Children Thrive in Neighborhoods With Safe Amenities

Public health officials understand that young people can overcome disadvantages if their communities offer them safe spaces in which to grow. At the neighborhood level, that means offering kids sidewalks and walking paths, recreation centers, parks, playgrounds, and libraries or bookmobiles. A recent research note by Mavis Sanders and her colleagues at Child Trends revisited data from the 2020-2021 National Survey of Children's Health, which suggests that if we want to address the problems confronting generations of black youth, we are going to have to stop expanding policing efforts to control young people and instead put our money into the amenities that make kids feel safe, keep them busy, and inspire hope for their futures.

The CDC's research is a reminder that we need to look beyond the individual if we want to create sustainable change for all children who are structurally on the margins with histories of disadvantage. Helping children flourish is definitely a case of "build it, and they will come." Those four amenities that were studied were able to increase the number of children who flourished in their communities. In fact, in their analysis, the authors of the report found that Black adolescents living in communities with all four of those amenities were twice as likely to be doing well than similar kids living in communities with zero, one, or only two of those amenities.

Sadly, we have been ideologically naïve when it comes to what helps children to thrive. First, there is the myth of individual ruggedness. Kids are told to "bounce back," show "grit," and "believe in themselves," and all will be fine. No matter that their neighborhoods and education systems are chronically underfunded by a strange reliance on municipal taxes which means poor (often racialized) kids get fewer opportunities in a never-ending cycle of disadvantage. The entire story is one of personal responsibility despite the evidence that social safety nets make lives better. As we say on the coast where I live, "A high tide lifts all boats."

Those advocating for personal transformation, however, can be just as much of a problem when efforts to enlighten ignore the social determinants of health. While mindfulness training, self-esteem workshops, and self-regulation courses have some benefits for children, it's disheartening to see so many people approaching children as spiritual beings waiting to be awakened rather than changing the world around kids to help them thrive. Themes of individual responsibility for personal transformation are just as much there on the left as they are on the right, only they're dressed up as pseudo-science and disguised beneath self-help gibberish with a flair for spiritual awakening that glosses over thornier problems with power and privilege. I have been in rooms with hundreds of trainees eager to learn how to teach meditation to kids without anyone talking about what happens when a child who is calm adapts to a toxic, violent, or racist world. When does "change yourself" collide with the need to "change the world around us"?

The report in Child Trends is not the first time evidence has been provided that proves a connection between the safe spaces children have to go to in their communities and their psychological and social outcomes. And yet, we are just as likely to invest in jails as we are to build recreation centers. We fail miserably at financing quality schools while worrying about street protests.

We know what to do to help children thrive. The cost is relatively little when compared to the alternatives.