Why does delinquency begin at the onset of puberty

Smith uses a study from Sweden recording the first time of sexual intercourse for people going through adolescence. This example supports the idea that sexual behavior for adolescents is getting earlier as time passes. Smith explains how romantic behaviors increase with each age during adolescence; however there is also an increase in homosexual relationships and a small presence of gender dysphoria.

As adolescents are sexually developing, dating becomes common and also dating violence. As a result, online romantic relationships influence sexting. Smith goes into detail about the risks of sexting. Adolescents will be permanently exposed and Smith suggests that education in schools is needed for this.

Education in schools is also needed for teenage pregnancy. Smith provides a graph on page showing a steady decrease in teenage pregnancies in the U. This chapter suggests that our world has gradually changed adolescence and the events that occur during this stage of life. Adolescence: A Very Short Introduction makes a significant contribution to the study of adolescence by considering the various perspectives of adolescence as a life stage.

The information presented in the book was supported by empirical research and well-studied theories. As a result, Smith was able to emphasize the important factors that collectively make up adolescence. The material Smith directly discusses begins with puberty and expands on how puberty affects adolescence in various ways. Puberty beings the physical and cognitive development that essentially develops into new abilities and mental processes.

Smith openly discussed the safety concerns present in adolescence and how they have been altering throughout the years. He supports his claim that adolescence is an experience of commonality, even though cultural and environmental factors can change some features of adolescences as a life stage. Smith, K. Adolescence: A very short introduction.

Oxford: Oxford University Press. Book Google Scholar. Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Hailey Plote. Reprints and Permissions. Plote, H. Peter K. Adolescent Res Rev 2, — Download citation. Received : 17 October Accepted : 19 October Published : 28 October Issue Date : December Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:.

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Skip to main content. Search SpringerLink Search. Download PDF. Reference Smith, K. Book Google Scholar Download references. Ethics declarations Conflicts of interest The author reports none. Rights and permissions Reprints and Permissions. About this article. One approach to assessing identity development was proposed by James Marcia In his approach, adolescents are asked questions regarding their exploration of and commitment to issues related to occupation, politics, religion, and sexual behaviour.

The responses to the questions allow the researchers to classify the adolescent into one of four identity categories see Table 7. Some teens may simply adopt the beliefs of their parents or the first role that is offered to them, perhaps at the expense of searching for other, more promising possibilities foreclosure status.

Other teens may spend years trying on different possible identities moratorium status before finally choosing one. To help them work through the process of developing an identity, teenagers may well try out different identities in different social situations.

They may maintain one identity at home and a different type of persona when they are with their peers. Eventually, most teenagers do integrate the different possibilities into a single self-concept and a comfortable sense of identity identity-achievement status. For teenagers, the peer group provides valuable information about the self-concept.

I was smart, so I hung out with the nerdy kids. I still do; my friends mean the world to me. I pierced various parts of my body and kept my grades up. Answerbag, Responses like this one demonstrate the extent to which adolescents are developing their self-concepts and self-identities and how they rely on peers to help them do that.

The writer here is trying out several perhaps conflicting identities, and the identities any teen experiments with are defined by the group the person chooses to be a part of. Adolescents define their social identities according to how they are similar to and differ from others, finding meaning in the sports, religious, school, gender, and ethnic categories they belong to.

The independence that comes with adolescence requires independent thinking as well as the development of morality — standards of behaviour that are generally agreed on within a culture to be right or proper. To study moral development, Kohlberg posed moral dilemmas to children, teenagers, and adults, such as the following:.

In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered.

The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging 10 times what the drug cost him to make. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later.

As you can see in Table 7. For one, children may use higher levels of reasoning for some types of problems, but revert to lower levels in situations where doing so is more consistent with their goals or beliefs Rest, Second, it has been argued that the stage model is particularly appropriate for Western, rather than non-Western, samples in which allegiance to social norms such as respect for authority may be particularly important Haidt, And there is frequently little correlation between how children score on the moral stages and how they behave in real life.

