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Volume 41 Number 2 (Summer 2007):344–370

© 2007 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7379.2007.00071.x

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKIMREInternational Migration Review0197-9183© 2007 by the Center for Migration Studies of New York. All rights reservedXXX Original Articles

Romantic Relationships Among AdolescentsInternational Migration Review

Romantic Relationships among Immigrant Adolescents

1

Rosalind Berkowitz King

National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Kathleen Mullan Harris

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

We examine the importance of the family and friendship group as twocrucial developmental contexts for adolescent relationship experiences. Wefocus particularly on immigrant adolescents who make up an increasingproportion of the youth population and who come from cultural contextswith stronger family traditions than native-born adolescents. Using datafrom the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we modelthe characteristics associated with having romantic relationships andparticipating in sex-related activities within relationships for immigrantadolescents, children of immigrants and adolescents in native-bornfamilies. First generation adolescents are less likely to enter romanticrelationships than adolescents in native-born families, but those who doparticipate engage in similar sex-related activities as native-born youth. Thisevidence suggests that immigrant youth who enter romantic relationshipsare selective of the more assimilated to native adolescent norms of hetero-sexual behavior. The peer group is especially important for immigrantadolescents because it provides opportunities for romantic relationshipinvolvement.

1

We gratefully acknowledge research support from the National Institute of Child Health andHuman Development (NICHD) to King through National Research Service AwardT32HD07168 and to Harris through grant P01HD31921 as part of the Add Health programproject and grant U01HD37558 as part of the NICHD Family and Child Well-being ResearchNetwork. We are grateful to Dick Udry and other participants of the Add Health working groupat the Carolina Population Center for their useful comments. This manuscript is a revisedversion of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America,May 2002. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. RichardUdry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by grant P01HD31921 fromthe National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative fundingfrom 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and BarbaraEntwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from AddHealth should contact Add Health, Carolina Population Center, 123 W. Franklin Street, ChapelHill, NC 27516-2524; email: addhealth@unc.edu.

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INTRODUCTION

Romance represents an important developmental experience during adole-scence in the U.S. and provides the building blocks for future patterns of unionformation in adulthood. As the ethnic diversity of the youth populationcontinues to expand with increasing immigration to the U.S., adolescentexperiences with romance are likely to be equally diverse. Adolescent romanticrelationships and the experience of adolescence among ethnic minorities in theU.S. are both understudied areas (Coates, 1999; Collins 2003). Most researchon ethnic differences focuses only on sexual behavior (

e.g.

, Norris

et al

., 1996;Santelli

et al

., 1998; Feldman, Turner, and Araujo, 1999; Raffaelli and Ontai,2001); moreover, many prominent studies are outdated and do not representthe growing ethnic diversity of the adolescent population due to rapidly risingimmigration (

e.g.

, Smith and Udry, 1985; Furstenberg

et al

., 1987; Hofferthand Hayes, 1987). Since 1990, roughly one million immigrants have beenadded to the population each year and immigrant children (first generation)and U.S.-born children of immigrants (second generation) are the fastestgrowing segment of the U.S. child population (Hernandez and Charney, 1998;Rumbaut, 1999). As a result, ethnic minorities in the adolescent population areprimarily adolescents in immigrant families, accounting for about 60% of allHispanic children and 90% of all Asian-American children (Zhou, 1997).Because this demographic change is so recent, we know little about the socialdevelopment of these youth and their adaptation to American youth cultureduring the life stage when romance and sexuality are first encountered.

Our paper contributes to this important gap by studying the develop-ment and context of romantic relationships among adolescents in immigrantfamilies. Research at the intersection of romantic relationships and immigrantfamilies provides new knowledge on how culture, family, and peers shape thedevelopment of youth in their romantic and sexual relationships, which in turnare key antecedents of union formation. The rise in immigration and increasingethnic diversity in our population foretell cultural shifts in union and familyformation. Hints of the direction of impending social change can be gatheredfrom the relationship behaviors of ethnic minority youth in immigrantfamilies. Our research therefore contributes to our understanding of behaviorpatterns with important implications for future family formation in the U.S.

Our study design incorporates factors in the social environment thatare especially salient in adolescence by studying the role of family and peercontexts in the development of romantic relationships. The importance ofexploring multiple social systems that affect teen dating and sexual behavior is

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well-documented (Brewster, Billy, and Grady, 1993; Upchurch

et al

., 1999;Kotchick

et al

., 2001). By exploring, for example, the ways in which peereffects vary by immigrant status, we contribute to growing knowledge on theways in which the social environment influences and interacts with individualcharacteristics in adolescent development.

We use a developmental theoretical perspective as it applies to adolescentromance and subsequent union formation (

e.g.

, Shulman and Collins, 1997;Furman, Brown, and Feiring, 1999). Romantic relationships in adolescence areimportant developmental steps along the pathway to cohabitation andmarriage (Thornton, 1990; Furman

et al

., 1999). During childhood, childrentend to associate largely with peer groups of their own gender; but in adolescence,teens have increasing contact with opposite-gender peers. This friendly exposureto the other gender lays the groundwork for more intimate heterosexualrelationships. Sexual activity among adolescents tends to be sporadic at first(Leigh

et al

., 1994) and relatively uncommon in its more intimate forms untilmid- to late adolescence (Meschke

et al

., 2000). The majority, however, reportpreoccupation with romantic feelings and relationships (Miller and Benson,1999) and place considerable emphasis on the significance of these relation-ships in their lives (Feiring, 1999a). Dating eventually leads to courtship andmarriage in the adult phases of the life cycle. Because these early relationshipscan impact subsequent union formation and the quality of these relationships(Furman and Wehner, 1994), we focus here on the likelihood of participationin them and indicators of the content of those relationships.

