High school students (approximately 14-18 years old; N=2,568) completed questionnaires in which they reported on their involvement in substance use and delinquency, and their perceptions of parental warmth, control, monitoring, and knowledge. Three alternative models were compared describing the nature of relations among these variables. Problem behavior was best predicted by a model that included indirect effects of warmth, control, and monitoring (all by way of parental knowledge), as well as direct effects of control and monitoring. Analyses are framed and findings are discussed with reference to recent work by Stattin and Kerr (2000; Kerr & Stattin, 2000) on the measurement and meaning of parental monitoring.

Abstract:The study is a qualitative investigation of mothers' perspectives about and their role in negotiating and developing intergenerational closure across race, class, and religious differences and their management of children's diverse friendships. Black and White mothers (n = 25) of third graders were interviewed about social networks, children's friendships, and closure relationships. Race, class, and faith were critical vantage points from which parents thought about social difference and managed closure relationships. Mothers' involvement in diverse networks reflected articulated ideologies, socialization goals, and active engagement of strategies to build relationships between parents and children. However, de facto social barriers and ideologies about the invisibility of social differences created barriers to building intergenerational closure across social differences as did mothers' perceptions of these relationships as threats to aspired to or salient identities and values.Keywords: social network closure | intergenerational closure | children's friendships | intergroup relationships | parenting | social capital Article:The social contexts within which children's friendships emerge and parents' social relationships develop, from neighborhoods to places of worship, are fraught with the divisions of race, class, and religion that are a part of the social fabric of American society (McPherson, Smith-Loving, & McCook, 2001). Yet the emphasis on diversity in American public life reflects a philosophy that acknowledges and embraces the value of social and cultural differences and the importance of positive intergroup relationships not only for personal growth and development but also for a prosperous, free, and democratic society (Putnam, 2007; Willet, 1998). A great deal of attention has focused on the role of institutions (schools, government, judicial) outside the family in facilitating intergroup relationships and breaking down social boundaries. However, parents' roles in developing (or limiting) children's friendships that involve social differences have been understudied as have the social relationships across race, class, and religion that involve both children and their parents (Furstenberg, 2005;Morrow, 1999;Parke & Ladd, 1992).Based on a qualitative investigation, we explore the ways parents negotiate children's friendships and relationships with other parents across race, class, and religious differences with a particular focus on the strategies parents engage to cross (or to maintain) social boundaries and the ideological and social-relational processes that inform these practices. James Coleman (1988;, in his theory of social capital, emphasized the importance of the social connections between families, specifically, the interconnected social networks of parents and their children which he referred to as intergenerational closure (or social network closure). Closure relationships are defined in terms of the strength of social connections among parents whose children are themselves friends. ...

Using an interpretivist approach, this article explores young African American men's (N = 20) reflections on coming of age and the meanings of father loss. Based on focus groups, the authors found that it was through autobiographical narratives of loss, survival, and redemption that young men positioned themselves ideologically and constructed the type of man they wanted to become. These emergent narratives reflect the complex ways young men worked out the meaning of father loss and the defining intragenerational and intergenerational lessons about manhood learned from their relationships with fathers and others. Within these narratives, young men also constructed both wanted and unwanted possible selves and evoked the discursive tropes of respectable manhood and deadbeat daddies.

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Although there are institutional barriers to interdisciplinary teaching in higher education, students report higher levels of cognitive though and greater knowledge of subject matter when they learn in interdisciplinary ways. This paper highlights interdepartmental collaboration for developing an undergraduate course integrating three concepts: child development, gardening, and nutrition. The course design is meant to prepare undergraduates for developmentally appropriate strategies to educate preschoolers on well-being through use of garden with edible crops. Forty-five students from various majors enrolled in the course over a 2.5-year period. Experiential learning activities included gardening activities at the University Child Development Laboratory along with tours of local farmers’ markets, the University Farm, and the Children’s Museum Edible Schoolyard. In reflective journaling, students reported on knowledge they gained in the three areas as a result of experiential gardening activities with preschoolers. The paper concludes with discussion implications of interdisciplinary course development among family science researchers and the role of gardening education in teaching health and well-being to preschoolers.