Carol Gilligan has argued that, because of differences in their socialization, males tend to value principles of justice and rights, whereas females value caring for and helping others. Anderson, S. Relative weight and race influence average age at menarche: Results from two nationally representative surveys of U. Pediatrics, , — What were you like as a teenager? Baumeister, R. How adolescence became the struggle for self: A historical transformation of psychological development. Greenwald Eds.

Blakemore, S. Development of the social brain during adolescence. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 61 , 40— Elkind, D. Farrington, D. The challenge of teenage antisocial behavior.

Rutter Eds. Ge, X. Child Development, 67 6 , — Gilligan, C. Goldberg, E. The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. Goossens, L. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 12 2 , — Haidt, J. The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 4 , — Harris, J. The nurture assumption — Why children turn out the way they do.

Jaffee, S. Furthermore, any individual factor contributes only a small part to the increase in risk. It is, however, widely recognized that the more risk factors a child or adolescent experiences, the higher their risk for delinquent behavior. A difficulty with the literature on risk factors is the diversity of the outcome behaviors studied.

Some studies focus on behavior that meets diagnostic criteria for conduct disorder or other antisocial behavior disorders; others look at aggressive behavior, or lying, or shoplifting; still others rely on juvenile court referral or arrest as the outcome of interest. Furthermore, different risk factors and different outcomes may be more salient at some stages of child and adolescent development than at others.

Much of the literature that has examined risk factors for delinquency is based on longitudinal studies, primarily of white males. Some of the samples were specifically chosen from high-risk environments. Care must be taken in generalizing this literature to girls and minorities and to general populations. Nevertheless, over the past 20 years, much has been learned about risks for antisocial and delinquent behavior.

This chapter is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of all the literature on risk factors. Rather it focuses on factors that are most relevant to prevention efforts. For reviews of risk factor literature, see, for example, Hawkins et al. The chapter discusses risk factors for offending, beginning with risks at the individual level, including biological, psychological, behavioral, and cognitive factors.

Social-level risk factors are discussed next; these include family and peer relationships. Finally, community-level risk factors, including school and neighborhood attributes, are examined. Although individual, social, and community-level factors interact, each level is discussed separately for clarity.

A large number of individual factors and characteristics has been associated with the development of juvenile delinquency. These individual factors include age, gender, complications during pregnancy and delivery, impulsivity, aggressiveness, and substance use. Some factors operate before birth prenatal or close to, during, and shortly after birth perinatal ; some can be identified in early childhood; and other factors may not be evident until late childhood or during adolescence.

To fully appreciate the development of these individual characteristics and their relations to delinquency, one needs to study the development of the individual in interaction with the environment. In order to simplify presentation of the research, however, this section deals only with individual factors. Studies of criminal activity by age consistently find that rates of offending begin to rise in preadolescence or early adolescence, reach a peak in.

Some lawbreaking experience at some time during adolescence is nearly universal in American children, although much of this behavior is reasonably mild and temporary. Although the exact age of onset, peak, and age of desistance varies by offense, the general pattern has been remarkably consistent over time, in different countries, and for official and self-reported data. For example, Farrington , a , in a longitudinal study of a sample of boys in London the Cambridge Longitudinal Study , found an eightfold increase in the number of different boys convicted of delinquent behavior from age 10 to age 17, followed by a decrease to a quarter of the maximum level by age The number of self-reported offenses in the same sample also peaked between ages 15 and 18, then dropped sharply by age In a longitudinal study of boys in inner-city Pittsburgh just over half the sample was black and just under half was white , the percentage of boys who self-reported serious delinquent behavior rose from 5 percent at age 6 to about 18 percent for whites and 27 percent for blacks at age 16 Loeber et al.

