Investigating the Links Between Trauma and Boys' Delinquency: The Roles of Father-Son Attachment and Alienation
Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Investigating the Links Between Trauma and Boys' Delinquency: The Roles of Father-Son Attachment and AlienationJuvenile delinquency has a tremendous impact on a youth's life course, disrupts family relationships, and comes with significant social and economic ramifications.In 2008 alone, over 1.6 million adolescent arrests occurred, comprising approximately 15% of all arrests in the United States (U.S.Department of Justice, 2009).Historically, males have been much more likely to be delinquent and currently account for 70% of all juvenile arrests (U. S. Department of Justice, 2009).Males are also more likely than females to engage in various types of serious and violent delinquency (Booth, Farrell, & Varano, 2008;Elliott, 1994;Fagan, Van Horn, Hawkins, & Arthur, 2007;Johnson, 1987).Increasing efforts have focused on understanding the causes of delinquency, as prevention and intervention efforts must be guided by the accumulating scientific knowledge of the precursors, etiology, and developmental pathways to juvenile delinquency (Lahey, Moffitt, & Caspi, 2003).Developmental psychopathology offers a particularly useful framework for examining delinquency (Frick & Viding, 2009).To begin with, developmental psychopathology prioritizes an understanding of normative development, and psychopathology is understood as deviations from normality (Kerig & Wenar, 2006;Sroufe, 1997).Also, developmental psychopathology emphasizes both equifinality and multifinality (Cicchetti & Rogosch, 1996).Whereas equifinality refers to the diversity of causes that may lead to a similar outcome, multifinality recognizes that a single cause may lead to multiple outcomes.Likewise, it is the developmental trajectory that is important to understand, as opposed to only those behaviors seen at one particular point in time (Sroufe, 1997).For example, some degree of antisocial behavior is relatively common in adolescence, although large differences exist between the majority of youth who engage in adolescent-limited antisocial behaviors and the small percentage of youth whose antisocial behaviors begin early in development and worsen throughout childhood and adolescence (Moffitt, 1993(Moffitt, , 2003)).Concomitantly, research has shown that whereas aggression may be a genetically-stable trait, delinquency in adolescence is considered to be more strongly influenced by environmental factors (Eley, Lichtenstein, & Moffitt, 2003;Taylor, Iacono, & McGue, 2000).
Author: Stephen P. Becker
Institution: Miami University
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2598029739