Journal of Adolescent Research

Ethnographic research, including individual interviews, focus groups, and participant observation, was conducted to examine how adolescents defined and negotiated the boundaries between normal/acceptable weight and overweight through direct and indirect teasing. In particular, this article focuses on gender differences in weight-based teasing and in the ways boys and girls responded to being teased within the high school context. Findings suggest that girls’ body fat was more closely monitored and criticized than boys’ by both male and female peers. Boys and girls of all sizes and all social groups, including teens who were overweight, were critical of people who displayed body fat. This article argues that by engaging in “othering” discourses of their peers’ body fat, adolescents, regardless of their size, were able to discursively construct themselves as “normal” in comparison. In doing so, they negotiated a higher social rank for themselves and distanced themselves from the reality of everyday fatness.

We examined mothers', adolescents', and observers' discrepancies in perceptions of family interaction guided by two approaches to discrepancies: divergent realities approach, which explores discrepancies in different peoples'perceptions of the samefamily member's interaction, and perceived inequality approach, which focuses on one individual's perception of discrepancies between family members' interaction. We used a video-recallprocedure to assess the videotaped conversations of 79 rural, working-class families. Results using the divergent realities approach support a developmental life-span perspective that posits that adolescents and mothers have different developmental tasks, which result in their viewing their behaviors with each other through different lenses. Adolescents viewedfamily interactions as more conflictual andperceived greater inequalities between themselves and their mothers. These discrepancies may contribute to the transformation toward more symmetrical and individuated parent-child relationships. Results using the perceived inequalities approach revealed that discrepancies between adolescents and their mothers were associated with adolescents' internalizing and externalizing symptoms.

The role of parental support, hostile campus racial climate, and sense of belonging to campus in predicting psychological adjustment and drug use was examined in a sample of 319 African American and White college freshmen. No ethnic-group differences were found for mean levels of parental support, racial hostility, belonging to campus, or psychological adjustment. White adolescents reported higher levels of drug and alcohol use than did African American adolescents. Drug use was related to anxiety and depression for White adolescents but not for African American adolescents. For both ethnic groups, higher perceptions of racial hostility were related to higher levels of adjustment problems and binge drinking. Higher levels of parental support were related to lower levels of depression and loneliness for both ethnic groups. Modest support for belonging to campus as a mediator between parental support and hostile racial climate and the outcomes was found, with more evidence for African American adolescents than for White adolescents.

Few studies have examined the migration and acculturation experiences of Latino youth in a newly emerging Latino community, communities that historically have had low numbers of Latino residents. This study uses in-depth interview data from the Latino Adolescent, Migration, Health, and Adaptation (LAMHA) project, a mixed-methods study, to document the experiences of Latino youth (aged 14-18) growing up in one emerging Latino community in the southeastern region of North Carolina. Using adolescent’s own words and descriptions, this study shows how migration can turn an adolescent’s world upside down, and it discovers the adaptive strategies that Latino immigrant youth use to turn their world right-side-up as they adapt to life in the United States.

Ethnographic research, including interviews, focus groups, and observations were conducted to explore gendered dimensions of smoking among low level smokers, including the acceptability of smoking in different contexts; reasons for smoking; the monitoring of self and friends’ smoking; and shared smoking as a means of communicating concern and empathy. Important gendered dimensions of smoking were documented. Although males who smoked were described as looking manly, relaxed, and in control, among females, smoking was considered a behavior that made one look slutty and out of control. Young women were found to monitor their own and their friends’ smoking carefully and tended to smoke in groups to mitigate negative perceptions of smoking. Gender-specific tobacco cessation programs are warranted on college campuses.

Family structure, parental strictness, and sexual behavior were examined among 200 Black male adolescents who completed an anonymous questionnaire. Adolescents who lived with both of their parents reported using condoms more consistently in the past year and were less likely to report fathering a pregnancy as compared with adolescents who did not live with both of their parents. Parental strictness was related to sexual behavior, but the relation differed depending on whether the perceived strictness of the mother or the father was examined. Adolescents who perceived that their mothers were more strict than did other adolescents reported less frequent coitus and with fewer women. Adolescents who perceived that their fathers were more strict than did other adolescents reported using condoms more consistently in the past year.

This research examined how parent-adolescent communication about initiating sex and condoms influenced the relationship between peer norms and behavior. African American and Hispanic adolescents reported on parent-adolescent discussions about initiating sex and condoms, perceived peer norms about sex and condom use, and their own behavior. Communication about sex and perceived peer norms about sex were each related to sexual behavior, and communication about condoms and peer norms about condoms were related to condom use behavior. For both sex and condom use, the peer norm–behavior relationship was moderated by parental communication: Peer norms were more strongly related to behavior among adolescents who had not discussed sex or condoms with a parent. Communication was also related to teens naming a parent as their best source of information about sex. Results suggest that a lack of communication may cause adolescents to turn to peers and that peers may then influence their behavior.

Despite the heightened awareness of body image concerns in early adolescence, there has been little research in Ireland regarding young people’s own perspectives on associated factors. Eight focus groups with young adolescents were conducted to explore common perceptions and influential processes occurring within the current Irish appearance culture. Three main themes emerged reflecting (a) appearance-related norms and processes operating in young adolescents’ immediate environment, (b) means by which more distal levels of sociocultural influences are transmitted, and (c) individual characteristics that shape the experience of the appearance culture. On the whole, the appearance-related values and behaviors of significant others were highly influential, especially those of peers. Cultural norms were evident in the young adolescents’ conceptions of the ideal body, and these appeared to be further negotiated and reinforced in proximal contexts. The collective interaction in the focus group discussions allowed alternative perspectives to be considered and generated new insights and perceptions. Outcomes indicate that the transmission of processes from distal and proximal environments are often interrelated and highlight the need to place greater emphasis on the interactive nature of sociocultural influences and the multiple processes by which appearance-related messages are transmitted.

This qualitative study examined the experience of immigrant Jewish Ethiopian youth in Israel and its impact on their identity formation. The study sample comprised 13 high-school students, aged 14 to 17. Data analysis revealed two poles on which these youths negotiate their identity: (1) the temporal pole (past, present, and future), and (2) the youths' struggle to integrate in the new society, presenting family and school environments as two significant domains. To cope with present social and academic challenges and distress, the youths draw strength from their past in Ethiopia, which represents traditional family values, thus projecting to the future their optimistic hopes for familial and economic achievements, as well as the wish to belong to Israeli society.

In order to understand the interplay of culture and mind in immigrant adolescent learning and psychological adjustment, this multiple-case qualitative study examined salient home and school experiences told by recent Chinese immigrant youth in semistructured interviews and narrative essays. Forging the future between two different worlds defined, respectively, by Chinese tradition and Canadian culture, these adolescents struggled with high parental expectations and intergenerational conflicts at home and suffered acculturative stresses and ethnic peer divides at school. Situating the voices of the immigrant adolescents in the personal, relational, and larger sociocultural contexts, the study suggests that their ongoing psychological adjustment and transformation at the crossroad of two different cultures must be understood in light of the emerging, interdependent individual and social processes.