This article considers the resort to violence by inner-city female youth, including the external forces impinging on them. In addition to underscoring that girls actively pursue and enjoy physically dominating others, I argue that the incidence of violence by girls in low-income areas, particularly “street fighting,” has been significantly underestimated in official statistics and generally by scholars. Engaging in violence was found to serve a number of functions for inner-city girls, similar to their male counterparts. Mothers were found to play an integral role in the anatomy of their daughters’ use of violence. The article addresses the need to situate girls’ violent behavior simultaneously on the level of individual psychology, on the cultural landscape of a neighborhood, and within the institutional framework that shapes both, in order to contextualize it properly. The article also considers how the method of ethnography is well suited to this end.

Why Girls Fight: Female Youth Violence in the Inner City

The gender gap in eating disorders: Why are the eating disorders more common among women?

As a result of basic demographic changes, the grandparent/grandchild relationship has the potential for spanning three to four decades of life. In light of this newly emerging family phenomenon the present article reviews the grandparent/grandchild relationship relative to the older adult, the middle generation, and the grandchild. The role of grandparents as a potential family resource is discussed and implications for family life programming are suggested.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/583572.pdf

The Grandparent/Grandchild Relationship: Family Resource in an Era of Voluntary Bonds.

The social networks of 32 mothers in families being treated in a hospital-based program for indicated cases of child abuse and neglect were compared to the networks of a demographically comparable control group of 24 mothers whose children were not subject to maltreatment. The clinic mothers were found to be more isolated and more insulated from other people in their -networks. Their isolation reflected a deficiency primarily in their peer connections, and their insularity served to separate their immediate families from their peer connections and from the rest of their families. Child and adolescent maltreatment has become more noticeable to the public in recent years as our information-gathering systems have become more efficient and reports issued have revealed its deleterious effects on children (American Health Association, 1976; American Humane Association, 1978; Konopka, 1975; Straus, Gelles, & Steinmetz, 1980; Child Protective Services, Note 1). Severe maltreatment of children by members of their families is unsanctioned by all social communities. There are cultural differences in disciplinary child-rearing practices that share some of the attributes of violence, as described in Erlanger's (1974) review, but nevertheless, there are limits and standards set by all social groups regulating such behavior and specifying the contexts in which and the extent to which it is permitted. The behavior we are concerned with, child maltreatment severe enough to be indicated by Child Protective Services, falls outside these limits and is considered a problem in every social group. Its persistence within the

Mothers' personal social networks and child maltreatment.

Although prior research suggests the importance of nonparental adults to adolescents, the ecological context of those relationships has received little attention. This study examined ties to influential adults among 122 adolescents who varied by race, family structure, and gender. The strongest effects were for race. Blacks reported stronger ties than Whites to the maternal grandmother as well as more supportive interactions with adult males. While race differences in grandparental ties were robust across social class (SES), ties to an influential adult male became nonsignificant upon controlling for SES. African American girls from divorced families consistently reported the strongest ties. Discussion considers the role of culture versus SES in explaining race differences. Implications for mentoring interventions are proposed, with special attention to the role of actualizing latent ties to already existing network members.

Gisela Konopka

Papers

Young Girls: A Portrait of Adolescence