In industrialized Western societies, romances are also a means throughwhich adolescents learn to define their identities as individuals separate fromtheir parents. Adolescents may seek partners similar to themselves to reinforcetheir ascribed place in society or seek partners who differ in order to explorenew cultures. These early relationships reveal relational patterns that persistacross the life course. For example, adolescents whose first sexual experiencewas with a partner of a different race are also more likely to be found in inter-racial marriages as adults (King and Bratter, forthcoming).

ADOLESCENTS IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES

Immigrants are a particularly interesting group in which to study romanticrelationships in adolescence. Along with changes in the number of immigrants,the composition of immigrants has tilted toward “new immigrants” from LatinAmerica and the Caribbean and from Asia and the Middle East (Portes andRumbaut, 1996). The expected experiences of childhood and adolescence in

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these “new” sending regions often differ significantly from the expectations inWestern cultures (Brown, Larson, and Saraswathi, 2002). In particular,immigrant adolescents in the “new immigration” come from cultural contexts inwhich adolescents have less freedom and autonomy than American adolescentsand where family traditions are stronger (Portes and Rumbaut, 2001).

The social contexts in which adolescent lives are embedded play a largerole in how the stage of adolescence is culturally and structurally defined andin defining the opportunities and expectations adolescents encounter in thetransition to adulthood (Coleman, 1961; Bronfenbrenner, 1972; Harris, 1998;Maccoby, 1998). Current research suggests that the social contexts in whichimmigrant youth grow and develop are uniquely different than those of youthin native-born families (Hernandez and Charney, 1998). Within industrializedWestern nations, immigrant youth grow up in homes with more complex familystructures, inferior socioeconomic resources, and in linguistic or geographicisolation from the nonimmigrant white majority ( Jensen and Chitose, 1996;Rumbaut, 1999). Often, adolescents in immigrant families take on adultresponsibilities of part-time work, care of younger siblings, and householdduties, limiting their time with friends and involvement in school (Portes andRumbaut, 2001). The more traditional norms placed on adolescent behaviorwithin the family and fewer opportunities to interact with peers limit theopportunities immigrant youth have to develop romantic relationships withsame-aged peers. Thus, we expect that immigrant adolescents will be less likelyto participate in romantic relationships overall, and that they may be affecteddifferently by family and peer influences than native-born adolescents are.

The normal developmental process of adolescence in which familyinvolvement diminishes and the importance of peers increases may be particu-larly alien to the cultural practices and models of respect in immigrant families(Zhou, 1997). Nevertheless, in a period where being different or “standing out”takes on crucial social significance, acceptance into peer networks and schoolculture may be especially important for immigrant adolescents who may alreadydiffer in their appearance, dress, or speech. Thus, their degree of assimilation intoAmerican society will affect the extent to which immigrant adolescents engagein romantic relationships with peers and disengage from parental authority.With greater assimilation, adolescents become “Americanized,” adopting thenorms and behaviors of the majority youth culture (Rumbaut, 1999).

Models of assimilation have taken different forms in immigrationresearch – particularly with the arrival of the “new” immigrants – from theclassical model of assimilation as a linear progression (Gordon, 1964; Lieberson,1980) to revisionist theories of segmented assimilation that argue that different

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groups of immigrants experience different outcomes based on the sector ofAmerican society into which they assimilate (Gans, 1992; Portes and Zhou,1993; Rumbaut, 1994; Hirschman, 1996; Alba and Nee, 2003). Recentevidence of segmented assimilation shows that movement toward the normativelevel of engagement in risk behaviors demonstrated by youth in native-bornfamilies varies for immigrant adolescents by ethnicity and generation(Hernandez and Charney, 1998; Harris, 1999). While we expect immigrantadolescents to be less engaged in romantic relationships and sexual activitieswithin relationships, we anticipate that the second generation, native-bornchildren of immigrant parents, will demonstrate relationship behaviors that aremore similar to adolescents in native-born families of the third+ generation asthey are more exposed to and increasingly adopt normative behaviors of themajority youth culture in America.

Studying immigrant adolescents also provides new information on the roleof friends in adolescent participation in romantic relationships. Friendshipswith native-born adolescents should have an assimilative effect whereas friend-ship networks that are dominated by immigrants should reinforce immigrantnorms. We therefore include the generational status composition of the friend-ship network in our analyses because networks dominated by immigrantsshould reinforce the effects of the respondent’s own immigrant status.

We examine three groups of characteristics: individual, family, andfriendship group factors. The adolescent personal characteristics that wemeasure are age, generational status, ethnicity, and religiosity. We include ageas a control since the proportion of adolescents involved in romance and sex-related activities increases steadily as they become older. We include ethnicitybecause the ethnic distribution of adolescents differs by generation status.From first generation to third, the proportion Hispanic and Asian decreasesand the proportion non-Hispanic White increases. We also include ethnicitybecause Hispanics and Asians are more tied to family-centered cultures regardlessof their generation (McLoyd

et al

., 2000) and because of documenteddifferentials in sexual activity among non-Hispanic White and Black teens(Brewster, 1994). We include religiosity because previous research has shownan inverse relationship between religiosity and sexual activity (Davis and Friel,2001; Kotchick

et al

., 2001).The family characteristics that we include focus on structural factors and

parenting behaviors associated with the socialization and monitoring of youthdating and sexual activities. Structural measures include parental figures in thehome and parental education. We are particularly interested in controlling forfamily structure because other research (

see

review in Kotchick

et al

., 2001) has

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suggested that adolescents in other than two-parent families are more likely toengage in sexual activity because they are modeling the behavior of a parentwho is dating. We also include parental religiosity to examine whether theapparent effect of adolescent religiosity is actually a parental effect. Theoretically,we also expect more religious parents to make greater efforts to control theirchildren’s romantic involvements. We include direct measures of parentalmonitoring and supervision to model the level of parental effort in regulatingadolescent activities and time spent in the absence of parents.

