Journal of Family Issues: Family Dynamics, Supportive Relationships, and Educational Resilience During Adolescence

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of Family Issues
Family Dynamics, Supportive Relationships, and Educational Resilience During Adolescence

Robert Crosnoe and Glen H. Elder, JR.
Journal of Family Issues 2004 25: 571
DOI: 10.1177/0192513X03258307
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10.1177/0192513X03258307
JOURNAL
Crosnoe , Elder
OF FAMILY
/ FAMILYISSUES
DYNAMICS
/ July 2004 ARTICLE
Family Dynamics, Supportive

Relationships, and Educational
Resilience During Adolescence
ROBERT CROSNOE
University of Texas at Austin
GLEN H. ELDER, JR.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
If problematic relationships with parents are an academic risk factor during adolescence,
then nonparental sources of support (e.g., friends, siblings, and teachers) may be arenas of
comfort that promote educational resilience in the face of such risk. In a series of structural
models using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the authors found that
nonparental relationships are more likely to be directly associated with academic behavior
than to interact with parent-related risk. Protective interactions occur only among certain
subgroups. For example, close relationships with teachers and involvement with friends pro-
tect against parent-related academic risk among Asian American adolescents, whereas sup-
port from friends operates similarly for younger girls. In other subgroups, parental and
nonparental relationships interact but not in a protective way. These patterns demonstrate the
complex interplay of developmental ecology and larger social structures during the adoles-
cent stage of life as well as the context-specific nature of resilience.
Keywords: resilience; life course; education; race; gender
Contemporary developmental research has cultivated a greater theoretical

recognition of the complexity of the adolescent stage of life, drawing at-
tention to the influence of interpersonal ties on adjustment, the interde-
pendence of developmental settings, and the overarching role of social
structure (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998; Elder, 1998). This theoretical
richness has, in turn, engendered empirical research that bridges multiple
Authors’ Note: The authors acknowledge support by the National Institute of Mental Health
(MH 00567, MH 57549) and a Spencer Foundation Senior Scholar Award to Elder. This
research is based on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
(J. Richard Udry, principal investigator), which was funded by Grant PO1-HD31921 from
the National Institute of Child and Human Development to the Carolina Population Center,
with cooperative funding participation by 17 other agencies. The authors would like to thank
Jeylan Mortimer for her helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
JOURNAL OF FAMILY ISSUES, Vol. 25 No. 5, July 2004 571-602
DOI: 10.1177/0192513X03258307
© 2004 Sage Publications
571
572 JOURNAL OF FAMILY ISSUES / July 2004
domains on multiple levels to more fully gauge how young people come
of age. This study follows this trend by exploring the potential function-
ality of the overlap among familial and extrafamilial relationships across
diverse social groups. Specifically, it examines whether support from
friends, siblings, and teachers protects against the academic risk of emo-
tionally distant relationships with parents and whether this risk-protection
interaction differs by developmental stage, race/ethnicity, and gender.
Essentially, this study centers on the linkage between the parent-ado-
lescent relationship and academic adjustment. This linkage has long been
a research focus, but it can be studied in a more nuanced way. We view
it here within the developmental ecology of adolescence, the larger so-
cial structure, and the intersection of the two. The motivation to pursue
this topic in this way is gleaned from life course theory (Elder, 1998;
Settersten, 1999, which is usually applied to more temporally oriented
questions but is relevant to studies within one stage of life. This paradigm
highlights the importance of interconnected relationships with significant
others (linked lives), timing, and macro-structural context in organizing
and shaping developmental trajectories. Drawing on this paradigm, rela-
tionships that occur within major settings (e.g., the family, school, peer
group) overlap to influence adolescent adjustment, but the nature of this
overlap differs by when it occurs in life and cannot be divorced from the
larger social structure (e.g., gender and race/ethnicity).
This study is also structured by a risk-protection framework borrowed
from epidemiological research. Risk refers to individual or social factors
that are associated with a greater likelihood of poor developmental out-
comes, whereas protective factors decrease the association between risk
factor and outcome (Garmezy & Masten, 1986). In this study, the poten-
tial risk factor is emotionally distant parent-adolescent relationships,
whereas support from friends, siblings, and teachers serve as potential
protective factors that may decrease the negative academic impact of the
family risk factor. To embed this in more substantive terms, we introduce
two concepts that will undergird our presentation. An arena of comfort is a
supportive interpersonal context that enhances the ability to cope with
challenges in other settings or, in other words, an interpersonal example of
a protective factor (Simmons & Blythe, 1987). The process by which pro-
tective factors buffer against risk factors is the heart of educational resil-
ience—success at school despite difficult circumstances. Bringing these
concepts together, resilient youth do well despite distant relationships
with parents, possibly because of nonparental arenas of comfort.
The empirical analyses derived from these conceptual frameworks ex-
tend the work of Call and Mortimer (2001), who explored arenas of com-
Crosnoe, Elder / FAMILY DYNAMICS 573
fort for several social psychological outcomes among Midwestern youth.

Here, we apply this framework explicitly to the educational realm, exam-
ine how these processes play out across developmental stages, and locate
these processes within the contexts of race/ethnicity and gender. Further-
more, we conduct this research with a nationally representative sample of
American youth—the ongoing National Longitudinal Study of Adoles-
cent Health.
In the following sections, we discuss the importance of social ties for
adolescent academic outcomes, paying attention to age, race/ethnic, and
gender differences. After describing our sample and methods, we present
results from a series of structural models on the overlapping and socially
embedded nature of adolescent relationships.
PARENTS, ADOLESCENTS,
AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES
At the center of this study is the linkage between adolescent academic

adjustment and emotional support from parents. In other words, we do not
delve into parents instrumental support or educational involvement but in-
stead explore the academic implications of the affective quality of the par-
ent-adolescent relationship. Such an approach is drawn from life course
theory, which emphasizes how behavioral trajectories are intertwined
with relationship trajectories and recognizes the connections among vari-
ous social contexts.
The linkage between emotional support from parents and adolescent
academic performance is well-established. Warm and supportive relation-
ships have been found to promote academic achievement and positive atti-
tudes about education, whereas more distant or conflictual relationships
can be tremendous stressors that disrupt proper functioning in school
(Amato & Gilbreth, 1999; Call & Mortimer, 2001; Demo & Acock, 1996;
Grotevant, 1998). Thus, in epidemiological terms, parent-adolescent
emotional distance is an academic risk factor, its presence increasing the
probability of academic problems.
Sociological interpretations of the academic implications of parent-
adolescent dynamics often draw on the concept of social capital, asserting
that close ties improve academic prospects by facilitating the transmission
of important resources from adult to child in the form of instrumental
assistance or pro-school attitudes, whereas distant ties block this trans-
mission. Certainly, evidence supports this explanation (Coleman, 1988;
Furstenberg, Cook, Eccles, Elder, & Sameroff, 1999). Although evidence
does support this scenario, a more social psychological explanation better

