Poster #87 - Neighborhood Resource Deprivation and Parenting in Early Childhood

• In Event: Poster Session 17

Abstract

Introduction: Parents’ experiences with systemic racism may undermine responsive and effective parenting in ways that pose developmental threats to young children. Indeed, research suggests that neighborhood resource deprivation, which is often reflective of structural racism, is associated with maladaptive parenting behaviors and adverse childhood outcomes (Shuey & Leventhal et al., 2015). Furthermore, these associations are more pronounced among lower-income families (Cuellar et al., 2015). When conceptualizing neighborhood disadvantage, it is critical to capture a multitude of neighborhood-level influences, such as access to educational opportunities, health/environmental inequities, and socioeconomic disparities, as these indicators tend to co-occur and accumulate in neighborhoods with higher percentages of parents of color. This study investigated whether neighborhood-level resource access (i.e., educational, health/environmental, and social/economic resources) predicted parenting behaviors (i.e., responsive involvement, constructive discipline, and problematic discipline) accounting for family-level socioeconomic burden.

Method: Data were drawn from a longitudinal study of parent-child dyads (N = 147) with histories of involvement with child protective services. The majority of parents identified as having a minoritized racial/ethnic identity (68.7% of parents identified as Black or African American; 13.6% identified as Hispanic) and as having low income (71.3% received TANF or welfare and 92.2% reported an income of less than $30,000). Data for the current study were collected when children were 4 years old (M = 4.20 years, SD = 0.35; 46.9% female). Participants' addresses were geocoded and neighborhood resources were assessed using the Child Opportunity Index (COI; Acevedo et al., 2014), a publicly available measure enumerating educational, health/environmental, and social/economic opportunities across US neighborhoods. Parental responsive involvement, constructive discipline, and problematic discipline were coded from a series of parent-child interaction tasks utilizing the Parenting Clinical Observation Schedule (P-COS) rating scales (Hill et al., 2008). Financial need was assessed based on whether families' incomes were lower than 30k or if they received public assistance.

Results: Using structural equation modeling with maximum likelihood estimation (Muthén & Muthén, 2017), results suggested that greater neighborhood opportunity was significantly associated with higher constructive discipline (β = .183, p = .043), but not responsive involvement (β = .141, p = .109), nor problematic discipline (β = -.187, p = .050), when controlling for financial need.

Discussion: The results of this study suggest that parents with less access to neighborhood resources were less likely to engage in firm and positive behavior strategies with their children than parents with more access. Given that individuals from marginalized populations are more likely to be deprived of neighborhood resources due to systemic racism, these results highlight parenting as a possible mechanism by which structural factors may interfere with healthy child development. As such, it is imperative for future research to investigate the invasive nature of systemic racism and explore potential protective factors, such as interventions targeting parenting behaviors.

Authors

• Lauren Morrison, Stony Brook University
  Presenting Author

• Daneele Thorpe, Stony Brook University

• Laura Perrone, Stony Brook Unviersity

• Rebecca Mirhashem, Stony Brook University

• Mary Dozier, University of Delaware

• Kristin L Bernard, Stony Brook University