DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR AND ADOLESCENTS

DELINQUENT BEHAVIOR AND ADOLESCENTS

Madona Tsirekidze

Doctor of medical sciences, full Professor, European University,

Georgia, Tbilisi

Tatia Aprasidze

Assistant Professor, European University,

Georgia, Tbilisi

PhD student, D. Tvildiani Medical University,

Georgia, Tbilisi

ABSTRACT

Introduction, aims: In the modern era, dissocial behavior problem, not only lost the urgency, but also acquired more importance, due to the growing trend of increased dissocial behavior all over the world. The delinquent behavior acquired more importance, with its increasing incidence among the dissocial forms of behavior.

The aim of the study was to determine whether there is a relationship between certain parenting styles and delinquent behaviors.

Methods: The Parental Authority Questionnaire was used to assess parenting style and the Self-reported Delinquency Survey was used to determine delinquency levels in adolescents. There were 34 participants aged 14 to 18 years old with delinquent behavior.

Results: Among the types of parenting – Authoritarian style have been established – in 7 (21%), permissive - in 18 (53%) adolescents, neglectful/uninvolved parents – in 5 (14%), authoritative parenting - changing of upbringing methods in connection with dynamics of home-life – in 4 (12%).

Concussion: The negative parenting style is predictive adolescents’ delinquency more than positive parenting styles.

Keywords: delinquent behavior, dissocial behavior, adolescents’delinquency.

Over the last 15-20 years, the concept of behavioral disorders has significantly changed its structure. If the problem of dissocial behavior was occasional and somehow exceptional in psychiatrists, psychotherapists, clinical psychologists’ practice, nowadays, their specificity rapidly increasing. Among the dissocial forms of behavior delinquent behavior is distinguished with its incidence and severity. The problem is global and is in the spotlight of the world's psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychotherapists.

In studying juvenile delinquency, there is a general consensus that a child’s family is influential in insulating a child from delinquent behavior or increasing the chances for participation in such behaviors (1). Parent-child relations have been studied as a source in the etiology of delinquent behavior (2).

Parenting styles are categorized under three major forms: the authoritarian, the authoritative or democratic, and the permissive or self-indulgence or un-involving (3). A fourth style, neglectful parenting was added to address severely un-involved parents.

The authoritarian parenting style constitutes of parents who are strict, harsh (4). Authoritative parents are flexible and responsive to the child’s needs but still enforce reasonable standards of conduct, while permissive parents are those who impose few restrictions, rules or limits on their children. Uninvolved parents give children a lot of freedom and generally stay out of their way. Some parents may make a conscious decision to parent in this way, while others are less interested in parenting or unsure of what to do (5).

Research based on Hirschi’s social bond theory (1969) indicates that social process variables such as parental warmth, attachment, and communication, monitoring and discipline do have a negative effect on delinquency (6-10) however, the literature is inconsistent. Studies that utilized Baumrind’s parenting typology have demonstrated that if you collapse family process variables into two distinct dimensions of parenting they provide an alternative way of explaining delinquency. She developed two concepts to describe the parenting dimensions, responsiveness and demandingness. These two concepts have distinct measures (11). Responsiveness involves those aspect of the parent-child relationship in which the parent shows support towards the child and recognizes they have basic needs. Parent-youth relationship (i.e., warmth and attachment), parent-child communication and adolescent involvement in family routines are dimensions that measure responsiveness in this study. The second concept, demandingness involves parental controls implemented to not only protect the child, but provide boundaries (11).

In Baumrind’s research responsiveness and demandingness become integrated to describe the four parenting styles (12, 13).

The purpose of the study was to study the delinquent behavior influenced as a result of negative micro social and chronic psycho traumatic factors, to determine the influence of parenting styles on the adolescent’ delinquency.

Methods:

34 teenagers aged 14-18 y old with delinquent behavior were participated in the study.

The main parenting styles were identified as follows:

1.  Authoritarian (negative parenting which involves demanding but not responsive). The characteristics of this parenting style are parental harshness, violence, aggression, punishment, parental expectations, strict rules etc.
2. Permissive parenting style (is also negative parenting that constitutes responsiveness but no demandingness). The main characteristics of these styles are: parental passiveness, lack of control, lack of monitoring, lack of supervision, few rules, lack of parental expectations to mention a few.
3. Authoritative parenting (is positive parenting style which involves responsive and demanding). The major features of this style are: provision of the adolescent’s needs, healthy relationship, provision of educational opportunities, control, monitoring, supervision, dialogue explanations etc.
4. Permissive neglectful or uninvolved parenting, whose parents are uninvolved parents. This fourth parenting style was added by Maccoby and Martin (14). The parent demonstrates minimal warmth and minimal control over the child. The parent is often rejecting of the child and gives the child minimal if any attention or nurturance. This parent is neglectful in their parenting responsibilities. Basically the parent provides some or most of the physical necessities for the child, but has little if any relationship with their child (14).

