Moving Through Adolescence Developmental Trajectories of African American and European American Youth

In this monograph, we investigate the developmental trajectories of a predominantly middle-class, community-based sample of European American and African American adolescents growing up in urban, suburban, and rural areas in Maryland, United States. Within risk-protection and positive youth development frameworks, we selected developmental measures based on the normative tasks of adolescence and the most widely studied indicators in the three major contexts of development: families, peer groups, and schools. Using hierarchical linear growth models, we estimated adolescents’ growth trajectories from ages 12 to 20 with variation accounted for by SES, gender, race/ethnicity, and the gender by race/ethnicity interaction. In general, the results indicate that: (a) periods of greatest risk and positive development depended on the time frame and outcome being examined and (b) on average, these adolescents demonstrated much stronger evidence of positive than problematic development, even at their most vulnerable times. Absolute levels of their engagement in healthy behaviors, supportive relationships with parents and friends, and positive self-perceptions and psychological well-being were much higher than their reported angry and depressive feelings, engagement in risky behaviors, and negative relationships with parents and peers. We did not find evidence to support the idea that adolescence is a time of heightened risk. Rather, on average, these adolescents experienced relatively stable and developmentally healthy trajectories for a wide range of characteristics, behaviors, and relationships, with slight increases or decreases at different points in development that varied according to domain. Developmental trajectories differed minimally by SES but in some expected ways by gender and race/ethnicity, although these latter differences were not very marked. Overall, most of the young people navigated through their adolescence and arrived at young adulthood with good mental and physical health, positive relationships with their parents and peers, and high aspirations and expectations for what their future lives might hold.

Leslie M. Gutman is Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Masters Program in Behavior Change at University College London. She is also a Senior Associate of the Early Intervention Foundation and Associate Editor of the Journal of Adolescence. Her research focuses on mental health and well-being, aspirations and achievement, and risk and resilience in children and adolescents. 

Stephen C. Peck is a Senior Research Fellow at the David P. Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality. During work on this monograph, he was an Assistant Research Scientist in the Achievement Research Lab at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on lifespan development in context, or the study of self/identity/personality as a multilevel information processing system designed to regulate human experience and behavior in relation to contextual opportunities and constraints. 

Oksana Malanchuk received her PhD in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan. She served as the Project Manager of the MADICS study from 1994 to 2016, contributing to the questionnaire design, data collection and analysis of Waves 3 through Wave 8. Her research has focused on social identities, including racial/ethnic identity, their development and their outcomes. 

Arnold J. Sameroff is Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Research Professor Emeritus at the Center for Human Growth and Development at the University of Michigan. His research focus has been on pathways to competence and mental health from infancy to adulthood. 

Jacquelynne Eccles, Distinguished University Professor of Education at University of California, Irvine and Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Education Emeritus at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, got her PhD at UCLA in 1974. She is past president of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and both Division 7 (Development Psychology) and 35 (Psychology of Women) of the American Psychological Association. She studies social development in the context of schools, families, and peer groups. 

Judith Smetana is Professor of Psychology, Director of the Developmental Psychology PhD program, and past Frederica Warner Chair at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on adolescent–parent relationships and parenting in different ethnic and cultural contexts and on the development of children’s moral and social reasoning. In addition to numerous articles and chapters, she is the author of Adolescents, families, and social development: How teens construct their worlds (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011).

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