The Impact of Adolescent Deviance on Marital Trajectories

Abstract

Marriage is a key life event that has numerous benefits. Recent research extends these benefits to include desistance from crime and drug use yet there has been little investigation regarding whether deviant behavior in adolescence impacts long-term marital patterns. Since rates of marriage are low among African Americans and rates of adolescent deviance and crime are high, we investigate the long-term relationship between the two drawing on longitudinal data from the Woodlawn cohort of urban African Americans. This article investigates whether serious adolescent delinquency and marijuana use predict marital trajectories, controlling for known correlates. Multivariate findings indicate that within this African-American population, deviance predicts the probability of marriage, stability of marriage, and timing of marriage for men yet deviance relates solely to the probability of marriage for women.

The impact of adolescent risk behavior on partner relationships

“…Doherty, Green, and Ensminger (2011) examined the impact of serious delinquency on the timing of first marriage and the overall likelihood of getting married. Although involvement in serious delinquent behavior was not related to the timing of first marriage, seriously delinquent males were less likely to be married than those not involved in serious delinquent behavior.…”

“…Although involvement in serious delinquent behavior was not related to the timing of first marriage, seriously delinquent males were less likely to be married than those not involved in serious delinquent behavior. Doherty et al (2011) also looked at the impact of drug use on marital outcomes. Marijuana use significantly affected the probability of being married for both male and female users, findings consistent with other research on the impact of drug use on marriage (Collins, Ellickson, & Klein, 2007; DeKlyen, Brooks-Gunn, McLanahan, & Knab, 2006; Fu & Goldman, 1996; Kaestner, 1997; Newcomb & Bentler, 1985; Yamaguchi & Kandel, 1985).…”

Parental criminality and children’s family-life trajectories: Findings for a mid-20th century cohort

“…A son's own juvenile deviance, as reflected by his serious offending, is a consistent predictor of a "nonstandard" family--life course. Juvenile delinquency was previously shown to be linked to other deviant behaviours, for example early parenthood and marriage (Eggelston--Doherty, Green, & Ensminger, 2012). As such, we find many juvenile offenders in the 'early wedding while (partner) pregnant' family--life trajectory.…”

Crime involvement and family formation: Evidence from the British birth cohort study

“…Third, according to the assumption of cumulative disadvantage, and in contrast to our second hypothesis, we would expect an association between continued crime involvement and reduced opportunities in the marriage market. Fourth, we expect that early delinquency is associated with the timing of life events, in particular teenage parenthood (Doherty et al, 2012). The timing of life events is one of the key principles of the life-course perspective (Elder, 1998) and according to the assumption of cumulative disadvantage we would expect early crime involvement to be associated with accelerated transitions, i.e.…”

“…). Yet, evidence from longitudinal studies (Doherty & Ensminger, 2013;Doherty, Green, & Ensminger, 2012), especially among general population samples (Hobcraft, 1998;Huebner, 2005Huebner, , 2007 is still rare. Furthermore, most studies have concentrated on delinquency among males, not taking into account potential gender differences in pathways.…”