Jim Liebelt's Youth Culture Watch

More Millennials Buy House Before Getting Married

Millennial couples are more likely to buy a house together before they take their wedding vows than their parents and grandparents were, according to a new Coldwell Banker Real Estate survey.

Almost a quarter of married homeowners aged 18 to 34 bought a home together before they were married, compared with 14% of those aged 45 and older.

"We didn't expect to find that couples committed to each other to buy homes before they were married," says Robi Ludwig, a psychotherapist who works for Coldwell on lifestyle surveys and buyer habits. "It's almost like buying a home is the new engagement ring."

The online survey of 2,116 adults March 8-12 found that couples who bought homes before marriage were all planning to tie the knot.

"Increasingly, Americans and especially Millennials see marriage as something that should be entered into only after you've taken several steps toward showing your maturity," says Stephanie Coontz, co-chair of the Council on Contemporary Families. "It's not something you jump into."

Two-thirds of couples getting married these days lived together before they walked the aisle. Buying a home together is a big proof of commitment.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/04/17/more-millennials-buy-homes-first-get-married-second/2088695/

More Americans Living Together, Having Kids

Americans are increasingly saying “I do” to living together before marriage, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, cohabitation is now more common among younger women than living with a spouse or living alone.

Among the women, 48% told interviewers that they were living with their significant other but were not married to them. In 1995, only 35% of women were cohabiting with their partners, according to a previous edition of the survey.

Couples aren’t only cohabiting more often than in the past, they’re doing it much longer, the study found. The women in the most recent survey averaged 22 months for their first stint at living together (after which they either got married or broke up). Back in 1995, the average length of cohabitation was 13 months, the researchers reported.

For 40% of the women surveyed between 2006 and 2010, these live-in relationships led to marriages, according to the study. But not everyone made it to the altar within three years of moving in together -- 32% of couples were still cohabiting, and 27% of couples split up.

Women living with their significant others are also more likely to get pregnant now than in years past, the researchers found. Back in 1995, only 15% of unmarried, cohabiting couples got pregnant; between 2006 and 2010, that figure was 19%. Among women who moved in with a significant other before they turned 20, 25% became pregnant before they got married.

Overall, getting pregnant was less likely to lead to marriage than in years past. Between 2006 and 2010, 19% of pregnancies prompted couples to get married. In 1995, 32% of pregnancies led to marriages, the researchers reported.

Source: Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-more-americans-living-together-before-getting-married-20130404,0,842643.story

 

Ability to Connect Relationally in Early Adolescence Predicts Later Outcomes

Teenagers’ struggles to connect with their peers in the early adolescent years while not getting swept along by negative peer influences predict their capacity to form strong friendships and avoid serious problems as much as a decade later, concludes a longitudinal study by University of Virginia psychologists that appears in the journal Child Development.

“Overall, we found that teens face a high-wire act with their peers,” said Joseph P. Allen, the Hugh P. Kelly Distinguished Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts & Sciences at U.Va., who led the study. “They need to establish strong, positive connections with them, while at the same time establishing independence in resisting deviant peer influences. Those who don’t manage this have significant problems as much as a decade later.”

Teens who had trouble connecting well with their peers in early adolescence had difficulty establishing close friendships in young adulthood. Teens who didn’t connect well at 13 also had more difficulty managing disagreements in romantic relationships as adults.

Teens who had trouble establishing some autonomy and independence with peers (especially with respect to minor forms of deviance, such as shoplifting and vandalism) were found to be at higher risk for problems with alcohol and substance use, and for illegal behavior, almost a decade later.

Conversely, teens who were seen as desirable companions – those deemed empathetic, able to see things from different perspectives and control their impulses, and having a good sense of humor – were more likely to have positive relationships in young adulthood.

Further, teens who were able to establish some autonomy from peers’ influences were more likely to avoid problematic behavior in young adulthood, with teens who showed they were able to think for themselves in the face of negative peer influences using less alcohol as early adults and having fewer problems with alcohol and substance abuse as young adults.

Source: ScienceBlog
http://scienceblog.com/62030/teens-who-get-off-to-a-poor-start-dont-easily-grow-out-of-it/

Each Family Dinner Adds Up to Benefits for Adolescents

Parents have heard it for years: Family dinners help kids avoid risky behaviors and may even help them in school.

