Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency: Exploring ...

Parenting Styles and Juvenile Delinquency: Exploring Gendered Relationships By Mike Tapia, Leanne Fiftal Alarid, and Courtney Clare

ABSTRACT We use the NLSY97 dataset to examine the parenting-delinquency relationship and how it is conditioned by parents’ gender, controlling for youths’ gender. Generally, neglectful and authoritarian parenting styles were associated with the highest levels of delinquency in youths. When the sample was split by parent gender, authoritarianism held up across both groups, but permissive and neglectful parenting was only significant for fathers. Independent of parenting style, boys have higher delinquency levels than girls. The strength and magnitude of this relationship is nearly identical in separate equations for mothers and fathers. Parental attachment was not a significant protective factor against delinquency for either mothers or fathers. Key words: parenting style, delinquency, gender, neglect, authoritarian, juvenile justice.

INTRODUCTION There have always been gender differences in delinquency rates, with boys committing more delinquent acts than girls. Of the many pathways and correlates of juvenile delinquency, attachment to parents and the type of parenting children

Mike Tapia, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at New Mexico State University. His teaching and research interests include Delinquency & Juvenile Justice, Street Crimes, and Race & Crime. He has recently published work on Parental Support and Juvenile Arrest, Suicide in Juvenile Detention, and the Effectiveness of Court Ordered Intervention Programs for Youth. Leanne Fiftal Alarid, Ph.D., earned her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University. She is currently the Department Chair and Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has conducted research with corrections agencies and authored over 60 journal articles and books, including Community-Based Corrections (Cengage Learning). Prior to entering academe, Dr. Alarid worked in Denver as a girls’ group home counselor and case manager at an adult halfway house. Courtney Clare, B.A., holds Bachelor’s degrees in Criminal Justice and Psychology from the University of Texas at San Antonio, where she graduated Cum Laude. She is a mom to two children and is interested in parenting research. Her honor’s thesis provided the initial concept for the current paper. Juvenile and Family Court Journal 69, No. 2 © 2018 National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges

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JUVENILE AND FAMILY COURT JOURNAL

experience have been found to be important predictors of delinquency for both boys and girls. However, with regard to gender effects and parenting styles, the literature does not reach conclusions that are as definitive as we might expect. For example, most parenting-style research assumes that one style is used with all children in each household. Thus, parenting style becomes a single measure and ignores parents’ gender differences or gender of each child (Bulanda & Majumdar, 2011). This shortcoming is important because while parenting styles can vary with different children within the same household, parenting styles more frequently vary by gender, with mothers generally more nurturing toward their children than fathers (Ashraf & Najim, 2011; Biblary & Stacey, 2010; McKee et al., 2007). Traditional gender roles are particularly strong in families that face economic difficulties in which fathers may feel powerless to fulfill their perceived role (Montgomery et al., 2016). Clear evidence shows changing gender role expectations for fathers (Kaufman 2013), but fathers in intact families still spent less time with their daughters than with their sons (Yeung et al., 2001). The current study is therefore important for two reasons. First, as family composition has changed over time, it adds to the small body of literature on the effects of youths’ perceptions of their mom and dad’s level of support and control with their own involvement in delinquency. Second, it further delineates how parenting style and delinquency is conditioned by parent gender, controlling for youth gender. We begin with the origins of parenting style typologies and briefly review the research findings relative to delinquency. We then proceed to describe parent-child attachment as a key correlate, and finally onto our hypotheses, description of our national data set, and statistical methods. Parenting Styles Developmental researcher Diana Baumrind (1971) is widely known for having studied parental behaviors at home and how these behaviors affected children’s socialization. In her now classical typology, parental characteristics of being nurturing, warm, and supportive of their children was referred to as responsiveness. The monitoring, supervision, and control of children’s behavior with rule setting and consequences was called demandingness. Maccoby and Martin (1983) then used these two domains to identify four styles of parenting: Authoritarian, Authoritative, Permissive, and Neglectful. Figure 1 shows how each domain fits to the four parenting styles and includes the proportion of each parenting style used by mothers and fathers in the current study. Authoritative parenting: Authoritative parents are the role models for overall effective child socialization and adaptive behavioral outcomes because authoritative parents offer the right balance of warmth and support, while creating a constructive and flexible disciplinary arrangement (Laurson & Collins, 2009; Maccoby & Martin, 1983). These parents are open to bidirectional communication and teach their children self-control (Trinkner, Cohn, Rebellon, & Van Gundy, 2012). This mix of positive parental attributes was congruent with low levels of problem behaviors in children (Darling, 1999; Lee, Daniels & Kissinger, 2006). Two authoritative parents provided the strongest buffer

