The Effects of Parental Divorce on the Intergenerational Transmission of Crime

Abstract

This study first examines the effects of parental divorce and paternal crime on offspring offending. Then, it tests whether parental divorce moderates the intergenerational transmission of crime. Diversity within the offending population is taken into account by examining whether effects are different for fathers who commit crimes at different points of the life-course and by distinguishing between violent and non-violent offending. A sample of 2374 individuals from three consecutive generations from 198 Dutch families was used. The results show that parental divorce increases offspring non-violent offending, but does not increase offspring violence after controlling for parental violence. Moreover, the intergenerational transmission of violence is moderated by parental divorce: empirical evidence for intergenerational transmission of violence is only found for children who did not experience parental divorce during their youth. This moderating effect of parental divorce is even stronger if the father committed violent crimes during the child's youth. The moderating influence of parental divorce on the intergenerational transmission of non-violent crime is less clear, and the effects are overall stronger for violent crime than OPEN ACCESSSocieties 2015, 5 90 for non-violent crime. These results suggest that social learning mechanisms play an important role in the intergenerational transmission of violent crime, although genetic influences cannot be ruled out.

The Role of Family in Dealing with Juvenile Delinquency

“…Disciplinary and behavioral issues have been studied from many theoretical perspectives, including the emotional distress that derives from parental divorce. It appears that children from one-parent families are more likely to be unemployed, drop out of school, have lower psychological well-being and engage in sexual violence than children from two-parent families [21]. The transition from a two-parent to a single-parent family often results in the loss of economic resources, because there is only one bread-winner in the family, and causes a decrease in child supervision [22].…”

Does the intergenerational transmission of crime depend on family complexity?

“…According to these contact-based theoretical explanations of the intergenerational continuity in criminal behavior, one should thus expect children who live with a criminal parent to be more likely to also engage in crimes compared to children who do not live in the same household as their criminal parent. Studies do document such a pattern (Blazei et al, 2008;Jaffee et al, 2003;Thornberry et al, 2009;van de Weijer et al, 2015). But these studies focus only on whether the child lives with criminal biological parents or not, and generally do not take the influence of alternative parental figures (like stepparents) and family stability into account, although these are key features of the ways in which family structures have changed over the years.…”

Assessing the Accuracy of Life Event Calendar Data in an Offender Sample

“…Figure 7 plots the percentage of the sample against the percentage of discrepancies and resembles the well-known Lorenz curve. In criminology, Lorenz curves are commonly used to depict the concentration of crimes across for instance individuals, families, or geographic areas (Bernasco & Steenbeek, 2017;van de Weijer, Thornberry, Bijleveld, & Blokland, 2015). Here, we similarly examine the concentration of reporting discrepancies across individuals.…”