Resumo

PALOMAR LEVER, Joaquina  e  VICTORIO ESTRADA, Amparo. Employment expectations in adolescence: Psychosocial correlates. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2016, vol.33, n.1, pp.95-110. ISSN 1668-7027.

Positive employment expectations represent the confidence that young people have of a promising future in terms of employment and economic development. Obtaining a skilled job and a better income is important in terms of the adequate social adjustment of youth to the adult life. The aim of this study was to determine what factors may predict positive employment expectations in the adolescent offspring of beneficiaries of the Opportunities Program of Mexico. Households enrolled in this program are considered as households living in poverty. The program aims to reduce poverty in the current generation by conditioned cash transfers; in order to alleviate poverty in the next generation through investment in the offspring’s human capital (education, nutrition, and health). The participants come from a probability sample of beneficiaries of Opportunities households with program-recertification data and proceeding from non-indigenous communities with 45 or more households. From this selection, a national sample of 2112 households was obtained. Of these 2112 households, in the first survey were interviewed the program household holder, which is usually the wife or a single parent, and the spouses, if they were available. Subsequently, from the original 2112 households there were selected those households with teenage children and we returned to those households in the second survey to interview the teenage children of the program household holder interviewed in the first survey. Data of 1093 children, 1049 mothers, and 545 fathers were obtained from both surveys. The sample of children had an average age of 14.92 (± 1.29) years, 55.8% of them were male, and 55.2% lived in an urban area. The sample of mothers had an average age of 46.21 (± 13.43) years, and the sample of fathers had an average age of 49.58 (± 14.17) years. Self-reports from both children and parents were obtained separately from both surveys. Self-reports from the children measured work expectations, cognitive abilities, psychopathology, social competence, school attitude, relationship with peers, social support, adverse life events, and perceived parenting practices and family conflict. Self-reports from the parents measured self-control, achievement motivation, social maladjustment, and social competence. Two models of multiple linear regression were performed to analyze the influence of the variables measured in the mother and father separately, in addition to the measured variables in the children.The results showed that the perception of social competence at school, positive attitude toward school, and social support consistently played an important role in predicting positive employment expectations. Positive peer relationship also has a positive influence; so that higher perceived social popularity predicted higher level of positive work expectations. Additionally, behavioral control parent practices, as perceived by the children, positively influenced the employment expectations of the adolescents. In contrast, the report of externalizing symptoms reduces their employment prospects. Likewise, maternal practices of autonomy, parental psychological control practices and conflicting family relationships, as perceived by the children, negatively affect the positive employment prospects of young people. Neither the gender of the adolescents nor their intellectual abilities influenced their work expectations; but the type of locality they live in did: the urban adolescents reported higher levels of positive work expectations. In summary, this analysis allows to identify significant predictors of positive work expectations of adolescents living in poverty, from both urban and rural settings. The results suggest that increasing the hope of gaining economic stability in the future largely depends on stimulate the social skills of young people and on eradicate punitive and coercive family interactions. It can be expected that interventions to improve social skills of the adolescents and to encourage more positive family interactions would promote greater economic stability in the future of young people living in poverty.

Palavras-chave : Employment expectations; Adolescents; Parents; Self-control; Achievement motivation; Rural and urban poverty; Opportunities Program; Mexico.

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