Adult child-parent bonds and life course criminality

Journal of Criminal Justice 38 (2010) 562–571

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Journal of Criminal Justice

Adult child-parent bonds and life course criminality☆ Ryan D. Schroeder a,⁎, Peggy C. Giordano b, Stephen A. Cernkovich b a b

University of Louisville, Department of Sociology, 110 Lutz Hall, Louisville, KY, 40292, United States Department of Sociology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43402, United States

a b s t r a c t Parents and parenting practices are often implicated as predictors of early childhood offending in criminological research, but little is known about the role of parents in adulthood in promoting or inhibiting criminal behavior. As juveniles mature into adult roles, parents also continue to mature and interact with their children in numerous roles throughout the life course. Unlike peers and romantic partners, parents are not easily discarded. Adults who have built a good foundation with their parents, then, possess additional social capital that has the potential to better adult life course outcomes, including criminal behavior. Social bonds formed within romantic relationships and stable employment have been the dominant factors identified within criminological literature in promoting criminal desistance, but in today's society with high rates of divorce and an unstable low-skilled job market, parents of origin may be an important stabilizing force in the lives of adults, particularly those lacking other conventional bonds. Using three waves of data from the Ohio Lifecourse Study, a project that spans some twenty-one years, the findings showed that strong relationships with parents are a significant predictor of criminal desistance for adult children, mainly through the emotional benefits these relationships have for the adult children. Furthermore, the data revealed that the adult child-parent relationship is a stronger predictor of desistance among the subjects with poor romantic relationship bonds. Implications for the life course theory are discussed. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Parenting practices during childhood and early adolescence are often cited as critical factors shaping social and behavioral outcomes in children (Lipsey & Derzon, 1998; Loeber & Dishion, 1983; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992; Steinberg, 1990) and adults (Cernkovich & Giordano, 2001; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Moffitt, 1993; Sampson & Laub, 1993). A review of the criminological research on parenting and crime, however, depicts parenting as a social influence that occurs early in the life course and then fades away. Little research examines the role of parents later on in the life course, as an influence on the offending patterns of their adult children. As juveniles mature into adult roles, parents also continue to mature and interact with their children throughout the life course. Aging parents and their adult children typically remain very involved with one another in a variety of contexts and capacities well after the children enter adult roles (Parrott & Bengtson, 1999; Umberson, 1992). Criminological research, however, has essentially ignored this potentially important family dynamic. Social bonds formed within romantic relationships and stable employment have been the dominant factors identified within criminological literature in promoting criminal desistance (Giordano, Cernkovich, & Rudolph, 2002; Laub & Sampson, ☆ This paper was accepted under the Editorship of Kent Joscelyn. ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 502 852 8010; fax: +1 502 852 0099. E-mail address: [email protected] (R.D. Schroeder). 0047-2352/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2010.04.027

2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993), but in today's society with high rates of divorce (Cherlin, 1992) and an unstable low-skilled job market (Booth, Crouter, & Shanahan, 1999), parents of origin may be a more important stabilizing force in the lives of adults than romantic partners or employment. Furthermore, given the recent importance that sociologists have placed on emotions as a basis of human action (Collins, 2004; Massey, 2002; Turner, 2000) and the documented consequences of internalized emotional self-concepts on life course patterns of criminal offending (Giordano, Schroeder, & Cernkovich, 2007), establishing strong parent-child relationships in adulthood may also provide opportunities to establish more positive emotional self-concepts for the adult children. Adults who have built a good foundation with their parents then have an additional source of social, financial, and emotional capital and that has the potential to better adult life course outcomes, including criminal behavior. The present study contributed to research on life course offending process by examining the impact of the adult child-parent bond on criminal behavior over an extended period of time. The current project relied on three waves of structured interview data derived from a sample of youths originally incarcerated in institutions for delinquent youth (1985), and subsequently reinterviewed as adults (1995, 2003) when the respondents averaged twenty nine and then thirty eight years of age. The influence of parents and parenting well into adulthood on the likelihood of exhibiting a pattern of stable desistance compared with persistent offending was assessed, net of early childhood and adolescent parenting practices and other traditional predictors of desistance.

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Background Parenting and crime Parenting characteristics are some of the most common measures employed by researchers investigating the etiology of juvenile delinquency and the continuation of offending into adulthood. Criminologists have amassed a body of literature that establishes early parenting practices as key determinants of juvenile offending and important factors contributing to adult criminality. The exclusive focus on parenting during childhood and early adolescence is understandable, as late childhood and adolescence is a period in which people accumulate the vast majority of the human, social, and cultural capital that shapes their lives (Hagan, 1998), and events during these life stages have been shown to strongly influence numerous life course outcomes (Elder, 1994; Malinosky-Rummell & Hansen, 1993), including criminal offending (Macmillan, 2001; Widom, 1989). Early problem emotional and behavioral characteristics have also been shown to overwhelm parents and cause the socialization process to collapse, highlighting a possible reciprocal relationship between parenting and delinquency (Kerr & Stattin, 2003; Lytton, 1990; Patterson, DeBaryshe, & Ramsey, 1989; Sampson & Laub, 1993; Simons, Johnson, Conger, & Elder, 1998). Early parenting methods clearly have a profound effect on a wide range of developmental outcomes in children and adults and also strain relationships between children and parents. Parenting is a vital process in the healthy emotional and social development of children and adolescents, but as children age and increasingly adopt adult roles outside of parental purview, traditional theoretical explanations connecting parenting and offending are less immediately useful as frameworks for understanding adolescent and young adult criminality. For instance, a lack of social control that results from inconsistent and harsh discipline and poor supervision has been shown to be good explanation of juvenile offending (Hirschi, 1969; Sampson & Laub, 1993), but as adolescents age and disassociate from parental authority, social control from parents becomes less pivotal as an influence on the individual's behavior (Agnew, 2003). Similarly, social learning dynamics have been theorized as an early set of associations (see e.g., Sutherland, 1939 for a discussion of ‘priority’ of associations), and strains caused by poor parenting have been considered particularly ‘noxious stimuli’ because the adolescent is not yet free to live independently (Agnew, 1997). Parental influence on the criminal behavior of their children undoubtedly diminishes over time, as peers and later on romantic partners and other life experiences become increasingly salient. Yet parental relationships continue to maintain a position of importance in the lives of most adults. Umberson (1992) stated, “…the parent/ adult child relationship represents a unique and powerful form of social integration…” (p. 666). Criminological theory, however, has essentially ignored adult child-parent relationships, focusing most attention on what are considered the key social relationships with peers and marital partners. In short, parental influence on juvenile offending has been firmly established, but the importance of parents on the offending of adult children has not been systematically investigated. A life course perspective on crime and parenting Criminal continuity and change are two key themes within the life course theory in criminology. The theory drew connections between early life events and outcomes later in life (Laub, 2004), but also highlighted the potential for behavioral change (Sampson & Laub, 1993). Sampson and Laub’ research has documented that patterns of criminal offending across the life course were not the result of a stable underlying trait (e.g., Bushway, Brame, & Paternoster, 1999; Moffitt, 1993, 1997), but rather were influenced by life events that increase

