystem Concept
- Recognizing Indirect Influences: The exosystem effectively highlights how environments not directly experienced by a child can still significantly impact their development.
- Contextual Understanding: It encourages a holistic view of child development, acknowledging the complex interplay between various social and environmental factors.
Limitations and Evolution
- Blurred boundaries: technology has blurred the lines between systems. A parent’s job, once purely exosystem, can now extend into the home through remote work, blending exosystem and microsystem influences.
- Digital environments: the original model didn’t cover online spaces, now central to child development. Navarro and Tudge’s (2022) neo-ecological theory fills this gap with “virtual microsystems,” though these digital spaces carry exosystem components too.
- Rapid cultural transmission: social media spreads cultural influences fast, challenging the idea that culture flows mainly from the macrosystem (society’s broad values and laws). Digital platforms now carry those values at every level.
The Exosystem Reimagined
To remain relevant, our understanding of the exosystem must evolve:
- Expanded scope: the exosystem now includes digital environments, online communities, and the policies that govern them, such as a platform’s content-moderation rules.
- Technology-mediated influences: technology now shapes “proximal processes,” the enduring, back-and-forth interactions with people and objects that drive development, through online interactions, curated content, and digital communication patterns.
- New research challenges: studying the modern exosystem requires new methods to capture the complex, often invisible influences of digital environments on child development.
By adapting our understanding of the exosystem to include these technological dimensions, we can better comprehend and support child development in the digital age.
Practical Applications
While the exosystem encompasses contexts that do not directly involve the child, it exerts a powerful influence on their development.
This understanding provides parents, educators, and communities with opportunities to leverage these indirect but significant forces to support healthy child development.
Parents
Parents can advocate for family-friendly policies in their workplaces, such as flexible working hours, paid parental leave, and on-site childcare. These changes matter.
These policies can reduce work-family conflict, allowing parents to be more emotionally present and engaged in their children’s lives.
Parents can also actively participate in their children’s education by communicating with teachers, attending school events, and advocating for quality education.
Furthermore, parents can connect with local community organizations that offer resources and support, such as after-school programs, parent support groups, and early childhood intervention services.
Educators
Teachers can strive to understand the social and economic factors affecting their students’ families, recognizing that these exosystem influences can impact a child’s academic performance and well-being.
This understanding can foster empathy and inform tailored support strategies.
Educators can also advocate for school policies that support both children and their families, such as access to mental health services, nutritious school meals, and transportation assistance.
Collaboration with community organizations can also extend the school’s reach, connecting families with essential resources and services.
References
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Ceci, S. J. (1994). Nature-nurture reconceptualised: A bio-ecological model. Psychological Review, 101 (4), 568–586. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.101.4.568
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human development: Research perspectives. Developmental Psychology, 22 (6), 723–742.
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1995). Developmental ecology through space and time: A future perspective. In P. Moen, G. H. Elder, Jr., & K. Lüscher (Eds.), Examining lives in context: Perspectives on the ecology of human development (pp. 619–647). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10176-018
Bronfenbrenner, U. (1999). Environments in developmental perspective: Theoretical and operational models. In S. L. Friedman & T. D. Wachs (Eds.), Measuring environment across the life span: Emerging methods and concepts (pp.3-28). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/10317-001
Guy-Evans, O. (2024, January 17). Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/bronfenbrenner.html
McLeod, S. (2024, January 24). Vygotsky’s Theory Of Cognitive Development. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
Navarro, J. L., & Tudge, J. R. H. (2022). Technologizing Bronfenbrenner: Neo-ecological theory. Current Psychology, 42(22), 19338-19354. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-02738-3
O’Regan, C., Brady, B., & Connolly, C. (2023). Building back better – using an ecological lens to argue for strengthening mesosystemic connections for young people in a post-pandemic world. Child Care in Practice, 29(4), 358–370. https://doi.org/10.1080/13575279.2022.2084364
Rosa, E. M., & Tudge, J. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human development: Its evolution from ecology to bioecology. Journal of family theory & review, 5(4), 243-258. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12022
Vélez-Agosto, N. M., Soto-Crespo, J. G., Vizcarrondo-Oppenheimer, M., Vega-Molina, S., & García Coll, C. (2017). Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory revision: Moving culture from the macro into the micro. Perspectives on psychological science, 12(5), 900-910. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617704397
