handbook of child well-being || ecological perspective on child well-being

Ecological Perspective on ChildWell-Being 46James Garbarino

46.1 Introduction

This chapter offers an ecological perspective on child well-being. How can we best

approach this array of issues? To do so effectively, we need a perspective on human

development that begins with the realization that there are few hard and fast simple

rules about how human beings develop; complexity is the rule rather than the

exception. Rarely, if ever, is there a simple cause–effect relationship that works

the same way with all people in every situation. Rather, we find that the process of

cause and effect depends upon the child as a set of biological and psychological

systems set within the various social, cultural, political, and economic systems that

constitute the context in which developmental phenomena are occurring.

This insight is the essence of an “ecological perspective” on human development

as articulated by scholars such as Urie Bronfenbrenner (1981). It is captured in

these words: If we ask, “does X cause Y?” the best scientific answer is almost

always “it depends.” It depends upon all the constituent elements of child and

context (Garbarino 2008):

• Gender (e.g., the amount of infant babbling predicts childhood IQ in girls but not

in boys (Bronfenbrenner 1981))

• Temperament (e.g., about 10 % of children are born with a temperamental

proneness to becoming “shy,” but this predisposition can be overcome in most

children with strong, supportive, and long-term intervention (Kagan 1997))

• Cognitive competence (e.g., abused children who exhibit a pattern of negative

social cognition were found to be eight times more likely to develop problems

with antisocial aggressive behavior than were abused children who exhibited

positive social cognition (Dodge et al. 1997))

J. Garbarino

Psychology Department, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

A. Ben-Arieh et al. (eds.), Handbook of Child Well-Being,DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-9063-8_140, # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

1365

mailto:[email protected]

• Age (e.g., on average, “unconditional maternal responsiveness” at 3 months of

age predicts “obedience” at 12 months of age, but such unconditional maternal

responsiveness at 9 months of age does not (Maccoby and Martin 1983))

• Family (e.g., while nurse home visiting that began prenatally was effective in

reducing child abuse in first time births to single mothers from 19 % to 4 %

among a high-risk sample, this effect did not occur when there was an abusive

man in the mother’s household (Olds et al. 1997))

• Neighborhood (e.g., the correlation between poverty and infant mortality is

conditioned by neighborhood factors, being “higher that would be predicted”

in some areas and “lower than would be predicted” in others, as a function of the

degree to which prenatal services are accessible (Garbarino and Kostelny 1992))

• Society (e.g., a study comparing the United States and Canada found that the

correlation between low income and child maltreatment was higher in the United

States than in Canada (Garbarino 2008))

• Culture (e.g., native Hawaiians see the goal of child rearing as producing an

interdependent person while most Americans are seeking to create rugged indi-

vidualists, and as a result, Hawaiianmothers place a high value on infants sleeping

with parents and Americans discourage the practice (Garbarino and Ebata 1983))

This ecological perspective is frustrating: we all would prefer a simple “yes

or no” to the question “does X cause Y?” It would make discussions of child

well-being much simpler conceptually and politically. But reality is not obliging on

this score. One important corollary of our ecological perspective is the fact that

generally it is the accumulation of risks and assets in a child’s life that tells the story

about developmental progress, not the presence of absence of any one negative or

positive influence. For example, Sameroff et al. (1987) classic study included eight

risk factors (both parental characteristics – educational level, mental health status,

absence, substance abuse – and family characteristics – economic status, race,

maltreatment, and number of children).

The results indicated that the average IQ scores of children were not jeopar-

dized by the presence of one or two risk factors. Since research indicates that what

matters for resilience is that children reach an “average” level of cognitive

competence (about 100), it is highly significant that children with zero, one, or

two risk factors averaged 119, 116, and 113, respectively. But IQ scores declined

significantly into the dangerous range with the presence of four or more (averag-

ing 90 with four risk factors and 85 with five). In Sameroff’s research, each risk

factor weighed equally in the effect; it was the accumulation of risk factors that

accounted for the differences. The same is true of developmental assets. Standing

against the accumulation of risk are the number of developmental assets in

a child’s life and the components of resilience. Research conducted by the Search

Institute has identified 40 developmental assets – positive characteristics of

family, school, neighborhood, peers, culture, and belief systems. As these assets

accumulate, the likelihood that a child or adolescent will be engaged in antisocial

violence declines – from 61 % for kids with 0–10 assets to 6 % for kids with

31–40, for example. Asset accumulation predicts resilient response to stress and

challenge (Scales and Leffer 2004).

1366 J. Garbarino

For example, if we ask, “does absence of a parent produce long lasting negative

effects?” the answer is, as it always is, “it depends.” That’s always the answer in

general, but once we know what else a particular child is facing – poverty? drug

abuse in a parent? child abuse? racism? too many siblings? We can move closer to

“yes, probably” or “no, probably not.” And one important influence on the devel-

opmental impact of these contingencies is always the temperament of the child.

Each child offers a distinctive emotional package, a temperament. Each child

shows up in the world with a different package of characteristics. Some are more

sensitive; others are less so. Some are very active; some are lethargic. Why are

these differences important? For one thing, they affect how much and in what

direction the world around them will influence how they think and feel about things.

What one child can tolerate, another will experience as highly destructive. What

will be overwhelming to one child will be a minor inconvenience to another.

Knowing a child’s temperament goes a long way toward knowing how vulnerable

that child will be in the world, particularly in extreme situations. Thomas and

Chess’s (1977) classic research on temperament in the United States reported that

while about 70 % of “difficult” babies evidenced serious adjustment problems by

the time they entered elementary school, for “easy” babies the figure was 10 %.

