NCJ Number
207782
Date Published
2001
Length
25 pages
Annotation
This chapter focuses on family risk factors for childhood delinquency (7-12 years old) and family-based interventions.
Abstract
Given that social-environmental and family risk factors cluster together, with any number of them co-occurring in the same families, there are various approaches to summarizing across cumulative risk factors. This chapter first reviews these approaches and then considers peripheral family risks, such as family criminality and social adversity. The authors then consider more central risks, such as parental psychopathology, parenting skills, and child physical abuse. The chapter concludes with a review of studies that have considered family risks at both peripheral and central levels. For each risk factor, the chapter first reviews its impact on early antisocial behavior and then considers interventions designed to lower early antisocial behavior by targeting that family risk factor. The authors advise that focused family-based approaches, such as parent management training and multisystemic therapy, have been useful in reducing the risk of poor family management practices and physically abusive parental behavior, both of which have been linked to aggressive and antisocial behavior in young children. Further, when traditional parent-child treatments are augmented with components that address co-occurring difficulties in the lives of adult family members, parents are more likely to complete treatment, and child treatment gains are more likely to be maintained. Overall, the chapter argues for intervention initiatives that involve integrated multidisciplinary approaches.