Adolescence is marked by change and renegotiation in almost every arena -- biological, social, and cognitive development; identity development; changes in peer relations and friendships; a renegotiation of family relationships, especially the parent-adolescent relationship; and school transitions. Further, for African Americans, adolescence is also marked by the exploration of ethnic or racial identity, which is shaped by parents' ethnic socialization and interactions with an increasingly diverse peer group. This article provides a developmental, cultural, and contextual framework for understanding changes in parenting and parental influences vis-a-vis peers. The normative developmental changes in adolescent outcomes, parenting, and parent-adolescent relationships are discussed as they are shaped by neighborhood characteristics, family-level socioeconomic status, and ethnicity and are related to mental health and developmental outcomes across late childhood through adolescence.
This study investigated the impact of neighborhood social cohesion on the perceived companionship of nearly 1,500 community-dwelling older adults from the Neighborhood, Organization, Aging and Health project (NOAH), a Chicago-based study of older adult well-being in the neighborhood context. We hypothesized that the relationship between neighborhood-level social cohesion and individual residents’ reports of companionship would be more pronounced among those who lived alone than those who resided with others. Controlling for age, gender, education, race, marital status, length of neighborhood residence, and self-rated health, neighborhood social cohesion predicted companionship among those who lived alone; for a one-unit increase in neighborhood social cohesion, the odds of reporting companionship increased by half. In contrast, social cohesion did not predict the companionship of those who resided with others. The results suggest that older adults who live alone particularly profit from the benefits of socially cohesive neighborhood environments.
Using longitudinal ethnographic data on low-income families residing in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, we explore the ways in which childhood illness, family comorbidity, and cumulative disadvantage shape behavioral and social contexts for young mothers' physical and mental health in later life. Data are from the Three-City Study ethnography, which examined, over a 6-year period, the lives of 256 low-income Latino, African American, and White mothers and their children (N = 685). Grounded theory analysis of the data revealed a markedly high prevalence of chronic physical and mental health conditions among the mothers and their children, with 80% of the mothers being categorized as comorbid and 72% of their children as such. Mothers' current illnesses were related to their childhood health problems-problems which were similarly demonstrated in the morbidity patterns of their children. Moreover, 68% of the families were designated comorbid, as they included both mothers and children with multiple concurrent physical and mental health problems. Family comorbidity was associated with cumulative disadvantages anchored in mothers' educational histories
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