Problem behaviors

According to conventional wisdom, jobs smooth the transition to adulthood by teaching teenagers responsibility, maturity, and professionalism. So one might expect adolescents who work to be generally more disciplined and well behaved than their nonworking peers. Surprisingly, research does not tend to support this conclusion.

A number of studies have found that high school students with jobs-especially boys who work long hours-are more likely to get into various forms of trouble than their nonworking peers. For example, a 1993 study by University of Michigan psychologists Jerald Bachman and John Schulenberg found that boys working more than 30 hours a week were more likely than those working fewer hours (or not at all) to smoke, use drugs or alcohol, and get into trouble with the police, although a later study suggested that this was only true for those already "at risk" for delinquency. Half a dozen other studies published in the 1990s found that working more than 20 hours a week is associated with a greater likelihood of using cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine, regardless of income level, race, and prior substance abuse.

There is no clear consensus on how to interpret these findings. On the one hand, it is possible that employment has a real detrimental effect on teens' behavior. Working may encourage youthful misconduct by increasing levels of day-to-day stress, exposing teens to risky behavior, and giving them an inflated sense of their own maturity. But it is also possible that work itself is not the root cause. It could be that teens who regularly use drugs and alcohol decide to work so that they can better afford their habits, or that teenagers with rebellious inclinations are also attracted to working because it gives them greater independence from parental authority.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1056