Suchergebnisse

Although childhood sexual abuse (CSA) has been linked to risk for delinquency, research is limited on the potential pathways from CSA to subsequent delinquent outcomes. A total of 160 youth with confirmed CSA histories were interviewed at the time of abuse discovery, when they were 8 to 15 years of age, and again 1 and 6 years later. The findings supported the proposed relations from stigmatization following the abuse (abuse-specific shame and self-blame attributions) and internalizing symptoms to subsequent delinquency through anger and affiliation with deviant peers. This longitudinal research suggests that clinical interventions for victims of CSA must be sensitive to these affective and cognitive processes and how they affect delinquent activity.

This study examined childhood and adolescent risk factors for males' reports of getting someone pregnant during adolescence. These questions were examined in an urban sample of 335 African American males involved in a prospective, longitudinal study. Childhood aggression significantly predicted reported pregnancies during adolescence. Boys who were stably aggressive across 3rd through 5th grades were at particularly high risk for reporting getting a female pregnant. Adolescent substance use and deviant peer involvement incrementally added to the prediction of pregnancy reports over and above the effects of childhood aggression. Adolescent aggressive problems did not contribute to reports of pregnancy once childhood aggression was accounted for in the model. These results highlight that precursors for males' pregnancy reports can be identified by as early as age 8. Findings also emphasize the importance of an expanded developmental focus to understand risk factors for adolescent pregnancy. The implications of these results are discussed for preventive interventions to reduce adolescent pregnancy.

In this prospective longitudinal study of 574 children followed from age 5 to age 21, the authors examine the links between early physical abuse and violent delinquency and other socially relevant outcomes during late adolescence or early adulthood and the extent to which the child's race and gender moderate these links. Analyses of covariance indicated that individuals who had been physically abused in the first 5 years of life were at greater risk for being arrested as juveniles for violent, nonviolent, and status offenses. Moreover, physically abused youth were less likely to have graduated from high school and more likely to have been fired in the past year, to have been a teen parent, and to have been pregnant or impregnated someone in the past year while not married. These effects were more pronounced for African American than for European American youth and somewhat more pronounced for females than for males.