Would this figure be the same for every society? It depends (upon how similar the

average balance of risk and asset factors was in comparison with the United States).

46.2 The Role of Resilience

Most children can live with one major risk factor; few can handle an accumulation

of them. Getting from a generalized “it depends” to a more specific assessment of

the likely fate of any child lies in accounting for all the elements of accumulated risk

factors, developmental assets, and temperament to determine the odds of success or

failure, and it is the foundation for approaching issues of child well-being.

Although it is defined in numerous ways, resilience generally refers to an

individual’s ability to stand up to adverse experiences, to avoid long-term negative

effects, or otherwise to overcome developmental threats. Many of us know a child

whose life is a testament to resilience. The concept of resilience rests on the

research finding that while there is a positive correlation between specific negative

experiences and specific negative outcomes, in most situations, a majority (perhaps

60–80 %) of children will not display that negative outcome. All children have

some capacity to deal with adversity, but some have more than others and are thus

more “resilient,” while others are more “vulnerable” in difficult times. But some

children face relatively easy lives while others face mountains of difficulty with few

allies and resources.

Resilience is not absolute. Virtually every child has a “breaking point” or an

upper limit on “stress absorption capacity.” Kids are “malleable” rather than

“resilient,” in the sense that each threat costs them something – and if the demands

are too heavy, the child may experience a kind of psychological bankruptcy. What

is more, in some environments virtually all children demonstrate negative effects of

46 Ecological Perspective on Child Well-Being 1367

highly stressful and threatening environments. For example, in his Chicago data

psychologist Patrick Tolan (1996) reports that none of the minority, adolescent

males facing the combination of highly dangerous and threatening low-income

neighborhoods coupled with low-resource/high-stress families was resilient at age

15 when measured by continuing for a 2-year period as neither being more than one

grade level behind in school nor having sufficient mental health problems so as to

warrant professional intervention.

What is more, resilience in gross terms may obscure real costs to the individual.

Some children manage to avoid succumbing to the risk of social failure as defined

by poverty and criminality but nonetheless experiences real harm in the form of

diminished capacity for successful intimate relationships. Even apparent social

success – performing well in the job market, avoiding criminal activity, and

creating a family – may obscure some of the costs of being resilient in

a socially toxic environment such as if faced by millions of children. The inner

lives of these children may be fraught with emotional damage – to self-esteem

and intimacy, for example. Though resilient in social terms, these kids may be

severely wounded souls.

46.3 The Organism at the Heart of the Social Ecology

At the heart of the social ecology is the child as an organism that is developing, that

has psychological systems, neurological systems, and biological systems. This

provides some parameters on how social environments can function to enhance

child well-being. For example, one of the few universals that seems to exist cross

culturally, around the world is that children thrive in conditions of parental accep-

tance, and wither in conditions of parental rejection. Stimulated by the work of

Rohner et al. (2005), anthropologists and psychologists working around the world

have found that across cultures, simply knowing the level of parental acceptance of

children can account for 25 % of the variation in outcomes for children. Particular

outcomes studied have to do with well-being, pro-social behavior, psychological

thriving, and resilience.

There may be some universal forces at work, but things always work in context.

This is true even of rejection. A recent study conducted in Brazil found levels of

rejection among poor families at a level approximately half that found among poor

American families. This may flow from the nature of poverty in the two societies

(more “structural” in Brazil, and more “personal” in the United States in the sense

that economic opportunity is greater in the United States and thus those who are

poor are more likely to be so as a function of issues that limit their effectiveness in

competing in the economic system – such as educational success). In Brazil,

where poverty is to a larger degree imposed by the structures of society, there are

many individuals who would be competent enough to succeed if there were

more economic opportunity but who are consigned to poverty by the lack of it

(Garbarino 2008).

1368 J. Garbarino

46.4 A Systems Approach to Human Ecology

Three specific principles underlie the ecology of human development

(Bronfenbrenner 1981). First, children are recognized as active participants who

influence, and are influenced by, the direct and indirect actions of others and

surrounding environmental systems. These reciprocal transactions create subjec-

tive, meaningful representation of experiences for children. Second, children, as

well as environments, adapt and respond accordingly to changes over time. Finally,

a series of interrelated systems – the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystems –

directly and indirectly influence development. These structures merge to make up

the child’s human ecology.

Microsystems are immediate environments in which a child is influenced by

place, time, roles, and activities. This system has the most direct influence on

development (Bronfenbrenner 1981). Here, a child engages in activities,

which should become more complicated and meaningful with time. A reciprocal

relationship between the child and environment exists, meaning that not only does

the child influence surrounding environments but also environments influence the

biological and social outcomes of the child. In addition, across time, a child

develops cognitive, social, emotional, psychological, and behavioral competence,

which will enable him to assume more complicated social roles. And of course, by

engaging with others a child will form relationships with caregivers and

other family members. Each of these experiences will influence perception of

surrounding environments and future interactions.

The mesosystem – the relationship between two or more settings in which a child

is directly involved – also influences development (Bronfenbrenner 1981). A few

examples of mesosystem structures include relationships between a child’s home

and school, home and welfare and health-care institutions, and home and places of

faith. Similar to the microsystem, the extent to which a child is influenced by

mesosystem environments depends in part upon the strength of reciprocal trans-

actions, communication, and knowledge between settings. For example, the likeli-

hood that a child will be maltreated is in part a function of the degree to which

parents receive pro-social social support from surrounding environments to include

community levels resources and relationships. Similarly, it is widely known that

social workers, as well as other service agencies, must provide parents with

a feeling that the community they live in is willingness to communicate and

encourage participation (Bronfenbrenner 1981).