Measures of adolescents’ friendship group characteristics that we examineinclude the number of friends reported by the adolescent, the gender com-position of those friends, and the generational status composition. Newcomer,Udry, and Cameron (1983) showed a positive association between popularityand sexual activity; our measure is comparable but not the same since we areonly relying on the reports of the adolescents and not cross-checking bywhether others see the adolescent as a friend. We also examine the gendercomposition of the network because research has shown that the presence ofopposite-gender friends is a developmental step on the way to heterosexualromantic involvement (Feiring, 1999b; Cavanagh, 2004).

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

We address three questions concerning adolescent romance. First, we addressthe question of how immigrant generational status affects the likelihood ofparticipation in romantic relationships and the characteristics of thoserelationships. We consider such characteristics as racial and ethnic similaritywith partner, sex-related activities pursued within the relationship, and desiresfor such relationships. Second, we narrow our focus to the likelihood ofparticipation in romantic relationships and sex-related activities within thoserelationships. This analysis addresses the question of how adolescent, parent,and friendship group characteristics affect these activities. Third, we investigatewhether immigrant generational status conditions the effects of friendshipgroup characteristics on these activities. In other words, we address whether thepeer aspect of developmental processes in adolescent romance differs forimmigrant and nonimmigrant children.

DATA

Data come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (AddHealth), a nationally representative study of over 20,000 adolescents in grades

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7 through 12 in the U.S. in 1995. Add Health was designed to help explainthe causes of adolescent health and health behavior with special emphasis onthe effects of multiple contexts of adolescent life. The study used a multistage,stratified, school-based, cluster sampling design. A stratified sample of 80 highschools was selected with probability proportional to size, as was a feeder schoolwith probability proportional to its student contribution to the high school.An in-school questionnaire was administered to every student who attendedeach selected school on a particular day during the period of September 1994to April 1995, and was intended to measure school-context variables, identifyfriendship networks, and obtain data in order to select special samples.

In a second level of sampling, adolescents and parents were selected fromthe school rosters for in-home interviews, including a random sample of some200 students from each school pair and a number of special oversamples usingscreeners from the in-school questionnaires. Special ethnic samples of Cuban,Puerto Rican, and Chinese adolescents make possible the richly detailed analysisof immigrant adolescents in Add Health (Harris, 1999). The in-home inter-views were conducted between April and December 1995, yielding the Wave Idata on 20,745 adolescents. One year later, almost 15,000 adolescents in grades7 through 11 in Wave I and 12th-graders who were part of the special geneticsample were reinterviewed in the home in 1996, comprising the Wave II data.(

See

Harris

et al

., 2003 for a more detailed description of the Add Health study.)The subsample for this analysis consists of 9,447 respondents. We

restricted our analyses to the 13,570 adolescents who participated in both theWave I and Wave II interviews and had valid sampling weights in order tomodel longitudinal relationship patterns. We also removed adolescents withmissing information on their gender (2), generational status (180), ethnicity(12), parental education (690), and parental monitoring and supervision (10).Finally, we removed another 3,225 respondents who were missing one or morefriendship group characteristics.

This analytic sample is representative of the entire Add Health samplethat was interviewed at Waves I and II, and with the use of Wave II samplingprobability weights does not differ in any substantive way from the entireWave II sample (Chantala, 2003). The greatest loss of cases is due to those missingdata on friendships, which occurs because some of the selected schools didnot permit an in-school survey but did provide Add Health with school rostersfrom which to select the in-home sample. This attrition is accounted for by thepost-stratification sampling weights that we use from Wave II (Chantala, 2003).All descriptive and multivariate analyses adjust for the complex samplingdesign of Add Health (

see

Chantala and Tabor, 1999; Statacorp, 2001).

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MEASURES

Gender

is based on respondent’s self-report from the In-School survey andconfirmed by interviewer at the In-Home Wave I interview (0 = boy, 1 = girl).

Age

is based on the respondent-reported birth date, calculated as time elapsedbetween Wave I interview and birth date (continuous from 12 to 21 years).

Generation

is based on Wave I respondent and parent reports ofbirthplace, measured as three dummy variables: foreign-born adolescents toforeign-born parents (first generation), native-born adolescents to at least oneforeign-born parent (second generation), and native-born adolescents tonative-born parents (third+ generation, reference category) (Harris, 1999).

Ethnicity

is based on Wave I respondent and parent reports of self-identified ethnic background, a nine-category dummy variable: Mexican,Cuban, Central and South American, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Filipino, OtherAsian, African and Afro-Caribbean, and European and Canadian as thereference category (

see

Harris, 1999).

Respondent and parent religiosity

are measured using factor scores fromWave I respondent and parent reports of the importance of religion, frequencyof attendance at services, frequency of prayer, and belief that scripture is theword of God. Adolescent and parent responses to these items were subjectedto a single exploratory factor analysis procedure. The procedure generated twofactors with a reliability coefficient of 0.78 and an interfactor correlationof 0.58. The adolescent-reported items loaded on the first factor while theparent-reported items loaded on the second. The continuous factor scores areused as variables where respondent religiosity ranges from

−

3.2 to 1.0 units andparent religiosity from

−

3.5 to 0.9 units.

