Juvenile Delinquency Is Associated With Parenting Factors Through Social Control Theory
Interventions that involve life-course unrelenting offenders should place emphasis on remedial social abilities, for them to have a chance to decrease their frequency of offence in future, and to tackle conduct disorder problems. Interventions involving teenage-onset offenders should, wherever applicable, tackle issues relating to parenting, alcohol/drug misuse, and anti-social friends. Keane, Krull and Phythian (2008) define self-control as the extent to which a person is susceptible to temptation. According to them, lack of self-restraint or self-control is a fairly universal and stable characteristic, accounting for individual discrepancies in deviant, reckless, and criminal conduct. Youngsters' parents are usually blamed for their kids' delinquent behavior. Some courts go as far as penalizing parents for their kids' antisocial actions. It is believed that weak self-control develops during early childhood, when one's family is the most central socializing agent. Therefore, lack of self-restraint and the resultant deviant behavior result from familial factors. This research work studies parenting effects on kids' self-restraint via a large-scale, countrywide sample of kids in Canada; it considers the part played by factors like household size and parental composition. Analyses show that the dimension of self-control is different for different family structures -- kids residing in a traditional household (both biological parents living together) report higher self-control levels as compared to kids raised in single-parent and reconstituted households. However, parental monitoring partly offsets this relationship. On the whole, regardless of the structure of families, it is clear that an accepting and nurturing family atmosphere positively impacts self-restraint (Farrington, 2010).
Introduction
Juvenile delinquency represents a growing, and alarming issue in today's world. Kaukinen and Apel (2008) define juvenile delinquency as any minor or major violation of the law (e.g., theft, robbery, rape, murder, etc.) by children aged below 18 years. Minor violations include status offenses and misdemeanors. The former represents activities that are considered illegal for teens on account of their age (e.g. underage drinking, truancy, etc.) According to McVie and Smith (2003), 80% of American teenagers professed to having committed at least one delinquent act worthy of arrest (which they were spared from). A majority of arrested teens are caught for perpetrating minor offenses. In the year 1990, 62.6% of overall juvenile arrests were for small misdemeanors and not for serious offenses. Out of these, 18.6% faced arrest for violating liquor law, violating curfew, running away and other such common status offenses, while 16.2% faced arrest for minor drug law violation, drunkenness, vandalism, and disorderly conduct (Apel & Kaukinen, 2008). Nowadays, however, not only is the frequency of delinquent acts rising, but the offenses are gradually becoming more vicious in nature. One example to corroborate this statement is the recent shooting incidents in American schools. As juvenile delinquency represents a rampant issue in the nation, studying it and assessing some of its potential underlying causes is essential. Hence, this study, whose basis is low self-control criminology theory and how it contributes to juvenile delinquency as a result of poor parenting, takes into account, the role of factors such as parental composition and household size and analyzes parental impacts on children's self-restraint, through an extensive, nationwide sample of Canadian children.
Thesis Statement
There is a strong correlation between permissive style of parenting and high delinquency levels.
Background of the Study and Theory
Self-control or social control denotes an individual trait established in one's early life; it contributes to deviant conduct (Teasdale and Silver, 2009). Kids with low self-control levels are more likely to perpetrate offenses, and this criminal tendency continues into adulthood. Self-control develops through powerful attachments to schools, communities and other social foundations. These social attachments can become weak, and are capable of influencing deviance levels. A popular criminological theory of recent times, the low self-control theory, propounded by Hirschi and Gottfredson (1990), holds that self-control is developed in individuals by the age of 7-8 years, and their self-control level remains relatively constant throughout their lives. Individuals engage in deviant conduct as it leads to immediate gratification of desires (for instance, stealing), has no long-term objective, and requires no much thought processing (Crosswhite and Kerpelman, 2008). The above results appeal to adolescents who have poor self-control, as weak self-control is associated with weak self-regulation. The term "self-regulation" refers to the ability of establishing and accomplishing goals, refraining from problematic activities, and concentrating on long-run goals. Teenagers cannot restrain behavior or maintain goals. The failure to control aberrant tendencies goads children into engaging in deviant or delinquent activities.
Purpose of the Study
This study is aimed at evaluating the relationship between self-reported delinquent behaviors and parenting style. Empirical investigation...
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