Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Social Change and Adolescent Development: Issues and Challenges
- Part I Models of Social Change Effects
- 2 Surmounting Life's Disadvantage
- 3 Marriage and the Baby Carriage: Historical Change and Intergenerational Continuity in Early Parenthood
- 4 Effects of Social Change on Individual Development: The Role of Social and Personal Factors and the Timing of Events
- Part II Social Change and Adolescent Transitions
- Part III Social Change and Adolescents' Social Contexts
- Part IV Implications of Social Change for Adolescent Health and Well-Being
- Part V Interventions: Promoting Healthy Development in Times of Social Change
- Endnotes
- Index
2 - Surmounting Life's Disadvantage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Social Change and Adolescent Development: Issues and Challenges
- Part I Models of Social Change Effects
- 2 Surmounting Life's Disadvantage
- 3 Marriage and the Baby Carriage: Historical Change and Intergenerational Continuity in Early Parenthood
- 4 Effects of Social Change on Individual Development: The Role of Social and Personal Factors and the Timing of Events
- Part II Social Change and Adolescent Transitions
- Part III Social Change and Adolescents' Social Contexts
- Part IV Implications of Social Change for Adolescent Health and Well-Being
- Part V Interventions: Promoting Healthy Development in Times of Social Change
- Endnotes
- Index
Summary
Children of disadvantage are seldom expected to do well in life. Childhood handicaps are known to cumulate, narrowing the range of options and the prospects for life success. Chronic disruptions of family life can undermine school achievement and occupational prospects; likewise, family instability makes friends more valuable and can enhance the risk of antisocial peers. These cycles of disadvantage are well known (Rutter & Madge, 1976). Less recognized, however, is the number of young people who manage to surmount life's disadvantage.
Thirty years ago Jean Macfarlane (1963) discovered that a good many study members in her Berkeley Guidance sample had risen above Depression hardships during the 1930s. They had fared better than staff predictions. She sought explanations for this turnaround in the psyche and proximal world of the individual, focusing on the maturation value of hardship experiences. “We have learned that no one becomes mature without living through the pains and confusions of maturing experiences” (1971, p. 341). She concluded that developmental gains may be associated with the departure from home and community; these changes often provide an opportunity to “work through early confusions and inhibitions” (p. 341). Pathways out of disadvantage identify human agency as a strategic perspective on adolescents who are growing up during times of social change.
Historical times shape the transition to adulthood and thus help to explain the disparity between a Depression childhood and adult achievement. Nearly three out of four of the Berkeley men were mobilized into the armed forces during World War II and the Korean conflict, and those who grew up in Depression hardship entered the military at the earliest possible time, right out of high school (Elder, 1986).
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- Negotiating Adolescence in Times of Social Change , pp. 17 - 35Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999