Family structure

is measured using Wave I respondent household rosterreports of parental figures living in the household and the relationship of theadolescent to the parent figure, represented by a six-category dummy variable:two biological/adoptive parents (reference category), biological mother andstepfather, biological father and stepmother, single mother, single father, andsurrogate parents (

e.g.

, relatives, other adults).

Parents’ education

is measured from Wave I respondent reports on thehigher of the mother’s or father’s educational attainment levels represented byfour dummy variables: less than high school diploma (reference), high schooldiploma, some college, and college (or higher).

Parental monitoring

is measured by a index constructed from a series ofWave I questions that ask whether the adolescent makes all his or her owndecisions about 1) time to be home on weekends; 2) friends; 3) clothes; 4) how

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much television to watch; 5) which TV shows to watch; 6) time to go to bedon week nights; and 7) what to eat. The continuous index, ranging from 0 to 7with an internal reliability of 0.65, is reverse coded such that high measuresindicate high parental monitoring.

Parental supervision

is a count variable ranging from 0 to 4 based on WaveI reports indicating whether a parent is present in the home most or all of thetime the adolescent 1) goes to school in the morning; 2) comes home fromschool in the afternoon; 3) eats the evening meal (5–7 dinners a week); and4) goes to bed at night.

Number of friends

comes from the In-School survey where respondentswere asked to nominate up to five of their closest female and male friends,beginning with a best friend and then next best friend and so on (for amaximum of ten students). This measure represents the total number of friendsnominated and accounts for friends within and outside the school. The mediannumber of friends reported was four and 96 percent of students reported nineor fewer friends (authors’ tabulations).

Gender composition of friends

is based on the In-School respondent listof friends matched to the data reported on the friends’ surveys and measuresthe proportion of friends who are female. Students transferred friends’identification numbers onto their questionnaire from a roster listing allstudents in the school. Because the in-school sample is a census of all studentsin the school, the identification numbers of nominated friends can be linkedback to their own in-school questionnaire, and friends’ actual responses canbe used to construct peer group-level indicators. This method of obtaining peerdata represents a significant improvement in measurement of peer influence(Billy, Rodgers, and Udry, 1984). By using friends’ own responses to surveyquestions, we avoid biases associated with self-reports about friends, whichlargely measure perceptions and represent more a reflection of the respondentthan a valid and reliable friendship measure (Billy and Udry, 1985; Hayes,1987; Manski, 1993). Since only five percent of boys and four percent of girlsin our analytic sample reported out-of-school friends (authors’ tabulations),we assumed that the proportion of friends who were out of school and who wereof the opposite gender was the same as the proportion among in-school friends.

Generational status of friends

is based on the In-School respondent list offriends matched to the data reported on the friends’ in-school surveys andmeasures the proportion of friends who were first generation and who weresecond generation. This measure is cruder than the adolescent’s own genera-tional status because it was based on the in-school respondent report ratherthan Wave I respondent and parent reports.

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Romantic relationships

is based on Wave II respondent reports of up tothree romantic partners. We constructed descriptive measures of the prevalenceof romantic relationships, including having any relationships, the number ofrelationships, and average length of relationships. We constructed measures of howthe respondent and partner met, the match between the respondent’s and partner’sethnicities, and the dating and sex-related activities in which the coupleengaged within the relationship. We included only heterosexual relation-ships because the smallness of the number of homosexual romantic relation-ships would have generated statistical difficulties in the multivariate analyses.As well, while heterosexual romance during adolescence is a fairly alien culturalconcept to the large majority of immigrant adolescents, homosexuality is evenmore alien and not currently common enough to study as an assimilation process.

When respondents reported multiple relationships, we designated one asthe primary relationship and based all analyses of relationship characteristics onthat relationship. We used the following decision rules:

1. If the respondent has only one current relationship, use that one.2. If the respondent has no current relationships and only one reported

relationship, use that one.3. If the respondent has multiple current relationships, use the longest.4. If the respondent has no current relationships and multiple reported

relationships, use the one that ended most recently.

Racial and ethnic partner similarity

is measured by two variables based onWave I information on the respondent’s ethnicity (as described above) andWave II respondent reports of the ethnicity of the partner in the primaryrelationship. “Race/ethnicity” similarity is more restrictive, requiring, for example,that a Cuban respondent have a Cuban partner or a Chinese respondent havea Chinese partner for a match. “Panethnicity” similarity requires that a Cubanrespondent have a Hispanic partner or a Chinese respondent have an Asianpartner for a match, where a match = 1, and 0 otherwise.

Dating activities

are based on respondent reports of whether they did ordid not engage in each of a list of activities in the primary romantic relationship,represented as a set of dummy variables (1 = yes, 0 = no): go out in a group,meet the partner’s parents, tell others that they are a couple, see less of otherfriends, go out alone, hold hands, exchange presents, tell each other that theyare in love, think of themselves as a couple, and kiss.

Sex-related activities

was measured as a factor score based on respondentreports of engaging in four sex-related activities within the primary romantic

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relationship: talking about contraception or sexually transmitted diseases,touching each other under clothing or with no clothes on, touching each other’sgenitals (private parts), and having sexual intercourse. The continuous factorscore ranges from −1.0 to 1.0 unit and has a Tucker and Lewis (1973) reliabilitycoefficient of 0.93.

