| This work presents a 3-wave longitudinal study of the relation between patterns in the family social ecology and African American adolescents' future expectations as they make the transition to high school. Guided by holistic contextual theory, I predicted that mothers and adolescents who maintain nurturing family profiles (i.e., high mother support and low adolescent risk behavior) over time would predict higher levels of Time 3 future expectations than those who maintain inhibiting family profiles (i.e., low mother support and high adolescent risk behavior). It was also expected that some families would transition out of the nurturing state and 'recover' (labeled 'Transition-recovery') and that some would not recover (labeled 'Transition-nonrecovery'). Consistent with my hypothesis, the Transition-recovery group had comparable levels of future expectations to the Nurturing-stable group. Unexpectedly however, the Transition-nonrecovery group showed equal levels of future expectations to the Nurturing-stable group. Implications of findings are discussed for theory and applied prevention settings. |
