Parental Perception of Neighborhood Safety and the Wellbeing of Children

Background

Historically social scientists stressed the importance of social environments on children’s growth trajectories.

Previous research indicated living in unsafe neighborhood is highly associated with children’s various negative outcomes.

Based upon the knowledge children are susceptible to environments, we hypothesized that parental perspective on neighborhood safety shapes children’s internalizing and externalizing outcomes.

While many research have focused on parental perception of neighborhood safety and physical outcomes (e.g. Body Mass Index) of children and adolescents, few have investigated the parental perception of neighborhood safety and children’s socio-emotional outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the way parents view their neighborhood safety has association on the wellbeing of children.

Method

The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) that followed children’s early childhood experiences starting from kindergarten to eighth grade was used for this study.

The samples of 21,409 children were analyzed along with parental report of perceived neighborhood safety data and children’s internalizing and externalizing behaviors in kindergarten, first, third and fifth grades totaling four waves.

Two-level growth-curve modeling was used to estimate the association between parental perception of neighborhood safety and children’s internalizing and externalizing outcomes.

For parents’ perceived neighborhood safety measures, questions on how safe is it for children to play outside during the day in their neighborhood and how safe is it for children to go to school were utilized.

Time-invariant variables include race, gender, language and parental education. Time-variant variables include parental information on age, occupation, Socioeconomic Status (SES) and employment status.

Results

We examined the relationship between the effect of parental perception of neighborhood safety on children’s internalizing and externalizing outcomes from kindergarten to 5th grade.

The results from the unconditional growth model indicated that children from neighborhoods perceived as unsafe by their parents are statistically significantly more likely to have internalizing outcomes compared to parents who perceived their neighborhoods to be safe.

The results from the conditional growth model revealed that negative parental perception on neighborhood safety is highly associated with children's internalizing outcomes over time. The conditional growth model further revealed that the average child's externaling outcomes varied over time.  

The results revealed that girls who speak non-English language with their parents at home, raised under unemployed mother and undereducated parents with low SES are statistically significantly more likely to experience internalizing outcomes.

Conclusions 

These findings highlight the importance of parental perceptions and characteristics that shape the wellbeing of children as we hypothesized.  

Furthermore, these findings are aligned with the urgent needs for programs that provide mental health treatment for children and families and in dire need for policies to help children and parents living in poor and under resourced neighborhoods in the fear of their safety in order to prevent further negative outcomes for these at-risk children.