A framework for studying minority youths' transitions to fatherhood: the case of Puerto Rican adolescents.

Erkut, Sumru ; Szalacha, Laura A. ; Coll, Cynthia Garcia 等

While men bear half of the biological responsibility for conception, until the late 1970s, they had been largely ignored in the discourse on pregnancy and child care. In the last three decades, however, studies of fatherhood have experienced an explosive growth (for comprehensive reviews of the literature, see Lamb, 1976, 1981, 1987, 1997). Lamb (1997) summarized his reading of the past two decades of the fatherhood literature in terms of three themes which merit special attention: "recognition that fathers play complex, multidimensional roles, that many patterns of influence are indirect, and that social constructions of fatherhood vary across historical epochs and subcultural contexts" (p. 1).

This last theme of historical and cultural variations in the social constructions of fatherhood echoes the messages of cultural ecologists (Ogbu, 1981; Slaughter-Defoe, Nakagawa, Takanishi, & Johnson, 1990) and Bronfenbrenner's (1979) human ecology model in emphasizing the importance of the social ecology of fatherhood. Lamb notes that while researchers have finally recognized that fathers have different roles in different cultural or subcultural contexts and that many communities hold different views of what constitutes normative fatherhood (see also Hochschild, 1995), these subcultural variations in the social construction of fatherhood have been less frequently and less comprehensively studied than other fathering topics (see Lamb, 1987; Sullivan, 1993). Since then a number of new research initiatives have collected data about or from low-income minority fathers.

The Fragile Families Study (McLanahan, Garfinkel, Reichman, & Teitler, 2001) is the largest research project that has focused on unwed couples and their parenting behavior, where the sample was recruited at hospitals at the time of birth. McLanahan and her colleagues (2001) found that the Hispanic subgroup in their sample had the highest percentage of unmarried couples living together, compared to Blacks and Whites. Their results indicated that, according to the mothers' reports collected at the time of birth, a large majority of them expected the fathers of their babies to be involved financially (82%) and otherwise (87%) in the baby's life. The authors note that many fragile unions do not last, some progress into marriage, but others dissolve. Thus, the mothers' expectations reported at birth may not be fulfilled. Coley (2001), in her review of the literature on father involvement, notes that while half the nonresidential fathers have contact with the baby during the first year of its life, contact is much less frequent for school-aged children and adolescents.

Another equally important finding of the Fragile Families Study was that the income and education of the average father in this study were very low. With current child support laws, fathers were olden forced to pay a substantial amount of their earnings to the mother and baby, earnings which they either did not have, or had only to a very limited extent. This situation can lead to conflict in the parents' relationship (Miller, Garfinkel, & McLanahan, 1997) and, consequently, lower father participation in the care of the child (DeLuccie, 1995; Marsiglio & Cohan, 1997). The Fragile Family Study authors, therefore, argue that services should be directed toward strengthening new fathers' earning power by providing education and job training.

This recommendation is echoed by Landale and Oropesa (2001) who studied the determinants of father involvement, obtained from the mothers of a representative sample of Puerto Rican children born on the mainland (more will be said about this study later).

Adolescent Fathers

Prospective longitudinal studies which have studied the transition to fatherhood using data from nationally representative samples of adolescent men have represented the typical profile of the adolescent father as a depressed young man with a truncated education, limited earning capacity, and more likely to have come from a family which received public assistance. Since adolescent parenting rates for minority teens are higher than those of White teens (see Marsiglio & Cohan, 1997), the typical teen father has been erroneously assumed to be a minority adolescent. While the profile may adequately describe the typical Caucasian adolescent fathers, it does not apply equally well to African American young fathers or adolescents categorized as "other" with respect to race and ethnicity (see Lerman, 1993a; Pirog-Good, 1995). There is a need for both theoretical and empirical studies on young men of color that address their unique circumstances and consequent profiles.

Why Study Puerto Rican Adolescents?

Puerto Rican young men fall into the "other" category to whom the typical profile of the adolescent father does not necessarily apply. The subgroup-specific information on them is lacking, as it is for all "other" groups whose limited presence in representative samples does not allow for separate analyses. On the other hand, recent changes in Puerto Rican adolescent fertility rates present an anomaly that begs explanation. The secular trend of lower adolescent childbearing observed every year since 1991 has not held true for Puerto Rican adolescent women (Mathews, Ventura, Curtin, & Martin, 1998). The decline in birth rates for African Americans and Whites has been steady and linear, whereas for Puerto Ricans it has been curvilinear, increasing from 1991 to 1992 then leveling off and declining by 1994 and then declining sharply in 1995. Puerto Rican teen mothers have been the focus of several studies (see, for example, Darabi, 1987; Ortiz & Nuttall, 1987) and with this intriguing drop in fertility in 1995, we are confident they will be the focus of intense study in the near future. However, there is currently no systematic information on the role Puerto Rican young men play in birth rates observed in this subgroup.

