How aspirations are formed and challenged in the transition to adulthood and implications for adult well-being

Aspirations play a primary role in linking social class background to later attainment. Planful adolescents who formulate ambitious educational and occupational goals are more likely to succeed than those who hold modest expectations. Yet we know little about the process by which young people choose and develop aspirations or the barriers they face in attempting to achieve these goals. This dissertation aims to fill this gap, by asking how structural factors shape the choices young people make regarding their educational and occupational futures, how the ability to follow through on these choices is distributed, and how failing to meet one's chosen goals may impact individuals' job satisfaction and psychological well-being. The first chapter uses in-depth interviews with 61 junior and senior high school girls to show how social class shapes educational and occupational aspirations and plans through the availability and use of social networks. These interviews reveal that middle class adolescents are embedded in resource-rich social networks that facilitate high educational and occupational attainment while limited social ties, family instability, and parental disengagement produce disadvantages for working class and poor youth. The second chapter uses survey data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS) to explore the relationship between events in the transition to adulthood and fulfillment of one's educational and occupational expectations. Findings reveal that the order and timing of family formation and dissolution events can disrupt young people's paths to attainment in early adulthood. The final chapter uses NLSY79 and NELS datasets to test the relationship between falling short of one's expectations and emotional and psychological outcomes in early adulthood. Results indicate that occupational expectations can serve as baseline standard with which to judge later accomplishments--falling short of these goals leads to lower emotional and psychological well-being in adulthood. These findings support the claims of relative deprivation theory, which argues that dissatisfaction arises from the gap between what one has and what one wants

Economic Factors and Relationship Quality Among Young Couples: Comparing Cohabitation and Marriage

Are economic resources related to relationship quality among young couples, and to what extent does this vary by relationship type? To answer these questions, we estimated regression models predicting respondent reports of conflict and affection in cohabiting and married partner relationships using the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, 1997 (NLSY97, N = 2,841) and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health, N = 1,702). We found that economic factors are an important predictor of conflict for both married and cohabiting couples. Affection was particularly responsive to human capital rather than short-term economic indicators. Economic hardship was associated with more conflict among married and cohabiting couples

Other People’s Racism: Race, Rednecks, and Riots in a Southern High School

This article uses data drawn from nine months of fieldwork and student, teacher, and administrator interviews at a southern high school to analyze school racial conflict and the construction of racism. We find that institutional inequalities that stratify students by race and class are routinely ignored by school actors who, we argue, use the presence of so-called redneck students to plausibly deny racism while furthering the standard definition of racism as blatant prejudice and an individual trait. The historical prominence of rednecks as a southern cultural identity augments these claims, leading to an implicit division of school actors into friendly/nonracist and unfriendly/racist and allowing school actors to set boundaries on the meaning of racism. Yet these rhetorical practices and the institutional structures they mask contributed to racial tensions, culminating in a race riot during our time at the school

The Dynamics and Correlates of Religious Service Attendance in Adolescence

This study examines changes in religious service attendance over time for a contemporary cohort of adolescents moving from middle to late adolescence. We use two waves of a nationally representative panel survey of youth from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) to examine the dynamics of religious involvement during adolescence. We then follow with an analysis of how demographic characteristics, family background, and life course transitions relate to changes in religious service attendance during adolescence. Our findings suggest that, on average, adolescent religious service attendance declines over time, related to major life course transitions such as becoming employed, leaving home, and initiating sexual activity. Parents’ affiliation and attendance, on the other hand, are protective factors against decreasing attendance

A Person-Centered Examination of Adolescent Religiosity Using Latent Class Analysis

Empirical studies of religion’s role in society, especially those focused on individuals and analyzing survey data, conceptualize and measure religiosity on a single measure or a summary index of multiple measures. Other concepts, such as “lived religion,” “believing without belonging,” or “fuzzy fidelity,” emphasize what scholars have noted for decades: humans are rarely consistently low, medium, or high across dimensions of religiosity including institutional involvement, private practice, salience, or belief. A method with great promise for identifying population patterns in how individuals combine types and levels of belief, practice, and personal religious salience is latent class analysis. In this paper, we use data from the first wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion’s telephone survey to discuss how to select indicators of religiosity in an informed manner, as well as the implications of the number and types of indicators used for model fit. We identify five latent classes of religiosity among adolescents in the United States and their socio-demographic correlates. Our findings highlight the value of a person-centered approach to understanding how religion is lived by American adolescents

His and Hers: Economic Factors and Relationship Quality in Germany

Research has linked economic factors to relationship quality in the United States, primarily using cross-sectional data. In the current study, 2 waves of the Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics data (n = 2,937) were used to test the gendered association between economic factors and relationship satisfaction among young German couples. In contrast to U.S.- based studies, the findings showed striking gender differences in the association between economic factors and relationship satisfaction for Germans. In cross-sectional models, women’s relationship satisfaction was positively associated with receiving government economic support, and men’s satisfaction was positively associated with poverty status and negatively associated with being a breadwinner. Longitudinal models revealed that changes in poverty status are associated with women’s satisfaction, but men’s satisfaction remains tied to their role as family provider. These unexpected results suggest that men’s satisfaction is positively associated with a more equal division of labor market activity between partners