Desire for romantic relationship is based on Wave I reports by respondentsof how much they would like to have a romantic relationship in the next year.We transformed the Likert scale that ranged from “Not at all” to “Very much”into a numerical variable as follows: 0 = not at all, 0.25 = very little,0.50 = somewhat, 0.75 = quite a bit, 1.0 = very much.

RESULTS

We first present descriptive data on boys and girls who are engaged in romanticrelationships and the characteristics of those relationships by immigrantgeneration. We then conduct multivariate analyses of the probability ofentering a romantic relationship and the level of sex-related activities inrelationships for boys and girls separately. We test for interactions between agroup of theoretically important variables and gender because researchindicates that dating among Asian immigrants in Canada and Great Britain ismore circumscribed among girls than boys because of parents’ greater interestin controlling the social lives of girls (Hennick, Diamond, and Cooper, 1999;Talbani and Hasanali, 2000). There is also ample research indicating thatdevelopmental processes of adolescence in general and relationshipinvolvement in particular differs for girls and boys (Maccoby, 1998).

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics (means and percentage distribu-tion) for the independent variables by gender. The sample is dominated bythird+ generation European/Canadian adolescents from two biological/adop-tive parent homes. About one-third have parents with a high school educationand about one-third with a college education. On average, girls report morefriends than boys do (p < 0.05), and they have more opposite-gender friendsand more immigrant friends, although these last two differences are notstatistically significant. We note that the skewed distribution of ethnicity in thesample means that estimates based on small ethnic groups are less precise,though still nationally representative with use of the sampling weights (standarderrors for estimates are available upon request from the authors).

Table 2 shows predicted romantic relationship characteristics bygeneration and gender. These are fundamentally descriptive data. The predictedvalues are generated by using the appropriate regression model to estimate a

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baseline intercept and coefficients for the effects of the adolescent’s gender,generation, age, and ethnicity. These are then summed for each adolescentdepending on his or her values on these characteristics and the predicted sumsare averaged across adolescents in the designated groups. For variables such asthe probability of having a romantic relationship, which varies between 0 and1, the predicted value represents a probability within that range. For a variable

TABLE 1SAMPLE CHARACTERISTICS BY GENDER (PERCENTAGES UNLESS INDICATED)

Girls Boys

N 4,950 4,497Mean Age 14.9 15.0

GenerationFirst 4.8 4.5Second 9.5 10.1Third 85.7 85.4

EthnicityMexican 5.3 5.8Cuban 0.5 0.5Central/South American 2.3 2.4Puerto Rican 1.5 1.6Chinese 0.5 0.7Filippino 1.1 1.6Other Asian 2.4 2.4African/Caribbean 16.4 13.7European/Canadian 70.0 71.1

Mean Religiosity 0.0 −0.0

Family StructureTwo bio/adoptive parents 57.7 60.3Biological mom & stepdad 13.8 13.3Biological dad & stepmom 1.7 2.9Single mother 21.2 17.5Single father 2.4 3.0Surrogates 3.2 3.0

Parents’ EducationLess than high school 11.5 9.7High school diploma 32.7 32.2Some college 22.4 21.0College or more 33.4 37.1

Mean Parental Religiosity 0.0 0.0Mean Monitoring 2.0 2.0Mean Supervision 2.4 2.4

Friendship Group CharacteristicsMean number of friends 5.1 4.5Mean percent same gender 58.9 68.9Mean percent 1st generation 4.7 4.2Mean percent 2nd generation 7.6 7.0

Note: Ns are unweighted, means and percentages are weighted.

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such as the level of sex-related activity, which varies between −1 and 1, thepredicted value represents a continuous score that may be positive or negative.The first section shows that first generation immigrant girls and boys weresignificantly less likely than third+ generation adolescents of their same gender toparticipate in romantic relationships. Second generation boys were marginallyless likely than third+ generation boys to have these relationships, but morelikely than the first generation. Still, less than half of first generation immigrantadolescents were predicted to have romantic relationships, and a majority of allother adolescents were predicted to do so.

The next two sections examine ethnic similarity between the respondentand the partner in his or her primary romantic relationship in two differentways. First, we used the more restrictive definition of similarity by requiringthat the partners in the relationship be co-ethnics. Second, we relaxed therestriction and only required that the partners be of the same race (if non-HispanicWhite, non-Hispanic Black, or non-Hispanic Asian) or both be Hispanic(if Hispanic of any race). The predicted probabilities showed extremely similaroutcomes for both dependent variables. First generation adolescents hadpredicted probabilities of dating within their ethnicity and race/Hispanicethnicity of greater than 90 percent, significantly higher than second and third+

TABLE 2PREDICTED ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP CHARACTERISTICS BY GENERATION

Generation

First Second Third

Probability of Having a Romantic RelationshipAll girls (n = 4,950) 0.482*** 0.684 0.715All boys (n = 4,497) 0.432** 0.582+ 0.650Probability of Dating within Race/EthnicityGirls in relationships (n = 3,343) 0.939+ 0.841 0.830Boys in relationships (n = 2,741) 0.924*** 0.915 0.820Probability of Dating within PanethnicityGirls in relationships 0.930+ 0.864 0.841Boys in relationships 0.922+ 0.901+ 0.834Level of Sex-Related ActivityGirls in relationships −0.235* 0.044 0.122Boys in relationships −0.042 −0.140 −0.090How Much Would Like Romantic Relationship in Next YearAll girls 0.527* 0.586 0.598All boys 0.607 0.620 0.639

Note:Values are predicted by Stata based on the constant and coefficients from regression models; variables included aregender, generation, age, and ethnicity.+p < 0.10.*p < 0.05.**p < 0.01.***p < 0.001.