A longitudinal study of a representative sample from high-risk neighborhoods in Denver also found a growth in the self-reported prevalence of serious violence from age 10 through late adolescence Kelley et al.

Females in the Denver sample exhibited a peak in serious violence in midadolescence, but prevalence continued to increase through age 19 for the boys. The study is continuing to follow these boys to see if their prevalence drops in early adulthood. Laub et al. Much research has concentrated on the onset of delinquency, examining risk factors for onset, and differences between those who begin offending early prior to adolescence versus those who begin offending in midadolescence.

There have been suggestions that early-onset delinquents are more likely than later-onset delinquents to be more serious and persistent offenders e. There is evidence, however, that predictors associated with onset do not predict persistence particularly well Farrington and Hawkins, There are also important problems with the choice of statistical models to create categories of developmental trajectories Nagin and Tremblay, Research by Nagin and Tremblay found no evidence of late-onset physical aggression.

Physical aggression was highest at age 6 the earliest age for which data were collected for this study and declined into adolescence. The available data on very young children indicates that frequency of physical aggression reaches a peak around age 2 and then slowly declines up to adolescence Restoin et al.

Those who persist in offending into adulthood may differ from those who desist in a number of ways, including attachment to school, military service Elder, ; Sampson and Laub, , sex, age of onset of offending, incarceration, and adult social bonds e. Sampson and Laub found that marital attachment and job stability significantly reduced deviant behavior in adulthood. Farrington and West found that offenders and nonoffenders were equally likely to get married, but those who got married and lived with their spouse decreased their offending more than those who remained single or who did not live with their spouse.

They also found that offending increased after separation from a spouse. Similarly, Horney et al. Within marriages, only good marriages predicted reduction in crime, and these had an increasing effect over time Laub et al. Warr also found that offending decreased after marriage but attributed the decrease to a reduction in the time spent with peers and a reduction in the number of deviant peers following marriage rather than to increased attachment to conventional society through marriage.

Brannigan points out that crime is highest when males have the fewest resources, and it lasts longest in those with the fewest investments in society job, wife, children. Crime is not an effective strategy for getting resources. There is evidence that chronic offenders gain fewer resources than nonoffenders, after the adolescent period Moffitt, The evidence for desistance in girls is not clear. One review of the literature suggests that 25 to 50 percent of antisocial girls commit crimes as adults Pajer, There is also some evidence that women are less likely to be recidivists, and that they end their criminal careers earlier than men Kelley et al.

However, the sexes appear to become more similar with time in rates of all but violent crimes. There is a suggestion that women who persist in crime past adolescence may be more disturbed than men who persist Jordan et al.

Several studies have found an association between prenatal and perinatal complications and later delinquent or criminal behavior Kandel et. Prenatal and perinatal risk factors represent a host of latent and manifest conditions that influence subsequent development. Under the heading of prenatal factors, one finds a broad variety of conditions that occurs before birth through the seventh month of gestation Kopp and Krakow, Similarly, perinatal factors include conditions as varied as apnea of prematurity poor breathing to severe respiratory distress syndrome.

The former condition is relatively benign, while the latter is often life-threatening. Although they are risk factors, low birthweight and premature birth do not necessarily presage problems in development.

Prenatal and perinatal risk factors may compromise the nervous system, creating vulnerabilities in the child that can lead to abnormal behavior.

Children with prenatal and perinatal complications who live in impoverished, deviant, or abusive environments face added difficulties. According to three major large-scale, long-term studies: 1 developmental risks have additive negative effects on child outcomes, 2 most infants with perinatal complications develop into normally functioning children, and 3 children with long-term negative outcomes who suffered perinatal complications more often than not came from socially disadvantaged backgrounds Brennan and Mednick, ; Broman et al.

