No abstract

This study extends the growing literature of family instability by investigating the significance of its timing for children's social adjustment. We find that more than a third of the 1,364 elementary school children in the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development experienced some family structure change. Their cumulative level of family instability was associated with multiple indicators of social development at the end of elementary school, associations that were especially strong for boys. These associations were driven largely by the lasting effect of family change in early childhood, demonstrating the significance of early family instability for children's later social development.

Research on adolescent friendships has typically treated these social ties differently from friendships at other stages of life or from other relationships during adolescence. To draw parallels among these literatures, this study focuses on two largely neglected aspects of adolescent friendships: their role in positive adjustment and the way in which this role varies by social structural and institutional context. In an analysis of data from 9,223 adolescents in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we found that those who had friends who liked school or did well in school had fewer academic problems than did those whose friends were less academically oriented. This potential protective role of friends did not differ by race, but it did differ by level of school disadvantage. Moreover, this moderating role of school disadvantage differed by race. These results suggest that adolescent friendships serve as social capital, the value of which is context-specific.

As patterns of union formation and dissolution in adult lives become complex, the living arrangements of American children are becoming increasingly fluid. With a sample ( N = 12,843) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study attempted to capture this complexity by mapping out children's family structure histories across their early life course, investigating the implications of these arrangements for their general adjustment, and finally, identifying family processes that explained these associations. The findings suggest that a sizable minority of young people experience dynamic family structure arrangements. Moreover, family structure at adolescence best predicted later emotional distress, and family structure at adolescence plus an indicator of cumulative family instability across childhood best predicted current marijuana use. More so than indicators tapping social control, levels of family connectedness and parent—adolescent relationship quality were key conduits for these associations.

Scholars who have studied the effects of early pubertal timing on girls' sexual debut contend that this association may result from the company they keep. Although this basic biosocial model of adolescent behavior has been applied to various outcomes with diverse samples of adolescent girls, less work has contextualized this microlevel developmental phenomenon within the larger macrolevel structures of race and ethnicity. Using a sample of White, African American, and Latina girls (N=1,299) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study conducted within‐group multivariate analyses and found important differences in the linkages that make up this biosocial model by race and ethnicity, with the linkages strongest for Whites, followed by Latina, and African American girls. These differences in association may reflect differences in the social construction of girlhood across race and ethnicity.