| ||||||
Bad News for Hispanic Teens: Parents' Marital Disruption Hurts Them Least |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
From Ohio State University: Compared to teens from other racial and ethnic groups, Hispanic adolescents don't experience nearly the level of problems during the process of their parents' divorce or separation. New research suggests that Hispanic teens aren't as affected by their parents' marital disruption - including divorce and separation -- only because they already face a host of difficulties and disadvantages before the breakup. "For many Hispanic adolescents, their life situation is already poor before their family dissolves - there may not be much further for them to drop," said Yongmin Sun, co-author of the study and associate professor of sociology at Ohio State University's Mansfield campus. The reason is the flip-side of what happens to Hispanic youth: European and Asian Americans start out with the most advantages in terms of well-being and resources, so they have the furthest to fall, Sun said. African American teens showed slightly fewer problems than their European and Asian American peers before family disruption, but not to the level of Hispanics. Data for this study came from the National Education Longitudinal Study, which surveyed thousands of students beginning in 8th grade in 1988. In another important finding, the study showed that parents' marital disruption hurts teens of different racial and ethnic groups in different ways. Asian American adolescents seemed to be affected most by a shortage of family social resources in predivorced families - meaning they missed things like talking to their parents and spending time with them.
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
