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PowerPoint slides prepared by Leonard R. Mendola, PhD
Touro College
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Chapter 8: Families
Outline
•
•
FAMILY PROCESSES
– Reciprocal Socialization and the Family as a System
– The Developmental Construction of Relationships
– Maturation
ADOLESCENTS’ AND EMERGING ADULTS’ RELATIONSHIPS
WITH THEIR PARENTS
– Parents as Managers
– Parenting Styles
– Gender, Parenting, and Co-parenting
– Parent-Adolescent Conflict
– Autonomy and Attachment
– Emerging Adults’ Relationships with their Parents
– Intergenerational Relationships
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Chapter 8: Families
Outline
•
•
•
SIBLING RELATIONSHIPS
– Sibling Roles
– Birth Order
THE CHANGING FAMILY IN A CHANGING SOCIETY
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–
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–
Divorced Families
Stepfamilies
Working Parents
Adoption
Gay Male and Lesbian Parents
Culture and Ethnicity
SOCIAL POLICY, ADOLESCENTS, AND FAMILIES
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Preview
Although parent-adolescent relationships can
vary considerably, researchers are finding that
for the most part, the relationships are both:
(1) Very important aspects of development and
(2) More positive than once thought.
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Family Processes
•
Reciprocal Socialization and the Family as a System
– The process by which children and adolescents
socialize parents just as parents socialize them
(Gross & others, 2008; Smetana, 2008a).
•
Family as a System
– As a social system, the family can be thought of
as a constellation of subsystems defined in terms
of generation, gender, and role.
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Family Processes
•
Family as a System (Continued)
• Divisions of labor among family members define particular
subunits, and attachments define others.
• Each family member is a participant in several subsystems—
some dyadic (involving two people), some polyadic (involving
more than two people).
• The father and adolescent represent one dyadic subsystem,
the mother and father another; the mother-father-adolescent
represent one polyadic subsystem, the mother and two
siblings another.
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The Family as a System
Interaction Between Adolescents and Their
Parents: Direct and Indirect Effects
Fig. 8.1
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Family Processes
•
Marital Relationships and Parenting
• The most consistent findings are that happily married parents
are more sensitive, responsive, warm, and affectionate toward
their children and adolescents (Grych, 2002).
• Marital satisfaction is often related to good parenting.
• The marital relationship is an important support for parenting.
• When parents report more intimacy and better communication
in their marriage, they are more affectionate to their children
and adolescents (Grych, 2002).
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Family Processes
•
The Developmental Construction of Relationships
• An increased interest in understanding how we construct
relationships as we grow up (Collins & Roisman, 2006; Collins
& van Dulmen, 2006).
• Two main variations
• Continuity View
– Emphasizes the role that early parent-child relationships
play in constructing a basic way of relating to people
throughout the life span.
• Discontinuity view
– Emphasizes change and growth in relationships over
time.
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Family Processes
•
The Developmental Construction of Relationships
(Continued)
– Continuity View (Continued)
• Early parent-child relationships are carried forward to later
points in development to influence all subsequent
relationships (with peers, with friends, with teachers, and
with romantic partners) (Berlin, Zeanah, & Lieberman, 2009;
Bowlby, 1969; Cassidy, 2009).
• Close relationships with parents also are important in the
adolescent’s development because these relationships
function as models or templates that are carried forward
over time to influence the construction of new relationships
(Allen, 2009).
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Family Processes
•
The Developmental Construction of Relationships
(Continued)
– Discontinuity View
• Emphasizes change and growth in relationships over time.
• With each new type of relationship, individuals encounter
new modes of relating (Furman & Wehner, 1997; Piaget, 1932;
Sullivan, 1953).
• Peer relationships are more likely to consist of participants
who relate to each other on a much more equal basis.
• In parent-child relationships children often must learn how
to conform to rules and regulations laid down by parents.
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Family Processes
•
The Developmental Construction of Relationships
(Continued)
– Discontinuity View (Continued)
• The discontinuity view does not deny that prior close
relationships (such as with parents) are carried forward to
influence later relationships
• It does stress that each new type of relationship that
children and adolescents encounter (such as with peers,
with friends, and with romantic partners) requires the
construction of different and even more sophisticated
modes of relating to others.
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Family Processes
•
Maturation and Multiple Developmental Trajectories
• Adolescents change as they make the transition
from childhood to adulthood, but their parents also
change during their adult years.