But new research shows that the more frequent these dinners, the better the adolescents fare emotionally, says new research published this week in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"The effect doesn't plateau after three or four dinners a week," says co-author Frank Elgar, an associate professor of psychiatry at McGill University in Montréal. "The more dinners a week the better."

With each additional dinner, researchers found fewer emotional and behavioral problems, greater emotional well-being, more trusting and helpful behaviors toward others and higher life satisfaction, regardless of gender, age or family economics. The study was based on a nationally representative sample of 26,069 Canadian adolescents ages 11 to 15 in 2010.

While researchers see a correlation, they can't say family dinners caused the benefits. "We don't know if family dinners contribute to mental health, or if mental health and other behavioral problems cause some teenagers to avoid the family dinner," Elgar says.

Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/24/family-dinner-adolescent-benefits/2010731/

Current Positive Family Relationships Linked to Healthy Marriages Later

Adolescents who have positive relationships with their parents tend to have stable and satisfying relationships in their early adult marriages as well as romantic relationships, a University of California Davis study has found.

Researchers, who began studying 265 individuals in the 1990s, found that nurturing parents contributed to the future success of their children's young adult romantic relationships.

"Our results indicate that when parenting behaviors are high in warmth and supportiveness, high in levels of child monitoring and positive child management and low in levels of harsh and inconsistent discipline in adolescence, early adult children are more likely to endorse the belief that marriage requires emotional investment," researchers said. "In turn, these emotional investments were associated with more positive romantic relationship interactions with a partner."

The study has practical implications for the importance of premarital and marital counseling that emphasizes the positive aspects of parenting, commitment in marriage and romantic relationships, sharing of relationship beliefs and expectations, and other aspects that can prepare people for romantic partnerships, the authors said.

Source: Daily Democrat
http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_22759302/uc-davis-study-positive-family-relationships-linked-healthy

Teens with Learning Disabilities Benefit from Closer Relationships

Many kids with learning disabilities also face social and emotional challenges, which in adolescence can lead to depression, anxiety and isolation.

For these youngsters, more positive relationships with the significant adults in their lives — including parents and teachers — can improve learning and “socioemotional” experiences, said Michal Al-Yagon, Ph.D., of Tel Aviv University in Israel.

In a recent study, Al-Yagon reported that teens with learning disabilities were less likely to have secure attachment relationships to their mothers and teachers compared to peers without learning disabilities.

The study, found in the journal of Journal of Youth and Adolescence, suggests the absence of close and supportive relationships can harm a teens’ social and emotional functioning. In turn, this void can contribute to behavioral problems including isolation, depression, and aggression.

“We found that more secure child-adult attachments may act as a protective factor during this developmental period, whereas insecure attachments are a risk factor” for social and emotional issues, Al-Yagon said.

These results could help researchers design more effective interventions for children and adolescents with learning disabilities. Helping to strengthen their relationships with parents and teachers may decrease their emotional and behavioral problems.

Source: PsychCentral
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/03/02/teens-with-learning-disabilities-benefit-from-closer-relationships/52087.html

More Than a Quarter of Teens in Relationships Report "Digital Abuse"

Teens in relationships may be susceptible to being digitally abused by their boyfriends or girlfriends, according to a new study by the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center.

The report examines the role technology plays in teen dating abuse and how abusers use tech - from social media to email and text - to intimidate, coerce and harass their partners.

The study found 26 percent of teens in a romantic relationship said their partners had digitally abused them during the previous year. The findings, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, are based on a survey of 5,647 dating middle-school and high-school students.

“Abusers use technology to stalk their partners, send them degrading messages, embarrass them publicly, and pressure them for sex or sexually explicit photos,” researcher Meredith Dank said.

The study found that girls in a relationship are digitally victimized more often than boys, especially when the abuse is sexual. Overall, girls in relationships report being victims of digital abuse more frequently than boys: 29 and 23 percent, respectively. This divide widens when the reported abuse involves sexual behavior. Approximately 15 percent of girls report sexual digital abuse, compared with 7 percent of boys. The gap narrows when the reported digital abuse is not sexual: 23 percent of girls compared with 21 percent of boys.

