ADULTHOODoutcomes. For example, employment has been
found to have a positive effect on high school
students’ grades when the workers are saving their
earnings to go to college (Marsh 1991; Ruscoe et
al. 1996). Consistently, youth who effectively bal-
ance their part-time jobs with school, working near
continuously during high school but restricting
the intensity of their employment to twenty hours
a week or fewer, were found to have high early-
achievement orientations and obtained more
months of post-secondary education (Mortimer
and Johnson 1998).
There is further evidence that the quality of
adolescent work experience matters for psycho-
logical outcomes that are likely to influence adult
attainment (Mortimer and Finch 1996). For exam-
ple, adolescent boys who felt that they were obtain-
ing useful skills and who perceived opportunities
for advancement in their jobs exhibited increased
mastery (internal control) over time; girls who
thought that they were being paid well for their
work manifested increasing levels of self-efficacy
(Finch et al. 1991). Exposure to job stressors, in
contrast, heightened depressive affect (Shanahan
et al. 1991).
For the most disadvantaged segments of socie-
ty there is concern that poor educational opportu-
nities and a rapidly deteriorating economic base in
the inner cities preclude access to youth jobs as
well as to viable adult work roles (Wilson 1987),
irrespective of personal efficacy, ambition, or oth-
er traits. The shift from an industrial- to a service-
based economy has lessened the availability of
entry-level employment in manufacturing. Eco-
nomic and technological change has created a
class of ‘‘hard-core unemployed’’; those whose
limited education and skills place them at a severe
disadvantage in the labor market (Lichter 1988;
Halperin 1998). Black males’ lack of stable em-
ployment in U.S. inner cities limits their ability to
assume the adult family role (as male provider)
and fosters the increasing prevalence and legitima-
cy of female-headed families.
Research on African-American adolescents sug-
gests that the transition to adulthood may differ
significantly from that of non-minority teens. Ogbu
(1989) implicates beliefs about success as critical to
understanding the paradox of high aspirations
among black adolescents and low subsequent
achievement. The ‘‘folk culture of success,’’ fos-
tered by a history of discrimination and reinforced
by everyday experience (e.g., the observation of
black career ceilings, inflated job qualifications,
housing discrimination, and poor occupational
achievement despite success in school), convinces
some young blacks that desired occupational out-
comes will not be assured by educational attain-
ment. Given the belief that external forces con-
trolled by whites determine success, alternative
strategies for achievement may be endorsed—
hustling, collective action, or dependency on a
more powerful white person. These, in turn, may
diminish the effort in school that is necessary to
obtain good grades and educational credentials.In the context of urban poverty and violence,
youth expectations for a truncated life expectancy
(an ‘‘accelerated life course’’), may lessen the
salience of adolescence as a distinct life stage
(Burton et al. 1996). With few employment and
educational opportunities available, these youth
often focus on alternative positive markers of adult-
hood, such as becoming a parent, obtaining mate-
rial goods, or becoming involved in religious ac-
tivities. Under such conditions, even a menial job
can engender and reinforce ‘‘mainstream’’ identi-
ties and ‘‘possible selves’’ as economically produc-
tive working adults (Newman 1996). However,
structural opportunities pervasively influence achieve-
ment orientations and outcomes throughout the
social class hierarchy; such processes are clearly
not limited to any particular societal stratum
(Kerckhoff 1995).Supportive families and other social bonds are
predictive of successful adjustment in the face of
poverty and other disadvantages (Ensminger and
Juon 1998). Families who are successful in these
circumstances place great emphasis on connecting
their adolescent children with persons and agen-
cies outside the immediate household, in their
neighborhoods and beyond, thereby enhancing
their social networks and social capital, invaluable
resources in the transition to adulthood (Furstenberg
et al. 1999; Sullivan 1989).In summary, becoming an adult involves
changes in objective status positions and in subjec-
tive orientations. The transition to adulthood has
changed through historical time as a result of
economic, political, and social trends. Contempo-
rary young people face increasingly extended and