The Effect of Parental Attachments and Direct Controls on Delinquency

Abstract

Prior theories of delinquency and child development suggest that specific combinations of family factors should disproportionately decrease the probability of children's deviance. Specifically, the impact of direct parental controls (e.g., discipline) on delinquency are thought to be conditional upon the level of indirect parental controls (e.g., parent-child attachments). However, the specific form of the interaction is unclear, given contradictory predictions in the literature. Our analysis of the national Youth in Transition data panel indicates that, although various measures of parental attachment and direct parental controls are consistently related to various types of delinquent behaviors, interactions between these variables are less evident than prior theory suggests.