Family and Delinquency

Family and Delinquency

Objective

  • Examine the effect of family on:

    • Family structure

    • Quality of family relationships

    • Parental deviance

    • Parenting

Family

  • The earliest and most important stage of a child's socialization.

  • Plays an important role in producing or reducing delinquency.

  • Family is more important during childhood and early adolescence.

Theories Explaining Family and Delinquency

Hirschi’s Social Bond Theory (1969)

  • Delinquency results from a broken or weakening of the social bond.

    • Attachment (to others)

    • Commitment (stake in conformity)

    • Involvement (in conventional activities)

    • Belief (endorsement of general conventional values and norms)

Hirschi and Gottfredson’s General Theory of Crime - Low-Self Control Theory (1990)

  • Individuals differ in "propensity" to refrain or to commit crime.

  • Individuals with "low self-control" will be more likely to engage in criminal acts.

  • The source of low self-control is ineffective or incomplete socialization.

  • The family is the most important socializer.

  • Self-control is learned by age 10 and is consistent over the life course.

  • Socialized by parental:

    • Monitoring behavior

    • Recognizing behavior

    • Punishing behavior

  • Inadequate monitoring, recognizing, and punishment result in dysfunctional child rearing.

Functions of the Family

  1. The Socialization of Children

  2. Inculcation of Moral Values

  3. Reproduction and Regulation of Sexual Activities

  4. Provision of Material, Physical, and Emotional Security

The Socialization of Children

  • The process in which the child learns the ways of society.

  • Children learn attitudes, behaviors, and social roles from family members.

  • Shapes personalities, values, and beliefs of children.

Inculcation of Moral Values

  • Instilling moral and religious values.

  • Teaching honesty, hard work, respect, responsibilities.

  • Adolescent's religiosity, reinforced by parents, has a preventive effect on delinquency.

Reproduction and Regulation of Sexual Activities

  • Teaching society’s norms about sexual conduct.

Provision of Material, Physical, and Emotional Security

  • Providing clothes, food, and shelter.

  • Supervision and monitoring to ensure safety.

  • Emotional security through encouragement, support, and love.

Family Failure

  • Families often transmit values that promote violence or criminality.

  • Fail to inculcate moral values.

  • Fail to teach proper sexual conduct.

  • Fail to provide adequate security.

  • Changes in the family contribute to juvenile delinquency.

Effect of Family Structure

Single Parent Families

  • Relationship between single-parent families and delinquency.

  • Single-parenting as a consequence of divorce produces adverse consequences for children.

  • Single-parent families (headed by women) face strains.

  • The poverty rate for single-parent families is higher.

Teenage Mother

  • More likely to drop out of school.

  • Earn less and spend longer in poverty.

  • Children face special difficulties such as psychological distress, health-compromising behavior, and poor academic performance.

  • Increase risk of incarceration.

Broken Homes

  • Family structure broken by divorce or separation.

  • Breaking up by divorce has more adverse effects than by death.

  • Multiple divorces are harder on children.

Effect of Divorce on Children

  • Higher levels of anxiety and depression.

  • Worse academic records.

  • More trouble in their own marriages.

  • Family war and being caught in the middle leads to stress.

  • Decrease in school performance and self-control.

  • Increased rate of psychological disturbance.

  • Drug use, gang affiliation, violent crime.
    *Specific consequences of divorce on children are the result of the diminished capacity of parents to supervise child rearing.
    *In the process of divorce, parents spend less time with their children and are less responsive to their needs.

  • Children in single-parent families are more likely to suffer psychological distress, but in the long run, they cope more successfully.

Three Major Effects of Divorce on Women

  • Overloaded from work and child-rearing.

  • Face financial strain.

  • Likely to be socially isolated.

Mother’s Employment Outside Home

  • Less time spent with children.

  • No negative effects of employment of mothers.

  • High status jobs lead to positive school effects for their children.

Latchkey Children

  • Children come home to empty houses.

  • Susceptible to opportunities for getting involved in delinquent situations.

  • Face subtle fears and worries and increased susceptibility to peer pressure.

  • Less adult supervision and vulnerable to peer pressure.
    *Presence of parents at home at key times during the day provides moderate protection against emotional distress for children, reduced alcohol and marijuana use.

*The most important determinant of whether a child will be involved in delinquency is with the quality of the parent-child relationship rather than family structure alone.

