Does Parenting Explain the Effects of Structural Conditions on Children's Antisocial Behavior? A Comparison of Blacks and Whites

Abstract

Despite the fact that black children are disproportionately likely to live in poverty and with single mothers, evidence about the effects of those experiences on antisocial behavior is based largely on samples of white children. We evaluate race differences in the processes that link poverty and single parenthood to antisocial behavior, drawing on conceptual models that link structural conditions to children's well-being through the mediating influences of parental distress and unsupportive parenting. On the basis of data from the 1988 Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data set, we find that the total effects of poverty and single parenthood on parenting practices, and of parenting practices on antisocial behavior, do not differ significantly by race. However, the processes that create those effects do vary by race. Parenting practices and antisocial behavior are reciprocally related for whites but parenting practices do not significantly predict antisocial behavior for blacks.