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The majority of research on African American adolescents raised in single-mother homes has focused on externalizing problems, with less attention to other facets of socio-emotional functioning. Using a compensatory resilience approach, the current study examined risk and protective factors at the family (maternal warmth, monitoring, psychological control) and youth (ethnic identity and religiosity) levels as predictors of depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and self-esteem among African American adolescents from single-mother homes ( n  = 193). Lower levels of psychological control, higher levels of monitoring, and higher levels of youth ethnic identity were associated with at least one of the outcomes, depressive symptoms, hopelessness, and self-esteem. In addition, self-esteem, but not hopelessness, mediated the associations between the family- and youth-level factors and youth depressive symptoms. The importance of targeting maternal psychological control and youth ethnic identity, as well as self-esteem, in intervention programs for African American youth from single-mother families is discussed.

Research indicates that individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and class origins differ in their unemployment rates. We know less, however, about whether these differences result from the differing groups’ unequal hazards of entering or exiting unemployment and even less about how economic fluctuations moderate the ethnoracial and class-origin gaps in the long-term risks of transitioning into and out of unemployment. Using Rounds 1–17 of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and event history models, we show that non-Hispanic blacks become more similar to non-Hispanic whites in their paces of entering unemployment as their local unemployment rate rises, perhaps because jobs largely closed to the former are eliminated in a greater proportion during recessions. Nonetheless, blacks’ relatively slow pace of transitioning from unemployment to having a job decelerates further with economic downturns. By contrast, Hispanics’ paces of entering and exiting unemployment relative to non-Hispanic whites hardly change with local unemployment rates, despite unemployed Hispanics’ slower rate of transitioning to having a job. With respect to class origin, we find that the advantages in both unemployment entry and recovery of young men with relatively educated parents diminish with economic deterioration. Based on these results, we suggest that facing economic pressure, employers’ preference for workers of a higher class origin is more malleable than their preference for whites over blacks, making unemployed blacks especially disadvantaged in uncertain economic times. DOI :  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2019.100422

Objective Exposure to early adversity carries long term harmful consequences for children's health and development. This study aims to 1) estimate the prevalence of childhood adversity for Australian children from infancy to 10-11 years, and 2) document inequalities in the distribution of adversity according to socioeconomic position (SEP), Indigenous status, and ethnicity. Methods Adversity was assessed every two years from 0-1 to 10-11 years in the nationally representative birth cohort of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (N=5,107). Adversity included legal problems; family violence; household mental illness; household substance abuse; harsh parenting; parental separation/divorce; unsafe neighborhood; family member death; and bullying (from 4-5 years). Adversities were examined individually and summed for a measure of multiple adversity (2+ adverse experiences). Results By 10-11 years, 52.8% (95% CI 51.0-54.7) of children had been exposed to two or more adversities. When combined with low SEP, children from ethnic minority and from Indigenous backgrounds had four to eight times the odds of exposure to two or more adversities than children from higher SEP Anglo-Euro backgrounds, respectively (OR 4.3, 95% CI 2.8-6.6 and OR 8.1, 95% CI 4.4-14.8). Ethnic minority and Indigenous children from higher SEP backgrounds had increased odds of exposure to multiple adversity than similarly advantaged Anglo-Euro children (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.4-2.3 and OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.3-4.3, respectively). Conclusions Addressing early adversity is a significant opportunity to promote health over the life course, and reduce health inequalities experienced by marginalized groups of children.