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Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, this study examines the effects of childhood family structure on intergenerational educational mobility using dynamic measures of structure and duration in structure type. Specifically, it looks at the effects of family structure type, the recentness of the last transition experienced, and the effect of six different family structure sequences on parent-child relative educational attainment. I hypothesize that family structure type, age at instability, and specific sequences of transitions affect intergenerational educational mobility based on the life course theory. Findings indicate that experiencing a recent transition, and a family structure sequence that moved from a two-parent family at birth, to a mother-only family, to a mother and stepfather family structure had the strongest positive impact on downward mobility. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With major demographic shifts surrounding the transition to adulthood across the past century, debates loom large as to what defines adulthood in the contemporary era. This study examines young people's understandings of whether they have reached adult status and whether these understandings are linked to prior role transitions, self-assessed personal qualities, and social location. We propose that young people's sense of adulthood and the criteria they employ in defining adulthood vary based on socially structured experience tied to race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, and based on age. Using the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that blacks feel adult more often than whites of similar ages, and that Asian Americans and Hispanics feel adult less often. Young people from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds feel adult more often than their more privileged agemates. Both role transitions and self-assessed personal qualities shape the extent to which young people see themselves as adults, although the most salient roles and qualities differ across racial/ethnic groups and by socioeconomic status. Key role transitions also become less tied to self-perceived adult status at older ages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]