Substance use changes rapidly during late adolescence and early adulthood. Not coincidentally, this time in the life course is also dense with social role changes, as role changes provide dynamic context for individual developmental change. Using nationally representative, multiwave longitudinal data from age 18 to 28, we examine proximal links between changes in social roles and changes in substance use during the transition to adulthood. We find that changes in family roles, such as marriage, divorce, and parenthood, have clear and consistent associations with changes in substance use. With some notable exceptions, changes in school and work roles have weaker effects on changes in substance use compared to family roles. Changes in socializing (i.e., nights out for fun and recreation) and in religiosity were found to mediate the relationship of social role transitions to substance use. Two time-invariant covariates, socioeconomic background and heavy adolescent substance use, predicted social role status, but did not moderate associations, as within-person links between social roles and substance use were largely equivalent across groups. This paper adds to the cascading effects literature by considering how, within individuals, more proximal variations in school, work, and family roles relate to variations in substance use; and which roles appear to be most influential in precipitating changes in substance use during the transition to adulthood. * The first author gratefully acknowledges support from a Mentored Research Scientist Development Award in Population Research from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K01 HD054467). This paper uses data from the Monitoring the Future study, which is supported by grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA01411; R01 DA016575); the second and other authors gratefully acknowledge support from these grants. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the sponsors.Correspondence can be sent to Jeremy Staff; Department of Sociology; The Pennsylvania State University; 211 Oswald Tower; University Park, PA 16802-6207, jus25@psu.edu; Telephone: (814) At the population level, late adolescence and early adulthood are marked by rapid changes in substance use (Bachman et al., 2002;Johnston, O'Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2009b). This time in the life course is also dense with regard to social role transitions (Shanahan, 2000), which provide the dynamic context for individual developmental change. Indeed, from a person-context interaction perspective, many of the individual-level changes can be viewed as a direct function of the social context transitions (Schulenberg, Maggs, & Hurrelmann, 1997); likewise, individual characteristics contribute to selection into different post-high school roles and contexts. Thus, it is not a coincidence that there are rapid changes in substance use at the same time in the life course as multiple social role changes. This empha...

WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT: Minority children are less likely than white children to be diagnosed and treated with attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder. However, diagnosis patterns over time in early and middle childhood and whether confounding factors explain these disparities are not currently well understood.WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS: Racial/ethnic disparities in attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder diagnosis occur by kindergarten and continue until eighth grade. Racial/ethnic disparities among diagnosed children in medication use occur in both fifth and eighth grades. These disparities are not attributable to confounding factors. abstract OBJECTIVE: Whether and to what extent racial/ethnic disparities in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnosis occur across early and middle childhood is currently unknown. We examined the over-time dynamics of race/ethnic disparities in diagnosis from kindergarten to eighth grade and disparities in treatment in fifth and eighth grade. METHODS: Analyses of the nationally representative Early ChildhoodLongitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (N = 17 100) using discrete-time hazard modeling.RESULTS: Minority children were less likely than white children to receive an ADHD diagnosis. With time-invariant and -varying confounding factors statistically controlled the odds of ADHD diagnosis for African Americans, Hispanics, and children of other races/ethnicities were 69% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 60%-76%), 50% (95% CI: 34%-62%), and 46% (95% CI: 26%-61%) lower, respectively, than for whites. Factors increasing children' s risk of an ADHD diagnosis included being a boy, being raised by an older mother, being raised in an English-speaking household, and engaging in externalizing problem behaviors. Factors decreasing children' s risk of an ADHD diagnosis included engaging in learning-related behaviors (eg, being attentive), displaying greater academic achievement, and not having health insurance. Among children diagnosed with ADHD, racial/ethnic minorities were less likely than whites to be taking prescription medication for the disorder.CONCLUSIONS: Racial/ethnic disparities in ADHD diagnosis occur by kindergarten and continue until at least the end of eighth grade. Measured confounding factors do not explain racial/ethnic disparities in ADHD diagnosis and treatment. Culturally sensitive monitoring should be intensified to ensure that all children are appropriately screened, diagnosed, and treated for ADHD. Pediatrics 2013;132:85-93

The belief that women and men are held to different standards of sexual conduct is pervasive in contemporary American society. According to the sexual double standard, boys and men are rewarded and praised for heterosexual sexual contacts, whereas girls and women are derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors. Although widely held by the general public, research findings on the sexual double standard remain equivocal, with qualitative studies and early attitudinal surveys generally finding evidence of the double standard and more recent experimental vignette designs often failing to find similar results. In this study, we extend prior research by directly measuring the social status of sexually permissive youth. We use data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to relate adolescents’ self-reported numbers of sexual partners to a network measure of peer acceptance. Results suggest that the association between lifetime sexual partnerships and peer status varies significantly by gender, such that greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys’ peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls’ peer acceptance. Moreover, the relationship between boys’ sexual behaviors and peer acceptance is moderated by socioeconomic origins; sexually permissive boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are predicted to have more friendships than permissive boys from more advantaged backgrounds. Our results thus support the existence of an adolescent sexual double standard and suggest that sexual norms vary by both gender and socioeconomic origins.

Whereas sociologists have long recognized that adolescence marks the start of the socioeconomic career, the importance of this period has been attributed to school performance, aspirations, and significant others' influence that support educational attainment to a greater or lesser degree. The underlying premise of this study is that adolescent work is an expression of instrumental action with consequences for socioeconomic attainment. Using data from the Youth Development Study, we find that part-time work during high school is linked with patterns of schooling and working that persist during the succeeding years and are more or less conducive to the receipt of a BA/BS degree. Moderate work coupled with school appears to especially facilitate the educational attainment of low promise youth.

Sexual harassment has been theorized as a stressor with consequences for the physical and mental health of its targets. Though social scientists have documented a negative association between sexual harassment and mental health, few longitudinal studies have investigated the association between sexual harassment and depressive symptoms. Using longitudinal survey data from the Youth Development Study, combined with in-depth interviews, this article draws on Louise Fitzgerald’s theoretical framework, stress theory, and the life course perspective to assess the impact of sexual harassment on depressive affect during the early occupational career. In support of Fitzgerald’s model, our findings confirm that sexual harassment is a stressor that is associated with increased depressive symptoms. Our quantitative results show that women and men who experience more frequent sexual harassment at work have significantly higher levels of depressed mood than non-harassed workers, even after controlling for prior harassment and depressive symptoms. Moreover, we find evidence that sexual harassment early in the career has long-term effects on depressive symptoms in adulthood. Interviews with a subset of our survey respondents point to a variety of coping strategies and reveal further links between harassment and other aspects of mental health, such as anger and self-doubt.