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levels of informal social control (Laub, Nagin, & Sampson, 1998; Laub & Sampson, 2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993, 1997). Sampson and Laub (1993) age-graded theory of informal social control emphasized the importance of social bonds such as marriage and a stable job as offering the potential to redirect lives in a more prosocial direction. The role of parenting during childhood did figure into Sampson and Laub's age-graded theory of informal social control, however. Through their detailed analysis of the Glueck data, Sampson and Laub (1993) documented that childhood family processes, including parental supervision, attachment, and discipline, are intimately connected to juvenile offending. These associations remained robust after individual difference constructs are taken into account, further strengthening the importance of early family life in understanding adolescent criminal behavior. Juvenile offending also increased the chances that juvenile offenders will engage in a wide range of criminal and deviant behaviors well into adulthood. Thus, the influence of parents on adult crime was theorized as indirect, through the initial increased risk posed by poor parent-child relationships during the childhood and adolescent years. Through a state dependence process (Nagin & Paternoster, 1991), juvenile delinquency detrimentally affected adult social bonds, and the absence/poor qualities of these social bonds were then seen as primary determinants of adult criminal offending (Laub, Nagin, & Sampson, 1998; Laub & Sampson, 2003; Sampson & Laub, 1993). This process of cumulative continuity suggested that early juvenile offending “mortgages the future” by limiting contacts and relationships with prosocial youth and institutions, thus “knifing off” future opportunities. Sampson and Laub (1993), however, pointed to lifestyle changes such as marriage and/or stable employment that can have stabilizing effects and become part of a social investment process that makes crime less likely. In a more recent study, Laub and Sampson (2003) explored a number of factors that for some of the original Glueck respondents appeared to have a beneficial influence (e.g., military experience, children), but overall the authors continued to focus heavily on marriage and employment effects as primary contributing factors associated with criminal desistance. Their quantitative analyses did not consider the Glueck men's adult relationships with their parents, and the qualitative interviews made little mention of these relationships as a positive or negative influence on their lives. In a study of criminal continuity and change among a more contemporary sample of youth, Cernkovich and Giordano (2001) found that variations in early levels of attachment to parents were related to levels of adult criminality among a general neighborhood sample of youth, even after traditional controls, including initial delinquency levels, were taken into account. A significant association was not found within the sample of highly delinquent previously institutionalized youth also interviewed in connection with the study, but because the analyses were cross-sectional, the long-term effect of the adult child-parent relationship well into adulthood could not be assessed.1 Thus it is not clear whether parent-child relationships are associated with more favorable adult trajectories, when a longitudinal design and a long time frame are considered. Taken together, the findings from prior work suggest that parents can have a substantial impact on the development of persistent criminal offending across the life course, but does not consider the relationships forged with parents during the adult years. Parents and their adult children, however, normally remain very close throughout the life course and interact in a variety of contexts and capacities well after the children enter adulthood (Bengston, Cutler, Mangen, & Marshall, 1985; Rossi & Rossi, 1990; Umberson, 1992). Most parents prefer to live in close proximity to their adult children and most parents communicate frequently with their adult children (Bengston et al., 1985; Rossi & Rossi, 1990). Research has indicated that adult children and parents generally view their relationship as positive (Brubaker, 1990) and parents are often cited as an important social and financial resource for their adult children (Bankoff, 1983; Cicirelli,

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1989; Hagestad, 1987). Further, following the logic of the social control theory that is the basis of the life course theory (Hirschi, 1969; Sampson & Laub, 1993), adult children who form good relationships with their parents will likely not want to disappoint or embarrass their parents by committing further crimes. Conversely, poor relationships with one's parents are likely to be a source of emotional difficulties and diminished well-being. The focus here on the parent-child bond also fits well with recent research findings that have highlighted declines in the likelihood and stability of marriage, and the fragile nature of employment, particularly for those with little education and a criminal history (Alderson & Nielsen, 2002; Cherlin, 1992; Laub & Sampson, 2001; McCall, 2000; Seltzer, 2000; Wilson, 1996). The age-graded theory of informal social control developed by Sampson and Laub (1993) points to the importance of developing strong ties to conventional society primarily though the mechanisms of marriage and employment, but recent research using more contemporary samples has questioned the transformative potential of employment and romantic partner bonds in altering life course offending trajectories (Giordano et al., 2007; Schroeder, Giordano, & Cernkovich, 2007). Given the declines in stable manufacturing jobs (Booth et al., 1999), increased age at first marriage, and high rates of divorce (Cherlin, 1992), adult parental relationships fit within the larger life course framework as social forces that potentially increase ties to conventional society and facilitate sustained patterns of criminal desistance. Positive relationships with one's parents can be conceptualized as an important source of social and financial capital (Powell, Steelman, & Carini, 2006) and indeed may be especially important for those who lack elements of the traditional “respectability package” of marriage and stable employment. Thus, in the current study it was hypothesized that strong relationships between adult children and parents will be associated with a pattern of criminal desistance, even after other adult social bonds and initial variations in delinquency involvement have been taken into account. The second hypothesis was that the positive effects of the adult-child parent relationship will be stronger for individuals with weak social bonds within the contexts of romantic relationships and employment.