Just as we have no information on their impact on the fluctuation in birth rates, we have only a rudimentary understanding of the factors influencing young Puerto Rican fathers' behavior, mostly gleaned from Landale and Oropeso's (2001) study that relied on mothers' reports of father involvement. As Coley (2001) recommends, there is a need for increased use of fathers' self-reports and multiple sources of data to corroborate mothers' reports.

The following reviews the relevant literature on young fathers, in general, and specifically the research on Puerto Rican fathers. A theoretical framework is then proposed for examining young Puerto Rican men's transitions to fatherhood.

YOUNG FATHERS

Adolescent fatherhood is treated in both the adolescent development and fatherhood literatures as an off-time event (see Marsiglio & Cohan, 1997; Montemayor, 1986); that is, it occurs too early in the course of a young man's psychosocial development. Consequently, a "deficit model" of development has been the lens through which teen fathers have been observed. Adolescent fathers are compared with a same-age group of boys who have not yet become fathers (or with a group of "on-time," older fathers), in studies emphasizing the ways in which the young fathers are different from boys their age (or from older fathers) and framing those differences as deficits. The period of adolescence, marked as it is by developmental struggles for autonomy and defining one's sexuality, coupled with a lack of interest in and knowledge of children, has led many to suggest that adolescent boys may be too immature to be effective fathers (Lamb & Elster, 1986; Marsiglio & Cohan, 1997).

The young fathers studied up to this point have tended to come from disadvantaged families and to have completed fewer years of education than their childless peers (Lerman, 1986, 1993a; Marsiglio, 1987). In fact, Lerman (1993b) found in his analysis of data from the NLSY (cohort of young men aged 23-27 in 1987) that young unwed fathers (as of 1984) worked fewer hours and earned less than their peers in 1983, even before they became fathers. Lerman's (1993b) analyses illustrated not only that young fathers are disadvantaged educationally and financially, but that they are more likely to engage in a number of risky behaviors such as drug abuse and even criminal activities. As with so many of the other "negative" characteristics of young fathers, the tendency to engage in risky behaviors was more pronounced for Caucasian fathers than for African American or Latino fathers (Lerman, 1993b; see also Pirog-Good, 1995).

In examining Puerto Rican young fathers, Laguna (1984) compared 15 Puerto Rican adolescent fathers with 15 nonfather same-aged peers. He found no differences between the two groups of Puerto Rican youth in single-parent origin, in placing greater value on fathers than on mothers, or self-reports of using contraceptives. On the other hand, he also found that fathers reported less favorable attitudes toward contraceptive use, more frequent sexual encounters, and a closer attachment to their Puerto Rican peers. Unfortunately, we cannot examine the generalizability of these results because nationally representative studies of youth have not provided information on young Puerto Rican fathers whose data remain submerged within the category of "Hispanics." The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescents is an exception to this oversight but Add Health did not focus on young fathers, rather on a representative sample of adolescents some of whom already were or became fathers in the course of the longitudinal study.

Landale and Oropesa's (2001) extensive study of Puerto Rican mothers in six eastern states is a laudable exception to the paucity of information on young Puerto Rican fathers. In this study, 2,763 Puerto Rican mothers were sampled from the 1994-1995 birth and death records of six U.S. vital statistics reporting areas and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The mothers reported on the fathers' characteristics and their involvement with the baby. The sample was almost equally divided among mothers in legalized marriage, those in an informal union with the father of their baby, and single mothers. Their results stressed that the father's financial situation (i.e., his employment) was key to whether he contributed to his children's upbringing, both in terms of providing financial and in-kind help and daily care for the baby.