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generation adolescents. Differences between second and third+ generationadolescents were overall not statistically significant, although the general patternpredicted by assimilation theory held in that second generation adolescents hadpredicted probabilities between those of first and third+ generation adolescents.

We also examined the predicted probabilities of reporting a variety ofdating activities. These results showed very few differences by generationalstatus, so they are not shown, but are available upon request. Of particularnote, first generation girls were significantly less likely than second andthird+ generation girls to report meeting their partner’s parents, telling othersthat they are a couple, and thinking of themselves as a couple. Since these arepublic acts that proclaim the relationship, this may reflect a greater need tohide relationships among girls in some immigrant groups (e.g., Hennick et al.,1999; Talbani and Hasanali, 2000). We found no statistically significantdifferences among boys by generation.

The next section shows the predicted score on the continuous measure ofthe level of sex-related activity in a relationship. We found that first generationgirls were predicted to report significantly lower levels of sex-related activitiesthan second and third+ generation girls, but, as with dating activities, nosignificant differences existed for boys by generation.

The final section shows the desire to be in a romantic relationship next year,where the predicted value translates as a location on a scale from zero to one.Mirroring the results from the predicted values for actually having aromantic relationship at the Wave II interview, first generation girls hadsignificantly lower desires for a romantic relationship in the next year than thirdgeneration girls did. Thus, part of the reason that immigrant girls are less likelyto have romantic relationships is because they do not desire one; in contrast,immigrant boys appear to be constrained in the realization of their desires fora relationship.

Multivariate Models

Table 3 shows the results from nested logistic regression models ofparticipation in a romantic relationship. The first model includes only theadolescent’s characteristics. Results indicated that first generation adolescentsare significantly less likely to participate in romantic relationships, secondgeneration adolescents are marginally less likely to participate, and thelikelihood of participating is inversely related to the adolescent’s level ofreligiosity. Adolescents of Chinese and Other Asian ethnicities are less likelythan those from a European/Canadian background to participate in romantic

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TABLE 3ODDS RATIOS FROM LOGISTIC REGRESSIONS PREDICTING ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Adolescent CharacteristicsAge (in years) 1.2704*** 1.2499*** 1.2623***Girl 1.3375*** 1.3285*** 1.2252**Generation

First 0.4153*** 0.4340*** 0.4774***Second 0.7707+ 0.8291 0.8615Third 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000

Gender * GenerationGirl * first 0.9529Girl * second 1.0466

EthnicityMexican 0.9179 0.9658 1.0535Cuban 1.2197 1.2162 1.3717Central/South American 0.9932 0.9558 1.0508Puerto Rican 0.9854 0.9122 1.0035Chinese 0.4733** 0.4766** 0.5146*Filippino 0.9231 0.8895 0.9828Other Asian 0.6736+ 0.6851+ 0.6973+African/Caribbean 0.8905 0.8314*** 0.9107**European/Canadian 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000

Religiosity 0.7291*** 0.7978*** 0.7866***

Parent CharacteristicsFamily Structure

Two bio/adoptive parents 1.0000 1.0000Biological mom & stepdad 1.5047*** 1.5220***Biological dad & stepmom 1.2579 1.3016Single mother 1.3324** 1.3599**Single father 1.4381 1.4628Surrogates 1.1724 1.2124

Parents’ EducationLess than high school 1.0000 1.0000High school diploma 1.1224 1.0694Some college 1.2440+ 1.1647College or more 1.1413 1.0589

Religiosity 0.9383 0.9306Monitoring 0.9487* 0.9517*Supervision 0.9260+ 0.9250+Friendship Group Characteristics

Number of friends 1.0877***Proportion opposite-gender 1.3529**Proportion 1st generation 0.9767Proportion 2nd generation 0.7951

N 9,447 9,447 9,447F-test 21.5*** 14.7*** 16.5***

Notes: Models include controls for missing values on religiosity and friendship group characteristics.+p < 0.10.*p < 0.05.**p < 0.01.***p < 0.001.

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relationships. We had hypothesized that generational effects would be strongerfor girls than for boys, but the inhibitory effects of being an immigrant do notdiffer significantly by gender. We therefore dropped the interaction betweengender and generational status for the remainder of the relationship analyses.

The second model added family characteristics. The pattern of effects of theadolescent characteristics did not change, with the exception of being of African-American/Caribbean ethnicity, which has a significant negative associationwith reporting a romantic relationship. Adolescents living in families with a singlemother or a biological mother and a stepfather were more likely to participatein romantic relationships than those living with two biological/adoptiveparents. Parental religiosity was unrelated to adolescent relationship behavior.

Increased parental monitoring was significantly associated with a lowerlikelihood of reporting a romantic relationship, while increased parentalsupervision showed the same relationship at a marginal level of statisticalsignificance. We also tested for interactions between these variables and genderand generational status. The inhibitory effects of monitoring had a differentialnegative impact on girls (p = 0.02) and a differential positive impact on firstgeneration adolescents (p = 0.04). Parents may be more effective in theirmonitoring efforts toward girls than boys, but immigrant parents may be lesseffective in their monitoring efforts than other parents because of their lack ofknowledge regarding the U.S. adolescent dating context.

The third model added characteristics of the friendship group. Again, theeffects of variables in the previous model remained relatively unchanged,suggesting that friendship group characteristics do not mediate individual orfamily characteristics. As expected, based on developmental views of adolescentromance, the number of friends and the proportion of opposite-gender friendsare positively associated with the likelihood of having a romantic relationship.Models with interaction terms between gender and friendship characteristicsshow that these effects operate similarly for boys and girls. Models with inter-action terms between generational status and friendship characteristics revealdifferences which are discussed below.

