Delinquent Parents? Gone are the good old days when mom and dad were around to teach their children about morality and the basics of growing up. Instead, we see parents who have replaced caring and personal involvement with the purchase of material goods. We see parents who are afraid to discipline their children and who are afraid to set boundaries. We see parents who are afraid to hug their children and be involved in their lives. A child's behavior shows the kind of home he or she comes from. Parents are suppose to be role models, but what do we find. Parents are neglecting their responsibility. Parents, who ought to teach by precept and example, have fallen prey to the "do as I say, but not as I do" syndrome. We as a society, often times fail to look at the root cause of many of the adolescent problems being witnessed today. I watched a PBS documentary entitled "The Lost Children of Rockdale County." I found this documentary to be very disturbing look into the lives of middle to upper class youth. Though the focus of the program was sexual promiscuity, drugs, pornography, and alcohol, but what I found far more troubling was the tremendous breakdown that exists between the children of Rockdale County and their parents. This entire documentary was full of houses that were empty and void of supervision and adult presence. Some recent research on adolescent behavior has provided an insight into factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency. The relationships between parents and children play a significant role in the social well being of the children. Children who do the best, have parents who use both a great deal of warmth and caring with their children and also exercise a high level of control over their children's actions. High levels of warmth and control characterize the form of parenting referred to as authoritative. (Teenagers in Trouble, Gallagher, p.2) Authoritative parents are both firm and fair. Rarely did I see this type of parent in the program. "I thought that if I disciplined you, you would run away" was one comment made by a mother whose daughter had gone on a drinking bing at age twelve, blacked out, and realized she had been raped when she came to. Many of the parents documented were not able to connect with their children and even when they did, they thought that just showing concern was enough.
When Ezra was eight years old, he had a psychologist report done that asked a set of questions not only to him but also to myself about my parenting style. I scored high in the top 15 percentiles in not only warmth and affection but also discipline and control. Being high in all four aspects of parenting styles puts me into the authoritative style (Bee & Boyd, 2012). In The Developing Child, the authors describe the parents with this parenting style as those that are “setting clear limits, expecting and reinforcing socially mature behavior, and at the same time responding to the child’s individual needs (Bee & Boyd, 2012, p. 326).” As I reflect on certain situations, I can tell that this style guided my parenting. For example, when Ezra was 6 he frequently cheated at games if he knew he could get away with it. My response, with accordance to my authoritative parenting style, was to beginning teaching him right and wrong, not getting upset, but to bring up the cheating and tell him to play by the rules despite him not having a “strong sense of mortality (Manis, 2008).” I decided to use that option because I wanted Ezra to learn from the experience but continue to play the game and have
Children who are under the influence of parental guidance tend to have better behavior and can distinguish between right and wrong. “Children placed in situations lacking parental guidance are six times as likely than those with parental guidance to have a high level of overall difficulties including, emotional issues, conduct disorders, and peer problems” (McGuire 2014). Children do not have to worry about the weight of responsibility because their parents take on that responsibility for them. Kids brought up in normal, loving environments behave in a more civilized manner and exhibit better etiquette than those who are placed in negative, harsh environments such as...
Parents should be more involved with their children’s lives, and try to discipline and set rules at an early age. It is better for a juvenile to be confined rather than him/her influencing average teenagers to follow in his footsteps. It is a sad day when a teenager has to spend his/her days in a juvenile facility rather than outside enjoying his freedom and childhood. Children, who attend these programs and cannot cope with the challenges, can be easily abused. The risk in enrolling these teenagers into such disciplinary programs may either break them or make them improve their behaviors and quality of life. Teenagers who come out of these camps are stronger, disciplined, educated and even become role models to other teens can someday help other delinquents. In order to change someone’s life, one must first change his/her actions and
Baumrind (1967) observed more than one hundred preschool age children and their parents and noted that responsiveness of the parents to their child’s needs in a supportive way would increase the child’s performance. There are two central elements regarding parenting style: parental responsiveness and parental demand (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). From these building blocks, Baumrind identified three prototypes: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. In 1983, the work of Maccoby and Martin would be published and reconceptualize Baumrind’s work by adding a fourth category; neglectful. All four of these parenting style prototypes are a combination of these basic elements. Authoritative parenting combines responsiveness with demandingness for what many people believe to be the best approach to parenting (Timpano, Keough, Mahaffey, Schmidt, & Abramowitz, 2010). The authoritarian style fuses unresponsiveness with demandingness to form a totalitarian view of child rearing. The inverse o...
Authoritative style remains high in all four domains. Authoritative parents’ use of appropriate discipline such as using time-out or mild punishment ensures their children’s independence along with children’s compliance with parental demands. Compare to children with any other parenting styles, children raised by authoritative parents have higher self-esteem, self confidence, and better grades in elementary school, high school, and college. They are also less likely to abuse alcohol or tobacco as adolescents. In general, children of the authoritative parenting style show more altruistic
The reason for the lack of sufficient changes in juvenile delinquency is that the problems that leads to juvenile delinquency starts in the home and there has not been enough attention paid to the family dynamics which causes delinquency. Parents are the first relationship chi...
