An Exploratory Study of Parenting in Public Places: What Can We Learn from Parents’ Activity Locations and Physical Punishment?

Abstract

In this exploratory study, we examine how abusive parenting behaviors cluster across activity space locations in order to assess whether these clusters may be places where parenting norms are learned. We used survey data from Sacramento, California, to identify activity space locations for physical punishment and administrative data to identify physical abuse clusters. We find that physical punishment clusters occur primarily in stores and do not overlap with physical abuse clusters. Alcohol outlet density within the clusters was significantly different. Findings from this study allow us to think about those venues or microcontexts that might be the most risky for children to experience physical punishment and parents to engage in punitive parenting. Furthermore, this study may provide insight into ways practitioners and prevention experts can engage in harm reduction program planning to reduce maltreatment. Keywords Place-based intervention. Child physical abuse. Parenting in public. Spatial statistics. Alcohol outlets Child maltreatment (i.e., abuse or neglect by caregivers) impacts 12.5% of children by the time they are 18 (Wildeman et al. 2014). Despite this prevalence, financial investments in maltreatment prevention remain relatively low. Prevention programming has focused primarily on changing individual risk factors related to abuse or neglect via family strengthening programs (

Contrasting Methods of Measurement in Spatial Analyses Examining the Alcohol Environment and Child Maltreatment

“…This consideration is especially salient given proposed interventions: Will the intervention/service target parents, or children? For example, (Freisthler et al, 2020) used household level data to determine activity spaces for parents and concluded that retail establishments such as Target could serve as efficient locations for parenting interventions (Freisthler et al, 2020). Thus, our “hot spots” could be used to locate likely shopping establishments that could be used to provide parenting resources proximal to targeted populations.…”