Longitudinal Associations of Neighborhood Collective ...

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Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01. Published in final edited form as: Dev Psychol. 2017 June ; 53(6): 1027–1041. doi:10.1037/dev0000308.

Longitudinal Associations of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy and Maternal Corporal Punishment with Behavior Problems in Early Childhood Julie Ma and University of Michigan–Flint

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Andrew Grogan-Kaylor University of Michigan

Abstract

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Neighborhood and parenting influences on early behavioral outcomes are strongly dependent upon a child's stage of development. However, little research has jointly considered the longitudinal associations of neighborhood and parenting processes with behavior problems in early childhood. To address this limitation, this study explores the associations of neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment with the longitudinal patterns of early externalizing and internalizing behavior problems. The study sample consisted of 3,705 families from a nationally representative cohort study of urban families. Longitudinal multilevel models examined the associations of collective efficacy and corporal punishment with behavior problems at age 3, as well as with patterns of behavior problems between the ages 3 to 5. Interactions between the main predictors and child age tested whether neighborhood and parent relationships with child behavior varied over time. Mediation analysis examined whether neighborhood influences on child behavior were mediated by parenting. The models controlled for a comprehensive set of possible confounders at the child, parent, and neighborhood levels. Results indicate that both maternal corporal punishment and low neighborhood collective efficacy were significantly associated with increased behavior problems. The significant interaction between collective efficacy and child age with internalizing problems suggests that neighborhood influences on internalizing behavior were stronger for younger children. The indirect effect of low collective efficacy on behavior problems through corporal punishment was not significant. These findings highlight the importance of multilevel interventions that promote both neighborhood collective efficacy and non-physical discipline in early childhood.

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Keywords neighborhood collective efficacy; corporal punishment; early behavior problems A growing body of research finds evidence that both neighborhood and family processes are substantial predictors of early childhood behavior problems (Ingoldsby et al., 2006; Kohen,

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Julie Ma, Department of Social Work, School of Education and Human Services, University of Michigan–Flint, 303 E. Kearsley Street, Flint, Michigan 48502. [email protected].

Ma and Grogan-Kaylor

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Dahinten, Leventhal, & McIntosh, 2008). This literature is consistent with the ecological perspective, which posits that child development is shaped by interactions between the individual and the distal (i.e., neighborhood) and proximal (i.e., family) environments (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). However, a shortcoming in prior research is the lack of studies that investigate multiple social contexts concurrently, while accounting for the interactive nature of social contexts and child development. The present study addresses this limitation by employing a longitudinal design on a sample of younger children than appear in most existing studies. Our models examine the simultaneous associations of low neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment with externalizing and internalizing behavior problems in early childhood and explore whether child age moderates these associations. Moreover, we investigate the indirect associations of low collective efficacy with early behavior problems through its influence on corporal punishment.

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Neighborhood Collective Efficacy and Behavior Problems in Early Childhood Contemporary research in child development increasingly recognizes the substantial role of neighborhoods in shaping early childhood outcomes (Kohen et al., 2008; Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Social disorganization theory highlights low neighborhood collective efficacy as a mechanism through which the structural disadvantages of neighborhoods such as poverty are manifested in child delinquency and misbehavior (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). Neighborhood collective efficacy combines informal social control (i.e., neighbors' willingness to intervene for social order in the neighborhood) with social cohesion and trust (i.e., neighbors' capacity to collectively bond for common rules and values).

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In the context of child development, emerging evidence demonstrates that low collective efficacy at the neighborhood level is indicative of problems in child behavior (Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002; Sampson et al., 1997; Xue, Leventhal, Brooks-Gunn, & Earls, 2005). That is, children in neighborhoods with low collective efficacy are likely to observe increased levels of social disorder and lack of social control; in turn, this exposure is associated with more problematic behaviors. Abundant research documents the prominence of neighborhood effects during middle childhood and adolescence (Leventhal & BrooksGunn, 2000; Proctor, 2000). However, only a handful of studies have examined neighborhood effects during earlier stages of child development. These studies find that, as with adolescents, young children's exposure to low collective efficacy is associated with adverse outcomes, including behavior problems (Ingoldsby et al., 2006) and mental health issues (Xue et al., 2005). During toddlerhood and early preschool years, exposure to neighborhood is thought to be more directly supervised by parents or parental figures (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). Very young children are also cognitively less capable of perceiving the neighborhood factors they observe than children in middle and late childhood (Fowler, Tompsett, Braciszewski, Jacques-Tiura, & Baltes, 2009). By the time children enter early childhood education programs (i.e., preschool) and elementary education system (i.e., kindergarten), children are

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exposed to their neighborhood more regularly and frequently, and with less supervision. Indeed, one study found that, compared with younger children, school-aged children were entrusted to spend time outside their homes with greater independent mobility (Veitch, Bagley, Ball, & Salmon, 2006), which allowed them more interaction with peers, older children, and adults in the community. Developmentally, children become increasingly aware of their environments through major transitions to new social contexts such as preschool and kindergarten. The quality of institutional resources, such as schools, correlates with neighborhood conditions and affects the development of children (Leventhal & BrooksGunn, 2000). These theoretical considerations of differential neighborhood influences depending on child age are supported by empirical research, which has shown that neighborhood effects on the cognitive and behavioral outcomes of children are more evident in middle childhood compared to early childhood (Chase-Lansdale, Gordon, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1997; Fowler et al., 2009). Yet, largely missing from the existing literature is a discussion of how neighborhood influences, specifically the effects of collective efficacy, may vary by child age across different developmental stages in early childhood that includes both preschool and early school-age (kindergarten) years.

Parental Corporal Punishment and Behavior Problems in Early Childhood

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A robust literature demonstrates the associations between parental corporal punishment, a term used interchangeably with spanking in the U.S., and a wide range of adverse child outcomes (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Lansford et al., 2005). Children who are spanked tend to exhibit externalizing (Taylor, Manganello, Lee, & Rice, 2010) and internalizing (Maguire-Jack, Gromoske, & Berger, 2012) behavior problems, and to experience involvement with Child Protective Services (Lee, Grogan-Kaylor, & Berger, 2014) at significantly higher rates than children who are not spanked. Nevertheless, corporal punishment in early childhood remains a normative and accepted disciplinary strategy among many parents in the U.S. and around the globe (Lansford et al., 2005; Lee, Altschul, & Gershoff, 2013). In the U.S., a recent study found that approximately 30% of one-yearolds, 56% of three-year-olds, and 50% of five-year-olds were spanked at least once in the past month by a parent (Maguire-Jack et al., 2012).

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Theoretical bases for the link between corporal punishment and externalizing problems are found in social learning theory (Bandura, 1973). Social learning theorists suggest that corporal punishment increases child aggression mainly because parents using this form of punishment model aggressive behavior, and thus, legitimize the use of violence to control the behavior of others. Attachment theory (Bowlby, 1982) and parental acceptance-rejection theory (Rohner, 2004) explain the link between corporal punishment and internalizing problems. Attachment theory posits that children form an emotional bond with their caregiver in the early years that provides a feeling of security (Bowlby, 1982). Thus, when parents interpret their child's messages, such as a need for attention or comfort, as misbehavior and respond by using corporal punishment, the quality of the child's attachment to their parent is likely to be disrupted and the child's emotional development may be negatively affected (Levy & Orlans, 2000; Slade & Wissow, 2004). According to parental acceptance-rejection theory, children may perceive corporal punishment as a form of caretaker rejection, which is likely to foster a feeling of unworthiness (Bretherton, 1985; Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


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Rohner, 2004). A constellation of disrupted attachment quality and negative internal states in children, caused by corporal punishment, may ultimately increase the risk of internalizing symptoms including anxiety and withdrawal (Maguire-Jack et al., 2012).

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Previous literature demonstrates an inverse association between corporal punishment and child age, such that corporal punishment is most prevalent among preschoolers and less common among older children (Gershoff, 2002). The negative effects of corporal punishment also appear to be stronger when children are in middle childhood than in early childhood (Gershoff, 2002). Nonetheless, research often fails to identify the potentially differential effects of corporal punishment across the stages of early childhood (for notable exceptions see Maguire-Jack et al., 2012; Slade & Wissow, 2004). Attention to the differential effects of corporal punishment on infants compared with toddlers and early school-age children is important, given that child behavior is subject to the child's own cognitive and emotional capacity to process the parent's disciplinary message (Gershoff, 2002; Margolin & Gordis, 2000).

