Linking perceived community violence and parenting stress from early childhood to adolescence: A parallel-process...

Community violence is one of the biggest social safety issues in the United States. In the past year, over 1.4 million people were assaulted by various types of community violence (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). Understanding how perceived community violence affects maternal parenting stress, independent of other community characteristics, is critical for developing targeted interventions that support families in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Using data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (N = 4,898 families across 20 U.S. cities), we estimated linear growth models with repeated measures at child ages 3, 5, 9, and 15. The sample overrepresented low-income families and minority populations. The results showed a correlation between higher initial levels of parenting stress and increased initial levels of perceived community violence, with both parenting stress and perceived community violence demonstrating concurrent decreasing trends over time. However, the rate of change in parenting stress was not significantly associated with the rate of change in perceived community violence. Results revealed that maternal parenting stress and perceived community violence are interconnected over time, with mothers experiencing higher stress also reporting higher community violence at baseline, and both declining concurrently as children aged. Such findings emphasized the importance of implementing interventions aimed at alleviating the negative impacts of community violence on family well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).