Thirty‐Year Trends in U.S. Adolescents' Civic Engagement: A Story of Changing Participation and Educational Differences

Using annual cross‐sectional data from Monitoring the Future, the present study examined trends in high school seniors' current and anticipated civic participation and beliefs over a 30‐year period. We examined overall trends and patterns based on youths' post‐high school educational plans. Findings point to declines in recent cohorts' involvement in conventional and alternative forms of engagement but greater involvement in community service. Regardless of period, the majority of youth said they intended to vote when eligible, but few expressed trust in the government or elected officials. All civic indicators showed significant differences based on youths' college aspirations: Youth who planned to graduate from a 4‐year college were more civically inclined than their peers with 2‐year or no college plans.     

The Decline of Orthodoxy among the Amish

Abstract

For the past decade, the study of social capital and civic involvement has been of primary importance to sociologists and other social scientists. Concern over perceived declines in civic participation has troubled many, since such participation has been linked to a variety of positive outcomes both for the individual and the broader social groups in which the person takes part. To date, most research on the factors influencing participation has focused on structural or community-level measures, such as state structure, increased suburbanization and changes in community institutional structures. We contribute to this literature by highlighting the important role of the family as a context for the transmission of civic skills, involvement, and knowledge between parent and child. This study draws upon theoretical and conceptual insights from the literature on social capital and civic involvement, as well as from earlier work on inter-generational status attainment and political socialization. We build an explanatory framework that traces the inter-generational transmission of civic involvement, skills, and action. We test this framework using data from the 1996 National Household Education Survey. Results indicate that both adult political and school involvement have a positive impact upon the level of child political interest, and that adult community and school involvement have a positive impact upon the level of child civic activities.     

Civic and Political Participation of Children and Adolescents: A Lifestyle Analysis for Positive Youth Developmental Programs

Social participation plays a key role in predicting positive youth development (PYD). As a previous step of this link, this research examined how children and adolescents' relational lifestyles influenced their participation in political and civic activities. This research provides a multi‐dimensional approach to the study of children's social participation, based on six children's lifestyles factors (i.e. family dialogue, risky behaviours, cultural activities, civic values, family supervision and peer group relationships). Using data from an international survey that included 6130 participants (2198 Spanish, 3932 Italian, Mage = 13.8), this study's results show that relational lifestyles (especially family dialogue and out‐of‐school cultural activities) are positively related to political and civic participation among children and adolescents. On the contrary, some peer group relationships decreased their social participation in those key dimensions for PYD. Limitations of the current study, implications for future policy decisions and applications to children social programs are discussed.     

Civic Engagement and Latina Immigrant Mothers' Remote Learning Involvement During COVID-191

Immigrant incorporation scholars have established that racialized immigrant parents encounter several barriers in their children's schooling: namely, language and cultural differences, discrimination, unfamiliarity with the U.S. schooling system, and unhelpful school agents. However, less is known about the mechanisms that lessen these challenges. Drawing on insights from immigrant incorporation and civic engagement literature, this study examines how advocacy organizations can mediate the barriers racialized immigrant parents face in their children's schooling. A case study of 20 Latina immigrant mothers is used to demonstrate how civically engaged parents drew on their participation with a local advocacy organization—Parent's Choice—to overcome the barriers that emerged during the transition to remote learning due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. Findings suggest that immigrant mothers leveraged their connection to Parent's Choice to learn how to use technology, get district-related updates, secure devices necessary for at-home learning, create complaints or demands for services at their children's school, fill out paperwork, and access community-based referrals. Parent's Choice provided support and empowered Latina immigrant parents by minimizing the overwhelming barriers they faced during online learning. These findings complicate our understanding of immigrant civic engagement patterns and provide implications of how civic engagement can facilitate the incorporation of marginalized parents in educational institutions.     

