RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND THE WEATHERING OF NONMARITAL RELATIONSHIPS.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of perceived racial discrimination on the satisfaction and dissolution of different-gender, nonmarital relationships among African American young adults. Background: Racial discrimination has proven detrimental to relationship quality among married couples. Racial disparities in relationship processes begin long before marriages form, however. Racial discrimination may also weather and disrupt nonmarital relationships earlier in the life course. Method: Survey data from African American young adult couples (N = 407) from the Family and Community Health Study were used to assess the associations between each partner's experience of racial discrimination, relationship satisfaction, and relationship dissolution using structural equation modeling. Results: Results support a stress spillover perspective in that racial discrimination experienced by both men and women increased the likelihood of relationship dissolution through reduced satisfaction. No support was found for a stress buffering perspective. Conclusion: Racial discrimination appears to distress and, ultimately, disrupt nonmarital relationships among African American young adult couples. Implications: Given the role of relationship quality and stability in promoting health and well-being, understanding how discrimination impacts the unfolding of relationships, or linked lives, across the life course is essential to untangling and addressing the "chains of disadvantage" identified by Umberson et al. (2014) as central to racial disparities in health and well-being.

Racial discrimination and health among two generations of African American couples.

The current study extends research on the detrimental health implications of racial discrimination by examining how these implications reverberate across romantic relationships. Using two generations of different-gender romantic couples from the Family and Community Health Study, we examined how racial discrimination experienced by a romantic partner was associated with poor health among Black adults, independent of one's own level of racial discrimination. Results from the actor-partner interdependence model showed that beyond the effects of socioeconomic status, health behavior, relationship satisfaction, and own experiences of racial discrimination, a romantic partner's experiences of discrimination were associated with increased psychological distress for both the middle/older-age generation and the young-adult generation. Further, in the middle/older-age generation, partners' experiences of racial discrimination were associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk, particularly for men. These results reiterate recent findings that researchers may underestimate the impact of racial discrimination on health when we fail to consider linked lives. Further, they indicate that there may be gender and generational differences in the individual and relational implications of racial discrimination on health.

How Economic Stress Impacts Risky Sex among African American Adolescents.

Given the potential for unintended pregnancy and exposure to sexually transmitted infections, both of which can have long-term deleterious health consequences, the identification of predictors of adolescent risky sexual behavior remains an important line of inquiry. Although prior research has identified a variety of family and individual factors that are associated with risky sexual behavior, few studies have examined the role of family economic stress. The current study utilized three waves of data from a community sample of African American families with adolescents (N = 778, 54% girls, average age = 10.4 years old at Wave 1, 12.3 years old at Wave 2, 15.6 years old at Wave 3) to test the family stress model as an explanation of adolescent risky sexual behavior. Multi-group analyses examined gender differences in the family processes expected to link economic stress and risky sexual behavior. Unlike most studies utilizing this theoretical perspective, family structure was also taken into account. The results supported the propositions of the family stress model for boys and girls for both two-caregiver and single-mother households. Further, in single-mother households, maternal psychological distress continued to have a positive effect on adolescent risky sex even after taking into account the impact of parenting behaviors. Overall, the results suggest that economic stress ripples through the family system, increasing adolescent risky sexual behavior through its negative impact on family processes, highlighting the need for systemic policy changes rather than individual-level intervention/prevention efforts.

The Negative Impact of Economic Hardship on Adolescent Academic Engagement: An Examination Parental Investment and Family Stress Processes.

Academic success is a strong predictor of adolescent adjustment and subsequent adult social, psychological, and economic well-being. Importantly, research has established a negative relationship between family economic hardship and children's educational outcomes. Despite being disproportionately represented among the most financially disadvantaged, African Americans remain an understudied group. The current study utilizes a longitudinal study design and prospective data from the Family and Community Health Study (n = 422, 52% girls, average age = 10.5 years at Wave 1), an African American sample, to investigate the impact of economic hardship on adolescent academic engagement by testing explanations offered by two commonly employed perspectives: the parental investment model and family stress model. While both models yielded significant results when tested separately, only the processes specified by the family stress model remained significant in a combined model, demonstrating that it is the superior explanation. By addressing many of the deficits of past research on the parental investment model and family stress model, the study was able to shed new light on the specific pathways by which economic disadvantage exerts an effect on youth outcomes. In doing so, the results question whether potentially middle-class, Eurocentric models (e.g., the parental investment model) are applicable when studying economically distressed African American youth.

