Child Effects and Reciprocal Relationships
Longitudinal research enables us to look the effects of delinquency on
parents, as well as the effects of parenting on delinquency. Delinquency
research had assumed until recently that parents exercise a predominantly
one-way influence on adolescents. However, recent research has found "child
effects"; that is, parenting is likely to be affected by antisocial behavior
in children and by the stress and disturbance in family life that is produces.
[34] Among those children who present the greatest challenges for parents
are those with a history of individual traits or characteristics, for example,
impulsivity and irritability, that are associated with early aggressiveness.
[35]
Patterson's research on cycle of coercion suggests that antisocial children
cause parents to be irritable, ineffective in discipline, and to withdraw
their support and attention. [36] This process accelerates the child's
antisocial behavior, which, in turn, precipitates further deterioration
in parenting, with rapid changes in both child and parent behavior often
occurring in a relative short period of time. [37] Thus, not only are there
influences in both directions, but parents and teenagers also influence
one another in a reciprocal or interactional fashion.
Interactional perspectives in criminology also suggest that, within a longer
time frame, delinquency may undermine parenting, which may then further
exacerbate antisocial or aggressive behavior. [38] Terence Thornberry and
colleagues find that, in early adolescence, low attachment to parents leads
to delinquency, which increases the detachment. [39] In looking at midadolescence,
Sung Joon Jang and Carolyn Smith find that delinquency has a negative effect
on both supervision and attachment, although only supervision has the reciprocal
effect; in this study, attachment did not affect delinquency. [40] These
studies support the developmental notion that families and adolescents
may affect one another differently at different ages and highlight the
importance of including a developmental perspective in research on children
and adolescents. [41]
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