Second paper
Hasanlari
the_power_of_peers.pdf
Laurence Steinberg, Ph.D. II'
with
B. Bradford Brown, Ph.D., and
.Sanford M. Dornbusch, Ph.D.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Steinberg, Laurence D., date.
Beyond the classroom: why school reform has failed and what parents need to do / Laurence Steinberg, with B. Bradford Brown and Sanford M. Dornbusch.
p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. High school students-United States-Social conditions-Longitudinal studies. 2. Academic achievement-United States-Longitudinal studies. 3. Home and school-
United States-Longitudinal studies. 4. High school students-United States- Attitudes-Longitudinal studies.. I. Brown, B. Btadford (Benson Bradford), date.
II. Dornbusch, Sanford M. III. Title. LC205.574 1996
370.19'342'09794-.<1c20 96-3GG2 CIF ISBN 0-G84-80008-X
EIGHT
The Power of Peers
Parents playa central role in influencing their child's development and edu-
cation, but by the time children have reached the later years of elementary
school, friends have talcen on tremendous importance in their school life. In
order to understand the full complement of influences on school perfor-
mance and engagement, especially during the adolescent years-and in
order to understand the causes ofAmerica's achievement problem-we need
to look closely at the iroles played by peerJllIndeed, our research indicates
that peers shape student achievement patterns in profound ways, and that in
many respects friends are more powerful 'influences than family members
are, For a large number of adolescents, peers-not parents-are the chief
determinants of how intensely they are invested in school and how much ef-
fort they devote to their education,)
THE SOCiAL WORLD OF ADOLESCENCE
In our research, we devoted countless hours to investigating and describing
the social world of adolescence. This expenditure of time and energy was
necessary because studying peer influences on adolescent behavior entails
138
THE POWER OF PEERS
much more than studying the influence of the adolescent's close friends. The
close friends a young person has, while significant influences in a young per-
son's life, are only a small part of the total complex of peer influence.
The adolescent's social world can be drawn as three concentric circles. In
the innermost circle are the youngster's one or two ~estfriene&-lThese are the other children with whom the child spends most of his or her free time-at
lunch, during free periods, and so on. If you are the parent of a child be-
tween the ages of ten and sixteen, talce a moment and think about the chil-
dren who are your child's besr friends. These are the children whom your
child greets first on arriving at school, and they are also the children whom
your child sees last before leaving school at the end of the day. When the
telephone rings for your child on a weekday evening or weekend afternoon,
more often than not it is one of these pals.
Best friends comprise the inner circle of the social map of adolescence.
In the next circle out are the youngsters who are members of the adolescent's
rliquel These adolescents are also the child's friends, but their friendships are not nearly as intimate as are the ones the child has with his or her closest
companions, and these relationships may fluctuate in importance from
week to week. At anyone time, an adolescent's clique usually will have
somewhere between six and ten members. Clique members will sit at the
same tables in the school cafeteria, hang around with each other during re-
cess, and interact with each other as they travel to and from class and school.
These are the children whose names typically pop up in the stories children
share with their parents abour the events of the school day.
The third circle in the map of adolescent peer relations is composed of
the adolescent's~rowd.jrheadolescent's crowd is made up oflike-minded in-
dividuals who share certain features in common with each other bur who are
not necessarily each other's friends. Indeed, it is possible for adolescents ro
be members of the same crowd without really lmowing each other well at all.
This is because adolescents are members of the same crowd by virtue of their
common interests, arritudes, and preferred activities, not because of their re-
lationships with each other. What crowd members have in common is not
intimacy, but shared identity. But even though crowd members do not share
the intimacy of close friends, rhey influence each other in important ways.
An adolescent may not talk much about the members of his or her crowd,
139
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
but, as you will read, crowd members greatly influence each other neverthe-
less.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PEER CROWDS
When adults tend to think of peer influences on adolescent behavior, they
tend to think mainly about influences within the innermost circle (best
friends), secondarily abour influences in the middle circle (the clique), and
only marginally, if at all, abour influences in the outermost circle (the
crowd). This is quite reasonable, since we might expect that individuals will
be most influenced by the people with whom they are closest, and least af-
fected by people with whom they share little intimacy. Of course, it is true
that during adolescence, as during other periods of life, best friends influ-
ence each other's behavior a good deal. Bur during adolescence, peer influ-
ence operates within cliques and crowds in extremely important ways, and
adults should probably pay more attention than they do to the ways in
which adolescents are influenced by these groups of friends.
It is especially easy to underestimate the power of the adolescent crowd,
because its influence is transmitted in less direct, and more subtle, ways than
is the influence of the adolescents' close friends or clique. Close friends and
clique members influence each other in adolescence much as they influence
each other in childhood or adulthood: by providing models whose behavior
can be copied (''I'm dressing this way because Jamie looks so cool when she
dresses this way"); by rewarding or punishing certain actions, thereby in-
creasing (or decreasing) the likelihood of our repeating them (''I'm never
wearing this again because Luke laughed at me"); and by exerting direct
pressure to behave one way or another ("Jessie told me I just had to wear this
shirt to the party"). Crowds, in contrast, are less common in adulthood, and
their influence is less familiar to adults.
IBecause crowd members do not necessarily know each other personally, they don't influence each other directlyt-through modeling, reinforcement,
or coercion. Crowd members influence each other indirectly, through estab-
lishing norms and standards that the members feel they must adhere to.
Once the adolescent has identified with a particular crowd, the crowd's stan-
dards become internalized, incorporated into his or her own sense of self. As
140
THE POWER OF PEERS
a consequence, adhering to the norms and standards of the crowd does not
feel to the adolescent like succumbing to peer pressure; it feels mo ce like an
expression of his or her own identity.
Adults do not understand this distinction very well. When we think of
"peer pressure," we tend to envision an adolescent being coerced by friends
to engage in a certain behavior ("Come on, just try this cigarette"), in the
company of friends who model a specific action and then wait to be imitated
("Everyone is doing it"), or who actively reward or punish the adolescent for
behaving in a given way ("You're not really wearing that!"). To be sure, such
instances of active peer pressure do indeed occur in the daily lives of
teenagers. But much of the peer pressure experienced by adolescents is not
this active-nor is it necessarily experienced as pressure-although it is no
less powerful in its own way than the more active forms.
