Holly Foster

S/He's a Rebel: Toward a Sequential Stress Theory of Delinquency and Gendered Pathways to Disadvantage in Emerging Adulthood

Quantitative longitudinal research neglects theoretical and qualitative work indicating that delinquency is a developmental phase embedded in a chain of emotions leading to cumulative disadvantage in the life course. Building on prior work in the sociological subfields of mental health, delinquency, and the life course, we propose and test a gendered and age-graded sequential stress theory that treats delinquency as a transitional event or set of events that can play an additive and intervening role in the movement from earlier feelings of anger through rebellious or aggressive (i.e., delinquent) forms of behavior to later depressive symptoms, and, especially, for males, drinking problems. Our results fill in transitional spaces that include a mediating role of delinquency in the cumulation of disadvantage and downward trajectories in gendered pathways to emerging adulthood.

Youth Violence and the End of Adolescence

American youth experience high levels of violence, and increasingly the U.S. public policy response is to punish young perpetrators of violence through waivers and transfers from juvenile to adult courts. Adolescence is a time of expanding vulnerabilities and exposures to violence that can be self-destructive as well as destructive of others. Such violence can involve intimate relationships or strangers, and in addition to being perpetrators or victims, youth are often bystanders and witnesses to violence. The authors hypothesize that the life-course consequences of experiences with violence, especially violence in intimate adolescent relationships, include more than contemporaneous health risks, leading also to subsequent depression and premature exits from adolescence to adulthood. An analysis of panel data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health indicates that violence in intimate adolescent relationships results in depressed feelings, running away from home, serious thoughts about suicide, dropping out of school, and teenage pregnancy. Among adolescent females, violence in intimate relationships is especially likely to lead to depression, and exposure to violence on the street combines with violence by intimate partners to result in especially high risks of pregnancy. Future work should consider how exposure to violence and premature exits to adulthood negatively affect adult life outcomes.

The Mass Incarceration of Parents in America: Issues of Race/ Ethnicity, Collateral Damage to Children, and Prisoner Reentry

The authors discuss social selection, stigmatization, and socialization/strain theoretical explanations for the intergenerational influences of parental incarceration on their children. Results with national survey data reveal that net of selection factors, paternal imprisonment decreases the educational attainment of children in emerging adulthood. While this pattern is found across race/ethnicity, the results in combination with disproportionate minority confinement suggest that parental incarceration is a mechanism of social exclusion of these groups. With data on Texas prisoners, the authors further find that about two-thirds of Hispanic fathers and about half of African American and Anglo fathers expect to live with their children and families when they return to their communities. This last finding suggests a broad foundation across racial/ethnic groups for the investment of resources in supporting the rehabilitation and reunification of these prospective families, for the welfare of the children, their parents, and the communities in which they live.

Intergenerational Educational Effects of Mass Imprisonment in America

In some American schools, about a fifth of the fathers have spent time in prison during their child’s primary education. We examine how variation across schools in the aggregation and concentration of the mass imprisonment of fathers is associated with their own children’s intergenerational educational outcomes and “spills over” into the attainments of other students. We assess the association of this interinstitutional and intergenerational “prison through school pathway” with downward and blocked educational achievement. Educational and economic resources and other predisposing variables partially explain school-linked effects of paternal imprisonment on measures of children’s educational outcomes. However, we find that the net negative school-level association of paternal imprisonment with educational outcomes persists even after we introduce school- and individual-level measures of a wide range of mediating processes and extraneous control variables. We discuss paternal imprisonment as a form of “marked absence.” The significance of elevated levels of paternal imprisonment in schools is perhaps most apparent in its negative association with college completion, the educational divide that now most dramatically disadvantages individuals and groups in American society.

Maternal and paternal imprisonment in the stress process

Parental incarceration is now prevalent in community samples (e.g., with 11% of children reporting paternal imprisonment and 3% reporting maternal imprisonment in a national sample), pointing to a potentially important childhood trauma that should be included in work on contemporary childhood stressors in this era of mass incarceration. This paper investigates the influences of maternal and paternal imprisonment on changes in young adult mental health using a nationally representative sample. We assess four perspectives-gendered loss, same-sex role model, intergenerational stress, and maternal salience - on the joint influences of maternal and paternal incarceration within the broader stress process paradigm. The results generalize support for a gendered loss perspective developed in work on parental death and an early small study of parental incarceration. This pattern reveals maternal incarceration increases depressive symptoms while paternal incarceration increases substance role problems. Chronicity of parental imprisonment and its timing are also influential. Analyses further specify a vulnerability of male and minority young adults to high levels of mental health problems following maternal and paternal incarceration in adolescence.

