RACIAL DISCRIMINATION AND THE WEATHERING OF NONMARITAL RELATIONSHIPS.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of perceived racial discrimination on the satisfaction and dissolution of different-gender, nonmarital relationships among African American young adults.

Background: Racial discrimination has proven detrimental to relationship quality among married couples. Racial disparities in relationship processes begin long before marriages form, however.

Relationship status and mental and physical health among Polish and American young adults: The role of relationship satisfaction and satisfaction with relationship status.

There is growing recognition that relationship factors besides relationship status play an important role in young adults' mental and physical health. This study explored the concurrent (between-individual) and longitudinal (within-individual) associations between relationship status, relationship satisfaction, satisfaction with relationship status, and varied dimensions of health in samples of Polish and U.S.

Testing Life Course Models Whereby Juvenile and Adult Adversity Combine to Influence Speed of Biological Aging.

The present study extends prior research on the links between social adversity and aging by employing more comprehensive measures of adversity and a new gene expression index of aging. Hierarchical regression and 20 years of data from a sample of 381 black Americans were used to test models regarding the impact of social adversity on speed of aging. Consistent with the early life sensitivity model, early adversity continued to predict accelerated aging after controlling for adult adversity.

Perceived relationship support moderates the association of contextual stress with inflammation among African Americans.

We followed 402 African American young adults from ages 24 to 29, a period of emerging committed relationships, to examine the association of contextual stress (CS), for example, experiences of financial strain, victimization, and racial discrimination, with inflammation, and to test predictions that greater perceived relationship warmth and support (PRWS) at age 29 would moderate the association between earlier CS and inflammation, using a multiplex assessment of cytokines to construct an index of the ratio between predominantly proinflammatory cytokines versus predominantly anti-inflammatory cytokines. CS experienced at age 24 was associated with greater inflammation at age 29 in the full sample (b = .112, p = .

Youth Adversities Amplify the Association between Adult Stressors and Chronic Inflammation in a Domain Specific Manner: Nuancing the Early Life Sensitivity Model.

There is strong evidence that chronic, systemic inflammation hastens onset of the diseases of old age that ultimately lead to death. Importantly, several studies suggest that childhood adversity predicts chronic inflammation. Unfortunately, this research has been plagued by retrospective reports of childhood adversity, an absence of controls for adult stressors, and a failure to investigate various competing models of the link between childhood adversity and chronic inflammation.

Sharing the Burden of the Transition to Adulthood: African American Young Adults' Transition Challenges and Their Mothers' Health Risk.

For many African American youth, the joint influences of economic and racial marginalization render the transition to stable adult roles challenging. We have gained much insight into how these challenges affect future life chances, yet we lack an understanding of what these challenges mean in the context of linked lives. Drawing on a life course framework, this study examines how young African Americans' experiences across a variety of salient domains during the transition to adulthood affect their mothers' health.

When inflammation and depression go together: The longitudinal effects of parent-child relationships.

Parent-child relationships have long-term effects on health, particularly later inflammation and depression. We hypothesized that these effects would be mediated by later romantic partner relationships and elevated stressors in young adulthood, helping promote chronic, low grade, inflammation as well as depressive symptoms, and driving their covariation. It has been proposed recently that youth experiencing harsher parenting may also develop a stronger association between inflammation and depressive symptoms in adulthood and altered effects of stressors on outcomes.

An index of the ratio of inflammatory to antiviral cell types mediates the effects of social adversity and age on chronic illness.

Background: It is assumed that both social stress and chronological age increase the risk of chronic illness, in part, through their effect on systemic inflammation. Unfortunately, observational studies usually employ single-marker measures of inflammation (e.g.

Romantic relationship transitions and changes in health among rural, White young adults.

A growing body of research examines how the presence and quality of romantic relationships, from dating to marriage, contribute to health. However, this work oftentimes fails to consider instability in the relationship supports and stressors thought to affect health. This is particularly important during the transition to adulthood when instability in romantic relationships is expected to be common.

Nonmarital Relationships and Changing Perceptions of Marriage Among African American Young Adults.

Cohabitation has become increasingly widespread over the past decade. Such trends have given rise to debates about the relation between cohabitation and marriage, in terms of what cohabitation means for individual relationship trajectories and for the institution of marriage more generally. Using recent data from a sample of almost 800 African Americans and fixed effects modeling procedures, in the present study the authors shed some light on these debates by exploring the extent to which cohabitation, relative to both singlehood and dating, was associated with within-individual changes in African Americans' marital beliefs during the transition to adulthood.

Stress, relationship satisfaction, and health among African American women: Genetic moderation of effects.

We examined whether romantic relationship satisfaction would serve as a link between early and later stressors which in turn would influence the thyroid function index (TFI), an indicator of physiological stress response. Using the framework of genetic susceptibility theory combined with hypotheses derived from the vulnerability-stress-adaptation and stress-generation models, we tested whether the hypothesized mediational model would be conditioned by 5-HTTLPR genotype, with greater effects and stronger evidence of mediation among carriers of the "s" allele. In a sample of African American women in romantic relationships (n = 270), we found that 5-HTTLPR moderated each stage of the hypothesized mediational model in a "for better or for worse" manner.