These and other studies have been unable to identify specific mechanisms to account for the fact that the number of prenatal and perinatal abnormalities tend to correlate with the probability that a child will become a criminal. In addition to the lack of specificity regarding the predictors and the mechanisms of risk, similar measures predict learning disabilities, mental retardation, minimal brain dysfunction, and others Towbin, An association between perinatal risk factors and violent offending is particularly strong among offenders whose parents are mentally ill or very poor Raine et al.

Most measures indicate that males are more likely to commit crimes. They are also more vulnerable to prenatal and perinatal stress, as is shown through studies of negative outcomes, including death Davis and Emory, ; Emory et al. Hyperactivity, attention problems, and impulsiveness in children have been found to be associated with delinquency. These behaviors can be assessed very early in life and are associated with certain prenatal and perinatal histories DiPietro et al.

For example, exposure to environmental toxins, such as prenatal lead exposure at very low levels, tends to adversely affect neonatal motor and attentional performance Emory et al. Hyperactivity and aggression are associated with prenatal alcohol exposure Brown et al.

Prenatal exposure to alcohol, cocaine, heroin, and nicotine appear to have similar effects. Each tends to be associated with hyperactivity, attention deficit, and impulsiveness Karr-Morse and Wiley, In recent investigations, observable behaviors, such as duration of attention to a toy and compliance with mother's instructions not to touch an object, that are particularly relevant to later misbehavior are observable in the first year of life Kochanska et al.

However, the ability to predict behavior at later ages in adolescence and adulthood from such traits early in life is not yet known. Aggressive behavior is nevertheless one of the more stable dimensions, and significant stability may be seen from toddlerhood to adulthood Tremblay, The social behaviors that developmentalists study during childhood can be divided into two broad categories: prosocial and antisocial.

Prosocial behaviors include helping, sharing, and cooperation, while antisocial behaviors include different forms of oppositional and aggressive behavior.

The development of empathy, guilt feelings, social cognition, and moral reasoning are generally considered important emotional and cognitive correlates of social development. Impulsivity and hyperactivity have both been associated with later antisocial behavior Rutter et al.

The social behavior characteristics that best predict delinquent behavior, however, are physical aggression and oppositionality Lahey et al. Most children start manifesting these behaviors between the end of the first and second years. The peak level in frequency of physical aggression is generally reached between 24 and 36 months, an age at which the consequences of the aggression are generally relatively minor Goodenough, ; Sand, ; Tremblay et al. By entry into kindergarten, the majority of children have learned to use other means than physical aggression to get what they want and to solve conflicts.

Those who have not learned, who are oppositional and show few prosocial behaviors toward peers, are at high risk of being rejected by their peers, of failing in school, and eventually of getting involved in serious delinquency Farrington and Wikstrom, ; Huesmann et al. The differentiation of emotions and emotional regulation occurs during the 2-year period, from 12 months to 36 months, when the frequency of physical aggression increases sharply and then decreases almost as sharply Tremblay, ; Tremblay et al.

A number of longitudinal studies have shown that children who are behaviorally inhibited shy, anxious are less at risk of juvenile delinquency, while children who tend to be fearless, those who are impulsive, and those who have difficulty delaying gratification are more at risk of delinquent behavior Blumstein et al.

A large number of studies report that delinquents have a lower verbal IQ compared with nondelinquents, as well as lower school achievement Fergusson and Horwood, ; Maguin and Loeber, ; Moffitt, Antisocial youth also tend to show cognitive deficits in the areas of executive functions 1 Moffitt et al. The association between cognitive deficits and delinquency remains after controlling for social class and race Moffitt, ; Lynam et al.

Few studies, however, have assessed cognitive functioning during the preschool years or followed the children into adolescence to understand the long-term link between early cognitive deficits and juvenile delinquency. The studies that did look at children 's early cognitive development have shown that poor language performance by the second year after birth, poor fine motor skills by the third year, and low IQ by kindergarten were all associated with later antisocial behavior Kopp and Krakow, ; Stattin and Klackenberg-Larsson, ; White et al.

