The principal risk factors that threaten a child's healthy development include severe family conflicts, insecure attachment and poor family communication, poor supervision, nonresponsive and permissive child-rearing practices, and problem behavior at an early age. These risk factors appear in the family, school, and peer group. The socio-ecological model taking these risk factors into consideration was tested on a sample of 150 Dutch at-risk adolescents who been in contact with the juvenile justice system as a result of delinquency or parent-child conflicts. The subjects participated in interviews designed to collect data on the psychosocial and problem situations; the responses were used to construct 13 scales. The socio-ecological model explained 30 to 40 percent of the variance in the problem behavior syndromes associated with the sample, indicating that children's emotional and behavioral problems can be linked to risky rearing and socialization conditions in their family and peer group environments. The implications of these findings for primary prevention, secondary prevention and treatment, and residential treatment are discussed. 2 tables, 2 figures, and 38 references