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Does Parental Monitoring During Adolescence Moderate Neighborhood Effects on African American Youth Outcomes?

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Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of parental monitoring, neighborhood risk, and racism experiences during early adolescence on adolescents’ emotional and behavioral outcomes in high school. Five hundred twenty-two African American youth and their parents and teachers completed surveys about youth development over time. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that neighborhood risk and racism had small and significant relations with anxiety, oppositional behavior, and conduct problems. Additionally, parental monitoring moderated the effects of neighborhood risk on behavior problems in both 9th and 12th grade, controlling for baseline problems. Finally, parental monitoring did not moderate effects of risk contexts on the development of anxiety problems. Findings are discussed with regard to implications for supporting effective parenting practices in high-risk contexts.

Highlights

  • African American youth reports of low parental monitoring in high risk neighborhoods during early adolescence predicted an escalation of youth problem behaviors two years later, and these effects were sustained at five years.

  • Examining supports and other interventions to help parents—in these high-risk settings during this development period especially—increase their attention and awareness of their child’s whereabouts may yield significant benefits and alter life course trajectories of youth in a favorable way.

  • Finding other ways to support parents and youth in high risk contexts and how they interact with one another can lead to improved outcomes for youth most at risk.

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Funding

Preparation of this manuscript was supported in part by research grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (RO1 MH57005, P30 MH086043) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (RO1 DA11796) awarded to Dr. Nicholas Ialongo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Missouri Prevention Science Insitute, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Keith C. Herman & Brandy Pugh

  2. Ball State University, Muncie, IN, 47306, USA

    Brandy Pugh

  3. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Nicholas Ialongo

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  1. Keith C. Herman
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  2. Brandy Pugh
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  3. Nicholas Ialongo
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Correspondence to Keith C. Herman.

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Herman, K.C., Pugh, B. & Ialongo, N. Does Parental Monitoring During Adolescence Moderate Neighborhood Effects on African American Youth Outcomes?. J Child Fam Stud 29, 3184–3197 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01829-8

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