Tapia et al. / PARENTING STYLES AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

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Figure 1. Parenting Styles for Mothers and Fathers in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLYS97) Dataset

High Low

Demandingness (Control)

Responsiveness (Support/Nurturing) High

Low

Authoritative

Authoritarian

Mom Dad 42.3% 39.1% Permissive

Mom Dad 12.4% 19.6% Neglectful

Mom 35.0%

Mom 10.4%

Dad 28.6%

Dad 12.7%

against delinquency, but even one authoritative parent provided some protection (Simons & Conger, 2007). Authoritarian parenting: Authoritarian parents elicit rigid discipline, little to no flexibility, and a highly structured environment. These parents tend to be highly controlling with less receptivity to their children’s preferences (Laurson & Collins, 2009; Trinkner et al., 2012). Overtly strict parenting may inhibit their children’s personal growth and independence. As children resist the controls on freedom, they become more likely to rebel by turning to delinquency. Authoritarian parenting styles were moderately likely to lead to negative outcomes for youths (Darling, 1999; Hoeve, Blokland, Dubas, Loeber, Gerris, & van der Laan, 2008; Lee et al., 2006; Trinkner et al., 2012). Permissive/Indulgent parenting: Permissive parents tend to be highly supportive, approachable, and lenient. However, permissive parents do not establish boundaries for their children and rarely enforced the rules. As a result, society may see permissive parents as less legitimate (Laurson & Collins, 2009; Trinkner et al., 2012). Youths who perceived their fathers as permissive had less socially desirable adjustment outcomes than youths who perceived their fathers as authoritarian or authoritative (Kausar & Shafique, 2008). Failure to monitor and control their children’s behavior, and to recognize and punish deviant behavior, leads to lack of self-control in children, further increasing the risk of delinquency (Hoeve et al., 2008). Finally, Church et al. (2015) noted that young black males with lax family rules, curfew expectations, and parental monitoring experienced high levels of delinquency. Neglectful parenting: Youths with neglectful parents often lack adult supervision (e.g., leaving young children alone for long time periods or leaving children in the care of persons who may be abusive) or assumed inappropriate responsibilities for the care of younger siblings. Neglectful parents tend to detach themselves emotionally from their children, provide minimal response to their needs (Hirschi, 1977; Lee et al., 2006) and

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often overlook accessibility to illicit drugs, weapons, and/or pornography in younger children’s reach (Samuels, 2011). Of all parenting styles, neglectful parents were at greatest risk of having youths involved in delinquency (Simons & Conger, 2007; Hoeve et al., 2011). Attachment to Parents Simultaneous with Baumrind’s (1971) work, Hirschi’s (1969) social bonding theory emphasized conventional bonds and attachment to parents and/or guardians. This now classical criminological theory suggested that delinquency is more likely when bonds between society and individuals are weakened, with respect to parental attachment, commitment to conventional goals, involvement in legitimate activities, and belief in the law. Of the four elements of the social bond, attachment to parents has been found to be a strong indicator of delinquency (McCluskey & Tovar, 2003) especially for young females charged with felonies (Alarid, Burton & Cullen, 2000). Parent-child connections were better predictors of future delinquency than were other social indicators, such as income or family type (Collishaw et al., 2011). Positive parent-child attachments yield lower levels of delinquency, particularly when attachments to both parents are strong, more so than when strong attachments are present with only one parent (Rankin & Kern, 1994). If the attachment between child and parent is weak and youths no longer care about their parents’ reactions, youths become more likely to commit delinquent acts because they perceive that they have less to lose. This lack of attachment to their parents arguably leads to a lack of respect toward teachers and other authority figures (Hirschi, 1977), and is a known pathway to delinquency when it is replaced with attachment to deviant peers (Laurson & Collins, 2009; Thornberry, 1987). There are various ways to define parental attachment, but most definitions include love and affection, respect, and communication between parent and child. Some definitions also extend to type and level of supervision and quantity or quality of interaction. While it is expected that parental attachment will play a role in youth delinquency, the focus of this study was on parenting styles. Thus, parental attachment is a control variable in the analyses. Hypotheses Because neglectful parents are deficient in both supervision/control and warmth/ emotional support, this parenting style should be the most damaging to youth development and behavior. Thus, we hypothesize (H1) that for both mothers and fathers, a neglectful parenting style is associated with more youth delinquency than other parenting styles. For the second and third hypotheses, we predict gender-specific effects of parenting styles (mother versus father) on youth delinquency. Baumrind (1991) posited that “traditional parenting” is where a father is either authoritative or authoritarian and a mother is indulgent/permissive. If this combination is normative, or “functional,” we hypothesize