Parenting as a Mechanism in Neighborhood Influences on Early Childhood Behavior


While research on neighborhood and parenting effects on children are often two distinct literatures, increasing research stresses the interdependence of the distal (i.e., neighborhood) and proximal (i.e., family) factors that surround patterns of child development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998). Given young children's strong dependence upon their parents, recent scholarship suggests that early neighborhood disadvantage is transmitted to children through more immediate experiences such as parenting behavior (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Reflecting this reality, an emerging literature identifies the interactive and intricate relationships between neighborhood and parenting processes and trajectories of child behavior using an extended family stress model (Church, Jaggers, & Taylor, 2012; Ingoldsby et al., 2006; Kohen et al., 2008; Reising et al., 2013; Scaramella, Sohr-Preston, Callahan, & Mirabile, 2008). This line of research considers non-optimal family process as a pathway through which adverse neighborhood factors affect child development. That is, neighborhood disadvantage is likely to cause mental health problems and lead to the deterioration of the quality of relationships among family members. Consequently, this family distress is likely to exacerbate punitive parenting practices, which in turn, leads to adverse child outcomes (Conger et al., 2002). For example, Ingoldsby and colleagues (2006) found that early neighborhood disadvantage was associated with antisocial behavior at age 5 even after accounting for parent-child conflict, which then predicted antisocial behavior across middle childhood. Another study by Kohen and colleagues (2008) highlighted neighborhood cohesion and punitive parenting as pathways through which neighborhood structural disadvantage affected 4 to 5-year-old children's cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Although these studies validate the assumptions of the family stress perspective, clear gaps exist in this literature. First, none of these studies directly examined corporal punishment, a widely accepted and employed parenting strategy across the globe (Lansford et al., 2005), as a mediator of the link between neighborhood collective efficacy and child behavior. Second, the possibly reciprocal nature of the parent-child relationship was not



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accounted for in the previous models. Finally, there is a scarcity of research that has assessed the possible causal pathway between neighborhood and child behavior through family influences during the earliest stages of childhood (Sampson et al., 2002).

Bidirectionality in Parent–Child Interactions and Child Emotional Temperament

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The transactional model of development posits that the bidirectional relationship between the parent and the child affects each member of the relationship which, in turn, determines the course of the child's development (Lansford et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2013; Maguire-Jack et al., 2012; Sameroff, 1975). This interactive nature of the parent-child relationship is the basis of the recurrent debate on parent effects and child effects. Some researchers argue that parental corporal punishment is an antecedent of problematic child outcomes because corporal punishment models the use of violence as appropriate means of correcting others' behaviors; thereby, reinforcing children's violent behavior (Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Grogan-Kaylor, 2005). Other researchers claim that child characteristics and misbehavior elicit certain parenting practices such as corporal punishment (Larzelere & Kuhn, 2005). For example, heightened or difficult emotional temperament of a child, represented by dysregulated behaviors, may lead to more punitive and coercive parenting (Pinderhughes, Dodge, Bates, Pettit, & Zelli, 2000), which then may produce child behavior problems in subsequent years (Maguire-Jack et al., 2012). Thus, when assessing the relationship of parenting practices with children's later behavioral outcomes, it is important for statistical models to control for children's earlier emotional temperament.

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The Current Study

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The present study builds on the accumulating evidence to further investigate the separate yet simultaneous relationships between neighborhood and parenting processes and behavior problems in early childhood, a developmental period that has received limited attention relative to the large body of evidence on older children (Ingoldsby et al., 2006; Kohen et al., 2008). Using data from a sample of urban families, we employ longitudinal multilevel models to pursue the following research goals as depicted in Figure 1: (a) to examine the direct associations of neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment with externalizing and internalizing behavior problems in early childhood, (b) to investigate whether child age moderates the associations of neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment with early behavior problems, and (c) to explore whether there is an indirect effect of neighborhood collective efficacy on early behavior problems through maternal corporal punishment. On the basis of prior literature, we expected that both low neighborhood collective efficacy at ages 3 and 5 and maternal corporal punishment at ages 1, 3 and 5 would predict higher levels of behavior problems at the mean age of the study sample (intercept). The rate of change in behavior problems was expected to increase by children's exposure to low levels of collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment (time slope). Child age was hypothesized to moderate the effects of low collective efficacy and corporal punishment on Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


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behavior problems such that neighborhood and parent influences on child behaviors were expected to be stronger for older children. Lastly, we expected that maternal corporal punishment would partially mediate any observed associations between low collective efficacy and child behavior problems.

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The current study contributes to existing literature in several ways. The key strength is the longitudinal and simultaneous examination of the link between neighborhood and parenting processes and outcomes in early childhood, an understudied developmental period in extant neighborhood research. By exploring neighborhood and parent influences concurrently in a single model, we are able to account for the effect of one context while examining the effect of the other context. In addition, this study employed a rigorous longitudinal design to examine whether neighborhoods may also influence young children indirectly, by way of their effects on parenting. Another advantage is the use of a statistical model that controls for children's earlier emotional temperament and thus, addresses the potentially bidirectional relationship of corporal punishment and behavior problems (Eisenberg et al., 2001). Finally, we accounted for a range of neighborhood, family, and individual factors that may be correlated with the main predictors and outcomes. For example, our analyses accounted for maternal warmth and depression to consider the broader context of parenting in which certain parenting behavior such as corporal punishment are used. Previous studies document an inverse association between maternal warmth and spanking (Lee et al., 2013) and a positive association between maternal depression and use of spanking (Berlin et al., 2009). In view of extant research that recognized parental, cultural, and family backgrounds as predictors of corporal punishment (Gershoff, 2002), our covariates include child sex, mother's age, race/ethnicity, education, relationship status, and family income. Finally, our models accounted for median household income of census tract, as prior studies identified neighborhood SES as an indicator of collective efficacy (Sampson et al., 1997).

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Method Data and Participants

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The present study used data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWS), a longitudinal birth cohort study of 4,898 children born between years 1998 and 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities. By study design, the baseline (Wave 1) in-person interview oversampled unmarried mothers at hospitals immediately after the focal child's birth until they reached about three-quarters of the full sample (Reichman, Teitler, Garfinkel, & McLanahan, 2001). This sampling design resulted in an overrepresentation of minority children in the FFCWS who were more likely to have been raised in underprivileged neighborhood and family contexts. The in-person baseline survey was followed up by phone-surveys when children were age 1 (Wave 2), age 3 (Wave 3), age 5 (Wave 4), and age 9 (Wave 5). Mothers who completed the Wave 3 and Wave 4 core surveys were also invited to participate in the In-Home Longitudinal Study of Pre-School Aged Children (In-Home study hereafter). Based on interviewer observations and mothers' self-reports, the In-Home study assessed various domains such as child development and parenting behavior when the focal child was 3 and 5



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years old. Participants who refused home visits completed the In-Home study over the phone. Analyses for the current study used data drawn from the core studies at Wave 2 (n = 4,270), Wave 3 (n = 4,140), Wave 4 (n = 4,055), and the supplemental In-Home surveys at Wave 3 (n = 3,288) and Wave 4 (n = 3,024). The study sample is limited to mothers who took part in at least one of the Wave 3 or Wave 4 In-Home surveys (either the home visit or the phone interview) during which child behavior problems were assessed. As a result, the final analysis sample for this study is 3,705. Independent t-tests indicated that there were no statistical differences on any study variables except for child age at the Wave 3 and Wave 4 core interviews between the full sample (N = 4,898) and the analytic sample (n = 3,705).

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The amount of missing data ranged from 0 to 10% across all study variables, except maternal warmth, where data was missing in 33% of cases at Wave 3 and 29% of cases at Wave 4. The large amount of missing cases in maternal warmth was mainly due to participants who did not participate in the In-Home study. To account for potential bias due to missing data and to retain maximum sample size in the analysis, we used a Multiple Imputation through Chained Equations procedure to impute missing data in complete interviews with the assumption that data were missing at random (MAR) (Royston & White, 2011). The imputation procedure was based upon all study variables. Our models were analyzed using ten imputations and combined to form a single set of final estimates. Measures

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Dependent variables—Behavior problems were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991, 1992) during Wave 3 (CBCL/2-3) and Wave 4 (CBCL/4-18) In-Home interviews when the focal child was age 3 and age 5, respectively. The CBCL items were read to the mothers, who reported whether each statement regarding their child's behavior was not true (score of 0), somewhat or sometimes true (score of 1), or very true or often true (score of 2). Responses to these items were averaged for each subscale such that higher scores represent more severe levels of behavior problems. Externalizing behavior: Externalizing behavior at Wave 3 (age 3) was represented by the Aggressive Behavior subscale that included 15 items of the CBCL/2-3 (range 0–2) such as: “Child is defiant”, “Child gets in many fights”, and “Child hits others” (α = .86).