matches our focus on affective bonds and emotional support. Close rela-
tionships with parents serve as the secure foundation for adolescents’nav-
igation of the external world. With such support, young people have more
security and confidence to meet challenges in other domains—negative
peer influences, school changes, academic pressures—and to success-
fully complete the developmental tasks of adolescence—identity forma-
tion, learning of responsibility, formulation of mature relationships
(Dornbusch 1989). Without this secure base, however, adolescents are
less able to cope with the rapid changes of their lives and adapt to new
roles and environments (Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider, 2000; Simmons
& Blythe, 1987).
Crucial to the life course approach is the appreciation of issues of tim-
ing and macro-context, which suggest a potential variability in the family
dynamics just described. For example, the influence of parents on adoles-
cent behavior declines with age, as young people attempt to establish au-
tonomy from the family (Crosnoe, 2000). Some evidence suggests that
African American and Hispanic American youth benefit more academi-
cally from supportive parenting, whereas Asian American adolescents are
more immune to harsh parenting (Deater-Deckhard, Dodge, Bates, &
Pettit, 1996; Steinberg, Dornbusch, & Brown, 1992). Finally, girls tend to
have a greater emotional stake in their relationships with parents and, con-
sequently, seem more reactive to parenting in positive and negative ways
(Call & Mortimer, 2001; Windle, 1992). Thus, the parent-adolescent
relationship should be examined in relation to timing and context.
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS AS
ARENAS OF COMFORT
Prior research suggests that a lack of emotional support from parents

hampers adolescent academic functioning. This risk factor is the given in
this study. Our main objective is to examine the arenas of comfort that
counterbalance this risk. To do so, we look at relationships from three pri-
mary settings of adolescent life: the peer group, family, and school. Can
relationships in these settings mitigate the potential consequences of
problems in the parent-adolescent relationship?
This focus derives from the life course principle that young people de-
velop within a system of social ties. When these ties are generally positive,
they amplify social redundancy, creating a secure, interconnected base of
support for adolescents to live their lives and face new experiences in mul-
tiple domains. When supportive relationships mitigate the effects of un-

healthy relationships, such overlap is developmentally functional in that
the secure base necessary for successful development is not undermined
by problems in any one domain (Elder & Conger, 2000; Rutter, 1985). In
the case of this study, adolescents who grow up in the midst of family dis-
cord might not be as academically successful as those from more func-
tional families, but they will do better than expected if their lives are built
on other sources of support. We define success of this kind in difficult
circumstances as educational resilience—nonparental arenas of comfort
protecting against the academic risk of problematic relationships with
parents.
What interpersonal contexts promote educational resilience? We focus
on relationships with friends, siblings, and teachers as potential arenas of
comfort. All three loom large in the social worlds of adolescents, and
emotional support from all three has been found to be associated with aca-
demic behavior (Buhrmester, 1992; Crosnoe, 2000; Sanders & Jordan,
2000). Again, the focus of this study is not on the main effects of these re-
lationships on academic performance but instead on how they interact
with parent-adolescent relationships to influence academic outcomes.
Past research has rarely taken such an approach, and so we have to base
much of our argument on related topics.
Friendships become more prominent during adolescence, often sup-
planting parents as significant others (Crosnoe, 2000). Because of this,
support from friends may buffer against a lack of parental support. Indeed,
evidence suggests that friendships help young people cope with life
stressors, such as divorce (Hetherington, 1989; Windle, 1992). On the
other hand, Call and Mortimer (2001) reported that in their special sam-
ple, support from friends did not moderate the impact of family problems
on grades.
Sibling relationships are embedded in the same family system as par-
ent-adolescent relationships and may be important for resilience (defined
in terms of problems with parents). In general, we know less about sib-
lings than other relationships. Although young people do not automati-
cally turn to siblings in the absence of parental support (Dunn, 1992),
those who rely on siblings during problematic family situations (e.g., di-
vorce) are better adjusted (Hetherington, 1998; Jenkins & Smith, 1991).
This dynamic could generalize to other family problems and to academic
outcomes.
Teachers can play an important role in the academic lives of young
people (Muller, Katz, & Dance, 1999). Because of their power to guide,
support, and set standards and expectations, teachers may promote educa-
tional resilience in the face of problems between parents and adolescents.

Muller (2001) found that support from teachers can protect against the ac-
ademic problems associated with nonemotional family disadvantages,
whereas Call and Mortimer (2001) found that such support can buffer
against problems with parents in nonacademic ways. Such research sug-
gests that close relationships with teachers may, to some extent, replace
support that is missing at home.
Thus, past research suggests that emotionally supportive relationships
with friends, siblings, and teachers may promote educational resilience by
serving as arenas of comfort. This phenomena, however, requires a more
systematic treatment, such as recognizing that it may be highly context
specific. For this reason, we draw on the life course principles of timing
and macro-context and examine whether this phenomenon varies by de-
velopmental stage, race/ethnicity, and gender.
If we know little about how personal relationships moderate family-
related academic risks, then we know next to nothing about how such
moderation differs by these three factors (or any other). Past research on
related topics does little to guide us. For example, older adolescents tend
to be more oriented to nonparental relationships (Crosnoe, 2000). This
suggests that they have greater access to sources of emotional support,
which increases the protective potential of nonparental relationships. At
the same time, this suggests that older adolescents may be less affected by
problems with parents, which reduces academic risk and therefore lessens
the need for protection.
A similar confusion surrounds race/ethnicity and gender. White ado-
lescents tend to have the most advantages (e.g., resources, status) that pro-
mote school success, so that the power of any one domain to derail or
enhance their educational trajectories is likely to be lower than for adoles-
cents from more disadvantaged groups. Yet past studies have found that
the ability of nonparental relationships to promote academic success var-
ies sharply, and somewhat inconsistently, across minority groups com-
pared to Whites (Ainsworth-Darnell & Downey, 1998; Steinberg et al.,
1992). Turning to gender, girls tend to need greater emotional support to
do well in school, but they also have closer relationships across the board
(Call & Mortimer, 2001; Kuttler, La Greca, & Prinstein, 1999). This sug-
gests that the negative impact of distant parent-adolescent relationships
may be greater for girls but that girls may be more likely than boys to draw
support from other sources that counterbalances this negative impact.
Because of the alternative expectations that arise from different read-
ings of past research relevant to this topic, we treat our additional analyses
as exploratory. Rather than looking at main effects of social relationships
on academic success within different groups, we study whether the inter-

action of parental and nonparental relationships differs by developmental
stage, race/ethnicity, and gender.
FAMILY RISK, ARENAS OF

COMFORT, AND EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE
To summarize, this study has two main objectives, both of which are
related to the proximate developmental settings of adolescence, the
macro-structural context in which these settings exist, and the linkage be-
tween these two levels. First, we seek to determine whether emotionally
supportive relationships with friends, siblings, and teachers serve as are-
nas of comfort that promote educational resilience in problematic family
environments. Second, we explore whether this overlap of parental and
nonparental relationships is more or less protective in certain population
subgroups.
METHOD
SAMPLE
This research uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Ado-
lescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative study of adoles-
cents in Grades 7 through 12. A sample of schools was selected from a list
of American high schools provided by the Quality Education Database.
To ensure diversity, sampling was stratified by region, urbanicity, school
sector, racial composition, and school size. Each high school in the sample
was matched to one of its feeder schools, with the probability of the feeder
school being selected proportional to its contribution to the high school.
More than 70% of the selected schools agreed to participate, with replace-
ments selected from each community. This multistage design resulted in a
final sample of 132 schools in 80 communities.
All students in this population completed the In-School questionnaire
in the 1994-1995 school year. Of these, a subgroup of students, selected
evenly across high school/feeder school pairs, was selected to participate
in two waves of in-home interviews in 1995 and 1996. A total of 14,736
adolescents participated in both in-home interviews. Our study sample
consists of Add Health adolescents who meet four requirements: They
participated in both waves of in-home interviews, had one parent inter-
TABLE 1
Comparative Statistics for Study Sample
Versus All Add Health Adolescents in Wave 1
Mean (Standard Deviation)
Study Sample Wave 1 Adolescents
Female .51 (.50) .51 (.50)

