Suburban Runaways: A Follow-Up Study

Abstract

This study grew out of an investigation begun twelve years ago on runaway youth from a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C . The children who participated in the original study have since grown up and the current research was undertaken to find out how they fared over this important interval. The current study addressed itself to several aspects of social functioning among the young people in the sample. The questions were: 1) How have the former runaways experienced school, jobs, and "trouble" ? 2) Do their experiences within these dimensions differ from those of their siblings? and 3) Do the former runaways differ among themselves -- repeaters from non-repeaters -- in their experiences at school, on the job, and "in trouble"? These questions provided the focus for the follow-up study. The sample consisted of young people between 23 and 27 years of age who had been interviewed in depth during an earlier study and their non-runaway siblings who were closest in age and, where possible, of the same sex as the former runaways. Both former runaways and their siblings were interviewed in depth using a fixed-schedule, open-response approach. Questions focussed on social development over the last dozen years and particularly on experiences in school, on the job, and "in trouble". The data were presented in a series of composite "cases" or profiles taken from the experiences of several of the former runaways and their siblings. School, jobs, and "trouble" were each treated separately, and selected comparisons were made between the experiences of former runaways and those of their siblings. The follow-up study revealed that those who ran away experienced considerable hardship during this twelve-year interval en route to adulthood. They curtailed their schooling because of difficulty and unhappiness in the classroom. They have worked only sporadically at menial jobs which have been experienced as frustrating drudgery. They have gotten in trouble with the law or have required the assistance of social agencies and institutions because of special problems they have had. Differences between former runaways and their siblings were found in each of the areas of school, jobs, and "trouble". The young people who ran away experienced gr eater difficulty in school than their siblings: they fared worse academically, had poorer grades, and more retentions . They also had greater difficulty in adjusting socially. They were more often dismissed from class, sent to visit the principal, and suspended from school. Less than half of the former runaways have regular jobs today. The others have been unable to hold a job for more than a period of months. This finding contrasts sharply with that for their siblings all but one of whom are now working at regular jobs. Moreover, the siblings have more professional , hi g her paying jobs than the former runaways who work . Finally, the former runaways have had a greater amount of trouble -- much of it more serious-- than their siblings. Most have been charged with offenses ranging in seriousness from "drunk and disorderly" to "burglary" and "assault and battery". Two are now serving jail terms. In contrast, only two siblings have been arrested and, in both cases, the charges were dropped . The findings were similar for nervous and emotional troubles. In all the areas of functioning that were examined, the young people who ran away from home repeatedly appear to have fared worse than those who ran only once. A further, serendipidous finding, not anticipated in this study, was a class difference: middle-class runaways appear to be functioning more poorly than their working-class counterparts .