Social context and family relationships: neighborhoods and parenting

In this chapter, we focus on family relationships in social context, with a specific emphasis on neighborhood contexts and parenting. Neighborhoods transcend mere physical surroundings; instead, neighborhoods serve as crucial social and cultural contexts. First, we introduce theoretical frameworks commonly employed by scholars examining the impact of neighborhoods on parenting behaviors and review how neighborhood characteristics have been defined and measured. Second, we review previous research examining neighborhood influences on parenting behaviors. This review incorporates two constructs of neighborhoods-neighborhood disadvantage and neighborhood social processes-in relation to various types of parenting behaviors including normative-general, non-normative, and domain-specific parenting behaviors. Third, we aim to elucidate potential mediating and moderating variables in the relation between neighborhood social processes and parenting behaviors. Drawing from our review, we propose a transactional model to guide future research examining how neighborhood context affects parenting behaviors.