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Violent communities, family choices, and children's chances: An algorithm for improving the odds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2009

John E. Richters  and
Pedro E. Martinez
John E. Richters*
Affiliation:
Child and Adolescent Disorders Research Branch, National Institute of Mental Health
Pedro E. Martinez
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Developmental Psychology, National Institute of Mental Health
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: John Richters, Child and Adolescent Disorders Research Branch, National Institute of Mental Health, 5600 Fishers Lane, Room 18–C17, Rockville, MD 20857.
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Abstract

Data are presented concerning the early predictors of adaptational success and failure among 72 children attending their 1st years of elementary school in a violent Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Adaptational failures were defined as those children who were doing poorly or failing in school and rated by their parents as suffering clinically significant levels of behavior problems. Adaptational successes were defined as children whose performance as students was rated in the average to excellent range and whose parent-rated levels of behavior problems were within the normal range. Despite the fact that these children were being raised in violent neighborhoods, had been exposed to relatively high levels of violence in the community, and were experiencing associated distress symptoms, community violence exposure levels were not predictive of adaptational failure or success. Instead, adaptational status was systematically related to characteristics of the children's homes. More specifically, the children's chances of adaptational failure rose dramatically as a function of living in unstable and/or unsafe homes. Moreover, it was not the mere accumulation of environmental adversities that gave rise to adaptational failure in these children. Rather, it was only when such adversities contaminated or eroded the stability and/or safety levels of the children's homes that the odds of their adaptational failure increased. We argue that this erosion of the quality of the child's microsystem (i.e., family) by adversities and pressures in the exosystem (i.e., community) is not an inevitable process. Although not yet well understood, it is a process over which families have and must exercise control. The implications of these data for improving children's chances of physical, psychological, and academic survival in violent neighborhoods are considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Development and Psychopathology , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , Fall 1993 , pp. 609 - 627
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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