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The average of 20 items from the Aggressive Behavior subscale in CBCL/4-18 approximated externalizing behavior problems at age 5 (range 0–2). At Wave 4 this scale consisted of items such as: “Child is cruel, bullies and shows meanness to others”, “Child destroys his/her own things”, and “Child physically attacks people” (α = .85). Internalizing behavior: Internalizing behavior at Wave 3 (age 3) consisted of a total of 24 items of the CBCL/2-3—14 items from the Anxious-Depressed subscale and 10 items from the Withdrawn subscale (range 0–1.4, α = .81). The Anxious-Depressed subscale included items such as: “Child looks unhappy without good reason” and “Child is nervous, high strung, or tense”. Items in the Withdrawn subscale included: “Child doesn't know how to have fun, or he/she acts like little adult” and “Child seems unresponsive to affection”.



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Internalizing behavior at Wave 4 (age 5) was based on 22 items from the CBCL/4-18 Anxious-Depressed (14 items) and Withdrawn (9 items) subscales. Example items in the Anxious-Depressed subscale included: “Child feels or complains no one loves him/her” and “Child is unhappy, sad, or depressed”. The Withdrawn subscale included items such as: “Child would rather be alone than with others” and “Child is underactive, slow moving, lacks energy”. The internalizing behavior scale was the average of 22 items (range 0–1.5, α = .76) from these subscales as an item (“Child is unhappy, sad, or depressed”) was included in both subscales. Independent variables

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Neighborhood collective efficacy: The level of neighborhood collective efficacy was derived from mother's self-report of collective efficacy in her neighborhood that was assessed using the parent survey questionnaire during the In-Home study at Wave 3 (age 3), and the core interview at Wave 4 (age 5). Collective efficacy was based on the average of ten items from the Informal Social Control and Social Cohesion and Trust subscales from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), the most widely used assessment tool of neighborhood social process in the literature (Sampson et al., 1997). Higher scores in the collective efficacy scale represent higher levels of neighborhood collective efficacy.

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The Informal Social Control subscale asked mothers about the likelihood that their neighbors would intervene or get involved in the following scenarios: “If children were skipping school and hanging out on the street”, “If children were spray painting buildings with graffiti”, “If children were showing disrespect to an adult”, “If a fight broke out in front of the house”, and “If the fire station closest to the neighborhood was threatened and its budget was cut”. Mothers indicated the likelihood of neighbors intervening using a 5-point response option (1 = very unlikely, 2 = somewhat unlikely, 3 = neither likely/unlikely, 4 = somewhat likely, 5 = very likely) at Wave 3 and a 4-point response option at Wave 4 (1 = very unlikely, 2 = not likely, 3 = somewhat likely, 4 = very likely).

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The Social Cohesion and Trust subscale at Wave 3 assessed mother's perception of her neighborhood using the five items with a 5-point scale: “People around here are willing to help their neighbors”, “This is a close-knit neighborhood”, “People in this neighborhood generally don't get along with each other”, “People in this neighborhood do not share the same values”, and “People in this neighborhood can be trusted” (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = somewhat disagree, 3 = neither agree/disagree, 4 = somewhat agree, 5 = strongly agree). The Wave 4 Social Cohesion and Trust subscale replaced the last item in the Wave 3 scale with the following item: “Gangs are a problem in this neighborhood”. Responses to the Social Cohesion and Trust subscale at Wave 4 was coded using a 4-point scale (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, 4 = strongly agree). The negatively-keyed items in this subscale were reverse-coded. A proportional linear transformation was used to rescale the inconsistent response options between the 5-point response options at Wave 3 and the 4-point response options at Wave 4. Specifically, the minimum and maximum points of the Wave 3 scales were matched to that of the Wave 4 scales and the remaining values in Wave 3 scales were substituted to match Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


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the proportional distance between response options in the Wave 4 scales1. Methodological literature suggests that increasing the number of scale points and removing neutral midpoints from rating scales does not have significant effects on the reliability and stability of responses (Leung, 2011). Internal consistency of the ten-item collective efficacy scale in this study was .85 at Wave 3 and .86 at Wave 4 (ranges 1–4).

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Maternal corporal punishment: During the Wave 2 (age 1), Wave 3 (age 3), and Wave 4 (age 5) core surveys, mothers' self-reports to two questions assessed how frequently mothers used corporal punishment, specifically, spanking: “In the past month, have you spanked [child] because he/she was misbehaving?” (1 = yes, 2 = no), and “How often did you spank [the child]?” (1 = every day or nearly every day, 2 = a few times a week, 3 = a few times this past month, 4 = only once or twice). To represent the frequency of maternal spanking, these two variables were combined and recoded to an ordinal variable (0 = never, 1 = only once or twice, 2 = a few times this past month, 3 = a few times a week or every day or nearly every day) (Taylor et al., 2010). Control variables

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Emotional temperament: Emotional temperament of the focal child at age 1 was included in the analyses to address the potential that a child's early temperament may contribute to the use of maternal corporal punishment before the initial assessment of behavior problems at age 3. During the Wave 2 core interview (age 1), mothers were asked to rate three statements about their child on a 5-point scale (1 = not at all like my child to 5 = very much like my child). The statements were drawn from the Emotionality, Activity, and Sociability Temperament Survey—Parent Form (Buss & Plomin, 1984): “Child often fusses and cries”, “Child gets upset easily”, and “Child reacts strongly when upset”. Higher scores of this scale indicated more difficult emotional temperament. Internal consistency of this three-item scale was .60 in the present study, which is consistent with earlier studies that found adequate reliability of this construct (Mathiesen & Tambs, 1999). Maternal warmth: Interviewers rated maternal warmth using items from the parental warmth subscale in the Early-Childhood HOME (EC-HOME) inventory (Caldwell & Bradley, 1984) during the In-Home interviews at Wave 3 (α = .71) and Wave 4 (α = .81). Maternal warmth at Wave 3 (age 3) was represented by the average of five items indicated by the interviewer (0 = no, 1 = yes), for instance: “Parent spontaneously praised child at least twice” and “Parent's voice conveys positive feelings toward child”.

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The maternal warmth scale at Wave 4 (age 5) was the average score of nine items including five items from the Wave 3 scale and four additional items (0= no, 1 = yes), for example: “Parent encourages child to contribute” and “Parent mentions skill of child”. Mother's depression: The Composite International Diagnostic Interview-Short Form (CIDI-SF), Section A (Kessler, Andrews, Mroczek, Ustun, & Wittchen, 1998) was used at Wave 2 (α = .97), Wave 3 (α = .97), and Wave 4 (α = .98) core interviews to detect whether 1The values in the Wave 3 5-point scales were converted to the values in the Wave 4 4-point scales as follows: 2 to 1.75, 3 to 2.5, 4 to 3.25, and 5 to 4.



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mothers suffered from Major Depression. Mothers were asked a diagnostic stem question, “In the past year, have you felt sad or depressed for 2 weeks or more in row?” (0 = no, 1 = yes). Respondents who endorsed this question were then asked an additional seven questions concerning depressive symptoms (e.g., feel tired out/low on energy, felt down or worthless, thought about death). A major depression case was indicated if mothers scored 3 or higher on the eight questions. Child demographics: Child sex was assessed during the baseline core interview (1 = male, 2 = female).

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Mother's demographics: Several socio-demographic characteristics of the mother were included in the analyses. Time-invariant variables assessed at baseline (Wave 1) included mothers' self-reports of their race/ethnicity (1 = non-Hispanic White, 2 = non-Hispanic Black, 3 = Hispanic, 4 = other) and education (1 = less than high school, 2 = high school degree or GED, 3 = some college, 4 = college degree or higher). Time-varying factors measured at Wave 2 (age 1), Wave 3 (age 3), and Wave 4 (age 5) included mothers' age, relationship status with the focal child's father (1 = married, 2 = cohabiting, 3 = not married or cohabiting) and annual household income. Annual household income was based on mothers' responses to the following question: “Thinking about your income and the income of everyone else who lives with you, what was your total household income before taxes in the past 12 months?”

