The Effects of Maltreatment and Family Structure on Minor and Serious Delinquency

Abstract

This study explores the influence of maltreatment on serious violent and property delinquency as well as on minor misbehavior offenses among a sample of White male delinquents. A recent influential study concluded that this relationship has been exaggerated and found it to be nonexistent for serious offending after the effects of family structure were factored in. This article points out some of the deficiencies in that research and demonstrates that when both delinquency and maltreatment are measured comprehensively, the relationship is robust controlling for type of family structure, verbal IQ, family size, and birth order. Although it was found that the variables impact differentially according to the type of delinquency being examined, in every case, maltreatment was found to account for significant independent variance. It was also found that delinquents from homes broken by desertion were the most maltreated and the most delinquent

Parental Divorce: A Protection from Later Delinquency for Maltreated Children

“…For this sam ple of maltreated children, the only risk factor that was significantly related to later delinquency was whether their parents divorced-here this divorce outcome made later adjudication less likely for the youth when compared to youth from never-married families. This is somewhat surprising when reviewing more recent family functioning literature, which found higher delinquency rates for children and youth, with and without maltreatment histories, who experienced parental divorce (Heck & Walsh, 2000;Price & Kunz, 2003;Rebellon, 2002). These differential outcomes may be explained in that very limited research to date has tried to explain the maltreatment, delinquency, and family structure connections.…”

“…These differential outcomes may be explained in that very limited research to date has tried to explain the maltreatment, delinquency, and family structure connections. Those who did used samples of youth that were all under juvenile court probation (some with maltreatment histories; Heck & Walsh, 2000), whereas this study used comparative delin quent and nondelinquent groups, all with maltreatment histories. Although this study's results have limitations, the findings support the notion that family divorce and youth delinquency adjudication are linked.…”

“…Price and Kunz (2003) found in a meta-analysis of 72 studies that children from divorced homes have higher delinquency rates compared to children from intact homes. Heck and Walsh (2000) measured both delinquency and maltreatment more comprehensively and found that when controlling for family structure, the maltreatment to delinquency risk was significant, whereas Rebellon (2002) used a national probability sample of adolescents and identified that divorce experienced by younger children might be a stronger predictor of later delinquency than previous research had found.…”

“…Divorce within families is quite common today in the United States (Heck & Walsh, 2000). As of 2003, 43% of all custodial mothers and 56% of all custo dial fathers were either separated or divorced.…”

“…However, there is still not a consensus as to the impact these family changes have on delinquency rates (Degarmo & Forgatch, 2005;Heck & Walsh, 2000), although three out of four youth in state correctional facilities experienced a parental divorce, separation, or their parents never marrying (Price & Kunz, 2003). Previous research that has tried to provide clarity included studies that broadly defined families as intact or not (Rebellon, 2002), defined these changes as marital transitions (Degarmo & Forgatch, 2005), used smaller and unrepresentative samples (Sokol-Katz, Dunham, & Zimmerman, 1997), and used self-reports of delinquency (Kaufman, 2000), all with vary ing external validity limitations for the field.…”