How I Understand Bioecological Systems Self-analysis

According to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s “Bioecological Systems Self-Analysis”, everyone is the product of many different groups of influences: the Microsystem, or relationship to self and family; the Mesosystem, or relationship between microsystems; the Exosystem, or social settings beyond immediate experience; the Macrosystem, or laws of society; and the Chronosystem, or influences of the time period. Applying this just to myself, it is obvious that the person I am today, as well as the person I will be 20 years from now, are a byproducts of influences from all of the above categories.

Starting with the Microsystem, it is clear that I was affected by both myself and my family. My family affected me deeply on a personal level, playing a huge part in who I am today. My family has always been extremely emotional, with a good number of quarrels and other problems to overcome. Because of this the only way to stay sane was for me to become the mediator, a level headed individual that could help my family come to resolutions before things got out of hand. Because of the amount of time I had to do this, it became a part of who I am, causing me to always keep a level head and keep my emotions to myself. I was the first child in our family, followed by just one sister. The stereotypes about birth order rang completely true for us, with me being the leader who was more academically inclined, and my sister being the artist who relied more on her emotions and creativity. Due to being polar opposites, we were always annoying each other, but still knowing at the end of the day we had each other’s back. Having a younger sister also caused me to be very protective of people I held dear.

The Mesosystem, or relationship between home and school/peers, affected me to an extent as well. Although it didn’t affect me quite as much, it did instill in me some values that are important to this day. My parents were never really involved in school or any part of my academic life. As far as they were concerned, my home life and school life were completely different. This wasn’t because they didn’t care, but because they trusted me to do well without them. The trust they put on me was a huge motivation for me to do well on my own, and ended up making me very independant at a young age. I was never really in any groups or clubs until way later in my life, because I already had friends from school and we had fun without the need for a group to bind us. This may have affected me a lot in the ‘working with a team’ section of my life, but I never regret failing to join the Cub Scouts or anything like that. As far as friends and peers, I always tended to stick with people similar to me, so instead of teaching me new things, they usually just built upon old ones.

My family was a little unorthodox as far as the Exosystem, or social settings, were concerned. We didn’t really have any unique traditions or culture aside from celebrating holidays, but I still learned a lot, because we were such a varied sort. I was raised around a Jewish father, a catholic mother, and Christian grandparents. With all that religion around me, even though I eventually decided I could never devote myself to a higher power, I learned a lot about a broad range of beliefs and learned to respect them, even if I didn’t believe in them myself. Being as American as the flag, we didn’t have any strong culture that made us stand out. Because of this, we tried our best to immerse ourselves in other culures, always traveling and eating. I got to see many different ways of living, which helped me gain a very broad view of the world. This greatly instilled in me the concepts of tolerance and curiosity, and helped shaped my dreams of going to other countries and immersing myself in their cultures as much as I can.

This brings us to the Macrosystem. The Macrosystem involves the effects caused by our country’s institutions, laws, and constructs. I believe that, as a whole, our society has gone down hill. Between our social values and our government’s role in our lives, the value of being independent and able to rely on myself has been increased ten fold. It’s gotten to the point where I’ve just come to expect nothing coming easy any more. I don’t watch the news and I hardly touch the TV for similar reasons. As a whole I mostly ignore the values and customs of our society, because aside for basic courtesy, I’ve found most of them to be pretty, for lack of a better word, dumb.

Finally we come to the Chronosystem, or the influences of the time period in which I grew up on me. I don’t believe our time period has affected me very much past the occasional nostalgia. I think it would be more apt to say that seeing the effects of time period on our generation has affected me more. I’ve always disagreed with a lot of stuff that I see happen to everyone else. I like to think that years and years of slowly losing values that were previously important, along with the long held American ideal of giving up nothing, our generation has become what many call the “special snowflake” generation, where everyone thinks that they are so much more special than everyone else and that they are entitled to so much. I’m pretty sure this trend has come mostly from the slew of civil rights movements happening, between gay rights, or tolerance in the Middle East. I’m all for being tolerant, but when someone tries to advertise a mental illness like Schizophrenia as something to be proud of, I think it’s been taken to far. I’ve grown such disdain for this mentality that seems to affect so many people these days, it’s actually come to the point where, just like with our Macrosystem, I’ve gotten cynical about it.

Overall, I can see the affects on myself from every part of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s “Bioecological Systems Self-Analysis”. I did, however, notice that it gets a bit harder to try and take everything into account for how I’ve turned out the farther down the system and the farther away from my person that I went.