SIGNIFICANCE OF FATHER INVOLVEMENT

An extensive body of research has documented that positive, or constructive, father involvement is associated with positive child outcomes (see Doherty, Kouneski, & Erickson, 1996, for an overview). Fathers' financial involvement has been shown to be critical to family well-being (Furstenberg, 1989; Weitzman, 1985), especially in low-income, female-headed households (Garfinkel & McLanahan, 1986), and children of highly involved fathers show increased cognitive competence, increased empathy, less sex-stereotypical beliefs, and a more internal locus of control (Pleck, 1997; Pruett, 1983; Radin, 1982, 1994). Involved fathers also have a positive indirect effect on the family system by sharing the parenting burden of mothers (see Lewis & Weinraub, 1976).

There is a considerable body of research on "on-time" fathers' involvement with their children (see, for example, McBride, 1990; McBride & Mills, 1993; Radin, 1994; Snarey, 1993; Volling & Belsky, 1991). Pleck's (1997) review of the father involvement literature has led him to conclude that recent research confirms Lamb, Pleck, Charnov, and Levine's (1985; Pleck, Lamb & Levine, 1986) four-factor model of father involvement. The model proposes that the degree of father involvement depends on (1) motivation, (2) skills and self-confidence, (3) social supports, and (4) institutional practices. On the other hand, Pleck (1997) argues that recent advances in the father involvement literature suggest a need to reconsider the model's content-free notion of the amount of father involvement. He proposes that, "involvement needs to be combined with qualitative dimensions of paternal behavior through the concept of 'positive paternal involvement'" (p. 67).

The importance of the shift from concern with simple quantity of father involvement to include its quality makes sense, especially when one considers the extreme case of a sexually abusive father who may be quite involved with his children. Underscoring the importance of the quality of father involvement, Leadbeater, Way, and Raden's (1996) study of young African American and Puerto Rican mothers showed that many of them wished to limit their children's contact with a nonresident father. This was because they perceived the fathers as tending to undermine the limits that they, as mothers, set. The mothers reported that their children would become emotionally upset so that they became either "hyper" or depressed during the visitations. In fact, Leadbeater and her colleagues (1996) found that increased quantity of father involvement was associated with more externalizing behaviors in the children as measured by the Child Behavior Checklist, which corroborated mothers' perceptions. In this study, the negative impact of fathers' involvement was stronger for Puerto Rican than African American children.

Lamb and Elster (1985) carried out an observational study in the homes of adolescent mothers of 6-month-old infants whose partners ranged in age from 16 to 29 years. The researchers found that the quality of father-infant interactions was correlated with all aspects of the father-mother interaction. The quality of mother-infant interactions, however, was not correlated with measures of the couple's interaction. This finding closely parallels research that documents the pivotal role played by the quality of the father's relationship with the mother as a determinant of father-child involvement (see DeLuccie, 1995). Marsiglio and Cohan (1997) suggest that dependence of father's involvement on the quality of the father-mother interaction does not bode well for young men's involvement with children. This is because most adolescent unions are marked by strife and tend to be short-lived. The lack of harmony in most couples' relationships implies that many young fathers will not be involved with their children--or, if they are involved, mothers may not perceive it as particularly beneficial to the child.

Just as young fathers' involvement with their children can be facilitated by a positive relationship with the mother, so it can be blocked by the mother and/or her family. This is particularly true if the father is viewed as not being a good enough provider (see Achatz & MacAllum, 1994; Sullivan, 1993). For example, Achatz and MacAllum's (1994) ethnographic study of inner-city youth gives vivid illustrations of young fathers' frustration at not being able to provide for their families through legitimate employment. Their bleak employment prospects lead them to illegitimate means such as selling drugs to make money. Wattenberg (1993) suggests that adolescent mothers' parents' doubts about the young fathers' ability to be a good provider may be behind many young mothers seeking "good cause exemption" from legally establishing the child's paternity.

A young man's ability to support his family through regular employment is likely to have a bearing on the level of his involvement with his children. Labor market research has demonstrated that Puerto Ricans are greatly influenced by macro-level economic fluctuations (see Melendez, 1992; Tienda & Wilson, 1992). As the local demand for low-skill labor has declined, so has the Puerto Rican labor force.

We, again, must rely on a few small-scale studies to describe Puerto Rican fathers' involvement with their children. On the island, Puerto Rican father roles have been described as "a provider" and "a disciplinarian" (Borras, 1989). Roopnarine and Ahmeduzzaman (1993) studied father involvement with preschool-aged children with 40 lower- to lower-middle income mainland Puerto Rican families. The fathers' assessments of their commitment to the whole family and their sense of competence as family problem solvers were significantly associated with their involvement with their preschool-aged children, as measured by Radin's (1982) Paternal Involvement in Childcare Index. When we define commitment as a source of motivation, and competence as skill and self-confidence, these results lend partial support to the four-factor model of father involvement proposed by Lamb et al. (1985). Roopnarine and Ahmeduzzaman (1993) did not, however, find that degree of extrafamilial support received was related to father involvement.

