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Neighborhood Poverty and Maternal Fears of Children's Outdoor Play
Author(s) -
Kimbro Rachel Tolbert,
Schachter Ariela
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
family relations
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.772
H-Index - 87
eISSN - 1741-3729
pISSN - 0197-6664
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2011.00660.x
Subject(s) - poverty , collective efficacy , fragile families and child wellbeing study , odds , mental health , census tract , fear of crime , psychology , perception , public health , scholarship , census , developmental psychology , environmental health , social psychology , logistic regression , medicine , political science , psychiatry , population , nursing , neuroscience , law
Investigating children's outdoor play unites scholarship on neighborhoods, parental perceptions of safety, and children's health. Utilizing the Fragile Families and Child Well‐being Study (N = 3,448), we examine mothers' fear of their 5‐year‐old children playing outdoors, testing associations with neighborhood social characteristics, city‐level crime rates, maternal mental health, and social support. Living in public housing, perceptions of low neighborhood collective efficacy, and living in a Census tract with a higher proportion of Blacks and households in poverty are associated with higher odds of maternal fear, but crime rates are not a significant predictor of fear. We also demonstrate that not being depressed—but not social support or collective efficacy—buffers the influence of neighborhood poverty on maternal fears of outdoor play.