Conceptual Framework
Two perspectives have been adopted in the parenting literature: research that is focused on dimensions of parenting and research focusing on typologies (Darling and Steinberg
1993; O’Connor
2002; Ten Haaf
1993). Dimensions are concepts to categorize parenting behaviors such as affection, punishment, monitoring, whereas typologies are constellations of parenting dimensions such as an authoritative parenting style which is a combination of supportive parenting, attachment and guiding the child’s behavior by explanation and appropriate expectations for conformity.
Although various
parenting dimensions have been proposed (see for an overview Holden
1997), two key dimensions, support and control, have been used to assess the quality of parenting behavior (Maccoby and Martin
1983). The
support dimension (also labeled warmth, responsiveness or acceptance–rejection by some scholars), refers to parental behaviors toward the child that makes the child feel comfortable, accepted and approved (Rollins and Thomas
1979). The support dimension can be represented as a range of positive and negative behavioral aspects such as acceptance, affection, love, support, warmth, responsiveness, sensitivity, communication and intimacy, but also hostility, neglect, and rejection (Rohner
2004; Rollins and Thomas
1979; Ten Haaf
1993). These various aspects of parental support, whether negative or positive can be placed along the continuum of low to high support and is generally considered to be unidimenstional (Ten Haaf et al.
1994). For example, rejection is represented by low scores and acceptance by high scores. In general, supportive parenting behaviors are negatively linked to delinquency, indicating that high levels of support and warmth are associated with low levels of delinquency and that low levels of support or even rejection are linked to high levels of delinquency (e.g., Barnes and Farrell
1992; Juang and Silbereisen
1999; Simons et al.
1989).
The
control dimension (also labeled demandingness), has been defined as placing demands on and controlling the child. Some scholars have argued that control should not be viewed as unidimensional, since this dimension could be further divided into separate constructs with different meanings. A common approach is to distinguish between authoritative control and authoritarian control (Baumrind
1968,
1971).
Authoritative control reflects child-oriented and inductive discipline techniques such as guiding the child’s behavior cognitively, giving information, and stimulating responsible behavior of the child, while
authoritarian control refers to adult-oriented, coercive, restrictive, and firm discipline techniques and emphasizes the negative aspects of control such as harsh punishment and love withdrawal (e.g., Baumrind
1968,
1971). In general, authoritative control has positive effects on child behavior, while authoritarian control has been found to have negative effects on the child (Baumrind
1966). Too strict authoritarian control (Farrington
1989) and harsh punishment (Farrington et al.
2003) appear to be linked to high levels of delinquent and antisocial behavior, although effect sizes vary substantially across studies (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber
1986).
More recently, Barber and colleagues have argued for a focus on behavioral and psychological control instead of authoritative and authoritarian control (e.g., Barber
1996; Barber et al.
2005).
Behavioral control is defined as parents’ attempts to control and regulate their children’s behavior by rules setting and monitoring. Aspects of behavioral control such as monitoring (Fischer
1983) and consistency in discipline (Coughlin and Vuchinich
1996) have been associated with low levels of delinquency (see also Patterson
1982).
Psychological control refers to intrusions into the psychological development of the child, such as love withdrawal, keeping the child dependent and the use of guilt to control the child. Behavioral control is more strongly linked to externalizing problems in adolescents, while psychological control is more strongly associated with internalizing problems (Barber et al.
1994). Thus, the parenting dimension control is often seen as a multidimensional concept. In the present analysis, this dimension is separated into either authoritative control and authoritarian control or behavioral control and psychological control.
