Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2016 Apr;45(2):259-277.
doi: 10.1007/s10566-015-9329-7. Epub 2015 Jul 11.

An Alternative to Residential Neighborhoods: An Exploratory Study of how Activity Spaces and Perception of Neighborhood Social Processes relate to Maladaptive Parenting

Bridget Freisthler  1 , Crystal A Thomas  1 , Susanna R Curry  1 , Jennifer Price Wolf  2
Affiliations

An Alternative to Residential Neighborhoods: An Exploratory Study of how Activity Spaces and Perception of Neighborhood Social Processes relate to Maladaptive Parenting

Bridget Freisthler et al. Child Youth Care Forum. 2016 Apr.

Abstract

Background: The environments where parents spend time, such as at work, at their child's school, or with friends and family, may exert a greater influence on their parenting behaviors than the residential neighborhoods where they live. These environments, termed activity spaces, provide individualized information about the where parents go, offering a more detailed understanding of the environmental risks and resources to which parents are exposed.

Objective: This study conducts a preliminary examination of how neighborhood context, social processes, and individual activity spaces are related to a variety of parenting practices.

Methods: Data were collected from 42 parents via door-to-door surveys in one neighborhood area. Survey participants provided information about punitive and non-punitive parenting practices, the locations where they conducted daily living activities, social supports, and neighborhood social processes. OLS regression procedures were used to examine covariates related to the size of parent activity spaces. Negative binomial models assessed how activity spaces were related to four punitive and five non-punitive parenting practices.

Results: With regards to size of parents' activity spaces, male caregivers and those with a local (within neighborhood) primary support member had larger activity spaces. Size of a parent's activity space is negatively related to use of punitive parenting, but generally not related to non-punitive parenting behaviors.

Conclusions: These findings suggest social workers should assess where parents spend their time and get socially isolated parents involved in activities that could result in less use of punitive parenting.

Keywords: activity spaces; harsh parenting; maladaptive parenting; neighborhood social processes; non-punitive parenting; punitive parenting.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest. The authors have no conflicts of interest to report.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Activity Space Polygons for Two Similar Female Respondents
Figure 2
Figure 2. Activity Space Polygons for Two Similar Male Respondents
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Brauer F, Castillo-Chávez C. Mathematical Models in Population Biology and Epidemiology. NY: Springer; 2001.
    1. Browning CR, Soller B. Moving beyond neighborhood: Activity spaces and ecological networks as contexts for youth development. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research. 2014;16(1):165–196. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Burton LM, Jarrett RL. In the mix, yet on the margins: The place of families in urban neighborhood and child development research. Journal of Marriage and the Family. 2000;62:1114–1135.
    1. Chung HL, Steinberg L. Relations between neighborhood factors, parenting behaviors, peer deviance, and delinquency among serious juvenile offenders. Developmental Psychology. 2006;42(2):319–331. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cohen S, Mermelstein R, Kamarack T, Hoberman H. Measuring the functional components of social support. In: Sarason IG, Sarason BR, editors. Social support: Theory, research, and application. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff; 1985. pp. 73–94.

LinkOut - more resources