How Family Structure Impacts Child Delinquency

Introduction 

Juvenile delinquency is very common today, not only in the US but also in the world at large. Research has also shown that the prevalence of delinquency is higher today than it was in the past decade. Many youths who have not engaged in actual crime and delinquency have been processed through a system where instances of crime characterize everyday life, making them experience the criminal justice system, and consequently create concern in the society and among parents, guardians, schools, and other children with whom they interact. The key family-associated elements that influence juvenile delinquency are family relationships and composition. The structure of the family and the relationship of the child to other members of the family are major determinants of the behavior he/she shall develop. The family structure in the US society is dynamic and diverse, and has changed tremendously over the last century, just like the patterns and structures of delinquency. 

Children and teenagers today live in families that are differently structured. Some live in homes with either a single parent or with cohabiting parents, while others live with their married parents. The social environment and the families in which children grow play a major role in their wellbeing and development. Children bred in married households generally have a relatively lower probability of engaging in various negative activities and being involved in crime than children brought up in non-traditional homes (Sharma & Joshi, 2015) . Different family structures provide varying forms of supervision, counsel, relations, and involvement to the child. These various types of adjustments offered by the family play a role in the determination of the outcome that the child will produce as they develop. 

The nuclear family is the dominant structure in the US, but cultural evolution and ‘modernity’ has brought about the prevalence of other non-traditional structures such as cohabiting, single parent families and the extended or joint family. The culture is mainly patrilineal though the consideration of the descent as either patrilineal or matrilineal is slowly sinking into oblivion with the new systems. Family ties are slowly dissolving with only a few conservative families maintaining close ties with their relatives. The primary form and functioning of the family has however survived through the wave of cultural evolution and history, and now co-exists with the new models as brought about by the evolution. 

This study will answer this question: how much has the family structure in the US changed and how does this change relate to cases of juvenile delinquency? Various other studies have sought to find out how family processes contribute to instances of child delinquency. This research further explores how cohabiting perhaps contributes to increased instances of child crime than does other family structures such as the married or extended family types. 

Review of Literature 

Family Structure and its Relation to Child Delinquency 

Many researchers have examined how the structuring of a family affects delinquency. Many of these researchers found that children who are brought up in broken families have report higher incidences of delinquency. Youths living in intact families report far less delinquencies than those living in non-intact families (Theobald, Farrington, & Piquero, 2013) . Moreover, Khan et al. (2014) found that children from divorced families were more involved in crimes ranging from drug and substance abuse, status offenses, felony, crimes against person, and general delinquency, than children from stable marriages. The causal relationship between divorce and child delinquency is the subject of discussion, and many people argue that perhaps there is a genetic trait that is common to children bred in broke families that predisposes them to delinquency (Parks, 2013) . It remains unclear if the results of the study that found children from intact families to have relatively lower rates of delinquencies than those from broken families can be generalized. Later teenagers and those from extended families are particularly at a higher risk of engaging in juvenile crime. 

The American nuclear family has over the last half century undergone dramatic changes than at any other time in history. Today single families are increasing and a third of the children born in the US are born to single mothers. The single-father kind of family is currently the fastest growing (Parks, 2013) . There is considerable variability in family structures in the modern world, an occurrence that is attributed not only to increasing instances of divorce and the growth of stepfamilies, but also to cohabitation and child bearing among the unmarried. Most of the earlier studies that focused on the effects of family structure on delinquency relied on simple measures of family structure that could possibly be a cause of study bias leading to a misinterpretation of the relationship. 

An examination of the relationship of child delinquency and non-intact families in the US found that non-intact homes were more likely to have their children taking part in offenses such as truancy and escapes than in other crimes of a larger magnitude when the context of the family is simplified to a simple dichotomy of intact versus non-intact families. The study asserts that it is misleading to suggest that non-stable families are not a key factor for high delinquency rates since those who come up with such suggestions use faulty operational definitions of delinquency and family structure. Moreover, immense evidence exists to prove that the level of variability is very high for families classified as broken. 