Many of the same principles (e.g., reciprocal relations, knowledge, and commu-

nications between settings) that apply to the mesosystem also apply to the

exosystem (Bronfenbrenner 1981). However, in contrast to the micro- and

mesosystems, children typically have no direct involvement or influence on deci-

sions made in the exosystem. Nevertheless, they are directly and indirectly affected

by decisions, legislation, and tenets set forth by policy makers, judges, and bureau-

cratic administrators at multiple levels of government (local, city, state, and

national levels) and private organizations.


The macrosystem is a blueprint of how a society as a whole decides how it will

live and what and who it will value (Bronfenbrenner 1981). Within the

macrosystem lie the micro-, meso-, and exosystems, each of which is influenced

by the morals and values of a society. It is here where state and federal lawmakers,

judges, and international governmental bodies – such as the United Nations –

influence judicial decisions, legislation, and policies.

Once we lay out the interaction of the systems that represent the ecological

perspective, it gives us a framework within which to look at specific issues of child

well-being. To start, there is the microsystem of the family. It is possible to detect

changes in the composition, the constitution, and the configuration of the families

over time as microsystem issues. Divorce, early marriage, late marriage, all these

issues are very commonly addressed in child welfare can be put within the ecolog-

ical perspective as microsystem issue.

Mesosytems are the systematic connections between microsystems, connections

that reflect more than simply a child’s participation in two microsystems. There is,

for example, the school–home mesosystem that comes from the child being in both

places, but is more than this. It lies in the fact that if parents visit the school, it

establishes the home–school mesosytem just as if the teacher visits the home it

likewise creates the school–home mesosystem. One of the ways of analyzing the

shifting configuration of society and communities is to track the rise and fall of

these mesosytems, church-and-home, church-and-school, government-and-home,

government-and-school, and workplace-and-home. In some situations, work

becomes the microsystem of the child because the child actually participates

there, but in other situations, the microsystem of work is completely disconnected

from the child. Here is a conceptual tool that we can use to see how rich and knitted

together the community is. In general, child well-being issues at the mesosystem

level focus on the degree to which children experience mutual regard across

microsystems (as when school and home are congruent in valuing the values of

the school and the home).

Exosystem are the social systems that the child does not participate in directly,

but which have effects on the child’s life. If the child has no physical connection to

the parents’ place of work, that is an exosystem because what goes on there still has

an effect on the child’s life. Some of the important exosystems are agencies,

government bodies, foundations, other places where decisions are made that affect

child welfare, but the child does not participate directly. This is a principal domain

of child well-being, the nature of these exosytems and how they seek to enhance the

quality of the child’s experience and development, principally by how well they

support parents and teachers (and others who have direct contact with children in

microsystems).

Finally, there are the macrosystems, the big social and institutional blueprints of

the society: capitalism, communism, Catholicism, Hinduism, industrialization, and

urbanization, all of these big, social cultural forces. And here, almost paradoxically,

although they are far away from the child, they may actually come back close to the

child because they are manifested and embedded in consciousness – consciousness

of parents, consciousness of children, consciousness of professionals, and

1370 J. Garbarino

consciousness of policy makers. For example, in some societies, there is a very

strong gender bias. In India, there might be a boy preference, and this can be played

out in a discriminatory policy about education. It might be played out in the

discriminatory policy about selective abortion, where girls are aborted rather than

boys because of preference for boys. This has been observed in China as well.

46.5 An Example: Democracy and Children from an EcologicalPerspective

One of the most important implications of an ecological perspective on child

development is its focus on the dynamics among the various systems – organismic,

micro-, meso-, exo-, and macrosystem. As an illustration, consider the question,

“What does ‘living in a democracy’ mean for kids?” (Garbarino 2011). This

question rises to the surface of our consciousness in the wake watching the impulse

for democracy literally explode in the past year in North Africa and the Middle

East, and over the last several decades around the world. It is an issue that taps

into many important social and intellectual issues. The classic work by political

scientists Almond and Verba (1963) referred to these macrosystem issues as

“the civic culture,” an examination of the habits of the mind and heart that define

human relationships in democratic societies.

The term “pluralistic” refers to a setting in which social agents and entities

represent different expectations, sanctions, and rewards for members of the society

but share an underlying commitment to the validity of divergent views and the

necessity of nonviolent structures and processes to resolve conflict. In pluralistic

societies differences generate intergroup conflict, which is regulated by a set of

ground rules (such as a constitution and a common commitment to the rule of law

despite individual interest in particular rulings and enforcement). This is the

essence of democracy. A monolithic setting, in contrast, is one in which all social

agents and entities are organized around loyalty to a single set of principles

and social organizations, and divergence from these values, norms, and structures

is treated as treason. In political terms, such societies are best understood as

“authoritarian” or “totalitarian.” Conversely, an anomic society is one in which

there is almost no integration; social agents and entities are either absent or

represent a multiplicity of profoundly divergent forces without any normative or

institutional coherence. In political terms, such societies are often referred to as

“failed states.”

When it is working well, democracy implies a set of social relationships infused

with a public discourse of respect for diversity in the context of consensus about the

importance of political commitments to harmonize self-interest and the legitimate

interests of others (Garbarino and Bronfenbrenner 1976). These conditions are both

the cause and effect of democracy. That is, it is difficult to create and maintain

political democracy in the absence of pluralism embedded in the institutions

of school, community, family, and religion. By the same token, when political

democracy is in place, it tends to infuse the panorama of social relationships with


encouragement for pluralism. This is the essence of what Bronfenbrenner

deemed “macrosystems.” As such, it is an important dimension of child well-being.

