Neighborhood Cohesion As a Protective Factor for Parental Adversity's Negative Effect on Early Behavioral Health

Background/Purpose: Early childhood experiences determine future success in well-being, school, work, and in the community. Adversity creates an accumulated number of risks that are potentially damaging to socio-emotional and behavioral health. This early foundation could increase vulnerabilities towards later engagement in delinquent behavior and potential involvement in the juvenile justice system. The relationship between parental adversity and early behavioral health is examined with the role of neighborhood cohesion as a protective factor against the negative effects of adversity. Differences across groups were also investigated, comparing associations between Whites, Blacks, and Latinos of risks that are potentially damaging and could increase vulnerabilities for negative health and social outcomes including the increase of externalizing and delinquent behaviors.

Methods: Hierarchical Regression Analysis was conducted using baseline, Wave 1, and Wave 9 data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study (N=4,898) with a nationally representative sample of Black and Latino mothers and their children in U.S. urban cities. The outcome measure is externalizing behavior at age 9 as measured by Achenbach’s Child Behavior Checklists. Parental adversity was measured by the sum of adversities including family instability (e.g. divorce or separation), mother’s experience of partner violence, parental incarceration, food insecurity, financial insecurity, and maternal depression measured at baseline. Control variables include the age of the mother at first childbirth and number of children.

Results:  Results showed a positive relationship between intergenerational adversity and externalizing behaviors, where greater adversity was significantly associated with worse externalizing behavior (p<.01). This result was consistent across ethnic groups but with a stronger association for Blacks followed by Latinos. The protective effect of neighborhood cohesion was significant for Blacks but not for whites nor Latinos. However, neighborhood cohesion demonstrated a unique effect on the behavioral health of white children where the lack of neighborhood cohesion was associated with worse behavioral health.

Conclusion/Implications: These results provide evidence towards the potentially increased risk and vulnerabilities of children exposed to multiple adversities in childhood towards developing externalizing behaviors and later potential involvement in the juvenile justice system. However, results show that adversity’s negative effects are potentially evitable. Neighborhood cohesion could be a promising resource for Black families that could mitigate the damaging impact of adversity on behavioral risks and vulnerabilities of young children. Interestingly, neighborhood cohesion did not moderate the negative effects of adversity for Latinos. Future research should address ways to further understand neighborhood cohesion for Latinos. For example, does immigration status affect the perception of cohesion? What other protective factors could mitigate the negative effects of adversity for Latinos? Future research should address how residential instability could influence neighborhood cohesion’s effects on behavioral health. Lastly, researchers can investigate ways that we can strengthen neighborhood cohesion especially for Black families who are often disproportionately impacted by various adversities.