Urie Bronfenbrenner, a co-founder of the federal Head Start program whose theories profoundly altered the understanding of what children need to develop into successful adults, died Sunday at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 88.
An emeritus professor of psychology and human development at Cornell University, Bronfenbrenner argued that individuals develop not in isolation but within a system of relationships to family, school, community and society. He called his theory the ecology of human development.
His advocacy of parent involvement in their children’s education led to his appointment in 1965 to a federal panel that laid the foundation for Head Start, the school readiness program that has served 20 million disadvantaged children and families over the past 40 years.
Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow and moved with his family to the U.S. at age 6. He went on to study psychology and music at Cornell, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in 1938. He received a master’s in education from Harvard University in 1940 and a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of Michigan in 1942.
In 1964, he testified at a congressional hearing that President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty should target poverty’s most vulnerable victims, children.
In later years, he was sharply critical of rising materialism, which he said was encouraging parents to spend more hours away from home working in order to afford nice things for their children. He saw it as just one of several societal forces that were reducing crucial family time and exacerbating the isolation and alienation of American youths.
Bronfenbrenner is survived by his wife, Liese, six children, 13 grandchildren and a great- granddaughter.
