Familial Experience, Identification, and Female Delinquency

The general thesis of this paper is that female delinquency may be explained in large part by the failure of girls to identify with their parents, and the resulting failure of the parents to effectively their daughter's behavior. The lack of structured interaction between parent and child (i.e., interaction characterized by parental behavior which is nurturant, consistent, and persistent) is seen as the underlying cause of the failure to identify. Some of the work which tends to support this thesis will be briefly outlined below. Socialization, Identification, and Delinquency Several authors have conceived of delinquency as resulting from inadequate or faulty socialization. Reiss (1951), for example, has suggested that delinquency may be explained in part as a relative absence of norms and rules governing be havior in conformity with the norms of the social system to which legal penalties are attached. Nye (1956) notes that society has produced a number of agencies of social to induce the child to obey rules and regulations rather than to break them, the most important of which is the family. The parents' role as socializing agent, he states (1958), is effected through the direct control they impose upon their children by means of restriction, reward and punishment, through internalized control insofar as they are responsible for the development of the child's superego or The authors wish to express their appreciation to the Department of Sociology, Purdue University, for providing travel funds and other expenses incidental to this research.