Tuesday, 12 April 2005

Parents, children and neighbourhoods

Information from the Families and Neighbourhoods Study (FANS) which I've referred to once or twice, is beginning to emerge. The research looked at the relevance of neighbourhood characteristics and residents' perceptions of their neighbourhoods for parenting and child behaviour, using four contrasting locations. Fans Among the findings:

  • Individuals who were more extrovert, those with more social support at home, and parents with older rather than younger children were more likely to become involved in their neighbourhoods.
  • Simply being a parent seems to be a barrier to being involved in the neighbourhood.
  • Deprivation itself is not particularly key in predicting different parenting approaches.
  • Parents who were more attached to their neighbourhood described more agreement locally about parenting, and more informal social control of local children. In contrast if the neighbourhood was seen to have higher levels of disorder and crime, respondents described less agreement about child rearing.
  • The parenting expected of neighbours was related to neighbourhood disorganisation and disorder such as the level of crime or disorder but particularly to the fear of retaliation by parents or children themselves if they engaged in informal social control.
  • If even a minority of local parents (and their children) are expected to react to intervention in a hostile manner then most parents will refrain from intervening in situations where children are either at risk or acting in an antisocial manner, even though they have strong personal beliefs that they should intervene.

A summary is available from the research team via the link above.

12 Apr 2005 13:37:39 | Neighbourhood relations

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Old campaigner at the gates again I've sat through the last couple of nights in a small hospital room, by a bed where my mother is wheezing out what we are told are her last days. My thoughts broken up by the brazen private terror of her breathing. Trying to understand what it was about her gift for relationships that she transmitted to those around her. And what strikes me is a sort of unemphatic certainty of her way, an instinctive doubt-free ease in how she related to others, so that none of us thought in terms of right or wrong, do or don't, good or bad - say in behaviour towards neighbours or acquaintances, when we were kids. Just somehow she transmitted, then and since, an unarticulated sense of the validity of other people. She genuinely knew she wasn't important, and people around her grew on her unostentatious and unmistakable compassion. Now, her social network is beginning to flock. I realise I've used the prefix un- several times, and perhaps there's a hint there to be taken, to do with simplifying. There are some aspects of our social relations that we could shed, that we could do without, fancy forms and customs we could strip away. What this tiny, frail, gasping, shrivelled figure tells me: take away stuff like hierarchies, deference and domination, celebrity, class, pomposity, snobbery. Take an interest in people, don't be distracted by frills. Give to them from all the resources of your self. I fall far short, and I'm privileged to be sitting here.
PREVIOUS POST
Policy on neighbourhoods More on the intentions of the present government, with regard to 'building from the neighbourhood up' and a 'vibrant civil society,' in chapter nine of the Labour Party manifesto.

Kevin Harris

Search

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments