Journal of Adolescent Research

The development of theories of and attitudes surrounding adolescent alcohol abuse was explored by asking students from sixth grade to college to react to a hypothetical case of problem drinking. With age, students perceived the problem as less serious; less often attributed it to moral weakness, but displayed little change in their endorsement of causal views emphasizing biological disease, bad environment, or normal motives; more often emphasized the individual's own responsibility for solving the problem and the value of self-initiated and nonpunitive treatment; and expressed more acceptance of the problem drinker. In addition, males were more likely than females to normalize and tolerate problem drinking. Deviance from adult-sanctioned, conventional values, although a contributor to tolerant views ofproblem drinking in its own right, could accountfor only some age and gender differences in perceptions. Implications for substance abuse education are discussed.

Adolescents with various musical preferences were compared. Adolescents who preferred hard rock or heavy metal music reported higher rates of reckless behavior, including driving while intoxicated, driving over 80 miles per hour, sex without contraception, sex with someone known only casually, drug use, shoplifting, and vandalism. Preferences for hard rock or heavy metal music were also associated with higher levels of sensation seeking, negative family relationships, and, among girls, low self-esteem. In regression analyses, sensation seeking was related to reckless behavior, whereas the relation between reckless behavior and musical preferences was no longer significant, except for sex without contraception. It was concluded that adolescents who are high in sensation seeking are attracted to hard rock and heavy metal music as well as to reckless behavior perhaps because of the high intensity of sensadon provided by these ewperiences.

A secondary analysis from a cross-sectional survey on the sexual behavior of Mexican-American andA nglo adolescent women was conducted using the methodology of survival analysis. The study examined whether socioeconomic factors or subcultural factors account for observed ethnic differences in the incidence of first premarital intercourse. Under the between-group analysis, a series of regression analyses was conducted in which the independent variables were entered one at a time to determine whether the gross impact of ethnicity on the incidence of first premarital intercourse was reduced. Under the intragroup analysis, the impact of acculturation -independent of socioeconomic factors -on the incidence of first intercourse experience among Mexican Americans was assessed. The results supported the model of subcultural values: Ethnic differences in socioeconomic circumstances alone do not accountfor the observed ethnic differences in the incidence offirst premarital intercourse; however, cultural differences relating to premarital sexual activity do partially account for this gap.

This study examined the association between the parent-child relationship (as perceived by late adolescent-early adult children) and the adolescent's codependency. College students 17through 22 years of age (N = 175) reported the parenting style of their mother and father (via ratings of perceived parental support and coercive control) and completed a scale assessing their own level of codependency. Parenting style (uninvolved, permissive, authoritarian, and democratic) was related to offspring codependency in that daughters of authoritarian fathers had higher codependency scores than did daughters of permissive fathers, whereas sons of authoritarian fathers reported higher levels of codependency than did sons of uninvolved fathers. It appeared that the exercise of control on the partoffathers untempered byperceptions ofpaternal warmth or support was related to higher codependency scores in offspring. Parenting style of mothers was unrelated to codependency scores in offspring. Future research should investigate other indirect as well as direct associations of parenting with offspring codependency.

In this study, 160 high school and college students were asked to describe their beliefs about the life course, in general, and the adulthood transition, inparticular. The majority (93%) described the life course in terms of an age period approach, with infancy, childhood, adulthood, and old age commonly described as stages. Life span status differences emerged in the ages at which adolescents believed adulthood transition events would occur overall and for the average woman versus the average man: College students described older ages of occurrence for leaving home, beginning full-time employment, marriage, andparenthood than did high school students. For both groups, however, marriage and parenthood were thought to occur at significantly younger ages for the average woman than for the average man. Findings are discussed in terms of the implicit life course theories that adolescents bring to the adulthood transition.

The transition from adolescence to adulthood involves a relational renegotiation that, at least in part, is reflected in communication. This study describes the communication difficulties that older adolescents felt they had experienced with their parents and explored whether those communication problems or the perceived qualities of the problems are more strongly associated with relational satisfaction. Results indicated that the most frequent type of current communication problem involved personal criticism. Past problems were more likely to focus on parent-adolescent tensions related to behavioral restriction. There were few significant differences between very satisfied and dissatisfied adolescents in terms of the types of difficulties reported. However, older adolescents' attributions for their past and present communication problems significantly predicted their current satisfaction. Particularly notable is the finding that the specific type of problem experienced by adolescents may contribute substantially less to their satisfaction with parents than the ways they interpret the problems.