Linda M. Burton

Teenage childbearing as an alternative life-course strategy in multigeneration black families

This paper summarizes the findings of a three-year exploratory qualitative study of teenage childbearing in 20 low-income multigeneration black families. Teenage childbearing in these families is part of an alternative life-course strategy created in response to socioenvironmental constraints. This alternative life-course strategy is characterized by an accelerated family timetable; the separation of reproduction and marriage; an age-condensed generational family structure; and a grandparental child-rearing system. The implications of these patterns for intergenerational family roles are discussed.

Geo-ethnography: Coupling Geographic Information Analysis Techniques with Ethnographic Methods in Urban Research

Abstract This research article focuses on the coupling of geographic information system (GIS) technologies with ethnographic data, an approach we refer to as geo-ethnography. The data used here were gathered in an ongoing, multi-site study of low-income families and their children. Throughout our work, the goals have been to think creatively about how GIS can be used in welfare research, to stretch the technology, and to revise the methodologies we currently use. We specifically discuss the ways in which the ethnographic data on families and neighbourhoods have been integrated within a GIS and how these two methods, alone and in combination, help situate families’ actions and experiences in time and space and enhance data analysis and interpretation. More specifically, we focus on conceptual and methodological issues we have faced in the process of this integration and on practical strategies for combining qualitative and quantitative research.

Adolescent substance use: preliminary examinations of school and neighborhood context.

In considering the influences of microsystems on adolescent substance use, familial and peer contexts have received the most extensive attention in the research literature. School and neighborhood settings, however, are other developmental contexts that may exert specific influences on adolescent substance use. In many instances, school settings are organized to provide educational services to students who share similar educational abilities and behavioral repertoires. The resulting segregation of students into these settings may result in different school norms for substance use. Similarly, neighborhood resources, including models for substance use and drug sales involvement, may play an important role in adolescent substance use. We briefly review literature examining contextual influences on adolescent substance use, and present results from two preliminary studies examining the contribution of school and neighborhood context to adolescent substance use. In the first investigation, we examine the impact of familial, peer, and school contexts on adolescent substance use. Respondents were 283 students (ages 13 to 18) from regular and special education classrooms in six schools. Although peer and parental contexts were important predictors of substance use, school norms for drug use accounted for variance in adolescent use beyond that explained by peer and parental norms. Data from a second study of 114 adolescents (mean age = 15) examines neighborhood contributions to adolescent substance use. In this sample, neighborhood indices did not contribute to our understanding of adolescent substance use. Implications for prevention are presented.

Reframing Theories for Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Families

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss what conceptual perspectives and theoretical frameworks explain and predict family phenomena among ethnic minority families. Three major discussions provide the basis to our examination: (1) restructuring assumptions and values to reflect ethnic reality; (2) creating new ways of thinking about ethnic minority families to enhance culturally relevant conceptual frameworks on the family; and (3) reframing existing theoretical perspectives and ideologies to explain and predict family phenomena among these families. Central to each of these discussions is the importance of cultural distinctiveness as it relates to the family.

The Influence of Physical and Sexual Abuse on Marriage and Cohabitation

Using ethnographic and survey data on low-income families residing in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, we examine the relationship between womens patterns of union formation and their experience of physical and sexual abuse. Both sets of data suggest that women who have been physically or sexually abused are substantially less likely to be married or to be in stable, long-term cohabiting relationships. The data also suggest that the timing and different forms of abuse may have distinctive associations with union formation. Women who have experienced abuse beginning in childhood, particularly sexual abuse, are less likely to be in sustained marriages or stable cohabiting relationships and instead are more likely to experience transitory unions: multiple short-term, mostly cohabiting unions with brief intervals between them. Women who have not been abused in childhood but experience adult physical abuse, however, are less likely to be in either a marriage or a cohabiting union, long-term or transitory; and some have withdrawn from having relationships with men. The relevance of these findings for the decline of marriage among low-income women and men is discussed.