Family socioeconomic status, family health, and changes in students' math achievement across high school: A mediational model.

In response to recent calls to integrate understandings of socioeconomic disparities in health with understandings of socioeconomic disparities in academic achievement, this study tested a mediational model whereby family socioeconomic status predicted gains in academic achievement across high school through its impact on both student and parent health. Data on over 8000 high school students in the U.S.

Different dimensions, different mechanisms? Distinguishing relationship status and quality effects on desistance.

This study follows from a long line of research aimed at understanding the effects of romantic relationships on desistance from crime. We expanded this work by testing the differential effects of relationship status (i.e.

SHIFTING PERSPECTIVES: COGNITIVE CHANGES PARTIALLY MEDIATE THE IMPACT OF ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS ON DESISTANCE FROM CRIME.

Although research regarding the impact of marriage on desistance is important, most romantic relationships during early adulthoood, the period in the life course when involvement in criminal offending is relatively high, do not involve marriage. Using the internal moderator approach, we tested hypotheses regarding the impact of non-marital romantic relationships on desistance using longitudinal data from a sample of approximately 600 African American young adults. The results largely supported the study hypotheses.

A dyadic analysis of relationships and health: does couple-level context condition partner effects?

Adding to the growing literature explicating the links between romantic relationships and health, this study examined how both couple-level characteristics, particularly union type (e.g., dating, cohabiting, or marriage) and interracial pairing, and interpersonal characteristics (e.

Romantic relationships and health among African American young adults: linking patterns of relationship quality over time to changes in physical and mental health.

With trends in delayed marriage, scholars have begun to explore how a wide range of romantic relationships contribute to health. Although a welcome shift, this largely cross-sectional work ignores potential (in)stability in relationship supports and stressors thought to affect health. Using Family and Community Health Study data on 634 African American young adults, we extend this work by demonstrating the value of a holistic, multidimensional assessment of relationship quality for understanding the link between relationships and health.

The Code of the Street and Romantic Relationships: A dyadic analysis.

Since its publication, Elijah Anderson's (1999) code of the street thesis has found support in studies connecting disadvantage to the internalization of street-oriented values and an associated lifestyle of violent/deviant behavior. This primary emphasis on deviance in public arenas has precluded researchers from examining the implications of the code of the street for less public arenas, like intimate relationships. In an effort to understand if and how the endorsement of the street code may infiltrate such relationships, the present study examines the associations between the code of the street and relationship satisfaction and commitment among young adults involved in heterosexual romantic relationships.

Teen motherhood and pregnancy prototypes: the role of social context in changing young African American mothers' risk images and contraceptive expectations.

Despite the declining rate of teen pregnancies in the United States, academic and public health experts have expressed concern over the still relatively high rate of rapid repeat pregnancies among adolescents, particularly among minority youth. Using a sample of over 300 African American female adolescents, the current study used insights from the prototype/willingness model of adolescent risk behavior to explore this risk. More specifically, it assessed the relationship between entry into unwed motherhood during mid-to-late adolescence and changes in prototypes of unmarried pregnant teens.

COLLEGE ASPIRATIONS AND EXPECTATIONS AMONG NEW AFRICAN AMERICAN MOTHERS IN LATE ADOLESCENCE.

It is a generally accepted finding in the sociological literature as well as in public discourse that adolescent mothers are less likely than their non-parenting counterparts to graduate high school and to attend college. For several decades, however, researchers have pointed out that the implied causal process from teen motherhood to academic failure has been largely unsupported by empirical research. In fact, scholars have recently argued that motherhood may actually serve as a positive turning point in the lives of young women.

Marriage Expectations Among African American Couples in Early Adulthood: A Dyadic Analysis.

Using Family and Community Health Study data consisting of 168 unmarried, primarily African American couples, the current study sought to understand the dyadic interplay among school, work, and partner-specific marriage expectations in early adulthood. Drawing on the economic prospects, adult transitions, and work - family literatures, the authors hypothesized and found ample support that expectations to marry a romantic partner were linked not only to one's own school and work-related experiences but also to those of a partner. These associations held while controlling for relationship satisfaction, general views of marriage, and other covariates that have been posited to explain racial inequalities in relationship and marriage patterns.

DIFFERENTIAL SUSCEPTIBILITY TO CONTEXT: A PROMISING MODEL OF THE INTERPLAY OF GENES AND THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT.

The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate the importance of incorporating gene by environment (GxE) interactions into behavioral science theory and research. In pursuit of this aim, the chapter is organized in the following way. First, we provide a brief critique of the behavioral genetics paradigm, noting why one should be skeptical of its suggestion that genes exert large main effects, and only main effects, on social behavior.