CHICAGO -- Adults who worked part-time in high school cope with job stress in their early 20s better than peers who didn't work as teens, but this edge disappears by age 27, a new study shows.
The issue of high school students working has sparked concern lately; some evidence links employment to lower grades and more drug use in high school.
But parents of working teens often believe that jobs help their children learn to manage time and prepare them for later challenges in the work world, says University of Minnesota sociologist Jeylan Mortimer. Mortimer spoke at the American Psychological Association meeting in Chicago, which ended Sunday.
Mortimer followed about 750 St. Paul adolescents over 10 years to see how jobs during high school affected their reactions to work in later years.
She started the study when they were about 17. Those experiencing stress from holding jobs felt less control over their lives than the jobless or kids doing stress-free work.
In their early 20s, though, those who had to cope with work stress as teens did best at handling adult work stress.
Peers who were sheltered in high school felt more depressed and less in control of their lives as work stress intensified, Mortimer says.
Hassles on the job didn't affect the self-esteem of young adults who had faced job stress during high school. But job tensions lowered the self-esteem of those who had less work experience in high school.
The high school hassles ''seem to be . . . good stress because these young people increase in resilience over time,'' as if they have learned coping techniques or have been inoculated against woes of the work world, she says.
But those who begin work later do catch up. By 27, there was no difference between the two groups, Mortimer says.
Amid today's economic uncertainty, more young people might need to work, says University of Michigan psychologist Abigail Stewart. But jobs they take as teens could have nothing to do with later work.
Still, benefits for working teens ''may not occur only in the work domain. The benefits may be in what you learn about yourself or what you learn about the world.''
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