What is the Role of Family and Peer relations in Adolescent Antisocial Behaviour?

Antisocial behaviour is characterized by having symptoms such as disregarding societal expectations, laws, violating rights of others (property, sexual, legal, emotional violations), physical aggression, instability in life and showing impulsive behaviours [Medicine Net, 2004]. This antisocial behaviour disorders are believed to be learned in the early childhood and continue to influence their transactions with low antisocial peers throughout elementary school and believed to incline during the adolescent ages [van Lier et al, 2005]. There are many biological and environmental risk factors related to this disorder such as child characteristics, perinatal factors, maternal/ familial characteristics, maternal pre and post-natal substance use, peer relations and parenting practices [Bor et al, 2004]. Although these factors influence the child’s behaviour, parents and peers are important part of the child’s life and it is interesting to review how these interactions alter this disorder. If this specific factor alters the child behaviour in a higher degree compared to other factors, by focusing on the network of peers and parent’s interaction, there is a chance for the treatment of this disorder. Therefore children who are born to be temperament will be fortunate to become like a normative children, and this can reduce crimes and abusive behaviours in the society. This particular review will focus on how the family and peer relations influence antisocial behaviour.

The article entitled “Parental Imprisonment: effects on boys’ antisocial behaviour and delinquency through the life- course” by Murray, J. et al argues the negative effects on boys’ antisocial behaviour due to the imprisonment of a parent. This article shows the importance of parenting practices, and the degree of negative effects on a child. According to this study, prisoner’s children suffer from psychosocial difficulties during their parents’ imprisonment. They hypothesized that parental (maternal/paternal) imprisonment predicts boys’ antisocial and delinquency behaviour partly because of the trauma of separation and partly because parental imprisonment is a marker for parental criminality and partly because of risks associated with parental imprisonment. To study this hypothesis the authors conducted a longitudinal study to compare boys separated by parental imprisonment during their first 10 years of life with other four control groups. These control groups include boys who did not experience separation, boys separated by hospital or death, boys separated for other reasons, and boys whose parents were only imprisoned before their birth. The results showed that separation due to parental imprisonment showed significant all antisocial-delinquent outcomes compared to other four controls. From this study, they have concluded that prisoners’ children are highly vulnerable to adverse antisocial behaviour than other children. This may due to the fact that parental imprisonment can leave the family in separation experience and associated risks. The other imprisonment associated risks can be stigma, reduction in family income, and reduced quality of childcare.

The findings were consistent with other studies. For example, the study done by Myers et al stated that prisoners’ children are six times more likely than their peers to be imprisoned themselves [Myers et al, 1999]. The authors included the fact that because prisoner’s children are most likely exposed to parenting and familial risk factors such as parents’ unemployment, low social class, multiple mental health problems and marital difficulties, there is high scale of antisocial actions can be perceived in these children.

Another interesting study done by Crowe in 1974 confirmed the underlying biological factor of the antisocial and delinquency behaviour. Crowe’s study found that the adopted children of imprisoned biological mothers were more likely to get arrested by age of 25 than controls. Therefore, there is no distinct answer for nature vs. nurture risk factors.

In this paper authors also compared children’s outcomes according to whether parents imprisoned before or after children’s birth. This is an effective way to determine the main risk factor (biological or parental practices) that induces this behaviour the most. They also mentioned other risk factors that can modify this behaviour, but fail to include those in their findings. For example, because prisoner’s children are most likely exposed to parenting and familial risk factors such as parents’ unemployment, low social class, multiple mental health problems and marital difficulties, there is high scale of antisocial actions. The authors did not include these factors in their results.

From the overall study, they have concluded that children with parental imprisonment showed higher degree of delinquency and antisocial behaviour than controls. This supports the fact that the parental practices are very important in child’s development. Terms used by the authors are well defined. As mentioned there are some limitations in this study. For example the pre-disposals of parenting and familial risk factors were not taken into consideration when defining imprisoned parents, and explanation given to environmental and biological factors that affects the child’s behaviour. Since the antisocial behaviour of these children were measured by self-reports, teachers’ and parents’ reports, results can be biased. In this case researchers should have used few observational studies to correct this problem. Although there are some limitations found, the overall concepts and explanations for each variable are well defined. To validate these findings the twin and adaptation studies are needed to see the effects of separation caused by parental imprisonment were not genetics.

One of the other interesting study entitled “Gender Differences in Developmental Links Among Antisocial Behaviour, Friends’ Antisocial Behaviour, and Peer Rejection in Childhood: Results from Two Cultures” written by van Lier et al, introduces the peer rejection and gender differences in antisocial behaviour. This study was done on Dutch and French- Canadian children in classroom settings by measuring high and increasing, moderate, and low antisocial behaviours. The conclusion suggests that only boys showed high degree of antisocial behaviour and these boys had more deviant friends and were more often rejected than other normative children.