Children and youth develop the habits of the mind and heart of democratic

pluralism, and thus become committed participants in the civic culture are a result

of their encounters with social and political realities as mediated by adults and peers.

The Jesuit educational motto “Give me a boy for his first 7 years and he is mine for

life” has a sound foundation in child development research. But it is incomplete,

however, for the next two 7-year periods are critical for political socialization. One

example of this line of influence is to be found in the work of the Search Institute

noted earlier, specifically on the role of 40 “developmental assets” in positive youth

development. Among many other issues, the Search Institute data address the link

between being rich in developmental assets and “valuing diversity,” operationalized

by asking, “How important is the following to you in your life? Getting to

know people who are of a different race than I am.” Overall, the more assets a

youth reports, the more likely he or she is to agree with the diversity item, from a low

point of 36 % for kids with 0–10 assets to a high of 88 % among kids with 31–40.

There is more to it than simply the kinds of socialization experiences tapped by

the 40 Developmental Assets (see www.search-institute.org for a complete list).

There are the social and political forces at work in the adult society in which these

developmental assets are forming and kids are experiencing them. Youth serve as

a kind of “social weathervane”: they mirror and internalize what is going on in

their society, particularly with respect to issues of authority and norms of civic

participation. Beyond the issue of valuing diversity as a foundation for pluralism is

the role of authority in the lives of kids as the make the transition from childhood to

adolescence.

The underlying hypothesis is that there is resonance between the way kids relate

to authority and the way in which authority is organized in the lives of adults in their

society. Presumably all the various manifestations of democratic culture infuse the

life experience of kids – how open the mass media are to presenting diverse

viewpoints and communicating respect across political lines; how well the political

process works to invoke trust that dissent and disagreement with political leaders

will be accepted as legitimate; how free educators feel both to express views that

diverge from political orthodoxy and to allow students to do so as well; in short,

how well adult society does in communicating democratic civic culture to kids. In

this spirit, we can examine the following analysis as a case study of this link

between the degree to which adult society manifests democratic pluralism

and how kids making the transition from childhood to adolescence balance and

incorporate adult- versus peer-oriented moral judgments.

This analysis is based upon a measure of “democracy” developed in the 1970s by

Vincent (1971) accounting for about 15 % of the variations among nation states.

It includes items such as “effective constitutional limits,” “freedom of group

opposition,” “free press,” “limited interest articulation by institutional groups,”

and “police and military politically neutral.” The moral judgment data derive

from a series of “moral dilemma” studies utilizing the “Moral Dilemma Test,”

developed by Bronfenbrenner (1961) and used widely during the period 1965

1372 J. Garbarino

http://www.search-institute.org

until 1979, thus paralleling the political data employed by Vincent in his analysis.

These moral dilemma studies pose problematic situations with choices that reflect

adult or peer orientation; resolution of the problem requires alignment with one side

or the other. For example, a child is told he/she finds the answers to an upcoming

math exam in a wastebasket in school and must either do what his/her peers want

(share the results with them) or what his/her parents would want (return the answer

sheet to the teacher). The procedure generates a score reflecting choices on a series

of five dilemmas – with total scores ranging between �25 and +25.

Figure 46.1 is a vehicle for examining the relationship between the way kids

approach social authority (peer- vs. adult-oriented judgments) in relation to the way

the adult society around them does so (via Vincent’s Democracy index) in the 17

nations for which both measures are available.

Democratic (pluralistic) nations show a much more balanced pattern of peer–

adult choice among 12-year-olds in matters of moral loyalty than do the totalitarian

(i.e., non-pluralistic) nations, whether they be communist or non-communist

regimes. The average moral dilemma scores for 12-year-olds in the totalitarian

nations is 10.28, while for the pluralistic nations, it is 2.20. Of course, there are

“cultural” variations in addition to the variations attributable to the pluralism score

(e.g., Canada and Israel have almost identical pluralism scores, but significantly

different moral dilemma scores, both located within the democratic cluster).

There are developmental issues embedded in the moral dilemma data as well. The

data come from the responses by 12-year-old boys and girls. This may be significant

because age 12 (with the onset of puberty in many cases) is generally the beginning of

the peer group’s challenge to adult authority – if there is to be one. This is manifest

in the fact that in one of the countries (Switzerland), data were collected not for

12-year-olds as was the norm for this protocol, but only for 13-year-olds. The moral

dilemma scores for Swiss kids were the only negative value obtained in any country

(�2.09, indicating a balance favoring peers over adults). As an expansion of this

point, when the data for Swedish kids are analyzed separately as they age from 11 to

14, their moral dilemma scores move in the direction of peers: 6.68 for 11-year-olds,

2.33 for 12-year-olds, �0.57 for 13-year-olds, and �3.72 for 14-year-olds.

This analysis illustrates an ecological perspective that can be brought to bear

in understanding issues of child well-being because it incorporates the various

elements of that ecological perspective and reveals how developmental pathways

arise in the context of social, cultural, and psychological forces. Cultural forces that

direct and infuse institutions may seem at first glance to be far away from child

development, but may actually be close to children because they become part of

consciousness.

46.6 Applying the Ecological Perspective to the Human Rightsof Children

This perspective is useful in addressing a wide range of child well-being issues. For

example, gender issues about work are common.Who can work?Who gets paid more?


