Parental Authority and the Dropout

Parental authority within the United States' urban working class families is frequently characterized as “matriarchal” Teen-agers, according to similarly prominent professional reports, reject parental authority and develop an “independent youth culture.” The conclusions from this study of working class urban youth half of whom completed high school and the other half of whom dropped out suggest a quite different dichotomous interpretation. High school dropouts originate in families in which paternal authority is characteristically weak and the noncontrol or laissez faire pattern, as well as the matriarchal, is typical. Dropouts regularly develop an “independent youth culture.” High school graduates, however, are seen to originate in families in which the fathers' authority is typically prevalent and the teen-agers do not develop an “independent youth culture.”

Class (philosophy) · Developmental psychology · Dropout (neural networks) · Interpretation (philosophy) · Local authority · Political science · Regulatory authority · School dropout · Socioeconomics · Sociology · Demography · Psychology · Public Administration · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies