R ational choice theories have advanced considerably in the social sciences, particularly in economics, political science, and law (e.g., Morrow 1994;Posner 1998;Sunstein 1999). In sociology, especially with the popularity of social capital theory, rational choice has gained traction as an individual-level theory of motivation compatible with macro-level theories of social structure (Coleman 1990). Nevertheless, skepticism in sociology persists, in part due to misconceptions, but more importantly due to questions about the explanatory power of rational choice theories. Proponents and skeptics alike agree that a fair assessment of the theory asks whether it has paid off empirically. Hechter and Kanazawa (1997) conclude that some empirical studies support rational explanations (sometimes unwittingly) in areas beyond market behavior, but that additional research is needed to examine rational choice theory in a variety of areas of social life and forms of social action.A challenging and important empirical puzzle for rational choice theory concerns the social control of criminal behavior. Crime is a difficult case for rational choice theory. In the case of street crime, behavior is typically characterized as irrational and suboptimal. This is in contrast to market behavior, financial decisions, and corporate crime, where institutionalized norms frame decision making in the terms of rationality or optimality. Indeed, the media-and some academics-commonly portray street criminals as impulsive, unthinking, and Hirschi 1990). Thus, a finding that street crimes follow rational choice principles would provide strong evidence for rational choice perspectives.and uneducated, and their behaviors as beyond the reach of formal sanctions (e.g., GottfredsonCrime is an important arena for investigating rational choice for another reason: Utilitarian principles, and their accompanying psychological assumptions, undergird our legal institution (e.g., Maestro 1973). This connection is rooted in writings of the classical school. Long ago, Bentham ([1789] 1948) argued that happiness is a composite of maximum pleasure and minimum pain, and that the utilitarian principlethe greatest happiness for the greatest number-underlies morals and legislation. For Bentham, punishment by the state constitutes one of four sanctions-political, moral, physical, and religious-that shape pleasures and pains. Beccaria ([1764] 1963), influenced by the moral philosophers of the Enlightenment, assumed that criminal laws reflect the terms of a social contract, in which members of society receive protection of their rights to personal welfare and private property in exchange for relinquishing the freedom to violate the rights of others. Those rights are protected by the state through deterrence, threatening potential transgressors with just enough punishment to outweigh the pleasures of crime. 1 Beccaria attempted to reform the unjust and brutal legal system of eighteenth-century Europe by developing a rational system that specified laws clearly and a prior...

The belief that women and men are held to different standards of sexual conduct is pervasive in contemporary American society. According to the sexual double standard, boys and men are rewarded and praised for heterosexual sexual contacts, whereas girls and women are derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors. Although widely held by the general public, research findings on the sexual double standard remain equivocal, with qualitative studies and early attitudinal surveys generally finding evidence of the double standard and more recent experimental vignette designs often failing to find similar results. In this study, we extend prior research by directly measuring the social status of sexually permissive youth. We use data collected from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to relate adolescents’ self-reported numbers of sexual partners to a network measure of peer acceptance. Results suggest that the association between lifetime sexual partnerships and peer status varies significantly by gender, such that greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys’ peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls’ peer acceptance. Moreover, the relationship between boys’ sexual behaviors and peer acceptance is moderated by socioeconomic origins; sexually permissive boys from disadvantaged backgrounds are predicted to have more friendships than permissive boys from more advantaged backgrounds. Our results thus support the existence of an adolescent sexual double standard and suggest that sexual norms vary by both gender and socioeconomic origins.

This article examines the extent to which participation in high school interscholastic sports contributes to male violence. Deriving competing hypotheses from social control, social learning, and masculinity theories, I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to test if (1) type of sport and (2) peer athletic participation, contribute to the risks of male serious fighting. Contrary to social control expectations, analyses suggest that athletic involvement fails to inhibit male violence. Moreover, there is a strong relationship between contact sports and violence. Football players and wrestlers, as opposed to baseball, basketball, tennis, and other athletes, are significantly more likely than nonathletic males to be involved in a serious fight. Additionally, the direct effect of football is explained by the football participation of individuals' peers. Males whose friends play football are more likely to fight than other males, supporting perspectives that emphasize peer contexts as important mediators. Overall, findings are consistent with the expectations of social learning and masculinity arguments. The theoretical and policy implications of these results are discussed.

Evidence from several qualitative studies has suggested that the transition to motherhood has strong inhibitory effects on the delinquency and drug use trajectories of poor women. Quantitative studies, however, typically have failed to find significant parenthood or motherhood effects. We argue that the latter research typically has not examined motherhood in disadvantaged settings or applied the appropriate statistical method. Focusing on within‐individual change, we test the motherhood hypothesis using data from a 10‐year longitudinal study of more than 500 women living in disadvantaged Denver communities. We find that the transition to motherhood is associated significantly with reductions in delinquency, marijuana, and alcohol behaviors. Moreover, we find that the effect of motherhood is larger than that of marriage for all outcomes. These results support the qualitative findings and suggest that the transition to motherhood—and not marriage—is the primary turning point for disadvantaged women to exit delinquent and drug‐using trajectories.