No Safe Havens: Protective Parenting Strategies for African American Youth Living in Violent Communities.

Africans American youth experience disproportionately high rates of exposure to community violence. Such exposures are associated with a myriad of physical and mental health challenges. However, few qualitative studies have examined the ways in which parental figures have attempted to manage youth exposure to violence. This study recruited 4 focus groups composed of the parents of African American youth (n = 54). Participants reported that (a) there were no safe places immune from community violence, (b) there were no populations or subgroups protected from community violence, and (c) strategies to manage exposure to violence were often defined by the gender of the child. Although common protective parental strategies included mixed benefits, they ranged from "sheltering" (keeping children off the streets), "chauffeuring" (transporting or accompanying children to and from places), "removal" (enrolling children in schools outside of the neighborhood), and attempting "to rebuild the village." However, several of these strategies had constraints including money, time, and child maturation. Based on these findings, we offer research, policy, and practice implications in response to community violence exposure among this population.