PEER PRESSURE PEAKS IN EARLY ADOLESCENCE
IThe less secure we are about our own identity and our own decision-malcing
abilities, the more we are influenced by others' opinions\ Bur the salience of
the crowd as an influence on our behavior declines as we'become adults. Be-
cause adolescence is a time when individuals often have questions about
their identity and their ability to function independently, it is inherently a
time of heightened vulnerability to the influence of others. While adults are
not immune to pressure from their peers, they are significantly less suscepti-
ble to it than adolescents are.
In our research, we have been able to chart changes in individuals' sus-
ceptibility to peer pressure as they move into and through adolescence. In
several different studies, we have found that vulnerability to peer pressure-
that is, how easily swayed a person is by the demands of his or her friends-
rises as children become teenagers, peal<s sometime around eighth or ninth
grade, and then begins to decline as individuals move through high school.
There is a specific period in development, then-roughly from age twelve
through sixteen-when individuals are easily influenced by their peers. And
it is during this time that peers begin ro play an enormouslYI important role
in influencing achievement.
It is especially interesting to juxtapose the developmental course of peer
141
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
pressure, with its power peaking in early adolescence, with what we know
about the developmental course of parental involvement in schooling. &
noted in the last chapter, national studies of American families show that
parental involvement drops off precipitously between elementary and sec-
ondary school-precisely at the time when youngsters' susceptibiliry to peer
influence is rapidly rising. Moreover, our evidence indicates that this sort of
parental disengagement is not limited to school matters, but affects a whole
range of issues, including monitoring and regulating the child's relationships
with friends, the child's use ofleisure time, and the child's choice of activi-
ties. To the extent that diminished involvement in their children's lives ren-
ders parents' influence less powerful, the door is opened for peers to step in
and exert a significant impact on each other's behavior-including their be-
havior in school. And this is precisely what happens between the sixth and
renth grades. At this point, in fact, children's achievement is more easily in-
fluenced by their peers than at any other time in their school career.
SHOULD ADULTS PANIC?
When adults are told that young adolescents are highly susceptible to the in-
fluence of friends-and, in fact, that friends may be more potent sources of
influence than parents-their first reaction is almost always tinged with anx-
iety and fear. The stereotype of the adolescent peer group portrays it as an
influence that inevitably affects teenagers for the worse-that rempts them
into trouble, steers them away from the endeavors that adults value, and co-
erces them to engage in risky or illicit activities.
In reality, this view of the adolescent's social world is far too simplistic.
True, there are peers who encourage their friends to be sexually active or to
experiment with drugs, and there are some who cajole their classmates into
cutting class or skipping school. But research tells us that there are also
teenagers who put pressure on their friends to stay away from drugs, remain
committed to school, and refrain from sex, and that these peers can be just
as powerful in their influence on other teenagers as peers who are trying to
steer other students in the wrong direction. In other words, although peer
pressure in early adolescence is a given, harmfUL peer pressure is not. Friends can influence each other's school performance positively or neg-
142
THE POWER OF PEERS
atively. &; adults suspect, an adolescent whose ftiends dispatage school suc-
cess will be steered away from scholastic achievement. All other things being eq ual, a B student whose friends are C students or who are alienated from
school, will usually see his or her own grades decline over time as a result of
associating with these less academically oriented peers. But, by the same
token, an adolescent whose friends value doing well in school will benefit by
his or her contact with these peers. That is, a B student whose friends are A
students will improve his or her school performance over time as a result of
these friendships. Although all adolescents will be influenced by their
friends, the specific direction of influence depends on who one's friends are
and what they value. Because of rhis, it is not enough to discuss peer pres-
sure in the abstract-as if it were a monolithic negative influence on adoles-
cents'. behavior. We must also know the climate of an adolescent's peer
crowd, the characteristics of his or her close friends, and the values held by
the members of his or her clique.
IdentifYing an adolescent's close friends and clique mares is simple
enough; we can just ask teenagers to tell us who their best friends are and
whom they hang around with. But what about the more amorphous peer
crowds? How do we identifY the crowds that influence youngsters' behavior?
In order to answer this question in our research, we organized, in each
school, a series of small "focus groups" composed of students who repre-
sented a cross section of the student body. In these focus groups, we asked
students ro talk abour the main crowds in their school and to identifY stu-
dents who were exemplary members of each of the crowds.
Although we conducted our research in different parts of the country
and in very different sorts of schools, we found striking similarities in the
rypes of crowds that were identified in each school. Let's look for a moment
at this part of adolescent sociery.
THE ADOLESCENT SOCIETY
All schools have crowds that emphasize social status, socializing and popu-
larity, although in most schools this group of the socially elite is divided into
two somewhat different crowds: "populars" (populariry-conscious students
who have a moderately strong commitment to academic achievement but
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BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
report moderate involvement in delinquent behavior and illicit drug use)
and "jocks" (who are quite similar to "populars," but less academically ori-
ented, and not as involved in drug use-except for alcohol, which they often
use to excess). Counterbalanced against these elite crowds are one or more
alienated crowds-which are referred to by students as "druggies,"
"burnouts," "greasers," and the like. Along with heavy involvement in drug
use and delinquent activities, members of these crowds tend to be inatten-
tive to schoolwork and often hostile toward teachers and other school per-
sonnel. Finally, nearly all schools have a large, amorphous crowd, consisting
of "average," "norma!," or "in-between" students who do not distinguish
themselves in any particular area-including school performance.
In addition to these elire, alienated, and average crowds, schools also
typically have at leasr one group of high achievers-sa-called "brains" or
"intellectuals"-students who thrive on academics, fotge close relations
with school staff, and avoid drugs and deviant activities. Most schools also
feature a vety small, socially inept crowd-"loners" or "nerds," as they ate
often called-whose members are generally low in social status and, conse-
quently, self-esteem.
