Fall/Winter 2003-04
Against the odds
Photo by Bridget Brown
While studying the effects of part-time work on high school students, Jeylan Mortimer and her team of researchers made a surprising discovery: Hmong high school students were succeeding at levels equal to and above their non-Hmong peers, despite such obstacles as early marriage, poverty, and teen pregnancy.
Mortimer, professor of sociology and director of the Life Course Center, has been the primary researcher for the Youth Development Study (with co-investigator and colleague Douglas Hartmann) since 1987. The study has tracked 1,000 young people during their transition from high school to adulthood. (Most today are nearing their 30s.) The study looks at how working during high school affects their future educational attainment and ability to make the transition into adulthood.
When the study began, researchers noticed that the Hmong participants, all of whom were first-generation immigrants, had "very high educational aspirations," Mortimer says, despite backgrounds that typically would predispose them to lower levels of school success. Their families were poor, and most of their parents had little formal education. And by the end of high school, 70 percent of the girls were married and 50 percent had at least one child reflecting the tradition of early marriage and childbearing among Hmong girls.
Despite these apparent disadvantages, the Hmong students had significantly higher grade point averages than their non-Hmong peers. Most graduated with their class and went on to college. Mortimer attributes this success to strong family support and high academic expectations by parents.
Mortimer's work is supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Mental Health. Her book Working and Growing Up in America (Harvard University Press, 2003) has been called "the standard against which all others in this field must be judged."