Table 4 shows the results from nested ordinary least squares regressionmodels of participation in sex-related activities, represented by the factor score.These models only included the 6,084 respondents who reported participationin romantic relationships. In all these models, as in the romantic relationshipmodels, the effect of age continued to be significant and positive. Again, thefirst model included only adolescent characteristics, the second included familycharacteristics, the third friendship group characteristics. The adolescentcharacteristics model revealed no statistically significant differences in

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TABLE 4COEFFICIENTS FROM OLS REGRESSIONS PREDICTING SEX-RELATED ACTIVITIES

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Adolescent CharacteristicsAge (m years) 0.1823*** 0.1661*** 0.1666***Girl 0.2174*** 0.2074*** 0.2024***Generation

First 0.0115 0.0597 0.1187Second −0.0661 −0.0471 −0.0304Third 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

Gender * GenerationGirl * first −0.3443+ −0.3576+ −0.3514+Girl * second −0.0223 −0.0221 −0.0229

EthnicityMexican −0.0031 −0.0191 0.0070Cuban −0.1207 −0.1475 −0.0851Central/South American −0.0783 −0.1034 −0.0603Puerto Rican 0.1517 0.1075 0.1283Chinese −0.0693 −0.0568 −0.0514Filippino −0.0882 −0.0865 −0.0222Other Asian −0.0850 −0.0733 −0.0468African/Caribbean −0.0188 −0.0431 −0.0373European/Canadian 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

Religiosity −0.1242*** −0.1403*** −0.1397***

Parent CharacteristicsFamily Structure

Two bio/adoptive parents 0.0000 0.0000Biological mom & stepdad 0.0747 0.0746Biological dad & stepmom 0.0899 0.0893Single mother 0.0542 0.0532Single father −0.0746 −0.0782Surrogates 0.0734 0.0711

Parents’ EducationLess than high school 0.0000 0.0000High school diploma 0.0047 −0.0034Some college 0.0264 0.0193College or more −0.0709 −0.0789

Religiosity 0.0438 0.0425Monitoring −0.0511*** −0.0511***Supervision −0.0240 −0.0244Friendship group characteristics

Number of friends 0.0032Proportion opposite-gender 0.0499Proportion 1st generation −0.2504*Proportion 2nd generation −0.0609

N 6,084 6,084 6,084F-test 31.2*** 23.6*** 20.2***

Notes: Models include controls for missing values on religiosity and friendship group characteristics.+p < 0.10.*p < 0.05.**p < 0.01.***p < 0.001.

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sex-related activities by generational status for boys, but the marginally signifi-cant interaction term showed that first generation girls had a lower score thanthird+ generation girls. In analyses run separately on girls alone, the size of theeffect was about one-half of a standard deviation on the sex-related activitiesfactor score. Adolescent religiosity had a significant negative effect on sex-relatedactivities, so religious adolescents were involved in fewer sex-related activitieseven once selection into heterosexual romance was controlled.

Ethnicity showed some interesting effects. Once selection into relation-ships was taken into account, Chinese and Other Asian adolescents were notsignificantly different from European/Canadian adolescents in their level ofsex-related activities. Again, analyses run separately on girls alone showed thatMexican and Cuban girls had significantly lower levels, which suggests thatoverall lower levels of sex-related activity among some groups of Asian adolescentsis due to not entering into romantic relationships while lower levels amongsome Latina groups is due to behavior differences within those relationships.

The next models showed that family characteristics had few effects onsex-related activity within relationships. Increased parental monitoring is sig-nificantly associated with lower levels of sexual activity on top of its inhibitoryeffects on participating in relationships. In these models, no interactions formonitoring and supervision with gender or generational status were statisticallysignificant.

Finally, when friendship group characteristics are added into the thirdmodel, results showed statistically significant effects only of the proportion ofthe friendship group that is first generation. As the adolescent’s friendshipgroup is increasingly dominated by immigrants, the adolescent reports lowerlevels of sex-related activities within romantic relationships. However, theseassociations differ by generational status, as discussed below.

Interactive Effects for Friendship Group Characteristics

Because we proposed that the effects of friends might differ by generationalstatus, we tested a series of interaction models involving friendship groupcharacteristics and first and second generation status. We found threesignificant interactions: between generation and proportion of friends who areopposite-gender for predicting romantic relationships, between generation andproportion of friends who are immigrants for predicting romantic relation-ships, and between generation and proportion of friends who are opposite-gender for predicting sex-related activities. We present these interactions ingraphic form for ease of interpretation, with the understanding that our

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discussion of statistical significance is based on the underlying multivariatemodels and not tests of the lines themselves.

Figure I shows that the association between the proportion of friendswho are of the opposite gender and the likelihood of a romantic relationshipis negative only among first generation adolescents (p = 0.09). For second andthird+ generation adolescents, the association is positive as a developmentaltheoretical perspective predicts. We speculate that first generation adolescentswith predominantly same-gender friendship networks may report a relation-ship with an opposite-gender friend as romantic that another adolescentwould not, because the immigrant adolescent has a more traditional view ofintergender relationships.

Figure II shows that the association between the proportion of friendswho were first generation and adolescents’ likelihood of reporting a romanticrelationship differed by generational status (p = 0.07). For first and secondgeneration adolescents, increases in this proportion had a positive associationwith reporting a romantic relationship, while increases in this proportion hada negative association with that likelihood for the third+ generation. Potentially,first and second generation adolescents with more friends who are immigrantslike themselves or who have immigrant parents as they do have more opportunities

Figure I. Effect of Opposite-Gender Friends by Generation

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to meet a partner with whom they match along this dimension; first generationstudents showed a preference for racial and ethnic homogeny in Table 2.

