Current Affairs
Afluent kids: Both pressuredand ignored
By Lou Marano
WASHINGTON, (UPI) -- Pressures to achieveand isolation from parents are associated with depression andsubstance use among middle school students from affluent, suburbanbackgrounds, a Columbia University study shows.
Suniya S. Luthar, a professor of Psychologyand Education at Columbia's Teacher's College, had first studiedan older cohort of suburban high school students as a controlgroup to compare with inner-city youth. The suburban 10th gradershad significantly higher levels of every kind of substance use-- cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs -- than didtheir inner-city counterparts.
"We also found significantly higherlevels of anxiety," she told United Press International ina phone interview. And suburban girls exhibited signs of clinicaldepression at rates three times higher than "a normativesample" of girls of the same age throughout the country.In general, suburban boys who used substances were more popularand enjoyed higher peer status. Luther's findings were publishedin 1999 in Volume 11 of the journal Development and Psychopathology.
To determine whether these were suburbanadolescent phenomena or general suburban phenomena, Luthar andher colleague Bronwyn E. Becker studied a cohort of 302 studentsin sixth and seventh grades from an affluent Northeastern communitywhere the median family income in the year 2000 was almost $102,000.The 1999 national median income was $40,816, according to theU.S. Census.
"At the sixth-grade level, everythingstill seems to be pretty much fine," Luthar said. "There'sno sign of girls or boys being unusually troubled in any regard."
But problems began to show among seventh-graders,whose average age was 13. "Again we found a higher rate ofclinically significant depressive problems among the girls,"the psychologist said. "And for boys we found the same patternof substance use that we had seen in the high school kids. Onceagain, peers seemed to approve of substance use."
The researchers found support for two possiblecauses for these problems: achievement pressures and isolationfrom parents.
Feelings of emotional closeness derive fromthings as simple as sufficient downtime to relax with families,Luthar said. "Upwardly mobile, affluent families place greatemphasis on the achievements of children as well as parents, includingmultiple extracurricular activities. Between the children's busyschedules and the parents' busy professional schedules, very oftenwhat you find is that youngsters do not have enough time to sitdown and have a calm and relaxing evening with their parents."
Luthar and Becker's findings will be publishedin the October issue of Child Development.
In their article they note that suburbanparents' pressures on children to achieve can involve "maladaptiveperfectionism," which they define as not merely strivingfor high and realistic goals but as "excessive investmentin accomplishment and need to avoid failure." Also, "thereis often a ubiquitous emphasis on ensuring that children secureadmission to stellar colleges," they write.
"The other thing that can be implicatedis lack of adult after-school supervision," Luthar told UPI."We suspected that a number of these 12- and 13-year-oldswere left alone after school hours on a regular basis. ... Thisis not just mother-absent but also nanny-absent."
A fair number of seventh-graders come hometo an empty house or hang out around the mall with their friendsor siblings, Luthar said. "Among these youth, it's not alack of financial resources that prevents child care. In a numberof instances, the parents seem to feel that this promotes self-sufficiency.The other factor seems to be that they feel their neighborhoodsare so safe that there really isn't a threat to their children.But there is no neighborhood however pristine that is going tomake up for the lack of adults being around to watch what childrenare doing."
Boys were more likely than girls to be unsupervisedafter school, but girls who were unsupervised were more likelyto exhibit behavioral problems.
The psychologist was asked if kids feelmore stress when adults are not there to supervise them.
"Yes," she said, "and theyhave more opportunities to indulge in behaviors that adults wouldnormally stop. Mom and dad's drinks cabinet is accessible, andthe medicine cabinet."
Seventh grade is a critical period, Lutharsaid. At 13, kids start formulating their value systems, theiridentities, and thinking about what they will pursue in life.
The researchers found that girls who areclose to their mothers are at a far lower risk for depression.Both girls and boys are helped more by closeness to mothers thancloseness to fathers. Children close to their mothers are leastlikely to smoke or use drugs and alcohol or to show symptoms ofdistress. "It makes more of a difference for the overallwell-being of girls than of boys," Luthar said.
However, girls who indicated a close relationshipwith their fathers were more likely to have high academic grades.