Positive Family Relationships

The most important people in a child’s life are his or her parents. A person’s first bond is with the people who are raising them. Parents get to decide what their child will be doing with his or her free time, play dates, sports, pre-school and other activities. Building strong healthy bonds with children is crucial for their outcome. It is has shown that, “Families characterized by warm interpersonal relationships and effective parenting are associated with a lower likelihood of affiliation with juvenile offenders and of juvenile crime (Henry, Tolan & Gorman-Smith).” Positive family vibes are as important as the relationship between everyone in the family, including the parents because, “…children raised by married parents with low-conflict

Mom allows Susie to go sleepover Gabby’s house but Dad disapproves and wants Susie to stay home because she has church in the morning and Dad does not like the way Gabby’s parents are raising her. This creates a dilemma amongst the parents but little Susie is a victim because she does not know what to do. Sometimes parents who can not get along, get divorced but this does not help a child because studies have, “…found that children of divorced parents are up to six times more likely to be delinquent than children from intact families (Larson, Swyers & Larson). Children of divorced parents have two separate households, forcing the child to live two separate lives because Mom can follow a certain lifestyle that Dad does not believe in. So when Susie is at Dad’s she goes to church every Sunday but when Susie is at Mom’s she goes to temple. Susie is forced to live two conflicting lifestyles, which can lead to her “slipping away” by distancing from one or both

This causes people from the same economic status live together and children of certain classes are exposed to certain environments. Social disorganization is a term that was created by Shaw and McKay that helps explain why neighborhoods of lower socio-economic status tend to be disorganized and why there is a higher risk of crime and gang activity. It is mentioned that these conditions, “…reduce the likelihood that residents will develop strong community ties or common norms. In turn, the lack of social ties renders the residents less invested in the well-being of the community, which may manifest itself in a lower likelihood of monitoring youth behavior (Shaw and McKay).” Families that live in the first ring of the Concentric Zone Model, which would be the Transitional Zone, are more prone to weak relationships and crime. The Concentric Zone Model was developed by Ernest Burgess to help explain why there is more crime in certain neighborhoods. Families living in the transitional zone are often of lower class where parents are working in order to make enough money and try to get their family out of that neighborhood. While Mom and Dad are at work, most children just wander around unsupervised. In these neighborhoods there is a high turnover rate which does not allow families of the neighborhood to form bonds and monitor