Social Competence in Late Elementary School: Relationships to Parenting and Neighborhood Context

Despite evidence that neighborhoods confer both risk and resilience for youth development, the existing neighborhood research
has a number of methodological limitations including lack of diversity in neighborhoods sampled and neighborhood characteristics
assessed. The purpose of this study was to address these methodological limitations of existing research and to examine the
relationship of neighborhood structural and social characteristics to family-level social processes and teacher-reported social
competence during early adolescence. The study sample of 3,624 fifth graders (51 % girls) was ethnically diverse, including
roughly even proportions of non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black, and Hispanic youth. Neighborhood measures included economic
disadvantage derived from the U.S. Census, physical and social disorder obtained by direct observation, and social capital
from parental reports. Family-level social processes included parent reported family cohesion and youth reported maternal
and paternal nurturance. We found that neighborhood factors significantly associated with youth social aggression and social
competence but not social withdrawal, after controlling for individual demographic characteristics and parenting factors.
There was limited evidence of moderation of family influences by neighborhood characteristics as well as the moderation of
neighborhood effects by children’s gender. Neighborhood physical disorder was associated with increased social aggression
among boys but with increased social withdrawal among girls. Implications of the study’s findings for research on neighborhoods
and adolescent development and the development of preventive interventions are discussed.