A neo-Meadian perspective on the effects of child-parent relationships Although it is relatively straightforward and appropriate to conceptualize the adult parent-child relationship as a ‘bond’ that is associated with increased social control and social capital (as generally theorized by Sampson & Laub, 1993), recent work has critiqued this version of the life course perspective as generally giving scant attention to the emotional realms of experience (Giordano et al., 2007). Crimes such as violence and drug abuse have an intuitive, intimate connection to emotional processes, but with the notable exception of Agnew (1992) general strain theory, most theoretical perspectives have not highlighted the effect of emotional feelings, particularly in exploring levels of criminal continuity and change. Giordano et al. (2007) hypothesized that some of the declines in criminal involvement rather reliably observed in life course investigations may derive from an emotional mellowing process, as much as from key transition events such as marriage. This perspective was consistent with Mead (1934) focus on the malleable and social nature of cognitive processes, but in this instance the focus was upon the changing character of the emotions (Engdahl, 2004). This neoMeadian perspective was thus fully compatible with Agnew's theory, but to a greater extent highlighted the social nature of emotions (see especially Agnew, Brezina, Wright, & Cullen, 2002), and their essential malleability in light of the continuous unfolding of social experiences over the life course. Since family problems and poor relationships with parents are extremely common among juvenile delinquents, this arena may be one that has the potential to improve with age and

increased social maturity. As one of the Ohio Lifecourse Study respondents in Giordano et al. (2007) study noted: Now I have a better relationship with my mother. I know at the time Iwas 14 and 15 years old I really had resentments with my mother, and sheworked two jobs so I really couldn't bond with my mother, build no relationshipand I really had a resentment with my mother for that, but Ithought it was her fault that my father wasn't there. . . . So I pretty muchblamed my mother for everything. But today we have a better relationshipand I know she was doing the best she could with what she had. (p. 1623) As with other life course experiences (Sampson & Laub, 1993) and cognitive processes (Giordano et al., 2002), however, adult relationship with parents will vary, as will the individual's emotional life and sense of well-being. Giordano et al. (2007) documented that those with a strong anger identity were significantly more likely to be classified as persisters, when compared with desisters in the sample group investigated, even when traditional social bonds such as marriage/romantic relationship quality had been taken into account. Depression was also linked with persistence, although to a somewhat lesser degree. The current study contributes beyond this prior work by investigating the degree to which the parent-child bond in adulthood was directly associated with criminal involvement, as well as whether effects were indirect through the development of a stronger anger identity and/or lower levels of emotional well-being. This line of inquiry is generally consistent with other research on adult relationships with parents, although links to criminality have not been systematically investigated. For example, Umberson (1992) reported that maintaining positive interactions with aging parents have important psychological and emotional benefits for both the parents and adult children, although the reasons for these relationships have not been explored (see also Mirowsky & Ross, 1992). Current investigation Using three waves of longitudinal data spanning twenty one years, the effect of the adult-child parent bond in early adulthood on stable criminal desistance through middle adulthood was first examined, net of adolescent parental bonds, juvenile delinquency, adult social bonds, and a host of control variables. Second, the function of anger identity and depression were assessed as one possible intermediate mechanism in the relationship between adult child-parent relationships and criminal desistance. Lastly, the interaction between parental bonds and adult social bonds was investigated to estimate the degree to which the impact of adult child-parent bonds varies by levels of employment and romantic relationship bonds. Methods Data The data used in this analysis of desistance were drawn from the Ohio Lifecourse Study (for a detailed description of the study, see Cernkovich, Giordano, & Pugh, 1985). The Ohio Lifecourse Study was a three-wave panel study of adolescents originally surveyed in 1982 when they resided in state-level juvenile correctional institutions, reinterviewed in 1995 and again in 2003. The sample included the entire population of the only state-level institution for females in Ohio (n = 127), and a randomly selected sample of males from three statelevel institutions in Ohio (n = 127). The ages of the respondents in the first wave of the study ranged from twelve to twenty-one, with a mean value of 16.34. The first follow-up study of the original juvenile offenders conducted in 1995 included 210 subjects. As noted in prior work

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(see Giordano et al., 2002), due to the long time period between waves of the study (thirteen years) and the highly marginal lifestyles of the majority of the sample members, many of the respondents were difficult to locate for the follow-up study. An intensive effort was nevertheless made to locate as many of these adolescents as possible and 83 percent were eventually located and interviewed for the follow-up study. At the first follow-up, the subjects ranged in age from twenty-five to thirty-four, with a mean age of 29.3. The second followup study of the original sample conducted in 2003 included 152 of the 210 (72.4 percent) subjects from the 1995 sample, with the overall sample attrition rate from 1982 at 40.2 percent.2 The third wave of the Ohio Lifecourse Study included seventy-five males (50.7 percent) and seventy-seven females (49.3 percent), was 39.5 percent minority and ranged in age from thirty-five to forty-one, with a mean age of 38.2. A complete list of sample descriptive characteristics is show in Table 1. Dependent variable The outcome under study was stable criminal desistance. The Ohio Lifecourse Data included three waves of data, thus stable patterns of criminal desistance across three periods of the life course could be examined, as contrasted with classification schemes that only include two waves of data where assessments of behavioral change away from crime were uncertain as to the long-term constancy of change. The assumption governing the classification method used was that all of the offenders at the first wave of the study, who were institutionalized at the time, were serious and/or frequent offenders as adolescents.3 Following a similar classification scheme of offending patterns across the life course used in prior research (Giordano et al., 2007; Schroeder et al., 2007), a sixteen-item modified version of the Elliott, Huizinga and Ageton (1985) criminal offending scale was created at the second and third waves of data. Each offense was assigned a seriousness weight derived from the Nation Survey of Crime Severity (Wolfgang, Figlio, Tracy, & Singer, 1985) and then multiplied by the self-reported frequency of each behavior to create an offending scale that accounted for the frequency of offending as well as the seriousness of each offense. The reference period for each set of offenses was the year prior to the interview. The scale showed a high degree of reliability with a Chronbach alpha score of .89 at the second wave (n = 210) and .87 at the third wave (n = 152). Across the three waves of the Ohio Lifecourse Study, stable criminal desisters were classified as those subject who had self-report