a
Age 16.01 (1.49) 16.16 (1.72)
a
Intact family .53 (.50) .50 (.50)
a
White .56 (.50) .50 (.50)
a
Grade point average 2.78 (.77) 2.75 (.77)
n 11,788 20,745
a. t tests indicate that two means differ significantly across groups (t > 1.96, p < .05).
viewed (parent data set, collected at Wave 1), are members of the four
main ethnic groups (White, African American, Hispanic American, Asian
American), and were in Grades 7 through 11 in Wave 1 (to ensure that all
youth in the panel would be in school at Wave 2).
These criteria result in a study sample of 11,788 youth. Sample charac-
teristics are presented in Table 1. A majority of the sample is White (56%)
and female (51%). Sample adolescents are, on average, about 15 and 16
years old and have a B+ grade point average. Table 1 also includes infor-
mation on the same factors for the full Wave 1 sample. Comparisons be-
tween the two groups reveal some bias due to attrition and selection crite-
ria. Compared to the Wave 1 adolescents, the sample adolescents are
younger (recall that we excluded all Wave 1 seniors), better students, and
come from more advantaged backgrounds.
MEASURES
The dependent variable is drawn from the Wave 2 in-home question-

naire, whereas all other measures are based on items in the Wave 1 in-
home and parent questionnaires.
Off-track academic behavior. The scale for our dependent variable

consists of five items: whether the student has repeated the last grade in
school (1 = yes), whether the student has had trouble in the past school
year getting homework done (0 = never to 4 = everyday), the sum of
whether the student has been expelled or suspended from school in the
past school year (1 = yes for each), whether the student has skipped school
TABLE 2
Univariate Statistics for Off-Track Academic Behavior Measure
Frequency (%) Mean (Standard Deviation)
Held back in school

No 95.0
Yes 5.0
Suspended/expelled from school
Neither 85.1
Either 10.6
Both 1.3
Skipped classes
No 66.8
Yes 33.2
Had trouble with homework
Never 30.0
Just a few times 41.7
About once/week 16.3
Almost everyday 8.3
Everyday 3.7
Low grade point average 2.20 (.76)
in the past year, and the reverse-coding of the student’s grade point aver-
age (the average of self-reported grades in English, math, social studies,
and science in the past year, 1 = F/D and 4 = A). The correlations among
these items range from .10 (p < .001) to .28 (p < .001). The five items are
standardized and summed to create the scale (M = –.16, SD = 2.63, α =
.65). Statistics for each item in this measure are presented in Table 2.
We constructed this scale to move beyond mere measures of achieve-
ment (e.g., school grades) and better gauge the social psychological expe-
rience of schooling. Low scores on this scale group together a wide variety
of students, including high achievers and those who are just getting by.
The high end, however, is more meaningful, identifying the group of stu-
dents whose educational careers are in clear trouble.
Emotional distance between parent and adolescent. Our primary inde-

pendent variable consists of five composite measures (all coded so that
higher values represent more problematic relationships). One, bonding
with adolescent, is based on parent report, whereas four, bonding to
mother and father, communication with parents, activities with parents,
and general family cohesion, are based on adolescent report. See Appen-
dix A for a complete description of the construction of each of these five
composites. The composites are positively correlated (p < .001), and with
the exception of bonding to adolescent with cohesion, these correlations
are moderate to strong. After standardizing all five measures, we take their
mean for the final scale (M = –.04, SD = .52, α = .66).
Based on the work of Furstenberg et al. (1999), we combine several
composites together in this scale in order to tap, more broadly, the overall
emotional tone of the parent-adolescent relationship. Some parent-ado-
lescent relationships may be high on some factors and low on others, so
that the middle values on this scale may be somewhat ambiguous. Yet the
high and low ends of the scale represent clear extremes. Theoretically, this
measure draws on three well-established dimensions of parenting: affec-
tive ties, shared activities, and security (Coleman, 1988; Hetherington,
1989). Statistically, it combines adolescent and parent reports, which in-
creases construct validity and reduces shared method variance (Conger,
Reuter, & Conger, 1994).
Friendship. Three components of friendship are considered in this

study. Each adolescent was asked a battery of questions about specific
friends, a maximum of five female and five male friends. Involvement is
the sum of four items (1 = yes, 0 = no): whether, in the past week, the ado-
lescent had gone to the friend’s house, hung out somewhere with the
friend, and talked on the telephone with the friend, and whether the ado-
lescent had spent time with the friend during the past weekend (M = 2.10,
SD = 1.07, α = .62). Support is a single item: whether, in the past week, the
adolescent talked to the friend about a problem (M = .49, SD = .41).
For each item, scores are averaged across all listed friends. Therefore,
if only one friend is named, then the support score for that friend serves as
friends support, but if 10 friends are named, then the average of support
across the friends serves as friends’ support. The impact of friendship
might differ depending on the number of friends that an adolescent has, or
alternatively, there might be a critical threshold, where having one friend
is the crucial distinction. To account for this, we code as zero on involve-
ment and support all respondents who name no friends and include a third
friendship measure, the number of friends, which is the count of the
friends listed by the respondent (M = 3.05, SD = 2.59). These three com-
ponents reflect Hartup’s (1993) call for studying both the qualities and
quantity of friendships.
Sibling relationships. Adolescents were also asked questions about

specific siblings (maximum = 7). Sibling support refers to emotional
closeness and is based on a single item: how often the adolescent feels
love for the specific sibling. Responses, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very
often), are averaged across siblings (M = 1.17, SD = 1.88). Slightly less
than half of the sample has no siblings. To avoid excluding these adoles-
cents, we code them as zero on support and include a measure for presence
of siblings (1 = yes, 0 = no), based on the count of siblings listed by the re-
spondent. This measure is included only as a statistical control. Its inclu-
sion converts the sibling support variable into an interaction term, mea-
suring support if siblings are present.
Teacher relationships. This scale consists of three items: the extent to

which the adolescent has trouble getting along with teachers, believes that
their teachers treat students fairly, and feels that teachers care about him or
her. Responses to each item range from 1 to 5: almost every day to never
for the first item, strongly disagree to strongly agree for the second, and
never to very much for the third. The average of the three serves as the
composite measure (M = 3.72, SD = .76, α = .68). Like several past stud-
ies, this measure does not refer to relationships with specific teachers but
instead taps the adolescent’s general feelings about the teachers in his or
her school (Sanders & Jordan, 2000; Steinberg, Lamborn, Dornbusch, &
Darling, 1992).
Sociodemographic controls. Seven variables serve as controls: gender,

age, parent education, race/ethnicity, parents educational expectations,
adolescents’ educational expectations, and prior off-track behavior. See
Appendix B for descriptive information on these control variables.
PLAN OF ANALYSIS
For hypothesis testing, we estimated a series of structural models

(without latent constructs) in Amos 4.0. We used this package because it
allowed us to account for measurement error, estimate missing data
(through full information maximum likelihood), and compare parameters
across groups (Arbuckle & Wothke, 1999). All models are fully saturated
and can be interpreted like standard regressions.
In our basic modeling plan, we first included Wave 1 parent-adolescent
distance (along with the controls) as a predictor of Wave 2 off-track be-
havior. Next, we added Wave1 friend, sibling, and teacher measures as
predictors. Finally, we included interaction terms for parent-adolescent
distance and all nonparental relationships. If an interaction term is signifi-
cant (and in the proper direction), then that relationship can be viewed as
TABLE 3
Correlations Among Relationships and Academic Behavior
1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Parent-adolescent distance
2. Number of friends .02
3. Friend involvement .01 –.14*
4. Friend support .02* –.11* .32*
5. Sibling support –.03* .05* –.00 .00
6. Teacher-bonding –.32* –.02* –.09* –.09* .03*
7. Off-track behavior .23* .04* .09* .01 .01 –.31*
*Correlations significant at p < .05.
an arena of comfort (Garmezy & Masten, 1986; Simmons & Blythe,

