# The Challenge of Parenting Girls in Neighborhoods of Different Perceived Quality

## TL;DR

This study explores how parents' perceptions of neighborhood quality affect their engagement with their daughters and how this relates to delinquency in girls.

## Contribution

The study reveals how parental perceptions of neighborhood problems influence parental engagement and its limited predictive power on girls' delinquency.

## Key findings

- Neighborhood problems and parental engagement showed higher stability over time compared to girls' delinquency.
- Parents' perception of neighborhood problems influenced their engagement with their daughters.
- Low parental engagement at age 16 predicted increased self-reported delinquency at age 17.

## Abstract

It is well-known that disadvantaged neighborhoods, as officially identified through census data, harbor higher numbers of delinquent individuals than advantaged neighborhoods. What is much less known is whether parents’ perception of the neighborhood problems predicts low parental engagement with their girls and, ultimately, how this is related to girls’ delinquency, including violence. This paper elucidates these issues by examining data from the Pittsburgh Girls Study, including parent-report of neighborhood problems and level of parental engagement and official records and girl-reported delinquency at ages 15, 16, and 17. Results showed higher stability over time for neighborhood problems and parental engagement than girls’ delinquency. Parents’ perception of their neighborhood affected the extent to which parents engaged in their girls’ lives, but low parental engagement did not predict girls being charged for offending at age 15, 16 or 17. These results were largely replicated for girls’ self-reported delinquency with the exception that low parental engagement at age 16 was predictive of the frequency of girls’ self-reported delinquency at age 17 as well. The results, because of their implications for screening and early interventions, are relevant to policy makers as well as practitioners.