Adolescents' Civic Engagement: Concordant and Longitudinal Associations Among Civic Beliefs and Civic Involvement

Associations between adolescent civic and organized activities (volunteering, standard political, social movement, school/community, religious) and civic beliefs (comprised of should, obligation, and respect judgments) were examined. Cross‐sectional models (N = 703, M_age = 15.87) indicated domain specificity between adolescent civic beliefs and behaviors. Longitudinal models (n = 219, M_age = 15.39) indicated that adolescents' standard political beliefs predicted greater levels of standard political involvement one year later, and school/community activities predicted greater standard political beliefs a year later. Youth volunteering predicted lower standard political beliefs, and standard political involvement predicted lower community service beliefs one year later. Findings support the assessment of adolescent sociomoral civic beliefs and demonstrate how civic experiences and civic beliefs can mutually promote each other during adolescence.     

Youth Civic Engagement in the Twenty‐First Century

We enter the 21st century contending with the end of the Cold War's legacy of political uncertainty, expecting youth to play a significant part in the search for new principles that will bring about stability in the world political order. In forging the future, youth will have to collaborate with adults, but on terms more fitting of the historical circumstances that lie ahead than those of the past. This was the framework adopted by a group of social scientists who held several discussions to reflect on the issues and opportunities that bear on youth's civic engagement and development in the century that has just opened. The present article describes the results of those conversations, starting with the issue of defining civic competence, and the finding that an expansive definition is needed to match the real‐world circumstances that affect its development for youth internationally. Specific conditions, such as globalization, information – communication technology, and immigration, are emphasized as forces that affect youth and need to be taken into account by educators and policy makers. In this regard, responsibilities of schools, government, the commercial sector, and community organizations are outlined. Each is viewed as a potential constructive force for promoting engagement insofar as youth's strengths are recognized and focus is placed on building on youth's proven capacities. As always, it is youth’s task to make history in the future and society's obligation to provide youth with sufficient resources and an honest basis for hope in carrying out this task. The authors' policy recommendations are founded on this reciprocal relation that binds the youth generation with its elders in the common task of preserving, while transforming, society for the good of humanity.     

Civic Returns to Higher Education: A Note on Heterogeneous Effects

American educational leaders and philosophers have long valued schooling for its role in preparing the nation's youth to be civically engaged citizens. Numerous studies have found a positive relationship between education and subsequent civic participation. However, little is known about possible variation in effects by selection into higher education, a critical omission considering education's expressed role as a key mechanism for integrating disadvantaged individuals into civic life. I disaggregate effects and examine whether civic returns to higher education are largest for disadvantaged low likelihood or advantaged high likelihood college goers. I find evidence for significant effect heterogeneity: civic returns to college are greatest among individuals who have a low likelihood for college completion. Returns decrease as the propensity for college increases.     

Parents’ awareness of lesbian,gay, and bisexual youths’ sexual orientation

This study used a sample of 293 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth to examine factors that differentiated youth whose parents knew of their sexual orientation from youth whose parents did not know. Earlier awareness and disclosure of same‐gender attractions, greater childhood gender atypicality, and less internalized homophobia were characteristic of youth whose parents were aware of youths’ sexual orientation. Youth with aware parents reported more past verbal victimization on the basis of sexual orientation from parents, yet more current family support and less fear of future parental victimization on the basis of their sexual orientation.     

Tagging Walls and Planting Seeds: Creating Spaces for Youth Civic Action

Youth civic spaces are environments in which youth participation in civic action is fostered—the pathways, structures, and vehicles that provide opportunities for young people to engage in critical discussion, dialogue, and action. The concept of youth civic space includes the formal and informal places in which youth civic engagement can occur and how the lived experience of those places contributes to young people's development as civic actors. It extends discussions regarding the physical locations of youth civic engagement to include the activities, perceptions, and interactions within them. Drawing on archival materials from 2 multiyear projects, this article explores the role of community-based organizations in mediating youth civic action and understanding the characteristics and qualities of the organizations that facilitate youth engagement in community action and social change. We use this analysis of empirical examples to develop a conceptual framework for strengthening practice.     

