Return to the overview of Stand by Me.
Introduction
Youth mentoring programs are in the limelight. Over two million young people have a Big Brother, a Big Sister, or a similar adult volunteer involved in their lives, and the numbers are rising at an unprecedented rate. Although mentoring initiatives in the United States date back to the turn of the century, nearly half of all programs were established in the past five years, and only 18 percent have been operating for more than fifteen years. 1 And what we see today is just a beginning. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America--probably the best-known agency nationwide--has committed to doubling its size within five years, and other agencies have set similar goals.
This dramatic expansion in youth mentoring speaks volumes about the faith our society places in one-to-one relationships between vulnerable young people and nonrelated but caring adults. To help mentors bring about positive changes in the lives of their protégés (or mentees, as they are sometimes called), scores of organizations offer brochures, manuals, websites, toolkits, lists of best practices, and online advisors brimming with tips and detailed recommendations. The authority with which this information is presented often leads readers to conclude that most of the questions in the field have been answered.
Unfortunately, that is often not the case. These recommendations are rarely based on scientific research that has undergone peer review--not out of any intent to ignore findings or deceive readers but simply because such rigorous studies are in short supply. And it's not surprising, given how rapidly the youth mentoring phenomenon has grown, that few researchers have had a chance to step back and ask how--or, indeed, whether--these interventions help boys and girls navigate the rough shoals of adolescence. Today, despite the "buzz" surrounding the topic of mentoring, many important questions about the effectiveness of mentoring relationships remain unasked and unanswered. To explain what we currently know and to point out areas where our knowledge is still inadequate are my primary reasons for writing this book.
Stand by Me: The Risks and Rewards of Mentoring Today's Youth presents over a decade of my own research, as well as a synthesis of the findings of others. It is anchored in the ongoing work of Public/Private Venture (P/PV), a research, public policy, and program development organization. I cite several P/ PV studies, but I give particular attention to their national evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. This study is the largest, strongest, and the most influential evaluation of mentoring to date. 2 For the past several years, I have worked with Jean Baldwin Grossman, senior researcher at P/PV and co-author of the national evaluation, to further analyze the data from this study, with the goal of addressing basic questions about mentoring relationships. In synthesizing findings from these and other studies, my intention is not to add to the growing number of books that extol the virtues of mentoring but rather to bring some complexity and even some words of caution to the dialogue. 3
From personal experiences, observations, and research, I am convinced of the extraordinary potential that exists within mentoring relationships. But I have also encountered the harm--rarely acknowledged--that unsuccessful relationships can do to vulnerable youth. One good relationship can transform a life, that's true; it can become the means by which a boy or girl connects with others, with teachers and schools, with their future prospects and potential. Yet because a close personal relationship is at the heart of mentoring, a careless approach can do tremendous damage to a child's sense of self and faith in others.
My strong contention--supported by findings that I will present in the following chapters--is that vulnerable children would be better left alone than paired with mentors who do not recognize and honor the enormous responsibility they have been given. Thus, instead of adding another voice to the chorus of calls for more and bigger mentoring programs, this book advocates a measured approach that builds on our growing knowledge about the risks, as well as the rewards, of mentoring. The goal of Stand by Me is to provide parents, policy makers, practitioners, and researchers with a deeper understanding of this very special human relationship and to assist them in making informed decisions about mentoring programs.
The Organization of This Book
A necessary starting point is a shared definition of the sometimes elusive word mentor. The term has generally been used in the human services field to describe a relationship between an older, more experienced adult and an unrelated, younger protégé--a relationship in which the adult provides ongoing guidance, instruction, and encouragement aimed at developing the competence and character of the protégé. Over the course of their time together, the mentor and protégé often develop a special bond of mutual commitment, respect, identification, and loyalty which facilitates the youth's transition into adulthood.4 In this book, I will examine primarily relationships that take place within structured youth mentoring programs; though occasionally I will allude to other kinds of naturally occurring mentoring relationships, such as those between teachers and students or clergy and youth, they are not my central focus. Likewise, although group-mentoring, peer-mentoring, on-line mentoring, faith-based mentoring, and school-to-work apprenticeship programs are proliferating around the country, in the chapters that follow I will concentrate on in-person, one-to-one mentoring relationships between adult volunteers and youths. Eighty percent of the nation's programs match one mentor with one youth and thus fall within this category.5
In Chapter 1 I discuss some of the social and political factors that have ignited so much recent interest in mentoring, and I consider the sorts of evidence that can help us evaluate a program's effectiveness. This includes the national evaluation of Big Brothers Big Sisters mentioned above, as well as other programs.
