The study by McCord (1991) seeks to identify whether there exists given factors related to child-rearing that have an influence on the child’s likelihood of becoming delinquent. The author also seeks to know whether home environment, in general, is a good ground for associating crime with socialization conditions. Another important question that the author of this article seeks to answer is whether criminal tendencies seen at different ages are as a result of similar influences.
To answer these questions, McCord (1991) studied 232 boys from a treatment program which was instituted to curb delinquency. These boys had been recruited into the program through random sampling. It is important to note that the sample composed of both well-behaved and misbehaved boys. Case reports were taken by counselors after at least five years of frequent visitations; when the boys were between 10 and 16 years. From the counselors’ reports, various family variables that are related to a child’s upbringing were derived to form a basis for data analyses. Such variables included “family structure, family conflict, esteem of each parent for the other, parental supervision and disciplinary characteristics, parental warmth, self confidence, role, and aggressiveness” (McCord 400). Data was collected by recording cases after frequent visits to the boys’ homes by counselors for a period of at least 5 years. This is enough time to establish patterns as far as the family variables are concerned and make good follow-up; thus strengthening the basis for making inferences. The various ratings on test variables were coded appropriately to allow for quantitative analysis.
Results from McCord (1991) indicated relationships between child delinquency and how competent the mother is in child-rearing, how the father interacts with his family and expectations of the family. To be specific, a higher likelihood of experiencing child delinquency was related to poor child upbringing. In families where mother competency was high, father interaction was good and family expectations were high; juvenile delinquency was very unlikely. This is unlike the case where incompetent mothers brought up their children in a family that had low expectations and father interaction was wanting.
The author established that instances of serious crimes committed during childhood were mainly associated with families where mother’s competence was rated low as well as families that had little expectations for the participants. The relationship between likelihood of committing a serious crime as a juvenile and poor paternal interaction was established as a weak one.
In regard to the relationship between the effect of various factors involved in a child’s upbringing and the likelihood of becoming a criminal during adulthood, varied findings were made. An outstanding factor in this relationship was the involvement of the father in the family whereby paternal family interactions greatly and independently contributed to criminal tendencies during adulthood. In cases where the father was rated as being aggressive, the likelihood of the boy turning out as a criminal during adulthood was found to be very high. In the same manner, a family where the father conflicted often with family members resulted into higher likelihood of boys turning out as criminals as adults. The competence of the mother in this case was very weakly correlated to adult criminality.
A positive relationship was established between juvenile delinquency and adult criminality. The adult criminality effect was found to be aggravated by other child-rearing factors such as poor paternal interaction. In other words, childhood delinquency and paternal interaction were identified as critical factors in determining adult criminality.
It is evident that some of the participants were lost to follow-up. The difficulty in tracking the participants, especially due to death and migration, is a good indication of follow-up hardships which weakens grounds for making conclusions. All in all, this prospective study was very effective in establishing relationships between the study variables. The true outcomes of the participants as far as the research variables are concerned may not have been reflected during the follow-up. For instance, it was evident that tracking the full criminal records for the participants was somewhat difficult. Even in cases where official records were identified, the author clearly states that these records may not have fully reflected the crimes committed by the individuals. The implication of this is that the findings of this study cannot be generalized without caution. This prospective design however helped in clearly indentifying that persons who commit serious crimes during childhood often turn out to be hardcore criminals during adulthood.
This study controlled for confounding factors by recruiting participants who had similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Failure to control for confounding variables gives erroneous findings since the influence of such factors is not accounted for. This study therefore proves to be more accurate in its findings since confounding factors were taken care of.
McCord (1991) made several conclusions from this study. Children who are brought up by competent mothers are insulated from childhood delinquency since these mothers offer leadership to their children, they discipline their children in a non-punitive manner, and they show affection to their children. If the family heaps high expectations on the child, competent mothers bring up a child who is even less likely to become delinquent or a criminal as an adult. This implies that where mother competence lacks, children are at a high risk of becoming delinquent (Carlson and Corcoran 780). While paternal interactions were found to be less significant in influencing childhood delinquency, they were identified as a critical factor in influencing a boy’s adult criminality tendencies.
Another important conclusion made by McCord (1991) is that good paternal interactions with the spouse lead to socialized behaviors. Poor paternal interactions with the spouse, however, have a great influence on the child’s antisocial behaviors; and the child is more likely to turn out as a criminal during adulthood (Teachman et al 836).
The significance of this study in understanding criminality and childhood delinquency is portrayed by the author where she points out that the study shows weakness in prior schools of thoughts on criminal behavior. In particular, the author has weakened the argument that all crimes have a similar cause regardless of the age at which the criminal commits them. The argument that crime is simply a symptom of a certain disorder, whether the criminal is a child, teen or an adult was also put into question in this study.
Despite this study coming up with substantiated conclusions, it would be very unwise to generalize the findings of this study. This is because the sample is made of participants of one gender only. It is therefore not appropriate to assume that similar findings would be deduced if the participants were girls only, or a mix of girls and boys (Bloom and Covington 1).
Bias in data collection has been greatly eliminated by the author’s decision to use direct observations as a data collection approach. If the researcher relied on responses from the boys or their parents, the likelihood of the participants providing false information would have been high. Observation as a data collection method is nonetheless criticized since the participants are likely to act in a given pattern (obstructive or to please the observer) once they identify that they are being observed. This, to some extent, weakens the credibility of the case reports recorded by the authors.
This study conducted a reliability test using the “Scott’s interater reliability coefficient, pi”… on “10% random sample” (McCord 403). Reliability measures the degree to which a research instrument yields consistent results and hence reliability highly influences the accuracy of data collected. The results in this study can therefore be regarded as reliable.
Quantitative data can be analyzed by three statistical data analysis tools: descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and test statistics. Inferential statistics helps the researchers to make conclusions and predictions in relation to the properties of a population using the information from the sample size. Descriptive statistics helps the researcher obtain information about central tendency, kurtosis, skew and dispersion of data. Inferential statistics also help the researcher to obtain information of on the relationship between variables (Taylor-Powell and Renner 5). The author has analyzed the data quantitatively after coding the variable measures accordingly.
In this study, McCord (1991) provided descriptive statistics such as percentages and frequencies to describe the characteristics of the sample. ANOVA was used as an inferential statistic to identify relationships among family factors and childhood delinquency. Chi-Square was used as a test statistic for indicating how strong the above relationships were.
Works Cited
Bloom, Barbara E. and Covington, Stephanie S. Effective gender-responsive interventions in juvenile justice: Addressing the lives of delinquent girls. Paper Presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology Atlanta, Georgia.
Carlson, Marcia J. and Corcoran, Mary E. “Family structure and children’s behavioral and cognitive outcomes.” Journal of Marriage and Family 63.3 (2001): 779-792. Print.
McCord, Joan. “Family relationships, juvenile delinquency, and adult criminality.” Criminology 29.3 (1991): 397-417. Print.
Taylor-Powell, Ellen and Renner Marcus. “Analyzing qualitative data.” Program and Development & Evaluation. University of Wisconsin-Extension. 2003.
Teachman, Jay, Day Randal, Paasch Kathleen, Carver Karen and Call Vaughn. “Sibling resemblance in behavioral and cognitive outcomes: The role of father presence.” Journal of Marriage and Family 60.4 (1998): 835-848. Print.