Besides parenting dimensions, parenting
typologies or styles are examined. Elaborating on the work of Baumrind (
1966,
1971), Maccoby and Martin (
1983) defined parenting styles according to a two-dimensional framework of support and control. Accordingly, four parenting styles can be identified: authoritarian (low support, high control), authoritative (high support and control), permissive (high support and low control), and neglecting (low support and control). Parenting styles are configurations of attitudes and behaviors of parents towards their child and create a context or a climate for the parent’s behavior and is displayed across many different situations (Darling and Steinberg
1993). From a typological viewpoint single parenting behaviors do not properly account for the interactional nature and dynamics of families and therefore parenting dimensions should not be examined in isolation (O’Connor
2002). Prior research revealed that an authoritative style had positive effects on child adaptation, whereas the remaining styles place the child at risk for negative child outcomes (Maccoby and Martin
1983). Neglectful parenting in particular has been linked to delinquent behavior (Maccoby and Martin
1983; Steinberg et al.
2006; Steinberg et al.
1994).
In the present study we examine various parenting dimensions, including parental support, and various types of control, and patterns of parenting behaviors (i.e., parenting styles) in relation to delinquency. We also examine discrete parenting behaviors (such as affection, hostility, monitoring, etc.) in order to identify which specific child-rearing characteristics are linked to child outcomes with the purpose of discovering effective ingredients for interventions.
There are several reasons that make it appropriate to conduct a meta-analysis. First, a considerable body of empirical research on the relationship between family factors and delinquency exists. Moreover, the inconsistencies in the literature make it difficult to summarize the results in a narrative review. For example, Wells and Rankin (
1988) concluded that aspects of parental control such as normative regulation, monitoring and punishment have the same impact on delinquency as parental attachment, whereas Wright et al. (
2000) concluded that results on parental control are mixed with inconsistent findings. A meta-analysis is useful for identifying whether effect sizes are homogeneous across studies and in the case where they are not, moderators can be investigated to identify the source of the mixed results.
A few meta-analyses have examined the association between parenting and delinquency. Several meta-analyses focused on risk factors for delinquency have included family factors (Cottle et al.
2001; Gendreau et al.
1996; Hubbard and Pratt
2002; Lipsey and Derzon
1998; Loeber and Dishion
1983). Next to offence history, family factors were among the best predictors of recidivism compared to other domains, such as socio-economic status, intellectual functioning, and personal distress (Cottle et al.
2001; Gendreau et al.
1996). A disadvantage of meta-analyses on risk factors is that the units of focus are very broad and several family factors such as family size, attachment, and punishment have been combined into the same category. Furthermore, only a small number of parenting characteristics have been included in these reviews.
Only one previous meta-analysis considered the association between various aspects of parenting and delinquency (Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber
1986) and included such factors as neglect (e.g., parent–child involvement), conflict (discipline and rejection), deviant behaviors and attitudes (e.g., parental criminality), and disruption (e.g., marital relations and parental absence). Among the over seventy studies reviewed, the best predictors of delinquency and problem behavior included lack of parental supervision, parental rejection, and parent–child involvement. Parental discipline appeared to be a weaker predictor than other family variables.
The present study extends the work of Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber (
1986) by using more advanced meta-analytic techniques including tests of homogeneity of effect sizes and moderator analyses. Moreover, the present meta-analysis includes many new investigations that have been completed since the Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber review.
Discussion
In the present meta-analysis we tested the connection between parenting and delinquency. We focused on parenting from different perspectives, analyzing parenting dimensions, styles and behaviors in relation to delinquency. The first goal was to investigate what the magnitudes of these associations are and which of these have the strongest relationships with delinquent behavior. The second purpose was to analyze potential moderators of the parenting–delinquency link and their relative importance.
This meta-analysis confirms that parenting is related to delinquency. We found significant links between all parenting dimensions and delinquency but the magnitude of the relation depended on the particular parenting dimension. The strongest links were found for psychological control (ES
r = 0.23) and the weakest links were found for authoritative and authoritarian control (ES
r = 0.12). Analyzing discrete parenting behaviors (i.e., subcategories within parenting dimensions) revealed that differences were even larger. The strongest mean effect sizes were found for negative aspects of support such as neglect, hostility and rejection or combinations of these parenting behaviors (ES
r ranges from 0.26 to 0.33). In addition, parental monitoring, either active monitoring by parents, parental knowledge or child disclosure, was relatively strongly linked to delinquency (ES
r ranges from −0.23 to −0.31). These results are in accordance with the finding of Loeber and Stouthamer-Loeber (
1986) that parental rejection and poor supervision were among the best predictors of delinquency. Furthermore, moderate effect sizes were found for psychological control and overprotection (ES
r ranges from 0.21 to 0.23). The smallest effect sizes were found for communication (ES
r = −0.07), permissiveness (ES
r = 0.09), and physical punishment (ES
r = 0.10). Parenting accounted for up to 11% of the variance in delinquency.
