“Making It”: Understanding Adolescent Resilience in Two Informal Settlements (Slums) in Nairobi,Kenya

Many adolescents living in contexts characterized by adversity achieve positive outcomes. We adopt a protection–risk conceptual framework to examine resilience (academic achievement, civic participation, and avoidance of risk behaviors) among 1,722 never-married 12–19 year olds living in two Kenyan urban slums. We find stronger associations between explanatory factors and resilience among older (15–19 years) than younger (12–14 years) adolescents. Models for prosocial behavior and models for antisocial behavior emerge as key predictors of resilience. Further accumulation of evidence on risk and protective factors is needed to inform interventions to promote positive outcomes among youth situated in an ecology of adversity.     

The Pivotal Role of Adolescent Autonomy in Secondary School Classrooms

Student engagement is an important contributor to school success, yet high school students routinely describe themselves as disengaged. Identifying factors that alter (increase) engagement is a key aspect of improving support for student achievement. This study investigated students’ perceptions of autonomy, teacher connection, and academic competence as predictors of changes in student engagement within the classroom from the start to the end of a course. Participants were 578 (58% female) diverse (67.8% White, 25.2% African American, 5.1% Hispanic, 1.2% Asian American) high school students from 34 classrooms who provided questionnaire data both at the start and the end of a single course. Novel results from a cross-lagged model demonstrated that students who perceived their classrooms as allowing and encouraging their own autonomy in the first few weeks increased their engagement throughout the course, rather than the typical decline in engagement that was demonstrated by students in other classrooms. This finding is unique in that it extended to both students’ perceptions of engagement and observations of student engagement, suggesting a fairly robust pattern. The pertinence of this finding to adolescent developmental needs and its relationship to educational practice is discussed.     

Sexual Orientation, Partnership Formation, and Substance Use in the Transition to Adulthood

Evidence suggests that lesbian and gay young adults use substances more frequently than their heterosexual peers. Based on the life course perspective, we argue that this difference may be due to the unavailability of marriage as a turning point in the lives of lesbian/gay young adults. We use data from a nationally representative sample of youth (N = 13,581, 52.4% female, 68.6% white, ages 18—26) to examine sexual orientation differences in substance use and explore whether these differences vary by romantic partnership formation in young adulthood. We find that the formation of more serious partnerships (e.g., cohabitation, marriage) is associated with less frequent substance use among heterosexual young adults, though this pattern does not hold for lesbian and gay young adults. We conclude that the partnership options available to lesbians and gay men do not provide the same health-protective benefits that marriage does for heterosexuals.     

The Impact of Emotional Disturbances on the Arrest Trajectories of Youth as They Transition into Young Adulthood

This article identifies the arrest trajectories of youth from ages 12 through 24 years old and tests hypotheses derived from Moffitt’s developmental taxonomic theory of crime concerning the impact of various emotional disturbances on the specific trajectories of the youth involved. The study uses exclusively administrative data sets and includes a gender and racially diverse sample of 10,360 youth (30.7 % females) who were arrested at least once between ages 12 and 24 in the early 2000s. Latent class growth analysis was employed in order to identify distinct arrest trajectories of youth in the sample. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify diagnostic and other characteristics associated with membership in the specific trajectories predicted by Moffitt’s theory. Five trajectory classes were identified, 3 of which were consistent with taxonomic theory including high and classic adolescence limited trajectory classes and a “snared adolescence limited class” described more recently by Moffitt. The distribution of youth among the 5 classes was very different for those with and without emotional disturbances. Youth with emotional disturbances in their late adolescent years were more likely to fall into the high arrest trajectory class and much less likely to fall into the low arrest trajectory class. Compared to youth without an emotional disturbance, youth with psychotic disorders were more than twice as likely to fall into the high as into the low arrest trajectory class. Youth with disruptive behavior disorders were more than twice as likely to fall into the high and intermediate classes as into the low trajectory class. Anxiety and depressive disorders were not associated with significantly greater likelihood of falling into any one of the trajectory classes. Youth in the snared adolescence limited class were more likely than those in the classic adolescence limited class to be male, black versus white and in the foster care enrollment category lending some support to Moffitt’s conceptualization of this class as an adolescence limited class composed of youth who are snared by involvement in the criminal justice and or social services systems. Implications of these results for public policy and the study of adolescence are discussed.     