Comparing Gender Expression,Gender Nonconformity,and Parents' Responses of Female-to-Male and Male-to-Female Transgender Youth

Abstract

Twenty-four female-to-male (FTM) and 31 male-to-female (MTF) transgender youth reported on their gender development and expression, and parental responses to their gender nonconformity. Both groups of youth felt different from others of their same birth sex at a mean age of seven and one-half years. The age when parents suggested they were different was younger for the MTF than the FTM youth. The MTF youth were called “sissy” at an earlier age than the FTM were called “tomboy.” Parents of FTM youth encouraged them to act in more traditional gender typical ways at a younger age than the MTF. The MTF youth considered themselves transgender two years earlier than the FTM youth. More parents of MTF youth felt that their children needed counseling than the parents of the FTM youth. While the majority of both groups reported past verbal victimization, comparatively more MTF youth reported being physically victimized. Implications of the developmental trajectories and experiences of transgender youth for school and family counselors are discussed.     

The effects of parental involvement on academic performance of Ghanaian youth: Testing measurement and relationships using structural equation modeling

Research in developed countries suggests that parental involvement is associated with youth academic success. However, little is known about the overall impact of parental involvement on youth academic performance in developing countries. Further, it is unclear what type of parental involvement impacts the academic performance of youth from developing countries. This study examines whether parental involvement at home and school are meaningfully different constructs in a population of Ghanaian youth and their parents, and whether parental involvement predicts academic performance. Results suggest a multidimensional construct consists of home and school involvement. The effect of parental involvement on youth academic performance appears to be a function of the type of parental involvement. Home-based parental involvement is positively associated with academic performance, while school-based parental involvement is negatively associated with academic performance. Parental involvement in youth's education has important implications for academic performance. Parental involvement in education has the potential to model positive attitudes toward school as well as adaptive academic practices, thus sending the message to youth that school is important.     

Youthscaping Our Classrooms: Nurturing Youth Civic Agency Through Youth-Centered Pedagogies

Youth are an ever-present component of conversations about culture, interconnectedness, and its effects, especially characterized as readily consuming all that globalization has to offer them. However, opportunities to acknowledge and legitimize the civic experiences youth have and the contributions they make to society have been overlooked in our curricula. We recognize that to support a curricular reorientation to harness these experiences, social studies teachers and teacher educators need a framework for teaching that is, at heart, youth-centered in ways that go beyond merely drawing on youths' prior knowledge and experiences to leaven a prescribed curriculum. We borrow the cultural studies work on youthscapes to provide a framework for how teachers can re-imagine the lives of youth and integrate the ways in which youth are already engaged in civic action as an elemental part of the curriculum.     

Explaining offline and online civic engagement intentions between Italian and migrant youth / Análisis de las intenciones de participación cívica virtual y presencial entre jóvenes italianos y emigrantes

The aim of the study was to assess the role of some psychosocial factors in explaining offline and online civic engagement intentions in a sample of Italian and second generation migrant (Albanian and Moroccan) adolescents and young adults living in Italy. The theoretical model was an extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour including past experience. The sample included 598 adolescents and young adults (M = 19.32, SD = 3.17). Two hundred were Italian (88 males, 44.0%), 197 migrants of Albanian origin (130 males, 66%) and 201 migrants of Moroccan origin (116 males, 57.7%). Moroccan youth reported higher levels of both past civic engagement and future intentions than Albanian and Italian peers. Perceived effectiveness of civic engagement and past experience are consistently associated with stronger intentions to engage in the future (offline and online) in all groups. Internal efficacy plays a limited role, whereas the role of subjective norms differs according to the group and the source of normative influence (parents, peers).     

Longitudinal Links Between Discrimination and Civic Development Among Latino and Asian Adolescents

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is formative for civic development. Unfortunately, many adolescents from Latino and Asian backgrounds experience discrimination, which can alienate them from civic life. This study employed cross‐lagged structural equation modeling to test the bidirectional links between perceived discrimination and civic beliefs and activism among Latino and Asian late adolescents (N = 400, M_age = 17.34, 61% female). Civic beliefs (i.e., believing that the government is unresponsive) and civic activism (i.e., protesting and expressing political opinions) in high school predicted increased perceptions of discrimination over time. Perceiving high levels of discrimination in high school predicted a decrease in the belief that society is fair over time.     

