counterparts, whether they will go to the prom, or whether their math test will be difficult. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I began to understand that, in contrast to what many developmental psychologists have suggested, the stories of urban adolescents are as important to our theories of adolescence as are the stories from their mostly white, middle-class, suburban peers. There are few studies, however, that elicit from urban teens their personal worldviews, and rarely have researchers examined their perspectives over time. This book presents findings from a three-year longitudinal research study of twenty-four urban adolescents from low-income families. During this period, I systematically investigated how they perceived their worlds over time—in their own words and on their own terms.
More than a decade after Carol Gilligan noted in In a Different Voice that girls and women had been excluded from studies of human development,4 social scientists are now beginning to take note that urban poor and working-class and ethnic-minority adolescents have also been excluded from developmental studies. Almost 40 percent of all adolescents are from poor or working-class families,5 one-fifth live below the poverty line,6 and the majority of these poor or working-class youth live in urban areas. It is clear from these numbers that the worldview of this population will have a significant impact on our collective future. Yet as a recent article in the American Psychologist noted: “Neither research nor theory in the adolescent field has had much to say about young people growing up in poverty.”7 And the editors of a comprehensive book on adolescent development remarked: “Perhaps the most striking observation across all the chapters in this volume is the degree to which research on normal development has been restricted to middle-class whites.”8 Anthropologist Linda Burton and her colleagues likewise deplore that “a systematic exploration of what constitutes normal development among inner-city, economically disadvantaged, ethnic/racial minority teens has yet to appear in the adolescent development literature.”9 While interest in and research on adolescent development began at the beginning of the twentieth century, we are approaching the new millennium with little understanding of a large portion of the adolescent population.
The research on urban adolescents over the past two decades has focused almost exclusively on high-risk behavior such as teen pregnancy, school dropouts, drug use, gangs, violent and criminal behavior, or on related issues such as sexual attitudes or behaviors (e.g., contraceptive use or frequency of sexual activity). As with most of the research on ethnic-minority adolescents,10 the research examining urban adolescents has centered almost exclusively on individual deviancy or social problems. Urban poor and working-class, and ethnic-minority adolescents have been and continue to be described as “deprived, disadvantaged, deviant, disturbed, [and] or dumb.”11
Over the past decade, however, psychologists and educators have begun challenging these pathological representations of low-income populations,12 ethnic-minority children and adolescents,13 and of urban adolescents.14 Disputing the negative images of black adolescents, Patricia Bell-Scott and Ronald L. Taylor point out that “the majority of black youth stay in school, avoid drugs, premature marriage, childbearing, are not involved in crime or other forms of self-destructive behavior and grow up to lead normal and productive lives, in spite of social and economic disadvantages.”15 A similar assertion can be made about urban poor or working-class youth. The statistics repeatedly indicate that the majority of urban adolescents are not involved in high-risk behavior. Nationwide surveys compiled by the Children’s Defense Fund indicate that approximately 70 percent of twenty to twenty-five-year-olds from poor families (of various ethnicities) graduate from high school.16 This percentage is much higher than what many imagine after reading the many newspaper articles on urban dropouts. The percentage of those who are poor and who drop out of school is almost exactly the same as the percentage of poor adolescents who go on to college: in 1987, it was 27.7 percent and 27.6 percent, respectively.17 Yet we hear much about the former and little about the latter. If we do hear about the latter, they are described as the exceptions to the norm—the dropouts are never given such descriptions. These surveys also indicate that fewer than 20 percent of white, black, or Latino adolescents18 under the age of eighteen report using marijuana (white females report the highest and black females report the lowest percentage of use); fewer than 5 percent of white, black, or Latino youth report using cocaine (Latinos report the highest and blacks report the lowest percentage of use); fewer than 30 percent of white, black, or Latinos report using alcohol (whites report the highest and blacks, particularly black females, report the lowest percentage of use); and fewer than 3 percent of white, black, or Latino adolescents reported “serious” alcohol use (five or more drinks per occasion on five or more days in the past month).19 Furthermore, the 1990 national birthrate statistics for fifteen- to seventeen-year-old girls indicate that twenty-three in one thousand whites, eighty-four in one thousand blacks, and sixty-five in one thousand Hispanics gave birth.20 In other words, for every thousand girls in this age group, 977 white, 916 blacks, and 935 Hispanics did not become adolescent mothers. And yet the experiences of those nine out of ten girls are not reflected in the developmental research. High-risk behaviors, furthermore, frequently overlap: an illicit drug user is more likely to drop out of school than her or his non-using peers, just as a young mother is more likely to drop out of school than a girl who does not get pregnant.21 These percentages and the overlap between them suggest that far fewer than half of the entire inner-city poor and working-class, or black, Hispanic, or white adolescent population, are actively involved in high-risk behavior.22 In focusing almost exclusively on high-risk behavior, then, social scientists neglect the lives of over half of the adolescent population. While the research on high-risk behavior is undoubtedly important, there is a dearth of research on normative issues such as parent and peer relationships among urban youth—including those who are and those who are not involved in high risk behaviors.23 If we are truly interested in understanding adolescents, improving their lives, and helping them grow into productive and healthy adults, as the multitude of books and articles on teenagers suggest we are, then we must not only continue to examine the lives of middle-class adolescents from the suburbs but also begin to investigate the wide-ranging and disparate experiences of ethnically diverse, poor and working-class urban youth.
An additional limitation of the research on urban adolescents, and in fact on all adolescents, springs from the dominant methodology used to gather it. Research projects on adolescents have not, for the most part, asked their participants to describe their experiences in their own words. There has been an overreliance on methods that impose predetermined definitions and categories. True/false or multiple-choice questionnaires are useful in obtaining information as to how well the respondents fit into the categories set up by the scale; they are of less use in exploring the intricacies and subtleties of how individuals perceive, assign value to, and speak about different parts of their lives. Renowned developmental psychologists Urie Bronfenbrenner and Kurt Lewin assert that what matters in development is not only what exists in “objective reality” (i.e., concrete material and environmental conditions), but also how the environment is perceived and constructed by the individuals in that environment.24 Although researchers may presume to know how urban adolescents perceive their worlds given the “objective reality” (e.g., a high crime, violence, and poverty rate) or developmental phase (i.e., adolescence), our assumptions may not reflect how this reality is actually perceived by the adolescents themselves. Certain assumptions about adolescents and “the adolescent experience” (e.g., the desire for separation from parents) pervade both the media and more academic representations of them. Yet, for the most part, we have neglected to check out many of these assumptions and, consequently, continue to perpetuate what may be myths about adolescents rather than knowledge based on their lived experiences. Listening to adolescents provides an essential window into their experience and allows us to build theories that are more reflective of their lives. Once we begin listening, our theories about adolescents—all adolescents—will likely be challenged and we will be forced to revise and expand what