Who gets paid less? When do children start to work? If there is a choice between going

to school and going to work, does gender determine which child goes to school, which

child stays home? These macrosystem issues of culture influence the exosystems,

influence the microsystems, and actually influence the individual children and their

individual parents and teachers.

With this analysis of the ecological perspective as a conceptual introduction,

we may proceed to consider how the concept of child well-being can be set within

an ecological perspective. We start with a moral imperative: the human rights

Pluralism Score

+ 2.00

United StatesWest German

Switzerland NetherlandsSweden Japan

+1.00

Canada

0

United Kingdom

Israel New Zealand

South Korea

−1.00 Nigeria

BrazilUSSR

Czechoslovakia Hungary

Poland

−2.00

+15.00+5.00− 5.00 0.00 +10.00

Moral Dilemma Score

Fig. 46.1 Relation of pluralism scores to moral dilemma scores for 17 nations

1374 J. Garbarino

of children. As State parties to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,

societies have committed themselves to the priorities and values embedded in

that document (and even the principal “rogue” nation on this score, the

United States, has felt compelled to consider these core values even without

having ratified the Convention – as in the US Supreme Court decision

defining the execution of minors to be in conflict with the global consensus on

this point).

Central to any society’s obligation is a commitment to give priority to the needs

of children for nurturing, protective, and supportive relationships. As Article 3 of

the UN Convention puts it, “Those responsible for children must make the best

interests of the child a primary consideration.”

How do we set these human rights of children issues within an ecological

context? What are the human rights of children with respect to the nurturing

and supporting relationships? The answer, of course is “it depends.” It depends

upon the particular conditions of the society in which the UN Convention on

the Rights of the Child is being implemented. For example, in wealthy,

well-functioning economies, the key issue may be the right of children of

working-class parents to benefit from day care services (Article 18). Or, if

conditions cultural and social conditions cause the flourishing of child trafficking

and exploitation of children by nonparental adults in the sex trade, the key may

be policies and procedures to prevent illicit transfer of children (Article 11).

In countries with very low levels of poverty and high levels of economic adequacy,

the focus may be on the rights to expression (Articles 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17)

and protection from child maltreatment in the home (Articles 19, 22, 32, 33,

and 37). For countries facing a large influx of immigrants or refugees, the

most pressing children’s rights issues may be those of identity (Article 7 and 8).

Which rights are the biggest issue? It depends. But the UN Convention is clear

that the human rights of children revolve around protecting their dignity by

protecting them from maltreatment and from the structural violence of poverty

and oppression.

In societies with high levels of poverty, the most pressing commitment is usually

the right to a healthy childhood uncorrelated with family income. Put another way, it

is a commitment of State and private resources to ensure that the care young children

receive should not depend upon their parents’ economic success (Article 24).

In most societies, if the national economy is allowed to function without humane

guidance, families with young children are more likely to be poor that other

segments of the population. Whether this occurs or not is matter of public policy

(Article 27). Public intervention (and to some degree, the actions of

nongovernmental organizations) can weaken the link between being a young child

and being poor. A commitment to doing so is inherent in the act of ratifying the UN

Convention on the Rights of the Child.

It is a fundamental matter of public policy – and a matter of human rights – that

vulnerable categories of the population be protected from the “natural” workings of

the economic system. Such a policy can succeed. For example, in the United States,

prior to the 1960s, the poverty rate for the elderly exceeded that of the rate for


young children. But a massive social intervention changed this, and the elderly have

consistently had a lower poverty rate than families with young children for the last

four decades.

The principal policy concern of those who would enhance the development of

young children is the degree to which poverty is allowed to affect the status

and prospects of infants and young children by undermining the capacity and

motivation of adults in their lives to enter into stable relationships of the heart

with them. To the degree that poverty fractures families, distracts parents, results in

substandard out of family care, and devalues children in the community, it becomes

a social toxin.

46.7 Poverty as a Primary Threat to Child Well-Being

What does it mean to be poor? In one sense, this question is easy to answer:

government agencies and nongovernmental organizations around the world com-

pute numerical definitions that set cut offs. Globally, the focus is on the “poverty”

represented by families existing on US $2 per day (or US $730 dollars a year) and

“extreme poverty” represented by those families living on US $1 per day (US $365

per year). There are a bit more than two billion children in the world. Half live in

poverty of this sort.

For a child in a society that is not committed to child protection in its broadest

sense, being poor means being at statistical risk. Poverty early in life is

a special threat to development, because at the most basic level if unchecked, it

can compromise a child’s biological and psychological systems. Research shows

that unless there is intensive and massive intervention designed to protect them

from the “natural” consequences of poverty, poor children live in the kinds of

environments that generate multiple threats to development as academic failure,

maltreatment, and learning disabilities.

What is this intensive and massive intervention? It takes the form of nutrition

programs the feed children independent of parental income (e.g., providing break-

fast and lunch to students at preschool, nursery, and elementary school programs),

maternal–infant care programs that prevent dangerous prenatal conditions and that

detect and treat dangerous medical conditions during infancy if they cannot be

prevented, high quality child care for children of working parents at low or no cost

to poor families, literacy promotion programs that demonstrate to children that

literacy is valued in the society and in their family, and other elements of a system

of child care that is in fact caring.

Around the world, according to the United Nations (World Bank 2008), some

30,000 children die each day due to conditions associated with or directly resulting

from poverty. That is 210,000 per week and 11 million per year. They die because

they lack access to basic sanitation and health care, lack adequate food, and

experience other toxic factors that can be linked to poverty.