1987).
The second main question of this study was whether these processes
differ by developmental stage (defined by school level), race/ethnicity,
and gender. We do this with group modeling (Arbuckle & Wothke, 1999).
For example, we first estimated a model in which the protective power of
teacher bonding (the interaction of bonding with parenting) is freely esti-
mated for boys and girls. In the next step, we constrained this effect to be
equal across genders. If the change in χ2/df between these steps was statis-
tically significant, then we could conclude that this association differs
across the two groups.
RESULTS
RELATIONSHIPS FROM VARIOUS

ECOLOGICAL SETTINGS AND ACADEMIC BEHAVIOR
To begin, we offer a preliminary look at the overlap of relationships in

the ecology of adolescent development. Table 3 presents the correla-
tions among the important relationship measures and off-track academic
behavior.
Parent-adolescent emotional distance is significantly correlated with
other relationships: positively with support from friends and negatively
with support from siblings and teachers. It is also positively correlated
with off-track behavior, meaning that problems at home coincide with ac-
ademic problems. Two other patterns in these data are important. Friend-
ship elements seem to go along with problems at home and school.

Teacher bonding has the most consistent pattern, negatively correlated
with all other relationships (except support from siblings) and with off-
track academic behavior.
OVERLAPPING RELATIONSHIPS AND

EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE
Having given a glimpse of the key relationships that constitute adoles-

cent life, we now turn to the main objective of this study: to explore rela-
tionship overlap by examining whether supportive nonparental relation-
ships can serve as arenas of comfort. Table 4 presents results from a series
of structural models relevant to this question.
Of course, this objective rests on the core idea that emotional distance
in the parent-adolescent relationship is an academic risk factor. Our analy-
ses indicate that it is (β = .08, p < .001 in Model 1). The strength of this
association is second in magnitude only to initial off-track behavior, but
some caution is needed when interpreting the size of the effect. One stan-
dard deviation increase in parent-adolescent distance is associated with an
increase in off-track behavior of only 3% of a standard deviation. Given
the severity of the behaviors cataloged in this academic scale, any increase
is problematic, but we stress that these effects are by no means large.
Inclusion of relationships from other ecological settings reduces this
risk of parent-adolescent distance even more (β = .06, p < .001 in Model
2), although it remains statistically significant. Of the potential arenas of
comfort, teacher bonding has the strongest impact on off-track behavior
(β = –10, p < .001; one standard deviation increase in bonding associated
with 4% of a standard deviation decrease in off-track behavior). Whereas
teacher bonding reduces off-track behavior, friendship-related factors all
increase academic problems. Sibling support has no relation to academic
behavior.
Our main focus is on conditional effects (see Model 3) or interactions
among relationships. Significant and negative interactions would indi-
cate that nonparental relationships are arenas of comfort that provide ref-
uge from problems at home (in other words, they promote educational
resilience).
Only one interaction term is significant, but interestingly, it is positive
in sign rather than negative. For this interaction between parent-adolescent
distance and teacher bonding, we can sum the main effect of parent-
adolescent distance on off-track behavior with the interactive effect of
parent-adolescent distance and teacher-bonding (.30 + .18 = .48, b coeffi-
TABLE 4
Results From Regressions Predicting
Off-Track Academic Behavior
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
b β b β b β
Individual characteristics
Female –.28*** –.05 –.34*** –.06 –.06 –.34***
(.04) (.04) (.04)
Age –.11*** –.05 –.12*** –.07 –.12*** –.07
(.01) (.02) .02
Parent education –.03*** –.02 –.04*** –.04 –.04*** –.04
(.01) (.01) (.01)
African American .19*** .03 .23*** .04 .23*** .04
(.06) (.05) (.05)
Hispanic American .21*** .03 .27*** .04 .27*** .04
(.09) (.09) (.09)
Asian American .18* .01 .26*** .02 .25*** .02
(.09) (.09) (.09)
Parents educational –.02 –.00 –.03 –.01 –.03–.01
expectations (.03) (.03) (.03)
Adolescents educational –.14*** –.05 –.13*** –.05 –.13*** –.05
expectations (.02) (.02) (.02)
Prior off-track behavior .43*** .49 .40*** .45 .40*** .45
(.01) (.01) (.01)
Relationships
Parent-adolescent distance .42*** .08 .31*** .06 .30*** .06
(.04) (.04) (.11)
Number of friends .03*** .03 .03*** .03
(.01) (.01)
Friend involvement .10*** .04 .10*** .04
(.02) (.02)
Friend support .18*** .03 .19*** .03
(.06) (.06)
Presence of siblings .23 .04 .24 .04
(.15) (.16)
Sibling support –.02 –.01 –.02 –.01
(.04) (.04)
Teacher bonding –.34*** –.10 –.35*** –.10
(.03) (.03)
Interaction terms
Number of friends –.01 –.01
(.02)
Friend involvement .00 .01
(.04)
(continued)
TABLE 4 (continued)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

b β b β b β
Friend support .08 .01

(.11)
Presence of siblings .04 .01
(.27)
Sibling support –.04 –.01
(.07)
Teacher bonding .18*** .03
(.05)
2
R .30 .33 .33
NOTE: Model 1 is baseline model. Model 2 includes main effects for relationship variables.
Model 3 includes interaction terms for all relationship variables (with parent-adolescent dis-
tance). b coefficients are unstandardized (with standard errors in parentheses), and β coeffi-
cients are standardized.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
cients used rather than β) (see Jessor, Van Den Bos, Vanderryn, Costa, &
Turbin, 1995). For the sake of interpretation, this sum can stand as the co-
efficient for the association between parent-adolescent distance and off-
track behavior for adolescents high in teacher bonding (e.g., for this
group, one unit increase in parent-adolescent distance is associated with
18% of a standard deviation increase in off-track behavior). In other
words, a supportive relationship with a teacher does not serve as an arena
of comfort but instead appears to exacerbate risk in the family setting.
Thus, emotional distance from parents is a significant academic risk
factor for adolescents. This effect is small in magnitude, although it still
exceeds the effects of family background, race/ethnicity, and academic at-
titudes. Nonparental relationships can influence academic behavior, in
positive and negative ways, but do not protect against this parent-related
risk. Life course theory suggests an extension of these analyses. This theo-
retical paradigm guides research on individual adjustment toward empha-
sizing timing and macro-context. In this vein, we now turn to the question
of whether patterns of interactions among parental and nonparental rela-
tionships differ by developmental stage (defined by school level), race/
ethnicity, and gender.
EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE AND SCHOOL LEVEL
The developmental nature of adolescent relationships and academic

