Male Juvenile Delinquents' Parenting Style And Self-Control

In this study, we explore juvenile delinquency main from parenting styles and self-control. The aims of this study are list as follows: exploring the conditions of the juvenile delinquents'parenting styles and self-control: testing the explanatory power of the"general theory of crime"on criminal behaviors in the context of Chinese culture.Two groups including male juvenile delinquents and male public middle school students are tested in this study, 166 male juvenile delinquents are randomly selected from juvenile prison in Zhengzhou, the average age is 17.10 years; 182 male public middle school students including junior two, senior one and senior two are from two ordinary middle schools in Kaifeng, the average age is 16.82 years.The study includes three parts. Characteristics of juvenile delinquents'parenting styles are tested with EMBU in part one. The conditions of juvenile delinquents'self-control are tested respectively using a questionnaire of self-control and the stop signal task experiment in part two. The part three is based on the first two parts, in this part the relaions between parenting styles, self-control and juvenile delinquency are explored.According to the survey and analysis, the results of this study are list as follows:(1) The parenting styles of male juvenile delinquents have shown less emotional warmth, understanding, and more interference, over-protection, rejection, denial, punishment, harsh and preferences; Male juvenile delinquents fathers and mothers'parenting styles are significant different from each other that their fathers have less emotional warmth, understanding, preference, rejection, denial and interfering, protection, and more punishment than their mothers.(2) Male juvenile delinquents have more temper and impulsive risk-seeking than male public middle school students; They also have lower p(r|s) and higher ns-hit and miss in the stop signal task experiment, which means that not only the self-control questionnaire but also the experiment both indicate juvenile delinquents have lower self-control than male public middle school students.(3) Male juvenile delinquents mothers'emotional warmth and understanding (MF1), over-protection and interference (MF2), rejection and denial (MF3), and preferences(MF5) all have significant predictions on the age of the first offense between 14—16 and 16-18 years old; Furthermore, emotional warmth and understanding(MF1) has significant negative predictions on five criminal types including robbery, rape, theft, intentional injury and intentional murder; Over-protection and interference(MF2) has significant positive predictions on four criminal types including robbery, rape, intentional injury and intentional murder; Rejection and denial(MF3) has significant negative predictions on three criminal types including robbery, rape, intentional injury; Preferences(MF5) has significant positive predictions on three criminal types including robbery, rape, theft.(4) Temper has significant positive predictions on the three-age phase of the first offense and three criminal types including robbery, rape, theft; Impulsive risk-seeking has significant positive predictions on the age of the first offense between 14—16 and16-18 years old, and all the main criminal types.(5) All the factors of the father and mother's parenting styles both have significant correlation to temper and impulsive risk-seeking; Punishment and harsh (FF2), preferences (FF4), rejection and denial (MF3), and punishment and harsh (MF4) have significant correlation to simplistic tendency.(6) Self-control plays part mediating role between parenting styles and juvenile delinquency; preferences (MF5) plays more independent role on the age of the first offense, and both emotional warmth and understanding (MF1), and rejection and denial (MF3) also have more independent role on the age of the first offense and the main criminal types.Finally, according to the discoveries, some measures to prevent juvenile delinquency are proposed respectively from family, school and the whole society. In addition, future researches are discussed based on the deficiencies of the study.