The magnitude of the effect sizes ranged from small to moderate. It should be noted that even small effect sizes, such as the link between authoritarian control and delinquency can have substantively important consequences. The practical importance of a correlation can be shown in a Binomial Effect Size Display (BESD, McCartney and Rosenthal
2000). For example, consider a group of 200 youngsters of which half of these youngsters have authoritarian parents and half do not. A correlation of 0.12 can be displayed as follows: 44% of the youngsters without authoritarian parents versus 56% of the youngsters with authoritarian parents show delinquent behavior. A correlation of 0.33 such as of the link between negative aspects of support (neglect, hostility and rejection) and delinquency can be displayed as follows: 67% of the youngsters with parents that adopt a rejecting and hostile attitude versus only 33% of the youngsters with parents who do not or hardly employ these seriously negative parenting behaviors will score high on delinquency. These are substantively important effects.
Given that both parenting dimensions of support and control were linked to delinquent behavior, parenting styles could be important risk factors for delinquency (that is, the combination of the dimensions support and control). In particular, a neglectful parenting style may be linked to delinquency (Maccoby and Martin
1983; Steinberg et al.
1994). Although hardly any studies were found on the link between a neglectful parenting style and delinquency, studies that measured parental neglect unidimensionally resulted in strong links between neglectfulness and delinquency (ES
r = 0.29).
The results of this meta-analysis have implications for theories on parenting. Analyzing parenting dimensions, we found significant differences between various types of control including authoritative, authoritarian, behavioral and psychological control, with the highest effect sizes for psychological control. Based on these findings we agree with Barber et al. (
1994) that it is useful to consider psychological control and nonpsychological assertive control (i.e. authoritarian control in this meta-analysis) as separate forms of control. However, contrary to the finding of Barber et al. (
1994) that behavioral control rather than psychological control is responsible for increased levels of delinquency, we found that psychological control is as least as important as behavioral control. A possible explanation could be that we focused on delinquency including at least some serious offences, while Barber et al. (
1994) focused on delinquency that included a relatively limited range of minor delinquent acts.
4 Nevertheless, our findings clearly indicate that psychological control, including keeping the child dependent and the use of guilt to control the child, elevates the risk for delinquent behavior.
Extremely negative behaviors such as rejection, neglect and hostility were linked to delinquency. Youngsters who experience rejection by significant others such as parents are at risk to develop distorted mental representations of themselves and their environment (Rohner
2004), which may explain why these youngsters are more likely to show delinquent behavior. The negative aspects of support had significantly stronger links to delinquency than a lack of support and warmth. These findings have implications for theories that model the support dimension of parenting as a continuum with one end referring to positive aspects such as warmth, affection and acceptance and the other end referring to the absence of these positive behaviors and the presence of negative aspects of support (e.g., Rohner
2004). The present meta-analysis shows that negative aspects of support have different links to delinquency than the positive aspects and therefore these concepts should be considered as separate parenting dimensions.