Some studies debates that the preexisting characteristics within the child such as personal dispositions and the influence of the deviant friends’ rejection as a driving force for the outcome of this disease. Since there are multiple risks factors involved in the development of this disorder, there is no solid answer when this disorder enters into one’s life. This study is effectively done by addressing the time-varying influence of peer rejection and friends’ antisocial behaviour on the development. The antisocial interaction style believed to be learned in the preschool years and influenced throughout the elementary years with the interaction of deviant peers [Dodge, 1983; Paterson et al., 1992]. By exploring development of friends’ antisocial behaviour, and onset of peer rejection, the authors have perceived the development of antisocial behaviour in relation to the social context. There are few limitations biased this experiment such as the age range of the samples ends at the start of adolescent, which prohibited the experimenters from drawing firm conclusion regarding the hypothesis. Since the study was done on classroom setting, when generalizing the results to the general population, there would be a significant degree of bias can be found.

The overall study was done in an effective way by taking other alternative risk factors into consideration. Findings were consistent with other studies. The conclusion clearly states the importance of social context in the development of the antisocial behaviour.

The study “Early risk factors for adolescent antisocial behaviour: an Australian longitudinal study” discusses the possible risk factors that associate with the antisocial behaviour. This study was done by Bor et al and targeted Australian adolescents. By finding the early risks factors for antisocial behaviour in young people can prevent the delinquency and crime in adolescents. This study investigates the major five types of risk factors such as child characteristics, perinatal factors, maternal/familial characteristics, maternal pre- and post natal substance use and parenting practices. The results were obtained based on maternal reports, child assessments, and medical records by using delinquency subscale of the Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL). Results suggest that children’s prior behavioural problems (aggression and attention/ restlessness) and marital instability were the strong factors that doubled or tripled the odd of this behaviour. The poor predictors were perinatal factors, maternal substance use, and parenting practices.

The experiment is performed in a flawless way when predicting early risk factors. The Mather University Study of Pregnancy study is an ongoing longitudinal which investigates women’s and children’s health and development. This study was done by collecting data from 8458 pregnant women attending to their first clinic visit. Mothers have completed surveys before and after the child birth. After the birth surveys were completed by when children are 6 months, 5 years and 14 years, and children were also evaluated at ages of 5 and 14 years. Unlike other research, this study did not identify perinatal factors as directly influencing adolescent antisocial behaviour.

There are few limitations in this study. For example, the measure outcomes were captured at age of 14, which may be too early to capture the full range of adolescent antisocial behaviour. The dependent variable is based exclusively on maternal reports by using CBCL measures. This may bias the results, since there is no direct observation study was performed. Despite these limitations, the findings contribute to the understanding of adolescent antisocial behaviour in the Australia context. The identification of possible risk factors will help the clinicians to establish prevention and intervention strategies for future antisocial behaviour in youngsters. Since marital instability and parental practices contribute high degree of aversive outcomes of this disorder, parenting programs can be introduced to the society to reduce the effects. In general, the article is very informative and well written, in terms of the quality of the experimental methods, sample collection and inference of results.

The other study entitled “The role of family and peer relations in adolescent antisocial behaviour: comparison of four ethnic groups” done by Dekovic et al, explains the children’s behaviour outcomes due to peer relations and familial practices. There are many dominant theories exist about the development of antisocial behaviour during adolescents, but these researches are entirely focused on mainstream, white, middle class adolescents. The current study tries to fill the gap in the literature by observing whether the same model of family and peer influence the antisocial behaviour of different ethnic groups. There are 603 adolescents (318 females and 285 males) from four different ethnic groups such as Dutch, Moroccan, Turkish, and Surinamese were subjected to perform an experiment. The data collection based on the relationship of a child with his/her parents and peers. The authors focused on the type of peer groups that an individual child has. Questionnaires were completed by adolescents individually at schools. All these adolescents from different ethnic groups showed similar levels of antisocial behaviour. However the association of parents and peer relations with the antisocial behaviour differed across the ethnic groups.

Research findings indicate that a negative relationship between a parent and a child can lead to a higher degree of externalizing problem behaviour. Children with antisocial behaviour and their parents are appear to have a lack of intimacy, a lack of mutuality, more blaming, anger and defensiveness than in normal families. These children are less likely to internalize parental values and norms. In normative children, parents provide more support and care, and this protects the children against the behaviour disorder. In addition to the support by the parents, the positive relationship enforces children to communicate with their parents, so children, will able to discuss their daily activities and problems that they may encounter. In this way they can reveal internal conflicts, and can communicate with their parents regarding how they feel about the world etc. Therefore, the adults’ openness and communicativeness can disclose children feelings and thoughts. This can reduce the degree of antisocial behaviour in children. This article clearly talks about the importance of the peer relations in child’s life. It is because a child spends more time their peers without an adult supervision. Findings show that adolescents who spend time with deviant children show more antisocial behaviours including higher substance use, norm breaking actions, and school problems [Brendgen, 2000].

