A longitudinal model of parent academic involvement, behavioral problems, achievement, and aspirations was examined for 463 adolescents, followed from 7th (approximately 12 years old) through 11th (approximately 16 years old) grades. Parent academic involvement in 7th grade was negatively related to 8th-grade behavioral problems and positively related to 11th-grade aspirations. There were variations across parental education levels and ethnicity: Among the higher parental education group, parent academic involvement was related to fewer behavioral problems, which were related to achievement and then aspirations. For the lower parental education group, parent academic involvement was related to aspirations but not to behavior or achievement. Parent academic involvement was positively related to achievement for African Americans but not for European Americans. Parent academic involvement may be interpreted differently and serve different purposes across sociodemographic backgrounds.Adolescence is a critical time for forming aspirations for the future, especially with regard to career aspirations (Schulenberg, Goldstein, & Vondracek, 1991;Vondracek & Lerner, 1982). School performance is a key mechanism through which adolescents learn about their talents, abilities, and competencies, which are an important part of developing career aspirations (Gottfredson, 1981;Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994. Parent academic involvement may ensure that adolescents obtain academic skills and knowledge that prepare them for considering higher level occupations (Young & Friesen, 1992). In fact, school performance and career Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Nancy E. Hill, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Box 90085, Durham, NC 27708-0083. Electronic mail may be sent to nancy@duke.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript aspirations in adolescence are often correlated (Abu-Hilal, 2000;Mao, 1995;Trusty, Robinson, Plata, & Ng, 2000), and supportive parents are associated with the development of career aspirations (Hill, Ramirez, & Dumka, 2003;McDonald & Jessell, 1992; McWhirter, Hacket, & Bandalos, 1998; Young & Freisen, 1990; Young, Freisen, & Borycki, 1994). Although research has consistently shown that parent academic involvement is associated with achievement and achievement is related to career and educational aspirations, little is known about whether parental involvement in schooling is ultimately related to adolescents' aspirations for adulthood and the mechanisms of influence, especially across the middle and high school years. Thus, the focus of this study was on the following questions: Is parent academic involvement associated with career and educational aspirations? If so, to what extent is this relation explained by relations to school behavior or academic achievement?Parent academic involvement is largely defined as parents' work with schools and with their children to benefit their children's educational outcomes and futur...

For two decades the acting white hypothesis-the premise that black students are driven toward low school performance because of racialized peer pressure-has served as an explanation for the black-white achievement gap. Fordham and Ogbu proposed that black youths sabotage their own school careers by taking an oppositional stance toward academic achievement. Using interviews and existing data from eight North Carolina secondary public schools, this article shows that black adolescents are generally achievement oriented and that racialized peer pressure against high academic achievement is not prevalent in all schools. The analysis also shows important similarities in the experiences of black and white high-achieving students, indicating that dilemmas of high achievement are generalizable beyond a specific group. Typically, highachieving students, regardless of race, are to some degree stigmatized as "nerds" or "geeks. " The data suggest that school structures, rather than culture, may help explain when this stigma becomes racialized, producing a burden of acting white for black adolescents, and when it becomes class-based, producing a burden of "acting high and mighty" for low-income whites. Recognizing the similarities in these processes can help us refocus and refine understandings of the black-white achievement gap.

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This study examined whether the occurrence and timing of parental separation or divorce was related to trajectories of academic grades and mother-and teacher-reported internalizing and externalizing problems. The authors used hierarchical linear models to estimate trajectories for children who did and did not experience their parents' divorce or separation in kindergarten through 10th grade (N = 194). A novel approach to analyzing the timing of divorce/separation was adopted, and trajectories were estimated from 1 year prior to the divorce/separation to 3 years after the event. Results suggest that early parental divorce/separation is more negatively related to trajectories of internalizing and externalizing problems than is later divorce/separation, whereas later divorce/separation is more negatively related to grades. One implication of these findings is that children may benefit most from interventions focused on preventing internalizing and externalizing problems, whereas adolescents may benefit most from interventions focused on promoting academic achievement. Keywordsdivorce; family structure; child adjustment; developmental trajectories; behavior problems Parents, clinicians, and policy makers alike are concerned about how experiencing divorce affects children's adjustment. Although the research literature includes sometimes contradictory findings regarding whether and how divorce affects children's adjustment, there is some consensus that children whose parents divorce are at higher risk for a variety of negative Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jennifer E. Lansford, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University, Box 90545, Durham, NC 27708-0545. lansford@duke.edu. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript developmental outcomes than are children whose parents do not divorce (for review, see Amato, 2001;Amato & Keith, 1991;Cherlin, 1999).In the literature, there have been two main ways of approaching the examination of children's well-being in relation to parental divorce. The first approach, using either cross-sectional or longitudinal data, has been to examine children's well-being at discrete points in time (e.g., Emery, Waldron, Kitzmann, & Aaron, 1999;Zill, Morrison, & Coiro, 1993). The second approach, which requires several waves of longitudinal data, has been to examine trajectories of well-being over time (Cherlin, Chase-Lansdale, & McRae, 1998;Malone et al., 2004). The first approach has been much more common, even when longitudinal data are available. To adopt the second approach, it is necessary to have data on children's adjustment measured consistently at multiple points in time.There are several reasons to believe that the timing of divorce will be systematically associated with individual differences in children's trajectories of adjustment (e.g., Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992). Conceptually, it may be that the farther along a given trajectory one is when the divorce occurs, the less likely i...