Stattin and Klackenberg-Larsson found that the association between poor early language performance and later criminal behavior remained significant even after controlling for socioeconomic status. Epidemiological studies have found a correlation between language delay and aggressive behavior Richman et al. Language delays may contribute to poor peer relations that, in turn, result in aggression Campbell, a.

The long-term impact of cognitively oriented preschool programs on the reduction of antisocial behavior is a more direct indication that fostering early cognitive development can play an important role in the prevention of juvenile delinquency Schweinhart et al. It is important to note that since poor cognitive abilities and problem behaviors in the preschool years also.

Executive functions refer to a variety of independent skills that are necessary for purposeful, goal-directed activity.

Executive functions require generating and maintaining appropriate mental representations, monitoring the flow of information, and modifying problem-solving strategies in order to keep behavior directed toward the goal. Several mental health disorders of childhood have been found to put children at risk for future delinquent behavior.

Conduct disorder is often diagnosed when a child is troublesome and breaking rules or norms but not necessarily doing illegal behavior, especially at younger ages. This behavior may include lying, bullying, cruelty to animals, fighting, and truancy. Most adolescents in U. Many adolescents, in the period during which they engage in these behaviors, are likely to meet formal criteria for conduct disorder. Behavior characterized by willful disobedience and defiance is considered a different disorder oppositional defiant disorder , but often occurs in conjunction with conduct disorder and may precede it.

Several prospective longitudinal studies have found that children with attention and hyperactivity problems, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, show high levels of antisocial and aggressive behavior Campbell, b; Hechtman et al. Early hyperactivity and attention problems without concurrent aggression, however, appear not to be related to later aggressive behavior Loeber, ; Magnusson and Bergman, ; Nagin and Tremblay, , although a few studies do report such relationships Gittelman et al.

Another disorder that is often associated with antisocial behavior and conduct disorder is major depressive disorder, particularly in girls Kovacs, ; Offord et al. In girls, conduct disorder may be a kind of manifestation of the hopelessness, frustration, and low self-esteem that often characterizes major depression.

For juveniles as well as adults, the use of drugs and alcohol is common among offenders. In , about half of juvenile arrestees in the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring Program tested positive for at least one drug.

In these same cities, 2 about two-thirds of adult arrestees tested. Data on adults are collected in 35 cities altogether. Of course, drug use is a criminal offense on its own, and for juveniles, alcohol use is also a status delinquent offense. A number of studies have consistently found that as the seriousness of offending goes up, so does the seriousness of drug use as measured both by frequency of use and type of drug see Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, In the longitudinal studies of causes and correlates of delinquency in Denver, Pittsburgh, and Rochester see Thornberry et al.

In addition, about three-quarters of drug users in each sample were also involved in serious delinquency Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, Similarly, in the Denver Youth Survey, serious offenders had the highest prevalence and frequency of use of alcohol and marijuana of all youth in the study. Nevertheless, only about one-third of serious delinquents were problem drug users Huizinga and Jakob-Chien, Although there appears to be a relationship between alcohol and drug use and criminal delinquency, not all delinquents use alcohol or drugs, nor do all alcohol and drug users commit delinquent acts other than the alcohol or drug use itself.

Those who are both serious delinquents and serious drug users may be involved in a great deal of crime, however. Johnson et al. Neverthless, it would be premature to conclude that serious drug use causes serious crime McCord, Whatever characteristics individuals have, resulting personalities and behavior are influenced by the social environments in which they are raised.

Characteristics of individuals always develop in social contexts. Children's and adolescents' interactions and relationships with family and peers influence the development of antisocial behavior and delinquency. Family interactions are most important during early childhood, but they can have long-lasting effects.

In early adolescence, relationships with peers take on greater importance. This section will first consider factors within the family that have been found to be associated with the development of delinquency and then consider peer influences on delinquent behavior. Note that issues concerning poverty and race are dealt with under the community factors section of this chapter. Chapter 7 deals specifically with issues concerning race. In assigning responsibility for childrearing to parents, most Western cultures place a heavy charge on families.

