Direct Parental Controls and Delinquency*

Until recently, “direct controls” by parents have been summarily dismissed by delinquency researchers as theoretically and empirically unimportant. Although prior research indicates that various measures of direct parental controls (e.g., the amount of time spent interacting with parents) are related to delinquency, the correlations are uniformly weak and often not significant. However, when the term “direct control” is reconceptualized to include specific components—normative regulation, monitoring, and punishment—the results indicate that direct controls by parents have as great an impact on delinquency as that of “direct controls” or parental “attachments.” Further, the results suggest that the form of the relation between direct controls and delinquency is not simple, direct, and linear. Depending on which specific component of direct control is examined, its relationship to delinquency may be either linear or nonlinear, positive or inverse.