This study provides better generalizability than other studies since it compare four ethnic groups rather than two. The groups that have been selected for the study are the major ethnic groups in Netherlands, but they are different from the Dutch group (Majority). The selected samples were random and each ethnic group is different. This will provide a better test of generalizability.

Overall, this research seeks to examine whether the different ethnic group parents and peers play similar roles in the development of adolescent antisocial behaviour. There are few limitations in this study. First of all, the results are obtained from the self report of school children. This is not a reliable data, since there is no observational study was done. Secondly, their sample does not include adolescents who show extreme forms of antisocial behaviour. Since these adolescents are high problematic, they have been excluded from school (dropouts). Thirdly, although the study included larger sample they have included only few ethnic groups. Although there are few limitations, the study was well organized and adds more detailed information to the growing evidence regarding the familial and peer relations in adolescent antisocial behaviour.

The final study “When Parent Have a History of Conduct Disorder: How Is the Care-giving Environment Affected?” done by Belsky et al. The study predicts that individuals with early emerging conduct problems are more likely to become parents who put their children to considerable antisocial behaviour. The samples included 246 members in a 30 year cohort study with 3 year old children. The findings conclude that the conduct disorder emerges in childhood and persists across adolescence. The aversive familial association can lead the antisocial behaviour of the child. Individuals who engage in aggressive, norm breaking and impulsive behaviours will show multiple psychological problems such as unemployment, conflict relationship, early pregnancy, early parenting and physical & mental health problems. These individuals were more hostile and harsh in their parenting styles compared with clinical and healthy. When these individuals raise their children, children have more chance to develop aversive behaviours than other normative children in their age.

This study also has several limitations. First of all, the parents, who represent a subset of a birth cohort, have not made the transition to parenthood. They have delayed in child bearing compared to individuals with antisocial behaviour. Secondly, parents with disorder are younger to have children, and therefore there is more chance to have disadvantage socio-economical background, school dropouts and lower IQ than the control group. The other limitation is that findings are limited to a single cohort of young parents in New Zealand, and further studies are required to generalize the results. The authors did not focus the underlying biological factors that relates to this disorder. They have concluded that antisocial behaviours are highly familial, and the transmission of risk can be correlated to genetic and psychosocial factors. They have confirmed that, by exploring biological vulnerabilities that parent transmit to children; one can discover and develop prevention strategies to this disorder. Positive parental practices can be asserted to reduce the intensity of the disorder.

In conclusion, all these studies imply the importance of family and peer relations in the children’s antisocial behaviour. Studies fill the gap in the literature, and help to figure out the importance of family practices and peer relations. The possible risk factors include child characteristics, perinatal factors, maternal/ familial characteristics, maternal pre and post-natal substance use, peer relations, parenting practices, family income, socio economic background, and parental mental and physical health. By closely examining these early risk factors can help to reduce the risk of antisocial behaviour in children who were born with the temperament. Since the child’s family and peers contribute a major part in its development, positive parenting (open to communication, non judgmental etc) and non-deviant friendship with lots of love can prevent this disruptive psychological phenomenon. The study done by Murray, J. et al argues the possible aversive effects on children’s behaviour due to the imprisonment of their parents. Boys showed more externalized separation associated problems. This may due to stigma, reduction in family income, and reduced quality of childcare. According to van Lier et al, peer rejection is one of the other important driving forces in the antisocial behaviour, especially, observed in boys. The author Bor et al concludes the importance of marital stability and biological predisposition in the children’s social delinquency. Belsky et al’s finding also consistent with the other studies in determining underlying risk factors. Overall, all these findings are consistent with each other and clearly illustrate the importance of the familial and peers relations in the children’s antisocial behaviour.

Reference:
Belsky, J., Caspi,A., Harrington, H., Jaffee., & S., Mofitt, T. (2006). When Parents Have a History of Conduct Disorder: How Is the Caregiving Environment Affected?. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115 (2), 309–319.

Bor, W., Fagan, A. & McGee,T.(2004). Early risk factors for adolescent antisocial
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Brendgren, M., Vitaro, F., & Bukowski, W. M. (2000). Deviant friends and early adolescents’ emotional and behavioural adjustment. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 10, 173–189.
Crowe, R.R. (1974). An adoption study of antisocial personality. Archives of General Psychiatry, 31, 785–791.
Dekovic´ , M., Janssens, J. A. M. A., & van As, N. M. C. (2003). Family predictors of antisocial behavior in adolescence. Family Process, 42, 223–235.

Dekovic, M., Wissinkb, I.& Meijerb, A. (2004). The role of family and peer relations in adolescent antisocial behaviour: comparison of four ethnic groups. Journal of Adolescence, 27, 497–514.

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