adjustment requires that we take into account issues of timing. The role of
various relationships, and the interactions among these roles, may differ
as adolescents move through this stage of life. A true life course study
would trace these patterns across time, a procedure that is not possible
with the current data. Instead, we attempt to capture the spirit of this life
course principle in our study of educational resilience by breaking down
our basic model for high school and middle school students.
The top portion of Table 5 presents descriptive statistics, by school
level, for the key variables in the model. High school students have a
higher mean level of parent-adolescent distance than do middle school
students, and they also seem to be more peer oriented than their middle
school counterparts. The bottom portion of Table 5 presents results from
group modeling of our basic model by school level. For the most part, the
two groups are quite similar. Initially, parent-adolescent distance was a
significant academic risk factor for both, although this risk becomes
nonsignificant for middle school students once other factors are taken into
account. Turning to conditional effects, the pattern seen for high school
students replicates the pattern for the full sample, but the finding from the
full sample on teacher bonding (the interaction suggesting that teacher
bonding strengthens the association between parent-adolescent distance
and off-track behavior) does not hold for the middle school students.
Thus, for the most part, the overlap between parental and nonparental
relationships, when it does occur, does not seem to promote educational
resilience at either stage. Timing is important, however, for the unex-
pected overlap, discussed above, between relationships with parents and
teachers, which occurs only in later adolescence.
EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE
AND ADOLESCENT RACE/ETHNICITY
Macro-contexts are important to understanding the role of the inter-

change between parent-related risk and nonparental arenas of comfort.
According to life course theory, the relation between individual develop-
ment and linked lives is embedded in macro-contexts. The social struc-
tural elements of race/ethnicity and gender are representative of macro-
contexts in American society. Again, these data are not equipped to
contextualize developmental or relationship trajectories within race/
ethnicity or gender, but they do allow the exploration of how overlap in
TABLE 5
Results From Regressions Predicting
Off-Track Academic Behavior, by School Level
High School (n = 8,532) Middle School (n = 3,045)
Mean Mean
Descriptive statistics
Off-track behavior –.11a –.37b
Parent-adolescent distance –.01a .13b
Number of friends 3.19a 2.55b
Friend involvement 2.17a 1.91b
Friend support .52a .41 b
Sibling support 1.16 1.10
Teacher bonding 3.71 3.74
Group Modeling b β b β
Main effects
Parent-adolescent distance .24*** (.11) .05 .33 (.22) .06
Number of friends .02* (.01) .03 .03 (.02) .06
Friend involvement .05* (.02) .03 .16*** (.04) .03
Friend support .15* (.17) .02 .08 (.11) .01
Presence of siblings .18 (.19) .01 .53 (.31) .09
Sibling support –.02 (.05) –.03 –.08 (.05) –.06
Teacher bonding –.38*** (.05) –.11 –.37*** (.06) –.11
Interaction terms
Number of friends –.01 (.02) –.00 –.04 (.04) –.02
Friend involvement –.00 (.04) –.00 .03 (.08) .01
Friend support .17 (.12) .01 –.16 (.21) –.01
Presence of siblings .14 (.32) .02 –.38 (.55) .04
Sibling support –.08 (.08) –.03 .14 (.14) .05
Teacher bonding .22***a (.06) .04 .01b (.09) .00
2
R .33 .34
NOTE: Controlling for gender, age, parent education, race/ethnicity, parents educational ex-
pectations, adolescents educational expectations, and prior off-track behavior. b coefficients
are unstandardized (with standard errors in parentheses), and β coefficients are standardized.
Coefficients with different subscripts differ significantly (p < .05) across school level, ac-
cording to one-way ANOVA for means an ∆χ2/df for interactions.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
developmental settings varies by structural location. To pursue this, we

perform race/ethnic-specific analyses of our main model (see Table 6).
The top portion of Table 6 contains mean differences by race/ethnicity.
As expected, White and Asian American youth are less likely to be off
track in school than are African American and Hispanic American youth.
588
TABLE 6
Descriptive Statistics and Selected Results From Group Modeling of Off-Track Behavior, by Race/Ethnicity
African Hispanic Asian
White American American American
(n = 6,595) (n = 2,598) (n = 1,954) (n = 641)
Descriptive Statistic Mean Mean Mean Mean
Off-track behavior –.42c –.15b .37a –.40c

Parent-adolescent distance –.04c –.07c –.01ab .01a
Number of friends 3.18b 2.63c 3.00b 3.51c
Friend involvement 2.15a 2.02b 2.05b 1.94c
Friend support .50 .48 .49 .48a
Sibling support 1.20ab 1.16b 1.07c 1.24a
Teacher bonding 3.73b 3.65c 3.73b 3.88a
Group Modeling b β b β b β b β
Main effects
Parent-adolescent distance .31*** (.14) .06 .09 (.26) .02 .49* (.24) .10 .91 (.51) .17
Number of friends .03* (.01) .03 .05* (.02) .04 .02* (.02) .02 .02 (.03) .02
Friend involvement .09* (.03) .04 .11* (.05) .04 .14** (.05) .06 .13 (.09) .05
Friend support .22* (.07) .03 .19 (.12) .03 –.03 (.15) –.00 .30 (.26) .02
Presence of siblings –.05 (.19) –.01 1.74*** (.44) .29 .07 (.45) .01 .47 (.71) .08
Sibling support .04 (.05) .03 –.33*** (.11) –.24 .01 (.11) .01 –.13 (.17) –.09
Teacher bonding –.34*** (.04) –.10 –.35*** (.06) –.10 –.41*** (.08) –.12 –.12 (.15) –.03
Interaction terms
Number of friends –.00 (.02) –.00 –.04 (.04) –.02 –.02 (.04) –.01 –.12 (.06) –.06
Friend involvement –.03b (.05) –.01 .20*a (.16) .07 –.02b (.10) –.01 –.47*c (.15) –.16
Friend support .09b (.13) .01 –.48c (.24) –.04 .62*a (.27) –.05 .76a (.48) .05
Presence of siblings .21 (.33) .02 –.66 (.72) –.06 –.24 (.68) –.03 1.71 (1.30) .17
Sibling support –.11 (.08) –.04 .02 (.17) .07 –.01 (.16) –.00 –.36 (.33) –.12
Teacher-bonding .17**b (.06) .03 .24*b (.11) .04 .20b (.13) .03 –.54*a (.24) –.07
2
R .35 .28 .28 .36
NOTE: Controlling for gender, age, parent education, parents educational expectations, adolescents educational expectations, and prior off-track behavior. b
coefficients are unstandardized (with standard errors in parentheses), and β coefficients are standardized. Coefficients with different subscripts differ signifi-
cantly (p < .05) across ethnicities, according to one-way ANOVA for means an ∆β2/df for interactions.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
589
Asian American and Hispanic American youth tend to be more distant

from parents, with African American youth having the least distant re-
lationships. Other personal relationships show no clear pattern of race/
ethnic differences. Asian American adolescents have the most friends and
receive the most support from teachers. Whites spend the most time with
friends. African American adolescents lag behind the others in student-
teacher relationships. Hispanic American youth lag behind the others in
support from siblings.
Does the ability of nonparental relationships to serve as arenas of com-
fort differ by race/ethnicity? The bottom portion of Table 6 contains re-
sults from group models relevant to this question. Results for Whites rep-
licate those of the full sample; parent-adolescent distance is a slight risk
factor, no nonparental relationship reduces this risk, and teacher bonding
appears to increase this risk.
Results from three minority groups, however, offer some intriguing
differences. Before adding the interaction terms, parent-adolescent dis-
tance was a significant academic risk factor for all groups, although this
risk became nonsignificant in subsequent steps of analysis. Friendships
have a dualistic interaction with parental distance among African Ameri-
can adolescents. The negative interaction term for friends support in this
group (b = –.48, p < .05, 1 unit increase in support associated with a 18%
standard deviation decrease in off-track behavior) suggests that emotion-
ally supportive friendships promote educational resilience. On the other
hand, the positive interaction for involvement in this group (b = .20, p <
.05, 7% standard deviation increase in off-track behavior) suggests that
such involvement is associated with the academic influence of parent-
adolescent distance being even more problematic.
Hispanic American youth also have a significant interaction between
support from friends and parent-adolescent distance, but unlike African
American youth, it is positive in sign and larger in magnitude (b = .62, p <
.05, 24% standard deviation increase in off-track behavior for every one
unit increase in support). Like involvement with friends for African
American youth and teacher bonding for African American and White
youth, support from friends does not counterbalance the parent-related
risk but instead appears to strengthen this risk. For Asian American youth,
we see a significant interaction term for teacher bonding (b = –.54, p < .05,
20% standard deviation decrease in off-track behavior) and involvement
with friends (b = –.47, p < .05, 17% standard deviation decrease in off-
track behavior). Unlike all other groups, these interactions, which are
somewhat moderate in size, suggest that support from nonparental adults
and friends can be arenas of comfort when emotional support is lacking at