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that deviation will result in a higher delinquency level. Thus, for H2, we predict that fathers with a permissive parenting style will have a greater effect on increasing youth delinquency than mothers with a permissive parenting style. Kausar and Shafique (2008) found that youths who perceived their fathers as permissive had less socially desirable adjustment outcomes than youths who perceived their fathers as authoritarian or authoritative. However, this was a study in Pakistan, which presents arguably a different cultural context than the U.S. We are cautious with this prediction, however, because some recent research notes that fathers with a traditional gender ideology show less parental involvement than fathers with an egalitarian ideology (Bulanda, 2004; Sabattini & Leaper, 2004). This research threatens our hypothesis because fathers’ involvement has been shown to have strong positive effects on youth outcomes (Pruett, Cowan, Cowan, & Pruett, 2000). Furthermore, some studies have found that between 50 and 75 percent of two-parent families use the same parenting style (Fletcher, Steinberg, & Sellers, 1999). Lastly, Simons and Conger (2007) also found that the least common gender-specific parenting style combination was an indulgent father and strict mother. In the current study, 54.4 percent of youths rated both parents as permissive, which appears to be a high enough incidence of off-paired parental ratings to observe an effect. Youths more commonly perceived mothers as nurturers, caretakers and providers of emotional security (Biblarz & Stacey, 2010). Mothers are known to speak more softly to their children, and to emphasize thoughts and feelings more so than fathers (Ashraf & Najam, 2011). Thus, if a mother behaves outside these gender norms, this behavior is predicted to have a more negative effect on children than if a father lacked emotional support/warmth. The third and final hypothesis (H3) is that mothers who are perceived to be authoritarian will be more likely to have children engaged in delinquency than fathers who are authoritarian. In the current study, 48.1 percent of youths rated both parents as authoritarian.

METHODS We used the 1997 National Longitudinal Study of Youth (NLSY97), a representative sample of nearly 9,000 U.S. youth. In 1997 the Bureau of Labor Statistics took a random, multi-stage cluster sample of youths 12 to 16 years old as of December 31, 1996 and living in the U.S. The initial wave consists of a cross-sectional sample of respondents representative of all youths (N = 6,748) and an oversample of black and Hispanic youths (N = 2,236). These panel data contain a wide range of information collected on respondents each year, including their delinquency levels, arrests, and other legal and social indicators such as relationships with parents.1 Most of the information is obtained through youth self-reports with additional information gathered from the youths’ 1 The NLSY97 uses the term “Uninvolved” to capture the “Neglectful” parenting style. These appear to be synonymous.