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Neighborhood demographics: Median neighborhood income in 1999 was taken from the 2000 U.S. Census and represented the median income of the households in the census tract in which a given respondent was residing at the Wave 2, Wave 3, and Wave 4 interviews. To employ a measure of relative change in income, rather than absolute changes in income, annual household income and neighborhood income were log-transformed for the multivariate models (Stock & Watson, 2003). Analytic Strategy

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Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed. Longitudinal multilevel models (MLM, Singer & Willet, 2003), also known as hierarchical linear models (HLM, Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002), were employed to examine the separate yet simultaneous relationships of neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment with between-child differences in initial levels of behavior problems, as well as the rate of change in behavior problems across ages 3 to 5. Multilevel models are an optimal strategy to analyze repeated observations of children in the current study given the likely correlated nature of such repeated observations. Lastly, multilevel mediation analysis in STATA 13 (StataCorp, 2013, Preacher & Hayes, 2008) was used to test the indirect neighborhood effect on child behavior through parenting. As recommended by Preacher and Hayes (2008), we performed a bootstrap analysis with 2000 resampled data sets. Bootstrapping estimates the indirect effect within each resampled data set based on the null hypothesis that the indirect effect is not different from zero.



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In this study, measurement occasions for individual children were the Level 1 unit of analysis and the children themselves were the Level 2 unit of analysis. To differentiate the effect of corporal punishment of infants (age 1) from later corporal punishment (ages 3 and 5), corporal punishment at age 1 was estimated as a time-invariant predictor while corporal punishment at age 3 and age 5 was analyzed as a time-varying predictor. To aid interpretation of results, child age at the time of the interview, which was originally assessed in months, was recoded to represent age in years and grand mean centered (mean age = 3.1 years). The analytic sample for the multilevel models included 3,705 respondents (total of 7,410 observation points). Specification of the final study model is as follows:

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β0 is the intercept of behavior problem at mean age β1 – β4 are the associations of predictors (collective efficacy, age 1 corporal punishment, ages 3-5 corporal punishment, and covariates) with the grand mean of behavior problems β5 is the average annual rate of change in behavior problem across children

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β6 is the degree to which the association of collective efficacy with the annual rate of change in behavior problem across children differs across ages β7 is the degree to which the association of corporal punishment with the annual rate of change in behavior problem across children differs across ages u0i is the random error term for the individual child's behavior problem at mean deviated from the grand mean of behavior problems u1i is the random error term for the individual child's rate of change in behavior problem from the average annual rate of change eit is the error term associated with the individual child's behavior problems at each measurement occasion

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Results Descriptive Statistics and Bivariate Correlations Descriptive statistics for the study sample are presented in Table 1. In this sample, the mean and standard deviation of both the externalizing and internalizing behavior scores were higher when children were age 3 than age 5. Maternal reports of neighborhood collective efficacy increased from 2.91 (SD = 0.70) at child age 3 to 3.10 (SD = 0.65) at child age 5.



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Approximately 27% of mothers reported using corporal punishment at least once during the past month when their child was age 1. More than half (54%) of children at age 3 and less than half (48%) at age 5 experienced corporal punishment at least once in the past month. Bivariate associations between study variables are displayed in Table 2. Most study variables within the same model had statistically significant, weak to moderately sizeable correlations. This indicates that multicollinearity was not a concern in the analyses. Multilevel Models

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Externalizing behavior problems—Table 3 presents results from the multilevel models that examined the simultaneous associations of collective efficacy and corporal punishment with externalizing (Model 1) and internalizing problems (Model 2). Overall, the average level of externalizing behavior significantly declined from age 3 to age 5 (β = –0.069, p < . 001). Collective efficacy had a noticeable inverse association with differences in externalizing behavior at mean age, net of covariates (β = –0.040, p < .001). Time-invariant corporal punishment at age 1 did not have a significant effect on between-child differences in externalizing behavior at mean age, after controlling for the covariates. Time-varying corporal punishment at ages 3 to 5, however, was clearly associated with higher externalizing behavior at mean age, and the magnitude of the effect increased as frequency of corporal punishment increased. Compared with children who were not spanked in the past month (reference group), all frequencies of spanking were met with higher externalizing behavior at mean age (p < .001). The non-significant interaction terms indicate that child age did not moderate the relationships between collective efficacy and externalizing behavior and corporal punishment and externalizing behavior.

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Turning to the covariates, higher levels of emotional temperament at age 1 predicted externalizing behavior at mean age (β = 0.051, p < .001). Overall, maternal warmth predicted reduced externalizing behavior at mean age (β = –0.083, p < .001), whereas maternal depression predicted higher levels of externalizing behavior at mean age (β = 0.092, p < .001). Average externalizing behavior at mean age was lower in girls, in Black children compared with white children, and in children whose mothers were more educated. On the other hand, mother's unstable relationship status with the child's father predicted higher child externalizing behavior.

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The standardized coefficients in Model 1 revealed the relative contribution of the predictors to externalizing behavior at the mean age. Joint tests of coefficients were performed to examine whether the differences in the coefficients were statistically significant. According to the standardized regression coefficients, the strongest predictive association with externalizing behavior was derived from child factors, which were child age, followed by emotional temperament, F(1, 95.3) = 44.97, p < .001. The next influential predictors were maternal corporal punishment during child ages 3 to 5 and maternal depression, F(1, 405.3) = 76.81, p < .001. The effects of collective efficacy came next, indicating that parent effects were more predictive of externalizing behavior than neighborhood effects, F(1, 105.9) = 19.40, p < .001.



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Internalizing behavior problems—In Model 2, the effect of age on internalizing behavior remained significant, net of the additional predictors, decreasing at a rate of 0.089 units per year (p < .001). On average, higher levels of collective efficacy predicted lower internalizing behavior at mean age, net of covariates (β = –0.030, p < .001). Corporal punishment at age 1 did not predict internalizing behavior at mean age, whereas corporal punishment at ages 3 to 5 was significantly associated with differences in internalizing behavior at mean age. Compared with children who were never spanked in the past month, the average level of internalizing behavior was 0.018 units higher for children who were spanked “once or twice” (p < .05) and 0.035 units higher for children who were spanked “a few times a week or more often” (p < .01) in the past month. The significant interaction between collective efficacy and child age on differences in internalizing behavior at mean age indicates that the protective effect of collective efficacy on internalizing behavior lessened as children became older (β = 0.008, p < .05). Conversely, the non-significant interactions between corporal punishment and child age on internalizing behavior demonstrate that the positive associations between corporal punishment and internalizing behavior were not dependent on child age.

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Emotional temperament at age 1 was positively associated with internalizing behavior at mean age (β = 0.021, p < .001). Increases in maternal warmth were met with lower internalizing behavior at mean age (β = –0.037, p < .001). On the contrary, maternal depression predicted higher internalizing behavior at mean age (β = 0.059, p < .001). In comparison to white children, internalizing behavior at mean age was higher in Hispanic children (β = 0.049, p < .001) and in children of an “other” race/ethnicity than white, Black or Hispanic children (β = 0.062, p < .001). Higher levels of mother's education and higher household income had significant associations with reduced internalizing behavior at mean age. The two largest standardized coefficients for internalizing behavior were observed in child age and emotional temperament, followed by mother's education, maternal depression, Hispanic ethnicity, and collective efficacy. The influence of all frequencies of maternal corporal punishment during child ages 3 to 5 were smaller in comparison to the effects of collective efficacy. This suggests that neighborhood effects are more predictive of internalizing behavior than corporal punishment. We tested this difference with a F-test, F(1, 198.9) = 44.97, and found that the difference was statistically significant (p < .001).

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Mediation analysis—Table 4 summarizes results from the multilevel mediation models and bootstrap analyses that tested the hypotheses that corporal punishment mediates the associations between collective efficacy and behavior problems. The models accounted for the full set of covariates in this study. The coefficients for the indirect effect for both externalizing and internalizing behavior were close to zero and their confidence intervals included zero, which indicated that the mediating effect of corporal punishment were minimal to non-existent. Robustness checks—To ensure that the rescaling of the 5-point collective efficacy items in Wave 3 to match the 4-point items in Wave 4 did not bias the analyses, the models were re-analyzed with two alternative transformations—(1) the continuous scales were divided Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


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into tertiles, such that each category represented low (reference group), medium, and high collective efficacy and (2) the neutral response options in the Wave 3 scales (neither likely/ unlikely, neither agree/disagree) were replaced as missing values and were imputed with the other missing variables. Results from both sensitivity analyses were very similar to the current results. This suggests that our analyses are robust and not threatened by the rescaling of the collective efficacy construct.

