Parental Attachments and Delinquency*

Using the 1972 National Survey of Youth, we analyze attachment to mother and father along several dimensions (i.e., intimacy of communication, affectional identification, supervision, and family activities). We test two hypotheses: (1) as long as a child is strongly attached to one parent, strong ties to the other parent play an insignificant role in reducing delinquency further and (2) single‐parent homes are not associated with delinquency as long as the child is strongly attached to the custodial parent. Generally, we find that children who are strongly attached to both parents have a lower probability of self‐reported delinquency than children who are strongly attached to only one parent. Further, children living in single‐parent homes who are strongly attached to the custodial parent generally have a greater probability of committing delinquent acts than children living in intact homes who are strongly attached to both parents.