Rethinking Teenage Childbearing: Is Sexual Abuse a Missing Link?.

This exploratory study examines the relationship between childhood sexual victimization and adolescent pregnancy. Interviews were conducted with a nonclinical sample of 41 young rural mothers who had been pregnant as teenagers. Research questions concerning the prevalence of sexually abusive experiences the effects of such abuse on self-perceptions and differences between victimized and nonvictimized young mothers were addressed. Of the respondents 54% reported that they had been sexually abused by the age of 18. Victims self-perceptions and their relationships with others appear to have suffered because of the abusive experiences yet few significant differences were noted when the victims were compared to non-victims in the sample. Implications of these findings for practitioners are discussed. (authors)

Operating within the Rules: Welfare Recipients' Experiences with Sanctions and Case Closings

This article examines the experiences of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients with sanctions and administrative case closings, as reported by respondents in a survey of families in low‐income neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio. Among those who said that their welfare benefits had been reduced or eliminated for noncompliance with the rules, the most common reasons provided were missing an appointment or not filing paperwork. In comparison with other families that had received welfare in the previous 2 years, families that were penalized were more disadvantaged in a number of respects, including lower education and poorer health.

Inequality, Family Processes, and Health in the "New" Rural America

Rural America is commonly viewed as a repository of virtuous and patriotic values, deeply rooted in a proud immigrant history of farmers and industrious working-class White ethnics from northern Europe. These views are not always consistent with the population and socioeconomic realities of rural terrains. Exceptions to these stereotypes are self-evident among large poor racial/ethnic minorities residing in rural ghettos in the “dirty” South and among poor Whites living in remote, mountainous areas of Appalachia. For these disadvantaged populations, sociocultural and economic isolation, a lack of quality education, too few jobs, and poor health have taken a human toll, generation after generation. Moreover, the past several decades have brought dramatic shifts in the spatial distribution and magnitude of poverty in these areas. And, America’s persistent racial inequalities have continued to fester as rural communities become home to urban-origin racial minority migrants and immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. As a result, the face of rural America has changed, quite literally. In this article, we address the primary question these changes pose: How will shifting inequalities anchored in poverty and race shape health disparities in a “new” rural America? Guided by fundamental cause theory, we explore the scope and sources of poverty and race inequalities in rural America, how patterns in these inequalities are transduced within families, and what these inequalities mean for the future of health disparities within and across rural U.S. terrains. Our goal is to review and interrogate the extant literature on this topic with the intent of offering recommendations for future research.

Romantic Unions in an Era of Uncertainty: A Post-Moynihan Perspective on African American Women and Marriage:

This article provides a brief overview of how African American women are situated in and around the thesis of the Moynihan Report. The authors take the lens of uncertainty and apply it to a post-Moynihan discussion of African American women and marriage. They discuss uncertainty in the temporal organization of poor womens lives and in the new terrains of gender relationships and how both influence African American womens thoughts and behaviors in their romantic relationships and marriages. They argue that much is to be learned from by focusing the lens in this way. It allows us to look at the contemporary romantic relationship and marriage behaviors of African American women in context and in ways that do not label them as having pathological behaviors that place them out of sync with broader societal trends.

Morality, Identity, and Mental Health in Rural Ghettos

When we think about the impact of place on poor mental health outcomes our thoughts are often anchored in images of how urban ghettos’ influence the prevalence of problem behaviors and violence among individuals and families who reside within them. Within the last decade, however, social scientists have increasingly turned their attention to the emergence of rural ghettos and the concomitant rise of mental health problems in these environments. Rural ghettos are residentially segregated places that have high concentrations of disadvantage and contextual stigma. They exist within small, geographically isolated towns and their adjacent pastoral communities. Ghettos take different forms including dilapidated tracts of housing, subsidized housing projects, and run-down trailer parks on the outskirts of town. They are also parts of larger ecologies of local residents who reside in protected and affluent spaces on their geographic peripheries.