FRIDAY, Aug. 30, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- The influences of family, school, neighborhood and friends all contribute to producing well-adjusted adolescents.
So says an article in a recent issue of Child Develpment.
Each of these factors plays a different role in shaping the mental, social behavior and school performance of adolescents. There is no such thing as a single "silver bullet," say researchers from Case Western Reserve University, Northwestern University and the University of California at Los Angeles.
They studied 12,398 adolescents in Grades 7 and 8 at 23 schools and 151 neighborhoods in Prince George's County, Md.
"We know that social contexts matter a great deal for kids' development, but the really important questions relate to how . . . different contexts matter in different ways for different kinds of outcomes and different kinds of kids at different points in their lives," says article co-author Richard Settersten, an associate professor of sociology at Case Western Reserve University.
While he and his colleagues say a number of social settings influence adolescents, they did find some specific connections: families impact mental health; schools influence academic performance; peers affect social behavior; neighborhoods shape school attendance and an adolescent's participation in social activities.
The researchers say all these settings are linked and found the strongest coupling was between family and friend quality. The next strongest link was between school and neighborhood quality.
The findings emphasize the need to look at the "whole child" when discussing child development, the researchers say.
"There seems to be no silver bullets that can radically change young lives for the better. Settings that are developmentally sensitive matter and more of them matter more. But improvements in one setting are not likely to dramatically change the functioning of young people in multiple areas," Settersten says.
More information
The National Institute of Mental Health has information on adolescents and violence.
