Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: We compared the meanings of adulthood for young women and men. In Study 1, gendered conceptions of adulthood are compared in a replication of Broverman (1970), manipulating whether participants are asked to describe gender-neutral (“adulthood”) or gendered adulthood (“manhood”/ “womanhood”). In Study 2, we explore cross-gender conceptions of adulthood, comparing women’s views of manhood and men’s views of womanhood.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The transition to adulthood has generally become more individualized in the past fifty years, with fewer young people attaining the classic markers of adult status in an orderly progression (Buchman, 1989; Rindfuss, Swicegood, and Rosenfeld, 1987). The average age of first marriage and age of entry into full-time employment has also increased dramatically in recent decades (Shanahan, 2000). Despite such changes, however, the notion that adults eventually “settle down” and desist from delinquent behaviors persists across shifting work and family arrangements. As they become full-fledged adults, people generally cease or at least moderate many forms of deviant and criminal behavior. In this paper, we examine how desistance from crime is related to life course markers, using latent class analysis to test whether such desistance constitutes a separate dimension of the multifaceted transition to adulthood. In our analysis of Youth Development Study data, we find the highest rates of desistance from minor theft, violence, and substance use among those who have made a multifaceted transition across work and family domains and, to a lesser extent, those who have made socioeconomic but not family transitions. In contrast, those who persist in crime into their mid-twenties are far less likely to be married or financially self-supporting.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Does being more religious make one less susceptible to alcohol problems? This paper considers the effects of religiosity (religious self-perception and coping) and attendance at religious services on the distribution of alcohol problems by gender, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Data come from a sample of 1,803 Miami-Dade County young adults interviewed between 1997 and 2000. One-way ANOVA and OLS regression indicate that, although males exhibit higher levels of alcohol abuse, religious involvement has a similar linear negative association with alcohol problems for both sexes. The most noteworthy contrast is found between African Americans and non-Hispanic whites. African Americans display a low level of alcohol problems with a virtually flat trend line. This situation reflects a high overall level of religious involvement with little variability. In contrast, whites show high variability in both religiousness and alcohol problems; these are related in an inverse linear fashion. Also, results show that, while religious involvement inhibits alcohol problems at all SES levels, all significant relationships between SES and alcohol problems are positive. Higher parental SES increases the risk for alcohol abuse-—most likely because people with higher SES tend to be less religious and more permissive with respect to alcohol use.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The underlying premise of this study is that adolescent work is as an expression of instrumental action with consequences for adult socioeconomic attainment. Using data from the Youth Development Study, a prospective study of 1,010 Midwestern teenagers from 1988 to 2002, we assess the implications of adolescent work for educational attainment in young adulthood. Youth who pursued fairly continuous but moderate employment during high school were found to invest more months in higher education after high school than their more intensively-employed counterparts, and were more likely to obtain 4-year college degrees. Here we pose the question, what accounts for the educational advantage of steady workers and the disadvantage of their more intensively employed counterparts after they leave high school? In general, we find continuity in time use; the “steady” work pattern during high school is followed by post-secondary schooling combined with part-time work; “highly invested” adolescent work precedes heavier subsequent involvement in the full-time labor force. We use discrete-time logit models for event history analysis to examine how teenage work patterns, socioeconomic background, school performance, aspirations, and time-varying investment in work and post-secondary schooling together influence the receipt of a four-year BA/BS degree. The findings support a process of bounded agency extending from adolescence to early adulthood, as patterns of time use involving schooling and work both reflect individual resources and influence the process of human capital acquisition.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We used data from the first and third waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to examine the linkages between relationship type (i.e., dating, cohabitation, or marriage) and relationship violence perpetration and victimization among young adults. Among women, cohabitors reported significantly higher levels of relationship violence than either marrieds or daters. Among men, cohabitors and marrieds reported similar levels of relationship violence and both groups experienced more violence perpetration and victimization than daters. These patterns persisted even after controlling for individual sociodemographic factors, family of origin characteristics, and relationship quality indicators.