Such cultures assign parents the task of raising children to follow society's rules for acceptable behavior. It should be no surprise, therefore, when families have difficulties with the task laid on them, that the product often is juvenile delinquency Kazdin, Family structure who lives in a household and family functioning how the family members treat one another are two general categories under which family effects on delinquency have been examined. Before embarking on a review of the effects of family structure, it is important to raise the question of mechanisms Rutter et al.

It may not be the family structure itself that increases the risk of delinquency, but rather some other factor that explains why that structure is present. Alternatively, a certain family structure may increase the risk of delinquency, but only as one more stressor in a series; it may be the number rather than specific nature of the stressors that is harmful.

Historically, one aspect of family structure that has received a great deal of attention as a risk factor for delinquency is growing up in a family that has experienced separation or divorce. For example, longitudinal studies have found an increased level of conduct disorder and behavioral disturbance in children of divorcing parents before the divorce took place Block et al. Capaldi and Patterson showed that disruptive parenting practices and antisocial personality of the parent s accounted for apparent effects of divorce and remarriage.

Thus, it is likely that the increased risk of delinquency experienced among children of broken homes is related to the family conflict prior to the divorce or separation, rather than to family breakup itself Rutter et al. In their longitudinal study of family disruption, Juby and Farrington found that boys who stayed with their mothers following disruption had delinquency rates that were almost identical to those reared in intact families.

Many discussions of family structure treat single-parent households and divorced families as the same. In this section, the literature on single-parents is reported separately from that on separated and divorced families because there may be considerable differences in the experiences of children born to single parents and those whose parents divorce. Being born and raised in a single-parent family has also been associated with increased risk of delinquency and antisocial behavior.

Research that takes into account the socioeconomic conditions of single-parent households and other risks, including disciplinary styles and problems in supervising and monitoring children, show that these other factors account for the differential outcomes in these families.

The important role of socioeconomic conditions is shown by the absence of differences in delinquency between children in single-parent and two-parent homes within homogeneous socioeconomic classes Austin, Careful analyses of juvenile court cases in the United States shows that economic conditions rather than family composition influenced children 's delinquency Chilton and Markle, Statistical controls for the mothers' age and poverty have been found to remove effects attributed to single-parent families Crockett et al.

Furthermore, the significance of being born to a single mother has changed dramatically over the past 30 years. In , Census Bureau, By , births to unmarried women accounted for Gorman-Smith and colleagues found no association between single parenthood and delinquency in a poor, urban U. Nevertheless, children in single-parent families are more likely to be exposed to other criminogenic influences, such as frequent changes in the resident father figure Johnson, ; Stern et al.

Single parents often find it hard to get assistance Ensminger et al. If they must work to support themselves and their families, they are likely to have difficulty providing supervision for their children. Poor supervision is associated with the development of delinquency Dornbusch et al. An analysis of children born in and in Washington state found that being born to a mother under age 18 tripled the risk of being chronic offender.

Males born to unmarried mothers under age 18 were 11 times more likely to become chronic juvenile offenders than were males born to married mothers over the age of 20 Conseur et al. What accounts for the increase in risk from having a young mother? Characteristics of women who become teenage parents appear to account for some of the risk. Longitudinal studies in both Britain and the United States have found that girls who exhibit antisocial behavior are at increased risk of teenage motherhood, of having impulsive liaisons with antisocial men, and of having parenting difficulties Maughan and Lindelow, ; Quinton et al.

In Grogger's analysis of data from the National Longitudinal Study of youth, both within-family comparisons and multivariate analysis showed that the characteristics and backgrounds of the women who became teenage mothers accounted for a large part of the risk of their offsprings' delinquency Grogger, , but the age at which the mother gave birth also contributed to the risk.

