THE ESSENTIAL
- Exposure to lead, through water from wells, before the age of 6 would also be associated with an increased risk of delinquency in adolescence.
- Children who are not cared for at home are also more likely to exhibit problematic behavior.
Does the family structure in which adolescents live have an impact on their behavior? This is the question asked by researchers at the University of Malmö in Sweden. To answer this, scientists decided to carry out a study, including the results were published in the journal PLOS One. They looked at data from four surveys conducted between 2016 and 2019 in the south of the country. A total of 3,838 adolescents aged 14 and 15 were included in this work. The authors looked at the family structure of the participants and their problematic behaviors (shoplifting, graffiti, etc.) or not.
A link between delinquency and family structure
According to the results, adolescents who grew up in a single-parent family, with their father and their stepmother or with their mother and their stepfather, report having more delinquent behavior than adolescents living with both parents. Young people living in “symmetrical” families, that is to say whose parents live separately, share custody and are both single or both have a new partner, report lower levels of delinquency. However, adolescents living in “asymmetrical” families, i.e. in which only one parent had a new partner, were associated with greater delinquency.
“This study shows the importance of moving to using more detailed categorizations of family structure in relation to delinquency. We need to learn more regarding the group of adolescents who pass from one parent to another , and in particular on the different types of families, asymmetrical and symmetrical”, can we read in the works.