Childhood Adversities as Determinants of Cardiovascular Disease Risk and Perceived Illness Burden in Adulthood: Comparing Retrospective and Prospective Self-Report Measures in a Longitudinal Sample of African Americans.

A large body of evidence suggests that exposure to childhood adversities increases risk for poor quality physical health in adulthood. Much of this evidence is based on retrospective measures which are believed to be contaminated by the limitations and biases of autobiographical memory. Using longitudinal data on 454 African Americans (61 percent female) this study examines the corroboration between prospective and retrospective measures of childhood adversities gathered approximately two decades apart, and the relative ability of the measures to predict self-reported illnesses and a biomarker of 30-year cardiovascular disease risk. Comparisons indicated that the retrospective and prospective measures demonstrated weak convergence and did not provide completely equivalent information about self-reported adverse childhood experiences. A series of regression models indicated that the two measures of adversities exhibited similar associations with the cardiovascular disease biomarker but divergent associations with self-reported illnesses. Furthermore, both the prospective and retrospective measures simultaneously predicted cardiovascular disease risk in adulthood. That the prospective measure did not significantly predict perceived illnesses after adjusting for the retrospective measure is evidence that childhood adversities predict self-reported health burden insofar as respondents remember those adversities as adults. The findings provide evidence that retrospective self-report measures of childhood adversities do not closely converge with prospective measures, and that retrospective measures may not provide valid estimates of the association between childhood adversities and perceived illnesses in adulthood.

Testing Life Course Models Whereby Juvenile and Adult Adversity Combine to Influence Speed of Biological Aging.

The present study extends prior research on the links between social adversity and aging by employing more comprehensive measures of adversity and a new gene expression index of aging. Hierarchical regression and 20 years of data from a sample of 381 black Americans were used to test models regarding the impact of social adversity on speed of aging. Consistent with the early life sensitivity model, early adversity continued to predict accelerated aging after controlling for adult adversity. Contrary to the pathway model, adult adversity was not related to aging following controls for early adversity. The cumulative stress model received partial support as high adversity during adulthood amplified the effect of early adversity on aging. Finally, consonant with the social change model, low adversity during adulthood buffered the effect of early adversity on aging. These findings held after controlling for health behaviors such as smoking, diet, and exercise.

Gender equality and violent behavior: how neighborhood gender equality influences the gender gap in violence.

Using a sample of 703 African American adolescents from the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) along with census data from the year 2000, we examine the association between neighborhood-level gender equality and violence. We find that boys' and girls' violent behavior is unevenly distributed across neighborhood contexts. In particular, gender differences in violent behavior are less pronounced in gender-equalitarian neighborhoods compared to those characterized by gender inequality. We also find that the gender gap narrows in gender-equalitarian neighborhoods because boys' rates of violence decrease whereas girls' rates remain relatively low across neighborhoods. This is in stark contrast to the pessimistic predictions of theorists who argue that the narrowing of the gender gap in equalitarian settings is the result of an increase in girls' violence. In addition, the relationship between neighborhood gender equality and violence is mediated by a specific articulation of masculinity characterized by toughness. Our results provide evidence for the use of gender-specific neighborhood prevention programs.

Chronic family economic hardship, family processes and progression of mental and physical health symptoms in adolescence.

Research has documented the relationship between family stressors such as family economic hardship and marital conflict and adolescents' mental health symptoms, especially depressive symptoms. Few studies, however, have examined the processes whereby supportive parenting lessens this effect and the progression of mental health and physical health symptoms in adolescence. The present study investigates the influences of chronic family economic hardship on adolescents' multiple health problem symptoms (i.e., symptoms of anxiety, and depression and physical complaints) through parents' marital conflict, and supportive parenting; it also examines how there adolescents' health problems mutually influence one another throughout adolescence. We used Structural Equation Modeling to analyze data from a longitudinal sample of European American mothers, fathers, and target adolescents (N = 451, 53% female) to examine direct and indirect effects. Findings generally supported the hypothesized model. Chronic family economic hardship contributed to mental and physical health problems of adolescents. This influence largely was mediated through supportive parenting. Moreover, supportive parenting buffered marital conflict on depressive symptoms of adolescents. Also, there was a tendency for females to show more stable depressive symptoms than males. The study demonstrates key mediating pathways and additional moderating influences based on the family stress model and also highlights the importance of improving health resources for adolescents.

