Sexual Activity of Affluent Adolescents: The Differential Importance of Family Socialization and Social Bonds

Lori A. Burrington, Ohio State University

In this research, we consider the relationship of two indicators of social class status—family income and socioeconomic status (as measured by parents’ educational attainment and occupation)—to a single adolescent problem behavior: multiple sexual partnering. We employ data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and examine the respective effects of social class and family-level social control variables on our outcome to test the middle-status conformity hypothesis that the effects of social control variables on deviance vary by social status, such that the association between social class and deviance is an inverse, U-shaped curvilinear relationship.