Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners: Enmeshment in Deviant Networks and Adolescent Delinquency Involvement

• NCJ Number: 226380
• Journal: Journal of Youth and Adolescence Volume: 38 Issue: 3 Dated: March 2009 Pages: 367-383
• Author(s): Robert A. Lonardo; Peggy C. Giordano; Monica A. Longmore; Wendy D. Manning
• Date Published: March 2009
• Length: 17 pages
• Grant Number(s): HD36223; HD042831-01
• Sponsoring Agency: Bowling Green State University; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study of the social networks of adolescents (n=957) from the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (49 percent female and 69 percent White) focused on the characteristics of their parents, friends, and romantic partners and their association with the sample’s self-reported delinquency.

Abstract

The study found that parents’, peers’, and romantic partners’ deviance were each related to respondents’ delinquency. Affiliation with a greater number of deviant networks was associated with higher self-reported delinquency. Adolescents with above-average delinquency for both romantic partners and friends reported especially high levels of delinquency. In all comparisons, adolescents with deviant romantic partners were more delinquent than those adolescents with more prosocial partners, regardless of friends’ and parents’ behaviors. These findings show the importance of analyzing an adolescent’s entire network of social affiliations and interactions rather than viewing family, friends, and romantic partners in isolation. This enables an analysis of comparative influence on behavior by various parties within the network. The sample was drawn from the enrollment records of registered students in the 7th, 9th, and 11th grades in Lucas County, OH, (n=1,321). The study focused on the 957 youth who reported either dating currently or having dated in the past year. Overall, the dating sample was sociodemographically similar to the full sample. Respondents’ delinquency was measured with a 10-item revised version of the inventory developed by Elliott and Ageton (1980). An identical index was used to obtain information about the respondent’s assessment of friends’ and romantic partner’s delinquency. Parents’ deviance was determined from a questionnaire administered directly to the adolescents’ parents or guardians. The associations of different network deviance characteristics on adolescent delinquency were categorized. In order to account for other variables known to influence delinquency, several measures were entered into the regression equations as controls. 5 tables, 2 figures, and 46 references