To test this theory, researchers constructed a new model of family class relations using data from followup interviews with parents of 463 students from a metropolitan Toronto, Canada survey conducted in 1979. The model was based on Dahrendorfian conceptions of power and authority and their use in the control of collective lives, but added the variable role of women in the workplace. In patriarchal families, wives had little power relative to husbands, daughters had little freedom relative to sons, and daughters were less delinquent than sons. These differences diminished in equalitarian families. Gender differences also declined and female delinquency levels increased in families from which the fathers were largely absent. Power-control theory explains this variation in terms of gender divisions in domestic social control and the resulting attitude toward risk taking. 8 tables, 6 footnotes, and approximately 40 references. (Author abstract modified)