African American Adolescents

A standardization of 1,000 individuals was drawn from youth ages 7-18 from the geographic areas in the North, South, Midwest, and West (Flanagan & Henington, 2005). Within the 1,000 sample 400 youth were ages 7-14, and there were 200 adolescents with ages ranging from 15-18 (Flanagan & Henington, 2005). Variables included age, gender, race, and parental education (Flanagan & Henington, 2005). Different sites were sampled from rural, urban, and suburban areas. Also, within those sites, samples included schools, churches, and community centers (Flanagan & Henington, 2005). According to Flanagan & Henington (2005), “…selection criteria for participants included English as the primary language, at least a second grade

81% of Black adults reported that they have experienced at least one incident of day-to-day discrimination. And Adolescence is a stage in which to examine the impact of racial discrimination on the psychological part of African Americans (Racial Identity Matters). Which can cause a person to be scared expectably if someone has already confined in themselves of their race. "My siblings had already instilled the notion of black pride in me. I would have preferred that Mommy were black. Now, as a grown man, I feel privileged to have come from two worlds" (McBride 103). It was easier to accept the black

The number of two-parent African American households is dissolving. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the black family has declined from 80% in 1890 to 39% in 1990. The result of conflict, and warring souls in the African American community, this trend can be stopped and reversed. The African American family must first gain an understanding of what is causing this dissolution, then they can be taught about what principals and skills they must adapt in order to reverse it. Once this is accomplished, the black family must be given opportunities to share this information. By taking these steps, two-parent African American families would once again be prevalent in the United States.

Due to the discrimination of African-Americans, and oppression resulting from it, the government, justice system, educational system, and society has made it clear that African-American teenagers obtaining a thorough and effective education is the least of their concerns. It is almost as though African-American teenagers are purposely being set up to fail. As stated in “The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of This System and the Revolution we need”, “Today the schools are more segregated than they have been since the 1960s with urban, predominantly Black and Latino schools receiving fewer resources and set up to fail. These schools more and more resemble prisons

Adolescent Black males throughout the years have been subject and victim to numerous economic, socioeconomic, and environmental disadvantages. In many inner-city neighborhoods, these disadvantages have led to an increase in violence among these adolescent African American males, especially in the educational system. Violence among African American males in schools is something that increases tremendously each year; a 2010 study in Education Week showed that over 70% of the students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were African American students. This can be explained

The movie thirteen touched many important factors of adolescent’s development. Some of the ones I want to concentrate in this paper are: family system, developmental tasks, and peer pressure.

Birth rates in African American and Hispanic teens are substantially higher than whites, a trend that has persisted for decades. Even though pregnancy rates among teens are at an all time low. It is still a major issue but mostly affecting the urban communities. In this research paper I will be comparing and demonstrating the relationships between teenage pregnancy, social issues, and education.

Many of my friends in high school came from single parent fatherless homes like mine. A lot of us, especially my female friends, were looking for a filler of the void our father’s left in us. I found mine at the age of fifteen in a twenty year old named Jay. My mother never spoke to me about the dangers of unprotected sex. Most of what I learned about sex was taught through cable television and my friends. This was a dangerous way to learn about something as important as sex. There have been several studies that have indicated that living with only one parent, especially fatherless homes, is an indicator of early sexual behavior in adolescent African American females (Hogan and Kitagawa, 1985). From a daughter’s point

African American adolescents face a period of development unique to that population, where they explore their ethnic and racial identity along with experiencing

African American boys are doubly displaced among society. Ann Arnett Ferguson says, “they are not seen as childlike but adultified; as black males they are denied the masculine dispensation constituting white males as being “naturally naughty” and are discerned as willfully bad”(page 80). These African American boys are thought of being two things, either a criminal or an endangered species. They are not allowed to be naughty by nature according to society, but rather there naughtiness is a sign of vicious, inherent, insubordinate behavior. African americans are seen as endangered victims, which makes them criminals. Ferguson states, “It is their own maladaptive and inappropriate behavior that causes African americans to self-destruct”(page 82). There are two versions of childhood that are contradictory to each other. A real child would be seen as a “little plants” ready to grow up accordingly which is what white men were like to educators. On the other hand the African American boys were seen as children who are powerful, self centered, and have an agenda of their own. These black boys are seen as adults from such a young age, they don’t have time to be young and grow up because others make it seem like they are already fully grown. This drives them in the path to do bad things and make bad decisions.

I felt as though many of my expectations going into this assignment were different than what I actually witnessed. It is probably due to the short observational period, rather than an indicator of “the new-norm” in adolescent behavior, or profound luck at observing the only two well-behaved teenagers in the state. Therefore, my take-away from this assignment is that I have preconceived notions of expected teenage behavior, that I have constructed from my time with my own children. I expected too, to see more activity than I did.

There is a lot of research done on the reasons for early sexuality in African American women. Though there is no single factor that causes early sexual activity, many attribute it to the absence of strong father figure, this is addressed in a study done by Vicki Ellison Burns, “Living without a strong father figure: A context for teen mothers’ experience of having becoming sexually active”. Burns cited Ellis et al. (2003), father absence was a powerful and overriding risk factor for early-onset sexual activity and subsequent teen pregnancy. Father presence provided a major protective effect against these behaviors, even when other risk factors were present. In Ellison’s study, she obtained data by interviewing

In the last decade or so, however, the growing awareness of the dangers of AIDS does appear to have contributed to a decline in the rates of sexual intercourse among teens. The Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that between 1991 and 2005 the percentage of teenagers who are sexually active dropped from 57.4 percent to 46.3 percent among males and from 50.8 percent to 44.9 percent among females. The rates of pregnancy, abortion, and sexually transmitted disease among teens have actually dropped even faster than the rate of sexual activity. So it appears that, in addition to postponing sex, teens are also becoming more responsible in their sexual activities. For example, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 87.5 percent of teens were either abstinent or used condoms. Of course, that means that 12.5 percent of teens were still having unprotected sex, but that is a significant improvement over past decades. Similarly, although the rate of teen pregnancy has declined, more than 11 percent of the babies born in the United States

Possessing a functional or dysfunctional family is of much importance to a healthy development, helping children through peer pressure, acceptance, and the anxiety of belonging. Yet how important is the environment that a child is raised on, this being shared or non-shared? How difficult or easy can peer pressure be? Will peer pressure help or deter a child from being functional. How much do these factors affect development from childhood to adolescence? This paper will explain the different stages of childhood to adolescence, and how a child and adolescence copes with nature and nurture .

The first risk factor is contextual factor, such as socioeconomic status and poverty, family and peer factors. The study showed that the percentage of sexually active young adolescents is higher in low-income areas of inner cities (Morrison-Beedy & others, 2013). A recent study revealed that neighborhood poverty concentrations predicted 15- to 17-year-old girls’ and boys’ sexual initiation (Cubbin & others, 2010). Children from low-income families are more likely to fall into the bad habits because they are lack of discipline from parents who are busy making a live. The second one is family factors. The family connectedness and parent-adolescent communication about sexuality can predict the sexual outcome. A study shows that sexual risk-taking behavior was more likely to occur in girls living in single-parent homes (Hipwell & others, 2011).