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

The proposed framework for studying young Puerto Rican fathers is grounded in the integrative model of development (Garcia Coll et al., 1996), which is anchored in social stratification theory, especially as articulated by Tumin (1967). Tumin posits that individuals are placed in a social hierarchy based on such social position variables as gender, race, ethnicity, and social class. The fundamental assumption of Garcia Coll and her colleagues' (1996) model is that developmental outcomes are significantly affected by the minority adolescent's position in the social hierarchy. The impact of social position operates through alienation resulting from racism and prejudice that creates the social environment within which the adolescent must learn to navigate. Adaptation to these inhibiting environmental circumstances is influenced by resources available to the adolescent, his/her level of acculturation, and current contextual demands such as fluctuations in unemployment.

To accommodate the exigencies of development in late adolescence and young adulthood, we have augmented the integrative model with a life course perspective, which also emphasizes the role of contextual factors. Indeed, the idea that changing life circumstances can change developmental trajectories is a basic tenet of the life-course theory (Elder, 1998). An example of a contextualized examination of an adolescent's fathering behaviors using a life-course perspective is to view it as embedded in family systems involving the couple relationship, the family of origin, and the father-child relationship, which, by their very nature, are in a state of flux (see Belsky & Volling, 1987; Parke & O'Leary, 1976).

The timing and sequence paradigm associated with a life-course perspective (see Elder, 1979; Neugarten & Datan, 1973) provides an additional lens for viewing fatherhood. The life course is normatively patterned such that there is a widely shared timing and sequential order for important life events such as marriage and becoming a parent and a set of formal and informal supports for these events. Deviations from this normative pattern can have negative consequences because the necessary supports such as peer and family approval may not be present or available. Montemayor (1986) has suggested that teenage fatherhood is both early and out of sequence--before completion of high school, getting a full-time job, and before marriage. Consequently, the adolescent father can become isolated from his peer group in addition to being hampered in earning capacity by early school leaving.

On the other hand, Garcia Coll (1989; Garcia Coll & Vazquez Garcia, 1996) has persuasively argued that, just as it has been the case in many societies historically, adolescent pregnancy, childbearing, and parenting is normative for many families in contemporary Puerto Rico. Her research with adolescent and older mothers from low socioeconomic status (SES), urban environments in Puerto Rico and Caucasian adolescent and older mothers in low SES urban environments in Rhode Island found that the negative outcomes associated with early parenthood for both the mother and the infant do not hold true for Puerto Rican young mothers. There were no differences in the obstetric and perinatal outcomes of adolescent and older mothers in Puerto Rico. One-year follow-up assessments of mental and motor development and temperament ratings by both the mothers and trained observers also revealed no significant differences between infants born to adolescents and those born to older mothers in Puerto Rico.

As the integrative model postulates, minority community definitions of what constitutes normative events will have a bearing on social supports available to promote these events. Garcia Coll's (1989) findings raise the possibility that adolescent parenting may be similarly normative among Puerto Ricans on the U.S. mainland which would lead us to hypothesize that early fatherhood is not necessarily associated with negative outcomes. On the other hand, the integrative model also postulates that factors such as migration, acculturation, and poverty can disrupt the support systems available to young families on the mainland. For example, as Zavala-Martinez (1994) has described in her discussion of "entremundos," the process of migrating from Puerto Rico to the mainland can provoke disruptions not only in the family unit but in other support systems leading to generational conflicts, role confusion, and feelings of not belonging to one place or another. Garcia Coll and Vazquez Garcia (1996) caution that in spite of the possibility that adolescent parenting may be viewed as normative among Puerto Ricans on the island, external stressors created by migration and becoming a minority in the majority Anglo society may render young parents--both men and women--susceptible to negative consequences of early parenthood.

Laguna (1984) has found Puerto Rican adolescent fathers in New York to be more closely attached to their Puerto Rican peers than same-aged Puerto Rican young men who were not fathers, which suggests that the adolescent fathers were less acculturated. To the extent that there are differences in the normative definitions of fatherhood with respect to its timing, sequence, and responsibilities between the mainland and Puerto Rican cultures, acculturation may play a role in the transition to fatherhood. Garcia Coll's claim that adolescent parenting has been normative on the island leads us to expect that adolescents with a stronger Puerto Rican than an Anglo or mainstream cultural orientation are more likely to view early timing of parenthood as acceptable, or even desirable.

