The Influence of Neighborhood Violence and Cohesion on Maternal Depression: The Effect on Maternal and Child Weight

Purpose:  Obesity in childhood is a major public health problem.  When developing effective childhood obesity interventions, it is important to consider contextual factors that can influence children’s weight.  Neighborhood factors and maternal depression can influence children’s weight.  However, few studies address the role of neighborhood and parental mental health simultaneously. These factors have implications for addressing child weight and are malleable with interventions. Thus, we examined the effects of neighborhood violence and cohesion on maternal depression and subsequent impact on maternal and child weight.

Methods:  This study used data collected by the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a longitudinal study of approximately 5,000 parents of children born between 1998 and 2000. Parents were recruited from hospitals, and unmarried parents were oversampled.

Our analysis focused on data collected during the 2007-2010 Wave. This was the first wave of data that included measures of neighborhood characteristics.  The sample included 3,515 mothers. Most of the mothers were Black (51.8%), and 306 (25.9%) were married.

We conducted structural equation modeling because our model included both measurement and structural components. We used Mplus 7.0 to test our hypotheses. This allowed for the use of weighted least squares estimation, which was needed because of the categorical variables included. Mplus 7.0 uses full information maximum likelihood to contend with missing data.  We also examined competing models. 

Results:  Although the chi-square test was significant (Chi-square = 29.362, df = 17, p-value = .031), other fit criteria demonstrated that the hypothesized model fit the data well: the RMSEA was .014 (low .004 and high .023), the CFI was .993, and the TLI was .989.

Neighborhood violence was negatively predictive of neighborhood cohesion (standardized coefficient = -.624). Greater neighborhood cohesion was associated with lower reported depression and lower BMI, and mothers who were depressed had significantly higher BMIs. The total effects from neighborhood violence on the mother’s BMI was .693, while the total effects from neighborhood cohesion on mother’s BMI was -.985. The results support our hypothesis that the relationship between neighborhood violence and mothers’ BMI would have an indirect effect on child BMI through neighborhood cohesion (standardized indirect coefficient = .545, p < .05). The results did not support our hypothesis that the relationship between neighborhood cohesion and mothers’ BMI would have an indirect effect on child BMI through mother’s depression. 

Conclusions and Implications:  Our findings indicate that when perceived neighborhood cohesion was lower, mothers were more afraid to let their children go outside because of fear of violence. Mothers who perceived more neighborhood cohesion were less likely to be depressed and had a lower BMI, and mothers with depressive symptoms were more likely to have a higher BMI and their children’s BMI was also higher. Neighborhood violence thus indirectly influenced mother’s BMI through neighborhood cohesion.

Community-based interventions that address violence and associated structural factors of the built environment may improve neighborhood cohesion as well as maternal depression.  Further, such interventions may help address the public health issues of obesity in children and their mothers.