Although the names of these crowds may vaty from school to school, or
region to region (e.g., "populars" might be called "preppies," "stuck-ups," or "'''''d ." 'hb alld"c 1"" ") CSOCles; ruggles mig t e c e rrea {S or stoners ,as Lar as we can tell, their existence is ubiquitous, at least within public schools. In racially
mixed schools, we also find crowds that are defined primatily by ethnicity,
and only secondarily by other attributes. For example, some schools have
crowds that ate characterized by students only as being composed of Black
students, or Vietnamese students, or Mexican students, and so on.
Once we had assembled a list of crowds for each of the schools we were
studying, we attempted to locate each student in the ctowd structure of his
at her school. In order to do this, we asked adolescents in each school to
classifY other students, rather than themselves, in the school's crowds. We in-
terviewed several paits of students in each school and asked them to tell us
which crowd each of theit classmates was a part of (we prompted them with
class lists at yearbook pictures). By tepeating this exercise across numerous
pairs of tatets, we wete able to identifY most students' crowd affiliation. Al-
though most teenagers say that they themselves ate unclassifiable, adoles-
144
THE POWER OF PEERS
cents have surprisingly little difficulty in identifYing which group (or
groups) their classmates belong to.
THE PREVAILING NORM: GETTING BY
With this social map in mind, then, what did our study tell us about the
peer norms and standards operative within the typical American school?
Let's begin by looking at the most common crowds found in American
schools and what they stand for. As you will see, there isn't much of a place
in the typical American high school for students whose primary concern is
academic excellence.
The popularity-conscious, socially elite crowds, whose concerns tend to
revolve around socializing, dating, and maintaining social status among
friends, accOunt for approximarely 20 percent of students in a typical high
school. Students in these crowds may do well enough to get by without ger-
ting into academic trouble, but they rarely strive for scholastic excellence-
most of rheir grades are B's. Another 20 percent of students belong to one or
more of the alienated crowds, where identities are centered around drugs,
drinking, delinquency, or defiance; these students are openly hostile to aca-
demics-on average, they earn C's. About 30 percent of students describe
themselves as "average"-not especially opposed to academic pursuits, but
not exactly striving for success, either; like rhose in the social crowds, their
grades hover around straight B's. And between 10 and 15 percent of stu-
dents belong to a crowd defined by ethnicity, although this figure varies con-
siderably from school to school, depending on the school's ethnic
composition. The extent to which members of ethnically defined peer
crowds are invested in academics depends largely on the particular ethnic
group in question, as I'll explain later in this chapter.
What about rhe explicitly academically oriented crowds-the "brains,"
rhe "intellectuals," and so on? Despite the facr rhar these students are en-
rolled in more difficult, more demanding courses-many of them ralee hon-
ors and advanced-placement courses-they maintain an A- average in
school grades. Bur whereas some 70 percent of students belong to one of the
solid-B, popularity-conscious elites, one of the low-achieving, alienared
crowds, or to the large mass of "average" students, less than 5 percent ofall
145
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
students are members ofa high-achieving crowd that defines itselfmainly on the
basis ofacademic excellence.
Not only is there little room in most schools for the academically ori-
ented, there is substantial peer pressure on students to underachieve. Adults
might think that virtually all teenagers would rather do well in school than
do poorly, but our studies suggest that this is not necessarily the case. To be
sure, the prevailing expectation among American teenagers is that one ought
to avoid failing in school and do what it tal,es to graduate. But our surveys
indicate that among American teenagers, there is widespread peer pressure
not to do too well. For example:
• Although most adolescents say that their friends believe that it is im-
portant to graduate from high school (73%) and ro go to college (46%),
fewer (32%) say that their friends think it is important to get good grades
or ro go ro "one of rhe best colleges in the U.S." (20%). Nearly as many
(16%) say that their friends think ir is importanr that they be "willing to
parry."
• One out of every six students deliberately hides his or her intelligence
and interest in doing well while in class because they are "worried what
their friends might think." One in five studenrs say their friends make fun
of people who try to do well in school.
• More than one-half of all studenrs say they almosr never discuss their
schoolwork with their friends. More than one-quarter say they have never
studied with their friends. Only one in five has studied with his or her
friends more than five times during the past school year.
• We asked the adolescents in our survey to tell us which crowd their
friends belonged to and which crowd they'd most like to be a part of.
When asked which crowd they would most like to belong to, five times as
many students say the "populars" or "jocks" as say the "brains." Three
times as many say they would rather be "parryers" or "druggies" than
"brains." Of all of the crowds, the "brains" were least happy with who they
are-nearly half wished they were in a different crowd.
PEER INFLUENCES ON ACHIEVEMENT
Although the prevailing norm in most high schools is, evidently, to "get by,
without showing 0[£" there are pockets within each school in which aca-
146
THE POWER OF PEERS
demic achievement is admired, and others in which ir is actively discour-
aged. These cliques and crowds that define a youngster's social world are sig-
nificant influences on the child's academic performance, because each crowd
has its particulat set of normative standards and expectations for achieve-
ment and behavior in school, and because adolescents attempt to conform
to the norms and expectations of their friends. As a consequence, an indi-
vidual student's school performance will depend in latge measure on which
crowd the student belongs to, and what that crowd's expectations are fat be-
havior in school. Simply put, given several adolescents of equal scholastic
ability, those who are membets of intellectual cliques and crowds will
achieve more in school than those who are members of the socially elite
cliques and crowds, and both groups of adolescents will outperform those
who ate members of alienated crowds.
This seems reasonable enough, of course-it is hardly surprising that
membets of academically oriented crowds do best in school and members of
alienated crowds do worst. Perhaps it is merely that students who choose to
associate with brainy classmates are themselves more academically inclined,
whereas those that select friends from the alienated crowds ate themselves
less oriented toward school. After all, it is not as if adolescents are placed
within diffetent peer groups. How can we be cettain that friendships really
affect students' school perfotmance, rather than simply reflect it. Do friends
really influence each other-is it teally a case of "the company they keep"-
or is it simply that "birds of a feather flock together"?
By tracking students over a three-year period, we were able to see how
they were doing in school at the beginning of the time period, which friends
they were spending time with, and whether their school performance and
behavior changed over time as a result. By comparing the academic careers
of students who began high school with equivalent grades, but who had dif-
ferent sorts of friends during the school years, we were able to see whether
the type of ftiends that adolescents have actually makes a difference in their
school performance.
