Parenthood Residency Status and Criminal Desistance across Neighborhood Contexts.

Research on desistance and parenthood has yielded mixed results bringing into question whether, and for whom, parenthood matters. Scholarship has not fully explored the importance of residency status or patterns of desistance across a full range of neighborhood contexts, nor examined distinctions between temporary and long-term desistance. Our study uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to examine the association between parenthood residence and criminal desistance across levels of adolescent neighborhood poverty. Our findings demonstrate that parenthood has different meanings for desistance, depending on its duration, residency status, and neighborhood context.

Social Class, Family Formation, and Delinquency in Early Adulthood.

Recent research suggests increasing heterogeneity in the transition from adolescence to early adulthood. This study considers how this heterogeneity may influence delinquency between these two developmental periods. We focus on the role of family transitions, educational attainment, and employment in predicting risk of nonviolent delinquency and substance use, as well as disparities in transitions across socioeconomic status subgroups. Data are from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). We find that family and neighborhood advantage are negatively associated with transitions into marriage, cohabitation, and parenthood, yet positively associated with educational attainment. In addition, adolescent family and neighborhood advantage are associated with a continuation of delinquent behavior and substance use during early adulthood. In multivariate analyses, accounting for family transitions in early adulthood largely attenuates the relationship between neighborhood advantage in adolescence and delinquency in early adulthood. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for developmental criminology.

Cumulative effects of maternal age and unintended pregnancy on offspring aggression.

Research on physical aggression often points to teen motherhood as being a primary contributor in the development of aggressive tendencies among young children. As a result of poor parenting practices, limited education, and a lack of emotional, physical, and financial resources, children born to young mothers often exhibit high levels of aggression across the life course. Meanwhile, unintentional pregnancy and young motherhood are likely to share many of the same risk factors and negative consequences for offspring, yet there is a dearth of research examining pregnancy intentionality and offspring aggression. Using the Fragile Families and Wellbeing Study, our study examines how mother's age and pregnancy intention status influence aggression among their 5-year-old children. We find that young motherhood and unintended births, despite being likely to co-occur, each provide distinct mechanisms for the formation of aggressive behavior in childhood.

Racial and Ethnic Differences in Neighborhood Attainments in the Transition to Adulthood.

This paper examines racial and ethnic differences in locational attainments in the transition to adulthood, using longitudinal data about neighborhoods of youth in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. It examines place stratification and life course models of locational attainment during the 1990s, a period during which neighborhood poverty rates were declining for many groups. The analysis reveals durable inequalities in neighborhood poverty from adolescence to young adulthood, particularly for blacks and Hispanic origin subgroups. Family socioeconomic status and emerging educational attainments are associated with decreases in neighborhood poverty, with blacks receiving a stronger return from educational attainments than whites. Despite the benefits of education, racial and ethnic minorities remain more likely to live in considerably more disadvantaged neighborhoods in young adulthood than whites.

SUFREN LOS NIÑOS : EXPLORING THE IMPACT OF UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRATION STATUS ON CHILDREN'S WELL-BEING.

The present study examines the effect of unauthorized immigration status on child well-being at a time of elevated immigration rates, economic decline, and unprecedented local lawmaking related to immigration. Immigrant families today are likely to differ from those of the past in that they are more likely to be from Latin America or the Caribbean and include unprecedented numbers of unauthorized immigrants. In addition, they are settling in destinations that have not historically had immigrant populations. The present study draws on interviews with 40 families from an emerging immigrant destination in north central Indiana to help illuminate the ways in which unauthorized immigration status influences child well-being. Results illustrate that unauthorized status extends beyond the individual to families and that mixed-status family situations create unique challenges for these families. More specifically, these results show the ways in which unauthorized immigrant status may impact family stress and uncertainty, health outcomes, and educational attainment and may result in increased social isolation for children in immigrant families.

Race and the Response of State Legislatures to Unauthorized Immigrants.

Increasingly, state legislatures are enacting laws to regulate immigrant populations. What accounts for these responses to foreign-born residents? To explain legislative activity at the state level, the authors examine a variety of factors, including the size and growth of foreign-born and Hispanic local populations, economic well-being, crime rates, and conservative or liberal political ideology in state government and among the citizenry. The authors find that economic indicators, crime rates, and demographic changes have little explanatory value for legislation aimed at restrictions on immigrant populations. Rather, conservative citizen ideology appears to drive immigrant-related restrictionist state legislation. Meanwhile, proimmigrant laws are associated with larger Hispanic concentrations, growing foreign-born populations, and more liberal citizen and governmental orientations. These findings suggest that ideological framing is the most consistently important factor determining legislative responses to newcomers. These findings are in line with the relatively scarce empirical literature on legislative tendencies associated with vulnerable populations.

Neighborhood Dynamics of Urban Violence: Understanding the Immigration Connection.

Social disorganization is the dominant framework linking neighborhood patterns of immigration to local rates of crime and violence despite inconsistent findings and evidence to the contrary. Using tract-level census data from 1970 to 1990 and Chicago homicide data from 1980 to 1995, this study explores whether and how the changing face of immigration is (un)related to homicide patterns within the contemporary urban environment. The results show that stable and consistent growth in foreign born is not associated with neighborhood trends in violence, whereas growth in recent arrivals occurs almost exclusively within the safest neighborhoods of the city. This research highlights the need to distinguish recent waves of immigrants/migrants from their historic counterparts.