This thesis explores representations of British youth culture and adolescent identity formation in the ‘first generation’ (seasons 1-2) of the British television teen drama Skins (2007-8). Like its peers in the Teen TV genre, Skins focuses on normative teenage angst and rebellion that results in ‘naughty behavior’: sex, drug and alcohol use, and conflict with and alienation from parents. Skins sets itself apart from genre standards by heightening and glamorizing the way these behaviors are visually depicted. Furthermore, the characters experience very few substantial consequences or repercussions from parents or other authority figures, but rather repercussions come from within their own close-knit group. The primary source of tension in the series occurs during the moments when the group of friends challenge the cultural, biological and ideological constraints under which they find themselves when their preoccupied, self-involved, neglectful, and otherwise overbearing parents directly contribute to the conditions that fuel their excessive ‘naughtiness.’ The series creators, writers, producers and actors promote Skins as an authentic representation of teenage experience and this thesis ultimately seeks to explore the implications of this representation in order to gain a better understanding of British youth culture in the new millennium.

This dissertation explores the effect of teen childbearing on the adult mother’s employment, earnings and welfare participation. This study contributes to the literature on the consequence of teen childbearing by relying on original datasets and using an array of samples and econometric methods to test the robustness of the results. We use state administrative data from several sources including the Georgia subset of the Vital Statistics for the years 1994-2002, the Wage and Employer files for the years 1990-2003, and the Welfare dataset for the years 1990-2005. We select three samples. The first sample is constructed with sisters raised in families on welfare, where one sister is a teen mother and the other a non-teen mother. The second sample is composed of young mothers who were pregnant as teens and whose first pregnancy ended with either a birth (teen mothers) or a fetal death (non-teen mothers). A third sample is selected by the propensity score matching technique on a subset of the second sample. For the labor market outcomes, this study suggests that teen childbearing has a negative effect on the employment and earnings of Blacks in the miscarriage sample and in the propensity score sample. However, White teen mothers are more likely to be employed and to earn more than the White non-teen mothers in the miscarriage sample. In contrast, the sisters’ sample does not show any statistical significant effect of teen childbearing on employment or earnings. These mixed results are probably due to the different distribution of the mothers’ race and socioeconomic status before pregnancy. Concerning welfare receipt, very few mothers in the sisters’ sample and no mothers in the propensity score sample receive welfare during the years of study. For the miscarriage sample, White teen mothers are less likely than the White non-teen mothers to receive welfare at any time. Blacks become less likely to receive welfare as their child’s age increases. The effect on Blacks might be due to the welfare reform that tightened the rules for welfare eligibility. This research suggests that as far as employment and earnings are concerned, policy dollars aimed at preventing teenage childbearing would be more efficiently used for the Blacks and low-income populations. However, the small magnitude of the teen coefficients in the employment and earnings analyses suggests that teen pregnancy prevention only will not have a very dramatic influence on the adult mothers’ standards of living. Therefore, policy dollars should also be directed to issues correlated with teen childbearing such as poverty or low education attainment. As for welfare participation, teen mothers are no more likely to rely on public assistance than non-teen mothers so their welfare dependence should not be a concern.

A greater understanding of how level of acculturation influences parent-teen sex communication is needed to implement effective teen pregnancy prevention and safer sex education. My research sought to examine how levels of acculturation into mainstream U.S. culture influence parent-teen sex communication among Latinos. I examined level of acculturation (via language preference and nativity) and gender of adolescents in relation to discussion of sex and specific sex topics with parents. More acculturated Latinos were more likely to discuss sex, STIs, saying no to sex, and condoms with their parents than those less acculturated Latinos. Greater acculturation was also associated with greater quantity of sex topics discussed with parents when compared to Latinos that preferred Spanish. Less acculturated Latinos in the sample were more likely to have never discussed sex with their parents compared to more acculturated Latinos. Latino participant’s gender was not a statistically significant predictor of parent-teen communication.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Bowling Green State University, 2007. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 289 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-93).

Although research on the genre of the soap opera is some of the earliest research present in mass communications scholarship, and despite the considerable amount of existing scholarship on the genre of the telenovela, the subgenre of the teen telenovela, as present in Mexico and other Latin American countries, has been mostly overlooked. It is undeniable that this subgenre is worth researching, however, if not because of the quality of its content, which has been called into question many times, then due to the significant number of people who consume it. At a time when Mexican telenovelas are struggling, it is the teenage public that continues to give Televisa, Mexico’s largest network, its highest ratings. This study focuses on one particular text in the genre, the teen telenovela Rebelde (Damián, 2004). Rebelde is an important telenovela to study for several reasons: its place in time, its target audience, its deviations from the genre, its massive popularity, and the fact that most of the existing scholarship on Mexican telenovelas focuses on texts which are much older. This dissertation uses textual analysis as a methodology in order to analyze six common themes of the teen telenovela: friendship, romance, childhood, school, rebellion and music. The purpose of this dissertation is to look at how these themes are represented in Rebelde, and at the way in which they draw elements from the genre of the traditional telenovela as well as from teenage content popular in other countries. The study also aims to analyze how this has allowed Rebelde to promote ideologies such as postfeminism, while still engaging with the more traditional ideology of the telenovela genre.

The statistical trend toward an increasing number of early marriages in the United states is causing concern for parents and community officials (21) . The average age of marriage has been declining since 1890. Half of the girls are now married by the time they are twenty and half of the men by the time they are twenty- three (13) . In a study made by Landis (20) of marriages in California high schools, 90 percent of the senior high schools reported one or more student marriages. Similar statistics have been retorted in New Mexico (16) and Oregon (18) . Research has pointed an accusing finger at youthful marriage as a primary factor in the rampant divorce situation, and there is little question but that lack of the competencies which come with the maturing process are a source of marital friction and breakdown.

The relationship between France and Hollywood is rooted in a deep history that dates to the late 1800s. French Cultural elites and policymakers have regulated Hollywood to prevent the American ideals that are depicted in Hollywood movies from infringing on French culture, restricting free trade distribution practices to limit audiences' accessibility of imported, non-French media. These import regulations have strengthened French exceptionalism, which is an ideal that recognizes France as being superior to any other culture, region, or market. Yet, the impacts of globalization and the rise of technology have shifted media consumption habits and forced France to regulate new modes of distribution, like digital streaming platforms, to continue to protect the French culture, film industry, and commerce. In 2014, when Silicon Valley-based streaming platform Netflix, entered France, the principles of French exceptionalism impacted the reception of the Hollywood-focused platform. Policymakers imposed a tax system which requires internationally based streamers to invest in the French media industry. Netflix invested their tax into local language, teen productions to target a demographic whose ideals were less rooted in French exceptionalism. Additionally, Netflix utilized the affordances of Instagram to visually appeal to teen users when marketing the local language productions Mortel (2019-2021) and Vampires (2020-). Netflix capitalized on the French teen audience in order to gain a foothold within this culturally and economically protected market.

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