Search Results

The purpose of this research brief is to explain the relationship context of adolescents who live in married couple families. Specifically, we assess the marital quality of the adolescents’ biological parents (and step-parents) by examining how supportive and conflict behaviors combine within the couple relationship. We also examine how support and conflict operate in parent-adolescent relationships. These separate measures of couple and parent-adolescent relationships are then combine[d] to form new categories that describe the relationship context within which adolescents transition into young adulthood.

The overall goal of the research is to determine whether marital quality and parent-adolescent relationships are associated with particular outcomes for adolescents. This analysis is unique in that it relies on the perceptions of parent marital and parent-adolescent relationship quality from the adolescents’ perspective. Additionally, this study uses a nationally representative data set to examine these couple and parent-adolescent relationships.

SUMMARY
This study of adolescents in married couple families finds that the combined nature of parent marital quality and parent-youth relationships affect physical health, mental health, and substance abuse outcomes for youth in middle adolescence and, to a lesser extent, early adulthood. Specifically, among adolescents in married-couple families, those whose parents experienced marital discord and poor parent-adolescent relationships during their early adolescent years fare worse on a range of indicators of physical health, mental health, substance use, sexual activity, religious activity, and education outcomes. Furthermore, this research offers preliminary evidence that both parental marital quality and positive parent-adolescent relationships are important to well-being outcomes later in adolescence and extending in some cases even into early adulthood.

Organization and Methods. The report is organized around three major tasks:
Review descriptions of what adolescent romantic relationships are like. To accomplish this task, the report assembles and reviews research that describes what adolescents believe and value about romantic relationships and marriage in general and how adolescents behave in their own romantic relationships.

Review explanations of the role adolescent romantic relationships may play in adult development. To accomplish this task, the report integrates existing theories of adolescent romantic relationships and adult development and evaluates the degree to which existing theories have received support from the empirical literature on adolescent relationships to date.

Assess interventions designed to make adolescents’ relationships, and their subsequent marriages, better. To accomplish this task, this report reviews a diverse sample of available relationship education curricula targeted at adolescents and describes interviews with practitioners directly involved in this area.

Drawing on the results of these tasks, the report concludes by identifying priorities for future research in this area and offering strategies and suggestions for developing programs and curricula to promote healthy adult marriages during adolescence.

This project examined the role of different aspects of youth vulnerability and risk-taking behaviors on several outcomes for young adults. The data come from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 cohort (NLSY97). The NLSY97, funded by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, follows a sample of adolescents in 1997 into young adulthood with annual interviews that capture their education, employment, family formation, and other behaviors. The analyses in this series use the subset of youth born in 1980-81, who were 15-17 years old when first interviewed in 1997. Outcomes are obtained by using the annual data through 2005 when these young adults were 23-25 years old.

Major findings from this project include:

Connectedness Trajectories of Youth: Trajectory analyses reveal that youth follow one of four patterns in connecting to the labor market and school between the ages of 18 and 24: consistently-connected, later-connected, initially-connected, or never-connected. The study also describes the factors associated with membership in each group, such as participation in adolescent risk behaviors.

Employment and Education Outcomes for Second Generation Latino Youth: Analyses suggest that second generation Latinos make a fairly smooth transition to young adulthood and, after controlling for other factors, make a better transition than white, black, and third generation Latino youth. At the same time, they are less likely to engage in post-secondary schooling than whites in young adulthood, which may contribute to a potential gap in future earnings.

Young Adult Outcomes for Vulnerable Youth: For three groups of potentially vulnerable youth (youth from low-income families, youth from distressed neighborhoods, and youth with poor mental health) findings suggest vulnerable youth have relatively high levels of participation in risky behaviors as adolescents and relatively lower earnings and connectedness to the labor market and school in early adulthood. The study also considers differences in behaviors and outcomes between young men and young women as they transition to adulthood, and findings suggest that differences between young men and young women are related to the fact that some women are caring for children.

Publications

Multiple Pathways Connecting to School and Work, Research Brief

Second-Generation Latinos, Connecting to School and Work, Research Brief

Youth from Low-Income Families, Fact Sheet

Youth from Distressed Neighborhoods, Fact Sheet

Youth with Depression/Anxiety, Fact Sheet

Young Men and Young Women, Fact Sheet