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parents. With the exception of items that are constant over time (such as sex), each indicator in the study is measured at each wave of analysis. There were 6,366 youths residing with a mother and a father figure in 1997 (Wave 1). Of these youths, 4,351 had a valid youth rating for both mothers’ and fathers’ parenting style in 1998. There were no significant differences between the Wave 1 and Wave 2 sample used in the study. The largest difference was with delinquency, which was five percent lower at Wave 1 than at Wave 2. We utilized Wave 2 to be able to control for criminal history (described in ‘Control Variables’ below). Measures The dependent variable, youth delinquency, was measured using a self-report questionnaire completed by the youths regarding engagement in illegal acts over the 12 months before the 1998 interview (Wave 2 of the NLSY). Respondents reported the number of times they committed delinquent acts ranging in severity from substance use/ abuse and minor theft to assault with injury and carrying a firearm (11 total items in the survey). As the number of cases tapers off in the higher frequency scores, skewing the variable, all items are truncated at “6 or more.” These items were combined to form a continuous delinquency index ranging from 0 to 66 (a = .70). The independent variable, parenting style, was a combination of two self-reported measures.2 The first measure asked youths to rate each parent separately regarding the parents’ level of support of the youth (responsiveness). Responses were initially measured on a three-point scale: very supportive, somewhat supportive, and not supportive. Very supportive was recoded as 1 for “high responsiveness,” and the latter two were collapsed and recoded as 0 for “low responsiveness.” The second measure asked youths whether each parent was permissive (coded as 0 for “low demandingness”) or strict (coded as 1 for “high demandingness”). The two items were then merged to create the four parenting styles defined earlier by Maccoby and Martin (1983). Control Variables Youth respondent’s sex was dichotomous (1 = male; 0 = female). Age was a continuous variable, ranging from 13 to 19 in 1998. The youth’s criminal history and delinquent propensity were addressed by asking whether the youth was ever arrested before 1998 (yes/no composite from Wave 1 and Wave 2). Parental attachment was a threeitem scale of youth perceptions of each parent separately, where responses for each item range from strongly disagree (0) to strongly agree (4). Youths were asked the extent to which they (1) enjoyed spending time with mom/dad, (2) think highly of mom/dad, and (3) the extent to which mom/dad praises the youth for doing well. This 3-item parental attachment measure has been used in previous research with this same data set 2 Parenting Style is a pre-constructed variable in the NLSY97. There are extensive notes on the rationale for its construction, its psychometric properties, and validity specifications in the NLSY97 User’s Guide (see Center for Human Resource Research 2011).


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(McCluskey & Tovar, 2003; Tapia, Alarid & Hutcherson, 2015). The Cronbach’s alpha reliability score was .63 for mothers and .71 for fathers.3 Analytic Approach We compared delinquency levels for each of the four parenting styles described above by combining mothers and fathers for the full sample in 1998 (n = 4,351). The sample was divided by parent gender (mothers and fathers), and delinquency levels were re-examined for each parenting style. Finally, using multivariate regression we controlled for youth gender, age, prior arrests, and parental attachment to examine the relationship between parenting style and the child’s delinquency. We estimated Poisson regression models for mothers and fathers separately. Listwise deletion of cases missing on independent variables yielded n = 3,920 or 91 percent of the original sample in the final regression models.

FINDINGS As an initial point of analysis, we examined the extent to which parents differed on parenting style, as reported by their children. A cross-tabulation of parenting styles (not shown) reveals a correspondence rate of 64.5 percent on Authoritativeness, 48.1 percent on Authoritarianism, 54.4 percent on Permissiveness, and 42 percent on Neglectfulness. Figure 2 contains the mean reported delinquency level in the 12 months before the 1998 interview, according to each predominate parenting style for both parents combined. Interestingly, 53.8 percent of the sample reported no delinquent episodes. Average delinquency scores did not exceed 3.8 across parenting styles. Figure 2 shows that Neglectful parents had children with the highest delinquency rates (M = 3.78), followed by Authoritarian parents (M = 3.31). T-tests in Table 1 indicated whether the delinquency levels reported for each parenting style were significantly different from the remainder of the sample. Delinquency among youths with Neglectful parents was significantly higher than with the other three styles, which supported H1. Delinquency among youths who reported overly strict Authoritarian parents was slightly higher, but the difference was not significant. Permissive and Authoritative parents had significantly lower delinquency levels than the remaining sample. Hypothesis 2 predicted that having a permissive father would be associated with more delinquency than having a permissive mother. But the overall data pattern of Figure 3 generally followed that of Figure 2, where Neglectful and Authoritarian parenting was associated with more youth delinquency than the other parenting styles. Only small changes in delinquency levels for each parenting style occurred by gender. 3 Pearson’s bivariate correlations between responsiveness and attachment is .10, (p < .01) for mothers and .11 (p. < .05) for fathers. Although moderately correlated, it does not appear that these two items measure the same dimension. Moreover, the individual measure for Supportiveness per se is not used in the study, it is only part of the composite measure for parenting style.

