1. Introduction
2. Organization of the Course
3. Systemic Approaches to Human Behavior
4. Bioecological Model
5. Contexts
6. Influence
7. Family Life Cycle Model
8. Approach
9. Jay Haley
10. Why look at transitions?
11. Life Events Precipitate Change
12. Two Types of Family Changes
13. Dysfunctional Families
14. Stressors on Family System
15. Six Stages of Predictable Family Changes
16. Thought Questions
17. Timing and Dysfunction in This Systems Model
18. Lesson 1A Assignments

Contexts

Microsystem

The most immediate and earliest influences are the family, along with local neighborhood or community institutions such as the school, religious institutions, and peer groups as well as the specific culture or subculture with which the family identifies.

Note about Culture

This term will appear throughout the course and so a definition is in order. Culture is the shared understandings and way of life of people, including beliefs and practices concerning the nature of humans in different phases of the life span, what children need to be taught to function in society, and how people should leave their lives as adults.

Mesosystem

This is an intermediate level of influences such as social institutions and linkages between two or more microsystems.

Exosystem

This consists of linkages involving social settings that individuals do not experience directly, but can still influence their development.

Example: a child is influenced by how well their parents' day at work went or changes applied to the welfare system that change their parents' ability to be at home and monitor their behavior after school (e.g., work requirements).

Macrosystem

This is the most removed influences such as larger cultural context, international region or global changes.

Bronfenbrenner added the concept of chronosystem - the idea that changes in people and their environments occur in a time frame and unfolds in particular patterns or sequences over a person's life time.

Note: the next model presented has always focused on this element.

Each of us functions in particular microsystems linked through the mesosystem and embedded in the larger contexts of the exosystem and the macrosystem.