• Adolescent changes that can influence parentadolescent relationships:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Puberty
Expanded logical reasoning
Increased idealistic thought
Violated expectations
Changes in schooling
Peers, friendships
Dating
• Movement toward independence
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Family Processes
• Parental changes that contribute to parentadolescent relationships:
•
•
•
•
•
Marital satisfaction
Economic burdens
Career reevaluation
Time perspective
Health and body concerns (Collins & Laursen, 2004).
• For most parents, marital satisfaction
increases after adolescents or emerging adults
leave home (Fingerman, 2006).
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Family Processes
• Multiple Developmental Trajectories
• Adults follow one trajectory and children and
adolescents follow another one (Parke & Buriel, 2006; Parke
& others, 2008).
• Adult developmental trajectories include:
• Timing of entry into marriage
• Cohabitation
• Parenthood
• Child developmental trajectories include:
• Timing of child care
• Entry into middle school
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
•
Parents as Managers
–
–
–
–
Managers of adolescents’ opportunities.
As monitors of adolescents’ social relationships.
As social initiators and arrangers (Parke & Buriel, 2006).
Mothers are more likely than fathers to have a managerial role
in parenting.
– Monitoring includes supervising adolescent’s choice of social
settings, activities, and friends, as well as academic efforts.
– Adolescents’ willingness to disclose information to parents
also is related to responsive parenting and a higher level of
parental behavioral control, which are components of a
positive parenting style, authoritative parenting.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Parenting Styles
– Diana Baumrind (1971, 1991)
• Emphasized four styles of parenting:
– Authoritarian
• A restrictive, punitive style.
– Authoritative
• Encourages independence but still places limits and
controls on their actions.
– Neglectful
• Parent is very uninvolved in the adolescent’s life.
– Indulgent
• Parents are highly involved with their adolescents
but place few demands or controls on them.
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Parent-Adolescent Relationships
Fourfold Scheme of Parenting Styles
Fig. 8.2
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Parenting Styles and Ethnicity
– Aspects of traditional Asian childrearing practices
are often continued by Asian American families.
– Latino childrearing practices encourage the
development of a self and identity that is embedded
in the family and requires respect and obedience
(Harwood & others, 2002).
– African American parents are more likely than nonLatino white parents to use physical punishment
(Deater-Deckard & Dodge, 1997).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Further Thoughts on Parenting Styles
– Parenting styles do not capture the important themes of
reciprocal socialization and synchrony (Collins & Steinberg,
2006).
– Many parents use a combination of techniques rather than a
single technique, although one technique may be dominant.
– Some critics argue that the concept of parenting style is too
broad and that more research needs to be conducted to
“unpack” parenting styles by studying various components
that comprise the styles (Maccoby, 2007).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
•
Gender, Parenting, and Co-parenting
– The Mother’s Role
• The mother’s role brings with it benefits as well as
limitations. Although most women do not devote their entire
lives to motherhood, for most mothers, it is one of the most
meaningful experiences of their lives.
– The Father’s Role
• Has undergone major changes (Parke & Buriel, 2006).
• Although U.S. fathers have increased the amount of time
they spend with their children and adolescents, it is still
less time than mothers spend (Parke & Buriel, 2006; Parke &
others, 2008).
• Gender difference in parenting involvement occurs not only
for non-Latino Wwhite parents, but also for Latino and
African American parents (Yeung & others, 2001).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Co-parenting: Partners in Parenting
– A dramatic increase in research on co-parenting has occurred
in the last two decades (McHale, 2009; McHale & Sullivan, 2007).
– Conditions that place children and adolescents at
developmental risk (Feinberg & Kan, 2008; Karreman & others, 2008;
McHale & others, 2009):
•
•
•
•
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Poor coordination/
Active undermining and disparagement of the other parent.
Lack of cooperation and warmth.
Disconnection by one parenting partner.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Co-parenting: Partners in Parenting (Continued)
– Conditions that show clear ties to children’s and
adolescents’ prosocial behavior and competence in
peer relations (McHale & others, 2002):
•
• Parental solidarity
• Cooperation
• Warmth
When parents show cooperation, mutual respect,
balanced communication, and attunement to each
others needs, these attributes help children and
adolescents to develop positive attitudes toward both
males and females.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
•
Parent-Adolescent Conflict
– For the most part, the generation gap is a stereotype.