Figure III shows that the association between the proportion of friendswho were opposite-gender and adolescents’ level of sex-related activities differedby generational status (p = 0.04). We expected that exposure to opposite-gender friends would increase sex-related activity, and that association appearsfor second and third+ generation adolescents. However, the association is inthe opposite direction for first generation adolescents, similar to the results inFigure I. We speculate that immigrant adolescents embedded in friendshipgroups with more opposite-gender friends are following more assimilatedpatterns of involvement in coed friendship groups where group activitiespredominate. In contrast, immigrant adolescents who stay more closely totraditional same-gender friendship groups only report opposite-gender friendsif a sexual relationship is involved. Generational status of the friendship groupis controlled in this model; unfortunately, the number of first generationadolescents in relationships is too small to support a three-way interaction test.In sum, Figures I and III taken together suggest a divide between traditionalimmigrant friendship group patterns and those of assimilated “Americanized”youth culture.

Figure II. Effect of First-Generation Friends by Generation

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DISCUSSION

These analyses are the first quantitative analyses of romantic relationshipsamong immigrant adolescents in a nationally representative sample of whichwe are aware. Previous qualitative research has been highly suggestive ofinteresting hypotheses, but those articles have been few in number and unableto generate statistical analyses. Our findings generally support our hypothesesbased on this previous work and the developmental perspective on adolescentromantic relationships. We find important effects of both family andfriendship group context. Parenting behaviors that monitor adolescent activitiesplay a unique role in the development of adolescent relationships. Parentalmonitoring of adolescent activities seems to constrain adolescents fromdeveloping romantic and sexual relationships with opposite-gender partners,although not equally for all adolescents. Monitoring actually increases thelikelihood of participating in romantic relationships for immigrant girls andboys, which we suspect is linked to a combination of an attempt on the part ofthe adolescent to fit in and a lesser ability to successfully monitor on the partof the immigrant parent.

In addition, the role of parental monitoring operates independently ofthe role of peer friendships in their association with relationship behaviors.

Figure III. Effect of Opposite-Gender Friends by Generation

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Developmental theory has often suggested that parents and peers compete intheir influence on adolescent behavior such that we might observe compensatoryeffects (Youniss and Smollar, 1985). Our results indicate that both parents andfriends have separate and important developmental effects. Peer group com-position is especially salient for the development of adolescent relationships.We found positive significant associations between the number of friendsreported by an adolescent and his or her participation in romantic relationships.We also found overall associations between the proportion of opposite-genderand immigrant friends and participation in romantic relationships and thelevel of sex-related activities.

Further, we found important differences in the influence of friendshipgroup contexts by generational status. Since adolescents tend to sort themselvesalong other lines of similarity such as race and ethnicity, we suggest that theysort along lines of generational status as well. Thus, first and second generationadolescents with larger proportions of first generation friends are similar tothem and more likely to find a dating partner, but third+ generation adolescentsin that situation are different and more isolated from romantic contact.Qualitative research by Eisikovits (2000) on immigrants from the formerSoviet Union in Israel suggests another possible explanation. The dating poolfor these teens is larger if they date native Israelis. She found that immigrantgirls were more likely to date Israeli boys, and thus more likely to date, if theyhad a supportive core group of immigrant girlfriends. The friendship grouphelped them maintain ties to their culture while they went out on the limb ofdating cross-culturally. Eisikovits did not find an effect such as this for the boys.

Immigrant status itself is most important in selecting youth into romanticrelationships; among youth who are involved in romantic relationships, ourresults indicated few generational status differences in relationship behavior.The marginal generational status differences in the models predicting sex-related activities were present only for girls, which follows the findings of somesmaller-scale projects that indicate that control of girls’ behavior is particularlyimportant in immigrant groups. The main influence on levels of sex-relatedactivities among boys is their personal level of religiosity.

We observe a common pattern of assimilation in romantic relationshipinvolvement such that first generation girls and boys are less likely to beinvolved in relationships, but the second generation has increasingly adoptedthe relationship norms of the majority youth culture in America and appearsmore similar to the third+ generation in the prevalence of having romanticrelationships in adolescence than the first generation. Being born in the UnitedStates, attending American schools their entire lives, and lacking language barriers,

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second generation youth are more likely to interact with and participate inneighborhood and school peer networks and friendships. There are stilldifferences between the second and third+ generation because second generationyouth have immigrant parents who attempt to reinforce ethnic traditions andvalues within the home, and they also face racial and ethnic barriers in terms ofpartner choices. Our results indicate that such ethnic differences are salient forpartner selection even at this beginning stage of relationship developmentin adolescence.

As first and second generation adolescents come to make up an increasingproportion of the dating and marriageable population of the U.S., knowledgeof their experiences and patterns of behavior becomes increasingly importantfor understanding the future of family formation. Immigrant adolescentsappear to be more conservative in their choices of dating and sexual partnersas well as their participation in these relationships and their behaviors withinthem. This conservatism applies particularly to female immigrant adolescents.Also, friendship groups that are predominantly composed of first generationadolescents are associated with more conservative levels of sex-related activitiesfor individual adolescents. More traditional attitudes and behavior in thearenas of romance, sex, and relationships may already play a role in the currenttrend toward lower levels of teenage pregnancy, and may portend futuredecreases in the age at marriage, rates of divorce, and patterns of sexualbehavior more generally.

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