Our goal was to illuminate associations between specific characteristics of under‐resourced neighborhoods (i.e., socioeconomic deprivation, danger) and specific aspects of parenting (e.g., parental praise, parental nurturance, harsh parenting, and parental control).
Prior work has highlighted associations between level of neighborhood disadvantage and the parenting of its residents. However, this work has yet to clarify the specific characteristics of the neighborhood or the types of parenting involved.
Exhaustive modeling analyses were conducted in a sample of 1030 families of twins (average age 8 years; 51% male, 49% female; the racial composition was 82% White, 10% Black, 1% Asian, 1% Indigenous, 6% multiracial) from the Twin Study of Behavioral and Emotional Development in Children. Neighborhood and parenting were assessed using multiple informants and assessment strategies (neighborhood informants, family informants, administrative data, and videotaped parent–child interactions).
Neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation (i.e., limited institutional and economic structural resources) demonstrated small but consistent negative associations with positive parenting behaviors and maternal control, but not with negative parenting behaviors. Neighborhood danger (i.e., recorded crime, fear of crime, exposure to community violence), by contrast, demonstrated weaker associations with parenting that dissipated once we controlled for overlap with socioeconomic deprivation.
Danger and socioeconomic deprivation do not function as interchangeable characteristics of under‐resourced neighborhoods, at least in terms of their association with positive parenting. Future studies should identify the specific mechanisms through which neighborhood socioeconomic deprivation is associated with less nurturing parenting.
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10443511
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Marriage and Family
- Volume:
- 85
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0022-2445
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 153-172
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
more » « less
Abstract Objective: This study examined how parental caregiving and parent–child closeness are associated with future fathering among 335 Filipino men who are participants in a long‐running birth cohort study.Background Few studies have multidecade longitudinal data to test the pathways through which parenting is transmitted across generations, with most relevant research conducted in the United States, Europe, and other similar settings. The roles of mothers and fathers in shaping their sons' future parenting is particularly understudied despite fathers having the potential to positively influence child health and development.Method: Participants' mothers (Generation 1 [G1]) reported on caregiving during Generation 2 (G2) participants' early life, and the G2 males reported parent–child closeness during adolescence. G2 fathers reported on their own child‐care involvement and the salience of caregiving to their parenting identity. We tested whether parent–child closeness moderated the effect of early‐life care to predict later‐life fathering.Results: G1‐G2 closeness moderated the association between G1 parents' caregiving and G2 fathers' parenting identity (for both G1 parents) and caregiving time (for G1 fathers only). When the G1‐G2 mother–son relationship was not close, there was a negative correlation between G1 maternal care and G2 fathers' caregiving identity. For G2 men who were close to their fathers, there were positive associations between G1 paternal care and G2 fathers' caregiving identity and time, respectively. Among G2 men who were not close to their fathers, the slopes relating G1 paternal care to G2 fathers' caregiving identity and time, respectively, were negative.Conclusion: These findings reflect that developmental experiences with both mothers and fathers are predictive of men's identity as parents in adulthood and that closeness between fathers and sons moderates whether sons' paternal care tends to emulate or diverge from their fathers' caregiving patterns. -
more » « less
Abstract Objective In this study, we investigated the interplay of positive work conditions with parenting behaviors across children's first 4 years.
Background Most mothers in the United States are employed in paid work during their children's early years. Research typically has focused on the ways that such employment can conflict with the intensive demands of parenting, but it can also help mothers socially and psychologically during this important period of children's development.
Method Integrating federal survey data on occupational conditions with parenting reports of job flexibility and parenting behaviors from 5,250 mothers in the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Birth Cohort, we estimated how work conditions were associated with stimulating and sensitive parenting and whether these associations were stronger for mothers with lower income.
Results Results of autoregressive modeling demonstrated that job flexibility, opportunities for mastery, and opportunities for connection were positively associated with a composite measure of stimulating and sensitive parenting. Significant interactions indicated that many associations were more pronounced for mothers with lower income.
Conclusion Our results build upon prior work, demonstrating that positive work conditions can support parenting during early childhood and that this is especially true for low‐income households.
Implications These results bridge the work–family and parenting literatures with important policy implications, such as adopting family‐friendly policies within companies.