That is one clear meaning of being poor in any society that allows the state of

children to be highly correlated with the economic status of that child’s family

1376 J. Garbarino

(particularly if it is not a wealthy society to start with). If society allows it, being

poor exposes children to more physical toxicity as well. Low-income populations

are more likely to be exposed to chemical and radioactive waste and polluted air

and water. But these toxic factors can be “unlinked” through social policies and

programs that assert and support the human rights of children, in short, through

policies and programs that support child care in its broadest sense.

How does that “unlinking” happen? In Canada, it has meant providing a real

safety net of social and health services for poor children (policies and programs

often presented as human rights issues). As a result, for example, when we compare

the results of research in Canada assessing the strength of the link between poverty

and child abuse with similar research from the United States (where the safety net is

not viewed as a human right, and thus access to basic health care is always

conditional), we find the link is stronger in the United States than in Canada

(Clement and Bouchard 2005). In statistical terms, this means the correlation

between the demographic and economic indicators of poverty and rates of child

maltreatment is higher in the US than it is in Canada (or at least it was when the

research was done in the 1980s and 1990s) (Garbarino 2008).

In Brazil, one form the effort to unlink poverty from toxic conditions for children

has taken is the government campaign called “Zero Hunger.” Of course, from the

perspective of the basic human rights of children, access to three meals a day should

be part of a larger commitment to the proposition that access to basic education and

essential health care should not be dictated by a child’s parents’ income.

The starting point for any discussion of the well-being care of children is always

a focus on their human rights. As noted before, the relative priority of these issues

depends upon the ecological “niche” in which a child is born. Thus, for families

with adequate incomes, the most salient issues may be the child’s right to have

access to parents (translated into day care, parental leave, and custody policies and

practices). For countries experiencing particularly severe problems with child

trafficking and sexual exploitation, it may take the form of efforts to empower

police and child protection authorities to assume custody of children detached from

their parents and seek reunification. For countries with significant ethnic and/or

racial minorities who have experienced historical oppression, it may take the form

of compensatory early education programs (like Head Start in the United States)

designed to redress accumulated educational deficits.

But in the context of societies with high levels of poverty, these core children’s

human rights issues are manifest as the question of whether or not a society will

mobilize its resources to shield children from the economic consequences of their

parent’s economic success or failure. The next step is to see how extreme poverty is

fundamentally a human rights issue and how approaching it from that perspective

is the key to eradicating poverty and thus nurturing young children.

Two world-renowned economists (Jeffrey Sachs of the Earth Institute’s

Millenium Villages Project and Grameen Bank’s Muhammad Yunus) seek to

eradicate poverty through a massive global intervention that goes beyond the

traditional mix of the infrastructure to support economic activity and job creation

and capital accumulation. What is the essence of this intervention? It is to


implement a basic human rights campaign as a means for stimulating economic

growth among those in extreme poverty – the one billion people worldwide (among

them the 40 million Brazilians) who live on $1.00 per day.

Although not explicitly conceived and promoted as a human rights campaign,

these efforts are best thought in these terms. The key is that Sachs and Yunus do not

focus on “abstract” human rights – the rights to free expression, to political

independence, to legal due process, and so on. Rather, they focus on the human

rights issues that are paramount in the context of extreme poverty – the concrete

basic human rights to be free from hunger, to have drinkable water, to be free from

debilitating disease – and while he is at it, to help them have sufficient credit

resources to have access to some small means of production (like more productive

seeds and fertilizer for impoverished farmers and tools for village women workers).

Sachs and Yunus advocate for meeting these human rights challenges not as an end

unto itself, but as a means to promote economic development that will eradicate

poverty.

In his book The End of Poverty, Jeffery Sachs shows how this approach flows

from an analysis of why people are extremely poor, namely, that they are too sick,

weak, and hungry to be very productive. It makes sense. And it makes particular

sense that in this state, parental ability to meet the developmental needs of children

tends to be quite limited. Basic economic development of the sort envisioned by

Sachs and Yunus can thus benefit infants and young children both directly

(by increasing their nutritional intake and access to basic care) and indirectly

(by improving the role models presented to children by their parents).

But will these efforts succeed in eradicating poverty and thus improving the

development of infants and young children? Probably not. Why? Because there are

so many political leaders who have self-interested agendas, because there are so

many sources of violent conflict that can and will disrupt efforts to promote the

basic human rights to which the program is directed, because the developmentally

hobbling traditions of many local cultures in many areas of extreme poverty

(like patriarchal-based oppression of girls and women) will get in the way, because

issues of global warming and climate change will undermine the effectiveness of

many local community interventions, and finally, because too many people are too

self-involved and preoccupied to support the effort in the long run. In short, the

long-term threats to child well-being posed by social toxicity in the human ecology

are substantial and have proved themselves to be largely intractable.

Nonetheless, despite the built-in impediments to Grameen Bank, the

Millenium Villages Project, and other efforts that adopt the same model, Yunus

and Sachs are correct in their analysis and their strategy, and they will help protect

many children from poverty and increase child well-being. What is more, these

intervention and any others that parallel them are the only efforts that will do

anything substantial to reduce the fundamental violence of human rights that is

extreme poverty. Traditional capital-intensive infrastructure projects are of only

limited value when they do not accompany the microenterprise and health pro-

grams envision by Yunus and Sachs. But there is more to this than simply

increasing economic assets for the very poor, particularly if our concern is the

1378 J. Garbarino

welfare and development of children. This takes us to the psychology of poverty

and its implications for child development from an ecological perspective.

