I had the good fortune to attend four exceptional educational institutions: the Alexander Hamilton Elementary School, the Boston Latin School, Columbia College, and Yale University. At Columbia, I was a work-study assigned to a graduate student in Psychology who introduced me to the scientific method. At Yale, Larry Marks taught me psychophysics, and Bill Kessen developmental psychology. As a post-doc, I studied with Hanuš Papoušek at Harvard and the Max-Planck-Institut für Psychiatrie in Munich. I spent a short time on the faculty at Princeton University before moving to NYU as Professor of Psychology and Human Development and Pediatrics and Psychiatry. Eventually I left New York City for Bethesda and the NIH to become Head of Child and Family Research at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Currently I hold positions at the NICHD, the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London, and UNICEF in New York City as well as academic appointments at institutions in several countriesopens in new window.
Science
My scientific and applied career interests have evolved around four interlocked issues and questions.
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Laboratory experimental investigations in neuroscience, perception, and cognition designed to address questions of the origins and expression of mental life. To realize this interest, I have studied infants, children, and their parents through genetic and hormonal analyses; multimethod measurements of the ANS and CNS; behavioral studies; and standardized assessments, questionnaires, and interviews.
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Explorations of children’s mental, social, and material worldly experiences based on home and field observations in multiple cultural settings. To realize this interest, I founded an International Network of Child Development and Parenting involving collaborations in more than a dozen countries on five continents with different cultural groups in each country and have exploited the UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys in more than 50 majority world countries.
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Applications of multidomain, multivariate, multiwave, multireporter designs to trace continuity and stability of diverse biopsychosocial domains across development. To realize this interest, I recruited and followed a large longitudinal cohort from infancy to young adulthood and studied thousands of families in associated supplementary specific and general investigations.
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Examinations of the interface of biology and experience in typical and atypically developing children. To realize this interest, I have undertaken applied research with various populations, including socially diverse SES, adopted, bilingual, and acculturating families as well as biologically compromised cocaine-exposed, disabled, hearing-impaired, clinically depressed, and preterm children, and children with cancer, Down syndrome, and autism spectrum disorder. Longitudinal studies of fetal-to-child development across parturition have also been part of my applied research program.
Addressing these several issues and questions has aggregated into a body of empirical findings that assess the nature and development of central biopsychosocial constructs, structures, functions, and processes in the individual and family. Faithful to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s prevailing developmental systems model, my research has framed the child, parent, and family in multiple systems and transactional perspectives. The culmination of this work is an evidence-based empirical program of research and publications in comparative, cultural, developmental, experimental, and methodological science as well as neuroscience, pediatrics, and aesthetics (Bornstein, 2022), and it led to the inauguration of a science of parenting with exponents in a scientific journal, a comprehensive handbook, and two monograph series.
Outreach
Throughout my career, I have endeavored to disseminate basic research to professional communities of practitioners, policy makers, and educators as well as to parents. In this regard, I have authored both trade and textbooks, engaged in long-standing consultantships as to UNICEF, conducted developmental research for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, and devoted 18 years of my professional life to the SRCD, six as Editor-in-Chief of Child Development, six on Governing Council, and six in the presidential legacy. Among other accomplishments as SRCD president, I relocated Society headquarters to Washington, DC, instituted a Science Directorate, brought the caucuses into the Society, and revamped the structure of the Society’s biennial meeting. I have also served on the Executive Committees of the ISSBD and ICIS. Beside the Bronfenbrenner Award, my scientific and outreach contributions have been recognized by Yale, SRCD, ISSBD, and ICIS, and with honorary doctorates from the Universities of Padua and Trento in Italy and as Honorary Professor of Psychology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
Today and Tomorrow…
With respect to science, I am focused on the development and dissemination of my Specificity Principle; in 2024 I celebrated the 25th anniversary of my journal Parenting: Science and Practice; and I continue to pursue a vigorous publication agendum with scores of scientific papers, chapters, and books published or in press and through diverse editorial responsibilities with a variety of academic publishers. With respect to outreach, I am more and more occupied with prospects of the next generation. For example, currently three disciplines--Pediatric Psychology, Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics, and Developmental Science—are fundamentally concerned with child and adolescent health and well-being and complement one another in integral ways, but the three are historically, theoretically, and professionally siloed. Harnessed, they would jointly forge more complete comprehension and successful management of typical and atypical child and adolescent development. To realize that aspiration, I am currently completing a 2-volume APA Handbook that joins credentialled members of all three disciplines in collaborative chapters which address a broad spectrum of topics and issues concerned with child and adolescent health and well-being. Among several other like projects in the spirit of this Division 7 Bronfenbrenner Award, I work with UNICEF and the Templeton World Charity Foundation in efforts to optimize child development and family life across the majority world.
Reference
Bornstein, M. H. (2022). Parenting: Selected works of Marc H. Bornstein. Routledge, The World Library of Psychologists Series.