Complex answers to simple questions: mediating the parental knowledge-delinquency relationship with unsupervised routine activities and moral neutralization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing from social-cognitive-development theory, I compared a two-stage mediation model where unsupervised routine activities and moral neutralization beliefs mediated the relationship between perceived parental knowledge and delinquency to one-stage mediation models where unsupervised routine activities or moral neutralization served as the sole mediator. Analyses were performed on data from 1,495 (702 boys, 793 girls) early to mid-adolescent youth. Results showed that the indirect effect of the two-mediator pathway was significant while the indirect effects of the two single-mediator pathways were not; although when the two-year gap between the independent and mediating variables was reduced to one-year, the single-mediator pathway in which moral neutralization served as the mediator was also significant. This provides preliminary support for the notion that some degree of complexity may be helpful in explaining criminological relationships. Specific findings from this study imply that lack of perceived parental knowledge as to a child’s whereabouts and associations predicted a rise in the child’s involvement in unsupervised routine activities, which then stimulated moral neutralization beliefs, and from here led to a rise in offending from early to middle adolescence.