Religion,Convention, and Paternal Involvement

Family scholarship has generally overlooked the influence that religion may have on paternal involvement. Accordingly, using longitudinal data taken from the National Survey of Families and Households, I examined the influence of religious affiliation and attendance on the involvement of residential fathers in one‐on‐one activities, dinner with their families, and youth activities and found religious effects for each of these three measures. Virtually no evidence was found for a competing hypothesis that these effects are artifacts of a conventional habitus such that the type of men who are more conventional in their patterns of civic engagement are both more religious and more involved with their children. However, civic engagement is positively related to paternal involvement.     

“Power in Numbers”: Youth Organizing as a Context for Exploring Civic Identity

This study examines civic identity exploration among African‐American and Asian‐American urban youth who participated in a grassroots organizing campaign to improve their local high schools. Drawing on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants, the study found that the campaign provided a venue for participants to wrestle with contrasting perspectives about the relationship between the individual and the broader public. The first perspective, which I call atomism, described local social relations as individualistic and self‐interested. The second perspective, which I call collective agency, emphasized that people should work together toward common goals and that the more people who were involved, the more powerful the effort would be. Implications of youth organizing for civic identity formation are discussed.     

The Influence of Parent Expectations and Parent-Child Relationships on Mental Health in Asian American and White American Families

Previous studies have suggested that Asian parents’ high academic expectations can lead to negative mental health outcomes among Asian American youth. We explore this hypothesis by analyzing data collected in an affluent, suburban high school with a large Asian American population. We examine the relationships between parent expectations, students’ relationships with their parents, and mental health outcomes among Asian American (predominantly Indian American and Chinese American) and white youth. We find that the quality of parent-child relationships is associated with mental health outcomes and that the association between parent expectations and mental health outcomes is insignificant after controlling for these relationships. We discuss significant differences by race and gender. The findings presented expand our understanding of the influence of Asian parents. They suggest that focusing on improving parent-child relationships, as opposed to altering parents’ expectations, might lead to improved mental health outcomes for Asian American youth, particularly for those in affluent communities.     

Brief Emotion Focused Family Therapy: An Intervention for Parents of Children and Adolescents with Mental Health Issues

This study evaluated the 2‐day intensive modality of Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT). The intervention attempts to prepare parents to take a primary role in their child's recovery from a range of mental health issues. One hundred and twenty‐four parents completed the intervention and provided data a week prior to intervention, post‐intervention and at 4‐month follow‐up. Results include significantly reduced parent blocks and increased parental self‐efficacy in relation to involvement in their child's recovery, as well as significant improvement in child symptomatology. The findings confirm positive results from an earlier pilot study involving eating disorders and demonstrate the potential for EFFT as an intervention for a range of clinical problems in children and youth.     

Household Structure and Children's Educational Attainment: A Perspective on Coresidence with Grandparents

Children from alternative households complete fewer years of schooling. Yet little is known about the implications of coresidence with grandparents for educational attainment. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 10,083), this study found that extended households with two biological parents were not detrimental to high school completion or college enrollment. Although coresidence with grandparents did not compensate for not living with two biological parents, it seemed to be beneficial for the educational attainment of youth from single‐mother households. In contrast, skipped‐generation households were associated with a persistent disadvantage for educational attainment. Limited socioeconomic resources partially accounted for the adverse effects of alternative households, whereas parenting quality did not explain these effects. Interactions of gender by household structure suggested that stepfather households could have negative consequences for high school completion and college enrollment only for girls.     

Impact of Postdivorce Sibling Structure on Adolescent Adjustment to Divorce

A sample (N = 222) of middle school, high school, and college students were surveyed with regard to their adjustment to their parents’ divorces in specific domains, including coparenting, financial strain, and overall adjustment. With time since the divorce covaried, youth living with half-siblings, stepsiblings, or both (HSS) rated their experiences consistently more positively than youth living with full biological siblings only (FBS). HSS youth reported stronger perceptions that life has gotten better, parents are working together to raise them, and there are no lingering financial effects. There were no main effects for age, but an interaction of sibling structure and gender found male adolescents in the FBS group sometimes had more negative ratings than any of the other groups. Our findings contrast with prior studies suggesting that HSS youth do not adjust as well as FBS youth.