Quality of Family Relationships

  1. Parental Affection/Rejection of Children

  2. Parental Attachment

  3. Family Conflict

  4. Child Abuse

Parental Affection/Rejection of Children

  • Delinquency is lower when parents express love.

  • Delinquency is higher when parents reject or ignore their children.

Parental Attachment

  • Children who like their parents respect their wishes and stay out of trouble.

  • Children least likely to turn to delinquency feel loved, identify with parents, and respect their wishes.
    Parental love may reduce delinquency, and attachment to a positive role model functions as a "psychological anchor" to conformity.

Family Conflict

  • Includes conflict between spouses and between parents and juveniles.

  • Weakens emotional bonds between parents and children, disrupts socialization efforts, exposes children to aggressive models and beliefs.

Child Abuse

  • Physical, emotional, sexual trauma to a child, including neglecting to give proper care and attention.

Factors Causing Child Abuse

  • Parents who suffered abuse as children tend to abuse their own children.

  • Abusive parents are isolated and alienated from their extended families.

Effect of Abuse

  • Lower self-esteem as adults, mistrust others, suspicion of close relationships.

  • Disrupts normal relationships, reduces bonds, and increases deviance.

Effect of Sexual Abuse

  • Disrupted ego and personality, guilt and shame, rage and horror.

  • Close relationship between sexual abuse and adolescent prostitution.

  • Girls are more prone to suicide as adults than non-abused.
    Sexual abuse victims are more likely to abuse others.

  • 30-75% of women in substance abuse treatment experienced childhood sexual abuse.

  • Maltreated children are more likely to become involved in delinquency.
    *Maltreatment of children leads to violence.

  • Nearly all subjects interviewed in urban street gangs experienced severe abuse and maltreatment.

Family Deviance

  • Is intergenerational; children of deviant parents produce delinquent children.

  • Disrupts the family role as an agent of social control.
    *Bullying is parental deviance.

  • Delinquency has more to do with the family process than family structure.

Parenting in Families

  • Parenting Skills

  • Parental Supervision

  • Parental Discipline

  • Parenting Styles

Parenting Skills

  • Effective parenting depends on many things.

  • Quality of parenting changes as child’s misbehavior increases.

  • Parent-child conflicts may escalate.

Parental Supervision

  • Establishing “house rules” and communicating them.

  • Parents must be aware of the child’s performance in school, drug use, and activities with friends.

  • Good supervision minimizes adolescents’ contact with delinquency.

  • Unsupervised children are more likely to participate in delinquency.
    *High parental monitoring with high parental support is key in preventing delinquency.

Parenting Discipline

  • Inconsistent discipline/physical discipline.

  • Inconsistency between adults can lead to manipulation.
    *Violence begets violence cycle.

  • Family disciplinary styles that increase the likelihood of delinquency:

    • Lax supervision and discipline.

Types of Parenting (Diana Baumrind)

  1. Authoritative parents

  2. Authoritarian parents

  3. Indulgent/permissive parents

  4. Indifferent/Rejecting parents

Authoritative Parents

  • Supportive and demanding.

  • Set standards consistent with the child’s needs.

  • Place a high value on autonomy but assume responsibility for behavior.

Authoritarian Parents

  • Rejecting and demanding.

  • Place a high value on obedience and conformity.

  • Favor punitive measures and are not responsive to the child.

Indulgent/Permissive Parents

  • Supportive and demand very little.

  • Place few demands on the child’s behavior.

  • Give the child a high degree of freedom.

Indifferent/Rejecting Parents

  • Rejecting and demand little.

  • Unresponsive to their child, minimize interaction, and may be neglectful.

  • Delinquents tend to lack a supportive relationship with their fathers and have minimal supervision.

  • Youths who have problems communicating with either parent combined with poor problem-solving skills are likely to lead to higher rates of delinquency.

Conclusion

  • The family has an effect on child delinquency.

  • The family plays an important role in preventing or inhibiting crime.

  • Parenting styles and the degree of supervision affect delinquency.

  • Inconsistent discipline and poor supervision are linked to crime.

  • There is a small relationship between a working mother and delinquency.

  • Parental conflict and authoritarian parenting were related to early childhood conduct problems.

  • Parenting skills have a considerable effect on delinquency.

  • The maltreatment of children creates an oppressive environment that produces a variety of negative outcomes.

Policy Implication

  • Reducing Delinquency Through Early Proactive Family Intervention.

  • Family Training