Three major approaches dominate the abuse/delinquency literature: the psychiatric approach which cites parents' defective personality characteristics as a causative factor in abuse, the sociological model that seeks causative factors in social environment, and the biological approach which emphasizes heredity and the 'bad seed' concept. Whatever the causation, statistical studies indicate that deviancy is linked across generations. Despite early research findings that abuse and delinquency patterns often extended over at least three generations, therapy attempts have usually concentrated on the nuclear family. In contrast, intergenerational family therapy seeks to include as many as five generations of family members. The web of social relationships within families can be untangled through assessment of boundaries within the family system. This approach assumes that the presence of child abuse or neglect is associated with family dysfunction and that the delinquency behavior of a nonabused child may or may not be associated with family dysfunction. For that reason, major consideration must be given to understanding victimized children, abusing-victimized parents, and the perpetuating grandparents. A clinical example illustrates how the robbery by a teenager could be traced to abusive treatment by his own father, which was, in turn, linked to the hostile, abusive behavior of the paternal grandfather. More extensive use of intergenerational therapy requires development of a conceptual framework integrating a number of family therapies and findings of clinical research, retraining of practitioners in use of therapeutic techniques, and restructuring of the service delivery system. At present, intergenerational family therapy could be introduced as a complementary approach to traditional family-based therapy. A national family policy would help to reduce the stigma of family-based problems, facilitate the family unit's access to effective services, expand the family focus of service delivery systems, and provide families with incentives to counteract trends toward isolation and dysfunction. Fifty references are supplied.