The answer is that it most certainly does, especially in two areas: aca-
demic performance and delinquency. Youngsters whose friends were more
academically oriented-that is, whose friends had higher grades, spent
mote time on homework, had higher educational aspirations, and who were
more involved in extracurricular activities-did better over the course ofhigh
147
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
school than students who began school with similat tecotds but who had
less academically oriented friends. Similarly, students whose friends were
more delinquent-who used more drugs and alcohol and who had more
conduct problems-developed more problems themselves over time than
did adolescents who began the study with the same behavior profile but who
had friends who wete less delinquent. , These findings tell us, then, that parents have legitimate reason ro be
concerned about the qualities and values of their children's friends, espe-
cially during early adolescence, when susceptibility to peer influence runs
strong. There is also reason to be concerned about the characteristics of the
crowd to which an adolescent belongs, since our study found that this in-
fluence matters, too. All other things being equal, adolescents who are mem-
bers of more academically otiented crowds do better in school than orher
students, whereas those who are members of more alienared crowds do
worse and ate more likely to get into trouble.
How large a difference do friends mal<e? In one set of analyses, we were
able to contrast the influence of best friends wirh the influence of parents on
two important outcomes: the grades in school thar the adolescent was get-
ting, and the adolescent's amount of drug and alcohol Use. Remember from
the previous two chapters that we had found consistent evidence that ado-
lescents from authotitative homes performed better in school and were less
involved in problem behavior than their peers. How does the "power of au-
thoritative parenting" stack up in comparison to the "power of the peer
group"? At least by high school, the influence offriends On school perfimnance and drug use is more substantial than the influence ofparents'practices at home. Parents may influence their children's long-term educational plans, but
when it comes to day-to-day influences on schooling-whether students at-
tend class, how much time they spend on homework, how hard they try in
school, and the grades they bring home-friends are more influential than
parents.
The realization that, by high school, peers playas great a role-if not
greater-in influencing student achievement and behavior as parents do led
us ro ask two important quesrions: First, how do students end up in the
crowds to which they belong? Second, does the power of the peer group help
explain the consistent ethnic differences in achievement we observed in our
148
THE POWER OF PEERS
study? In other words, is the superior achievement of Asian students, and
the inferior achievement of Black and Latino students, due to differences in
the peers these youngstets hang out with?
Let's begin by looking at the first question: How do students end up in
a specific niche within the adolescent society?
HOW ADOLESCENTS SORT THEMSELVES INTO CROWDS
What is the sorting ptocess through which some adolescents become part of
the "brain" crowd and others become "jocks"? What makes some students
become "partyers" and others "druggies"? Why do adolescents end up with
the particular circle of friends they have?
The results of our study point to three sets of forces that determine in
which crowd an adolescent will end up: (I) the adolescent's personality and
interests, which in part are determined by the way the student has been
raised by his or her parents; (2) the types of peer crowds available to that stu-
dent in his or her particular school; and (3) the tactics that parents use to
"manage" rheir child's friendships. In describing how these three sets of
forces work together, I have found it helpful to use a sort of astronautical
metaphor that has three main parts: the launch, the territoty, and the navi-
gational plan.
THE LAUNCH
The firsr set of factors-the child's personality and interests-refers to the
general direction in which the child is "launched" as parents prepare to send
the youngster on a journey through adolescence. When the child is six or
seven, adolescence seems a distant destination, but parents are already "aim-
ing" the child toward certain goals-even if they themselves are not fully
aware of what they are doing. As a result of this goal-setting, during the early
elementary school years, a sort of "launch ttajectory" is established for the
child, especially with regard to school matters. Launching the child on a cer-
tain trajectory does not guarantee that he or she will reach a particular des-
tination, bur it does point the child in a general direction.
At one extreme are children who are launched on a route that is headed
in the general direction of educational excellence, instilled wirh values that
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BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
stress scholastic success, and who are expected to make school achievement
a top priority. In the child's upbringing, traits like perseverance, achieve-
ment motivation, and responsibility are emphasized, and parents put into
place high standards for achievement. At the other extreme are children
whose launch trajectoty does not aim the child toward school success. The
child may be aimed toward a different goal or, more likely, toward no specific
goal at all. Socialization in these households may be overly permissive or in-
consistent, and parental expectations and performance standards are un-
clear. Between these two extremes are other trajectories, which vary in
the degree to which they point the child toward school success and in the
strength and importance of schooling as an activity.
THE TERRITORY
Because peers play such an important role in influencing children's day-to-
day behaviors once they reach adolescence, the territOlY into which a child
is launched-that is, the particular types of peers and peer crowds he or she
is likely to run into-is as important as the launch trajectory on which the
child is initially placed. Once a child becomes involved with a certain group
of friends, these peers begin to have an effect on his or her behavior. To con-
tinue the astronautical metaphor, we can think of peer crowds as sorts of
"planets" toward which the child is launched. Once a child ends up in the
"orbit" of a given peer group, the power of that group keeps the child within
its orbit and encourages the child to adopt a certain set of behaviors and out-
looks. The longer a child orbits around a certain group of friends, the tighter
the rein the group has on the child's behavior, and the more established that
behavior pattern becomes.
We saw this quite clearly when we looked at adolescent drug use. The
most important determinant of an adolescent's initial experimentation with
drugs-primarily alcohol and marijuana-is the home environment. Spe-
cifically, adolescents are more likely to begin drinking and experiment with
marijuana when they come from households that are exceptionally permis-
sive or in which the parents are disengaged, and they are less likely to exper-
iment with these substances when their parents are authoritative. This is not
very surprising. But it is the peer group, and not the home environment,
that determines whether an adolescent will progress from experimentation
'50
THE POWER OF PEERS
with drugs to regular use. Adolescent "experimenters" who had drug-using
friends were far more likely to become regular users than were "experi-
menters" whose friends were not using alcohol or other drugs. In other
words, parental permissiveness or disengagement may launch an adolescent
in the direction of drug-using peer groups, but whether drug use becomes a
part of the adolescent's regular pattern of behavior depends largely on the
peer group that he or she joins. An adolescent from a permissive family who does not connect with a drug-using peer group is unlikely to get into trou-
ble with drugs, despite the permissive home environment.
