In this study, nested latent-variable causal models were contrasted to compare the direct and indirect relationships of distal family and child and proximal adolescent factors to dropping out of high school. The sample included 194 Euro-American conventional and nonconventional families in a 19-year longitudinal study. The findings showed that dropping out of high school is a multiply-determined process, with early influences beginning in childhood, that involves family as well as child and adolescent factors. Early family nonconventionality with higher commitment to lifestyle values was associated with a lower probability of dropping out; cumulative family stress, lower high school achievement and motivation, lower sixth-grade school performance, and adolescent drug use were associated with a higher probability of dropping out. Family lifestyles and values are related to children’s developmental pathways through childhood exposure to drug use, child ability prior to school entry, and early school perform...

The Mentally retarded and society : a social science perspective

The Process of Dropping Out of High School: A 19-Year Perspective:

Children give much time and attention to their friends and remember them for years afterward. Emotionally disturbed children, however, frequently have difficulties in forming and maintaining these relationships. Extreme conditions, including autism, are commonly marked by the complete absence of friends (Rutter, 1970; Rutter & Garmezy, 1983).

Children’s Friendships

When psychology informs public policy: The case of early childhood intervention.

T he need to form and maintain lasting, positive, and significant relation-ships with others is a fundamental human motive (Baumeister & Leary,1995). People strongly desire social attachments, exert considerable
energy to develop and sustain them, and are adversely affected by their dissolution or absence (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Williams, 2001). The need to
belong may be evolutionarily adaptive. Infants who desire and are successful atmaintaining secure attachments with their caregivers are more likely to survive
(Bowlby, 1969). Human beings who lived in groups and sought and sustained
supportive relationships with others may have been more likely to survive and
reproduce than those who lived alone (Leary, 2001). Whereas the experience of
inclusion is frequently accompanied by positive emotions, the experience of
being excluded typically leads to negative emotions, including sadness, loneliness, jealousy, anger, shame, and anxiety (Baumeister & Tice, 1990; Leary,
1990). Individuals who chronically expect rejection from others are more likely
to have low self-esteem, be depressed, and experience high levels of negative
affect than those who typically expect to be accepted by others (MendozaDenton, Purdie, Downey, Davis, & Pietrzak, 2002).

Stigma and Social Exclusion

Normalization is an ideology of human services based on the proposition that the quality of life increases as one's access to culturally typical activities and settings increases. Applied to individuals who are mentally retarded, normalization fosters deinstitutionalization and the development of community-based living arrangements. Closely allied with normalization is the concept of least restrictive environment—that the places where people live, learn, work, and play should not restrict their involvement in the mainstream of society. Some psychologists are numbered among the chief advocates of normalization and deinstitutionalization, whereas others are vocal critics. Our premise is that examining the sources of the controversy over normalization will clarify the limits of our knowledge about treatment and open the possibility of theory-based evaluation of service delivery. Such evaluation should advance our understanding of environmental influences on all human development. Deinstitutionalization and normalization are probably the most controversial and emotionally charged issues in the field of mental retardation. Their merits and liabilities are debated passionately in courtrooms, legislative hearings, parent meetings, social and health service agencies, professional societies, and the media. Testimony invariably includes accounts of the phenomenal progress of previously institutionalized individuals after they were moved to small community homes and vivid descriptions of shameful conditions that still exist in state institutions, countered by horror stories of deinstitutionalized persons who are isolated, neglected, or abused in the community and by glowing reports of model programs conducted within institutions.

background

https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/pdf/80s/87/87-NDI-LAB.pdf

The Mentally retarded and society : a social science perspective

Citations

The Process of Dropping Out of High School: A 19-Year Perspective:

Children’s Friendships

When psychology informs public policy: The case of early childhood intervention.

Stigma and Social Exclusion

Normalization and deinstitutionalization of mentally retarded individuals. Controversy and facts.

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