The Neighborhood Walk

Abstract: This report documents children's perceptions of their involvement with self-development, family members, and members of the community and begins to test the relation between that network and aspects of social-emotional functioning during middle childhood. One hundred sixty-eight children residing in nonmetropolitan and rural northern California participated. Each child was taken on a Neighborhood Walk, and then several measures of social-emotional functioning were administered. Cross-sectional data form the empirical basis for a developmental perspective on sources of support, the structure of social-emotional functioning, and the relationship between sources of support and social emotional functioning during middle childhood. The child's perception of support was found relevant to predicting the social-emotional functioning of children growing up in relatively secure and low-stress conditions in modern American sy.