Desistance in the Transition to Adulthood: The Roles of Marriage, Military, and Gender

Research is needed on desistance from crime comparatively by gender. This research uses a national longitudinal sample of youth transitioning to adulthood. Drawing on Sampson and Laubs Age-Graded Theory of Informal Social Control, social bonds found in marriage and military involvement are examined to determine if they decrease delinquency over time. The results for the full sample revealed that marriage but not military involvement led to desistance. However, gender sub-sample analyses further showed military enlistment led females, but not males, to desist from crime. Implications and future research aims are discussed.

A Gendered Theory of Delinquency and Despair in the Life Course

The paper pays particular attention to gender-and age-linked differences in forms of indirect, relational and direct, physical forms of delinquent aggression, as well as to sequential links of these forms of delinquent aggression to depression and drug and alcohol abuse. A power-control theory of the gender-delinquency relationship that draws attention to differences in familial control practices is then linked to these variations in the expression of delinquency and despair. We extend the focus of power-control theory to address how parental agency and support for dominant attitudes or Schemas influence involvement in different forms of delinquency and despair. This extension emphasizes that differences in structure, particularly between more and less patriarchal households, result in degrees of difference and of kind in non-normative outcomes. The paper concludes with a call for increased diversity in the measurement of delinquency and despair and for the development of opposite-sex sibling samples to explore gender-and age-linked differences in non-normative phenomena.

Associations between Menarcheal Timing and Behavioral Developmental Trajectories for Girls from Age 6 to Age 15.

Substantial evidence from cross-sectional and short time-span longitudinal studies exists about negative associations between early pubertal maturation on a number of psychological outcomes. The objective of the present study was to assess the association between early maturation and developmental trajectories of social skills and internalizing and externalizing problems in girls from grades 1 through 9, including pre- and post-pubertal periods. The sample came from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development and included 398 Caucasian and 60 African American girls. Multilevel modeling revealed early maturing Caucasian girls were at risk for higher internalizing and externalizing problems and experiencing higher levels of problems pre-pubertally. African American youth had lower social skills and internalizing problems with no group differences due to early pubertal development. Findings are discussed in light of literature on continuity of girls’ psychosocial development before and during the pubertal transition.

Children's exposure to community and war violence and mental health in four African countries

In this article we review the mental health consequences of childrens exposure to community and war violence (ETV) in four African countries: South Africa, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Rwanda. A focus on Africa is particularly pressing because of childrens high levels of community and war ETV in countries therein. Regions of Africa present important macro-contexts for understanding childrens various types of violence exposure amidst war and economic disadvantage. Findings of the review across 20 quantitative studies from 2004 to 2015 indicate consistent associations between exposure to war and community violence and childrens symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and aggression. School climate and family support mitigate these ETV influences upon children: however, more research is needed on the buffering effects of such resources. The effects of war violence are mediated by perceived discrimination in communities post-conflict. We integrate findings across studies to synthesize knowledge on childrens ETV in Africa around a model of its correlates, mediators, and moderators in relation to mental health. Emerging research points to avenues for prevention and future inquiry.

Neighborhood Influences on Antisocial Behavior During Childhood and Adolescence

This chapter reviews recent research on neighborhood influences on children’s and adolescents’ antisocial behavior. Building on reviews in this area, we focus on recent developments pertaining to life course criminology. We have five main aims in this chapter. First, we engage General Strain Theory along with stress process perspectives to further theorize neighborhood structural and processual influences both in the short-term and dynamically over time. Second, we examine findings from cross-sectional research on neighborhood structure and process influences on a range of antisocial behaviors in both childhood and adolescence, considering direct and indirect links as well as moderating factors. Third, we use a life course criminology framework to examine antisocial behavior trajectories in the context of neighborhood residence. Studies in this area include results of both semi-parametric mixture models as well as hierarchical linear growth models of antisocial behavior trajectories. Fourth, we examine emerging research on neighborhood dynamics. Fifth, we consider research on the timing of neighborhood influences. We conclude with a summary of major findings and suggestions for future research on neighborhood influences on young people in life course criminology.