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Figure 2. Delinquency Level by Parenting Style (Both Parents Combined) 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Neglecul

Permissive

Authoritarian

Authoritave

Opposite the prediction in Hypothesis 2, youths with permissive mothers engaged in slightly more delinquency (M = 2.05) than youths with permissive fathers (M = 1.86), and this effect was not much different between boys and girls (see Figure 3). The difference by parent gender was not statistically significant (t = 2.9). Hypothesis 3 predicted that Authoritarian mothers would be associated with more delinquency than Authoritarian fathers. The slight differences seen in Figure 3 were not statistically significant (t = 0.12), even between boys and girls. Separate regressions for each parent may illustrate whether this relationship is mediated by other variables. To account for other possible confounding influences on the delinquency-parental style relationship, we used Poisson regression to properly analyze the count-based dependent variable. Count-variables with many zero values and with no theoretical upper limit (e.g., number of delinquent acts) are well suited to analysis with a Poisson regression procedure. Zero was the modal response on delinquent counts, with 54 percent of youths TABLE 1 Delinquency Level by Parenting Style Self-Reported Delinquency 1998 Parenting Styles

Mean (s.d.)

t-value

Neglectful All Others

3.77 (6.87) 2.91 (6.08)

2.851*

Permissive All Others

2.16 (4.82) 3.09 (6.32)

4.587*

Authoritarian All Others

3.31 (6.62) 2.91 (6.06)

1.826

Authoritative All Others

1.41 (3.77) 3.52 (6.70)

13.204*


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Figure 3. Delinquency Level by Parenting Style by Parent and Child Sex 6.

Mothers

Delinquency Level

5.

Fathers

4. 3. 2. 1. 0. Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Neglect.

Permiss. Authoritar.

Authoritat.

Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Boys Girls Neglect.

Permiss. Authoritar. Authoritat.

reporting no delinquent acts within a 12-month period. Delinquency figures were highly dispersed around the mean, with the variance about double the mean size. Negative binomial regression may be able to yield valid estimates when the data are over-dispersed in this way (Long & Freese, 2003), but negative binomial regression is limited by possible distortion of effects and potential intercept shift (Cameron & Trivedi, 2013). Poisson models tend to be less affected by over-dispersion in panel data (like the NLSY97) than in cross sectional data (Wooldridge, 2002). Table 2 contains the distribution of all variables used in the regression analyses. Youth gender is well-balanced in the sample, at 51.2 percent male and 48.8 percent female. The average age of youths in this Wave was 16 years. Five percent of the sample had an arrest before 1998.4 The levels of attachment to mom and dad were comparable with mean attachment to mom at 9.21 and mean attachment to dad at 8.72. Regression Analyses Regression analyses were performed for mothers in Table 3 and fathers in Table 4. Model 1 (Parenting) entered all parental variables, to include parenting style and level of attachment. As the most favorable parenting style reflected both in the literature (Darling, 1999; Lee et al., 2006; Trinkner et al., 2012) and in bivariate analyses, the Authoritative parenting style was the omitted category in regression, against which coefficients for all other parenting styles were compared. Model 2 added in the study’s delinquency variables, and Model 3 added youth demographics. In Table 3, Model 1 showed that relative to Authoritative mothers, all other mothering styles were associated with statistically significant increases in youth delinquency levels. The value of R2 jumped significantly with the addition of the delinquency variables 4 Prior delinquency without arrest (not shown) is a much more common behavior by American youth, with 53 percent reporting engaging in some type of delinquency.

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TABLE 2 Distribution of Variables Used in Regression Analyses Mean (SD)

Variable

%

Min

Max

Delinquency

2.96 (6.13)

–

0

66

Youth Male Youth Female

– –

51.2 48.8

0 0

1 1

15.97 (1.44)

–

13

19

.05 (.23)

–

0

1

Attachment to Mom 1998

9.21 (2.36)

–

0

12

Attachment to Dad 1998

8.72 (2.72)

–

0

12

Youth Age in 1998 Prior Arrests in 1998

in Model 2. In this Model, the Authoritarian style remained positive and significant. All other parenting styles lost significance with the addition of these items. The level of Attachment between youths and their mothers had a slight negative effect on delinquency, but it was not significant. Prior arrests had a positive, significant effect on current delinquency, with a large coefficient relative to those of parenting items. With the TABLE 3 Poisson Regression of Mother’s Parenting Style on Youth Delinquency Parenting

INTERCEPT Authoritarian Permissive Neglectful Parental Attachment Prior Youth Arrests Youth Age Youth Gender (1 = Male) Pseudo R² Number of Observations

