The Effects of Neighborhood Disorganization and Maternal Corporal Punishment on Behavior Problems in Early Childhood

Purpose  Abundant research indicates that both family- and neighborhood-level processes have profound direct effects on children’s behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, a body of literature guided by social disorganization theory and the family stress model documents the indirect pathway of the effects of neighborhood disorganization on child behavior through its impact on negative parenting practices, such as parental use of corporal punishment. Yet, a limited amount of research explored the simultaneous roles of neighborhood process and parenting practice as determinants of problematic behaviors in early childhood. To address this gap in the literature, the current study explores the impacts of neighborhood disorganization—represented by low levels of collective efficacy—and corporal punishment on five-year-olds’ behavior problems, and tested whether corporal punishment mediates the effects of neighborhood disorganization on child behavior.

Methods  The sample for this study is comprised of 2,472 mothers and their child in Waves 3  (child age 3) and Wave 4 (child age 5) of the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a birth cohort study in 20 large U.S. cities. Missing data for the sample was imputed using multiple imputations through chained equations. Mothers reported child externalizing and internalizing behaviors, the outcome variables, using the Child Behavior Checklist. Collective efficacy and frequency of maternal spanking, the main predictor variables, were mothers’ self-reports. Multi-level models were employed to investigate the simultaneous effects of collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment on behavior problems at age 5 net of individual-, family-, and neighborhood-level covariates, while accounting for possible clustering of individuals in neighborhoods. Models were run separately for externalizing and internalizing problems. Additionally, the mediation hypothesis was tested using the product of coefficients approach and bootstrapped confidence intervals for total and specific indirect effects.

Results  Maternal corporal punishment, regardless of its frequency, was a significant predictor of higher levels of both externalizing and internalizing behavior problems, even after controlling for the effects of collective efficacy, earlier behavior problem scores at age 3, and covariates. The protective influence of collective efficacy on externalizing problems were marginally significant (p<.07), whereas its effect on internalizing problems was statistically significant (p<.05), net of other predictors. The direct effects of collective efficacy on behavior problems decreased when corporal punishment was included in the models, however, bootstrapping replications revealed that the indirect effects of collective efficacy on externalizing and internalizing behavior problems through maternal corporal punishment was not significant, after accounting for individual-, family-, and neighborhood-level factors.

Conclusions and Implications  The current findings suggest the importance of reducing both neighborhood disorganization and maternal use of corporal punishment for more desirable child outcomes. The non-significant indirect effect of collective efficacy on child behavior through maternal corporal punishment indicate that prevention and intervention efforts should consider neighborhood and parenting processes as two empirically separate domains that affect child behavior problems. Implementing community-based programs that aim to increase social control and social cohesion and trust as well as promoting alternatives to corporal punishment through parent education programs may be strategic ways to support positive child development.