Table 1 Descriptive Characteristics of the Sample Percentage Mean Criminal Offending Patterns Stable Criminal DesistanceT2-T3 Persistent OffendingT2-T3 Age at Wave 3 Gender Males Females Race Minorities Whites Adolescent DelinquencyT1 Parenting Parental Caring and TrustT1 Parental Contact FrequencyT1 Parental Caring and TrustT2 Adult Social Bonds Romantic Relationship HappinessT2 Occupational PrestigeT2 Emotional Identity AngerT2 DepressionT2

SD

Range

43.4 56.6 ---

------------38.20 1.29 35-41

49.3 50.7

-----

-----

-----

60.5 39.5 ---

----126.4

----108.1

----0.10 - 569.42

-------

3.52 3.12 3.34

0.69 1.30 - 5.00 1.08 1.00 - 6.00 0.72 1.30 - 5.00

-----

4.47 2.26

1.39 1.00 - 7.00 1.46 1.00 - 7.00

-----

2.88 3.31

0.71 1.43 - 4.57 1.13 1.00 - 6.00

T1 = Wave 1 (1982), T2 = Wave 2 (1995), T3 = Wave 3 (2003).

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histories free of frequent and/or serious offending and were not incarcerated at both follow-up periods.4 All other subjects who reported serious and/or frequent criminal offending or who were incarcerated at either of the follow-up studies were defined as persistent offenders. The outcome measure was thus dichotomous with desisters coded 1 and persistent offenders coded 0.5 Independent measures Adult child-parent bond The relationship between adult children and their parents was a composite of two parenting scales identified in prior work through a principle components factor analysis of a group of family-related items in the Ohio Lifecourse Study and shown to be associated with juvenile delinquency, caring and trust and identity support (Cernkovich & Giordano, 1987; Cernkovich & Giordano, 2001). The caring and trust scale included the following items taken from the second wave of the study, when all of the subjects were well into adulthood: “My parents often ask about what I am doing in college (at work)”; “My parents give me the right amount of affection”; “One of the worst things that could happen to me would be finding out that I let my parents down”; “My parents are usually proud of me when I've finished something I've worked hard at”; “My parents trust me”; and “I'm closer to my parents than a lot of people my age”. Identity support represents contains more negatively worded items: “My parents sometimes put me down in front of other people”; “Sometimes my parents won't listen to me or my opinions”; “My parents sometimes give me the feeling that I'm not living up to their expectations”; and “My parents seems to wish I were a different type of person.”6 The items were coded such that high scores represent stronger bonds between adult children and their parents, and the ten items from both scales were summed to create the adult child-parent bond scale (Alpha = .808).7 Missing data on this variable were deleted listwise in the following analyses. Overall, the scale represents the degree of intimacy, attachment, respect, acceptance, and support that parents give to their adult children, the key components of the social bond outlined by Hirschi (1969). Adult social bonds The adult social bond measures were taken from prior work examining offending across the life course (Giordano et al., 2002; Giordano et al., 2007; Schroeder et al., 2007). Marital/intimate partner happiness was measured using a single item from the second wave of the study that asked the respondents to rate their degree of happiness in their current relationship on a scale ranging from 1 (extremely unhappy) to 7 (perfect). Employment bonds were assessed with a measure of occupational prestige from the second wave of the study that classified the respondent's occupation ranging from service workers and laborers (coded 1) to executives, administrators, and managers (coded 7).8 Emotional self-concepts Anger identity and depression were measured using the scale developed by Giordano et al. (2007) in their assessment of the ubiquitous role of emotional self-concepts on offending across the life course. In contrast to other anger measures employed in prior studies of negative affect and crime that tap transitory situational components of the emotional response (Agnew, 1992; Agnew & White, 1992; Simons, Simons, Chen, Brody, & Lin, 2007), the anger identity scale represented a more stable emotional response that has coalesced as an aspect of an individual's identity that has implications for longer-term involvement in criminal activity. Anger identity was constructed using six items from the second wave of the study, including items such as “I have a lot of trouble controlling my temper,” and “I can be a pretty mean person.” Items were measured on a fivepoint scale with higher values representing a stronger anger identity

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(alpha = .727). Depression was measured using eight items drawn primarily from the Langner (1962) index, as described in Mirowsky and Ross (1989). Respondents indicated on a six-item scale (1 = never or almost never, 6 = almost every day) how often during the past twelve months they had experienced certain symptoms, such as feeling “low in spirits” or “wondered if anything is worthwhile” Higher values represented higher levels of depression (alpha = .842). Control variables The following analyses also employed numerous control variables to isolate the independent effect of adult child-parent bonds on stable patterns of criminal desistance. First, child-parent bonds from the first wave of the study were included in the models, measured using the same variables described above for the adult child-parent bonds taken from the first wave of the study. Second, initial levels of juvenile offending taken from the first wave of the study were included to account for the reciprocal relationship between delinquency and parenting (Kerr & Stattin, 2003; Lytton, 1990), as well as the individual differences in offending propensity not captured by the other variables included in the study (i.e., single parents, parental divorce, remarriage).9 Third, the frequency of contact between adult children and their parents has been shown to influence parental relationships (Aquilino, 1990), so an item assessing the frequency of contact with parents was taken from the second wave of data and was also controlled in the analyses. Finally, age, race, and gender have been implicated as factors that contribute to life course patterns of criminal behavior (Elliott, 1994; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Loeber & LeBlanc, 1990; Moore & Hagedorn, 1999) and were therefore used as control variables in the current study. Findings Adult child-parent bonds and desistance The analysis began by explicitly assessing the contributions of the adult-child parent bond to stable criminal desistance across the two follow-up waves of the Ohio Lifecourse Study. The results shown in Table 2 from the logistic regression predicting stable criminal desistance (desistance = 1) indicated that strong bonds between adult children and their parents significantly increase the odds of criminal desistance, net of adolescent parental bonds, the frequency of contact between children and parents, adolescent delinquency, and sociodemographic factors. Model 3 included the traditional adult

social bonds identified in prior life course theory research, romantic relationship and employment bonds. Although romantic relationship happiness showed a marginally significant increase in the odds of stable desistance, adult child-parent bonds remained a significant predictor of criminal desistance, net of employment and relationship bonds. In fact, each unit increase in the strength of the adult childparent bond was associated with an 81.8 percent increase in the odds of stable criminal desistance across the two follow-up studies of the previously institutionalized delinquent youth.