In addition to the timing and sequence of life events, the life-course perspective brings into focus psychosocial developmental milestones, or developmental tasks, in the study of transition to fatherhood. Late adolescence is the time of life when majority-culture youth formulate and begin to implement plans for becoming an adult. The major developmental tasks facing adolescents have been described as establishing a commitment to values, ideology, occupation, and life styles (Adams & Looft, 1977; Erikson, 1968), leaving home (Bloom, 1980), entering the workforce, selecting a mate, and becoming emotionally and financially independent of one's family (Havighurst, 1951) on the road to becoming independent "adults who can carry on the business of [their] society" (Havighurst & Dryer, 1975, p. 125). In the majority culture, adulthood is associated with shouldering responsibilities for one's own and others' care. Education or training to get a job, looking for work, and working become focal activities essential for sustaining independence and family formation (Holmes, 1995; Muuss, 1962). To the extent that a young man is preoccupied with such developmental tasks as gaining independence from his parents, pursuing education to prepare for the world of work, or the romance associated with selecting a mate, he may not place a high priority either on becoming a father or on fathering any children he may have.

To what extent the majority culture definitions and tasks of transition to adulthood, in general, and parenthood, in particular, are relevant to the lives of Puerto Rican adolescents growing up on the U.S. mainland remains unknown. Viewed through the lens of the social, political, and economic context of their lives, Puerto Rican adolescents are preparing for adulthood in the majority White culture where their ethnic group has a very low social standing--next to the last in a "social standing" rating of 37 racial/ethnic groups (Lewin, 1992); they are discriminated against in employment and wages (Torres, 1992; Rodriguez, 1989), have little political power or representation (Rodriguez, 1989), and, with 26.1% of families living in poverty in 2001 (Ramirez & de la Cruz, 2003), constitute one of the most impoverished racial/ ethnic groups on the U.S. mainland. Therefore, there is a need for prospective studies of transition to fatherhood that examines the lives of these young men, their families of origin, and the families they form in the context of social class, race/ethnicity, and the attendant oppression these create.

TWO LINKED MODELS OF PUERTO RICAN ADOLESCENTS' TRANSITIONS TO FATHERHOOD

We have combined the two developmental perspectives and the revised four-factor involvement model into two linked models for a study of young Puerto Rican men's transition to fatherhood. The models are linked insofar as a child's conception--which is the outcome of the first--when it results in a live birth, sets into motion the second model describing father involvement.

The first of the linked models predicts engaging in behaviors leading to conception and is consistent with the integrative approach to minority youth development and life-course development. This model, presented in Figure 1, depicts social stratification derivatives--education, employment, income, and family of origin--as independent variables. The latent variable of racism is assumed to be a major underpinning of a minority young man's position on each of the stratification derivatives. The impact of the stratification derivatives on fatherhood outcomes is moderated by such personal characteristics as sex-role ideology, acculturation, alienation, and risky behavior syndrome. Among these, alienation is the one likely to be most responsive to the young men's perceptions of discrimination. The influences of the personal characteristics are mediated by the normative definition of fatherhood and the young man's priorities in life. Together they predict the likelihood of conception. The first of the two linked models pauses at conception.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

The model "takes a pause" at conception for four reasons. First, not every conception results in a live birth. Second, whether conception leads to a live birth is more directly influenced by the female partner's health and decision to carry to term. The male partner clearly has an input on the outcome of a pregnancy but this is through his impact on the mother. Third, not all live births are acknowledged by the father. And fourth, not all mothers want an acknowledged father for their child (see Wattenberg, 1993). For these reasons, the model of transition to fatherhood pauses at conception and picks up at the occurrence of a live birth in which paternity is acknowledged.

The second model joins the integrative model and life-course perspective with Lamb and his colleagues' (1985) four-factor model of father involvement, as revised by Pleck (1997) to emphasize positive involvement. Presented in Figure 2, the second model becomes operative once there is an acknowledged child. This birth is likely to have an effect on a young man's definition of fatherhood and his life priorities. The same set of independent and moderator variables still exert an influence but there are additional sources of influence. These are the young man's perception of his competence as a father, the nature of his relationship with the mother of the child; the child's characteristics; and support for fathering from his family, the child's mother, current partner if different from the mother, his peers, and social institutions which impinge on his life.

