Girls' Peer and Partner Relations: Links to Antisocial Behavior

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• Girls' Peer and Partner Relations Links to
  Antisocial Behavior

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Same and Opposite-Gender Relationships among
Court-Involved Girls A Qualitative Perspective

• Shari Miller-Johnson, Donna-Marie Winn, Rebecca
  Schaffer, Sherri Lawson Clark
• With a special thanks to the girls who gave us a
  glimpse into their lives

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(No Transcript)
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Juvenile Females as a Percentage of all Juvenile
Index Crime Arrests (FBI)
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PEERS WHAT DOES THE LITERATURE TELL US?

• Peer affiliations1 is a lonely number
• Selection birds of a feather flock together
• Socialization deviancy training

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AND THE GIRLS?

• Early work lone wolves more recent work -
  discounted
• Gendered dynamic
• Girls delinquency occurs with males
• bad boyfriend hypothesis
• Girls as victims

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QUALITATIVE APPROACH

• Particularly useful with understudied population
• Data allow for the emergence of the unexpected
• Exploratory study, with particular interests in
  unpacking
• Nature of girlfriends/friend-girls
• Opposite-gender relationships
• Are girls in a victim frame of mind?

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OUR GIRLS

• Adjudicated
• Mid-size, Southeastern city
• Inner-city neighborhoods plagued with persistent
  poverty, underemployment, substance abuse, and
  violence
• Prime location for drug trafficking on the
  eastern seaboard
• 8 randomly selected females
• Ages 14-17 7 African-American, 1
  European-American
• 2 semi-structured interviews
• Audio-recorded, transcribed
• 1-2 hours each interview home-based

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ANALYSIS

• Iterative process among research team
• Began with initial questions developed 1st
  interview
• Allowed for emergence of new themes
• Used this information to add new questions to the
  2nd interview
• Developed matrices and culled major themes
• Content analysis
• Cross case identified major themes across all of
  the girls
• Within-case analysis examined domains within
  each girl

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WHAT ARE THEIR AFFILIATIONSSAME GENDER

• I used to hang around females, I dont hang
  around females no more, I hang around males . . .
  I act like them, more like them than being like
  females . . . females gossip about all, be that
  type to go around gossiping, males dont.
• Female friendships either none or when younger
  few high quality female friends
• Those with female friends some good qualities

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WHAT ARE THEIR AFFILIATIONSSOCIAL AGGRESSION

• Girls act like they are better than you or
  better than someone else that you knew all the
  time. Its like so retardedTheyll just like
  spread rumors . . like shes such a slut.
• Associated with
• Isolation from other females
• Affiliations with males

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WHAT ARE THEIR AFFILIATIONS?BOYFRIENDS

• All of them except (1 had been in trouble).
  They havent told me about it but I know. Some
  told about it, I havent been around when they
  have got in trouble. My number one boyfriend he
  was the biggest trouble maker..(he) was in a
  gang. At the time I might have been 12, (he) was
  17 or 18 the time.
• Boys going to cheat regardless. If not cheat,
  they going to sleep with somebody. Cuz aint
  that two different things, sleeping and
  cheating?...Cuz some boy might say I never
  cheated on you but I have slept with other
  girlsBut we think they still cheating.
• Negative views towards the males
• Virtually all were delinquent, older
• Girls typically not involved in their delinquency

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WHAT ARE THEIR AFFILIATIONS?OPPOSITE GENDER

• The boys, they would be in gangs, not the girls,
  and I used to hang out with my friends and all
  the gang. We used to sit out there and smoke weed
  and stuff and thats all we would do. And we
  would stay out late.
• They was really there to help me. I admire them
  and I really love them, I stay with them or if I
  needed something to eat they would give it to me,
  feed me. We had great conversations, we would
  talk about things that was very important to us.
  And its funny that a male can actually do that
  with a female but sometimes you need the opposite
  sex and they actually understand.
• Large, diffuse groups of older, delinquent males
  with peripheral younger females
• For some girls especially the runners
  groups provided basic necessities as well as a
  sense of belonging

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CONTEXT

• This area over here is called the South Side and
  people in the environment over here, I just feel
  like they are my family, but anywhere else I
  wouldnt feel comfortable because you know I
  dont know who they are, (mostly) guys - they are
  my brothers.
• Cuz at the time when I was fighting a female, it
  was an older girllike 20 or 21 and my mama
  called my sister and told her look, this older
  girl is messing with XX and I want you to do this
  and I want you to do that and its just like my
  mom and a whole lot of other people, my uncles
  and everybody just approached the scene....I
  think my mama is still attracted about that kind
  of stuff.
• Neighborhood talked about positively
• Kin often the gatekeeper and sometimes
  supportive of delinquent behaviors

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DISTRUST

• I cant trust nobodyFriends or not friendsI
  mean you cant trust people, like I say they do
  something one time, you cant trust them no
  more.
• I just dont trust them (girls) because if you
  tell them something everybody will know, they
  stay in too much drama for me to trust them with
  anything of mine, my money or my business.
• General assumption that people/girls are
  untrustworthy
• Evidence of having been hurt previously by
  someone (either romantic or non-romantic)

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SUMMARY

• Expected but still fills out
• Lots of bad boyfriends
• Poor quality same-gender relations
• Context neighborhood and kin
• Giordano encapsulation hypothesis

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SUMMARY (contd)

• Emergent themes
• Role of non-boyfriend male affiliations needs
  based, affiliation and belonging
• Role of social aggression deters same-gender
  friendships
• Distrust particularly of females

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NEXT STEPS

• Further exploration of themes
• More detailed analyses of these themes with girls
• Unpack agency theme girls present as having a
  lot of agency and choice
• Explore boys data
• Preliminary ideas intervention
• Generalized and situation specific distrust
• Social aggression
• Influence of non-romantic cross-gender
  relationships