-
more » « less
Background Callous‐unemotional (CU) traits are associated with chronic and escalating trajectories of antisocial behavior. Extant etiologic studies suggest that heritability estimates for CU traits vary substantially, while also pointing to an environmental association between parenting and CU traits.
Methods We used twin modeling to estimate additive genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and nonshared environmental (E) influences on CU traits, measured with the Inventory of Callous‐Unemotional Traits (ICU) and its subscales. Our sample included 600 twin pairs (age 6–11, 230 monozygotic) from neighborhoods with above‐average levels of family poverty, a risk factor for antisocial behavior. We examined the extent to which correlations between parenting, measured via parent and child report on the Parental Environment Questionnaire, and CU traits reflected genetic versus environmental factors. Then, we tested whether parenting moderated the heritability of CU traits.
Results In the context of lower‐income neighborhoods, CU traits were moderately to highly heritable (
A = 54%) with similar moderate‐to‐high nonshared environmental influences (E = 46%). Bivariate models revealed that associations between CU traits andwarm parenting were genetic (rA = .22) and environmental (rE = .19) in origin, whereas associations between CU traits andharsh parenting were largely genetic in origin (rA = .70). The heritability of CU traits decreased with increasing parental warmth and decreasing harshness.Conclusions Callous‐unemotional traits are both genetic and environmental in origin during middle childhood, but genetic influences are moderated by parenting quality. Parenting may be an important target for interventions, particularly among youth with greater genetic risk.
-
more » « less
Neighborhood quality has been cross‐sectionally linked to both relationship behaviors and relationship well‐being. Consistent with the Vulnerability Stress‐Adaptation model of relationship functioning (Karney & Bradbury, 1995), we hypothesized that associations between social behaviors (e.g., drinking) and relationship quality could be moderated by neighborhood factors. Specifically, we characterized neighborhoods along multiple dimensions using multiple methods (self‐report, census) to investigate how neighborhood factors might clarify ambiguous effects of alcohol use on marital functioning. A nationally recruited sample of 303 newlywed couples completed a baseline assessment around the time of marriage and was then assessed yearly across the first 4 years of marriage (94% retention). Three level HLM slope‐intercept models were used to model changes in relationship satisfaction across the first 4 years of marriage. Results suggested that, for couples living in highly disordered neighborhoods, positive shifts in overall levels of drinking within specific waves of assessment were associated with corresponding negative shifts in satisfaction whereas in neighborhoods without perceived disorder, this effect was reversed. For couples living in neighborhoods with low levels of domestic structures (high census rates of single renters without children), within‐couple discrepancies favoring higher rates of husband drinking in specific waves predicted poorer relationship quality for both partners in those same waves whereas those same discrepancies predicted higher satisfaction in high domesticity neighborhoods (high census rates of married homeowners with children). The findings provide insight into the different roles of alcohol use in relationship maintenance and highlight the importance of using external context to understand intradyadic processes.
-
more » « less
Abstract Gun violence is a major public health problem and costs the United States $280 billion annually (1). Although adolescents are disproportionately impacted (e.g. premature death), we know little about how close adolescents live to deadly gun violence incidents and whether such proximity impacts their socioemotional development (2, 3). Moreover, gun violence is likely to shape youth developmental outcomes through biological processes—including functional connectivity within regions of the brain that support emotion processing, salience detection, and physiological stress responses—though little work has examined this hypothesis. Lastly, it is unclear if strong neighborhood social ties can buffer youth from the neurobehavioral effects of gun violence. Within a nationwide birth cohort of 3,444 youth (56% Black, 24% Hispanic) born in large US cities, every additional deadly gun violence incident that occurred within 500 meters of home in the prior year was associated with an increase in behavioral problems by 9.6%, even after accounting for area-level crime and socioeconomic resources. Incidents that occurred closer to a child's home exerted larger effects, and stronger neighborhood social ties offset these associations. In a neuroimaging subsample (N = 164) of the larger cohort, living near more incidents of gun violence and reporting weaker neighborhood social ties were associated with weaker amygdala–prefrontal functional connectivity during socioemotional processing, a pattern previously linked to less effective emotion regulation. Results provide spatially sensitive evidence for gun violence effects on adolescent behavior, a potential mechanism through which risk is biologically embedded, and ways in which positive community factors offset ecological risk.
