Race/Ethnic Differences in Effects of Family Instability on Adolescents' Risk Behavior

The study suggests that adolescents who experience family instability and are exposed to repeated changes in a parent’s marital status are more likely to engage in delinquency, become sexually active early or become parents outside of marriage than their peers who lived in a consistent family arrangement.

The findings, published in the April 2010 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, show that white and Mexican American adolescents who experience family instability are more likely to become sexually active earlier and experience a nonmarital birth, compared to their African American peers. Adolescents who engage in these risk behaviors are also more likely to leave school early and have less professional success. Researchers restricted analysis to Mexican American adolescents out of the available Latino subgroups because Mexican American families are compositionally similar to Black families in their poverty rates, according to the study.

Researchers tracked approximately 8,000 U.S. adolescents over the course of seven years, beginning in the mid-90s. The adolescents answered questions about their school activities, relationships and illegal behavior. The adolescents’ parents supplemented questions with information about their own romantic relationships.

Read the study.