Adolescent Risk-Taking Has Major Consequences When It Comes To Marriage

[buffalo]

Adolescent Risk-Taking Has Major Consequences When It Comes To Marriage

Release Date: April 21, 2009
BUFFALO, N. Y. – A national study of data collected over 12 years finds that delinquent teens marry earlier than their peers, while substance-abusing teens – especially girls who abuse marijuana – marry later than peers, if at all.
“The Influence of Risk-Taking Behaviors on the Transition into Marriage: An Examination of the Long-Term Consequences of Adolescent Behavior” by University at Buffalo sociologist Sampson Lee Blair, Ph.D., is a rare look at the long-term effects of teen delinquency and drug abuse on adult role attainment.

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The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities

 

[Angels_Unaware]

Pet peeve: social retrospective analyses that clearly confuse causation with correlation, and then dance around implying an inappropriate causal argument.

This article seems to imply that being a juvenile delinquint causes a child to marry early. I seriously doubt that is the case. There is a correlation between anti-social behavior in adolescnce and early marriage. Why? My guess would be a third variable- parental involvement. Children who engage in anti-social behavior may be very angry children who are neglected by their parents, and who marry early because they have such a strong need for someone to take of them that they find a wife or husband to fulfill the parental role they never had.

Another pet peeve: dancing around implied upper-middle class, elitist value systems and allowing those values to color the interpretation of research results. It was implied throughout this article that early marriage is bad, though that was never directly stated. It was implied because “delinquency” is negative, and was paired with “early marriage” without further elaboration, in an alarmist tone. However, the researchers never tell us whether these early marriages had stabilizing or de-stabilizing effects on the former delinquents who married. We don’t know if these kids “grew out” of their problems or not.
And even if the researchers did tell us all the early marriages were “bad”, the fault is still clearly not the early marriage. They were childen with emotional problems to begin with.