We can apply the same logic to understanding the dual roles of parents
and peers in school achievement. Parents may launch their child on an aca-
demic trajectory, but if there is no academically oriented crowd for that stu-
dent to connect up with, the launching will have little effect. On the other
hand, if there are only academically oriented peer crowds in a given setting, what parents do at home, in terms of the trajectory they launch their child
on, will mal<e relatively less difference, since their child will likely end up in
a crowd that emphasizes school success anyway.
To a certain extent, then, the impact of the home environment on the
adolescent's behavior will depend to a large measure on the peer groups that
inhabit the adolescent's social world. Knowing this helps us understand why
the impact of parents on their children's achievement, while significant, is
not all-powerful. Parents may socialize a child in a certain direction, but
whether that socialization will be successful-that is, whether the adolescent
will actually reach the desired goal-will also depend on the peer influences
he or she enCOunters during the journey. This, in turn, will depend on which
peers are available for the child to associate with, and how the adolescent
navigates among the different circles of classmates within his or her school.
NAVIGATING THROUGH THE ADOLESCENT SOCIETY
Although it is true that parents have less of a direct effect on their children
during adolescence than during childhood, our studies show that parents
can have a powerful indirect effect by steering the child toward some peer
groups and away from others. Through such piloting, parents can exert
some control over the types of peers their child spends time with and, con-
sequently, over the peer influences to which their child is exposed.
1 51
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
There are two chief ways in which parents do rhis. One way is by ar-
tempring to exert some control over the child's choice of friends and out-of-
school activiries. This, of course, is difficult once the child has entered
adolescence, but it is not impossible. Indeed, in contrast to the widely held
view that there is little parents can do when it comes to influencing their
child's choice of friends, we find in our research that families vary a great
deal in the extent to which parents monitor and regulate their child's friend-
ships. More important, parents who exercise greater control over which
peers their children spend time with have children who do better in school
and who are less likely to get into trouble.
A second, and potentially more powerful, way in which parents influ-
ence their child's choice of friends is by selecting the settings in which their
child will spend time-by living in one neighborhood as opposed to an-
other, by choosing one school over another, and by involving the child in
certain rypes of after-school and weekend activities. This is really a matter of
playing the percentages, ttying to maximize the number of "good" peers a
child comes into contact with and minimizing the number of "bad" peer in-
fluences in rhe child's environment. When parents maximize the number of
good peers in their child's environment, rhey are less likely to need to exert
control over their child's choice of specific friends, since the odds are good
that by chance alone the child will come into contact with peers who are
likely to be positive influences on his or her development. In essence, al-
though parents can't choose their children's friends, they can influence rheir
child's choices by defining the available pool of possible peers. One way that
parents can do this is by malring sure that their child's world is adequately
populated with other children who themselves have been raised in authori-
tative families-families that, as I have explained, tend to produce the most
well-adjusted children.
WHY NEIGHBORHOODS MATTER
A clear example of this phenomenon was revealed when we looked at how
neighborhoods affect children's behavior and performance in school. Be-
cause our sample was so large, we were able to compare adolescents who
went to the same school but lived in different neighborhoods within the
152
THE POWER OF PEERS
school district.lWhat we found was that adolescents who live in neighbor-
hoods in which a large proportion of families are authoritative perform bet-
ter in school and are less likely to get into trouble than adolescents who
come from identical home environments-and who go to the same
school-but who live in neighborhoods in which the population of author-
itative families is much lower. \
Why would growing up in a particular neighborhood matrer, above and
beyond the influence of the home and school environment? Because where
a family lives affects the pool of peers their child comes into contact with,
and this, in turn, influences the child's behavior. If you are a good parent
and you live in a neighborhood with other good parents, chances are that
the lessons you have tried so hard to teach your child at home will be rein-
forced when your child comes into contact with other children, and other
adults, in the community.
I want to stress here that choosing a "good" neighborhood in which to
settle and raise a family is not the same as choosing an affiuent neighbor-
hood. Although, as a general rule, the prevalence of authoritative parenting
rises, and that of disengaged parenting falls, as one moves up the socioeco-
nomic ladder, parenting style and family income are by no means perfectly
correlated. Within any particular social class range, therefore, there is con-
siderable variability in how children are raised, and it is possible both for a
well-to-do family to end up in a terrible neighborhood (so far as the quality
of parenting is concerned) and for a family of more modest means to end up
in a neighborhood that provides a wonderful social environment for chil-
dren.
What specific factors increase the likelihood that a given neighborhood
will provide a good social environment for the child? Based on our research,
parents should look for a high level of parental involvement in the local
schools, a high level of parental participation in organized activities serving
children (sports programs, arts programs, etc.), and a high level of parental
monitoring and supervision of children. Our research shows that children
who grow up in such neighborhoods fare better. Even if their own parents
are not especially involved in school, active in their child's life, or vigilant su-
pervisors of their child's activities, the children benefit from contact with
peers whose parents have these characteristics. And for parents who are in-
153
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
valved, active, and vigilant, living in a community in which there is a high
proportion oflike-minded parents gives an added boost to the beneficial ef-
fects of an authoritative home environment.
SCHOOL CHOiCE: CHOOSING SCHOOLS OR CHOOSING
PEER GROUPS?
Our findings on the importance of peers as influences on adolescent
achievement and behavior are interesting in light of current debates about
school choice. Most debates about proposals to increase parents' choice of
schools-for example, tuition tax credits, giving parents vouchers to use for
private school tuition, or permitting parents to choose among several public
schools within their area-have focused on the impact of these policies on
schools' practices. Proponents of school choice have argued that permitting
parents to choose among schools-either among private and public schools,
or among only public schools-will enhance school quality because it will
force schools to compete with each other. Opponents of school choice pro-
grams contend that providing parents with vouchers to use for private
schools will undermine the quality of public schools (by siphoning resources
out of schools' coffers and directly into parents' hands). In addition, oppo'
nents argue that encouraging competition among public schools will ulti-
mately widen the gap between good schools and bad ones, since the good
ones, over time, will become more selective and attract better and better
students, while the bad ones will ultimately have to serve a larger and larger
proportion of ill-prepared students.
