Adolescent Lives

This report of a longitudinal study of the influence of family relationships and genetic factors on competence and psychopathology in adolescent development proposes that family relationships are crucial to the expression of genetic influences and may constitute a code for translating genetic influences into the ontogeny of behaviors.

Should teenagers have jobs while they’re in high school? Doesn’t working distract them from schoolwork, cause long-term problem behaviors, and precipitate a “precocious” transition to adulthood? This report from a longitudinal study of 1,000 students, followed from the beginning of high school through their mid-twenties, answers, resoundingly, no.

In this down-to-earth book, filled with the voices of young people speaking for themselves, Savin-Williams argues that the standard image of gay youth presented by mental health researchers—as depressed, isolated, drug-dependent, even suicidal—may have been exaggerated even twenty years ago, and is far from accurate today.

Deeply troubled teenagers spend time in a locked psychiatric ward. They are out of control—violent or suicidal, in trouble with the law, unpredictable, and dangerous. Twenty years later, a handful of them are thriving. In a series of interviews that began during their hospitalizations and ended years later, these teens tell their stories.