Neighborhood and Gender Effects on Family Processes:Results From the Moving to Opportunity Program*Tama Leventhal Jeanne Brooks-Gunn**Abstract: Data from the New York City Moving to Opportunity 3-year follow-up were used to examine neighbor-hood and gender effects on adolescents’ family processes. Low-income, minority families in public housing in high-poverty neighborhoods were assigned randomly to (a) move to private housing in low-poverty neighborhoods only,(b) move to private housing in neighborhoods of their choice, or (c) stay in place. Family processes, assessed by par-ent reports and interviewer observations, were compared for those who relocated and those who stayed in place. Par-ents in the low-poverty group were observed to be harsher toward their daughters than parents in the high-povertygroup. In adolescence, residential relocation may be difficult for mother-daughter relations and require additionalservices to ease the transition.Key Words: adolescence, communities, gender, parent-child relations, poverty, social policy.The social contexts in which families are embeddedare thought to affect the nature of relationshipsamong family members (Teachman & Crowder,2002). For families with adolescent children, thecommunities where they live are one such con-text that may impact their interaction patterns(Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Sameroff,1999; Jencks & Mayer, 1990). Neighborhoods mayplay a role by organizing opportunities for socialinteractions and activities. However, families con-tinue to be the dominant force in adolescents’ lives(Steinberg, 2001). Thus, how community and familycontexts intersect has important implications forrelations among family members. Both of theseinfluences—family and neighborhood—may varyby gender during adolescence, when gender differen-ces become pronounced (Galambos, 2004).The focus of the present study is on this com-plex intersection. Specifically, we consider howneighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and gen-der independently and jointly affect parent-child in-teractions. To address these issues, we use 3-yearfollow-up data from a residential mobility experi-ment in which low-i ncome, minority families livingin public housing in high-poverty urban neighbor-hoods were assigned to (a) move to private housingin low-poverty neighborhoods, (b) move to privatehousing in neighborhoods of their choice, or (c) stayin public housing.Literature ReviewNeighborhood Socioeconomic Effects onAdolescents’ Family ProcessesOur theoretical understanding of how neighbor-hood SES, particularly concentrated poverty, is*The authors would like to thank the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Russell Sage Foundation for their support. We are also grateful tothe National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the NICHD Research Network on Child and FamilyWell-Being, and the Center for Health and Well-being at Princeton University. We are especially thankful to John Goering for his support throughout this project. Wealso would like to thank the staff at Schulman, Ronca, and Bucuvalas, Inc., for their role in data collection and preparation. We are indebted to Judie Feins and DebiMcInnis of Abt Associates, Inc., for technical assistance throughout this project. In addition, we are grateful to Greg Duncan, Tom Cook, Bob Crain, Rebecca Fauth, JeffKling, and Phil Thompson for their comments and suggestions throughout the study; Rebecca Fauth also provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.**Tama Leventhal is an Associate Research Scientist, Institute for Policy Studies and an Assistant Professor, Bloomberg School of Public Health at the Johns HopkinsUniversity, 3400 N Charles Street, Wyman Building, Baltimore, MD 21218 ([email protected]). Jeanne Brooks-Gunn is a Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor ofChild Development and Education at Columbia University.Family Relations, 54 (December 2005), 633–643. Blackwell Publishing. Printed in the USA.Copyright 2005 by the National Council on Family Relations.associated with adolescents’ family processes drawsheavily from reviews and analysis of neighborhoodstudies by Jencks and Mayer (1990) and Leventhaland Brooks-Gunn (2000), economic resource per-spectives (Haveman & Wolfe, 1994), literature onfamily stress and economic hardship and unemploy-ment (Conger, Ge, Elder, Lorenz, & Simons, 1994;McLoyd, 1990), and work on social organizationtheory (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997). Theinstitutional resources model highlights resourcesavailable in the community, such as parks, libraries,and youth programs (Jencks & Mayer; Leventhal &Brooks-Gunn, 2000). Poor neighborhoods are likelyto have fewer resources for families to draw upon fortheir children than more affluent neighborhoods,which may undermine parents’ efforts to providedevelopmentally enriching experiences for their chil-dren. The relationships and ties model focuses onthe association between neighborhood poverty andparent well-being that, in turn, may be associatedwith parenting behavior. Specifically, living in a poorand dangerous neighborhood may exacerbate paren-tal stress and lead to more negative parenting(Simons et al., 2002).The final model, collective efficacy and norms,points to community social processes as most perti-nent. Neighborhood socioeconomic conditions,notably poverty, are associated with the extent of com-munity social organization. Socially organized neigh-borhoods provide a sense of cohesion and trust amongcommunity members as well as shared values regard-ing behavior (Sampson et al., 1997). On average,higher income neighborhoods are more socially orga-nized and may provide more optimal contexts for ado-lescent child rearing if they minimize community-level threats to youth such as crime, violence, disorder,gangs, and access to illegal substances (cf., Luthar,2003). Taken together, these theoretical models re-veal that neighborho od poverty is likely to be associ-ated with a range of family processes relevant toadolescents—warmth, harshness, monitoring, androutines (Bradley et al., 2000; Steinberg, 2001).Affective ties between parents and children areoften characterized along two dimensions—warmthand harshness (Baumrind, 1972; Conger et al.,1994). Parental warmth entails emotional respon-sivity and support displayed by parents towardchildren. Parental harshness involves critical andunresponsive behavior toward children and