Trends in illegitimacy, divorce, female out-of-home employment, the percentage of children living in poverty, and parental attitudes suggest that the quality of American families' influence on their children has increasingly deteriorated over the 1970's and into the 1980's. Such a decline in family life would support an estimate of increased juvenile crime rates over this period. Uniform Crime Reports arrest data for 1971-1983, however, show little deviation in juvenile arrest rates over this period. This finding applies to both property and violent Index crimes. The long plateau in juvenile arrest rates is the result of opposing trends in powerful etiological factors, notably an increase in the proportion of adults relative to children, that have balanced one another for more than a decade. There is no reason to assume that the 'balance of forces' will not continue, leading to the prediction that juvenile arrest rates will remain relatively constant through the year 2000. 10 tables and 18 references.