Delinquency in Adolescent Children of Divorce.

Abstract

The burgeoning literature on children of divorce has focused attention on psychopathology and delinquent behavior. For the most part, however, these problems have been studied in clinical and delinquent populations. Few studies have been conducted on truly normative, non-self-selected populations. Those which have been based on normative populations have, in some cases, generated doubts about the long-term deleterious effects of parental divorce. The present study addresses the issue of relationships between delinquency and psychopathology in a normative population of adolescent children of divorce. A national sample of 1,395 adolescents was interviewed, using st and ard sampling techniques and a structured interview. From this sample, 119 children of divorce were identified as subjects to be compared with 991 children from intact homes. Four measures of delinquent behavior served as the bases for comparisons. These measures were indices of frequency of all delinquent acts, frequency of serious delinquent acts, seriousness of delinquent behavior, and delinquent self-image. Eight psychological and cognitive factors were chosen, based on the literature in this area, as predictors to delinquency. Children of divorce were found to be significantly more delinquent than children from intact homes. This finding was true on all four measures of delinquency among the girls, and on the two measures of frequencies of delinquent behaviors among the boys. Children of divorce of both sexes had significantly lower school grades than did their same-sex peers from intact homes. Additionally, male children of divorce were more anxious, and female children of divorce felt more acutely a sense of having more problems than their peers. Only school grades, however, had a significant impact on the relationship between domestic status and delinquency, attenuating the significance of that relationship completely among the boys while leaving it unaffected among the girls.