In Chapter 2 I explore the underlying psychological processes by which volunteers bring about change. Previous theoretical work has emphasized the protective qualities of relationships between nonparent adults and vulnerable youth. According to this model, mentors increase the young person's resilience in the face of hardships, and therefore reduce the risk that the youth's development will take a negative turn. While compelling, the research supporting this model falls short of describing the actual mechanisms by which mentors bring about this increase in resilience. Similarly, this research sometimes fails to fully acknowledge the young person's ongoing relationships with parents and other adults who may have enormous influence on the course of development. The framework presented in this book places mentoring relationships within the broader cultural contexts of adolescents' lives.
Among the many things that change as adolescents grow and mature is the way they think about relationships. It should come as no surprise, then, that the benefits of mentoring accrue over a relatively long period of time. Earlier-than-expected terminations that dissolve the bond of trust between mentor and protégé appear to touch on vulnerabilities in youth in ways that other, less personal programs do not. In Chapter 3 I describe a mentoring bond that failed, in order to highlight both the benefits of enduring relationships and the potentially harmful effects on youths when mentors fail to deliver consistent support. Many programs take a rather cavalier approach to relationships between mentors and protégés, treating them as though the actual people involved are interchangeable. If one mentor doesn't work out, according to this view, another one can be quickly substituted, with no permanent harm done. I offer explanations for this misdirected thinking on the part of some program directors about the uniqueness of a given relationship. These explanations include our culture's tendency to equate healthy development with growing independence and therefore to devalue relationships over the life span, as well as developmentalists' emphasis on infant bonding with the mother. Both of these philosophical stances minimize the range of relationships, both good and bad, that shape developmental outcomes throughout life, not just in childhood.
Every year, caseworkers pair thousands of mentors with youth, based in part on guidelines from organizations like The National Mentoring Partnership, but mostly based on their own experience and intuition about the "fit" of particular mentors with particular youth. No rigid guidelines should ever replace the judgment, experience, and flexibility that real human beings bring to this very human activity. Nonetheless, the initial process of match-making, and the ongoing guidance that case workers offer mentors, youths, and their parents, could bene fit from the rich research literature that has already been compiled on other helping relationships, particularly psychotherapy and interpersonal relations. Chapter 4 will highlight some of the lessons from emotional and behavioral therapy that might be profitably applied to the mentoring relationship.
In Chapter 5, I ask how programs might better respond to the developmental needs of youth, and I make recommendations for research and policy priorities. A continuing challenge will be to conduct more fine-grained evaluations that can decipher which program features, mentor styles, and relationship characteristics are most influential, and then to use that knowledge to make adjustments in existing programs. Evaluations that try to determine specific mentor characteristics that lead to the longest-duration relationships could have immediate and practical benefits for youth.
Although all adolescents in Western society are likely to share certain developmental processes, their unique circumstances, cultures, and identities often shape the meaning and quality of mentoring relationships. Many different aspects of identity intersect with one another in complicated ways during the formative teen years. Throughout the book, I discuss some of the sensitivities that emerge within subgroups of adolescents around issues of gender, ethnicity, race, and class, and the impact of these factors on the mentoring relationship.
Mentoring by volunteers is not a panacea, and it is not as inexpensive a public policy initiative as it may seem at first glance. Mentoring programs for vulnerable youth cannot substitute for a caring community of support, or for adequate public investment in adolescents' education, physical health and safety, and psychological well-being. Nonetheless, mentoring programs have proven that they can powerfully influence positive development among youth, and I believe that their careful expansion is warranted. Our challenge is, first, to not underestimate the complexities of mentoring relationships and, second, to better understand and promote the conditions under which they are most likely to flourish.