Mediating effect of emotional self-concepts The mediating role of emotional self-concepts was assessed using the method developed by Baron and Kenny (1986). The method suggested that when the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable decreases to zero with the addition of a mediating variable, complete mediation had occurred, and when the effect of the independent variable on a dependent variable decreased by a nontrivial amount with the addition of a mediating variable, partial mediation had occurred (Baron & Kenny, 1986). The results in Table 3 showed the independent mediating function of anger and depression separately (Model 1 and Model 2) and combined (Model 3 and Model 4). The results suggested that both anger identity and depression significantly decreased the odds of desistance, reinforcing the complicating role of emotional selfconcepts in criminal desistance processes described in earlier work (Giordano et al., 2007). Further, the addition of anger identity to the model reduced the effect of adult child-parent bonds to insignificance. Depression displayed a similar mediating effect, but adult childparental bonds maintained a marginally significant effect on desistance. In the models that included both anger and depression, anger sustained a significant influence on criminal desistance, but the impact of depression on desistance diminished to insignificance. More importantly, the effect of adult child-parent bonds remained insignificant in the models with both anger and depression. These results held when romantic relationship happiness and occupational prestige were controlled. Anger, and to a lesser degree depression, thus appeared to partially mediate the relationship between adult child-parents bonds and stable criminal desistance. The positive emotional benefits of a strong adult child-parent relationship, therefore, were partially responsible for the positive effect of this important social relationship on stable criminal desistance.

Table 2 Binary Logistic Regressions Estimating Stable Long-Term Criminal DesistanceT2-T3 (n = 149) Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

B

Exp (B)

B

Exp (B)

B

Exp (B)

Background Measures Age Gender (Male = 1) Race (Minority = 1) Adolescent DelinquencyT1 Adolescent Parental BondsT1 Parental Contact FrequencyT2

0.207 -0.468 -1.226 ** -0.004 * 0.121 0.315 +

1.230 0.626 0.294 0.996 1.128 1.370

0.199 -0.685 + -1.227 ** -0.004 * -0.022 0.222

1.220 0.504 0.293 0.996 0.978 1.248

0.212 -0.735 + -1.173 ** -0.004 * -0.013 0.212

1.236 0.480 0.310 0.996 0.987 1.236

Adult Social Bonds Romantic Relationship HappinessT2 Occupational PrestigeT2

-------

-------

-------

-------

0.261 + -0.035

1.298 0.966

Adult Child-Parent Relationshipz Parental Social BondT2

----

----

0.598 *

1.818

Model χ2 = 25.777 *** R2L = 0.146 + p b .10,* p b .05, ** p b .01, *** p b .001. T1 = Wave 1 (1982), T2 = Wave 2 (1995), T3 = Wave 3 (2003).

0.644 * 30.893 *** 0.181

1.904

34.336 *** 0.205

R.D. Schroeder et al. / Journal of Criminal Justice 38 (2010) 562–571

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Table 3 Binary Logistic Regressions Estimating Stable Long-Term Criminal DesistanceT2-T3 (n = 149) Model 1

Model 2 Exp (B)

Background Measures Age Gender (Male = 1) Race (Minority = 1) Adolescent DelinquencyT1 Adolescent Parental BondsT1 Parental Contact FrequencyT2

0.220 -0.573 -1.194 ** -0.004 + -0.001 0.257

1.246 0.564 0.303 0.996 0.999 1.292

Adult Social Bonds Romantic Relationship HappinessT2 Occupational PrestigeT2

-------

-------

-------

-------

Emotional Identity Anger IdentityT2 DepressionT2

-0.849 ** ----

0.428 ----

----0.371 *

---0.690

Adult Child-Parent Relationship Parental Social BondT2

0.436

B

Model 3

B

Exp (B) 0.211 -0.785 + -1.156 ** -0.004 * -0.039 0.240

1.547

0.546 +

Model χ2 = 39.227 *** R2L = 0.241

B

1.234 0.456 0.315 0.996 0.962 1.272

B

Exp (B)

1.246 0.518 0.319 0.996 0.979 1.296

0.241 -0.708 -1.085 ** -0.004 + -0.022 0.239

1.273 0.493 0.338 0.996 0.978 1.269

-------

0.301 + -0.072

1.351 0.930

-0.726 * -0.232

0.484 0.793

-0.805 * -0.211

0.447 0.810

0.404

1.498

0.330

1.392

0.220 -0.659 -1.143 ** -0.004 + -0.021 0.259

-------

1.726

35.382 *** 0.212

Model 4 Exp (B)

40.697 *** 0.252

44.795 *** 0.285

+ p b .10,* p b .05, ** p b .01, *** p b .001. T1 = Wave 1 (1982), T2 = Wave 2 (1995), T3 = Wave 3 (2003).

adult social bonds and adult child-parent bonds. The results in Table 4 showed the interactions between adult child-parent bonds and romantic relationship happiness (Models 1 and 2) and occupational prestige (Models 3 and 4). The results indicated that there is a marginally significant interaction between romantic relationship happiness and adult child-parent bonds but there was no interaction between occupational prestige and adult child-parent bonds. This finding suggested that parents have the potential to be an important resource in the desistance efforts of individuals with poor romantic relationship bonds but not those subjects with weak bonds to