Consequences of corporal punishment among African Americans: the importance of context and outcome.

Corporal punishment is a controversial practice used by the majority of American parents and is especially prevalent among African Americans. Research regarding its consequences has produced mixed results although it is clear that there is a need for considering the context within which corporal punishment is administered. To assess the impact of spanking, we employed an expanded parenting typology that includes corporal punishment. Longitudinal self-report data from a sample of 683 African American youth (54% female) were utilized to evaluate the relative impact of the resulting eight parenting styles on three outcomes: conduct problems, depressive symptoms, and school engagement. Results from Negative Binomial Regression Models indicate that the effect of corporal punishment depends upon the constellation of parenting behaviors within which it is embedded and upon the type of outcome being considered. While it is never the case that there is any added benefit of adding corporal punishment, it is also the case that using corporal punishment is not always associated with poor outcomes. Overall, however, our findings show that parenting styles that include corporal punishment do not produce outcomes as positive as those associated with authoritative parenting.

The influence of ethnicity and adverse life experiences during adolescence on young adult socioeconomic attainment: the moderating role of education.

Previous research has documented that adverse life experiences during adolescence, particularly for ethnic minorities, have a long-term influence on income and asset attainment and that this relationship is largely mediated by educational achievement. We extend prior research by investigating three research questions. First, we investigate the extent to which community disadvantage, family factors and race/ethnicity each exert an independent influence on young adult socioeconomic attainment. Second, we examine whether youths' educational attainment mediates these independent influences on socioeconomic attainment. Third, we test whether educational attainment ameliorates the negative influences of disadvantaged community and family conditions and race/ethnicity on socioeconomic attainment. We address these questions using multilevel modeling with longitudinal, prospective data from Waves 1 and 4 of National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which has a nationally representative sample of adolescents (N = 13, 450; 53 % females). Regarding our first research question, our results indicated that African Americans, youth from disadvantaged communities, lower SES families achieve significantly lower levels of earnings, assets, and job quality during young adulthood. Second, we found that young adults' educational level only partially mediate the influences of family and race/ethnicity influences on young adults' socioeconomic attainment. Third, we found that young adults' educational level buffered the influence of early socioeconomic adversities and accentuated the positive influences of family resources. Findings highlight the importance of social context as well as educational opportunities during childhood and adolescence for economic stability in early adulthood.

The effect of corporal punishment and verbal abuse on delinquency: mediating mechanisms.

While the link between parenting and delinquency is well established, there is less consensus among scholars with regards to the processes that account for this link. The current study had two objectives. The first was to disentangle the effects of African American parents' use of corporal punishment and verbal abuse on the conduct problems of their preteen children. The second was to investigate the mechanisms that explain this relationship, such as having low self-control or a hostile view of relationships, whereby these harsh parenting practices increase a youth's involvement in problem behavior. Further, we are interested in specifically addressing how these mechanisms may operate differently for males versus females. Analyses utilized structural equation modeling and longitudinal data spanning approximately 2.5 years from a sample of 704 (54.2 % female) African American children ages 10-12. The results indicated that verbal abuse was a more important predictor of conduct problems than corporal punishment. Additionally, we found that the mechanisms that mediated the impact of verbal abuse and corporal punishment on conduct problems varied by gender. For males, most of the effect of verbal abuse was mediated by low self-control, whereas anger/frustration was the primary mediator for females. Implications of these results and directions for future study are also discussed.

Supportive parenting moderates the effect of discrimination upon anger, hostile view of relationships, and violence among African American boys.

Studies have shown that exposure to discrimination increases the probability that African American adolescents will engage in delinquent behavior, especially acts of violence. The present study extended this research by examining the extent to which supportive parenting buffers a youth from these deleterious consequences of discrimination. Analyses based upon two waves of data from a sample of 332 African American adolescent males and their caretakers supported this hypothesis. Further the results indicated that there are two avenues whereby supportive parenting reduces the probability that discrimination will lead to violence. First, supportive parenting decreases the chances that discrimination will lead to anger and a hostile view of relationships. Second, supportive parenting lowers the risk that anger or a hostile view of relationships, when they develop, will result in violence.