First Comes Work, Then Comes Marriage: Future Orientation among African American Young Adolescents

First Comes Work, Then Comes Marriage: Future Orientation Among African American Young Adolescents* In this study we gathered quantitative and qualitative information on the thoughts and feelings of 72 low income, African American sixth-graders about their future careers, romantic relationships, and family relationships. Interviews were scored along several dimensions of future orientation: detail, optimism, pessimism, realism, and control beliefs. Children also rated the probability that various future life events would occur. Repeated Measures ANOVAs revealed that sixth-graders were more detailed, optimistic, and realistic about their fiaure careers than their romantic and family relationships and felt that they had more control over careers than relationships. No gender differences were found across the domains of future orientation. Descriptive information about at-risk adolescents' future orientations is presented. Results are discussed in terms of implications for intervention with at-risk Youth. Key Words: African American adolescents, at-risk adolescents, future orientation, identity development. There is wide agreement that African American children growing up under conditions of urban poverty are at increased risk for a number of negative psychosocial outcomes, including psychological distress, substance abuse, delinquency, teen pregnancy, and failure to complete high school (McLoyd, 1990). Nonetheless, the majority of African American children raised in impoverished urban environments manage to avoid negative outcomes (Hill, 1972). Researchers have become increasingly interested in identifying factors that promote resilience among children exposed to stressful environments (Rutter, 1987). According to Wyman et al. (1992), future orientation mav be one such protective factor for at-risk children. However, future orientation has primarily been studied among middle class, Caucasian adolescents, and as a result, relatively little is known about future orientation among low-income, African American youth. The current study combines multidimensional quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the future orientation of lowincome, African American young adolescents and to examine the content of future orientation across important domains of life functioning. Future Orientation: Definition and Dimensions Although a variety of definitions have been proposed (e.g., Agarwal, Tripathi, & Srivastava, 1983; Trommsdorff, 1986), future orientation may generally be defined as "the human ability to anticipate future events, give them personal meaning, and to operate with them mentally (Nurmi, 1991, p. 4)." Future orientation can be thought of as a collection of schemata, or attitudes and assumptions based on previous experiences, that interact with incoming information from the individual's environment to form expectations for the future, set goals and aspirations, and give personal meaning to future events (Nurmi, 1991; Trommsdorff, 1986). These expectations, goals, aspirations, and personal meanings then direct future-oriented behavior such as delay of gratification, planning, and achievement oriented behaviors (Trommsdorff, Lamm, & Schmidt, 1979). Future orientation has been described as a complex and multidimensional process (Nurmi, 1991). For this investigation, we have developed a multidimensional, quantitative and qualitative measure of future orientation grounded in Nurmi's (1991) model that describes four dimension of future orientation: detail, optimism, pessimism, and control beliefs. In addition, we have also added the dimension of realism because of its theoretical importance in determining whether a youth's future oriented thinking will serve a planning function that will assist in future goal achievement or a "fantasy" or "escape" function that is unlikely to promote such achievement (Nuttin, 1985). Measures of both optimism toward the future (the degree of anticipation of positive events and achievements), and pessimism (the degree of anticipation of negative events or failure), were included because studies have demonstrated that these two dimensions may be orthogonal to one another (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988). …