– Most adolescents and their parents have similar beliefs about
the value of hard work, achievement, and career aspirations
(Gecas & Seff, 1990).
– Most adolescents and their parents often have similar religious
and political beliefs.
– Early adolescence is a time when parent-adolescent conflict
escalates beyond parent-child conflict (Allison & Schultz, 2004;
Smetana, 2008b).
– About 20 percent of families, parents and adolescents engage
in prolonged, intense, repeated, unhealthy conflict (Montemayor,
1982).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
•
Parent-Adolescent Conflict (Continued)
– 4 to 5 million American families, encounter serious, highly
stressful parent-adolescent conflict.
– This prolonged, intense conflict is associated with a number of
adolescent problems:
•
•
•
•
•
•
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Moving away from home.
Juvenile delinquency.
School dropout rates.
Pregnancy and early marriage.
Membership in religious cults.
Drug abuse (Brook & others, 1990).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
•
•
•
Autonomy and Attachment
– The term autonomy generally connotes self-direction and
independence.
– Emotional autonomy
• The capacity to relinquish child-like dependencies on
parents.
Gender and Culture
– Boys are usually given more independence than girls.
Developmental Transitions/Going Away to College
– The transition from high school to college involves increased
autonomy for most individuals (Bucx & van Wel, 2008).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
•
Adolescent Runaways
– Desperately unhappy at home.
– Gradual process.
– Susceptible to drug abuse.
– Many runaways are from families in which a parent or another
adult beats them or sexually exploits them (Chen & others, 2004).
– Runaways are not all from our society’s lower-SES tier.
– Running away often is a gradual process, as adolescents begin
to spend less time at home and more time on the streets or
with a peer group.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Attachment and Connectedness
– Secure attachment
• Infants use the caregiver, usually the mother, as a secure
base from which to explore the environment.
• An important foundation for psychological development
later in childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
– Insecure attachment
• Infants either avoid the caregiver or show considerable
resistance or ambivalence toward the caregiver.
• Related to difficulties in relationships and problems in later
development.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Attachment and Connectedness (Continued)
– Secure attachment to parents in adolescence can
facilitate the adolescent’s social competence and
well-being (Hilburn-Cobb, 2004).
– Securely attached adolescents have somewhat
lower probabilities of engaging in problem behaviors
such as juvenile delinquency and drug abuse (Allen,
2007).
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (George, Main, & Kaplan,
1984).
– Individuals are classified as secure-autonomous or
as being in one of three insecure categories:
1. Dismissing/avoidant attachment
– Individuals deemphasize the importance of attachment.
– Associated with rejection by caregivers.
2. Preoccupied/ambivalent attachment
– Hypertuned to attachment experiences.
– May occur because parents are inconsistently available.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) (Continued)
3. Unresolved/disorganized attachment
– Unusually high level of fear.
– Disoriented.
– Can result from traumatic experiences such as abuse or
parent’s death.
– The new model of parent-adolescent relationships
emphasizes that parents serve as important
attachment figures, resources, and support systems
as adolescents explore a wider, more complex social
world.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Attachment in Emerging Adults
– Leading experts, Mario Mikulineer and Phillip Shaver
(2007), concluded the following about the benefits of
secure attachment:
• Individuals who are securely attached have a well-integrated
sense of self-acceptance, self-esteem, and self-efficacy.
• They have the ability to control their emotions, are optimistic,
and are resilient.
• Facing stress and adversity, they activate cognitive
representations of security, are mindful of what is happening
around them, mobilize effective coping strategies.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Emerging Adults’ Relationship with Parents
– Emerging adults’ relationship with their parents
improve when they leave home.
– They often grow closer psychologically to their
parents and share more with them than they did
before they left home (Arnett, 2007).
– In successful emerging adulthood, individuals
separate from their family of origin without cutting
off ties completely or fleeing to some substitute
emotional refuge.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Emerging Adults’ Relationship with Parents
(Continued)
– Emerging adulthood is a time for young people to
sort out emotionally what they will take along from
the family of origin, what they will leave behind, and
what they will create.
– Many emerging adults no longer feel compelled to
comply with parental expectations and wishes.
– They shift to learning to deal with their parents on an
adult-to-adult basis, which requires a mutually
respectful form of relating.