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

A sense of competence as a father includes whether the young man feels he has the skills and self-confidence to be an adequate caregiver. Increased emphasis on this dimension of father involvement has led to the growth of formal skill development programs (Levine & Pitt, 1995) based on the notion that motivation alone is not sufficient to increase father involvement; skill and self-confidence are also necessary.

A young man who perceives himself to be competent as a father, who has a positive relationship with the mother of his child, who receives emotional as well as direct caregiving and/or financial support from his family members, whose current partner (if other than the child's mother) supports and facilitates his involvement with the child, whose friends respect and support the idea of him being a father, and whose involvement with social institutions do not hinder his fathering activities is going to be more involved as a father.

McLoyd (1990) has found that the availability of social support can diminish the negative effects of poverty on parenting behavior. Most research on social support for fathering has focused on support from the mother which shows that when the mother is supportive of the father's involvement and the couple relationship is going well, the father is more involved. On the other hand, Pleck's (1997) review of the few studies that exist on extrafamilial support for fathering has shown that highly involved fathers tend to encounter at best indifference and at most ridicule from coworkers, relatives, and friends.

The world of work is one such extrafamilial institution. A job with a wage adequate for supporting a family, especially one which has family health benefits, is likely to increase father involvement. The importance of father's employment appears to be a robust finding underscored by both the Fragile Families Study and Landale and Oropesa' research with Puerto Rican mothers. In the absence of a job with a living wage, the shame of not being able to provide for one's family coupled by the rejection of the young man (by the child's mother and/or her family) as a man who cannot be counted on for financial support is not conducive to father involvement. Shift work, if it means that the father is available for child care during hours that the mother is not available, can promote father involvement. Frequent changes in shift-work schedules (e.g., many companies rotate their shift workers from graveyard, to evening, to day shifts every two weeks or every six weeks), however, makes the young man's availability inconsistent. Some work places offer on-site day-care centers. If a young father could afford such a service, just bringing the child in and picking him/her up and interacting with day-care staff would be likely to greatly increase his involvement with his child. Unfortunately, work-based care is rarely available in settings where a young minority man is likely to find work. Other than work, service in the armed forces and incarceration can also mitigate against father involvement as these institutions were not designed to promote fathers' involvement with their children's upbringing.

CONCLUSION

To ensure that the crucial psychological factors surrounding an adolescent's transition to fatherhood are better understood, particularly among minority youth; to better comprehend the antecedents, correlates and consequences of teenage pregnancy and childbearing, particularly with a developmental perspective; and to guide policy formulations and programmatic efforts for young minority fathers, there is a need for research on young minority fathers. This is especially true because national longitudinal studies of youth, which have yielded much valuable information on Caucasian, and to some extent African American, young men's characteristics as fathers do not provide disaggregated information on adolescent fathers from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. The only large-scale study that has gathered information from minority fathers themselves is the Fragile Families Study which is ongoing.

We have proposed the two linked models of transitions to fatherhood to stimulate much needed research on minority young men. The theoretical bases of the two linked models are the integrative model of minority developmental competencies (Garcia Coll et al., 1996), the life-course developmental perspective (Baltes & Schaie, 1973; Elder, 1979, 1998; Neugarten & Datan, 1973) and Lamb and his colleagues' (1985) four-factor model of father involvement as revised by Pleck (1997). The two linked models offer a useful heuristic for studying Puerto Rican young men's transitions to fatherhood.

We believe that our basic approach can be adapted to other understudied populations because the framework specifically builds on the integrative approach to minority youth development (see Garcia Coll et al., 1996) which incorporates such social stratification-related variables as gender, race, ethnicity, and social class that reflect the impact of the latent variable of racism. Moreover, the integrative approach also emphasizes minority community definitions of what constitutes normative events and their timing and sequence in a given cultural milieu.

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Sumru Erkut is an Associate Director and Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Research on Women at the Wellesley Centers for Women.

Laura A. Szalacha is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Education and Research Associate at the Center for the Study of Human Development at Brown University.

Cynthia Garcia Coll is Mittleman Professor of Education, Psychology, and Pediatrics and the Director of the Center for the Study of Human Development at Brown University.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Sumru Erkut, Associate Director, Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, Massachusetts 02481. E-mail: serkut@wellesley.edu