A teenager who becomes pregnant is also more likely than older mothers to be poor, to be on welfare, to have curtailed her education, and to deliver a baby with low birthweight. Separately or together, these correlates of teenage parenthood have been found to increase risk for delinquency Rutter et al.

Nagin et al. Children raised in families of four or more children have an increased risk of delinquency Farrington and Loeber, ; Rutter and Giller, It has been suggested that large family size is associated with less adequate discipline and supervision of children, and that it is the parenting difficulties that account for much of the association with delinquency Farrington and Loeber, Work by Offord points to the influence of delinquent siblings rather than to parenting qualities.

Rowe and Farrington , in an analysis of a London longitudinal study, found that there was a tendency for antisocial individuals to have large families.

The effect of family size on delinquency was reduced when parents' criminality was taken into account. Even in intact, two-parent families, children may not receive the supervision, training, and advocacy needed to ensure a positive developmental course.

A number of studies have found that poor parental management and disciplinary practices are associated with the development of delinquent behavior. Failure to set clear expectations for children 's behavior, inconsistent discipline, excessively severe or aggressive discipline, and poor monitoring and supervision of children predict later delinquency Capaldi and Patterson, ; Farrington, ; Hawkins et al.

As Patterson , indicates through his research, parents who nag or use idle threats are likely to generate coercive systems in which children gain control through misbehaving. Several longitudinal studies investigating the effects of punishment on aggressive behavior have shown that physical punishments are more likely to result in defiance than compliance McCord, b; Power and Chapieski, ; Strassberg et al. Perhaps the best grounds for believing that family interaction influences delinquency are programs that alter parental management techniques and thereby benefit siblings as well as reduce delinquent behavior by the child whose conduct brought the parents into the program Arnold et al.

Consistent discipline, supervision, and affection help to create well-socialized adolescents Austin, ; Bender, ; Bowlby, ; Glueck and Glueck, ; Goldfarb, ; Hirschi, ; Laub and Sampson, ; McCord, ; Sampson and Laub, Furthermore, reductions in delinquency between the ages of 15 and 17 years appear to be related to friendly interaction between teenagers and their parents, a situation that seems to promote school attachment and stronger family ties Liska and Reed, In contrast, children who have suffered parental neglect have an increased risk of delinquency.

Widom and McCord both found that children who had been neglected were as likely as those who had been physically abused to commit violent crimes later in life.

In their review of many studies investigating relationships between socialization in families and juvenile delinquency, Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber concluded that parental neglect had the largest impact.

Child abuse, as well as neglect, has been implicated in the development of delinquent behavior. In three quite different prospective studies from different parts of the country, childhood abuse and neglect have been found to increase a child's risk of delinquency Maxfield and Widom, ; Smith and Thornberry, ; Widom, ; Zingraff et al. These studies examined children of different ages, cases of childhood abuse and neglect from different time periods, different definitions of.

The findings are true for girls as well as boys, and for black as well as for white children. In addition, abused and neglected children start offending earlier than children who are not abused or neglected, and they are more likely to become chronic offenders Maxfield and Widom, Victims of childhood abuse and neglect are also at higher risk than other children of being arrested for a violent crime as a juvenile Maxfield and Widom, There are problems in carrying out scientific investigations of each of these components as predictors of juvenile delinquency.

First, these behaviors are not empirically independent of one another. Parents who do not watch their young children consistently are less likely to prevent destructive or other unwanted behaviors and therefore more likely to punish. Parents who are themselves unclear about what they expect of their children are likely to be inconsistent and to be unclear in communications with their children.

Parenting that involves few positive shared parent-child activities will often also involve less monitoring and more punishing. Parents who reject their children or who express hostility toward them are more likely to punish them. Parents who punish are more likely to punish too much abuse. Another problem is the lack of specificity of effects of problems in childrearing practices. In general, problems in each of these areas are likely to be associated with problems of a variety of types —performance and behavior in school, with peers, with authorities, and eventually with partners and offspring.

