Does Parenting Behaviour Impacts Delinquency? A Comparative Study of Delinquents and Non-Delinquents

IntroductionA normal healthy development of any individual starts at home. It is the home, the family this constitutes the backbone of any human being. During childhood, the family constitutes the basic ecology in which the child's behaviour is manifested by way of positive or negative reinforcement (Dishion & Patterson, 2006). There is considerable evidence that the family plays an important role in the development of adolescent delinquent behaviour, by inappropriate reinforcement practices. Many research studies have emphasized the importance of the child's relationship with the parent in decreasing the likelihood of delinquency (Bachman, 1970; Bandura & Walters, 1959; Glueck & Glueck, 1962; Gold, 1963; Hirschi, 1969). Although most of these studies have found a link between parenting behaviour and delinquency, but only few of them have focused on parenting styles and delinquency (Hoeve etal., 2009). Apart from this, in most of the studies only mother's role in parenting has been focused upon, without considering father's influence (Simons & Conger, 2007). To understand an adolescent behaviour it is very crucial to consider both mother's and father's role in parenting. To asses, whether there is any relationship between gender of the parent and probable link with delinquency is, therefore worthy of research.Parenting as a behaviourTwo perspectives have been adopted in the parenting literature: research that focused on dimensions of parenting and research focusing on typologies (Darling & Steinberg, 1993; O'Connor, 2002; Ten Haaf, 1993). Dimensions are concepts to categorize parenting behaviours such as affection, punishment, reward, whereas typologies are combinations of parenting dimensions such as an authoritative parenting style. Support and control are the two widely used dimensions to assess the quality of parenting behaviour (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). The support dimension (also known as warmth, responsiveness or acceptance - rejection by some scholars), refers to a child's feeling of comfort, acceptance and approval from his parents (Rollins & Thomas, 1979). The support dimensions can be represented as a range of positive and negative behavioural aspects such as acceptance, affection, love, support and intimacy, as well as hostility, neglect and rejection (Rohner, 2004; Ten Haaf, 1993). In general, supportive parenting is negatively linked to delinquency and neglecting parenting is positively linked to delinquency (Barnes & Farrell, 1992; Juang & Silbereisen, 1999; Simons et al., 1989). The control dimensions (also known as demanding), has been defined as placing demands on and controlling the child. This dimension can be further divided into two separate constructs, authoritative control reflects parental supervision as well as warmth and care; while authoritarian control refers to dominance and control without affection (Baumrind, 1968, 1971). The second body of research has focused upon, parenting typologies or styles. Baumrind (1968, 1971), Maccoby & Martin (1983) defined parenting styles according to a two dimensional framework of support and control. Accordingly, four parenting styles can be identified: authoritative (high support, high control), authoritarian (low support, high control), permissive (high support, low control) and neglecting (low support, low control). For e.g. an authoritative style is characterized by high levels of warmth and affection and high levels of punishment, restriction and supervision as well. Relation between these four parenting styles and delinquency had been sought in the present study.Parenting styles are combinations of attitudes and behaviours of parents toward their child, create a context or a climate for the parent's behaviour, and is displayed across many different situations (Darling & Steinberg, 1993). According to typological viewpoint single dimensions of parenting is not able to account for the interactional nature and dynamics of families and therefore parenting dimensions should not be examined in isolation (O'Conner, 2002). …