Urie Bronfenbrenner Quotes

“Children need people in order to become human.

It is primarily through observing, playing, and working with others older and younger than himself that a child discovers both what he can do and who he can become – that he develops both his ability and his identity.

Hence to relegate children to a world of their own is to deprive them of their humanity, and ourselves as well.”

“Development, it turns out, occurs through this process of progressively more complex exchange between a child and somebody else – especially somebody who's crazy about that child.”

“Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her.”

“In order to develop normally, a child requires progressively more complex joint activity with one or more adults who have an irrational emotional relationship with the child.

Somebody's got to be crazy about that kid. That's number one. First, last and always.”

“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents – but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards – and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”

“Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up.

If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us – through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.”