How Family Processes Relate to Delinquency 

According to Sharma (2012) the social control theory provides a good explanation for the relationship between delinquency and family processes. This theoretical explanation is founded on the tenet that good social attachments decrease the possibility of crime and acts of defiance among children and teenagers. The social bond is composed of four elements which are belief: the opinions, values, or impressions that one forms as a result of the social environment; commitment: the shunning of wayward behavior; attachment: the relationship bonds that one has with others; and involvement: active participation which makes one occupied and not available to commit a crime (Sharma A. , 2012) . 

The social control theory asserts that people conform to societal norms and values because their behavior affects their stakes in conformance, their relationship to their parents, their belief in societal unity, and their active participation in activities vetted by conventional laws. People with weak attachments, on the other hand, have a significantly higher possibility of being involved or taking part in delinquent behavior since they have poor conformance stakes, little or no participation in conventionally vetted activities, and negative attitudes about communal values. The strength of the bond between a child and their parents is an important determinant of their behavior (Elham, 2016) . This is to say that it is the strength of the relationship and not the number of people involved that can be factored in the study of child delinquency. 

Children that grow up in nuclear families with their biological parents have a closer bond with their parents than those children who experience the separation of their parents or are growing up in other forms of families. Children from non-traditional families have a higher likelihood of becoming delinquents because of the weaker bonds that they have with their families. Growing up in a non-traditional family can affect the four aspects of the attachment. Incomplete families lack the instruments that can adequately provide the strong bonds necessary for socialization into acceptable behavior ( Estévez, Jiménez, & Moreno, 2018) . Parenting techniques can affect delinquency in the long-run, either in the positive or in the negative. A child who grows up in a broken family will most likely have challenges adapting to the social environment and this can potentially drive him/her towards defiance. 

Gender is also an element to consider in the prediction of delinquency. Relationships between children and their mothers are especially important as a causal factor for delinquency and crime. Maternal behavior can, for example, influence child delinquency and crime, consequently affecting adult criminality. A child who does not receive adequate care and attention from their mother is likely to become a delinquent. The probability of criminal behavior as an adult is however more directly related to parental interaction rather than care and attention in the family. Children who grow up in families where they get close attention and adequate supervision have a lower likelihood of turning out as delinquents (Sharma & Joshi, 2015) . The close supervision and good parenting of an adolescent can influence them not to engage in criminal behavior in their adulthood. Participation, family bonding, supervision and monitoring are particularly critical elements in cases of adolescents indulging in criminal activities and delinquencies. 

The Connection of Family Structure, Family Processes, and Delinquency 

Studies show that biological-father-mother-child families exhibit the four elements of parental attachment more than other types of families. Generally, adolescents report a higher number of disagreements with single mothers than with mothers from the biological nuclear family (Taylor, Goeke-Morey, Merrilees, & Cummings, 2014) . Single parent households have a limited number of individuals to supervise, watch, and counsel the growing adolescent while the biological nuclear family offers more support, encouragement, discipline and involvement for the adolescent. The behavior of children has also been established to be better in biological nuclear families than in all other family forms (Theobald, Farrington, & Piquero, 2013) . 

Given the sensitivity of parenting techniques and their effect on the eventual behavior of the child/adolescent once an adult, it is imperative that mediation is created. Households run by single parents are more likely to produce delinquent youths than married households. The difference in the magnitude of the impact is however reduced when family processes such as supervision and attention are factored in. If parenthood is done in such a way that it leads to higher levels of social control, cases of delinquency and defiance would be greatly reduced. On the contrary, other studies found no adequate evidence to conclude that parenting techniques mediate the connection between adolescent outcomes and family structure (Maimon & Browning, 2012) . The different samples used in various studies are perhaps a possible explanation for the difference in the study outcomes. A data sample collected from a population consisting of children from mothers with largely varied ages would, for example, produce different results from another data sample collected from children born of teenage mothers. 

