Violence Exposure and Adjustment in Inner-City Youth: Child and Caregiver Emotion Regulation Skill, Caregiver–Child Relationship Quality, and Neighborhood Cohesion as Protective Factor

Abstract

This short-term, longitudinal interview study used an ecological framework to explore protective factors within the child, the caregiver, the caregiver–child relationship, and the community that might moderate relations between community violence exposure and subsequent internalizing and externalizing adjustment problems and the different patterns of protection they might confer. Participants included 101 pairs of African American female caregivers and one of their children (56% male, M = 11.15 yrs, SD = 1.28) living in high-violence areas of a mid-sized southeastern city. Child emotion regulation skill, felt acceptance from caregiver, observed quality of caregiver–child interaction, and caregiver regulation of emotion each were protective, but the pattern of protection differed across level of the child's ecology and form of adjustment. Implications for prevention are discussed.