Working and Growing Up in America

Working and Growing Up in America. Jeylan T. Mortimer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 2003. 304 pp. ISBN 0-674-00923-1. $45.00 (cloth). Does paid work interfere with youth's educational and/or extracurricular activities, thus decreasing youth's chances for positive developmental outcomes? The controversy over whether adolescents should engage in paid work has brewed for decades. Jeylan T. Mortimer, in Working and Growing Up in America, dramatically changes the context of the debate. She provides ample evidence that not only is working in moderation (20 hours or less) through high school not harmful but that steady, low-intensity employment may actually improve developmental outcomes for youth. In 1987, Mortimer initiated a longitudinal study designed to assess how the quantity and quality of paid work affect developmental outcomes of youth. The project began with an initial group of 1,010 Minnesota ninth graders, who were followed through 7 years post-high school (1998). The participant retention rate is one of the many strengths of this study. Mortimer boasts 93% retention at year 4 of the study (participants were seniors), and in 1998, 75.9% of the original participants were still involved. The research design is also an excellent study. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected from the students and their parents in order to reveal the developmental processes and trajectories of both working and nonworking youth. Working and Growing Up in America not only adds to the body of knowledge regarding the consequences of paid work on youth development but is also a fine example of credible social science research. This was inarguably a massive research project, yet Mortimer adopts a comfortable, easy-to-understand tone throughout the book. She speaks softly, yet systematically refutes all of the usual arguments against paid youth work. Each chapter begins with an overview of relevant research literature and concludes with a concise summary. The limitations of the research are clearly indicated. The author acknowledges that problems are inherent in self-reported data, and that findings may or may not be generalizable to other populations or geographic regions. Chapter 1 is a lively introduction to the debate over whether youth should engage in paid work. Mortimer sets the stage for later chapters with a brief sociohistorical account of youth employment in the United States, and a balanced presentation of the potential positive and negative consequences of paid work for youth. She introduces the Youth Development Study (YDS) in Chapter 2, where she details the data collection protocols. In Chapter 3, Mortimer discusses how youth allocate time among various activities. She differentiates between household work, schoolwork, volunteer work, and paid work, and then makes a compelling case that developmental outcomes may be related to individual (subjective) perceptions of each type of "work." She introduces a typology of youth work characterized by duration and intensity of work. The identified categories are quite useful throughout the book for understanding how the complex processes of youth development can be affected by paid employment. Chapter 4 explores paid youth work relative to the other youth work environments previously discussed. …