Helping Others? The Effects of Childhood Poverty and Family Instability on Prosocial Behavior

• NCJ Number: 196521
• Journal: Youth & Society Volume: 34 Issue: 1 Dated: September 2002 Pages: 89-119
• Author(s): Daniel T. Lichter; Michael J. Shanahan; Erica L. Gardner
• Editor(s): Kathryn G. Herr
• Date Published: September 2002
• Length: 31 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Russell Sage Foundation; National Science Foundation; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This article explores the relationship between social and economic disadvantages during childhood and prosocial behavior in late adolescence.

Abstract

Scholarly dialogue has reviewed whether social and economic disadvantages in the early life course of young people adversely affect the practice of various prosocial behaviors in early adulthood. This study considered this in terms of a single key indicator of civic or prosocial behavior, volunteerism. The goal was to evaluate whether socially disadvantaged children became socially disengaged as they made the transition to young adulthood. The hypothesis was that growing up in a single-parent family or experiencing family instability during childhood might adversely affect later civic commitment and engender estrangement from broader societal or communal goals. The study built on past research to balance the current preoccupation with psychosocial and behavioral problems with prosocial behavior, focused on distal causes such as childhood social and economic background, and addressed new research that suggested that family poverty and parenting mattered less than previously thought. This study examined 1,106 adolescents ranging from age 14 to 18 from the 1996 Young Adult supplements survey of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). The study first considered the frequency with which NLSY youth engaged in volunteer activities and their early life course experiences as well as at midadolescence, and then examined whether early family experiences predicted volunteerism. The conclusion based on the data analysis was that the exposure to single-parent families, especially boys, and childhood poverty, especially girls, were negatively associated with later prosocial behaviors. In addition, the results indicated that any long-term effect of childhood disadvantages was mediated by healthy psychosocial development and behavioral patterns in adolescence. Study limitations are presented and discussed. References