Candidate: Yaschica Williams

Degree of: Doctor of Philosophy

Department: Sociology

Title: The Effect of Parenting Styles on Adolescent Delinquency: Exploring the Interactions between Race, Class and Gender

Committee: Dr. Rachel Bridges Whaley , Chair
Dr. Angela M. Moe
Dr. Douglas V. Davidson
Dr. William Santiago-Valles

Date: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 2:15 p.m.– 4:15 p.m.
2526 Sangren Hall

Abstract: The purpose of this study is to examine how parental influences lead to the onset of delinquent behaviors in adolescents. More specifically, this study pays attention to how parenting style (i.e., authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent and uninvolved) interacts with other variables related to characteristics of the child (i.e., race, class and gender) in producing delinquency. This research integrates the traditions of criminology and psychology by incorporating the research of two researchers renowned in their prospective fields of study, Travis Hirschi from criminology and Diana Baumrind from psychology. Hirschi (1969) is a social control theorist who introduced social bond theory. Baumrind (1966) is known for the parenting typology she created that has been influential in not only explaining delinquency but other outcomes as well, such as self-esteem, academic performance and sexual risk-taking.

Research based on Hirschi's social bond theory (1969) indicates that social process variables such as parental warmth, attachment, and communication, monitoring and discipline do have an affect on delinquency (Agnew, 1985; Alarid, Burton & Cullen, 2000; Huebner & Howell, 2003; Demuth & Brown, 2004; Agnew, 1985) however, the literature is inconsistent. Studies that utilized Baumrind's parenting typology have demonstrated that if you collapse family process variables into two distinct dimensions of parenting they provide an alternative way of explaining delinquency. For example, she identified two concepts to describe the parenting dimensions, responsiveness and demandingness. These two concepts have distinct measures. Responsiveness involves those aspect of the parent-child relationship in which the parent shows support towards the child and recognizes they have basic needs. Parent-youth relationship (i.e., warmth and attachment), involvement and parent-child communication are dimensions that measure responsiveness in this study. The second concept, demandingness involves parental controls implemented to not only protect the child, but provide boundaries. Parental monitoring, strictness and limit setting are the three dimensions used to measure demandingness. Further, Baumrind argues that the interaction between responsiveness and demandingness could be used to create categories to describe parenting behavior. This could serve as another approach at looking at the relationship between parenting and delinquency. In Baumrind's research responsiveness and demandingness become integrated to describe four parenting styles (Gray & Steinberg, 1999; Bednar & Fisher, 2003).

The National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 (NLSY97) is used in this study to test hypotheses relative to Hirschi's (1969) social bond theory and Baumrind's (1966) parenting typology. These hypotheses examine the effects of family process variables (e.g., warmth, attachment communication, strictness and monitoring) on adolescent delinquency moderated by the effect of the child's race, gender and class of the family.

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