Glossary / Lexicon

Macrosystem is the larger cultural or sub-cultural context in which development occurs; the cultures and sub-cultures in which the microsystem, mesosystem, and exosystem are embedded.

Macrosystem is, likewise, defined as the basic institutions and ideologies that influence the child, such as the American ideals of freedom of expression and equality under the law; the child’s society and the ideology in which he/she grows up, for example, the United States, the middle class, Spanish ancestry, the Roman Catholic church. It refers to consistencies in the form and content of lower order systems (micro-, meso-, and exosystems) that exist or could exist at the level of the sub-culture or the culture as a whole, along with any belief systems of ideology underlying such consistencies. Macrosystem is, moreover, Bronfenbrenner’s outermost environmental layer or context.