It is an undenialble biological fact of life that to exist one must have a biological mother and a biological father, however after the point of conception nothing is certain about how that child will be raised. Some children are raised by foster parents – people who have absolutely no biological relationship to the child – some children have two mothers, some have two fathers… Frequently children are raised in some combination of stepparents, half-sisters, cousins, grandmothers, and whatever other family members are available to rear the child. It is long past the time where a mother and a father would raise a child except for the rare exception. This untraditional makeup of families has a great impact on the child’s successes and failures, as do traditional families which may be traditional in makeup but deal with several confounding factors from differing communication styles to poverty, to more severe abuse and neglect. Oftentimes there is an almost direct connection to an intact family versus a broken family and the type of juvenile delinquency that the children raised in these environments perpetrate. Recognizing the common patterns of family dynamics which
Authoritative parenting is both a demanding and responsive way of parenting a child. The responsiveness aspect of the parenting allows for the child to still be creative and unique while offering understanding, empathy and love to the child. Responsiveness is a vital key during the child 's cognitive development as it helps guide the child on how to deal with certain things and how to act, while giving them a sense of understanding and answering their question of “Why.”The demandingness is also very important and helps lay the foundation for what is to expected of a child when they grow up and live on their own. Parents who are demanding, set age-appropriate limits and boundaries and the majority of the time those limits and boundaries have good intentions and rational reasoning. The parents
Successful parenting may be judged by many different standards. Raising a child to be a respectful, mature, and independent adult requires a great deal of effort. There are several parenting styles, and not all lead a child to reaching their full potential. Overpowering sternness leads may lead to a rebellious child, while passive parenting may lead children to inept for the challenges of adulthood. Parenting requires more than teaching children submissiveness, or building of self-importance. Children learn best from a role model who is admirable. Parenting is a great opportunity to set the course of one’s entire life in the right direction.
Studies indicate that positive parenting, including normative development, monitoring, and discipline, clearly affects whether children will become delinquent. Adequate supervision of free-time activities, whereabouts, and peers are critical to assure that children do not drift into antisocial and delinquent patterns of behavior. Surprisingly, little is known about normative and moral development with the family as they relate to delinquency. Single-parent families, and in particular mother-only families, produce more delinquent children than two-parent families. Research indicates that parenting practices account for most, but not all, of the ...
It can be said for most parents that they want their children to grow up to be successful contributing members of society. Being a parent is a difficult, yet rewarding task. But why do some types of parenting result in juvenile delinquency while others find success. There are four generally recognized parenting styles and are categorized: authoritarian, permissive, neglectful, and authoritative. This essay will break down the various styles, its type(s) of discipline and effectiveness.
All parents are deficient from time to time and no parent can be emotionally available all the time to their children. It is perfectly normal for parents to yell at their children once in a while. Some parents may be controlling while some resort to physical discipline, but as long as the child receives plenty of love and understands why the discipline took place (Forward,1989). The question that lies ahead is: Does all of these options portray the parent as “cruel or unfit” to raise a child? Of course not. The saying “Spare the rod, spoil the child” stands true. Without discipline or order in the household, the child feels that there is no boundaries and can react in any form that he or she wants to without fearing the consequences. But, there is a distinct line between “discipline” and “abuse” which will be explained in the next chapter.
Most humans tend to live by example and studies prove that our behavior is learned, but how do we explained the bad behavior of those that have good parents that are excellent role models. Some people would said that the parents are too flexible and the kids take advantage of them in the other hand when parents neglect the kids and are bad role models for their kids we easily find the answer to the problem. As a society we contradict ourselves for example; sometimes we tell parents to not be too flexible with our kids but at the same time we do not want parents to discipline their children too harsh. The question of why juveniles commit crime does not have an exact answer. Some juveniles commit crime because of peer pressure, anger against life, and others might be just do it for fun. Even though the question does not have a conquer answer to why juveniles commit crime we know that different factors contribute to the issue. In the book True Notebooks Mark the author did not only explain his personal experience as a volunteer teacher at the juvenile hall, but also what he learned from his students and how his perspective change regarding the juveniles as he spend more time with them. Mark also discover that even though he was not aware of it he was making a positive change on some of them and the fact that he was willing to teach them a writing class meant so much for some of the students, and most important Mark present on the book the different reasons juveniles commit crime.
A finding that emerges very strongly and consistently is that delinquents have very poor relationships with their parents” (Gove 303-304). The teens who commit crimes often lack a parental figure in their lives. These teens are not strictly overseen by their parents, and their parents rarely know what they are up to or what they are doing (Gove 303). “Poor parent-child relationships, lack of parental control, and erratic behavior of parents could be a product of juvenile misbehavior and the juvenile’s hostility towards his or her parents” (Gove 304). Teens that do not have a close relationship with their parents often resort to delinquency as a form of resentment. “The family as an institution plays a critical role in the socialization of children; as a consequence, parents presumably play a critical role in whether their children misbehave” (Gove 315). Parents play the biggest role in a child’s life because the parents have been with the child since birth. Parents shape, mold, and provide the foundation that a teen needs to make hard decisions and to live by a good m...
As a parent, I have spent a great deal of time observing the behavior, motivation, and thought processes of my children. As they mature these processes have changed, and it has been fascinating to watch. I have learned a great deal on the limits of self control in the adolescent mind during this time, and I believe that families should be held responsible for crimes committed by their teenagers.