NCJ Number
70401
Date Published
1980
Length
10 pages
Annotation
Child-rearing, as measured in this longitudinal study of parental behavior and family atmosphere as criminogenic factors, clearly accounts for a significant proportion of the variance in subsequent criminality.
Abstract
Between 1939 and 1945, 201 boys aged 5-11 were selected from a Massachusetts juvenile delinquency prevention program. Counselors used records of visits to the children's homes, located in congested urban areas, to determine the children's family environments. Thirty years after the termination of the program from which descriptions at home atmosphere had been collected, information about criminal behavior of the subjects (considered criminals if they had been convicted of serious crimes as indexed by the FBI) was gathered from court records pertaining to 138 of the subjects. Some of the original 201 had died or left Massachusetts. Multiple regression and discriminant function analyses indicated that six variables describing family atmosphere during childhood had an important impact on subsequent behavior: mother's self-confidence; father's deviance; parental aggressiveness; maternal affection; parental conflict, and supervision. Social status, as measured by the father's occupation, and father's absence from the household showed no statistical significance. Footnotes are provided and 19 references are appended.