Switching Schools: Reconsidering the Relationship Between School Mobility and High School Dropout.

Youth who switch schools are more likely to demonstrate a wide array of negative behavioral and educational outcomes, including dropping out of high school. However, whether switching schools actually puts youth at risk for dropout is uncertain, since youth who switch schools are similar to dropouts in their levels of prior school achievement and engagement, which suggests that switching schools may be part of the same long-term developmental process of disengagement that leads to dropping out. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this study uses propensity score matching to pair youth who switched high schools with similar youth who stayed in the same school.

Cohabitation and Children's Externalizing Behavior in Low-Income Latino Families.

We consider the association of cohabitation experience with externalizing behavior among children of Latina mothers whose ethnic origin is in Mexico, Puerto Rico, or the Dominican Republic. Data were drawn from three waves of the Three-City Study (N=656 mother-child pairs). Children of Mexican-origin mothers had higher externalizing problems in childhood and adolescence when their mothers were born in the United States or immigrated as minors.

Gender Distrust and Intimate Unions among Low-Income Hispanic and African-American Women.

We investigate levels of generalized distrust of men among low-income African American, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and non-Hispanic white women in a three-city survey. The results reveal substantial variation. We find Hispanics' overall levels of distrust to be higher than levels for either African Americans or whites.

The Role of Trust in Low-Income Mothers' Intimate Unions*.

Recent scholarship concerning low rates of marriage among low-income mothers emphasizes generalized gender distrust as a major impediment in forming sustainable intimate unions. Guided by symbolic interaction theory and longitudinal ethnographic data on 256 low-income mothers from the Three-City Study, we argue that generalized gender distrust may not be as influential in shaping mothers' unions as some researchers suggest. Grounded theory analysis revealed that 96% of the mothers voiced a general distrust of men, yet that distrust did not deter them from involvement in intimate unions.