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Introduction -- Preparation for reintegration -- The reintegration process -- Living arrangements : the impact of where and with whom you live -- Training and employm ent : preparing for self support -- Family relationships : how family bonds can support or interfere with success -- Friends and frenemies : how peers can help or hinder success -- Overcoming substance abuse and dependency : a key to success -- Mental health challenges : stacking the odds against success -- Social context : neighborhood and community influences -- Programs and policies -- A look back and a look forward

This article reviews the consequences of recent changes in the laws of marital dissolution. Two of the major trends are the removal of misconduct as a ground for divorce and the removal of gender as a criterion for settlements. The major consequence of these changes has been the deterioration of the economic well-being of divorced females, particularly those from long-term marriages. To help reduce these inequalities it is recommended that legislatures and courts place explicit economic value on the nonmonetary contributions spouses make to their marriages.

We critically review recent studies to examine the measurement schemes and empirical models used to examine adolescent drug use, with a particular eye toward determining whether differences between the prevalence and frequency of use have been addressed. Several theoretical models suggest that there are differences but we find relatively few studies that have considered prevalence versus frequency, even though selection effects that dictate these processes affect conclusions about predictors of drug use. Using data from the 2004 U.S. National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), (n=16,235), we provide an empirical example of why distinguishing prevalence and frequency of use is important. In particular, gender, age, and parent-child arguments are associated with the prevalence, but are not associated with the frequency of drug use. The associations between grades, religiousness, positive parental relations and drug use are overestimated substantially absent controls for the selection process inherent in the shift from any use to frequency of use. We therefore contend that adolescent drug use studies require greater attention to this selection process.

In this paper we examined the relationship between religiosity, peer drug use, and adolescent drug use among 4,983 Utah adolescents and the 13,534 respondents from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Adolescents who were religious were less likely to smoke, drink heavily, and use marijuana than adolescents who were not religious. Adolescents in highly religious schools were less likely to smoke than adolescents in schools low on religiosity. Individual religiosity tended to lessen the influence of peer drug use on respondent drug use for cigarettes, heavy drinking, and marijuana use but not for the use of other illicit drugs. The associations between individual religiosity and the four types of drug use were not affected by the level of school religiosity. The findings were consistent across the two different samples and three types of drugs: cigarettes, heavy drinking, and marijuana. Social learning and social control theories were used to explain these findings.

Using data from 1,494 Greeks and 1,993 Americans, this study finds that social abortion attitudes are a separate dimension from physical abortion attitudes. According to our structural equation model, abortion attitudes are influenced significantly by religiosity and sexual liberalism. The model explains social abortion attitudes significantly better than physical abortion attitudes. Although the model is applicable to both countries, there are three major differences between Greece and the United States. First, in Greece religiosity has a smaller impact on sexual liberalism, and sexual liberalism has a much weaker impact on both types of abortion attitudes, particularly social abortion attitudes. Second, in Greece religiosity is more strongly related to abortion attitudes than in the United States, particularly to social abortion attitudes. Third, education has a weaker influence in Greece than in the United States.

Using a national sample of over 17,000 high school seniors, we examined the effect of education of parents, employment status of mother, number of parents in household, religiosity, religious affiliation, gender, and race on alcohol and marijuana use. Contrary to some previous research, neither parental education nor employment status of mother was related to use of alcohol or marijuana. Adolescents who lived with both parents were less likely than adolescents in single-parent homes to use marijuana, although the differences were relatively small. Number of parents in household was not related to adolescent alcohol use. Level of religiosity had a significant association with alcohol and marijuana use among all religious denominations, although the magnitude of the relationship varied by denomination. Religious denomination, gender, and race were also related to drug use.