This study was designed to examine the attitudes toward family obligations among over 800 American tenth ( M age ϭ 15.7 years) and twelfth ( M age ϭ 17.7 years) grade students from Filipino, Chinese, Mexican, Central and South American, and European backgrounds. Asian and Latin American adolescents possessed stronger values and greater expectations regarding their duty to assist, respect, and support their families than their peers with European backgrounds. These differences tended to be large and were consistent across the youths' generation, gender, family composition, and socioeconomic background. Whereas an emphasis on family obligations tended to be associated with more positive family and peer relationships and academic motivation, adolescents who indicated the strongest endorsement of their obligations tended to receive school grades just as low as or even lower than those with the weakest endorsement. There was no evidence, however, that the ethnic variations in attitudes produced meaningful group differences in the adolescents' development. These findings suggest that even within a society that emphasizes adolescent autonomy and independence, youths from families with collectivistic traditions retain their parents' familistic values and that these values do not have a negative impact upon their development.

We focus our review on three universal tasks of human development: relationship formation, knowledge acquisition, and the balance between autonomy and relatedness at adolescence. We present evidence that each task can be addressed through two deeply different cultural pathways through development: the pathways of independence and interdependence. Whereas core theories in developmental psychology are universalistic in their intentions, they in fact presuppose the independent pathway of development. Because the independent pathway is therefore well-known in psychology, we focus a large part of our review on empirically documenting the alternative, interdependent pathway for each developmental task. We also present three theoretical approaches to culture and development: the ecocultural, the sociohistorical, and the cultural values approach. We argue that an understanding of cultural pathways through human development requires all three approaches. We review evidence linking values (cultural values approach), ecological conditions (ecocultural approach), and socialization practices (sociohistorical approach) to cultural pathways through universal developmental tasks.

This study examined whether parent-child conflict and cohesion during adolescence vary among families characterized as having different cultural traditions regarding parental authority and individual autonomy. Approximately 1,000 American adolescents from immigrant and native-born families with Mexican, Chinese, Filipino, and European backgrounds reported on their beliefs, expectations, and relationships with parents; longitudinal data were available for approximately 350 of these youths. Despite holding different beliefs about parental authority and individual autonomy, adolescents from all generations and cultural backgrounds reported similar levels of conflict and cohesion with their parents. Discussion focuses on the relative importance of cultural beliefs and social settings in shaping the nature of parent-child relationships during adolescence.

The goal of this study was to determine the relative impact of family background, parental attitudes, peer support, and adolescents' own attitudes and behaviors on the academic achievement of students from immigrant families. Approximately 1,100 adolescents with Latino, East Asian, Filipino, and European backgrounds reported on their own academic attitudes and behaviors as well as those of their parents and peers. In addition, students' course grades were obtained from their official school records. Results indicated that first and second generation students received higher grades in mathematics and English than their peers from native families. Only a small portion of their success could be attributed to their socioeconomic background; a more significant correlate of their achievement was a strong emphasis on education that was shared by the students, their parents, and their peers. These demographic and psychosocial factors were also important in understanding the variation in academic performance among the immigrant students themselves.

Changes in a sense of obligation to assist, support, and respect the family were examined among an ethnically diverse group of 745 American individuals as they began to move from secondary school into young adulthood. A sense of family obligation increased for all young adults, with slight variations according to ethnic and financial backgrounds. Young adults from Filipino and Latin American families reported the strongest sense of familial duty during young adulthood, which partially explained their tendency to live with and contribute financially to their families. The implications of family obligation for employment and educational persistence depended on age and academic performance in high school. Finally, a sense of family obligation was associated with more positive emotional well-being.

This study examined the links between children's perceptions of the manner in which they and their parents adjust their relationships during early adolescence and early adolescents' orientation toward parents and peers. A sample of 1,771 children completed self-report questionnaires during the spring of their 6th and 7th grades. As predicted, early adolescents who believed their parents asserted and did not relax their power and restrictiveness were higher in an extreme form of peer orientation. Also as predicted, those who perceived few opportunities to be involved in decision making, as well as no increase in these opportunities, were higher in both extreme peer orientation and peer advice seeking. Discussion focuses on the importance for parent-child relationships to adjust to early adolescents' changing developmental needs, as well as the implications of early adolescent peer orientation for later development.

Numerous developmental changes occur across levels of personal organization (eg, changes related to puberty, brain and cognitive-affective structures and functions, and family and peer relationships) in the age period of 10 to 15 years. Furthermore, the onset and escalation of alcohol use commonly occur during this period. This article uses both animal and human studies to characterize these multilevel developmental changes. The timing of and variations in developmental changes are related to individual differences in alcohol use. It is proposed that this integrated developmental perspective serve as the foundation for subsequent efforts to prevent and to treat the causes, problems, and consequences of alcohol consumption. D URING THE DEVELOPMENTAL period spanning 10 to 15 years of age, considerable changes occur in biological, cognitive, emotional, and social processes, as well as physical and social contexts. These changes occur across different levels of personal organization, including overt physical appearance (eg, increases in physical size), refinements in the structure and function of the central nervous system (CNS), and maturational changes in the internal hormonal and neurophysiological milieus. By age 10, most adolescents have begun the rapid changes of puberty, as defined by changes in secretory patterns of the gonadal steroids. These hormonal changes are accompanied by dramatic changes in height as well as readily visible changes in body composition and secondary sexual characteristics, with overt physical differences between the genders becoming increasingly apparent.Whereas some personal changes are closely aligned with chronological age, such as attendance at elementary, middle, or high school, others are more closely tied to variations in the timing of events (pubertal onset) and/or developmental stages, such as interest in the opposite gender and relative peer influences. As a result, different aspects of personal development take place at different times, and different individuals mature in different dimensions at different times. For example, pubertal development may occur at a different time than does the socialcognitive development necessary for intimate relationships. The physical and emotional changes associated with pubertal development occur over a considerable age range. Adolescents who begin puberty relatively early may experience processes postulated to be associated with puberty, such as heightened emotional states and greater influences of external stimuli, sooner than they have the cognitive and emotional abilities to control consistently behaviors that develop as a function of the maturation of brain regions and collaborative brain networks.The average age of puberty has decreased over the past century, whereas the average age of assumption of adult roles has increased because of prolonged education by more youths and later age of initial marriage. These changes have heightened the significance of understanding adolescence along the multiple continua of physical, cogniti...

The association of adolescents' ethnic identification with their academic attitudes and achievement was examined among a sample of 589 ninth-grade students from Mexican, Chinese, and European backgrounds. Adolescents from all backgrounds chose a variety of ethnic labels to describe themselves, with those from Mexican, Chinese, and immigrant families incorporating more of their families' national origin and cultural background into their chosen ethnic labels. Nevertheless, the strength of adolescents' ethnic identification was more relevant to their academic adjustment than the specific labels that they chose, and it was most important for the extra motivation necessary for ethnic minority students to attain the same level of academic success as their European American peers.