Robert Murphy

Past research on mostly middle-class children suggests that as they enter adolescence, their experiences within their immediate social contexts - schools, peers, families, and neighborhoods‹become more challenging, and for some, more problematic. Does a similar pattern prevail for very low-income youth who reside in inner-city neighborhoods? And does this downward trend persist when all four social contexts are considered simultaneously?

Recently released findings by Thomas D. Cook (IPR-Sociology) and IPR graduate fellow Robert F. Murphy find this pattern persists. In an IPR working paper, they paint a portrait of inner-city children who, over the span of 5th to 8th grade, came increasingly to view their family, schools, peers, and neighborhoods as significantly less supportive.

The authors surveyed a sample of nearly 10,000 African-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American students in 19 K-8 Chicago schools between 1992 and 1997. They also analyzed gender, ethnicity, family background, academic achievement, and psychological adjustment to determine whether different types of students might differ in how they come to view their social contexts.

In both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, all respondents, as they grew older, reported a sharp decrease in the quality they attributed to their four social worlds. "Members of this inner-city sample increasingly characterize their schools, neighborhoods, families, and peer groups in terms that developmental research suggests are detrimental to their well-being," the authors note.

However, it is highly likely that this negative trend in support children report from their social contexts as they move into adolescence is not unique to this inner-city sample, the authors caution. They suggest that a portion of the trend may be explained by normative developmental transactions between the child and his or her social worlds.

	Melissa Herman

In contrast to childhood, all children entering adolescence, regardless of family circumstances or the type of communities they live in, will find their schools, families, friends, and neighborhoods expect more from them, present them with more challenges, and are less forgiving when they fail to live up to societal norms and expectations. The result, the authors argue, may be an immediate social world that appears to the average adolescent as less supportive than when they were younger.

Some individual differences did emerge from the study:

• Compared to African Americans, Hispanics in 8th grade see their home and neighborhood context as more negative, and their peers as more positive. Their views of the school and neighborhood context show steeper declines between grades 5 and 8.
  
  
• In 8th grade, Asian-Americans are less positive than African-Americans in how they view home and neighborhood, but tend to be more positive in their judgments of school and peers and experience a less steep decline in their views of these contexts.
  
  
• Eighth graders living in structurally more advantaged homes (with two biological parents and more educated parents) judge their social worlds more positively and tend to experience less steep declines in their views between grades 5 and 8.
  
  

A potentially troubling difference involved children with better academic records at the 5th grade level. They experienced steeper declines in their views of the social environment and by 8th grade viewed their social world less favorably than their same-age peers. Since these children may possess greater cognitive abilities, the authors suggest they might "adopt ever higher standards about what a quality social context should look like, and the worlds in which they actually live suffer by comparison."

The declines in perceptions of supportive social contexts gain particular salience if they are linked to important objective outcomes, according to Cook and Murphy. In the next phase of their research, they will try to determine whether students who experience the greatest declines in their perceptions of the supportiveness of social contexts are the same children who experience more problematic outcomes, including poor school performance, mental health, and greater involvement in delinquent behaviors.

Another study of developmental influences in early adolescence, by Cook, Melissa Herman (IPR-Sociology), Meredith Phillips at UCLA, and Richard A. Settersten, Jr., at Case Western Reserve University, examined the joint role that neighborhoods, schools, nuclear families, and friends play in promoting positive development between early 7th and late 8th grade. Their research took place in Prince George"s County, Maryland, a middle-class, racially diverse area. The study sample was composed of about 12,000 white and African- American students.

The analysis revealed that no single context, such as school or family, was independently linked to successful development. This finding, the authors note, has important implications because it suggests that there are "no early teen silver bullets that. . . carry the potential to radically transform children"s lives." Yet they also found that the total effect of all four contexts was much larger than any single one, especially for the average student, and they do exert a joint, additive influence on developmental change.

"How Inner-City Children See Their Family, School, Peers, and Neighborhood: Developmental Changes During the Transition to Adolescence," and "How Neighborhoods, Families, Peer Groups, and Schools Jointly Affect Changes in Early Adolescent Development." may be ordered from IPR's publications department for $5.00 each or downloaded from our web site at www.northwestern.edu/IPR/publications.