Being poor is about being left out of what your society tells people they could

expect if there were included. This is relative poverty. At root, it is a social issue, an

issue captured in a question a child asked at the conclusion of the interview being

conducted with him as part of a psychological assessment. He asked, “when you

were growing up were you poor or regular?” (Garbarino 2008).

That is it precisely: are you poor or regular. Being poor means being negatively

different; it means not meeting the basic standards set by your society. It is not so

much a matter of what you have as of what you do not have compared to what your

peers have. It means being ashamed of who you are – and that in and of itself can be

an instigator of violence toward self and others as well as a host of other negative

developmental trajectories. All of this has direct implications for child well-being.

When Gandhi said that poverty is the worst form of violence he was on the mark.

When Sachs and Yunus say that only by mobilizing an intervention to guarantee the

basic human rights that extreme poverty violates can there be economic peace they

also exactly correct. They are correct in part because of a global trend toward

economic inequality which reduces the impact of any general increase in wealth.

46.8 Poverty in Context: The Role of Economic Inequality

Globally, the data indicate growing economic inequality among societies as

modernization has moved forward. Wealth is possible in dramatically different

ways since the advent of technologically driven modern economic systems, and an

analysis of long-term trends presented in the 1999 Human Development Reports

from the United Nations Development Program reveals that the gap between rich

and poor countries (expressed as the ratio of wealth in the richest to wealth in the

poorest) has grown since the early 1800s:

• 3 to 1 in 1820

• 11 to 1 in 1913

• 35 to 1 in 1950

• 44 to 1 in 1973

• 72 to 1 in 1992

There are several approaches to measuring this economic inequality. The

Luxembourg Income Study compared the ratio of incomes for the top 10 % of the

population with that of the bottom 10 % among 31 countries. These comparisons

were made after taxes and income transfers are taken into account (because

a society’s economy may generate inequality but its political system can seek to

reduce that inequality by income redistribution programs that supplement the

incomes of the poor directly and/or fund public services like education, health

care, and recreation so that family income becomes less of a factor in the quality of

life for children). Using this approach, the study revealed that among industrialized

“rich” countries, the United States had the worst ratio – about six to one – while

Sweden had the best – about two to one (with Canada at four to one and no country


other than the United States above four to one). This is one study, but it is consistent

with global analyses of economic inequality such as those based upon the Gini Index.

The Gini Index is perhaps the best statistical measure of economic inequality

because it compares a country’s divergence from complete income inequality

(i.e., if each 10 % of the population receives 10 % of the income, the Gini score

would be zero, and if the top 10 % controlled all the income, it would be nearly

100). Scandinavian countries usually report the lowest Gini Indices – for example,

Denmark’s score of 24 – and most industrialized nations have scores of about 30

(the United States is at 41 and has increased 20 % in recent decades). The

worst countries (i.e., the countries with the most inequality) have scores of about

70 (e.g., Namibia’s score of 71).

46.9 Little Matters of Life and Death: Child Survival

Infant mortality is one of the best simple indicators of the material quality of life in

any society, the answer to the question, “how many babies die in the first year of

life?” There are many amplifications of this number of course, for example, the

child mortality rate after age one and before age five, the rate of environmentally

induced mental retardation, and the growth and height curves of the children. But

infant mortality is a good measure in part because it represents and is correlated

with a host of variables linked to the degree to which children are well cared for. It

is a good starting point in efforts to assess child well-being.

The underlying reality of the matter is that if the basic human rights to physical

and social care institutions (maternal–infant clinics, day care centers, churches,

local governments, schools, basic economic resources) are functioning well, par-

ents will care for children, and children will survive. And if they survive – and not

seriously malnourished, drastically neglected, or chronically sick – children will

smile. It is good to be alive, even if your playground is a garbage dump, even if your

toys are pieces of junk, even if your food is boring and tasteless. Thus, if the

important adults in the lives of infants and children are present and not psycholog-

ically or physically incapacitated because of economic stress or oppression – in

other words so long as there in an intact structure of adult support that enables

parents to care for children – children can take advantage of subsequent educational

opportunities presented to them by schools and other educational influences in the

community and the society (e.g., educational television and community education

campaigns). Whether or not these “subsequent educational opportunities” are in

fact provided to children and adolescents is another matter of policy and practice

(one beyond the scope of the present analysis).

Of course, if the conditions of life conspire against parents – particularlymothers –

to the degree that they become depressed and apathetic the quality of care experience

by infants and young children deteriorates. Research from many societies reveals

that the quality of care for infants and young children tends to decline when mothers

are depressed and thus become “psychologically unavailable.” Thus, one measure of

the degree to which a society “cares” for its children zero to three is the degree to

1380 J. Garbarino

which it supports mothers – through financial subsidies like “child allowances,”

through social arrangements that offer respite care and other child care support

services, and through mental health interventions to prevent or reduce depression.

All of these interventions serve to ensure the survival of infants.

Usually expressed as the number of infants per 1,000 live births who die before

their first birthday, the infant mortality rate says a great deal about how well

communities are doing in meeting basic human needs, particularly health and

nutritional needs. Why? Because without unlinking interventions, it is correlated

with poverty and the availability of medical technology.

So it is that infant mortality directly reflects the political priorities of a society.

Societies with equal resources sometimes have very different rates of infant

mortality – as is true of neighborhoods and communities within societies. On the

whole, the number of babies who die reflects a society’s willingness and ability

to marshal its resources on behalf of its next generation. A highly motivated

community can lower infant mortality significantly without fundamentally altering

the socioeconomic order by providing good maternal/infant care, prenatally and

postnatally. Being born to a poor family need not be a death sentence for a baby.