Poor parental monitoring was also relatively strongly linked to delinquency. The three indicators of parental monitoring, that is, parental knowledge of the child’s whereabouts, the active tracking and tracing of the child’s whereabouts by parents, and child disclosure, had links to delinquency that were relatively similar in magnitude. Stattin and Kerr (
2000) suggested that the link between parental knowledge and delinquency can be explained by the child’s disclosure of his or her activities and whereabouts, rather than actual tracking behavior by the parent. Actual monitoring by parents is probably limited, because adolescents spend less time with their parents and are relatively autonomous (Hirschi
1969; Nye
1958; Stattin and Kerr
2000). Therefore, we expected that the link between child disclosure and delinquency would be stronger than the link between poor parental monitoring and delinquency, however, the present meta-analysis revealed relatively similar effect sizes. Thus, both the child and the parent are active agents in the process of the link between knowledge on whereabouts of the child and delinquency.
In addition to theoretical implications, our results concerning the link between discrete parenting behaviors (monitoring, neglectfulness, rejection) and delinquency have implications for intervention and prevention policies focusing on delinquency, in particular parent management training programs. Programs should focus on training parents to actively monitor and guide their children in order to enhance parents’ knowledge on the whereabouts of children. Although parent management training programs exist in many variations, typical trainings primarily do focus on improving parental discipline techniques and monitoring (Patterson
1982). Given that a large effect size was found for child disclosure, the emphasis in parent trainings should also lay on improvements in the relationship and trust, given that this enhances disclosure. Furthermore, practitioners should be alert to parents who are neglecting and have a hostile and rejecting attitude towards their children, since combinations of these parenting behaviors are strongly linked to higher levels of delinquent behavior in youngsters. Translating the present results into a Binomial Effect Size Display (McCartney and Rosenthal
2000) suggests that if parent management training programs succeed in improving parenting practices, up to 33% of the youngsters of the successful parents may desist from delinquent behavior. Our finding concerning the significance of the link between parenting and delinquency is in line with studies that found support for the effectiveness of parent management training programs in reducing delinquency and antisocial behavior (e.g., McCart et al.
2006; Mulford and Redding
2008).
Sex-differences were found regarding the parenting–delinquency association. We found stronger links between poor support and delinquency in same-sex parent–child pairs. Poor support of father to sons and poor support of mothers to daughters were more strongly linked to delinquency than cross-gender supportive behavior by parents. An explanation could be that children have the tendency to identify with the same-sex parent (Laible and Carlo
2004), and a good relation with this parent serves as a protective factor against delinquency. We also found that poor
paternal support was more strongly related to delinquency than poor
maternal support. This finding may be particularly applicable to boys. Given the lack of studies that investigate fathers and that boys are more often delinquent than girls, there appears to be a serious gap in research. Our findings suggest that fathers may even have more influence on their sons’ delinquency than mothers, supporting the contention that it is important to work with fathers when treating delinquency in boys. This is in line with a recent meta-analysis showing that children benefited more if fathers attended a parent training compared to programs that focused on mothers only (Lundahl et al.
2008).
Our findings from the moderator-analyses on age have important implications for the current debate between scholars from static versus dynamic theories on the causes of delinquent behavior (Hirschi and Gottfredson
2001; Sampson and Laub
2001a,
b). In the present meta-analysis significant effects of age were found in cross-sectional studies on general parenting, indicating that correlates are not the same at all ages. This is in contradiction with assumptions of static models, but is in line with the dynamic models, such as the theory of Sampson and Laub (
1993,
2005) suggesting that correlates of delinquency may change during the life-course. We found that the association between general parenting and delinquency was stronger in school age children and early adolescents compared to mid and late adolescents. The parenting–delinquency link may weaken as children mature with the influence of peers or other life events having more impact. According to Sampson and Laub, changes in life circumstances are able to generate turning points in an individual’s criminal career. Delinquent behavior is inhibited during childhood and adolescence by bonds to the family and school. During (young) adulthood, social ties to labor or marriage and other turning points in life can modify trajectories of criminal offending. Thus, the findings in the present meta-analysis favor dynamic theories.
