The Impact of Sexual Harassment on Depressive Symptoms during the Early Occupational Career

Sexual harassment has been theorized as a stressor with consequences for the physical and mental health of its targets. Although social scientists have documented a negative association between sexual harassment and mental health, few longitudinal studies have investigated the association between sexual harassment and depressive symptoms. Using longitudinal survey data from the Youth Development Study, combined with in-depth interviews, this article draws on Louise Fitzgerald’s theoretical framework, stress theory, and the life course perspective to assess the impact of sexual harassment on depressive affect during the early occupational career. In support of Fitzgerald’s model, the authors’ findings confirm that sexual harassment is a stressor that is associated with increased depressive symptoms. Quantitative results show that women and men who experience more frequent sexual harassment at work have significantly higher levels of depressed mood than harassed workers, even after controlling for prior harassment and depressive symptoms. Moreover, the authors find evidence that sexual harassment early in the career has long-term effects on depressive symptoms in adulthood. Interviews with a subset of survey respondents point to a variety of coping strategies and reveal further links between harassment and other aspects of mental health, such as anger and self-doubt

Understanding the effects of Covid-19 through a life course lens

The Covid-19 pandemic is shaking fundamental assumptions about the human life course in societies around the world. In this essay, we draw on our collective expertise to illustrate how a life course perspective can make critical contributions to understanding the pandemic’s effects on individuals, families, and populations. We explore the pandemic’s implications for the organization and experience of life transitions and trajectories within and across central domains: health, personal control and planning, social relationships and family, education, work and careers, and migration and mobility. We consider both the life course implications of being infected by the Covid-19 virus or attached to someone who has; and being affected by the pandemic’s social, economic, cultural, and psychological consequences. It is our goal to offer some programmatic observations on which life course research and policies can build as the pandemic’s short- and long-term consequences unfold

Familial transmission, support, and youth employment in hard economic times

This is a brief introduction to the Part-Special Issue, "Youth, Economic Hardship, and the Worldwide 'Great Recession.'" (I do not believe that an abstract is needed for an introduction.

Socioeconomic origin, future expectations, and educational achievement: A longitudinal three-generation study of the persistence of family advantage

Expectations about the future direct effort in goal-oriented action and may influence a range of life course outcomes, including educational attainment. Here we investigate whether such expectations are implicated in the dynamics underlying the persistence of educational advantage across family generations, and whether such dynamics have changed in recent decades in view of historical change. Focusing on the role of domain-specific (educational) and general (optimism and control) expectations, we examine parallels across parent-child cohorts in (1) the relationships between parental socioeconomic status and children’s future expectations and (2) the associations between children’s future expectations and their academic achievement. We estimate structural equation models using data from the prospective multigenerational Youth Development Study (N= 422 three-generation triads [G1-G2-G3]; G1 mean age in 1988 = 41.0 years, G2 mean age in 1989= 14.7 years, G3 mean age in 2011= 15.8 years; G2 white in 1989 = 66.4%, G3 white in 2011 = 64.4%; G1 mean annual household income, converted to 2008 equivalents = $41,687, G2 mean annual household income in 2008 dollars =$42,962; G1 mode of educational attainment = high school, G2 mode of educational attainment = some college). We find intergenerational similarity in the relationships between parental educational attainment and children’s future expectations. Children’s educational expectations strongly predicted their academic achievement in the second generation, but not in the third generation. With educational expansion, the more recent cohort had higher educational expectations that were less strongly related to achievement. Overall, the findings reveal dynamics underlying the persistence of educational success across generations. The role of future expectations in this intergenerational process varies across historical time, confirming a central conclusion of life-span developmental psychology and life-course sociological research that individual functioning is influenced by sociocultural contexts

Family Socialization, Economic Self-Efficacy, and the Attainment of Financial Independence in Early Adulthood

The attainment of financial independence is a key marker of the contemporary transition to adulthood.  In this study we ask, how do young adults gain the capacity to support themselves?  We contend that communication about work in the family during adolescence is an essential precursor of economic self-efficacy during adolescence and financial independence in early adulthood.  Drawing upon rich longitudinal data that span adolescence and young adulthood, we first ask whether family communication and socialization practices surrounding work and finances influence the development of ways of thinking about oneself that imply self-reliance and confidence in the economic domain (economic self-efficacy).  Second, we assess whether these components of the family’s economic climate have long-term influences on the transition to adulthood, status attainment, and financial independence. Our findings indicate that direct communications about work with parents foster the development of economic self-efficacy.   This positive dimension of the self-concept fosters achievement during the transition to adulthood (e.g., educational achievement, employment status, and income attainment), which, in turn, heighten financial independence.  In contrast, looking to parents for money during adolescence (that is, receiving a regular allowance) appears to diminish economic self-efficacy and does not promote socioeconomic attainment

Government and the Life Course

Leisering L. Government and the Life Course. In: Mortimer JT, Shanahan MJ, eds. Handbook of the Life Course. Handbooks of sociology and social research. New York u.a.: Kluwer; 2003: 205-225