This article uses hierarchical linear modeling with a sample of African American children and their primary caregivers to examine the association between various community factors and child conduct problems. The analysis revealed a rather strong inverse association between level of collective socialization and conduct problems. This relationship held after controlling for a variety of individual-level variables relating to family, peers, and school. Two other community-level variables, prevalence of crime and concentrated disadvantage, were not significantly related to conduct problems. Overall, the results suggest that successful childrearing is a community enterprise. It appears that communities significantly reduce their risk for child conduct problems to the extent that adults know the children, parents, and teachers in their area, and they are inclined to act upon these social ties either by reprimanding children who are misbehaving or by notifying the proper authorities.
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