Adult child-parent bonds, romantic relationship happiness, and occupational prestige With declines in the likelihood and stability of marriage (Cherlin, 1992) and tenuous economic prospects for those with little education (Booth et al., 1999), adult child-parent bonds may assume a greater position of importance in moves away from crime for those individuals who lack traditional attachments to society in the form of stable employment and quality romantic relationships. This possibility was assessed using interaction terms between traditional

Table 4 Binary Logistic Regressions Estimating Stable Long-Term Criminal DesistanceT2-T3 (n = 149) Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Exp (B)

B

Exp (B)

Background Measures Age Gender (Male = 1) Race (Minority = 1) Adolescent DelinquencyT1 Adolescent Parental BondsT1 Parental Contact FrequencyT2

0.230 -0.664 -1.059 ** -0.004 * -0.012 0.228

1.259 0.515 0.347 0.996 0.988 1.256

0.265 -0.622 -0.990 * -0.004 + -0.012 0.253

1.304 0.537 0.372 0.996 0.988 1.288

0.227 -0.750 + -1.129 ** -0.004 * -0.005 0.200

1.255 0.473 0.323 0.996 0.995 1.222

0.264 -0.701 -1.040 * -0.004 + -0.004 0.229

1.302 0.496 0.354 0.996 0.996 1.257

Adult Social Bonds Romantic Relationship HappinesscT2 Occupational PrestigecT2

0.256 + -0.053

1.292 0.949

0.315 + -0.094

1.370 0.911

0.285 * -0.034

1.330 0.966

0.346 * -0.086

1.413 0.917

Emotional Identity Anger IdentityT2 DepressionT2

-------

-------

-0.845 * -0.177

0.429 0.838

-------

-0.837 * -0.180

0.433 0.835

0.417

1.517

0.293

1.340

Adult Child-Parent Relationship Parental Social BondcT2 Interactions Parental Social BondcT2 * Romantic Relationship HappinesscT2 Parental Social BondcT2 * Occupational PrestigecT2

0.696 *

2.006

-0.367 +

0.693

-0.378 +

0.685

----

----

----

----

2

Model χ = 37.883 R2L = 0.229 + p b .10,* p b .05, ** p b .01, *** p b .001. c = variable centered. T1 = Wave 1 (1982), T2 = Wave 2 (1995), T3 = Wave 3 (2003).

48.406 *** 0.309

B

Model 4

B

Exp (B)

-------

0.556 +

----0.031 34.799 *** 0.206

1.744

---0.970

B

Exp (B)

---0.070 45.053 *** 0.284

---1.073

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employment. The interaction maintained significance with the addition of the emotional self-concept variables, further strengthening the importance of parental relationships for individuals with weak bonds to romantic partners. Discussion and conclusions Parent-child relationships have been a major focus of criminological research for decades, and criminologists have amassed a convincing body of evidence documenting that weak parent-child bonds are a key determinant of juvenile offending (Hirschi, 1969; Lipsey & Derzon, 1998; Loeber & Dishion, 1983; Patterson, et al., 1992; Steinberg, 1990) and contribute to adult offending (Cernkovich & Giordano, 2001; Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Moffitt, 1993; Sampson & Laub, 1993). Criminological research, however, has tended to view parenting as a static condition only occurring during childhood and adolescence and has virtually ignored continuing relationships between adult children and their parents. The current study investigated the role of adult child-parent bonds in stimulating sustained criminal desistance. Within the context of this longitudinal study focused on a contemporary sample of highly delinquent youth, the findings showed that a strong relationship between adult children and their parents significantly increased the odds of sustained criminal desistance for those children. The life course theory in criminology, with the heavy emphasis on the “turning points” of good marriages and stable employment, has not given much credence to the potential of regaining or stabilizing relationships with parents during adulthood as an additional opportunity for social bonding and altering criminal trajectories. Due to historical shifts away from the importance of marriage (Cherlin, 1992; Seltzer, 2000) and the declining availability of stable employment in low-skilled economic sectors in the U.S. (Alderson & Nielsen, 2002; Laub & Sampson, 2001; Wilson, 1996), Kazemian (2007) and Massoglia and Uggen (2007) both suggested that life course theory research examine other social institutions in contemporary society as potential sources of social bonding and social capital. The findings reported in the current study highlighted that strong relationships that contemporary children have with their parents in adulthood were a key source of social bonding that contributed to sustained criminal desistance across the life course. In addition to the changing nature of work and marriage in our contemporary society, the sociohistorical context of contemporary parenting might also influence the importance of parents in desistance processes. Sanson and Wise (2001) suggested that conceptions of childhood, child development, and parenting have transformed over the past century. Early parenting practices focused heavily on behaviorist notions of rewards and punishments, but the introduction of attachment theory in the 1950s (see Bowlby, 1953) marked a shift in parenting away from a strict adherence to control and supervision to a stronger emphasis on caring and warmth in the healthy social, emotional, and cognitive development of children. Sociohistorical shifts in definitions of children and parenting, therefore, have created a context in which parenting practices and goals are more in line with emotional competence through childparent attachment and emotional support than behavioral compliance through discipline and direct control. Furthermore, Arnett (2000) highlighted that the initiation of adulthood has been extended over this same period through delays in the acceptance of adult roles well into the twenties for most youth in Western cultures, stressing the importance of parenting during this period of emerging adulthood. Taken together, the Ohio Lifecourse Study subjects then experienced parenting in a different context than Glueck subjects in both adolescence and early adultood, where child-parent relationships are seen as more consequential for adult outcomes and thus likely a more important feature of adult life in stimulating stable

