Parents' Conceptions of Social Dangers to Children in the Urban Environment

Abstract

This study explores parents' conceptions of dangers in their changing neighborhoods in relationship to the activities of their nine- to eleven-year-old children. It was designed as exploratory research, based on the tradition of grounded theory, to discover the socio-physical qualities that a sample of New York City parents viewed as dangerous to their children, how parents from different ethnic and racial backgrounds cope with their concerns, and the impact of their beliefs on their children.