The Parental Authority Questionnaire (Buri, 1991) was used to assess parenting style and the Self-Reported Delinquency Survey (Elliot & Ageton, 1980) was used to determine delinquency levels.

Results: Factors of negative microsocium were revealed in 41%, chronically psycho traumatic factors – in 59%.

Among the types of parenting – Authoritarian style have been established – in 7 (21%), permissive - in 18 (53%) adolescents, neglectful/uninvolved parents – in 5 (14%), authoritative parenting - changing of upbringing methods in connection with dynamics of home-life – in 4 (12%).

The types of disharmonic families were showed in the following sequence: incomplete family – 18 cases (53%), rigid pseudo solid family- 7 (21%), breaking up family – in 3 (9%), the broken family - 1 (3%).

Among family conflicts on the forefront there came intensive family conflicts of 26 (76%), followed by incidental - in 21(62 %) and easy family conflicts – in 6 (18%) cases.

Character accentuation, psychopath, pathological pubertal crisis, as asynchronous rate of maturing, mainly an acceleration, can be ranked as factors promoting development of delinquency.

Prevail teenagers with underdeveloped moral-ethical standards and absence of correct social motivation; though the certain part of teenagers shows ability to analyze critically the behavior and frequently keeps an opportunity of prognostic estimation of delinquent behavior consequences.

Discussion: There is an abundance of research that examines the impact of family structure on delinquency (17-19). The majority of research finds that youth from broken homes report increased levels of delinquency. For example, in a longitudinal survey of 411 males living in South London, Juby and Farrington (2001) found that delinquency rates were higher among 75 boys who were living in non-intact homes compared to boys living in intact families (11,20).  Moreover, Price and Kunz (2003) conducted a meta-analysis involving 72 studies that involved divorce and juvenile delinquency. The results indicated that children from divorced homes have higher rates of delinquency (status offenses, crimes against person, felony theft, general delinquency, tobacco and drug use) compared to children from intact homes, with the exception of alcohol use (18). While past research has demonstrated that children raised in traditional, two-parent families experience a lower risk of delinquency than children from alternative family types (11,19,22), the understanding of whether this effect is universal remains imperfect (21). For example, using a national sample of adolescents between the ages of 12 to 17, Kierkus and Hewitt (2009) examined whether the link between nontraditional family structure and delinquency varies according to six distinct circumstances: gender, race, age, SES, family size, and place of residence. They found that gender, race, SES, and place of residence do not condition the relationship between family structure and delinquency (21). They did report, however, that age and family size impacted the relationship between family structure and crime and delinquency. Specifically, older adolescents and those from larger families were at a higher risk for participating in juvenile delinquency (11, 21). According to our study disharmonic (non-intact) families were reported in majority of cases in adolescents with delinquent behavior.

High demandingness and responsiveness is associated with authoritative parenting and high demandingness, but low responsiveness is associated with authoritarian parenting. Indulgent parenting has responsive parenting, but is low on demandingness whereas neglectful parenting is low in both responsiveness and demandingness. According to Baumrind (1966), the most effective style of parenting in reducing delinquent behaviors is authoritative parenting, whose children are expected to perform better in social competence than children whose parents are authoritarian (demanding but not responsive), permissive - responsive but not demanding (4). Our results are similar of this study showing higher incidence of permissive parenting style affecting the development of delinquent behavior.

Authoritative parenting (positive parenting) has positive effects on the adolescents‟ behavior while authoritarian and laissez-faire (negative parenting) has negative effect. Darling (2007) reported that parenting style predicts child well-being in the domains of social competence, academic performance, psychosocial development and problem behavior. Children and adolescents whose parents are authoritative rate themselves and are rated by objective measures as more socially and instrumentally competent than those whose parents are non-authoritative. All these will enhance and promote proper growth and development of adolescents in their environment (23).

However, factors which constitute negative parenting (poor parenting) were equally identified as: parental harshness, aggression; lack of love, lack of affection, lack of care, adequate monitoring and supervision, and lack of control to mention but a few. These and a host of other conditions may prong the adolescents into delinquent behaviors and increase in crime rate. Besides, poor parenting may enhance adolescents’ health problems (5,23). Darling (2007) also observed that children and adolescents whose parents are uninvolved perform most poorly in all domains.

Conclusion: The negative parenting style is likely to predict adolescents’ delinquency more than positive parenting styles.

Due to the essence of the problem it is vital to develop and implement appropriate programs, which first of all, promote to plan prevention methods, as well as medical, psycho-correction; social training and habilitation events which will be enable us to avoid maladjustment of the adolescents with addictive behavior and social complications related to it.

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