Question

The ecological model asserts that individuals develop and grow within a number of reciprocal systems. These systems include the micro-system, meso-system, exo-system, macro-system, and chronosystem, with the individual at the center.

The ecological model is very helpful in understanding at-risk families and youth and guiding advocacy efforts. Choose one person from a book or movie. Explain the problems this person is facing that may put him/her at-risk. Discuss, in depth and in detail, how each system in the ecological model impacts your client. What role could a child and family advocate play in this person’s life? Be specific with your answers and give examples.

Answer 1

It could be challenging to find one single character from the movie or the book which explains the roles of all the systems. However, we will still try looking at the character of Anne Frank during the Holocaust.

The situations were not conducive for Anne Frank's and her family's survival. Still, she not only survived but also later published her diary which we know as the diary of Anne Frank today which can be helpful in understanding how different ecological systems played a role in her life.

We see how her family and her closest friends have been the source of various emotions in her life and kept her living and feeling even when her survival for threatened.

We also see how the German family tried to go out of the way to help Anne Frank and her family survive. Also, the conditions outside the secret annexe spoke about the impact ecosystem, macro system and choronosystem had on Anne Frank and unfortunately she had to die an early death which could have averted if she was in some other Macro or Chronic system.

Every system is important in shaping up human personality:

While Micro system talks about upbringing of the child and how the child will grow as an individual etc. The kind of parenting the child gets, the kind of peers the child gets will make him loving, caring, sensitive, insensitive, soft or bullying.

The kind of treatment a child's family gives to his significant others and those related to his parents, the child learns to behave in a particular way in the society.

The kind of treatment the child receives at schools and institutions around him defines the stereotype and prejudices the child may hold.

Similarly, the norms and values practiced by that particular country with their own people of different caste, creed, race, religion also impacts an individual's personality and may develop a thought process in alignment to the norm or against it.

Similarly, we see a lot of social reformers born in times of challenges in different countries, who actually we're impacted by how the society was when they lived and they strives to create a better world at a time the world they could think of was just an imagination.