Discussion

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The present study investigated the simultaneous effects of neighborhood and parenting processes on child behavior problems from ages 3 to 5. Results from longitudinal multilevel models indicated that, overall, children living in neighborhoods with low collective efficacy from ages 3 to 5 exhibited higher behavior problems at mean age (3.1 years) of the study sample. On average, more frequent maternal corporal punishment at ages 3 to 5 was associated with increased behavior problems. These effects were evident even after controlling for emotional temperament and covariates at the child, family, and neighborhood levels. The interaction between neighborhood collective efficacy at ages 3 to 5 and child age on internalizing behavior indicate that the protective influence of collective efficacy was stronger for younger children. Child age, however, did not moderate the associations between corporal punishment at ages 3 to 5 and behavior problems. We found no evidence that the effect of low neighborhood collective efficacy on behavior problems is transmitted via corporal punishment after accounting for the covariates. Taken together, the current findings confirm the unique and concurrent effects of low neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment on early behavior problems.

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Neighborhood Collective Efficacy: Predictor of Behavior Problems in Early Childhood Consistent with the tenets of social disorganization theory, our analyses found a significant inverse association between neighborhood collective efficacy at ages 3 to 5 and behavior problems at age 3. Although early childhood remains largely unexplored in neighborhood studies, based on the perception that neighborhood contexts are less influential on early years in comparison to later childhood (for exceptions see Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, Klebanov, & Sealand, 1993; Chase-Lansdale & Gordon, 1996; Kohen et al., 2008), these results underscore the salience of neighborhood collective efficacy in shaping early child behaviors.

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Contrary to study expectations, the interaction between neighborhood collective efficacy and child age revealed that the protective influences of neighborhood collective efficacy on internalizing behavior diminished over time, whereas these same influences on externalizing behavior remained consistent in early childhood. As a whole, these results run counter to earlier research that found neighborhood influences to be weaker for younger children (Chase-Lansdale et al., 1997; Fowler et al., 2009) and highlight the meaningful role of neighborhood processes even in early childhood—a developmental stage during which children's direct exposure to neighborhoods is thought to be restricted and directly supervised by their parents. One possible explanation for the stronger neighborhood effect on internalizing behavior of preschoolers compared to older children involves potential indirect effects. Although this study found evidence for the direct effect of low collective



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efficacy on early behavior problems, neighborhoods may also influence early childhood behavior through indirect mechanisms that are not explored in this study. The negative effect of low collective efficacy on internalizing behavior may be exerted more strongly through mothers' individual processes when children are in early preschool years (age 3) compared to late preschool and early elementary school years (age 5). As neighborhood disadvantage predicts maternal depression (Kohen et al., 2008) and child behavioral issues are associated with heightened parenting stress (Baker, Heller, & Henker, 2000), mothers' mental health and functioning may be more susceptible to adverse neighborhood conditions when child behavior problems reach their peak around age 3. Accordingly, mothers experiencing mental health issues such as higher levels of depression in this sample might have attributed higher levels of internalizing behavior problems to their children (Ordway, 2011). Another indirect pathway through which collective efficacy affects early behavior may be individual child processes. Exposure to low collective efficacy during early ages may place children at higher risk of developing internalizing symptoms than in later years because young children lack the cognitive and socio-emotional capabilities to develop coping strategies and to regulate their dysregulated emotions (Fowler et al., 2009).

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In view of extant research that found the substantial linkage between neighborhood factors and school outcomes (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000), another explanation for the stronger neighborhood effect on internalizing behavior of younger children involves a change in neighborhood. Families may have moved to more advantaged neighborhoods with more institutional resources such as schools, libraries, and parks by the time their children reach public school entry. Indeed, the current analyses found the average household income and collective efficacy in neighborhoods to be significantly higher at age 5 than at age 3. This finding suggests that families in this study were more likely to reside in disadvantaged neighborhoods that lacked collective efficacy and community resources when their children were younger. In light of prior research, the scarcity of institutional and community resources that were available to families while their children were younger may have exacerbated the adverse effects of low collective efficacy on early internalizing behavior (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn, 2000).

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Finally, it should be noted that prior studies that investigated the differential effect of neighborhood by child age have focused on structural indicators (e.g., neighborhood SES, violence, ethnic diversity) and did not explicitly assess neighborhood social processes such as collective efficacy (Chase-Lansdale et al., 1997; Fowler et al., 2009). The stronger effect of collective efficacy on younger children found in this study suggests that there may be a different mechanism through which neighborhood social processes are manifested in child behavior as opposed to the way in which neighborhood structure affects children. Thus, more research is needed to identify the role of collective efficacy at various stages of child development. Maternal Corporal Punishment: Predictor of Behavior Problems in Early Childhood The current analyses present evidence that more prevalent corporal punishment leads to increased behavior problems during early childhood. This finding joins a large body of research that documents the longitudinal, positive associations between corporal punishment



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and behavior problems (Gershoff & Grogan-Kaylor, 2016; Grogan-Kaylor, 2005; MaguireJack et al., 2012). A noteworthy contribution of our findings is that corporal punishment at age 3 or age 5 was a substantial predictor of both externalizing and internalizing problems, even after accounting for the broader contexts of neighborhood conditions (Kohen et al., 2008) and parent functioning (i.e., maternal warmth and depression) (Eamon, 2001; Lee et al., 2013), as well as earlier child functioning (Stacks, Oshio, Gerard, & Roe, 2009) that may have potentially confounding relationships with the effect of corporal punishment. As expected, the evident link between corporal punishment at ages 3 to 5 and internalizing behavior at mean age lends credence to the contention that corporal punishment in early years may disrupt the quality of the parent-child relationship and thus, place children at higher risk of internalizing symptoms (Levy & Orlans, 2000). This finding also adds to the limited literature on the antecedents of internalizing behavior (Xue et al., 2005). In contrast, Maguire-Jack and colleagues' (2012) study notes that the associations between early corporal punishment (age 1 and 3) and internalizing behavior are only evident at age 5, which the researchers suggest, may be due to the less prevalent internalizing symptoms in early childhood than in middle childhood (Zahn-Waxler, Klimes-Dougan, & Slattery, 2000). The clear association between corporal punishment and internalizing behavior at age 3 in this study may reflect the noticeable influence of collective efficacy that is likely to predict both early corporal punishment and internalizing symptoms. Further, as demonstrated by the significant correlations in this study, internalizing and externalizing problems frequently coexist, with researchers reporting the former to be more challenging to detect (Campbell, 1995; Wiesner & Kim, 2006). Despite the methodological challenges in identifying internalizing behavior problems, the evident link between corporal punishment and internalizing symptoms in this study highlights the deleterious influence of corporal punishement on a wide-randing specturm of early behavior problems.


Unlike an earlier study that found lasting associations of corporal punishment at age 1 with externalizing behavior at ages 3 and 5 (Maguire-Jack et al., 2012), corporal punishment at age 1 was not a substantial predictor of later behavior problems at age 3 in our study. This non-significance of the effect of age 1 corporal punishment may be attributed to the way corporal punishment was measured. Whereas we only measured maternal corporal punishment, Maguire-Jack and colleagues (2012) included both parents' corporal punishment in their analysis. Another possibility may be that maternal warmth, an important covariate that considered the broader context of parenting in this study, reduces the harmful influences of corporal punishment on children (Ma, Han, Grogan-Kaylor, Delva, & Castillo, 2012). In addition, our broader conceptual framework that jointly investigated neighborhood and parenting influences may partially explain the non-significant effect of infant corporal punishment on behavior problems. It is possible that mothers residing in neighborhoods with higher levels of collective efficacy use less corporal punishment to their infants, as indicated by the significant negative correlation between collective efficacy and corporal punishment in this study. Furthermore, earlier child behavior and functioning could be confounded with the effect of infant corporal punishment on later behaviors. Indeed, Maguire-Jack et al. (2012) found that the effect of corporal punishment at age 1 on behavior problems at age 5 operated indirectly through corporal punishment and behavior problems at age 3, even after controlling for emotional temperament at age 1.