In the United States, for example, between 1920 and 1980, infant mortality

decreased from about 80 per 1,000 to about 12 per 1,000 (the figure was double that

for non-Whites) due mainly to improved public health measures and provision of

maternal–infant care. By 2003, it was under 10 per 1,000. The world leaders on this

score post figures of about 4 per 1,000, but anything 10 and under is good by

international standards (Garbarino 2008).

But infant mortality goes up in times of deteriorating social and economic

conditions for families, particularly families otherwise at risk, such as unmarried

teenagers and large, low-income households. In the United States, as the recession

of the early 1980s deepened, infant mortality rates began to creep up in the areas

hardest hit by economic disintegration. It was not from lack of wealth in the society

as a whole during this period that this occurred, but rather from the way wealth was

accumulated and distributed.

This paralleled a global pattern. During the period 1980–1998 as the global

economy flourished, progress in reducing infant mortality around the world slowed

considerably when compared with the previous two decades, when more societies

were committed to social progress rather than simply fitting into the emerging

global economy.

In Brazil, for example, the boom years of the 1960s and 1970s resulted in large

increases in GNP, but did not produce dramatic improvements in the infant mor-

tality rate commensurate with the growing total wealth of the society (Garbarino

2008). In the mid-1980s, the officially reported rate was about 80 per 1,000 for the

richest, most developed of Brazil’s states such as Rio de Janeiro, and reached 130

per 1,000 in the poorer states such as Bahia. At the same time, there was evidence of

deteriorating social and economic conditions as more and more families crossed the

line from being poor to being impoverished. The result was increased infant

mortality, and (among those infants who did survive these harsh conditions) more

and more children and youth subsequently becoming “orphans with living parents.”


All this can change when national policy is guided by a focus on the protecting the

human rights of children as laid out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Such a child well-being policy that focuses upon protecting the human rights of

young children finds support in systematic research in the United States and

elsewhere, most notably in the work of David Olds and his colleagues over the

last 30 years to develop, perfect, implement, and evaluate the “nurse home visitor

model.” Olds and his team have demonstrated the effectiveness and cost–benefit

ratios that come with providing nurses who visit high-risk families, starting prena-

tally with the first pregnancy and continuing for the first 2 years of the child’s life.

These efforts have dramatically reduced child maltreatment and maternal and

infant health concerns in the short run, and various social problems (e.g., delin-

quency, teenage pregnancy, and welfare dependency) in the long run. No zero to

three programs can immunize children against later social threats and risk factors,

but such efforts can ensure that the child has the maximum capacity to profit from

later developmental opportunities and demonstrate resilience in the face of adver-

sity. However, simply accomplishing this much is a major improvement in the life

any society with poor and at-risk families, and reflects a conscious policy of setting

a high priority on investments that nurture and support infants and young children

by nurturing and supporting the adults who care for them.

46.10 Acceptance–Rejection as a Macrosystem Issue AffectingChild Well-Being

Perhaps one of the important elements of this investment is represented by the

process by which national leadership can validate the self-worth of marginal poor

parents. Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes (1993) conducted an important

study of poor marginalized Brazilian parents. In her study, she found that these

parents were so demoralized and hopeless in their “world view,” that they too

readily gave up on young children when the children became ill – and in so doing

hastened the death of the sick child.

One of the ways that public policy makers and political leaders can improve the

care of children zero to three is to inspire hope and a feeling of validation in parents

and other adults who care for poor children – teachers, nurses, pediatricians, child

welfare workers, and others whose job it is to protect and promote the development

of young children. Perhaps an example from the United States will make clear this

possibility.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s large numbers of American workers

were unemployed because of the economic crisis and felt despair, fear, and anger

that through no fault of their own they were being impoverished. Debate continues

among historians and economists about the exact causes of the Depression and the

strategies and tactics used to deal with it by the national government and other

public policy entities. What does seem clear is that the actions of President Franklin

Roosevelt, a Democrat elected to lead the nation in 1932, played an important role

in inspiring demoralized unemployed workers, who prior to his arrival on the

1382 J. Garbarino

national scene felt betrayed and abandoned by the national political leadership and

business leaders who were their allies. The renowned American writer John Updike

(2007) was a child during the 1930s and recalls observing his own unemployed

father’s desolation, and his reaction to the policies and words of President

Roosevelt:

My father had been reared a Republican, but he switched parties to vote for Roosevelt and

never switched back. His memory of being abandoned by society and big business never

left him and, for all his paternal kindness and humorousness, communicated itself to me,

along with his preference for the political party that offered ‘the forgotten man’ the better

break. Roosevelt made such people feel less alone. The impression of recovery—the

impression that a President was bending the old rules and, drawing upon his own courage

and flamboyance in adversity and illness, stirring things up on behalf of the down-and-

out—mattered more than any miscalculations in the moot mathematics of economics.

46.11 Summary

Specific prevention and intervention programs can make concrete improvements in

the well-being of children, but only if parents are motivated to enroll their children

and demonstrate support for the goals and objectives of the program. One important

element in the success of these early intervention programs is the degree to which

the larger human ecology supports and nurtures them, and communicates a sense of

their importance to parents, grandparents, and other adults in the community.

A public national commitment to protecting the human rights of the poor and

their children in the spirit of Franklin Roosevelt contributes to a culture of affirma-

tion that enhances the motivation of at-risk parents to participate in and support

developmentally enhancing programs for their children. Will this be enough? As

always, the answer is as it always is from an ecological perspective, “it depends.”

But if the commitment to support relationships of the heart for young children is

fulfilled, the future holds great promise of human improvement.

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