Criminology

Jennifer Roback Morse in her article Parents or Prisons argues that there is an extraordinarily strong causal relation between being raised in a single-family household and juvenile behaviors that are classified as delinquent or criminal.  In support of this argument she presents a wealth of empirical evidence, both within and outside of the United States, and she further notes that some of these studies have controlled potential juvenile delinquency risk factors such as poverty in an effort to more precisely determine whether and to what extant being raised in a single-parent household affects juvenile behavior and life choices.  All of the evidence taken together, to be sure, persuasively suggests that children and juveniles are highly dependent on the social setting in which they are raised with respect to social types of behavior, positive types of socialization, and whether they will ultimately behave in ways that are deemed delinquent or criminal.  One of the most shocking implications of this empirical evidence, in Morses view, is that adult decisions to marry and divorce are not purely private decisions.  She reasons that because adult decisions to raise a child in a single-family household expose the children to greater risks of delinquency and incarceration, what she terms the spillover effects, society should begin to view these traditionally private decisions as a larger social issue involving the countrys children rather than as a purely private decision.  This is quite a provocative statement, particularly in a country unaccustomed to having family decisions too intimately monitored or regulated except in extreme instances, and yet the evidence strongly supports Morses commentary in certain respects.  There does seem to be, in short, a very strong correlation between being raised in a single-family household and subsequent types of juvenile delinquency that transcend other risk factors such as poverty, child abuse, and even mental illness.

If there is one shortcoming in Morses article, it is that her assertions are perhaps too broad.  More specifically, there is evidence to suggest that a blanket assertion to the effect that single family households cause juvenile delinquency is slightly misleading.  It is misleading because, in a study dealing with the children of single mothers, it was found that the effects of single-mother families on adolescent problem behaviors depend on race, gender, and the quality of the relationship with the nonresident father HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5035139000(Thomas, Farrell  Barnes, 1996, p. 885).  There are therefore different types of single family households that are better predictors of juvenile delinquency rather than a monolithic type of single family household which Morse seems to imply.  With respect to single family households classified according to race and gender, for example, it was discovered that the most serious types of negative impacts occurred for white male children raised in single-mother families in which the father retains no involvement on the other hand, Black males in single-mother families without father involvement do as well as those living with both biological parents HYPERLINK httpwww.questiaschool.comPM.qstaod5035139000(Thomas, Farrell  Barnes, 1996, p. 890).  This contrary type of finding, using race and gender, seems to suggest that while Morses focus on the family unit is necessary that she ought to have engaged in a more nuanced analysis to acknowledge and analyze how factors such as race and gender affect children in single family households.  This is not meant to suggest that Morse is incorrect, for she provides substantial statistical data in support of her assertions, but instead meant to suggest that the research data presents a more complex type of single family household than Morse presents in her article.  All single-family households, in effect, are not the same and it would be a mistake to proceed upon such a sameness basis rather than more carefully dissecting the constituent parts of different single family household structures.

In the final analysis, Morses assertion of a strong causal connection between single family households and juvenile delinquency is persuasive as far as her reasoning extends the primary weakness, however, is that she seems to view single family households a bit too narrowly.  This could have dangerous consequences were marriage and divorce decisions to be deemed a public concern because this type of generalized assertion fails to account for deeper causes related to race, gender, and the sociocultural peculiarities related to those deeper characteristics of the single family household.  Nonetheless, it would appear rather fair to conclude that many single family households do place children at risk in several respects.