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Adolescents’ and Emerging Adults’ Relationships
With Their Parents
• Intergenerational Relationships
– Connections between generations play important
roles in development through the life span (Bengtsson
& Psouni, 2008; Fingerman & others, 2008; Gover, Kaukinen, & Fox,
2008; Soenens & others, 2007; Swartz, 2008).
– With each new generation, personality
characteristics, attitudes, and values are replicated
or changed (Pratt & others, 2008a,b).
– As older family members die, their biological,
intellectual, emotional, and personal legacies are
carried on in the next generation.
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Sibling Relationships
• Sibling Roles
• Approximately 80 percent of American adolescents
have one or more siblings—that is, sisters and
brothers (Dunn, 2007).
• Three important characteristics of sibling
relationships:
• Emotional quality of the relationship.
• Familiarity and intimacy of the relationship.
• Variation in sibling relationships.
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Sibling Relationships
• Birth Order
• Firstborns have been described as:
•
•
•
•
•
More adult oriented.
Helpful, conforming.
Anxious.
Self-controlled.
Less aggressive than their siblings.
• Birth order also plays a role in siblings’ relationships
with each other (Vandell, Minnett, & Santrock, 1987).
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Sibling Relationships
• Birth Order (Continued)
• What are later-borns like?
• Characterizing later-borns is difficult because
they can occupy so many different sibling
positions.
• Overall, later-borns usually enjoy better relations
with peers than firstborns.
• Last-borns run the risk of becoming overly
dependent.
• Middle-borns tend to be more diplomatic, often
performing the role of negotiator in times of
dispute (Sutton-Smith, 1982).
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Divorced Families
– The U.S. divorce rate increased dramatically in the
1960s and 1970 but has declined since the 1980s
(Amato & Irving, 2006).
• Adolescents’ Adjustment in Divorced Families
– Show poorer adjustment than their counterparts in
non-divorced families (Clarke-Stewart & Brentano, 2006)
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
•
Adolescents’ Adjustment in Divorced Families
(Continued)
– Those who experienced multiple divorces are at
greater risk to have:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Academic problems and /or drop out of school.
Externalized problems.
Internalized problems.
Less-competent intimate relationships.
Become sexually active at an earlier age.
Drug related problems.
Associate with antisocial peers.
Lower self-esteem (Conger & Chao, 1996; Hetherington, 2005;
Hetherington, 2005, 2006; Hetherington & Kelly, 2002).
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
Emotional Problems in Children and Emerging Adults from Divorced Families
Fig. 8.5
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
•
Should Parents Stay Together for the Sake of the
Children and Adolescents?
– The most commonly asked question about divorce
(Hetherington, 2005, 2006).
– An unhappy, conflicted marriage that erodes the
well-being of the children and adolescents are
reduced by the move to a divorced, single-parent
family, divorce might be advantageous.
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
•
How Much Do Family Processes Matter in Divorced
Families?
• Family processes matter a great deal (Hetherington,
2006; Kelly, 2007; Wallerstein, 2008).
• When the divorced parents have a harmonious
relationship and use authoritative parenting, the
adjustment of adolescents is improved (Hetherington,
2006).
• A secure attachment also matters.
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• What factors are involved in the adolescent’s
individual risk vulnerability in a divorced
family?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
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The age of onset of the divorce.
Adolescent’s adjustment prior to the divorce.
Personality and temperament.
Developmental status.
Gender.
Custody.
Relocation.
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45
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
•
What role does socioeconomic status play in the
lives of adolescents in divorced families?
• On average, custodial mothers’ income decreases
about 25 to 50 percent from their predivorce income, in
comparison to a decrease of only 10 percent for
custodial fathers (Emery, 1999).
• The income decrease for divorced mothers is typically
accompanied by increased workloads, high rates of job
instability, and residential moves to less desirable
neighborhoods with inferior schools (Sayer, 2006).
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Stepfamilies
– Not only are parents divorcing more, they are also
getting remarried more (Stewart, 2006).
– The number of remarriages involving children has
grown steadily in recent years.
• Types of Stepfamilies:
– Stepfather
– Stepmother
– Blended or complex
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Adjustment
– Adolescents in stepfamilies have more adjustment
problems than their counterparts in non-divorced
families (Hetherington, 2006).
