Single Parent Families Vs. Two Parent Homes

What is the relationship between family dynamics and juvenile delinquency? Can the family environment really affect the delinquency of a juvenile? A broken home is one of the first factors that will be looked at. Do single parents have more juveniles involved in delinquency than families with two parents? Do families with just a mother present have more delinquency than a family with just a father? The second factor that will be looked at is drugs and alcohol in the home. How does drugs and alcohol relate to violence in the home? When parents get in trouble for their drug and alcohol use and get locked up, how is the family affected by this? The third factor that will be looked at is bad parenting. Is bad parenting caused simply by being too strict or not strict enough? Or could it be that parents lack the proper supervision of their children and allow them to do things that they shouldn’t? All of these factors will be looked at and discussed within this paper.

Since the late 1900’s incarceration rates have been rising constantly. Incarceration impacts other individuals that aren’t behind bars locked up in a cell. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1.5 million minors deal with parental incarceration every year (Harrison & Beck, 2006).This project will investigate/ observe the effects of parental incarceration on male juveniles. Young juveniles of prisoners appear to suffer from the difficult living environments due to lack of guardianship leading them to commit crimes and violent offenses. The main focus of this project is to validate and observe the behavior of juveniles whose parents are incarcerated. There would be two control groups to be evaluated; Juveniles that haven’t had their parents incarcerated, and those who have been incarcerated throughout their lifetimes. This study will use data from the analysis conducted from the office of state courts administrator juvenile office risk. These children would be observed to analyze if any anti-social behavior is depicted. It is reasonable to predict that juveniles, whose parents have been incarcerated throughout their lifetime, will demonstrate acts of violence and illegal behaviors towards society. Prisoners’ children are more accessible to violence since no parental supervision is acquired when the parents are locked up.

Did you know 30% of children in the United States live in a single-parent household as of 2012? ( )Every year this number is on the rise and it is causing children everywhere to suffer. When children are raised in an environment with only one parent they can have less opportunities and less supervision than a child with two parents. Children should not be raised in single-parent households because it can lead to abuse from parents, violence in children and poverty.

Moreover, a deteriorating structure within a family impacts children from a very young age. They start to get neglected and eventually accept the difficulties. A study was done on kindergarten boys from low socioeconomic neighborhoods in Canada and it found that boys raised in adverse family environments are at a high risk of engaging in deviant peer groups (Lacourse et al., 2006). This indicates that when a child is not cared for appropriately, they are capable of doing as they wish. For the reason that some families have a complex structure and are hard to cope with, youth replace them with a gang which can be seen as a surrogate family. Mackay (2005) depicts that adverse conditions such as parental separation have shown to result in significant

“The so-called traditional family, with a male breadwinner and a female who cares for the home, is a thing of the past” (Siegel, Welsh, & Senna, 2003, p. 194). This particular type of family structure can no longer be considered normal. Sex role changes have created a family in which the mother now plays a greater role in society and the economic process. The number of households that have children living with both parents has substantially declined. “Early social science researchers asserted that the “broken home” was the single most important factor in understanding delinquency” (Burfeind & Bartusch, 2011, p. 185). Less than half of the children born today will live continuously with their mother and father throughout their childhood. A disturbed home environment is believed to have a significant impact on delinquency. Family is the contributing unit towards children’s values and attitudes that mark the paths throughout their lives.

“Any form of delinquent behavior is 7.6% points lower among boys living with their biological fathers and is 8.5% points lower among boys who live with stepfathers and have no relationship with their biological fathers” (Cobb-Clark and Tekin, 2013). When it comes to adolescent girls, Cobb-Clark and Tekin (2013) found that if they live with their biological father, they are less likely to be involved in violent behavior, sell drugs and be involved in gangs than adolescent girls without fathers (Cobb-Clark and Tekin, 2013). This is about a 3.6%-point difference between girls with fathers and girls without fathers (Cobb-Clark and Tekin, 2013). In East et al. (2006) research for adolescent girls, it found that if the father left a girl’s life when she was five years old or younger, that child’s rate of teen pregnancy was increased compared to children whose father was absent between the ages of five and thirteen and those whose father was not absent. When adolescent boys were compared to adolescent girls, research done by Cobb-Clark and Tekin ( 2013) showed that adolescent boys engaged in more delinquent behavior than adolescent girls when there is no father figure present. This can carry on into the child’s adult life as

Single parent vs. two parent homes and the effect it has on their child’s viability, intimacy and conflict in their intimate relationships.

Traditional families versus single parent families. A traditional family household is a household with two parents, mother and father. A single parent family household is a one parent household a mother, or father. This household is usually occurs when a parent dies, parents divorce, or the parents was never married and separated after having a child together. The question at hand is would a child be more successful and mentally stable in life growing up in a traditional family household, or single parenting household? This has been an intriguing argument for many years. I strongly believe a child in a single parent home could grow up to be just as emotionally stable and also be just as successful as a child who grows up with both parents.

The strongest link between parenting and delinquency is the lack of support in the form of neglect, hostility, psychological control and rejection of the child or a combination of these parenting behaviors (Merrin, Hong & Espelage, 2015). The lack of parental involvement leaves children with feelings of worthlessness, confusion and it diminishes their drive to succeed. Chung & Steinberg (2006) note that adolescents who experienced low emotional support and inconsistent discipline from their parents, compared with youths from families characterized by warm interpersonal relationships and consistent discipline, reported having more deviant friends and being involved with more violent and nonviolent delinquent

Stephanie Gonzalez is a 16 year old teenager who grew up and was raised in Chicago by only her mother and older brother. Stephanie has had to persevere through several challenges and obstacles in her life due to the fact that her father left her when she was only an infant. Stephanie was willing to speak out about how her culture needs to relook at the way they view single-parent households in society and how she was deeply affected by the way she grew up (Gonzalez). The percentage of children living with single parents increased substantially in the United States during the second half of the 20th century. Only nine percent of children lived with single parents in the 1960s, while this statistic increased dramatically to 28 percent in 2012. Growing

Just to sum it up, if the two biological parents are married, then the child is considered least likely to be involved with criminal activity. Additionally, if the biological parents that are just living together the adolescent will more likely to be involved in antisocial behavior such as verbal abuse, intimidation and hitting; or change, involving destructive actions against property, such as robbery, vandalism, and fire-setting (Antisocial Behavior, 2006). Also, findings reveal that adolescents who resides with one of the biological parents who lives with a significant other besides the other biological parent could possibly have a higher rate of antisocial behavior. While other research stated children living in a single-parent or a cohabiting family are prevalent to delinquency than those who live in traditional families. Cohabitation (shacking up) is linked to delinquency, but not the welfare of the child. In other words, single parent families and cohabitation can affect children and influence juvenile delinquency in our society. Further research must be conducted due to there is a just a slight difference between single parent and two parent families depending on the other contributing factors. As it stands both families dynamics can play into

During the years, single parent families have become a more common thing. This is starting to become a problem, because family dynamics can really influence a child’s life. According to studies it affects not only the child but the parents too.

The cause of behavioral and/or emotional problems among our youth could come from being raised in a single parent home. Many children resort to negative acts of behavior because of limited parental supervision within the single parent household. Children are two to three times more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems in single parent homes (Maginnis, 1997).

Girls who grew up in stepfamilies were involved in more delinquent behavior compared to girls who lived in in-tact homes. For boys, living in a single parent family greatly increases the chance of delinquent behavior while living in a stepfamily does not. The test also showed that a good relationship with the mom and dad helped lower delinquent activities in girls. For boys, having a good relationship with their dad and lower conflict in the family helped lower delinquent activity.