A reconsideration of social control and differential association theories: An empirical investigation of parental and peer influences on delinquency

Abstract

This paper presents an integrated framework of juvenile delinquency that includes vari­ables from social control and differential association theories in addition to a reconceptual­ization of the role of parents as discussed in these theories. The reconceptualization reflects our argument for the need to consider how antisocial parents may serve to facili­tate delinquency. A path model was developed for testing a set of hypotheses generated from the model. The predictor variables include parental conventionality, parental supervi­sion, parental attachment, school commitment, delinquent peer association, and delinquent attitudes. We examined both the direct and indirect effects each of these had on delin­quency. The data were obtained from a sample of 891 urban high school and junior high school students identified as early adolescent and late adolescent girls and boys. The path model is separately estimated for these four groups. Although the amount of variance our model explains for each of these groups is quite significant, we did discover some differ­ences in the strength of the predictor variables across age groups. While parental influence proved to be more significant than peer association for early adolescents, we found the opposite to be true for late adolescents. Finally, our findings support our argument for a reconceptualization of the role of parents in influencing delinquency.