Neighborhood Influence on Parenting Practices Regarding Youth Outdoor Play

Adolescent Behavior, Parenting, Physical Activity

Parental constraint of outdoor play may be fueling unhealthy emotional and physical development in today's children and adolescents. Time spent outdoors is a key determinant of unstructured play and overall physical activity levels, both of which are crucial to optimal development in youth. Modern barriers - such as crime, poor social ties among neighbors, and unsafe physical environments - constrain parental practices and reduce opportunities for outdoor play in children and youth. Low levels of perceived collective efficacy, a measure of perceived neighborhood cohesion and the collective capacity to solve neighborhood problems, has been proposed as a social environmental factor that constrains outdoor play by parents either attempting to avoid potentially dangerous situations or using defensive behavior by upgrading security measures. Moreover, incivilities in the neighborhood physical environment (e.g. litter, graffiti, blighted property) may influence parents' perceived collective efficacy. Consequently, a child's ability to achieve the recommended minimum of 60 minutes of daily physical activity may be limited by a complex interaction between neighborhood social and physical environmental factors and the extent to which parents respond by constraining offspring outdoor play. The central hypothesis of this research is that modifiable factors in the neighborhood social and physical environment result in parental constraint of offspring outdoor play, which reduces overall physical activity during critical years of development. This research will use qualitative methods to generate a comprehensive understanding of how and which environmental factors play a crucial role in parental constraint of outdoor play and promote low levels of within-neighborhood physical activity. This ancillary study will recruit 32 parents/guardians of participants from the parent study, Translational Investigation of Growth and Everyday Routines in Kids (TIGER Kids) Study (USDA 3092-51000-056-04A), to participate in in-depth interviews. My ultimate goal is to use knowledge gained from this ancillary study to generate community-based interventions that will target neighborhood factors to successfully reduce parental constraints on outdoor play.

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