The Relationship Between Childhood Deviance and Adult Deviance

The Relationship Between Childhood Deviance and Adult Deviance

Introduction

The current study is a correlation design. This design will be used to find if there is a relationship between childhood conduct problems or deviance and adult deviance. Deviance for childhood will be defined as any psychological issues, conduct problems in school, such as physical fighting or lashing out in anger to teachers or peers, deviance for adults will be defined as any form of a criminal record and any form of a psychiatric record.

Loeber, R., Green, S.L., Lahey, B.B. (2000) . Physical Fighting in Childhood as a Risk Factor for Later Mental Health Problems. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. 39, 421-428.

This journal article discusses physical fighting as a child, as a risk factor for later mental health problems. In some studies of this behavior it is shown that there is a strong correlation between physical fighting as a child and adult mental health problems. In this study the author is attempting to answer three main questions.

1. Does the prevalence of boys’ fighting in a clinical sample differ by informant or by age cohort? How high is the persistence of physical fighting over a 7-year period, and does it differ by age? What proportion of boys who fight stop fighting?

2. Does persistent physical fighting predict later conduct disorder and mental health problems, and are multiple informant ratings a better predictor than a single informant rating of fighting.

3. Does a combination of previously defined risk factors other than fighting better predict later mental health problems?

The authors hypothesis is that persistent physical fighting is a risk factor for la...

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... abuse in adulthood. In conclusion to the study the following evidence suggests that children with conduct disorder may be at risk for major mental disorders. Other outcomes also show that children with conduct problems also have a higher incidence of criminality as an adult. Antisocial personality disorder in adulthood is almost always preceded by conduct disorder in childhood.

In this study, the data did support the researchers hypothesis that childhood conduct disorder leads to adult criminality and mental disorder. Some weaknesses do exist in this study such as biased sample by taking high risk participants and relying on self reports by adults on the child’s behavior. It is unsure that childhood conduct problems is associated with adult deviance because of the sample used. The norms for this study were good because they were set for the norms of Sweden.