The family and delinquency

-----Valeria response

A family’s influence on delinquency is based around four categories of family dysfunction that seem to promote delinquent behavior in children: 1) family breakup, 2) family conflict, 3) family effectiveness, and 4) family deviance. According to the author, there is a recurrent theme throughout the book, family influences  a child’s development, “The family is the primary unit in which children learn the values and attitudes that guide their actions through adulthood” (Siegel & Welsh, 2017). These four factors also come together and interact, where you may see a family where parents are involved in crime and will likely experience fighting and conflict in the family, as well as spousal conflicts. A study done by Rand Conger and his associates showed how family problems can overlap, and what seemed to be at the root of the problem was economic stress, “According to his “Family Stress Model” of economic hardship, such factors of low income and income loss increase parents’ sadness, pessimism about the future, anger, despair, and withdrawal from other family members.” This is a common strain of family relationships, as economic stress brought by lack of money created daily pressure and makes it hard to afford basic necessities you must provide for the family, (i.e. Adequate food, housing, and medical care). As parents become more distressed emotionally, their communication tends to fall, and “they tend to interact with one another and their children in a more irritable and less supportive fashion” (Siegel & Welsh, 2017). These same patterns of behavior put strains on a marriage, making it less stable, while also disrupting the parenting practices. Children that are raised in a supportive, non-dysfunctional family, tend to be secure and confident, while those who come from broken homes exhibit antisocial behavior which is a big risk for delinquency. Plus, broken homes (of Divorce, separation, abuse) produce children with known behavior problems later in life, since “Family breakup is often associated with conflict, hostility, and aggression; children of divorce are suspected of having lax supervision, weakened attachment, and greater susceptibility to peer pressure” (Siegel & Welsh, 2017). Another influence of family dysfunction is family conflict, which can have different perspectives as a child in the family, in fact “Children who experience indirect types of family violence, such as exposure to the physical abuse of a sibling, are just as likely and even sometimes more likely to externalize behavior (i.e., act out), than children who experienced direct maltreatment and child physical abuse” (Siegel & Welsh, 2017).

       It has proven that there is little difference In the behavior witnessed by children and the behavior children experience personally, there are victims of intrafamily violence (Families that resort to aggression), and there are those who are just witnessing and learning to the delinquent behavior. Family effectiveness is important as well, as effective parenting skills help control a child from engaging in delinquent behavior. There are different types of parenting styles, although, the effectiveness of parents on childrearing can be subjective, some parents are controlling, demanding, and still supportive, while others have an authoritarian attitude, expecting their children to obey them; these children tend to be disconnected, withdrawn, and distrustful. The book mentions that no matter the efforts made by parents to keep kids away from delinquency, good parenting in any way does not mean the child will listen. Finally, there is family deviance. Known as a never-ending cycle, since deviant kids then to come from deviant parents, their kids as well will learn behaviors that are deviant, and “Kids whose fathers were incarcerated are more likely to suffer an arrest by age 25 than the offspring of conventional, law-abiding parents” (Siegel & Welsh, 2017), thought this applies to males or sons most of the time. There have been multiple links that are thought to be reasons as to how behavior of parents and past deviance in parents produces deviant kids. Genetics is linked to parental deviance being passed to kids as there are neurological conditions along with antisocial behaviors that are inherited genetically from parents to their children. Substance abuse is also linked, and this can be simply due to a child copying the drug-abusing parents in the household, becoming a drug-abuser themselves. Reduced parenting skills, labeling in families, and absent parents also lead to a kid becoming delinquent, more so the absence of a parent because of incarceration seems to affect kids more than other causes such as divorce, illness, or death.

      A study done by David Huh and colleagues wanted to prove if it Is really the family who is to blame for a child engaging in delinquent behavior, and the results were surprising. He looks at the family conflict model, and asks the question, “What comes first? Bad parents or bad kids?”, I assume that a child can completely ignore what goes in the household, and almost transform into a different person outside the household. Huh surveyed about 500 adolescent girls from eight different schools and asked them what their life was like at home with parents and if they ever engaged in delinquent behavior such as running away, or substance abuse. They wanted to prove that it was not poor parenting that caused children to misbehave, but that teens were undermining their authority, acting out. More so, “Huh suggests it is possible that the parents of adolescents who consistently misbehave may become more tolerant of their behavior and give up on attempts at control” (Siegel & Welsh, 2017). Huh was able to prove parental effectiveness and parental attachment fades, as kids exhibit more threatening behaviors, then the parents choose to detach themselves, leaving the child to do what they want. Huh did find that bad kids create dysfunctional families. I think the results of this study prove that parenting and family conflict has little to do with a child being a delinquent, it is what the child decides to do themselves, as they develop their own sense of things, forming a culture with adult values, think of the phrase, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”