Family Risk Factors

Children and their families defy narrow descriptions. Social, environmental, and family risk factors tend to cluster, and any number of them can occur together within the same family. Understanding the role and influence of each of these factors is a difficult task. For example, early child offending may develop through several pathways. For some children, the primary risk factor may be a family risk factor such as lack of parental supervision; for others, it may be an individual risk factor such as a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Cicchetti and Rogosch, 1996).

Studies have shown that inadequate child-rearing practices, home discord, and child maltreatment are associated with early-onset delinquency (e.g., Derzon and Lipsey, 2000). In addition, the strongest predictors of early-onset violence include family size and parental antisocial history. Early temperamental difficulties in the child coupled with parental deficiencies that interfere with proactive parenting are also thought to be important in the development of early-onset behavior problems.

In looking at the clustering of family risk factors, one goal is to identify which combinations of risk factors promote early misbehavior because, more than likely, early misbehavior is the result of an accumulation of a number of factors. The number of risk factors and stressors and the length of exposure to them have a strong impact on child behavior (e.g., Tiet et al., 1998; Williams et al., 1990).

A number of social adversities in families can affect children’s delinquency. These factors include parenting, maltreatment, family violence, divorce, parental psychopathology, familial antisocial behaviors, teenage parenthood, family structure, and family size.

Parenting

Inadequate parenting practices are among the most powerful predictors of early antisocial behavior (e.g., Hawkins et al., 1998). Compared with families in which the children do not have conduct problems, families of young children with conduct problems have been found to be eight times more likely to engage in conflicts involving discipline, to engage in half as many positive interactions, and, often unintentionally, to reinforce negative child behavior (Gardner, 1987; Patterson and Stouthamer- Loeber, 1984). Three specific parental practices are particularly associated with early conduct problems: (1) a high level of parent-child conflict, (2) poor monitoring, and (3) a low level of positive involvement (Wasserman et al.,1996). In the Pittsburgh Youth Study, the co-occurrence of low levels of monitoring and high levels of punishment increased the risk of delinquency in 7- to 13-year-old boys. Conversely, attachments to conventional parents and to society’s institutions are hypothesized to protect against developing antisocial behavior (Hirschi, 1969).

Maltreatment

Child maltreatment or abuse commonly occurs with other family risk factors associated with early-onset offending. Focusing specifically on the relationship between physical abuse and children’s aggression, one study suggests that 20 percent of abused children become delinquent before reaching adulthood (Lewis, Mallouh, and Webb, 1989). Clearly, most physically abused children do not go on to become antisocial or violent. However, one study that compared children without a history of abuse or neglect with children who had been abused or neglected found that the latter group accrued more juvenile and adult arrests by the age of 25 (Widom, 1989). Abused or neglected children also offended more frequently and began doing so at earlier ages.

Family Violence

Each year, approximately 3.3 million children witness physical and verbal spouse abuse (Jaffe, Wolfe, and Wilson, 1990). Witnessing domestic violence has been linked to increased child behavior problems, especially for boys and younger children (Reid and Crisafulli, 1990). Little is known about the age range in which children may be most vulnerable or how long associations persist. In most families, when the woman is battered, children are also battered (McKibben, De Vos, and Newberger, 1989). The co-occurrence of child abuse and witnessing domestic violence affects children’s adjustment more than twice as much as witnessing domestic violence alone (Hughes, Parkinson, and Vargo, 1989). Other factors that impose additional risk in violent families include a high incidence of other behavior problems (e.g., alcohol abuse and incarceration) in male batterers. Maternal psychological distress may also expose children to additional indirect risks, such as the mother being emotionally unavailable to the children (e.g., Zuckerman et al., 1995).

Divorce

Compared with boys whose parents remained married, boys whose parents divorced have been found to be more likely to have continuing problems with antisocial, coercive, and noncompliant behaviors through age 10 (Hetherington, 1989). As with many family factors, establishing the exact effects of divorce on children is difficult because of other co-occurring risks, such as the loss of a parent, other related negative life events (e.g., predivorce child behavior problems, family conflict, decrease in family income), and a parent’s subsequent remarriage. When these related factors are considered, the impact of divorce itself is substantially less.

Parental Psychopathology

High rates (as high as 45 percent) of parental antisocial personality disorder have been consistently reported for parents of boys (including preadolescents) referred for conduct problems (e.g., Lahey et al., 1988). Similar rates occurred for parental substance abuse and depression (Robins, 1966). Depressed parents show many parenting deficiencies associated with increased antisocial behaviors in children, such as inconsistency, irritability, and lack of supervision (Cummings and Davies, 1994). Parental psychopathology has been linked to increased rates of psychiatric disorder among school-aged children (Costello et al., 1997). The Pittsburgh Youth Study found that the association between delinquency and parental anxiety or depression was stronger in younger than in older children (Loeber et al., 1998).

Familial Antisocial Behaviors

A long history of research demonstrates that aggressive behavior and criminality are more prevalent in some families than in others. For example, the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, which followed 411 families, found that offending was strongly concentrated in a small group of families and that approximately 5 percent of the families accounted for about half of the juvenile criminal convictions (West and Farrington, 1977).

Antisocial adults tend to select antisocial partners (e.g., Farrington, Barnes, and Lambert, 1996). Overall, antisocial parents show increased levels of family conflict, exercise poorer supervision, experience more family breakdown, and direct more hostility toward their children. In addition, having an antisocial sibling also increases a child’s likelihood of antisocial behaviors (e.g., Farrington, 1995). The influences of siblings are stronger when the siblings are close in age.

Teenage Parenthood

Being born to a teenage mother has been found to strongly predict offending in adolescence (Conseur et al., 1997), although much of this effect may stem from the mother’s own antisocial history and involvement with antisocial partners (Rutter, Giller, and Hagell 1998).

Family Structure

Many single parents are able to raise their children very well. However, children from single-mother households are at increased risk for poor behavioral outcome (Pearson et al., 1994; Vaden-Kiernan et al., 1995; McLanahan and Booth, 1989; Sampson, 1987), even controlling for the fact that single-mother households on average have fewer economic resources. Other factors could explain this relationship. Especially as compared with partnered women, single mothers report more mental health problems (e.g., Guttentag, Salasin, and Belle, 1980), have higher levels of residential mobility (McLanahan and Booth, 1989; McCormick, Workman-Daniels, and Brooks-Gunn, 1996), and have fewer resources to monitor their children’s activities and whereabouts. Each of these factors on its own contributes to increased levels of early childhood behavior problems.

Family Size

The more children in a family, the greater the risk of delinquency. The Cambridge Study found that, compared with boys who had fewer siblings, boys who had four or more siblings by the age of 10 were twice as likely to offend, regardless of the parents’ socioeconomic status (West and Farrington, 1973). These associations may be related to diminished supervision in larger families.

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Risk and Protective Factors of Child Delinquency	Child Delinquency Bulletin • April 2003