Juvenile Delinquincy

Parent/Child Relationships:

A Contribution to Delinquent Behavior in Juveniles

Michael Ferra

Sociology 4325, Section 1

Dr. Charles Ubah

March 19, 2008

Parent/Child Relationships:

A Contribution to Delinquent Behavior in Juveniles

For years now researchers in the fields of psychology, sociology, genetics, and the juvenile justice system have contemplated the reasons why some youth turn to delinquency and violence. To investigate the reason, for some adolescents you would have to research on a case to case basis to determine causal factors but the majority of cases could fall into one category or multiple categories stemming why they act the way they do and what causes these reactions. Some researchers may want to reason it’s a cause in the genetic line, it’s the youth’s social atmosphere concerning if the youth has the right friends or any friends at all, or they could even be led to argue it’s the environment in which the child is raised. In any instance, most researchers may first turn to one of the major contributing factors in a youth’s life and this is how the parent contributes to the child from birth until adulthood. There are many different ways in which you can observe a parent and child relationship and determine causal factors of delinquency by observing these questions:

1. Does the child receive maltreatment or abuse from the parent?

2. Does the child live in a single-parent household or in a household where the one or both parents are absent?

3. Does the child receive the right amount of discipline or is the parent too passive?

By observing these three questions and making intensive research on these issues, it can be concluded that parental involvement in a youth’s life is a major contributing factor of why juvenile delinquency exists.

Does the child receive maltreatment or abuse from the parent?

From the time a baby is born until the time it enters adulthood it becomes adjusted to the environment it is surrounded in. The way a baby is raised tends to determine how it will function in social environments. When looking at the patterns of juvenile delinquents and the types of environments they were raised in and accustomed to, it seems to all relate back to abuse and a poor parent to child relationship. Raymond Arthur (2005) has acknowledged this to be the case with his research:

Every study of the personal and social experiences of known juvenile delinquency offenders reveals that almost all of them have endured various kinds of abuse, neglect, deprivation and misfortune. Juvenile offenders are far more likely than the general population to have … experienced child abuse. Neglect by parents, poor maternal and domestic care, family conflict … have all been shown to increase the risk of behavior problems and subsequent offending (p. 237).

The fact that these children grow up in these environments stunts the child’s social being and thus causes the child to react in the manner they have always known. Arthur also suggests that majority of households from which abuse is stemmed is from those of low-income and those of which there is no full-time employment (p.239). Most parents in these households don’t realize the damage they do on their child when they abuse them but just see their reactions as a way to relieve their own stress and discomfort in life. The realization that parents are turning their child into exactly what they are seems to escape from thought. They set themselves up for problems in the long run because these abuse factors are major outputs of juvenile delinquency. In fact, according to studies it has been shown that 26 % of abused youths had official court reports of delinquency compared to 17% of those not abused. In a similar study it was shown that 16% of abused youths had a delinquency record compared to a 7.8% of youths in a non-abusive household (Mann & Reynolds, 2005, p. 156). The rate for those in abused homes is nearly 10% more than those of non-abused households in both studies. Evidence just shows that it puts more of a likely hood a child will misbehave and have delinquent conduct having been raised in an abusive type of environment.

Does the child live in a single-parent household or in a household where the one or both parents are absent?

The absence of a child growing up is another factor that tends to lead to a path of delinquency in youth. Pulling from information on the first subtopic we can note as well that not only does abuse on a child affect their social environment but the absence of parental figures and that loss of familial connection can as well play a major role. Arthur expands on this by characterizing that, “Involvement and interaction of parents with their children and strong family bonding have the potential to protect children against the development of anti-social and offending behavior” (p. 237). In households where there is only a single-parent it is difficult for a mother or father to be able to give a child the type of time and care necessary for them to maintain stable in their ways of action and thinking. One factor that gets in the way of good parenting in a single parent households would be a problem of less income meaning the parent may have to take on two jobs in some cases and will have more stress put on the parent in that since. In this case the parent has less time to spend with the child and in more cases than others the child will be left to tend for itself after school and sometimes on weekends giving the child more will power to do as he or she pleases without the parental authority figure telling them what to do. Also the absence of a parent in single-parent families goes along with what was just talked about in the fact that with one parent around it is more difficult to maintain that authoritarian model without support of another parental figure. In Coley and Medeiros (2007) study in the case of non-resident fathers that from an economical standpoint this was not the problem for the child just the absence of the, “fathers’ authoritative parenting practices, such as a close relationship and participation in parenting responsibilities, decisions, and discipline,” is what showed to have more of an adverse affect on the child and