An important part of the case made by school choice proponents is the observation that students attending private schools outperform those in
public schools. One of the most important elements of this argument is that
the observed achievement difference between private and public school stu-
dents persists even after talcing into account the different family back-
grounds of these two groups of students (as one would expect, private school
students, on average, come from more affluent families). The usual inter-
pretation of the achievement differential between students from private
schools and those from public ones is not, then, that the students attending
the two lcinds of schools are inherently different from each other, but that
154
THE POWER OF PEERS
private schools have higher standards, more rigorous requirements, and
more strenuous disciplinary practices. AB a consequence, it is argued, stu-
dents attending private schools take more demanding courses, work harder,
behave themselves better, and, ultimately, learn more in school and perform
better on achievement resrs.
An equally plausible alternative, though, is that the achievement differ- ential between public and private high school students is not due ro differ-
ences between theit families or between their schools, but ro diffetences
between their peer groups. Compatisons that talce family background into
account do not control for the mote intangible facrors that distinguish stu-
dents who ate sent ro private school from those who attend public school,
such as motivation, self-reliance, and the knowledge that one's parents have
made a financial sacrifice for one's education. In all likelihood, students who
attend private and parochial schools are exposed ro a higher proportion of
peers with high educational aspirations and good study habits, and this ex-
posure positively affects their own behavior, entirely independent of the in-
structional climate of the school. Although our study did not include
students from private schools, our findings on the importance of peers, as
well as a wealth of research on the minimal effects of school differences on
student achievement, are consistent with this interpretation.
When parents are choosing a school, they are not only choosing a prin-
cipal, a school facility, and a faculty. They are also choosing classmates-and
potential friends-for their child. Our study suggests that it may be this as-
pect of school choice-the choice of a peer group-that may be the most
important, and that parents should keep this in mind when selecting a
school for their child.
ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN ACHIEVEMENT:
THE IMPORTANCE OF PEERS
Our findings on the importance of peers in adolescent achievement also
bear directly on the question of ethnic differences in school performance.
Remember, one of the puzzles we encountered when we looked at the role
of the family in school achievement was rhat Asian parents did not, on the
surface, appear ro be doing anything particularly special that would account
155
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
for their children's remarkable success, nor were Black parents doing anye
thing noteworthy that would explain their children's relatively weaker per-
formance. Overall, Asian students in our study were performing better than
we would expect on the basis of their parents' practices, and Black students
were performing worse. Something in Asian students' lives protects them,
even if they are exposed to less than perfect parenting, while something in
Black students' lives undermines the positive effects of parental involvement
and authoritativeness.
According to our study, this "something" is the peer group. One clear
reason for Asian students' success is that Asian students are far more likely
than others to have friends who place a great deal of emphasis on academic
achievement. Asian-American students are, in general, significantly more
likely to say that their friends believe it is important to do well in school, and
significantly less likely than other students to say that their friends place a
premium on having an active social life. Not surprisingly, Asian students are
the most likely to say that they work hard in school to keep up with their
friends.
Asian students' descriptions of their friends as hardworking and aca-
demically oriented are corroborated by information we gathered indepen-
dently from the friends themselves. You may recall that one of the unique
features of our study was our ability to match information provided by ado-
lescents with information provided directly by their friends. This provided
us with a more accurate assessment of each adolescent's social network than
would have been possible had we been forced to depend on adolescents' per-
ceptions of their friends' behavior, since such perceptions can be erroneous
(like adults, adolescents tend to overstate the degree of similarity that exists
between their friends and themselves).
When we look at friends' activity patterns for adolescents from different
ethnic groups, we see quite clearly that the friends with whom Asian stu-
dents socialize place a relatively greater emphasis on academics than other
students do, whereas the opposite is true for Black and Hispanic teenagers.
Specifically, Asian students' friends have higher performance standards (that
is, they hold tougher standards for what grades are acceptable), spend more
time on homework, are more committed to education, and earn consider-
ably higher grades in school. Black and Hispanic students' friends earn lower
156
THE POWER OF PEERS
grades, spend less time on their studies, and have substantially lower perfor-
mance standards. White students' friends fall somewhere between these two
extremes on these various indicators.
When I first saw these findings, my presumption was that they were due
entirely to racial segregation in adolescent peer groups. In other words, if
Asian students are performing better in school'than other students, and
Black and Hispanic students worse, and if peer groups are constituted
mainly along ethnic lines, it necessarily follows that Asian students will have
friends who are doing better in school, and Black and Hispanic students will
have friends who are doing more poorly.
It turns out that the segregation argument is only partly true. While it is
certainly the case that adolescent peer groups are characterized by a high de-
gree of ethnic segregation-about 80 percent of White and Black students,
and more than half of Asian and Hispanic students have best friends from
the same ethnic group-there are sufficient numbers of cross-racial friend-
ships in any school to ask whether the pattern described above holds for stu-
dents who travel in integrated circles. The answer is that it does, at least for
the most part. Even if we look solely at youngsters whose best friends are
from a different ethnic background, we still find that Asian students' friends
place a greater emphasis on doing well in school, and Black and Hispanic
students' friends, relatively less. Once again, White students fall somewhere
in between.
Peer pressure among Asian students and their friends to do well in
school is so strong that any deficiencies in the home environment-for ex-
ample, parenting that is either too authoritarian or emotionally distant-are
rendered almost unimportant. It is, of course, true that Asian students from authoritative homes perform better in school than those from disengaged
ones. But an Asian student who comes from a less-than-optimal home envi-
ronment is likely to be "saved" from academic failure by falling in with
friends who value academic excellence and provide the necessary support for
achievement.
