Racial discrimination has serious negative consequences for the adjustment of African American adolescents. Taking an ecological approach, this study examined the linkages between perceived racial discrimination within and outside of the neighborhood and urban adolescents’ externalizing and internalizing behaviors, and tested whether neighborhood cohesion operated as a protective factor. Data came from 461 African American adolescents (mean age = 15.24 years, SD = 1.56; 50% female) participating in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. Multilevel models revealed that perceived discrimination within youth’s neighborhoods was positively related to externalizing, and discrimination both within and outside of youth’s neighborhoods predicted greater internalizing problems. Neighborhood cohesion moderated the association between within-neighborhood discrimination and externalizing. Specifically, high neighborhood cohesion attenuated the association between within-neighborhood discrimination and externalizing. The discussion centers on the implications of proximal stressors and neighborhood cohesion for African American adolescents’ adjustment.
Mothers and fathers in 156 African American families reported on racial discrimination experiences, gendered traits, and warmth and conflict in family relationships. Discrimination was linked with relationship quality, but links differed for mothers and fathers. More expressive parents and less instrumental fathers had more positive relationships in the face of discrimination, but for more instrumental fathers, discrimination-relationship quality links were negative. Findings imply consideration of sociocultural and individual characteristics for family relationships. Keywordsexpressivity; gender; instrumentality; racial discrimination; relationship quality Racial discrimination is common in the lives of African Americans, with 60-90% of African American adults reporting at least one incident of discrimination per year (Kessler, Mickelson, & Williams, 1999;Landrine & Klonoff, 1996). In turn, many studies show that discrimination is a stressor that is linked to men's and women's reports of poor psychological functioning and mental health (Bennett, Merritt, Edwards, & Sollers, 2004;Fischer & Shaw, 1999;Lincoln, Chatters, Taylor, & Jackson, 2007). In the face of research on individuals' reactions to discrimination, however, we know little about how experiences of discrimination affect families. Research on racial discrimination also documents consistent gender differences, with males reporting more frequent experiences of discrimination than females (Kessler et al.; Stevenson, Cameron, Herrero-Taylor, & Davis, 2002). Although a body of research suggests that males and females react differently to stressful experiences (Taylor 2006;Taylor, Klein, Lewis, Gruenewald, Gurung, & Updegraff, 2000), we know very little about the potentially different responses of males and females to the stressors of racial discrimination.Links between stressful experiences and family relationships have been documented in European-American families (e.g. Taylor et al., 2000), but research examining the implications of psychosocial stressors for African American family relationships is limited. Although some empirical work has documented associations among stressful events, discrimination experiences, and mothers' family relationships (Murry, Brown, Brody, Cutrona, & Simons, 2001;Murry et al., 2008), there are gaps in this literature. First, we know little about the potential impact of racial discrimination for African American families who do not face chronic stressors. In addition, research on African American families has often focused on single parents, who tend to be mothers, and we know little about Grounded in research and theories of stress and gender, the overarching goal of this study was to assess how racial discrimination experiences, one type of contextual stressor, influence the nature and quality of parent-adolescent, coparenting and marital relationships. Further, to determine whether discrimination-family relationship links were different for mothers and fathers, we tested the moderating role of parent gender, and ...
Research on coparenting documents that mothers' and fathers' coordination and mutual support in their parenting roles is linked to their offspring's adjustment in childhood, but we know much less about the coparenting of adolescents. Taking a family systems perspective, this study assessed two dimensions of coparenting, parents' shared decision-making and joint involvement in activities with their adolescents, and examined bidirectional associations between these coparenting dimensions and boys' and girls' risky behaviors and depressive symptoms across four time points (6 years) in adolescence. Participants were 201 mothers, fathers, and adolescents (M = 11.83, SD = .55 years of age at Time 1; 51 % female). Parents of sons shared more decisions, on average, than parents of daughters. On average, shared decision-making followed an inverted U shaped pattern of change, and parents' joint involvement in their adolescents' activities declined. Cross-lagged findings revealed that risky behavior predicted less shared decision-making, and shared decision-making protected against increased risky behavior for boys. For girls and boys, parents' joint involvement predicted fewer risky behaviors, and lower levels of risky behavior predicted higher levels of joint involvement. In contrast, boys' and girls' depressive symptoms predicted less joint involvement. The discussion centers on the nature and correlates of coparenting during adolescence, including the role of child effects, and directions for future research on coparenting during this developmental period.
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