Abstract
Research on adolescents has ignored a setting in which significant numbers of young people spend significant amounts of time: the workplace. The increasing participation of high school students in the part-time labor force raises a number of questions about the impact of such employment on family and peer relations. Questionnaire data from a descriptive study of 531 tenth- and eleventh- graders indicate that (a) working attenuates time spent with family, but not with peers; (b) girls, but not boys, may enter the work force in part as a result of weaker emotional ties to their parents; (c) working has negligible impact on the quality of family and peer relationships; (d) despite substantial incomes, workers do not have complete autonomy over their expenditures, nor do working and money-making lead to increased autonomy in other areas; and (e) the workplace is not a source of close personal relationships with others. Taken together, these findings suggest that working does not have a substantial immediate impact on the adolescent's relations with others. Possible long-range effects are briefly noted.
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This study is part of a large-scale investigation of the costs and benefits of part-time employment during the high school years. This research was supported by a contract from the National Institute of Education (NIE). The first two authors are Co-Principal Investigators of the NIE project and share equal responsibility for this report.
Received Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Harvard University. Main research interests are adolescence and social institutions, life-span development, and social policy.
Received Ph.D. in human development and family studies from Cornell University. Main research interests are adolescent development, life-span development, and social policy.
Received Ph.D. in psychology from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. Main research interests are stress and social support, community psychology, and social change.
Received M.A. in social ecology from the University of California, Irvine.
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Greenberger, E., Steinberg, L.D., Vaux, A. et al. Adolescents who work: Effects of part-time employment on family and peer relations. J Youth Adolescence 9, 189–202 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088464
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02088464