Why is it so likely that an Asian student will fall into an academically
oriented peer crowd and benefit from its influence? Ironically, Asian student
success is at least partly a by-product of the fact that adolescents do not have
equal access to different peer groups in American high schools. Asian stu-
157
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
dents are "permitted" ro join intellectual crowds, like the "brains," but the
more socially oriented crowds-the "populars," "jocks," and "parryers"-are
far less open ro them. For example, whereas 37 percent of the White stu-
dents in our sample were members of one of these three socially oriented
crowds, only 14 percent of the Asian students were-even though more
than 20 percent of the Asian students said they wished they could be mem- bers of these crowds (slightly less than one-third of the White students as-
pired to membership in one of these crowds). In essence, at least some Asian
students who would like ro be members of nonacademically oriented
crowds are denied membership in them.
A similar argument has been advanced by several Asian social scientists
in explaining the extraordinary success of Asian-American students. They
have noted that academic success is one of the few routes to social mobiliry
open to Asians in American culture-think for a moment of the relative ab-
sence of Asian-American entertainers, athletes, politicians, and so on. For
Asian youngsters, who see most nonacademic pathways to success blocked
off, they have "no choice" but ro apply themselves in school. This is why
Asian students are so much more likely than other youngsters ro subscribe
ro the belief that academic failure will bring terrible consequences. When
individuals believe that there are few opportunities ro success through routes
other than education, doing well in school becomes that much more im-
portant.
Because Asian students find it more difficult than White students ro
breal{ inro the more socially oriented crowds, they drift roward academically
focused peer groups whose members value and encourage scholastic success.
The result of this drift is that a large number of Asian students, even those
who are less academically talented than their peers, end up in crowds that
are highly oriented toward success in the classroom. Once in these crowds,
Asian students benefit tremendously from the network of academically ori-
ented peers. Indeed, one of the striking features ofAsian student friendships
is how frequently they turn to each other for academic assistance and con-
sultation.
The opposite is true for Black and Latino srudents, who are far more
likely than other students to find themselves in peer groups that actually de-
value academic accomplishment. Indeed, peer pressure among Black and
158
THE POWER OF PEERS
Latino students not to excel in school is so strong in many communities-
even among middle-class adolescents-that many positive steps that Black
and Latino patents have taken to facilitate theit childten's school success are
undermined. In essence, much of the good work that Black and Latino par-
ents are doing at home is being undone by countervailing pressures in their
youngsters' peer groups. As a consequence, parental efforts in these ethnic
groups do not have the payoff that we would expect.
This is true not only in racially integtated schools, but in segregated
schools as well. In one well-known study of an all-black, inner-city high
school, for example, the researchers found that students who tried to do well
in school were teased and openly ostracized by their peers for "acting
White." Students were criticized-accused of acting as if they were "better"
than their peers-if rhey earned good grades, exerted effort in class, or at-
tempted to please their teachers. Those who wished to do well academically
wete forced to hide their success and to develop other means of maintaining
theit popularity among classmates in order to compensate for being good
students, such as clowning around in class or excelling in some athletic ac-
tivity. Why would Black and Latino peer groups demean academic success?
In many minority peer groups, scholastic success is equated with "selling
out" one's cultural identity) as some sort of surrender to the control of
White, middle-class America.
I found this so interesting that I asked an extremely brighr African-
American undergraduate in one of my seminars at Temple University, who
was familiar with our research, to help me better undersrand rhis phenome-
non. The student said that the finding rang true for her. She had been raised
in dire poverty within inner-city Washington, D.C., and she was the only
one of her school friends to have made it out of the ghetto; as she explained, all of her former schoolmates were either on drugs, in jail, on welfare, or
raising an infant. She was torn about where she would settle after graduat-
ing from college; the pull to return to her home community was very strong,
but she felt that she 'could nor face her former friends. Whenever she re-
turned home during school vacations, she was taunted for thinking too
highly of herself and reased for not yet having given birth to a child. She said
that the pressure her friends put on her over the years to drop out of college
and return to her roots was enormous. In fact, she said, her friends inti-
159
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
mated that the only teason she had gone off to college and avoided eatly
pregnancy was because she was nOt physically attractive enough to interest a
man.
Why is succeeding in school equated in some circles with "acting
"''hite'' or "selling out"? As Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu, two African- American social scientists who have studied this phenomenon explain:
[W]hite Ameticans traditionally refused to acknowledge rhat black Amer- icans are capable of intellectual achievement, and ... black Americans
subsequently began to doubt their own intellectual ability, began to define
academic success as white people's prerogative, and began to discourage
their peers, perhaps unconsciously, from emulating white people in aca-
demic striving, i.e., from "acting white.
One of my colleagues at the University of Georgia, Layli Phillips, points
out that this message-that academic success is somehow incompatible with
a healthy Black identity-is perpetuated by a mass media that emphasizes
and glorifies low-income African-American peer culture, malcing it attrac-
tive even to middle-class African-American youngsters. African-American
parents who want their children to succeed in school are not only battling
the force of the Black peer culture (which in many circles demeans academic
success), but are fighting a difficult battle against the very powerful images
of anti-intellectual Black youth portrayed as normative in music, movies,
and television.
We heard variations on the "acting White" theme many, many times
over the course of our interviews with high school students. The sad truth is
that many students, and many Black students in particular, are forced to
choose between doing well in school and having friends. Although there are
crowds within each high school in which academic success is valued and in
which successful students are respected, these crowds tend to be dominated
by W'hite students, and peer groups in American high schools are so ethni-
cally segregated that it is extremely difficult for Black and Latino students to
join these crowds. Thus, in many schools, there is a near-complete absence
of identifiable peer groups that respect and encourage academic success and
are genuinely open to Black and Latino students. As a consequence, it is far'
160
THE POWER OF' PEERS
more difficult for a talented Mrican-American student than it is for a com-
parably skilled Asian at White student to find the necessary peer support for
achievement.
Among the high-achieving Black students in our sample, for example,
only 2 percent said their friends were members of the "brain" crowd, as op-
posed to 8 percent of the White students and 10 percent of the Asian stu-
dents with the same grades in school. Interestingly, the proportion of
high-achieving Black students who said they wished they were members of the "brain" crowd (6 percent) was about the same as it was for' White stu-
dents (5 percent), Thus, while just as many Black students as White students
aspire toward membership in the "brain" crowd, membership in this group.
is more open to White than to Black students.