Further, tampering with a partner’s social media account is the most prevalent form of digital abuse. More than one in twelve teens in a relationship (8.7 percent) say their partner used their social networking account without their permission.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/parenting/aisha-sultan/more-than-a-quarter-of-teens-in-relationships-report-digital/article_29daf7e8-a628-5463-a5b0-faf2c40dd5e6.html

Teaching Teens That Bullies Can Change Reduces Aggression

Teenagers who believe people can’t change react more aggressively to peer conflicts than those who think people can change. And teaching them that people have the potential to change can reduce these aggressive reactions, according to a new psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin.

The study, published in the February 2013 issue of Child Development, has important implications for bullying interventions in public schools.

“When adolescents believe the world is full of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ people, with nobody in between, they are then quick to classify people as one or the other,” said David Yeager, assistant professor of developmental psychology at The University of Texas at Austin. “We found that teens in this ‘fixed’ mindset — even after a minor offense like getting bumped in the hall or being left out of a game of catch — relegated peers to the ‘bad person’ group, decided that they had offended on purpose and wanted aggressive revenge.”

The researchers developed and tested a brief intervention that taught the teens about the potential for change in people. The intervention reduced the respondents’ tendency to see the offense as having been done on purpose and reduced their desire for aggressive revenge even eight months after the students took part in the study.

Source: University of Texas at Austin
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2013/02/14/teaching-teens-that-bullies-can-change-reduces-aggression-in-school-study-shows/

Catfishing: Online Relationships and Deception

A 'Catfish' "is someone who pretends to be someone they're not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances” according to UrbanDictionary.com.  About two months ago, most Millennials, and certainly most adults, didn’t know what the term meant despite the release of a 2010 documentary of the same name. Now, it’s become a common catchphrase in culture, is the subject of a hit reality show on MTV, and is national news following Manti Te’o’s scandal. Millennials are redefining dating in the digital age, and unfortunately that sometimes means being misled online.

Having a relationship that solely exists on the Web is more common among Millennials than one might think. Two in ten (22%) say they’ve been in an online relationship before, and nearly this same percentage (19%) believes that an online relationship is just as meaningful as an in-person relationship. This generation has grown up forming friendships and relationships on the Internet, so it’s no surprise that they feel close to others through a screen. (JL note: Generation Z — post-millennials born around the turn of the century to present — kids who are now entering their teenage years will be similarly, if not even more accustomed to establishing online relationships! Parents and ministry leaders should seek to help equip today's teenagers to successfully navigate online relationships.)

Typically, a "Catfish" creates a fake profile for the purpose of putting on a front and forming a relationship with someone online. According to Ypulse research, 44% of Millennials understand the term Catfish and of those, 19% known someone who’s been Catfished. While this percentage is relatively low, it still shows how this behavior exists beyond Manti Te’o’s story.

Source: Ypulse
http://www.ypulse.com/post/view/digital-dating-and-the-catfish-phenomenon

Sharing Secrets Improves Teen Well-Being

Teens who share their secrets in confidence with parents and friends have fewer headaches and depressed moods and are more confident in social situations than others who keep secrets to themselves, according to a new study published in the Journal of Adolescence.

Researchers worked with nearly 800 boys and girls, ages 14 to 19, from five schools in the Netherlands. Most came from two-parent families. The teens reported on questionnaires if they had a private secret that they never talked about, how long they had kept the secret, if the information was known to others and how difficult it was to keep or reveal the secret.

The students also answered questions about secrets they had shared. Separate tests assessed the frequency of headaches, depressed moods and feelings of loneliness. Relationships and social skills were self-rated.

About 79% of the participants said they had at least one shared or private secret. Secrecy was more prevalent in girls than boys: 82% of girls shared secrets compared with 54% of boys, while 38% of girls and 29% of boys had private secrets. About two-thirds of shared secrets were told to best friends. Other confidants included mothers, fathers, teachers, neighbors and parents of friends.

Compared with those who shared secrets, students who kept private secrets tended to have more rule-breaking behaviors, physical complaints, low moods and poor-quality relationships. Researchers said the findings suggest that sharing secrets is an important skill in creating and maintaining close personal relationships. Because they have more shared secrets, girls may reap the benefits of sharing more than boys, researchers said.

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323926104578277831872813890.html