– The adjustment problems of adolescents in
stepfamilies are much like those of adolescents in
divorced families:
•
•
•
•
•
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Academic problems
Externalizing and internalizing problems
Lower self-esteem
Early sexual activity
Delinquency (Hetherington, 2006)
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Adjustment (Continued)
– Adjustment for parents and children may take
longer in stepfamilies (up to five years or more)
than in divorced families (Hetherington, 2006).
– One aspect of a stepfamily that makes adjustment
difficult is boundary ambiguity.
– Adolescents in simple stepfamilies (stepfather,
stepmother) often show better adjustment than
their counterparts in complex (blended) families
(Anderson & others, 1999; Hetherington, 2006).
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Adjustment (Continued)
– There is an increase in adjustment problems of
adolescents in newly remarried families (Hetherington,
2006).
– James Bray and his colleagues (Bray, Berger, & Boethel,
1999; Bray & Kelly, 1998) concluded that the formation of
a stepfamily often meant that adolescents had to
move, and the move involved changing schools
and friends.
– James Bray and his colleagues also found that
when the stepparent tried to discipline the
stepchild, it often did not work well.
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Working Parents
• What matters for adolescent development is the
nature of parents’ work rather than whether one
parent works outside the home (Clarke-Stewart, 2006).
• A consistent finding is the children (especially
girls) of working mothers engage in less gender
stereotyping and have more egalitarian views of
gender (Goldberg & Lucas-Thompson, 2008).
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51
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Latchkey adolescents
• Typically do not see their parents from the time
they leave for school in the morning until about
6:00 or 7:00 P.M.
• They are called “latchkey” because they carry a
key to their home and let themselves into the home
while their parents are still at work.
• The experiences of latchkey adolescents vary
enormously.
• Some have negative experience.
• Parents need to give special attention to the ways
they can monitor their latchkey adolescents’ lives.
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
•
Adoption
• The social and legal process by which a parentchild relationship is established between persons
unrelated at birth.
• A number of changes began occurring in adoption
practices in the last several decades of the
twentieth century. These changes include (Brodzinsky
& Pinderhughes, 2002, p. 281):
• A substantial decrease in the number of healthy, nonLatino white infants have become available for adoption.
• Other prospective adoptive parents began considering
adopting foster children.
• Changes also have characterized adoptive parents.
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53
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
•
Adoption (Continued)
– Researchers have found that adopted children and
adolescents often show more psychological and schoolrelated problems than non-adopted children (Bernard & Dozier,
2008).
– Many of the keys to effectively parenting adopted
adolescents are no different than those for effectively
parenting biological adolescents:
• Be supportive and caring.
• Be involved and monitor the adolescent’s behavior and
whereabouts.
• Be a good communicator.
• Help the adolescent learn to develop self-control.
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54
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Gay Male and Lesbian Parents
• Another aspect of the changing family in a
changing society focuses on adolescents raised by
gay male and lesbian parents (Patterson & Hastings, 2007).
• An important aspect of gay male and lesbian
families with adolescents is the sexual identity of
parents at the time of a child’s birth or adoption
(Patterson, 2002).
• Researchers have found few differences in
children and adolescents growing up with gay
fathers and lesbian mothers (Patterson, 2006; Patterson &
Hastings, 2007).
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
Percentage of Gay Male and Lesbian Couples with Children and
Adolescents: 1990 and 2000
Fig. 8.6
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56
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Culture and Ethnicity
• What are some variations in families across
different cultures?
• How do families vary across different
ethnic groups?
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The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Cross-Cultural Comparisons
• Cultures vary on a number of issues involving
families:
• What the father’s role in the family should be.
• The extent to which support systems are available.
• How children should be disciplined (Kim & others, 2009).
• Most common pattern was a warm and controlling
style, one that is neither permissive nor restrictive.
• In some countries, authoritarian parenting
continues to be widely practiced (Rothbaum &
Trommsdorff, 2007).
• There are trends toward greater family mobility.
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58
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Ethnicity and Parenting
• Ethnic minority families differ from nonLatino white American families:
•
•
•
•
In their size.
Structure and composition.
Reliance on kinship networks.
Level of income and education (Gonzales & others,
2007; Wadsworth & Santiago, 2008).
• Large and extended families are more common
among ethnic minority groups than among nonLatino white Americans.
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59
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Ethnicity and Parenting
• African American and Latino children interact more
with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and
more distant relatives than do non-Latino white
American children (McAdoo, 2006).
