Who Affects Whom? The Bidirectional Relationship Between Parenting and Delinquency

Open Access
- Author:
- Gault, Martha Elaine
- Graduate Program:
- Crime, Law and Justice
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 17, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Eric Silver, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Eric Silver, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Darrell J Steffensmeier, Committee Member
Jeremy Staff, Committee Member
Daphne Hernandez, Committee Member - Keywords:
- reciprocal effects
delinquency
parenting
social control
social bonds - Abstract:
- Building on prior studies by Liska and Reed (1985) and Jang and Smith (1997), this study addresses is a key measurement problem in social control theory, which calls into question the cross-sectional results of past studies, and raises significant questions about the validity of the theory as articulated by Hirschi (1969). The theoretical issue is whether or not the relationship between social bonds and delinquency is reciprocal. To address this issue, I examine the bidirectional relationship between parenting and types of delinquency. Parenting is operationalized using measures of parental attachment, parental monitoring, and parental involvement. Delinquency is operationalized using measures of overall delinquency, which included 13 delinquent behaviors, property delinquency, and violent delinquency. One main research question guided this research. Is there a bidirectional relationship between parenting behaviors and delinquency? In other words, are there both parent effects on delinquency and adolescent effects (through delinquency) on parenting? In order to test for bidirectionality, eighteen main models were estimated, accounting for three delinquency outcomes, each with one of the three parenting measures as the key predictor, and three parenting outcomes, each with one of the three delinquency measures as the key predictor. In each model, the time 1 measure for the outcome was controlled in a cross-lagged regression to control for prior delinquency or parenting behaviors. This allowed me to estimate the effect of each key predictor on change in the relevant outcome, thus factoring individual differences related to each of the dependent variables of interest. The data used in this research were collected for the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Add Health is a nationally representative, school-based longitudinal study of adolescents in grades 7 through 12 in the United States in 1994-1995. I found that there are bidirectional affects between perceived parental attachment and each of the three types of delinquency. There were no bidirectional effects for parental monitoring or parental involvement. Rather, I found no significant parent effects between parental monitoring and delinquency or between parental involvement and delinquency, and no significant adolescent effects between parental monitoring and delinquency. Overall delinquency and property delinquency both had negative effects on parental involvement, providing evidence of adolescent effects. The findings regarding perceived parental attachment provide strong evidence for the existence of a bidirectional relationship between parenting and delinquency, consistent with both the transactional and interactional models of bidirectional parent-adolescent relationships. Contrary to prior criminological research that has focused on or assumed a unidirectional relationship of parents on adolescents, the data here show that the influence goes both ways in the relationship between perceived parental attachment and delinquency.