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Introduction: Terence P. Thornberry, Carolyn A. Smith, Craig Rivera, David Huizinga, and Magda Stouthamer-Loeber This Bulletin is part of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Youth Development Series, which presents findings from the Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency. Teams at the University at Albany, State University of New York; the University of Colorado; and the University of Pittsburgh collaborated extensively in designing the studies. At study sites in Rochester, New York; Denver, Colorado; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the three research teams have interviewed 4,000 participants at regular intervals for a decade, recording their lives in detail. Findings to date indicate that preventing delinquency requires accurate identification of the risk factors that increase the likelihood of delinquent behavior and the protective factors that enhance positive adolescent development. The composition of families is one aspect of family life that is consistently associated with delinquency. Children who live in homes with only one parent or in which marital relationships have been disrupted by divorce or separation are more likely to display a range of emotional and behavioral problems, including delinquency, than children from two-parent families (Wells and Rankin, 1991). Since 1970, the proportion of American households that have children who live with both parents has declined substantially. In 1970, 64 percent of African American children lived with two parents, compared with 35 percent in 1997; comparable figures for white children are 90 percent and 74 percent, respectively (Lugaila, 1998). According to some estimates, as many as 40 percent of white children and 75 percent of African American children will experience parental separation or divorce before they reach age 16 (Bray and Hetherington, 1993) and many of these children will experience multiple family disruptions over time (Furstenberg and Cherlin, 1991). As alarming as these figures are, they do not address the impact of family transitions on individual children. These transitions can set into motion changes in residence, financial conditions, family roles, and relationships along with increased stress and conflict in the home. All of these factors have major implications for children's adjustment (Bumpass and Sweet, 1989; Shaw, Emery, and Tuer, 1993). While some studies have found that the number of family transitions is linked to delinquency (Capaldi and Patterson, 1991; Fergusson, Horwood, and Linsky, 1992), there is little information on the impact of multiple family transitions on serious adolescent problem behavior such as delinquency and drug use, especially in representative samples that include at-risk youth who experience both problem behaviors and family transitions. The central question of this analysis is: Are adolescents who experience multiple changes in family structure more likely to be involved in delinquency and drug use than adolescents who live in more stable families?
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