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Interestingly, the non-significant interactions between child age and varying frequencies of corporal punishment at ages 3 to 5 are indicative of the fact that, contrary to our hypotheses, the effect of corporal punishment on behavior problems did not differ by child age. A plausible explanation for this non-significance may be that the negative effect of corporal punishment on child behavior was not dependent on the developmental changes during early childhood, specifically ages 3 to 5, a period during which corporal punishment is most prevalent (Gershoff, 2002). However, this does not preclude the possibility that the effect of corporal punishment may vary when children move from early to middle or to later childhood. In a meta-analysis on the effect of corporal punishment on children, Gershoff (2002) found a stronger association between corporal punishment and adverse child outcomes during middle childhood than early childhood. Gershoff's study supports the argument that corporal punishment of school-aged children during which corporal punishment is less normative than preschool years is likely to have intensified effects on children. Alternatively, there may be cumulative effects of corporal punishment over time as children enter middle childhood. Non-significant Indirect Effect of Neighborhood on Early Behavior through Parenting

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Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find a significant indirect effect of neighborhood collective efficacy on early child behavior through maternal corporal punishment. This finding indicates that although conceptually linked, collective efficacy and corporal punishment are empirically separate domains when a comprehensive range of child, parent, and neighborhood factors are controlled for. This null finding has several implications. The first possibility is that there is a direct pathway from collective efficacy to behavior problems even for children in early childhood. Certainly, although young children are under the protection of their parents, they still live in the neighborhoods that their families inhabit; thus, these children are directly exposed to and affected by their neighborhood conditions. By study design, children in this sample were more vulnerable to neighborhoods risks such as crime, poverty, and dangers in their built environment than the U.S. population as a whole (Reichman et al., 2001). Thus, the low levels of collective efficacy, which many children in this sample have faced in their communities, may have had a direct influence in shaping children's early behavior problems.

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Alternatively, it is possible that there are other mediators that account for the direct associations between neighborhood characteristics and child behavior problems detected in the statistical models used in this research. For example, mothers' fear of children's outdoor play may be higher in high-crime neighborhoods with low collective efficacy (Kimbro & Schachter, 2011). The absence of the much-needed children's free may inhibit young children's healthy development as they are deprived of opportunities to expend energy and the ability to engage in prosocial play (Ginsburg, 2007). Another implication of this null finding is that corporal punishment cannot be viewed as a direct consequence of neighborhood problems represented by low collective efficacy. That is to say, factors beyond neighborhood characteristics such as culture and social norms appear to contribute to the degree to which parents use of corporal punishment and the degree to which physical discipline influences child outcomes (Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff et al.,



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2010; Lansford et al., 2005). In an important and influential contribution to the field, Lansford and colleagues (2005) conducted a study across six different countries to examine whether normativeness of corporal punishment in a particular cultural group moderated the associations between corporal punishment and child behavior problems. These researchers found that cultural normativeness did moderate these associations to some extent; however, increased use of corporal punishment was associated with increases in behavior problems across cultural groups (Lansford et al., 2005). Gershoff and colleagues (2010) reported similar results—suggesting that cultural processes may play an important role in advancing current understanding of the effects of parental discipline on children. Early Emotional Temperament, Parenting Context, and Early Behavior Problems


The significant role of neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment on child behavior should be interpreted within the larger context of child development and parenting. The substantial associations that we found between emotional temperament and later behavior problems underscore the importance of identifying early signs of behavior problems, mainly because infant behavior problems may be understood as a precursor for the early onset of a coercive cycle of negative parenting that leads to increased behavior problems and vice versa (Maguire-Jack et al., 2012). In light of the evident relationship between emotional temperament and later behavior problems (Eisenberg et al., 2001), the inclusion of emotional temperament in the current analyses strengthens the causal argument of this study. Congruent with a transactional perspective (Sameroff, 1975), future research could more directly investigate transactional relationships between emotional temperament and parenting behavior with a particular focus on the way in which these bi-directional relationships play out in disadvantaged neighborhoods. It would be particularly important to control for individual differences in early child temperament when examining such relationships empirically. A promising avenue for future research is the use of fixed effects regression, which has been employed elsewhere (Han & Grogan-Kaylor, 2013) in examining the effects of particular parenting behaviors, while controlling for individual differences in children.

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Turning to the effects of the broader contexts of parenting and socio-demographic factors, the direct neighborhood and parenting effects remained significant even after controlling for maternal warmth and depression, as well as a range of socio-demographic indicators that previous research has identified as predictors of behavioral issues (Berlin et al., 2009; Gershoff, 2002). The significance of maternal warmth in our findings underscores the deleterious influence of corporal punishment even in the context of a positive parent-child relationship. Likewise, the protective role of collective efficacy holds true net of parenting context (i.e., use of harsh and warm parenting practices) and maternal functioning (i.e., depression). Limitations and Directions for Future Research The results of this study should be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, most of our measurements relied on mothers' self-reports (exceptions include maternal warmth, which was based on interviewer ratings, and neighborhood income, which was derived from U.S. Census data). Consequently, mothers' responses regarding their child's behavioral



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issues, neighborhood problems, and use of corporal punishment may be subject to social desirability bias. The heavy reliance on maternal self-reports may also produce a spurious inflation of associations due to shared sources variance. An additional measurement issue related to corporal punishment is the reliance on mothers' self-definitions of their own use of spanking. As such, corporal punishment in this study may be confounded with other forms of coercive and harsh parenting. Also, the lack of reference to paternal corporal punishment in this study may have underestimated the role of fathers in shaping child outcomes. Second, the over-representation of socio-economically disadvantaged families in the FFCWS restricts the generalizability of our findings to similar populations. Third, despite the use of longitudinal data, as is the case with most of existing literature on this topic, the present study is limited in fully establishing the true causal and temporal directions between the influences of neighborhood and parenting and child behavior. The issues of omitted variables also caution causal interpretation of our results. That is, the negative impacts of low collective efficacy and corporal punishment on child behavior problems may be attributable to variables not captured in the current analysis. Nonetheless, by accounting for early child functioning, our findings provide more rigorous evidence that behavior problems are likely to be the outcomes of neighborhood and parent influences. Finally, while the current study's use of repeated measurements of child behavior before school-age extends our understanding of early behavioral trajectories, the 2-year interval between observations may be a substantial lag considering the rapid development in early childhood. This points to the need for additional repeated measurement designs with shorter follow-up schedules for more closely spaced observations of the developmental changes in early childhood.


Notwithstanding the study limitations, our findings extend the literature concerning the critical role of neighborhood and parenting processes on child development and underscore the value of multilevel intervention efforts that consider multiple ecological contexts such as individual, family, and neighborhood levels concurrently (Trickett, 2009; Trickett & Beehler, 2013). For example, to improve early child behavior, such an intervention might involve parent education programs that advocate the use of effective methods of non-physical discipline, series of group sessions where parents can discuss the successes and challenges of parenting together, and community-level campaigns that promote neighborhood collective efficacy. Importantly, neighborhood interventions that reflect the beneficial influences of collective efficacy on internalizing behavior of young children starting as early as three years old are warranted. Also, results of this study inform understandings of the mechanisms through which such multilevel interventions to affect child behavior problems might take effect. Our findings indicate that improving neighborhoods and parenting would likely both have direct effects on child behavior problems. However, design of such a multilevel intervention could not assume that improving neighborhoods would have an indirect effect on child behavior through its influence on parental spanking. Future efforts in the development and testing of multilevel intervention programs are warranted to improve neighborhood and parenting processes and child well-being. In sum, the present longitudinal multilevel models revealed that both low neighborhood collective efficacy and maternal corporal punishment, simultaneously and uniquely, were significant risk factors for externalizing and internalizing behavior problems during the earliest stages of childhood. As it is commonly said that “it takes a village to raise a child”, Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


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the current study provides empirical support for the contention that positive socialization of children requires a collective effort, which involves both the family and the community.

Acknowledgments The Fragile Families Study was funded by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD (#R01HD36916) and a consortium of private foundations.

