Rand D. Conger

Negotiating Adolescence in Times of Social Change: The Role of Economic Pressure in the Lives of Parents and Their Adolescents: The Family Stress Model

Social change in the form of economic restructuring and recessions has occurred across the United States throughout the countrys history. The Depression of the 1930s brought hardship to all regions of the country and produced a mass migration of farmers leaving the land. More recently, widespread unemployment resulting from worldwide competition in the Rust Belts steel industry, stagnation of U.S. car manufacturing in the face of foreign competition, the oil boom and bust in Texas, and the decline of the aerospace industry in the Northwest are all examples of macroeconomic change influencing the lives of thousands of families. Studies of unemployed autoworkers and their families, for example, revealed the staggering effects of unemployment: marriages fell apart, emotional and physical health problems increased, incidents of spouse and child abuse increased, and the demand for social services escalated (e.g., Kessler, Turner, & House, 1988; Perrucci & Targ, 1988). A similar period of economic decline struck agriculture in the 1980s and continues to plague rural areas of the country today. Riding the 1970s crest of unprecedented prosperity that included easy credit, escalating land values, and an increasing demand for grain, farmers of the Midwest mortgaged the family farm to modernize and expand, buying larger machinery and farming larger tracts of land. In many cases, plans were made to expand their operations to make room for their sons and daughters. These economic boom times also benefited the small towns that served farm families with increased retail sales, well-paying jobs related to agriculture, and an increased tax base that spurred local economic development such as newschools and community improvements.

Neighborhood Disorder and Children’s Antisocial Behavior: The Protective Effect of Family Support Among Mexican American and African American Families

Using data from a sample of 673 Mexican Origin families, the current investigation examined the degree to which family supportiveness acted as a protective buffer between neighborhood disorder and antisocial behavior during late childhood (i.e. intent to use controlled substances, externalizing, and association with deviant peers). Children’s perceptions of neighborhood disorder fully mediated associations between census and observer measures of neighborhood disorder and their antisocial behavior. Family support buffered children from the higher rates of antisocial behavior generally associated with living in disorderly neighborhoods. An additional goal of the current study was to replicate these findings in a second sample of 897 African American families, and that replication was successful. These findings suggest that family support may play a protective role for children living in dangerous or disadvantaged neighborhoods. They also suggest that neighborhood interventions should consider several points of entry including structural changes, resident perceptions of their neighborhood and family support.

Mental Health of Rural Young Adults: Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders, Comorbidity, and Service Utilization

Few studies estimate rural psychiatric disorder rates. No study has reported either DSM-III-R or DSM IV disorder prevalence and mental health service use among US rural young adults. This paper reports psychiatric disorder prevalence, comorbidity, service utilization, and disorder correlates in a community sample of 536 young adults, aged 19 to 23xa0years, living in the rural Midwestern US. More than 60% of the sample met criteria for a lifetime disorder. Substance use disorders were most prevalent. Results indicate that young adults living in the rural Midwest demonstrate substantial rates of psychiatric disorder that are comparable to other population groups.

Risk and Resilience Processes in Single-Mother Families: An Interactionist Perspective

The developmental consequences of economic hardship and poverty for family functioning and child and adolescent adjustment continue to be of concern to developmentalists and policy makers. Economic changes in the United States during the past two decades, such as increasing income inequality, have renewed interest in how social position and economic resources affect families and the development of children (Conger & Donnellan, 2007). Research shows that more socially and economically disadvantaged adults and children are at higher risk for physical, emotional, and behavioral problems (Bradley & Corwyn, 2002; Conger, Conger, & Martin, 2010; McLoyd, 1998; Schoon, Sacker, & Bartley, 2003). Also important, it is increasingly evident that the family acts as a conduit for socioeconomic influences on the development of children and adolescents (e.g., Repetti, Taylor, & Seeman, 2002). Two dominant perspectives have been proposed to explain the nature of the relationships among contextual stressors, family functioning, and child development. The first, social causation, proposes that variations in environmental conditions, such as poverty or social support, lead to differences in social, emotional, cognitive, and physical functioning. In contrast the social selection perspective argues that differences in individual traits or characteristics account for the associations among adverse life events, family functioning, and life course development (Conger & Donnellan, 2007).

Social and economic antecedents and consequences of adolescent aggressive personality: Predictions from the Interactionist Model

The present study examined the development of a cohort of 279 early adolescents (52% female) from 1990 to 2005. Guided by the interactionist model of socioeconomic status and human development, we proposed that parent aggressive personality, economic circumstances, interparental conflict, and parenting characteristics would affect the development of adolescent aggressive personality traits. In turn, we hypothesized that adolescent aggressiveness would have a negative influence on adolescent functioning as an adult in terms of economic success, personality development, and close relationships 11 years later. Findings were generally supportive of the interactionist model proposition that social and economic difficulties in the family of origin intensify risk for adolescent aggressive personality (the social causation hypothesis) and that this personality trait impairs successful transition to adult roles (the social selection hypothesis) in a transactional process over time and generations. These results underscore how early development leads to child influences that appear to directly hamper the successful transition to adult roles (statistical main effects) and also amplify the negative impact of dysfunctional family systems on the transition to adulthood (statistical interaction effects). The findings suggest several possible points of intervention that might help to disrupt this negative developmental sequence of events.