STEINBERG, Laurence 1952–

(Laurence D. Steinberg)

PERSONAL:

Born July 8, 1952, in NJ; son of Irwin (a consultant) and Mollie (a homemaker) Steinberg; married Wendy Brodhead (a writer), August 27, 1982; children: Benjamin James. Education: Attended Johns Hopkins University, 1970-71; Vassar College, A.B., 1974; Cornell University, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA 19122. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of California, Irvine, professor, 1977-83; University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor, 1983-88; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, professor, 1988-98, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology, 1998—, Distinguished University Professor, 1999—, director of graduate studies, department of psychology, 2001—. Director, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice, 1997—; visiting scholar, University of Minnesota, 1998.

MEMBER:

American Psychology Association (fellow; president-elect, Division of Developmental Psychology, 2005-06), Society for Research on Adolescence (past president, 1998-2000), Society for Research in Child Development, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Cornell University fellowship, 1976; John P. Hill Memorial Award, Society for Research on Adolescence, 2002, for outstanding contributions to the study of adolescence; Urie Bronfenbrenner Award, American Psychological Association, 2003, for lifetime contribution to developmental psychology.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Lynn J. Mandelbaum; as Laurence D. Steinberg) The Life Cycle: Readings in Human Development, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1981.

Adolescence, Knopf (New York, NY), 1985, 7th edition, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 2005.

When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1986.

You and Your Adolescent: A Parent's Guide for Ages 10 to 20, Harper (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Jay Belsky and Roberta B. Meyer) Infancy, Childhood and Adolescence: Development in Context, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1991.

(With wife, Wendy Steinberg) Crossing Paths: How Your Child's Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 1994.

(With Roberta Meyer) Childhood, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1995.

(With B. Bradford Brown and Sanford M. Dornbusch) Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with Vonnie C. McLoyd) Studying Minority Adolescents: Conceptual, Methodological, and Theoretical Issues, Laurence Erlbaum (Mahweh, NJ), 1998.

The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

(Editor, with Richard M. Lerner) Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 2nd edition, Wiley (Hoboken, NJ), 2004.

Contributor to numerous books, including Handbook of Parenting, 2nd edition, edited by M. Bornstein, Laurence Erlbaum (Mahweh, NJ), 2002; On Your Own without a Net: The Transition to Adulthood for Vulnerable Populations, edited by W. Osgood and others, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), 2005; and The Chicago Companion to the Child, edited by R. Shweder, University of Chicago Press (Chicago, IL), in press. Author of numerous articles to scholarly journals, including Law and Human Behavior, Developmental Psychology, Journal of Family Psychology, and Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice. Associate editor of Child Development, 1995-98.

SIDELIGHTS:

Temple University psychologist Laurence Steinberg has written numerous textbooks and scholarly works on adolescence and youth as well as books for a general audience, including When Teenagers Work, Crossing Paths: How Your Child's Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis, Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, and The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting.

One of Steinberg's earliest books, When Teenagers Work focuses on the detrimental aspects of teenage employment. Far from being a good way of teaching young adults how to manage time and money and learn responsibility, the authors contend that working teenagers often learn to cut corners on their schoolwork, gain contempt for the adult world of work, and spend money just as soon as they make it. More dangerously, the authors say, work interferes with the time adolescents need to develop their own interests and pursuits in order to determine a course for their future. A job detrimentally focuses their attention on performing menial tasks in return for acquiring more material goods.

In Crossing Paths: How Your Child's Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis, which Steinberg cowrote with his wife, Wendy Steinberg, the authors focus on what happens when children become old enough to question parents who once held absolute authority over them. Apart from the psychological changes that adolescence imparts to teenagers are the psychological changes that the parents undergo simultaneously, including what is often deemed a "midlife crisis." This crisis sometimes features envy, fear of abandonment, or even depression. The resulting struggle pits adolescents, who are attempting to achieve independence, against parents, who are often reluctant to give this independence. The book, wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, is "sensitive and illuminating."

Steinberg's research into the U.S. school system resulted in Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do. Over the course of ten years, Steinberg studied 20,000 high school students and found that a majority of them cheat and do not value good grades. Forty percent actually pride themselves on their ability to float through school without extending any effort. What is surprising about Steinberg's results, critics said, was the fact that they apply to middle-class students—those for whom the country largely has high expectations. Steinberg blames popular culture for young people's lack of academic initiative, because many television shows and popular figures are proudly anti-intellectual, and the idea of working hard to achieve academic success is not valued in many levels of society. Moreover, he cautions that our "knowledge economy" is in danger from producing too little knowledge. He also notes that money spent on schools has no effect on these phenomena; wealthy schools show as much decline in standards as do impoverished schools. His solutions for improvement in the schools include returning to a strong basic curriculum, sanctions for underperforming schools, and the widespread fostering of "achievement attributions" in students; that is, giving them the desire to take responsibility for their work, solve their own problems, and work hard to achieve their goals. Central to this, Steinberg says, is that parents must expect their children to achieve in school. In a review of Beyond the Classroom for the Alberta Report, Nathan Greenfield concluded that "educators anxious to blame parents for current problems may seek solace in this book. So may parents eager to shift the blame to popular culture. But its detailed description of the consequences of 30 years of educational fadism and permissive parenting are a clear indictment of both."

In a Newsweek review of The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Barbara Kantrowitz wrote that the book successfully bridges the "gap between academia and the real world" and gives parents the tools they need to become effective, active parents. Though the advice Steinberg gives in the book will not come as a surprise to many (such as number one: "What you do matters," and number six: "Help foster your child's independence"), he stresses that they are still as valid in the twenty-first century as ever, perhaps more so in light of ever-increasing amounts of conflicting information from the media, as well as the steadily high rates of divorce and blended families. As Kantrowitz concluded, "no parent is perfect, but Steinberg's book can help moms and dads bring up their own grades." At the book's foundation is over sixty years of research into adolescence and child psychology, the findings of which, Steinberg claims, have proven consistent over time. "Steinberg maintains a thoughtful but instructive tone throughout," wrote a reviewer for Publishers Weekly, who concluded that the book "will satisfy parents."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Steinberg, Laurence, The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, Simon and Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

periodicals

Alberta Report, February 10, 1997, Nathan Greenfield, review of Beyond the Classroom: Why School Reform Has Failed and What Parents Need to Do, pp. 42-43.

Educational Leadership, October, 1996, James Hill, review of Beyond the Classroom, p. 88.

Newsweek, May 3, 2004, Barbara Kantrowitz, review of The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, p. 52.

Psychiatric Times, November 1, 2005, Laurel L. Williams, review of Handbook of Adolescent Psychology, 2nd edition, p. 17.

Psychology Today, October, 1986, Paul Chance, review of When Teenagers Work: The Psychological and Social Costs of Adolescent Employment, p. 86.

Publishers Weekly, July 11, 1994, review of Crossing Paths: How Your Child's Adolescence Triggers Your Own Crisis, p. 72; May 19, 1997, review of You and Your Adolescent: A Parent's Guide for Ages 10 to 20, p. 72; April 12, 2004, review of The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, p. 58.*