Methodology 

This study will use the evaluative survey research design in exploring the possibility of the family structure as a driving force for delinquency. It will use a population of adolescents in juvenile detention centers. The sample will be composed of delinquent adolescents picked from various youth detention centers. The study will use the purposive sampling method since detention centers have a ready categorization of their delinquents. They are, therefore, the most representative social strata for the study of this topic. A questionnaire will be used as the tool for data collection since it is affordable and relatively easy to use compared to other methods. Many of the questions asked will be close ended for the facilitation of scoring and the avoidance of complex answers. Some will be open ended to provide more details and supplementing information. Questions on the questionnaire will be framed in a way that captures matrimonial family status of the delinquents, their moral values, their personal data, their family’s socio-economic standing, their crimes, their family structures, the number of people in their families, and their education level. Simple quantitative methods such as percentages, modes, medians, and averages will be used to analyze the data so collected. The study shall use the results of the data analysis to prove or disapprove several hypotheses that shall be formed about the topic. 

Hypothesis 1 

Many child offenders grow up in dysfunctional families where they were alone or were not adequately cared for because of divorce, runaway parents, death of either or both of the parents, and separation. From the data collected, the study will be able to establish how many of the delinquents in the sample population come from single parents, biological father-mother families, cohabiting parents, divorced parents, or other forms of families. The percentages computed will be adequate to test this hypothesis and come up with a conclusive answer. 

Hypothesis 2 

Child offenders come mostly from homes characterized by poverty, unemployment, crime, and poor living standards. The questions will be structured in a way that captures the economic activity that parents or guardians of the study sample involve themselves with. it will as well capture the living conditions and location of their homes as well as the possible income of the families. The dominant occupation in the representative family determines the income, the living conditions, the location, and the socio-economic status of the family. It can also be used to gauge the education level of the parents or guardians because some jobs, particularly those that are the lowest paid in an economy, are associated with school drop-outs and those with the lowest level of education. 

Hypothesis 3 

Most juvenile delinquents grow up in overcrowded families characterized by a small space occupied by many individuals. Such a family will most likely have aggressive competition for the available resources. The children will be in competition for the limited attention and care that the parent/guardian can offer. A parent overburdened with multiple responsibilities will be and worn out most of the time and may not perform their duties effectively. The data collected will capture the number of individuals in the families represented in the sample. The questions will be framed to capture both extremes- the highest possibility of more than 16 individuals and the lowest possibility of 2 or 3 persons. This is because there are homes where the parents are not the only adult members. Such families may also have friends and relatives, children from previous marriages, a pre-marital relationship partner, or grandparents as bona fide members (Kumar, 2015) . The addition of children into such families creates a large family. The home sizes as represented in the final percentages will be used to test the hypothesis. 

Hypothesis 4 

Parents/ guardians of child offenders do not spent enough time with their children due to their attachment to their occupations. To capture time spent with parents, the study will seek to establish the occupation of the parents and guardians then classify the jobs as either with heavy time constraints or with light time constraints. Jobs with heavy time constraints leave little or no time for the parents to interact with their children since they keep them away for long hours, many days, or even months. The unemployed parents will also be factored into the study since they too spent little time with their children due to loafing and moving about in the search for employment. Their availability for the needs of their children is limited since the time they spent at home is short and very unpredictable. The heavy time constraints bar them from effectively accomplishing their parenting duties. These duties include moralizing, counseling, and socializing of their children. 

Some parents and/or guardians are also incapable of meeting their financial obligations and responsibilities since they hold low paying jobs. This further aggravates their inability to effectively cater for their families both emotionally and financially. A vicious cycle is thereby established where parents lack the adequate financial mechanisms to earn and therefore fail to effectively meet their financial responsibilities. Such parents are consumed by guilt and choose to stay away from their homes for longer periods of time. Their escape from home raises the possibility of squandering their meager earnings and ultimately elongating their stay away from home due to the naked stare of poverty. The percentages collected in relation to the presence or absence of the parent or guardian will be used to test the hypothesis that many child offenders have limited or no time with their parents. 

