8: Contemporary Issues for Children and Families
Issues for Children and Families
Socialization intends to instill developmental skills in children for them to successfully function in their larger target communities. Children are members of several groups and structure within their nested systems. The developmental skills or tasks of a specific society differ from group to group depending on the cultural group the child belongs to. Factors that impact a child’s socialization are ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability or class; skill development is thus dependent on the individual and the societal demand within the Bronfenbrenner's larger macrosystem influence.
Even at a young age, children are impacted by experiences that occur in the larger society. In response to these experiences children’s beliefs, values attitudes will be shaped. How do society issues impact the way children are socialized? How do these societal changes redefine children’s needs and development?
Some of key contemporary experiences and exposures include issues of related discrimination and prejudice and bias in all forms, and larger Bronfenbrenner’s chronosystem changes such as the COVID-19 pandemic has on the socializing agent of media.