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Sampson RJ, Morenoff JD, Gannon-Rowley T. Assessing “neighborhood effects”: Social processes and new directions in research. Annual Review of Sociology. 2002; 28:443–478. https://doi.org/ 10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.141114. Sampson RJ, Raudenbush SW, Earls F. Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science. 1997; 277(5328):918–924. https://doi.org/10.1126/science. 277.5328.918. [PubMed: 9252316] Scaramella LV, Sohr-Preston SL, Callahan KL, Mirabile SP. A test of the family stress model on toddler-aged children's adjustment among Hurricane Katrina impacted and nonimpacted lowincome families. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. 2008; 37(3):530–541. 53. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374410802148202. [PubMed: 18645744] Singer, JD., Willett, JB. Applied longitudinal data analysis: Modeling change and event occurrence. New York: Oxford University Press; 2003. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/ 9780195152968.001.0001 Slade EP, Wissow LS. Spanking in early childhood and later behavior problems: A prospective study of infants and young toddlers. Pediatrics. 2004; 113(5):1321–1330. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds. 113.5.1321. [PubMed: 15121948] StataCorp. Stata Statistical Software: Release 13. College Station, TX: StataCorp LP; 2013. Stacks AM, Oshio T, Gerard J, Roe J. The moderating effect of parental warmth on the association between spanking and child aggression: A longitudinal approach. Infant and Child Development. 2009; 18(2):178–194. https://doi.org/10.1002/icd.596. Stock, JH., Watson, MW. Introduction to econometrics. Boston, MA: Addison Wesley; 2003. Taylor CA, Manganello JA, Lee SJ, Rice JC. Mothers' Spanking of 3-Year-Old Children and Subsequent Risk of Children's Aggressive Behavior. Pediatrics. 2010; 125(5):e1057–e1065. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2009-2678. [PubMed: 20385647] Trickett EJ. Community psychology: individuals and interventions in community context. Annual Review of Psychology. 2009; 60:395–419. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych. 60.110707.163517. Trickett EJ, Beehler S. The ecology of multilevel interventions to reduce social inequalities in health. American Behavioral Scientist. 2013; 5:1227–1246. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764213487342. Veitch J, Bagley S, Ball K, Salmon J. Where do children usually play? A qualitative study of parents' perceptions of influences on children's active free-play. Health & Place. 2006; 12(4):383–393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2005.02.009. [PubMed: 16814197] Wiesner M, Kim HK. Co-occurring delinquency and depressive symptoms of adolescent boys and girls: a dual trajectory modeling approach. Developmental Psychology. 2006; 42(6):1220–1235. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.6.1220. [PubMed: 17087554] Xue Y, Leventhal T, Brooks-Gunn J, Earls FJ. Neighborhood residence and mental health problems of 5-to 11-year-olds. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2005; 62(5):554–563. https://doi.org/10.1001/ archpsyc.62.5.554. [PubMed: 15867109] Zahn-Waxler C, Klimes-Dougan B, Slattery MJ. Internalizing problems of childhood and adolescence: Prospects, pitfalls, and progress in understanding the development of anxiety and depression. Development and Psychopathology. 2000; 12(03):443–466. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0954579400003102. [PubMed: 11014747]

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Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Figure 1. Relationships addressed by the current study's research questions

Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


Page 25

Table 1

Demographic Characteristics (N = 3,705)

Author Manuscript

Age 1

Age 3

Age 5

p value

(M (SD) or %)

(M (SD) or %)

(M (SD) or %)

Externalizing behavior

0.65 (0.39)

0.53 (0.34)

< .001

Internalizing behavior

0.40 (0.24)

0.25 (0.20)

< .001

Variable

Child Outcomes

Neighborhood Collective efficacy

2.91 (0.70)

3.10 (0.65)

< .001

0.46 (0.86)

0.91 (1.03)

0.71 (0.88)

< .001

Never

73%

46%

52%

Only once or twice

15%

28%

31%

A few times this past month

6%

14%

12%

A few times a week or more

6%

12%

5%

Maternal Corporal Punishment

Author Manuscript

Emotional temperament

3.05 (1.17)

Maternal depression (%)

0.16 (0.36)

0.21 (0.41)

0.17 (0.38)

Yes

16%

21%

17%

No

84%

79%

83%

0.88 (0.22)

0.76 (0.28)

< .001

35.61 (2.44)

61.58 (2.70)

< .001

Maternal warmth

N/A < .001

Child Demographics Age (months)

15.02 (3.43)

Sex of focal child (%)

N/A

Male

52%

Female

48%

Mother's Demographics Age (years)

26.27 (6.02)

28.07 (6.04)

30.16 (6.02)

Author Manuscript

Race/Ethnicity

0.954 N/A

White, non-Hispanic

21%

Black, non-Hispanic

50%

Hispanic

26%

Other

3%

Education

N/A

Less than high school

34%

High school degree or GED

31%

Some college/technical school

25%

College degree or higher

10%

Relationship status

Author Manuscript

2.14 (0.84)

2.18 (0.88)

2.25 (0.90)

Married

29%

31%

31%

Cohabiting

28%

20%

13%

Not married or cohabiting

43%

49%

56%

31,215 (34,920)

34,502 (43,373)

36,662 (42,638)

< .001

35,826 (17,036)

36,404 (17,950)

37,847 (18,612)

< .001

Household income ($)

< .001

Neighborhood Demographics Median household income ($)



Page 26

Note. Chi-square tests were conducted for binary and categorical variables. Two independent samples t-tests or Bonferroni corrected one-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) were conducted for continuous variables.

Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.


