A Sociological Study Of Family Structure And Juvenile Delinquency

The “Broken Home” or Broken Society A Sociological Study of Family Structure and Juvenile Delinquency By Hillary R. Sheehan Advised by Professor Chris Bickel SocS 461, 462 Senior Project Social Science Department College of Liberal Arts CALIFORNIA POLYTECHNIC STATE UNIVERSITY Winter, 2010 © 2010 Hillary Sheehan Delinquency 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page Research Proposal…………………………………………………………………………3 Annotated Bibliography…………………………………………………………………...5 Outline……………………………………………………………………………………10 Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………..14 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………15 The “Broken Home”: Truth or Trend……………………………………………15 Statistics on Single-Parent Families and Juvenile Delinquency…………………21 Case Study……………………………………………………………………….23
Methodology • Secondary analysis o Data from Add Health o Recoding, Frequencies and Crosstabulation using SPSS Delinquency 12 • Hypothesis o Single-parents are more likely to have their adolescent children involved in delinquency, than are two biological, married parents. (Trying to prove this wrong but can’t use null hypothesis in data analysis) • Definition of variables o Single-parent: a biological parent who cares for one or more children, without the assistance of another [the other biological] parent in the home. o Juvenile Delinquency: conduct by a child, younger than 18 years old, characterized by antisocial behavior that is beyond parental control and therefore subject to legal action (i.e. arrested or convicted of a crime). VIII. Analysis • Supports Hypothesis or not • Problems, strengths, weaknesses, etc. • Future research IX. Theories • Labeling Theory o Tannenbaum, Lemert, & Becker o Definition: “The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is the behavior that people so label” (Leighninger,