Neighborhood Context and the Development of African American Children: Children of Poverty, Studies on the Effects of Single Parenthood, the Feminization of Poverty, and Homelessness

Abstract

Neighborhood Context and the Development of African American Children: Children of Poverty, Studies on the Effects of Single Parenthood, the Feminization of Poverty, and Homelessness, by M. Loreto Martinez. New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. 153 pp. $70.00, hardcover. Reviewed by Ernescia M. Torbert Richardson, Cleveland State University. Many notable approaches and explorations in the field of child development within the arena of education try to explain the impact environmental factors may have on an individual's overall physical, cognitive, and social maturation (or growth). Developmentalists, as well as educational professionals on every level have attempted to examine how these factors increase or hinder the edification of a society, children, and their families with respect to academic, sociocultural, political, economic matters. While research has revealed having a sense of a child's influencing surroundings may add to their development, discernment is not conclusive. For example, Vygotsky (1978), an established cognitive theorist, believes that to fully understand a child's psychological progress one must take into account social and cultural realms. Others theorists such as Bandura (1986, 1997), echo that perspective. Bandura interrelates the association between behavior and self-efficacy formation with social contexts as a key influencing factor of a developing child. He continues to explain, children observe and imitate what they see in these contexts (i.e., neighborhoods and communities) and thus the inception of their behavior is manifested and developed. Even further, Brofenbrenner (1986), who addresses the ecological realms of an individual's formal development, extends the perspectives aforementioned and formulates the relevant environmental factors into a model of systems that impact the family, the central unit of a child's development. Moreover, systems including not only the family, but other institutions such as churches, the communities, or neighborhoods also contribute to the development of children. Oblivious to the depth of their viewpoints, these theorists firmly incorporate a significant direction for human growth and development in normative and non-normative environments. These perspectives also assist in setting an educational criterion in understanding the experiences of children. However, established research fails to shed light on the plight of a considerable number of African American families and their children within oppressed urban settings. Instead, the literature approaches developmental topics relating to underrepresented groups of people using a biased and deficit framework. Neighborhood Context and the Development of African American Children: Children of Poverty, Studies on the Effects of Single Parenthood, the Feminization of Poverty, and Homelessness, by M. Loreto Martinez, redirects prior forms. Martinez reiterates the theories formerly ascertained and gives a contemporary validation providing a step forward in trying to understand the ways in which neighborhoods [or environments] relate to children's development and the relationships among neighborhood structure, family processes and children's outcomes (p. 109). Even more, this book documents the observable, unobservable, and denied conditions that have plagued the underrepresented disadvantaged socioeconomic group of African American children and their families for decades in urban settings (McGroder, 2000; Ogbu, 1989). Martinez investigates and focuses on environmental systems such as the outer community or neighborhood which can reveal disparities of poverty, crime-ridden, dilapidated infrastructure in addition to other ominous threats to their-family and child-existence. She documents with empirical data how the result can be detrimental to African American children's cognitive and social development-a condition that can trickle down from the outer reality, the community, and be absorbed by the inner reality, the family (Comer, 1988, 1997). …