Delinquency

B

SE

B

.78* .65** .35* .81*** .04 – – – .03 3,960

.33 .21 .17 .21 .03 – – –

.27 .53*** .14 .29 .02 2.34*** – – .33 3,920

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed)

Full Model

SE .25 .15 .13 .19 .02 .11 – –

B 1.72 .52*** .14 .31 .02 2.26*** .13* .26* .34 3,920

SE .97 .16 .14 .19 .02 .11 .06 .11


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TABLE 4 Poisson Regression of Father’s Parenting Style on Youth Delinquency Parenting

Intercept Authoritarian Permissive Neglectful Parental Attachment Prior Youth Arrests Youth Age Youth Gender (1= Male) Pseudo R² Number of Observations

Delinquency

B

SE

B

SE

.53 .87*** .46* .92*** .04 – – – .05 3,960

.35 .23 .21 .23 .03 – – –

.07 .63*** .33* .49* .02 2.23*** – – .30 3,920

.28 .17 .17 .20 .02 .14 – –

Full Model B 2.25 .61*** .34* .47* .02 2.18*** .15* .27* .31 3,920

SE 1.11 .17 .16 .20 .02 .14 .07 .13

*p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < .001 (two-tailed)

addition of youth demographic variables in Model 3, the Authoritarian parenting style remained positive and significant with little difference from Model 2. No other parenting variables regained significance in the full model. Youth Age and Gender (Male) were positive and significant, which are both normative findings in the delinquency literature. Table 4 showed the effect of Fathers’ parenting style on delinquency for comparison to that of Mothers. Overall, the model fit was remarkably similar for mothers and fathers. Pseudo r-squared was within a similar range for both parent genders and a sizeable jump in this statistic from Model 1 to Model 2 was present for both. As with mothers, the R2 remained the same with the addition of demographics in Model 3 for fathers. For Fathers, the Authoritarian coefficient, like that of Mothers, was positive and significant throughout all models. However, the remaining parenting styles were positive and significant for fathers relative to the Authoritative category. Neglect and Permissiveness among fathers significantly increased youth delinquency levels Contrary to our expectation, parental attachment had no effect on delinquency for either parent gender. Attachment was negatively associated with delinquency for both parents, but it was a very weak association that never reached significance. Finally, youth gender and age had nearly identical effects on delinquency (positive and significant), controlling for parenting variables.

DISCUSSION The current study examined the effect of parenting styles on delinquency and focused on the extent to which parent gender played a role controlling for youth gender. Clearly, parents can play a critical socialization role in curbing or reducing socially improper behavior (Andrews, 1998), and these effects may be gendered. The study

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yielded several notable findings in this regard and at least one unexpected finding. First, as predicted, neglectful parenting was associated with the highest level of youth delinquency in bivariate tests. This finding was consistent with previous research that compared the four parenting styles (Simons & Conger, 2007). However, it was ultimately true only for fathers, as evidenced in regression. Perhaps the form of parental neglect by fathers is qualitatively different than that of mothers in a way that corresponds to increased levels of delinquency. For example, there is a notable track record of children who follow in their criminal parents’ footsteps in the literature on this topic (Besemer 2012; Farrington, 2011) and males, regardless of age are more involved in crime and delinquency. Neglect by the father includes exposing their children to criminogenic factors and situations, which may be captured in these data. In terms of functional policy responses, the juvenile justice and foster care systems were created in part to respond to the needs of dependent and neglected children who were at risk of becoming delinquent (Barn & Tan, 2012). Consistent with much of the prior research, the authoritarian parenting style was also correlated with youth delinquency. It was a robust correlation that held up for both parents. Our hypothesis on this category (H2) was not supported, as the findings suggested that authoritarian mothers had the same effect on delinquency as authoritarian fathers (a slightly weaker effect, in fact). These findings suggest that youths respond similarly to a stern or disciplinarian parent, regardless of the parent’s gender. For permissive parenting styles, we hypothesized that this quality in fathers would tend to increase delinquency in children because fathers are more often seen as authority figures. We reasoned that without a strong rule-setting father, children would be more likely to stray into delinquency. Here, indeed, the data did show a gender difference with respect to permissive parents. Ultimately, this parenting style had no effect on delinquency for youths of permissive moms, but it had a positive, significant effect with dads. Our findings here were consistent with Kausar and Shafique’s (2008) study, which found that youths who perceived their fathers as permissive had less socially desirable adjustment outcomes. However, Kausar and Shafique’s findings (2008) are from a sample of families from Pakistan. In terms of the gendered effects in the current study, the regression models overall “behave” rather similarly for both mothers and fathers, but there are several key differences to highlight. First, the results suggested that fathers’ parenting styles had a greater influence on delinquency than mothers’. This distinction is evidenced by stronger coefficients for fathers on all parental style variables, and by the fact that fathers registered significant differences in three parenting styles versus only one for mothers. This finding is consistent with previous research, particularly for the effect that fathers may have on their sons’ behavior (Hoeve et al., 2009). Specifically, the current study found that fathers who neglected their children and who were overly permissive with them were more likely to have delinquent children. Compared to other recent studies, youth attachment to parents was far less important to predicting youth delinquency in the current study. This comparison appears to specify some of the findings in recent research that includes a test of this issue. For example, Hoeve et al. (2009) found that poor paternal support among fathers was more