• Ethnic minority adolescents are more likely to
come from low-income families than non-Latino
white American adolescents are (Leventhal, BrooksGunn, & Kammerman, 2008; Parke & others, 2008; Wadsworth &
Santiago, 2008).
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60
The Changing Family in a Changing Society
• Ethnicity and Parenting
• Single-parent families are more common among
African Americans and Latinos than among nonLatino white Americans (Harris & Graham, 2007).
• The characteristics of the family’s social context
also influence its adaptation.
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61
Social Policy, Adolescents, and Families
•
•
Parents play very important roles in adolescent
development.
Competent adolescent development is most likely
to happen when adolescents have parents who:
– Show them warmth and respect.
– Demonstrate sustained interest in their lives.
– Recognize and adapt to their changing cognitive and
socioemotional development.
– Communicate expectations for high standards of
conduct and achievement.
– Display authoritative, constructive ways of dealing with
problems and conflict.
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62
Social Policy, Adolescents, and Families
•
Compared with families with young children,
families with adolescents have been neglected in
community programs and public policies.
– School, cultural arts, religious and youth organizations,
and health-care agencies should examine the extent to
which they involve parents in activities with adolescents
and should develop ways to engage parents and
adolescents in activities they both enjoy.
– Professionals such as teachers, psychologists, nurses,
physicians, youth specialists, and others who have
contact with adolescents need not only to work with the
individual adolescent but also to increase the time they
spend interacting with the adolescent’s family.
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63
Social Policy, Adolescents, and Families
•
Employers should extend to the parents of young
adolescents the workplace policies now reserved only
for the parents of young children. These policies
include:
–
–
–
–
•
Flexible work schedules.
Job sharing.
Telecommuting.
Part-time work with benefits.
This change in work/family policy would free parents
to spend more time with their teenagers.
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Social Policy, Adolescents, and Families
•
•
•
Community institutions such as businesses, schools,
and youth organizations should become more
involved in providing after-school programs.
After-school programs for elementary schoolchildren
are increasing, but such programs for adolescents
are rare.
More high-quality, community-based programs for
adolescents are needed in the after-school, weekend,
and vacation time periods.
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65
RESOURCES FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENTS
Between Parent and Teenager by Haim Ginott. (1969).
New York: Avon.
Despite the fact that Between Parent and Teenager is
well past its own adolescence (it was published in 1969),
it continues to be one of the most widely read and
recommended books for parents who want to
communicate more effectively with their teenagers.
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66
RESOURCES FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENTS
Handbook of Socialization edited by Joan Grusec and
Paul Hastings. (2007). New York: Guilford Press.
An excellent collection of up-to-date reviews of research
by leading experts on many topics including parenting,
siblings, family diversity, autonomy and attachment, and
culture.
McGraw-Hill
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67
RESOURCES FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENTS
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
www.bbbsa.org
Single mothers and single fathers who are
having problems with a son or daughter
might want to get a responsible adult to
spend at least one afternoon every other
week with the son or daughter.
McGraw-Hill
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68
RESOURCES FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENTS
Divorce Lessons: Real Life Stories and What You Can
Learn from Them by Alison Clarke-Stewart and Cornelia
Brentano. (2006). Charleston, SC: BookSurge Publishing.
An outstanding book that gives special attention to
emerging adults’ experiences and development while
growing up in divorced families.
McGraw-Hill
Copyright © 2010 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.
69
RESOURCES FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENTS
Raising Black Children by James P. Comer and Alvin E.
Poussaint. (1992). New York: Plume.
This excellent book includes many wise suggestions for
raising African American children.
National Stepfamily Resource Center
www.stepfamilies.info
This organization serves as a clearinghouse for of
information, resources, and support for stepfamilies.
McGraw-Hill
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70
RESOURCES FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF ADOLESCENTS
You and Your Adolescent (2nd Ed.) by Laurence
Steinberg and Ann Levine. (1997). New York: Harper
Perennial.
You and Your Adolescent provides a broad, developmental
overview of adolescence, with parental advice mixed in
along the way.
McGraw-Hill
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71
E-LEARNING TOOLS
To help you master the material in this
chapter, visit the Online Learning Center
for Adolescence, 13th edition at:
http://www.mhhe.com/santrocka13e
McGraw-Hill
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