ITROW Research Projects - Neighborhoods and Gendered Child
Development
Introduction
 As
girls become women, their shaping and formation is affected by many
aspects of society – their families, their friends, and even conditions
far beyond their consciousness such as the level of employment available
to the adults in their community, the ways in which people make their
living, the rules made by lawyers, politicians, and governments –
influences that determine the constraints and opportunities available to
them – influences that they may not become aware of until they are
adults, if then.
This project, the Neighborhood
Research Project, attempts to trace one kind of flow of influence – from
local economic opportunities, to neighborhood qualities, to families
living in those neighborhoods, to the children of the families, to the
shaping of girls in common with but also in difference from boys.
The primary sources of data for the
study are three: (1) 1990 data on 202 neighborhoods (census tracts) in
Baltimore City, Maryland, which measure the economic, social, and
occupational characteristics of neighborhoods; (2) 1989-1993
neighborhood crime data on community violence derived from records of
the Baltimore Police Department; and (3) 1985-1993 longitudinal sample
data on approximately 2000 children and their care-takers collected by
the Baltimore Prevention Program
of Johns Hopkins University on two cohorts of children who were in the
first grade in 1985 and 1986, and collected each year since then.
Map of Neighborhoods in Baltimore’s
North East Side
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