home.
Of course, issues of timing, as well as linked lives, may be contex-
tualized within the larger social structure, and so we also performed by-
race/ethnic analyses within school levels. The results of these analyses are
far too voluminous to present in tabular form, but we can summarize the
general pattern. Analyses for high school students show basically the
same pattern of results as seen in Table 6. Analyses of middle school stu-
dents, however, show some differences.
Among White youth in middle school, no nonparental relationships
interacted with parent-adolescent distance in a positive or negative way,
unlike White high school students, for whom we saw an interaction for
teacher bonding. For African American adolescents in middle school, the
protective role of friends’ support is the same as for their counterparts in
high school, but the problematic role of involvement with friends and
teacher bonding, seen among older students, does not occur. In addition,
the interaction of friends’ support and parent-adolescent distance for His-
panic American students, seen in the full model, only held in high school.
Unfortunately, we could not break up Asian American youth by school
level, due to a lack of statistical power.
To summarize, nonparental relationships can protect against parent-
related risk, but this protection depends, to some extent, on timing, the
macro-context of race/ethnicity, and the interaction between relation-
ships. For African American youth, friends’ support protects against
problems at home. For Asian American youth only, close relationships
with teachers are protective. At the same time, in some circumstances,
nonparental relationships are associated with parent-adolescent distance
being an even stronger risk factor, as in the case of friendship involvement
among older African American youth, teacher bonding among older
White and African American youth, and friends’ support among older
Hispanic American youth.
EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE AND

ADOLESCENT GENDER
A second element representative of the larger social structure, gender,

could also be an important macro-context for the interactions between
parental risk and nonparental protection. Consequently, we performed the
same sets of analyses for gender as for race/ethnicity. Table 7 contains the
results of these analyses. As expected, girls have fewer academic prob-
lems. Although boys and girls do not differ in emotional distance from
TABLE 7
Descriptive Statistics and Selected Results From Group Modeling
of Off-Track Behavior, by Gender
Boys (n = 5,767) Girls (n = 6,021)
Descriptive Statistics Mean Mean
Off-track behavior .23a –.54b

Parent-adolescent distance –.04 –.03
Number of friends 3.05 3.04
Friend involvement 2.12a 2.07b
Friend support .37b .61a
Sibling support 1.12b 1.23a
Teacher-bonding 3.68b 3.76a
Group Modeling b β b β
Main effects
Parent-adolescent distance .25 (.17) .05 .40** (.15) .09
Number of friends .04* (.01) .03 .03* (.01) .03
Friend involvement .10*** (.03) .04 .11* (.03) .05
Friend support .16* (.08) .02 .21 (.05) .03
Presence of siblings .36 (.22) .06 .10 (.23) –.02
Sibling support –.05 (.05) –.03 .00 (.05) .01
Teacher-bonding –.31*** (.04) –.09 –.39*** (.04) –.12
Interactions terms
Number of friends .03 (.02) –.01 –.01 (.02) –.00
Friend involvement .01 (.06) .01 .01 (.05) .00
Friend support .38*a (.17) .03 –.21*b (.10) .03
Presence of siblings .25 (.38) .03 –.15 (.32) –.02
Sibling support –.11 (.10) –.03 .02 (.09) .01
Teacher bonding .28*a (.07) .05 .08b (.06) .02
2
R .32 .30
NOTE: Controlling for age, parent education, race/ethnicity, parents educational expecta-
tions, adolescents educational expectations, and prior off-track behavior. b coefficients are
unstandardized (with standard errors in parentheses), and β coefficients are standardized.
Coefficients with different subscripts indicate significant gender difference (p < .05), accord-
ing to one-way ANOVA for means an ∆χ2/df for interactions.
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
parents, girls receive more emotional support from friends, siblings, and
teachers.
Multivariate analyses show some interesting gender differences. Be-
fore adding the interactions, parent-adolescent distance was a risk factor
for both groups, but this risk became nonsignificant for girls in the final
model. Turning to interactions, support from friends offers the greatest

contrast between boys and girls. For girls, the negative interaction term for
support from friends (b = –.21, p < .05) suggests that this factor is an arena
of comfort that counterbalances parent-related risk, but the opposite is
true for boys (b = .30, p < .05). The problematic role of teacher bonding
discussed above only holds among boys (b = .28, p < .001), but teacher
bonding does not interact significantly with parent-adolescent distance
for girls.
Again, we reestimated this group model by school level. The results
just described for boys hold only in high school. Analysis of middle
school boys reveals no meso-system level interactions, protective or oth-
erwise. For girls, we see significant interactions in middle school only.
The protective interaction of friends’ support seen in the full sample also
occurs among younger girls, but a nonprotective interaction (e.g., increas-
ing risk) also occurs in this group for support from siblings.
To summarize, girls tend to enjoy more support than boys in non-
parental relationships, but in general, they do not necessarily derive
greater protection from these relationships. Only supportive friendships
serve as arenas of comfort for girls and only in middle school. No personal
relationship serves as an arena of comfort for boys at either school level,
and some actually operate in the opposite direction. Thus, boys and girls
are more alike than different in the overlap of relationships in their lives,
but their differences also depend on their developmental stage (if school
level is a proxy for stage).
CONCLUSION
A key developmental task of adolescence is to establish independence

from parents, but this independence should develop within a supportive
family environment. The absence of close relationships with parents is ac-
ademically problematic for adolescents, just as it is for children, whether
it results from the traits and behaviors of the parent, adolescent, or both.
Yet adolescents are also active participants in a larger social world that ex-
tends far beyond their families. This expanded interpersonal world pro-
vides potential relationships to counterbalance what is lacking at home
and to reinforce what is right at home. In applying the life course perspec-
tive to educational resilience, our goals have been to explore the nature of
these overlapping relationships during adolescence, to determine whether
such overlap promotes educational resilience, to examine the role of tim-
ing in conditioning the protective function of this overlap, and to con-
textualize this constellation within the larger structures of race/ethnicity