.39*

.46*

-.14*

-.10*

.07*

.15*

.22*

.20*

-.09*

-.11*

.13*

.14*

.16*

.02

-.05*

-.11*

-.02

.03

.01

.08*

.03*

-.04*

-.11*

.70*

.38*

-.17*

-.14*

.14*

.20*

.20*

.25*

-.14*

-.07*

.12*

.18*

.18*

.05*

-.05*

-.12*

-.07*

.05*

-.01

.01

.11*

.03*

-.07*

-.11*

3. Int. behavior, age 3

4. Int. behavior, age 5

5. Collective efficacy, age 3

6. Collective efficacy, age 5

7. Maternal CP, age 1



10. Emotional temperament, age 1

11. Maternal warmth, age 3

12. Maternal warmth, age 5

13. Maternal depression, age 1



16. Child age

17. Child sex

18. Mother's age

19. Race/Ethinicity: White

20. Race/Ethinicity: Black

21. Race/Ethinicity: Hispanic

22. Race/Ethinicity: Other

23. Education: Less than HS

24. Education: HS diploma

25. Education: Some college

26. Education: College or higher

-.01

—

.51*

2. Ext. behavior, age 5

2

1

—

-.17*

-.14*

.03

.22*

-.07*

-.10*

.02

.12*

-.01

.11*

.08*

.02

-.04*

-.06*

-.07*

-.02

.03

.16*

.14*

.13*

-.05*

-.14*

.15*

.12*

.07*

.05*

-.12*

-.12*

—

4

.03

-.13*

-.12*

-.04*

.08*

.14*

.15*

.10*

-.10*

-.17*

.18*

.09*

.07*

.08*

-.16*

-.17*

.43*

—

3

.18*

.07*

-.06*

-.13*

.01

-.01

-.15*

.19*

.15*

.01

-.04*

-.07*

-.11*

-.08*

.07*

.11*

-.10*

-.09*

-.07*

-.06*

.36*

—

5

.16*

.04*

-.01

-.13*

.00

-.05*

-.10*

.18*

.09*

.00

-.02

-.09*

-.10*

-.07*

.11*

.10*

-.09*

-.05*

-.06*

-.05*

—

6

-.06*

-.01

.06*

-.01

-.02

-.13*

.21*

-.09*

-.13*

-.05*

.08*

.04*

.08*

.06*

-.02

-.07*

.11*

.31*

.38*

—

7

-.03

.05*

.04*

-.07*

-.01

-.13*

.11*

.01

-.10*

-.06*

-.03

.09*

.11*

.07*

-.03

.01

.09*

.48*

—

8

Author Manuscript

1. Ext. behavior, age 3

-.03*

-.06*

.04*

.03*

-.06*

-.04*

.03

.06*

-.01

-.03

-.02

.07*

-.06*

-.04*

-.01

.04*

.09*

.09*

.12*

.00

-.04

—

10

-.12*

.11*

.01

-.13*

-.06*

-.02

.08*

.08*

.06*

-.04

-.03

.08*

—

9

.13*

.12*

-.01

-.18*

.04

.03

-.18*

.18*

.10*

.05*

-.12*

-.03

-.04

-.03

.19*

—

11

.13*

.07*

-.02

-.13*

-.02

.06*

-.17*

.16*

.12*

.03

-.05*

-.02

-.03

-.02

—

12

-.06*

.02

-.01

.03

-.02

-.04*

.04*

.00

-.02

.00

.01

.29*

.33*

—

13

-.08*

.02

-.01

.05*

.00

-.05*

.05*

-.01

-.05*

.00

.01

.35*

—

14

-.06*

.03

.00

.01

-.02

-.05*

.02

.04*

-.01

-.01

.01

—

15

-.02

.00

—

16

-.09*

-.05*

-.01

.12*

-.01

.05*

.08*

-.16*

Author Manuscript

Measures

-.02

.01

-.01

.02

.00

.01

.00

.00

.00

—

17

.36*

.10*

-.07*

-.27*

.06*

-.05*

-.12*

.17*

—

18

.29*

.04*

-.05*

-.17*

-.11*

-.32*

-.49*

—

19

-.16*

.02

.12*

-.02

-.19*

-.58*

—

20

-.14*

-.07*

-.07*

.21*

-.13*

—

21

.13*

.02

-.04*

-.06*

—

22

-.25*

-.41*

-.48*

—

23

Author Manuscript

Table 2

-.23*

-.37*

—

24

-.20*

—

25

—

26

27

28

29

30

Author Manuscript

Correlation Matrix for Study Variables (N = 3,705) 31

Ma and Grogan-Kaylor Page 27

.12*

-.10*

-.09*

.11*

-.11*

-.12*

29. Relationship: Neither

30. Household Income

31. Neighborhood Income

3

-.15*

-.18*

.11*

.01

-.13*

-.08*

-.11*

.04*

.24*

.21*

-.13*

-.03

.05*

5

.17*

4

-.08*

6

.17*

.21*

-.13*

-.02

.15*

7

-.09*

-.09*

.09*

-.02

-.08*

8

-.04*

-.03*

.05*

-.03

-.03*

9

-.07*

-.06*

.05*

-.03

-.03

-.07*

-.08*

.06*

.01

-.07*

10

.13*

.16*

-.12*

-.01

.14*

11

.06*

.14*

-.11*

-.01

.14*

12

-.05*

-.06*

.10*

-.03

-.09*

13

-.05*

-.10*

.11*

-.03*

-.09*

14

-.02

-.05*

.05*

-.02

-.03*

15

-.03

-.09*

.12*

-.04*

-.09*

16

17

.00

-.01

-.01

.01

.00

.23*

.31*

-.23*

-.08*

.31*

18

.34*

.31*

-.19*

-.07*

.27*

19

p < .05 (or lower)

*

20

-.33*

-.20*

.30*

-.02

-.31*

Note: Time-varying demographic variables (child age, mother's age, relationship status, household income, neighborhood income) are from Wave 3 when the focal child was age 3.

.00

.00

28. Relationship: Cohabiting

2

-.13*

Author Manuscript

1

Author Manuscript

-.12*

.00

-.11*

-.13*

.11*

.05*

21 .11*

22

.13*

.10*

-.06*

-.05*

Author Manuscript

27. Relationship: Married

-.18*

-.28*

.12*

.08*

-.19*

23

-.13*

-.12*

.08*

.03*

-.11*

24

.05*

.06*

-.03

-.02

.05*

25

.39*

.52*

-.25*

-.14*

.38*

26

.32*

.39*

-.67*

-.34*

—

27

-.08*

-.06*

-.48*

—

28

-.24*

-.32*

—

29

Author Manuscript

Measures

.47*

—

30

—

31

Ma and Grogan-Kaylor Page 28



Page 29

Table 3

Multilevel Models Predicting Externalizing and Internalizing Behavior Problems

Author Manuscript

Model 1 (Ext. Behavior)

Model 2 (Int. Behavior)

Fixed Effects Coefficient Behavior problem score at mean age (intercept)

Rate of change in behavior problems (slope)

Standardized Coefficient

Coefficient

0.900***

0.585***

(0.108)

(0.075)

–0.069***

–0.305***

–0.089***

(0.018) Neighborhood Collective efficacy

–0.040***


–0.613***

(0.010) –0.075***

–0.030***

(0.010)

–0.087***

(0.005)

Corporal punishment, age 1 (baseline): Never Only once or twice this past month

–0.005

–0.005

0.010

Author Manuscript

(0.014) A few times this past month

0.012

(0.009) 0.008

0.005

(0.020) A few times a week or more

0.029

0.015

0.005

(0.013) 0.019

0.014

(0.021)

0.015

(0.013)

Corporal punishment, age 3-5: Never Only once or twice this past month

0.070***

0.088***

0.018*

(0.014) A few times this past month

0.106***

(0.008) 0.099***

0.015

(0.018) A few times a week or more

0.145***

0.035*

0.022

(0.011) 0.112***

0.035**

Author Manuscript

(0.019)

(0.012)

0.007

0.008*

(0.005)

(0.003)

0.042**

Interactions between main effects and child age Collective efficacy × age

CP, age 3-5 (Only once or twice) × age

CP, age 3-5 (A few times past month) × age

CP, age 3-5 (A few times a week or more) × age

Emotional temperament, age 1

–0.005

–0.003

(0.008)

(0.005)

0.006

0.008

(0.011)

(0.007)

0.013

0.004

(0.013)

(0.009)

0.051***

0.164***

0.021***

(0.005)

Author Manuscript

Maternal warmth

–0.083***

(0.003) –0.060***

–0.037***

(0.016) Mother's depression

0.092***

0.105***

–0.042***

(0.011) 0.098***

(0.010)

Child demographics


0.059*** (0.007)

0.098***


Page 30

Model 1 (Ext. Behavior)

Model 2 (Int. Behavior)

Fixed Effects

Author Manuscript

Sex of child: girl

Coefficient


Coefficient


–0.025*

–0.034*

–0.009

–0.019

(0.010)

Mother's demographics

–0.002

Age of mother (years)

(0.006) –0.034

–0.000

(0.001)

–0.000

(0.001)

Race/ethnicity: White, non-Hispanic –0.031*

Black, non-Hispanic

–0.043*

–0.003

(0.014) Hispanic

–0.006

(0.008) 0.049***

–0.007

(0.016) Other

0.031

–0.006

0.092***

(0.010) 0.062***

0.015

Author Manuscript

(0.027)

0.048***

(0.019)

Education: Less than high school High school degree or GED

–0.027*

–0.034*

–0.032***

(0.013) Some college/Technical School

–0.061***

(0.007) –0.073***

–0.073***

(0.014) College degree or Higher

–0.085***

–0.063***

–0.136***

(0.009) –0.072***

–0.075***

(0.022)

–0.098***

(0.014)

Relationship Status: Married Cohabiting

0.022

0.024

(0.016) Not married or cohabiting

0.036**

0.050**

Author Manuscript

(0.012) Logged household income

–0.004

0.010

0.017

(0.010) 0.013

0.028

(0.008) –0.016

(0.003)

–0.007**

–0.044**

(0.002)

Neighborhood demographics Logged median household income

–0.014

–0.039

–0.006 (0.006)

0.265***

0.154***

(0.011)

(0.009)

0.067***

0.045***

(0.019)

(0.014)

0.237***

0.157***

(0.013)

(0.009)

–0.013

Random Effects Level-2 variance for intercept (u0i)

Level-2 variance for slope of child's age (u1i)

Author Manuscript

(0.010)

Level-1 variance (eit)

Note: N = 7,410 observations (Level 1); N = 3,705 individuals (Level 2). CP = Corporal punishment. Age of child was grand mean centered. *

p < 0.05;



Page 31

**

p < 0.01;

***

p < 0.001; Standard errors in parentheses.

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Page 32

Table 4

Author Manuscript

Indirect Effects of Neighborhood Collective Efficacy on Behavior Problems through Maternal Corporal Punishment Percentile 95% CI Observed Coefficient

Bootstrap S.E.

Lower

Upper

Indirect effect

–0.003

0.001

–0.003

0.000

Direct effect

–0.026

0.009

–0.031

0.003

Total effect

–0.029

0.009

–0.032

0.003

Indirect effect

–0.000

0.000

–0.000

0.000

Direct effect

–0.013

0.000

–0.021

–0.005

Total effect

–0.013

0.000

–0.021

–0.005

Model summary for externalizing behavior

Model summary for internalizing behavior

Author Manuscript

Note: Percentile confidence interval based on 2,000 bootstrap samples

Author Manuscript Author Manuscript Dev Psychol. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2018 June 01.