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strongly related to youth delinquency than maternal support among mothers. More generally, a father’s involvement has positive effects on families and a strong influence on the development of children socially, emotionally, and cognitively (Pruett, Cowan, Cowan, & Pruett, 2000). By contrast, we found parental attachment to be equally unimportant to predicting delinquency for both parent genders. This finding may seem contrary to previous findings (Anderson, Holmes, & Ostresh, 1999; Fagan et al. 2011; McCluskey &Tovar, 2003; Rankin & Kern, 1994), but these previous studies did not account for parenting styles. Ordinary least squares models produced in earlier phases of our study showed that parental attachment was a significant protective factor against children’s delinquency for mothers only. However, when we used the more appropriate count-based Poisson model, the finding did not hold. This circumstance may suggest that findings regarding attachment to parents in studies of this type may be prone to change with alternate modeling, in that it is a methodological artifact of some studies. Limitations The current study was designed to examine two-parent households. The structure of the family has changed, with more children now living in single parent households and in shared custody arrangements than in traditional two-parent households (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Future studies should consider these other living arrangements. A second methodological concern was that parenting style was a youth-generated measure, and thus may not be highly reliable over time. It has been noted that adolescent assessments of support and other parenting dynamics are arguably more valid than parents’ self-assessments because youths are more sensitive to changes in parental style and support (Laird, Pettit, Bates, & Dodge, 2003). Yet, Simons and Conger (2007) find that observer ratings of parent-child interactions and child self-reports had low agreement rates for classifying parenting style. Still, we must remember that family relationships are often complex and dynamic. Where youth temperaments can be volatile, there is much potential for variations in youth-generated parent ratings to be situational (Assor & Tal, 2012; Laurson & Collins 2009; van Aken, van Lieshout, Scholte, & Branje. 1999), which was not captured by our design. We did not average out the youths’ scores over time, for example. In this research context, a longitudinal design comes with its own set of problems, however. Repeated measures of youth-generated parenting styles will yield some amount of change in reported parenting style across years and thus the proportion of the sample that falls into any particular parenting style will shift in the aggregate. Such a study also has higher youth attrition because in this age range, living arrangements are prone to change significantly from year to year (Tapia, Alarid, & Hutcherson, 2015). A final potential limitation of our study was that the effects of parenting styles on delinquency might vary by neighborhood context, race, and/or ethnicity. Neighborhoods and race/ethnicity were not central concepts in our study, but research on the differing effects of parenting styles and delinquency suggest that authoritarian parenting may be more necessary in socially disorganized neighborhoods or places where deviant behaviors

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are more commonplace. Recent theoretical work suggests important distinctions in how many African-American parents raise their children versus Caucasian parents (Unnever & Gabbidon, 2011). In addition, past studies have found race-ethnic differences on attachment and delinquency (McCluskey & Tovar, 2003), which also went unmeasured in the current study. Therefore, future studies may wish to consider how race/ethnicity, neighborhood variables, and living arrangements affect youth delinquency, and to explore more deeply why fathers’ parenting styles had a greater influence on delinquency than mothers’. Policy implications of our findings include encouraging more fathers of delinquent youths to attend parenting classes to better understand the negative effects of their absence or abusive behaviors on child outcomes.

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