and gender.
Like past studies, we have shown that families can be a source of aca-
demic risk. Such risk involves more than socioeconomic disadvantage but
also a lack of emotional bonding between parents and adolescents. Young
people who lack support at home, in the form of an absence of emotional
ties and positive interactions, are more likely to get off track in school, in
the form of lower engagement, attachment, and achievement, even con-
trolling for differences in family background, parents’ and adolescents’
attitudes about education, and prior academic behavior. Thus, the aca-
demic importance of this home-school connection encompasses the very
foundation of the parent-adolescent relationship—its ability to serve as a
psychological base for the navigation of extrafamilial contexts. If this
base is undermined, then adolescents may lack the confidence and consci-
entiousness to meet challenges, pursue tough goals, and cope with adver-
sity. Lacking these abilities, they might be overwhelmed by school and, in
turn, disengage.
Unlike most studies, we have also explored how this parent-related risk
can be counterbalanced by alternate sources of emotional support. In gen-
eral, supportive nonparental relationships are related to academic out-
comes in positive (e.g., teacher bonding) and negative (e.g., friends) ways,
but they do not serve as arenas of comfort. These findings mirror those of
Call and Mortimer (2001) on school grades in a special sample of adoles-
cents. Yet this pattern of findings is not the final word. Unlike Call and
Mortimer, we worked with nationally representative data (AddHealth)
that allowed a more nuanced exploration of these processes that can better
capture the guiding principles of the life course perspective. For our pur-
poses, this nuance refers to variability in these processes that is related to
timing and macro-context. This nuance is at the heart of the phenomenon
of resilience during the adolescent stage of the life course.
In some cases, nonparental personal relationships are directly related
to academic outcomes. These associations do not mean that they are are-
nas of comfort, no matter what their positive effects may be. To be an
arena of comfort, a nonparental relationship has to reduce the impact of a
risk factor (parent-adolescent distance) on a developmental outcome (aca-
demic behavior). For the most part, nonparental relationships do not serve
as arenas of comfort, except in specific examples. These examples are
highly context specific—related to the intersection of timing, macro-con-
texts, and type of relationship. For example, the overlap among parental
and nonparental relationships is most functional for Asian American
youth and for girls in middle school.
Among Asian American youth, a supportive relationship with a teach-

ers can be an arena of comfort that mitigates the academic risk of an emo-
tionally distant relationship with parents. If, as Chao (1994) suggested,
the training components of Asian American parenting is crucial to the suc-
cess of Asian American youth, then the absence of such disciplined guid-
ance and management may derail academic trajectories among these
youth. Teachers are authority figures who can offer support and guidance
and are likely to stand in when parent-adolescent relationships break
down. In other words, due to the unique nature of parenting in this popula-
tion, teachers may be more capable of filling voids in the lives of Asian
American adolescents. In this group, involvement with friends also ap-
pears to be an arena of comfort for these adolescents. According to
Steinberg et al. (1992), peer involvement is often more positive, in aca-
demic terms, among Asian American youth because their peer groups are
often organized around academic activities. Such a phenomenon could
explain how just spending time with friends, not necessarily receiving
support from friends, could lessen the academic risk of problems at home.
For younger girls, a supportive friendship can also be an arena of com-
fort. Girls tend to be more oriented toward interpersonal relationships and
to develop stronger emotional ties with friends (Crosnoe, 2000). For these
reasons, they may be more likely to draw on one source of support when
another is lacking and to derive more emotional sustenance from relation-
ships with age mates in troubled times than boys. As they get older, the
functionality of this overlap may decrease as their vulnerability to prob-
lems at home decrease or as their peer relationships develop into romantic
relationships.
The main premise of this study was that parental and nonparental rela-
tionships would condition each other in a functional way. The phenomena
just described capture such functionality. Such functional overlap was
rare; overlap itself was more common. Instead, we often saw what ap-
peared to be dysfunctional overlap—potential protective factors related to
a stronger association between risk and the academic outcome. In other
words, we also saw examples of arenas of discomfort. We are hard-
pressed to explain such examples, but we can offer some speculation.
The most glaring example of this arena of discomfort phenomenon
centers on teacher bonding. Supportive relationships with teachers were
directly related to lower off-track behavior in practically every group
studied. We hypothesized that this source of support would also reduce
the association between the parent-related risk and academic behavior,
but it did not. In fact, teacher bonding appeared to increase this associa-
tion. How could this be? One possibility is that boys, especially older
boys, may receive greater attention and support from teachers because
they have a history of academic problems, which, of course, are probably
related to their family problems. Such support may translate into more
positive feelings about teachers. Our analyses cannot tease out the
bidirectional nature of relations in such a scenario. We should stress again
that although these interactive effects contradict our expectations, the
direct effects of teacher bonding are in line with past research.
Other unexpected findings (e.g., arenas of discomfort) concerns
friendship. Among African American youth, spending more time with
friends exacerbates the impact of parent-related risk, whereas having sup-
portive friendships assuages its impact. Heavy involvement with friends
may take away from school-related activities, whereas emotional support
from friends can bolster youth in facing challenges, including academic
ones. Such findings add to the expanding literature on the role of peers in
the educational experiences of African American youth, suggesting that
the emotional tone of peer dynamics needs to be considered along with
oft-studied peer values. For older Hispanic American youth, however,
support from friends is related to a greater association between risk and
outcome. Because Hispanic American families tend to be more oriented
toward family relationships, their drawing of support from friends might
reveal a degree of interpersonal conflict that is related to their overall
functioning.
Each ethnic group has its own patterns of relationship overlap, and
these patterns may be embedded in the different experiences of each
group and the meaning that they attach to the family and to academics. In
general, the risk of emotional distance between parents and adolescents is
more intractable among White and Hispanic American youth and more
malleable among African American and Asian American youth.
The lack of malleability of parent-related risk among Whites may be
related to their economic advantages. In this group, the disadvantage of
weak bonds with parents may lie more in the instrumental support that is
lost (e.g., parents’ investments and knowledge of education), which may
be harder to replace than psychological resources. For Hispanic American
youth, the reasons for this lack of protective overlap are probably quite
different. Hispanic American youth are often economically disadvan-
taged and, of all groups studied here, have the most academic difficulties.
They, like Asian American youth, also represent an incredibly heteroge-
neous population, including many immigrants with varying language
skills. The cultural divide that separates many Hispanic American youth
from other groups and from the American school system may be even
harder to bridge when they lack a firm foundation of instrumental and

emotional support at home.
The greater malleability of parent-related academic risk, in positive
and negative ways, among African American youth largely centers on
their peer relationships. Such patterns of arenas of comfort and discom-
fort suggest that that the importance of their relationships with parents lies
in social support—parents making adolescents feel secure and worthy in
the face of a school system that often alienates them. Friends may provide
alternate sources of support that mirror this ability of parents, even though
excessive peer orientation can be problematic. Among Asian Americans,
relationship overlap is more often functional than not. The unique orienta-
tion of Asian American youth, their friends, and parents to schooling and
school success may increase the likelihood of ecological interactions pro-
moting healthy outcomes.
Of course, the interactions presented here, although statistically signif-
icant, are small in magnitude. No interaction explained more than one
fourth of a standard deviation in the dependent variable of off-track be-
havior. The magnitude of these associations begs the question of whether
they are substantively meaningful. We contend that they are. These asso-
ciations arise from a conservative analytical framework that measures a
change in academic behavior—behavior that may very well be firmly en-
trenched by adolescence—over a 1-year period. Still, they are stronger
than the associations for more status-related factors, such as family back-
ground. We also argue that in light of the problematic nature of the behav-
iors cataloged in our dependent variable, any significant reduction in off-
track behavior is meaningful.
This study has built on past research, especially that of Call and
Mortimer (2001), by focusing on educational resilience (as opposed to
general resilience or resilience in other domains) and by drawing on a
larger, more representative sample that allows for intragroup analyses of
developmental stage, race/ethnicity, and gender. We encourage others to
build on this research in several ways.
One clear avenue for future research is to explore other dimensions of
personal relationships. Here, we examined the affective tone of parent-
adolescent relationships and the supportive features of three types of non-
parental relationships. Although we certainly did not measure the parent-
adolescent relationship simplistically, we could have also examined other
aspects of this relationship, such as parental hostility and parental non-
residency, or other aspects of the family system, such as conflict between
parents. Other nonparental relationships could also be important to resil-
ient pathways, such as those with mentors (e.g., ministers, coaches, Big
Brothers or Sisters), romantic partners, and grandparents. In looking at