The Peer Context and the Development of the Perpetration of Adolescent Dating Violence

The peer context is a central focus in research on adolescent risk behaviors but few studies have investigated the role of the peer context in the perpetration of adolescent dating violence. This longitudinal study examined between-subjects and within-person contemporaneous and lagged effects of peer attributes, measured with social network analyses, on trajectories of dating violence perpetration and determined if effects varied by grade and/or sex of the adolescent. Data are from adolescents who participated in a five-wave panel study beginning when they were in 7 through 9th grade and ending when they were in 10 through 12th grade (n = 3,412); half were male, 40.5 % were white, 49.9 % were black and 10.4 % were of another race/ethnicity. Significant between-subjects effects indicate that adolescents who typically have friends who use dating violence, and girls who are typically high in social status, are at increased risk for using dating violence throughout adolescence. Adolescents who typically have high quality friendships and girls who typically have friends with pro-social beliefs are at decreased risk for using dating violence throughout adolescence. Significant within-person contemporaneous effects indicate that both boys and girls reported lower levels of dating violence than usual at times when they had more friends with pro-social beliefs, and reported higher levels of dating violence than usual at times when they had higher social status. None of the lagged effects were significant and none of the effects varied across grade. These findings suggest that the peer context plays an important role in the development of the perpetration of adolescent dating violence.     

Two Mothers in Law and Fact

What is the proper balance between legislative and judicial innovation and between formal and functional family recognition once legislatures have addressed gay men’s and lesbians’ families? In the civil-law jurisdiction of Quebec, legislative reforms allow two women to register as a child’s mothers. But judges have recognized a second mother ‘in fact’ by orders sharing custody where the parties had not used the new legislative channels. Such judicial creativity is reconcilable with the civil law and comparative scholars should flag it as a valuable resource. But it risks undermining legislative choices about family recognition. Perhaps the option to give a child a second mother includes the choice for a lesbian birth mother not to do so. Once two women become thinkable as spouses and mothers, judges risk inappropriately pressing a rich range of queer kinship possibilities into standard models.     

Academic Lionesses

Vivid Dreams

Michèle Roberts, Flesh and Blood, London: Virago, 1994, £14.99 (paper 1995, £6.99).

Living and Losing

Stevie Davies, Closing the Book, London: The Women's Press, 1994, £12.99, £6.99 pbk.

Secondhand Roles: What's So New about Fetishism ?

Lorraine Gamman and Merja Makinen, Female Fetishism: A New Look, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1994.

De‐mystifying Mysticism

Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.

Sarah Beckwith, Christ's Body. Identity, Culture and Society in Late Medieval Writings, London: Routledge, 1993.     

The heritage of autonomy in Carpathian Rus’ and Ukraine's Transcarpathian region

As the Soviet Union disintegrated and eventually dissolved in 1991, many of its peoples, both so-called titular nationalities and national minorities, put forth demands for independence or, at the very least, self-rule for territories that were said to represent the national patrimony. Among the many peoples who put forward such demands were Carpatho-Rusyns, who, together with fellow citizens of other national backgrounds, demanded autonomy or self-rule for the region (oblast) of Transcarpathia in far western Ukraine. This essay examines from a historical perspective the question of autonomy or self-rule for Carpatho-Rusyns and for all or part of the territory they inhabit, historic Carpathian Rus’. The autonomy question in Carpathian Rus’ is hardly new, but one that goes as far back as 1848.     

Subjective Social Status,Immigrant Generation,and Cannabis and Alcohol Use Among Adolescents

Research indicates that subjective perceptions of socioeconomic status (SES) affect aspects of health and behavior. There has been little research attention to how objective (e.g., education) and subjective aspects of SES may differ in their influence on the substance use of adolescent immigrants. The present study examined whether the associations between subjective SES and substance use, and between parental education and substance use varied by immigrant generation. Data were derived from the 2011 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, a representative survey of students in the 7th to 12th grade. The sample for this study consisted of 9177 students 12–19 years of age; 48.4 % were female, 66.4 % were White/European, 5.2 % Black/Afro-Caribbean, 16.4 % Asian and 12 % other. Results indicated that subjective SES was more strongly associated with cannabis and alcohol use among first-generation immigrants than among adolescents of other immigrant generations even after adjusting for parental education. First-generation immigrants with low subjective SES had a lower probability of cannabis and regular alcohol use, but there was no difference in use between immigrant generations at high subjective SES. The associations between parental education and cannabis and alcohol use did not significantly vary with immigrant generation. The findings highlight the importance of status beliefs among adolescents, particularly among first-generation immigrants, and suggest that further research attention to such beliefs would enhance our understanding of SES and its links to adolescent health risk behaviors.     

Experimental Evidence on the Impacts of Need-Based Financial Aid: Longitudinal Assessment of the Wisconsin Scholars Grant

We conduct the first long-term experimental evaluation of a need-based financial aid program, the privately funded Wisconsin Scholars Grant. Over multiple cohorts, the program failed to increase degree completion and graduate school enrollment up to 10 years after matriculation. The program did reduce time-to-degree for some students and modestly increased the number of STEM degrees earned. The lack of robust effects raises important questions about the conditions necessary for financial aid to benefit students.