Different effect sizes were found depending on the informant about parenting. Studies in which the children reported on the level of authoritarian control found significantly stronger results than studies in which the parents were the informants or in which several different informants reported on this parenting dimension. We offer the following possible explanation for this finding. Children are more likely to indicate negative characteristics of their family, whereas parents tend to overestimate positive characteristics of their parenting behavior (Noller and Callan
1988). Additionally, dissimilar views of parents and children have been found to reflect stress and conflict and are associated with child maladjustment (Carlson et al.
1991). The stronger effect sizes for child report measures may be due to more negative views of youngsters who engage in delinquency and not to actual parenting differences per se. To our knowledge it is unknown which informants provide the most realistic information on parenting. These findings are important as the majority of studies rely on reports of children instead of parents (69% in the present meta-analysis) and only 3% of studies actually used observed parent–child interactions. Researchers collecting information on parenting should take the effects of different informants on parenting–delinquency associations into consideration when they interpret their findings and should control for social desirability of informants.
We found some evidence for significant methodological moderators. For example, the number of items in parenting and delinquency questionnaires did moderate the parenting–delinquency link. If questionnaires had relatively many items, stronger links were found between psychological control and delinquency. Also, stronger effects were found in studies that used more reliable parenting questionnaires. As expected, these findings indicate that if the quality of studies is higher, stronger links will be found between parenting dimensions and delinquency. Thus, these results demonstrate the importance of using reliable and validated questionnaires. Given that we included studies that ranged in quality, the mean effect sizes in this meta-analysis may be conservative.
Limitations
It should also be noted that, for reasons of comparability, we focused on studies analyzing bivariate associations. Nevertheless, studies have been published that conducted multivariate analysis to test a prediction model for delinquent behavior. Multivariate analyses give insight to the unique contribution of parenting characteristics to delinquency by simultaneously controlling for other factors. However, meta-analyzing multivariate associations is problematic, because the effect size statistics of interest depend on what other variables are in the multivariate model (Lipsey and Wilson
2001). Multivariate models that are comparable across studies are rare. Further limitations of this meta-analysis are related to the poor availability of studies with specific characteristics. These gaps in research are discussed below.
Gaps in Research
Unfortunately, as a result of the dearth of the studies that have actually examined parenting styles, we were not able to calculate mean effect sizes for various parenting styles. Future studies should extend research on parenting styles and delinquency in order to clarify whether these combinations of parenting characteristics have stronger associations with delinquency than only single dimensions. In particular, studies should include neglectful and permissive styles, and not only focus on authoritarian and authoritative parenting styles.
The vast majority of studies did not report separate effect sizes for different ethnic groups. Generally, studies only reported the percentage of several ethnic minority groups in the sample. Given that ethnic minority groups each may differ in style of parenting and in the prevalence of delinquency, analyzing ethnicity as a moderator would be of interest. In order to get insight into potential differences in the parenting–delinquency link between ethnic groups, it would be helpful if future studies would report effect sizes for each ethnic group.
The vast majority of studies (87%) had short time interval (less than 5 years) or were cross-sectional, which makes it difficult to get a clear picture of the longer term effects of parenting. Some previous studies, including time-intervals of at least 10 years suggest that parenting influences delinquent behavior in youngsters, but the influence of parents weakens over time (Hoeve et al.
2007,
2008). Further research is needed to provide information on parental correlates of delinquency across developmental levels. Most studies were focused on adolescents despite the fact that many models emphasize the role of parenting during childhood (e.g., Gottfredson and Hirschi
1990; Moffitt and Caspi
2001; Sampson and Laub
1993). Another reason for the need of additional longitudinal studies that cover a longer time span is to test typological theories of delinquency. For example, Moffitt (
1993) identified two types of offenders: life-course-persistent offenders, which originate early in life, and adolescence-limited delinquents, which begin around puberty. Life-course-persistent delinquents were found to be associated with poor parenting, whereas adolescence-limited delinquents were not (Moffitt and Caspi
2001). Given the assumptions of Moffitt and Caspi’s taxonomy, one would expect to find stronger links between inadequate parenting and persistent offending than the parenting–delinquency links found in the present meta-analysis (i.e., delinquency at one point in time). Finally, longitudinal studies are needed to demonstrate whether or not parenting factors contribute to the continuation of offending after onset or for later onsets after age 20 (Farrington
2005).