such relationships, researchers should also take into account the interac-
tions between the qualities of the relationship and the characteristics and
behaviors of those involved in the relationship.
Furthermore, our treatment of resilience could certainly be expanded.
We examined resilience here by proxy, as the reduction of risk. Resilience
can be measured more directly by, for example, creating a category of
high-achieving youth from problematic family environments and then
predicting membership in this category. Moreover, the importance of
school level demonstrated here reinforces the benefits of longitudinal ap-
proaches to resilience. The nature of relationships change with age, as
does the role of young people in school. Modeling trajectories across mul-
tiple time points, especially in relation to social context, is the best way to
understand resilience.
Resilience during the early stages of the life course is a complex phe-
nomenon. With few exceptions, risk and protective factors are not univer-
sal but vary in relation to different domains, proximate ecological con-
texts, and social structural factors. This study only hints at the challenges
of studying how some young people cope with risk. The complexity of
resilience, as captured here, illustrates the more general complexity of the
adolescent life course. We can only understand the resilient pathways of
young people by viewing them as dynamic, intertwined with the experi-
ences of significant others, and embedded in the structure of the larger
society.
APPENDIX A
Five Composite Measures Used
in Parent-Adolescent Distance Construct
Five Composite Variables Items
Parent-reported lack of Mean of parents assessment of how well he or she gets along with adolescent, the extent to which he or she makes de-
bonding with adolescent cisions about the adolescents life with the adolescent, the degree to which he or she can trust the adolescent, and sat-
(M = 1.81, SD = .64, isfaction with his or her relationship with the adolescent (1 to 5 = always to never for first three items, strongly agree
α = .74) to strongly disagree for fourth).
Adolescent-reported lack For fathers, adolescents rate how close they feel to their fathers, how loving their fathers are, how satisfied they are
of bonding with parents with the communication with adolescent, and how satisfied they are with the relationship (a = .89). For mothers, ado-
(M = 1.75, SD =.66, lescents answer same items, plus how much they feel that their mothers care about them and how often their mothers
α = .88) talk with them when things go wrong (α = 85). Take the mean for each parent, and then the mean across parents, if
have information for both (1 = very much, 5 = not at all).
Adolescent-reported lack of For each parent, adolescents rate how often they talked with parents, in the past month, about someone the adolescent
communication with par- was dating, a personal problem the adolescent was having, school or grades, and things that were going on at school.
ents (M = 2.16, SD = Take the sum for each parent, and then the mean across parents, if have information for both (0 = yes, 1 = no).
1.18, α = .70)
Adolescent-reported lack For each parent, adolescents respond whether, in the last month, they had gone shopping, played a sport, gone to a reli-
of shared activities with gious event, gone to a move or other cultural event, or worked on a project with their parents. Take the sum for each,
parents (M = 3.58, SD = and then the mean across parents, if have information for both (0 = yes, –1 = no).
1.04, α = .64)
Adolescent-reported lack Adolescents assess the degree to which they feel that the people in their families understand them, their family has fun
of family cohesion (M = together, and their parents pay attention to them (1 = very much, 5 = not at all).
2.00, SD =.70, α = .78)
599
600
APPENDIX B
Descriptions and Descriptive Statistics for Control Variables
Control Variable Description
Gender (51% female, Self-reported gender (1 = female, 0 = male)

49% male)
Age (M = 16.01, Self-reported age, in years
SD = 1.49)
Parent education Parental report of educational attainment (1 = eighth grade or less; 2 = more than eighth grade, less than high school
(M = 5.48, SD = 2.23) graduation; 3 = vocational instead of high school; 4 = high school graduate; 5 = completed a GED; 6 = vocational
school after high school; 7 = some college; 8 = college graduate; 9 = professional training). The interviewed parents
(mostly mothers) gave information for self and spouse. We took the mean of both if both available or the value of
one if only one available.
Race/ethnicity (56% White, Self-reported race/ethnicity (four dummy variables)
22% African American,
17% Hispanic American,
5% Asian American)
Parents educational ex- Parent response to: How disappointed would you be if adolescent did not graduate from college? (1 = not disappointed
pectations (M = 1.30, to 3 = very disappointed).
SD = .71)
Adolescents educational Adolescent response to: On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is low and 5 is high, how much do you want to go to college?
expectations (M = 4.46,
SD = 1.01)
Prior off-track behavior
(M = –.30, SD = 3.00)
See explanation for Wave 2 off-track behavior in text.

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Family Dynamics, Supportive Relationships, and Educational Resilience During Adolescence

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Family Dynamics, Supportive

Keywords: resilience; life course; education; race; gender

Contemporary developmental research has cultivated a greater theoretical

fort for several social psychological outcomes among Midwestern youth.

At the center of this study is the linkage between adolescent academic

does support this scenario, a more social psychological explanation better

Prior research suggests that a lack of emotional support from parents

tiple domains. When supportive relationships mitigate the effects of un-

tional resilience in the face of problems between parents and adolescents.

on academic success within different groups, we study whether the inter-

FAMILY RISK, ARENAS OF

Female .51 (.50) .51 (.50)

The dependent variable is drawn from the Wave 2 in-home question-

Off-track academic behavior. The scale for our dependent variable

Held back in school

Emotional distance between parent and adolescent. Our primary inde-

Friendship. Three components of friendship are considered in this

Sibling relationships. Adolescents were also asked questions about

Teacher relationships. This scale consists of three items: the extent to

Sociodemographic controls. Seven variables serve as controls: gender,

For hypothesis testing, we estimated a series of structural models

*Correlations significant at p < .05.

an arena of comfort (Garmezy & Masten, 1986; Simmons & Blythe,

RELATIONSHIPS FROM VARIOUS

To begin, we offer a preliminary look at the overlap of relationships in

ship elements seem to go along with problems at home and school.

OVERLAPPING RELATIONSHIPS AND

Having given a glimpse of the key relationships that constitute adoles-

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Friend support .08 .01

EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE AND SCHOOL LEVEL

The developmental nature of adolescent relationships and academic

Macro-contexts are important to understanding the role of the inter-

developmental settings varies by structural location. To pursue this, we

Off-track behavior –.42c –.15b .37a –.40c

Asian American and Hispanic American youth tend to be more distant

and friends can be arenas of comfort when emotional support is lacking at

EDUCATIONAL RESILIENCE AND

A second element representative of the larger social structure, gender,

Off-track behavior .23a –.54b

model. Turning to interactions, support from friends offers the greatest

A key developmental task of adolescence is to establish independence

textualize this constellation within the larger structures of race/ethnicity

Among Asian American youth, a supportive relationship with a teach-

harder to bridge when they lack a firm foundation of instrumental and

Brothers or Sisters), romantic partners, and grandparents. In looking at

Gender (51% female, Self-reported gender (1 = female, 0 = male)

See explanation for Wave 2 off-track behavior in text.

Ainsworth-Darnell, J., & Downey, D. (1998). Assessing racial/ethnic differences in school

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