Neighborhood child-friendliness and parenting strategies: Community cultural wealth in a public housing community.

Abstract

Understanding the experiences of parents in public housing is crucial for supporting their well-being and their children's development. However, prior research on high-poverty neighborhoods, including public housing communities, has given limited attention to parents' experiences and perceptions and predominantly focused on neighborhood deficits rather than strengths. This qualitative study drew on in-depth interviews with 29 parents from a single public housing community in the United States. We used reflexive thematic analysis to understand perceptions of neighborhood child-friendliness, including both stressors and assets, and use of parenting strategies. Yosso's Community Cultural Wealth framework was applied to situate parenting strategies from a strengths-based perspective. We found that parents perceived child-unfriendly aspects of the neighborhood, including neighborhood chaos and safety concerns, leading them to use preventive parenting strategies to protect their children from risks. Parents also identified child-friendly aspects of the neighborhood, such as supportive social networks and neighborhood amenities, which prompted their use of promotive parenting strategies to support their children's positive development. Both parenting strategies reflected the activation of multiple domains of Community Cultural Wealth, including familial (valuing broader family and collective knowledge), social (social networks), navigational (skills to navigate external environment), aspirational (aspirations in the face of environmental challenges), and resistant (challenging deficit views and stereotypes) capital (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research, n.d.). Our findings offer insights into creating child-friendly environments in high-poverty neighborhoods and designing programs for parents in these communities that leverage their existing strengths. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).