It is important to understand that the pressure against academic excel-
lence that is pervasive within Black and Latino peer gtoUpS is not unique to
these ethnic groups, Rather, what we see in these peer groups is an extreme
case of whar exists within most White peer gtoupS as well. As noted earlier,
the prevailing norm in most adolescent peer groups is one of "getting by
without showing off"-doing what it takes to avoid getting into trouble in
school, but at the same time shunning academic excellence. The chief dif-
ference appears to be not in the different ethnic groups' avoidance of excel-
lence-this is common among all but the Asian youngsters-but in how the
different ethnic groups define academic "trouble,"
We measured students' perception of this "trouble threshold" by asking
them whar the lowest grade was that they could receive without their parents
getting angry, The students' answers to this question confirmed our suspi-
cion: Among Black and Latino students, not until their grades dipped below
a C- did these adolescents perceive that they would get into trouble, Among
White students, however, the average "trouble threshold" was one entire let-
ter grade higher-somewhere between a B and a C. And among Asian stu-
dents, the average 'grade below which students expected rheir parents to
become angry was an astounding A-! One reason for the relatively poorer
school performance of Black and Latino students, then, is that these stu-
dents typically have different definitions of "poor" grades, relative to their
White and Asian counterparts, And because peer crowds tend to be ethni-
cally segregated, different normative standards develop within Black and
161
BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
Latino peer groups rhan in other crowds. Conversely, one reason for the re-
markable success of Asian students is that they have a much stricter, less for-
giving definition of academic failure than their Black, White, and Latino
peers, and this definition shapes peer norms.
Our findings suggest, then, that a large part of ethnic differences in high
school achievement does not derive from differences in the ways in which
parents from different ethnic groups raise their children-that is, the
"launch" they get from the home environment-but come instead from dif-
ferences in the peer environments-the "territory"-that youngsters from
different backgrounds encounter. At a time in development when children
are especially susceptible to the power of peer influence, the circle of friends
an adolescent can choose from may malce all the difference between excel-
lent and mediocre school performance.
152
NOTES
119 MetLife survey. Metropolitan Life Survey of the American Teacher, Violence
in Americas Public Schools: The Family Perspective (New York: MetLife,
1994).
CHAPTER 7: THE HOME ENVIRONMENT
OF ACADEMICALLY SUCCESSFUL STUDENTS
PAGE
125 parental involvement wotks: Wendy Grolnick and Marcia Slowiaczek, "Par-
ents' Involvement in Children's Schooling: A Multidimensional Concep-
tualization and Motivational Model," Child Development 64 (1994):
237-52; David Stevenson and David Baker, "The Family-School Rela-
tion and the Child's School Performance," Child Development 58 (1987):
1348-57.
126 parents of successful students: See also Annette Lareau, Home Advantage: So-
cial Class and Parental Intervention in Elementary Education (New York:
Falmer Press, 1989).
129 American parents' involvement: Susan Chira, "Parents, Take Less of a Role as
Pupils Age," The New York Times, September 5, 1994.
129 drop-off in parental involvement: Stevenson and Stigler, Learning Gap.
CHAPTER S: THE POWER OF PEERS
PAGE
139 The adolescent's social world: B. Bradford Brown, "Peer Groups," in S. Feld-
man and G. Elliott, eds., At the Threshold' The Developing Adolescent
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 171-96.
141 changes in. individuals' susceptibility to peer pressure: Laurence Steinberg
and Susan Silverberg, "The Vicissitudes of Autonomy in Early Adoles-
cence," Child Development 57 (1986): 841-51.
142 Friends can inllu~nce each other's school performance: Joyce L. Epstein,
"The Inflllenc~ of Friends on Achievement and Affective Outcomes," in
J. Epstein and N. Karwei:, eds., Friends in School (New York: Academic Press, 1983), 177-200.
143 All schools have crowds: Btown, "Peer Groups."
149 three sets of forces: B. Bradford Btown et al., "Parenting Practices and Peer
GtoUP Affiliation in Adolescence," Child Development 64 (1993):
467-82.
207
NOTES
152 how neighborhoods affecr children's behavior: Anne Fletcher et al., "The
Company They Keep: Relation ofAdolescents' Adjustment and Behavior
to Their Friends' Perceptions ofAuthoritative Parenting in the Social Net-
work," Developmental Psychology 31 (1995): 300-310; Nancy Darling
and Laurence Steinberg, "Community Influences on Adolescent Achieve-
ment and Deviance," in G. Duncan, J. Brooks-Gunn, and L. Aber, eds.,
Community Influences on Child and Adolescent Development (New York:
Russell Sage Foundation, in press).
158 one of the few routes to social mobility: Sue and Okazaki, "Asian-American
Educational Achievement."
159 students who tried to do well in school: Signithia Fordham and John Ogbu,
"Black Students' School Success: Coping with the Burden of 'Acting
White,'" Urban Review 18 (1986): 176-206; see also Signithia Fordham,
"Racelessness as a Factor in Black Students' School Success: Pragmatic
Strategy or Pyrrhic Victory?" Harvard Educational Review 58 (1988):
54-84.
160 "[W]hite Americans tradirionally refused": Fordham and Ogbu, "Black Stu-
dents' School Success," 177.
CHAPTER 9: ALL WORK AND ALL PLAY MAKES
JACK A DUMB BOY
PAGE
165 The widespread employment of American high school students: See Lau-
rence Steinberg and Elizabeth Cauffman, "The Impact of School-Year
Employment on Adolescent Development," in R. Vasta, ed., Annals of
Child Development, vol. 11 (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1995),
131-66; Ellen Greenberger and Laurence Steinberg, When Teenagers
Work: The Psychological and Social Costs ojAdolescent Employment (New
York: Basic Books, 1986).
171 working teenagers get less rest. Mary Carskadon, Mancuso, J., and Rosekind,
M., "Impact of Part-time Employment on Adolescent Sleep Patterns,"
Sleep Research 18 (1989): 114.
172 The United States is the only country: Greenberger and Steinberg, When Teenagers Work.
174 participation in various extracurricular activities: Data from Laura Berk,
"The Extracurriculum," in P. Jackson, ed., Handbook ofResearch on Cur- riculum (New York: Macmillan, 1992).
20B