From our meta-analysis it became clear that studies generally focus on one parent or both parents without differentiating between the sex of the parent (58% of the studies). The present meta-analysis, however, shows that it is worthwhile to compare studies on fathers with studies on mothers and their children. Future studies should make an effort to involve both fathers and mothers in their investigations and more clearly distinguish between father’s and mother’s reports on parenting when analyzing the link between parenting and delinquency.
The longitudinal studies included in our meta-analysis measured parenting at an earlier point in time than delinquency, hypothesizing that poor parenting leads to offspring delinquency. However, parents not only influence their children, but children also influence their parents (Crouter and Booth
2003; Granic
2000; Holden
1997). Most parents change their discipline practices if they notice that their child has committed a delinquent act (Kerr and Stattin
2003). Even though the included longitudinal studies showed that poorer parenting practices preceded delinquent behavior, a bidirectional view on parent–child relations cannot be rejected as we do not know whether the child-rearing characteristics had been influenced by earlier delinquency or other problem behaviors of the child. Thus, the direction of causal influence may run both ways. Therefore, we should not rule out that the link between parenting and delinquency may also be due to the impact of delinquency on parenting. If future longitudinal studies would test whether delinquency affects parenting, a meta-analysis could compare child and parent effects in the parenting–delinquency link.
The moderator analysis revealed that parental monitoring (at least knowledge and child disclosure) is relatively strongly linked to
overt delinquency. We found that studies on overt delinquency, such as violent offences, found stronger links between poor child disclosure and parental knowledge on the child’s whereabouts and delinquency than studies on covert delinquency, such as theft and arson. Moffitt and Caspi (
2001) found that chronic offenders are more likely to be engaged in overt delinquency and have more family-related problems than youngsters who show primarily covert delinquent behavior temporarily during adolescence. Therefore, parental monitoring may be an important predictor for persistent overt delinquency. However, this finding should be interpreted with caution as only three studies focused on parental knowledge, child disclosure and covert delinquency. Given that parenting may be differentially linked to overt and covert delinquency (see also, Loeber et al.
2008), future studies on delinquency should distinguish between overt and covert behaviors.
Conclusions
This meta-analysis demonstrates that a significant relationship exists between parenting and delinquency and confirms previous research that behavioral control, such as parental monitoring is negatively linked to delinquency (Barber
1996; Patterson and Yoerger
1993). Moreover, this meta-analysis revealed that negative aspects of support including rejection, hostility and neglect and psychological control had the strongest links to delinquency. Furthermore, several indicators of parental monitoring, including parental knowledge, child disclosure, and active monitoring by parents, had similar links to delinquency.
Important study characteristics including sex of children and parents, age of the participants, delinquency type, and informant on parenting were significant moderators, indicating that some parenting dimensions are more crucial in particular situations or for particular subsamples. A lack of support had a relatively strong link to delinquency if that parent and child were the same sex. In addition, the parenting–delinquency link was stronger in school age children and early adolescents than in older adolescents. Furthermore, parental monitoring was more strongly linked to overt delinquency that covert delinquency, stressing the importance of distinguishing between different types of delinquency. Finally, larger effects were found when children reported on parenting than when parent self reports were used.
These findings have important implications for intervention and prevention policies focusing on delinquency. Interventions should not only focus on aspects of behavioral control such as restrictiveness, consistency in discipline, and monitoring, but should also target parenting dimensions such as psychological control and negative aspects of support. Furthermore, our findings suggest that fathers should be involved in intervention programs for violent youth, particularly interventions aimed at delinquent boys and if fathers themselves are not offenders. Finally, the finding that parenting is more strongly linked to delinquency in school age children and early adolescents, stresses the importance of prevention strategies early in life.
References marked with an asterisk indicate studies included in the meta-analysis.