criminal desistance. Future research on this topic would benefit from a detailed examination of the consequences of sociohistorical transformations for criminal desistance processes. Prior research using the first two waves of the Ohio Lifecourse Study data documented no significant differences in the strength of both adolescent and early adulthood parental bonding between the high rate juvenile offenders above and below the Time 1 delinquency median (Cernkovich & Giordano, 2001). The additional information gleamed from the third wave of data, however, highlighted that the serious persistent offenders are best represented in the top 25 percent most serious and frequent offenders. Following this new information about the distribution of long-term persistent offenders, subsequent mean comparisons between the stable desisters and the persistent offenders were conducted (analyses not shown). The results showed very little differences in adolescent parental bonds, but at the second wave of the study when the subjects were well into adulthood, desisters maintained significantly stronger relationships with their parents than the persistent offenders (t = -2.471, p b .05). Furthermore, child-parent bonds weakened slightly, on average, from the first to the second wave of the study for all of the subjects, but the bonds weakened at a faster rate for the persistent offenders in the sample. In other words, all of the subjects at the first wave of the study reported similar child-parent bonds, but as time progressed the stable desisters maintained closer relationships with their parents than the persistent offenders. Future research should more thoroughly investigate shifts in the strength of parental bonds over time and the impact of such shifts on patterns of criminal offending. The second major finding revealed through the current study is that the long-term behavioral impact of adult child-parent bonds was partially mediated by emotional self-concepts. The more favorable emotional identities displayed by the previously high rate offenders who have close relationships with their parents in adulthood then were in part responsible for their more favorable behavioral outcomes. This finding emphasized the salience of emotions in life course patterns of offending identified in prior work (Giordano, et al., 2007) and suggested that developing or maintaining positive relationships with parents in adulthood presents opportunities to define a new emotional self for these high rate offenders. Older parents typically occupy more favorable economic positions in society (Eggebben, 1992; McLanahan, 2004) and display greater emotional, intellectual, and social maturity (Mirowsky & Ross, 1992). The life experiences that accompany advancing parental age promote investments in children and create circumstances favorable to redefining the emotional self in a more positive direction, which then works to facilitate and sustain criminal desistance. It is also possible that the more favorable economic and social conditions of older parents positively influence additional aspects of adult social bonding such as access to higher education and home ownership. Unfortunately, the Ohio Lifecourse Data did not include data on the financial or life conditions of the subjects’ parents, nor does it identify the transmission of resources to their adult children. Future research should examine the family dynamics and systems of support available to adult children in greater detail to specify the mechanisms by which the adult child-parent relationship benefits previously high rate offenders in their desistance efforts. Lastly, the current study showed that adult child-parent bonds are a stronger contributor to stable criminal desistance for those prior offenders who have poor bonds to the dominant society through romantic relationships. Very little criminological research from the life course perspective has examined the conditional nature of the marriage effect on desistance. Recent research has questioned the applicability of marriage and other romantic relationships as “turning point” in the lives of high rate offenders in our contemporary society (Giordano, et al., 2002; Giordano et al., 2007; Kazemian, 2007; Massoglia & Uggen, 2007; Schroeder et al., 2007), and a closer examination of factors that condition the impact of such relationships

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on desistance can potentially resolve such counterintuitive findings. Adult child-parent bonds appear to be one aspect that can mitigate the exacerbating effect of weak relationship bonds to the dominant society on adult criminal offending. In other words, positive childparent bonds in adulthood provide resilience for individuals engaged in the desistance process when faced with problematic relationship experiences, consistent with prior work that showed that conventional social support buffers in part the negative impact of adverse life events on criminal offending (Thoits, 1984; Vaux, 1998). Although this finding was consistent with the hypothesis offered in the current study, an alternative interpretation of this finding is that poor childparent relationships in adulthood exacerbate the detrimental effect of problematic romantic relationships in desistance processes. In this sense, poor child-parent interactions can be an additional factor in the process of cumulative adversity (Linsky & Straus, 1986; Thoits, 1984). Laub and Sampson (2001) argued that the process of cumulative disadvantage is a particularly pervasive factor blocking opportunities for behavioral change, and future research should address in more detail the impact of additive elements of disadvantage in criminal desistance processes (see Agnew, 1992 for a discussion of cumulative adversity contributing to criminal offending from the general strain theory perspective). These findings, however, are tentative and should be interpreted cautiously given the marginal significance level indicated by the interaction term, and future research should investigate interactive relationship between adult child-parent bonds and marriage and other romantic relationships in more detail, as well as examine a myriad of other factors that might condition the effects of traditional predictors of desistance. The temporal sequence of variables in our current study, however, could not be firmly established and the results of the study should thus be evaluated accordingly. The Ohio Lifecourse Study, with three waves of data collected across a twenty one year time period, provided for a broad analysis of offending across the life course among a group of high rate juvenile offenders but did not allow for a detailed description of chronological ordering. Thus, it is quite likely that observed associations tap reciprocal processes—those in the sample who have carved out positive relationships with their parents as adults may indeed be less inclined to offend, and may have reduced anger about things that were highly stressful when they were adolescents—factors that in turn are associated with reduced likelihood of exhibiting violence, taking drugs, or getting involved in other antisocial behaviors. It is also likely, however, that those who have continued a pattern of offending are a disappointment to their parents, and the latter may increasingly distance themselves from such chronic offenders. The models utilized in the current project introduced a control for initial level of delinquency involvement, and also included the longitudinal component wherein adult relationships with parents predict total adult offending patterns that extends forward the next eight years. Further strengthening the impact of bonds between parents and their adult children as a facilitator of stable criminal desistance, supplementary analyses assessed changes in parental bonding between the first and second waves of the study. Controlling for baseline levels of juvenile delinquency and parental bonds at the first wave of the study, increases in the strength of parental bonds between the two waves was significantly associated with increased odds of criminal desistance (analyses not shown but available upon request). These findings combined with the life course theory emphasis on social bonding in adulthood as a stimulus of desistance strengthens support for our contention that adult childparent relationships are an important contributor do desistance in contemporary society. The current project could not, however, completely document what portion of any observed association stems from impaired bonds that were a result and not a causal factor influencing criminal activity of the respondent. To that end, it is entirely possible that criminal desistance and a more positive emotional identity are necessary predecessors to