There are also some children who appear to elicit punishing behavior from parents, and this may predate such parenting. Therefore, it is necessary to take account of children's behavior as a potential confounder of the relationship between early parenting and later child problems, because harsh parenting may be a response to a particular child's behavior Tremblay, It is also possible that unnecessarily harsh punishment is more frequently and intensely used by parents who are themselves more aggressive and antisocial.

Children of antisocial parents are at heightened risk for aggressive, antisocial, and delinquent behavior e. Where a family lives affects the nature of opportunities that will be available to its members. In some communities, public transportation permits easy travel for those who do not own automobiles.

Opportunities for employment and entertainment extend beyond the local boundaries. In other communities, street-corner gatherings open possibilities for illegal activities.

Lack of socially acceptable opportunities leads to frustra-. Community-based statistics show high correlations among joblessness, household disruption, housing density, infant deaths, poverty, and crime Sampson, , Community variations may account for the fact that some varieties of family life have different effects on delinquency in different communities Larzelere and Patterson, ; Simcha-Fagan and Schwartz, In general, consistent friendly parental guidance seems to protect children from delinquency regardless of neighborhoods.

But poor socialization practices seem to be more potent in disrupted neighborhoods McCord, Neighborhoods influence children's behavior by providing examples of the values that people hold, and these examples influence children's perception of what is acceptable behavior.

Communities in which criminal activities are common tend to establish criminal behavior as acceptable.

Tolerance for gang activities varies by community Curry and Spergel, ; Horowitz, In sum, family life influences delinquency in a variety of ways.

Children reared by affectionate, consistent parents are unlikely to commit serious crimes either as juveniles or as adults. Children reared by parents who neglect or reject them are likely to be greatly influenced by their community environments.

When communities offer opportunities for and examples of criminal behavior, children reared by neglecting or rejecting parents are more likely to become delinquents. And delinquents are likely to become inadequate parents. A very robust finding in the delinquency literature is that antisocial behavior is strongly related to involvement with deviant peers. One longitudinal study reported that involvement with antisocial peers was the only variable that had a direct effect on subsequent delinquency other than prior delinquency Elliott et al.

Factors such as peer delinquent behavior, peer approval of deviant behavior, attachment or allegiance to peers, time spent with peers, and peer pressure for deviance have all been associated with adolescent antisocial behavior Hoge et al.

In other words, the effects of deviant peers on delinquency are heightened if adolescents believe that their peers approve of delinquency, if they are attached to those peers, if they spend much time with them, and if they perceive pressure from those peers to engage in delinquent acts.

There is a dramatic increase during adolescence in the amount of time adolescents spend with their friends, and peers become increasingly. Moreover, peers appear to be most important during late adolescence, with their importance peaking at about age 17 and declining thereafter Warr, Thus the decline in delinquency after about age 18 parallels the decline in the importance of peers, including those with deviant influences. Consistent with this view, in the longitudinal research of antisocial British youth by West and Farrington , deviant youth reported that withdrawal from delinquent peer affiliations was an important factor in desistance from offending.

Peer influences appear to have a particularly strong relationship to delinquency in the context of family conflict. For example, adolescents ' lack of respect for their parents influenced their antisocial behavior only because it led to increases in antisocial peer affiliations Simmons et al. Patterson et al. And 6th grade association with deviant peers, in turn, predicted delinquency in 8th grade.

In adolescence, susceptibility to peer influence is inversely related to interaction with parents Kandel, ; Kandel and Andrews, ; Steinberg, Other research suggests that adolescents usually become involved with delinquent peers before they become delinquent themselves Elliott, b; Elliott et al.

In those cases in which an adolescent was delinquent prior to having delinquent friends, the delinquency was exacerbated by association with deviant peers Elliott, b; Elliott and Menard, ; Thornberry et al. The influence of peers varies depending on the influence of parents.