The Reciprocal Relationships between Parenting and Delinquency: Boys vs. Girls

Abstract

Uni-directional models in family-delinquency research are not able to properly capture the dynamic nature of relationships between delinquency and parenting. Additionally, although gender plays an important role in shaping family dynamics, it is relatively lacking systematic investigation in the literature. Therefore, deriving hypotheses from interactional theory, this study examines the reciprocal relationships between parenting and delinquency in adolescent boys and girls to fill the gap in the empirical research. Using panel data derived from a longitudinal dataset with a nationally representative sample, the results show that the model works similarly in for both male and female adolescent groups. Delinquency is reciprocally related to parental attachment and supervision. When comparing the effects across the gender groups, the results indicate that the negative impact on parental supervision, however, appears to be larger for females. In general, the results in this study emphasize the importance of examining the reciprocal nature of parenting-delinquency relationships. Also, taking gender into account allows us to explore the similarity and differences in the parenting-delinquency relationships between boys and girls.