The official fact sheet gives necessary sociological data on New Jersey children, and its segment on child poverty may reveal some new psychological information. For example, it shows that Black and Hispanic children are more economically disadvantaged than their White counterparts (Children’s Defense Fund, 2017). Therefore, one can suggest that the number of families with one parent is higher in these groups since this category of families is poorer than the traditional one (Jensen, 2020). Judging by such a microsystem, one can say that these children are likely to continue this negative socioeconomic trend of their predecessors (Guy-Evans, 2020). Vivid ethnic disproportion in child poverty is also a sign of either racial disunity or racial preferences in their mesosystems.
The aforementioned ethnic imbalance is key to understanding the societal climate in New Jersey’s population. It also shows significant latent racial bias in communities and that people prefer neighborhoods and jobs where there are many members of their ethnicity and race. Unfortunately, this assumption is partly true as “segregated districts are found across the state, especially in cities such as Paterson, Newark, Trenton and Camden,” Adely and Sheingold (2018) say (para. 3). From a macrosystem perspective, one can say that the region is dominated by a divisive culture that strongly influences the worldview of children and their future socioeconomic position. The statistics shown in this fact sheet also allow one to assume that adverse events such as parents’ divorce, school dropouts, or police arrests are more frequent in the chronosystems of Black and Hispanic children. Positive cultural influences through micro-and mesosystems, namely daycare workers and teachers, could be a resolution for the current crisis in the social climate of the New Jersey population.
References
Adely, H., & Sheingold, D. (2018). How segregated are New Jersey’s schools and what can be done about it? North Jersey. Web.
Children’s Defense Fund. (2017). The state of America’s children in New Jersey. Children’s Defense Fund. Web.
Guy-Evans, O. (2020). Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory. Simply Psychology. Web.
Jensen, L. (2020). Single-parent families are more likely to face poverty, and they’re more likely to be black. Willamette Week. Web.