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building a strong relationship with parents in adulthood. Future research in this area will benefit from more frequent assessments of criminal involvement than the authors were able to include in the current analysis to more definitively establish the causal order in the relationship between adult child-parent bonds and desistance. Furthermore, although there is a great deal of debate in the criminological literature concerning the differential impact of theoretical processes on offending by sociodemographic factors such as race and gender (Canter, 1982; Chapple, McQuillan, & Berdahl, 2005; Liu & Kaplan, 1999; Smith & Paternoster, 1987), other work has suggested that social bonds influence juvenile offending differently for boys and girls (Hagan, Gillis, & Simpson, 1987; Heimer & De Coster, 1999) and adult social bonds have been shown to differentially affect criminal desistance by race (Nielsen, 1999). Data collection efforts that include larger, diverse samples will allow researchers to investigate the ways in which such factors as race/ethnicity and gender complicate the role of adult child-parent bonds in desistance processes. Notes 1. Although this prior research indicated that parent-child relationships are potentially not protective to highly delinquent youth, current criminological theory provides little justification for the differential impact of social bonding based on prior offending histories (see Hirschi, 1969). Furthermore, Sampson and Laub (1993, 2003) body of research has documented a significant effect of adult social bonds on longterm criminal desistance among highly delinquent youth, just as a large body of crosssectional work has pointed to the importance of social bonds in deterring conventional youth from committing criminal acts (Cernkovich & Giordano, 2001; Chapple, et al., 2005; Costello & Vowell, 1999; Hirschi, 1969; Leiber, Mack, & Featherstone, 2009). 2. A variety of follow-up techniques were used at both follow-up studies to locate as many of these adolescents as possible. Even so, the high rate of sample attrition among the Ohio Lifecourse Study subjects was potentially problematic. Logistic regressions comparing those interviewed in 2003 and those who were missing, however, revealed no significant differences by background characteristics (race, adolescent delinquency, age, or gender) or any of the key predictors analyzed in the current study (parenting, emotional identity, or adult social bonds). Further, neither offending nor desistance status at the second wave of the study predicted third wave attrition (analyses not shown). Sample attrition across the three waves of the Ohio Lifecourse Study, therefore, while a concern, did not appear to introduce systematic bias that would influence these results. 3. Research has shown that the subjects in the Ohio Lifecourse Study were more delinquent at the first measurement period than a even the most serious offenders in a comparable household sample of youth from Toledo, Ohio collected at the same time period (Cernkovich et al., 1985). 4. As has been described in earlier work (Giordano et al., 2007; Schroeder et al., 2007), a value of 8.75 on the delinquency scale was chosen to be the cutoff value that distinguishes between those offenders who were considered desisters and those who were not. The baseline criminal offending value was 7.70, so this value allows for individuals to have committed one or two very minor offenses, such as being drunk in a public place, and still to be considered a desister in this study. Bushway, Thornberry, and Krohn (2003) pointed out that many studies of desistance include individuals who commit non-serious and infrequent acts of deviance are classified (perhaps inappropriately) as persistent offenders. The life course offending construct thus allowed very minor and infrequent offending in an effort to avoid classifying minor and infrequent offenders as persistent offenders. Supplementary analyses also estimated models using the zero-involvement definition and other minor variations and the substantive results were similar (analyses not shown). 5. Dichotomous measures of desistance are common in quantitative criminological research (see Ayers, Williams, Hawkins, Peterson, Catalano, & Abbott, 1999; Beaver, Wright, DeLisi, & Vaughn, 2008; Gunnison & Mazerolle, 2007; Farrington & Hawkins, 1991; Loeber, Stouthamer-Loeber, Van Kammen, & Farrington, 1991; Maume, Ousey, & Beaver, 2005; Warr, 1998). Dynamic methods of identifying criminal desistance, such as latent class trajectory (Bushway, et al., 2003; D'Unger, Land, McCall, & Nagin, 1998; Eggleston, Laub, & Sampson, 2004; Laub & Sampson, 2003) and event history analyses (Esbensen & Elliott, 1994; Kruttschnitt, Uggen, & Shelton, 2000; Uggen & Kruttschnitt, 1998) are also common, but require longitudinal data with frequent follow-up data collection periods. With three waves of data collected thirteen and eight years apart respectively, the Ohio Lifecourse Study data then were not appropriate for latent class trajectory or event history analyses. In contrast to other static approaches that use dichotomous criminal desistance measures, however, the current study drawing on three waves of data provided an assessment of stable criminal desistance across the two follow-up periods, thus highlighting a more sustained period of behavioral change than previous desistance research. 6. The items did not designate between mothers and fathers; rather, each item used the gender neutral generalized term “parents.”

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7. A prior study investigating the role of parenting in the etiology of juvenile delinquency and continuation of offending into early adulthood using the Ohio Lifecourse Study assessed the role of caring and trust and identity support, in addition to family communication styles, separately (see Cernkovich & Giordano, 2001). While the intricacies of the parenting process are valuable to understanding the short-term impact of parenting on offending, especially among juveniles with frequent parental contact, we contended that combining these highly correlated parenting measures provided a more concise and yet theoretically consistent assessment of the social bond between parents and their adult children. Further, the combined measure showed a higher degree of reliability than the two items separately, and when the variables from the two scales among the institutionalized subjects only (the original factor analysis included the institutionalized sample and a comparable sample of neighborhood youth) were assessed using a similar factor analysis technique, the results suggested that the a one-factor structure is more appropriate for this sample than a two-factor structure. 8. Less than 5 percent of the subjects at the second wave of the study had missing data on the adult social bond measures, so mean substitution was used for these measures. The effects of these variables on offending were robust to several missing data procedures (listwise deletion, assigning missing values a value of zero, and mean substitution), so mean substitution was used in an attempt to maintain the highest possible sample size. 9. A limited dichotomous measure of family structure (intact family, non-intact family) added to the models did not affect the substantive results of the study. As prior work showed, issues such as family structure and parental divorce/remarriage do influence juvenile offending (Anderson, 2002; Apel & Kaukinen, 2008; Juby & Farrington, 2001; Rebellon, 2002) but make little impact on adult offending net of controls for early offending (Mednick, Baker, & Carothers, 1990; Mednick, Reznick, Hocevar, & Baker, 1987; Sampson & Laub, 1993). The control for juvenile offending in this study, therefore, accounted for a substantial portion of the influence of early family structure and functioning on adult patterns of offending.

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