Results 

The analysis of data will reveal the ages of the respondents which will be used to estimate their development path. This is because age correlates with certain stages of development. An age above 10 years would, for example, indicate a stage where the individual is searching for an identity and wishes to integrate into a role. The results will establish what percentage of the represented families live in the same home and are legally married. The study will also establish the percentage of respondents who received their moral education from parents, from relatives, or from other members of their families. It will as well compute the percentages of parents who hold jobs in the lowest paying class or are unemployed. These statistics will be used to reveal the average general financial situation in the represented families. Other important measures that will be captured include the percentage of represented homes with above 5 members and the percentage of respondents whose parents stay away for long hours due to heavy time and job constraints. 

Conclusion 

The study will establish the factors that account for delinquency in the US with concern to family structure. It will narrow down the contributing magnitude of each of the factors associated with family structure which are co-habiting, married biological two-parent homes, poverty, overcrowding, and heavy constraints that reduce the time spent with children. The analysis will highlight the characteristics of the represented family structures. It will highlight the contribution of functional dissonance characterized by cohabiting, structural breakdown, permissive parenting systems, financial challenges, heavy time constraints and family overcrowding. It will explore the correlation of child delinquency with parental absence characterized by neglect, ignorance or heavy time constraints, unemployment or low paying jobs, and general lack of care. 

Additionally, the analysis will determine what characterizes the represented family structures by exploring factors such as parental vacuum, inadequate space, moral want, and financial challenges. These factors make children vulnerable and contribute in pushing them to disparity and crime. The lack of emotional, physical, moral and financial support creates an enabling environment for child offenses such as stealing and dropping out of school. To conclude, the analysis will present a clear picture of how the incorporation of both traditional and complex modern socio-economic systems into the family structure has caused successive unresolved concerns in the society. It will use the factors associated with the family structure and composition to establish how they relate to child delinquency. 

References 

Estévez, E., Jiménez, T. I., & Moreno, D. (2018). Aggressive behavior in adolescence as a predictor of personal, family,. Psicothema , 66-73. 

Elham, K. (2016). The Relation Between Identity Styles and Family Cohesion with Tendency to the Aggressive Behaviors in Students of Boys High School in Qazvin City. Biomedical and Pharmacology Journal, 9 (2). 

Khan, M., Aser Quadri, S. M., & Aziz, S. (2014). Association of Family Structure and its Environment with Aggressive Behaviour of Children (6-8years) in a Rural Community. Journal of Child and Adolescent Behaviour, 2 (1). 

Kumar, A. (2015). Family Environment and Juvenile Delinquency. VEETHIKA, 1 (2). 

Maimon, D., & Browning, C. R. (2012). Adolescents’ Violent Victimization. The British Journal of Criminology, 52 (4), 808-833. 

Parks, A. B. (2013). The Effects of Family Structure on Juvenile Delinquency. Electronic Theses and Dissertations , Paper 2279. 

Sharma, A. (2012). Aggressive behavior in students: the role of family environment. Advances in Asian Social Science, 3 (1), 622-628. 

Sharma, M., & Joshi, H. L. (2015). Role of Family Environment and Parenting Style in Adjustment among Male Adolescents. International Journal of Current Research and Academic Review, 3 (1), 252-263. 

Taylor, L. K., Goeke-Morey, M. C., Merrilees, C. E., & Cummings, E. M. (2014). Trajectories of Adolescent Aggression and Family Cohesion: The Potential to Perpetuate or Ameliorate Political Conflict. Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology, 45 (2), 1-15. 

Theobald, D., Farrington, D. P., & Piquero, A. R. (2013). Childhood broken homes and adult violence: An analysis of moderators. Journal of Criminal Justice, 41 (1), 44-52.