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Fathers and youths’ delinquent behavior

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Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between having one or more father figures and the likelihood that young people engage in delinquent behavior. We pay particular attention to distinguishing the roles of residential and non-residential, biological fathers as well as stepfathers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we find that adolescent boys engage in more delinquent behavior if there is no father figure in their lives. However, adolescent girls’ behavior is largely independent of the presence (or absence) of their fathers. The strong effect of family structure is not explained by the lack of paternal involvement that generally comes with fathers’ absence, even though adolescents, especially boys, who spend time doing things with their fathers usually have better outcomes. There is also a link between adult delinquent behavior and adolescent family structure that cannot be explained by fathers’ involvement with their adolescent sons and is only partially explained by fathers’ involvement with their adolescent daughters. Finally, the strong link between adolescent family structure and delinquent behavior is not accounted for by the income differentials associated with fathers’ absence. Our results suggest that the presence of a father figure during adolescence is likely to have protective effects, particularly for males, in both adolescence and young adulthood.

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Notes

  1. For reviews see Harris and Marmer (1996), Amato and Rivera (1999), and Bronte-Tinkew et al. (2006).

  2. Much of the literature on non-residential fathers seems to be about the relationship between child support payments and access to children (e.g., Ermisch 2008; Del Boca and Ribero 2003).

  3. Similarly, Kalil et al. (2010) find that living in closer proximity to ones biological father after divorce is associated with poorer outcomes in young adulthood. In contrast, King (2006) analyzes the same data source as Yan and Hamilton, but is somewhat more optimistic about the role of non-residential fathers. She finds that while close relationships with both non-residential and stepfathers are associated with better outcomes, it is the relationship with the stepfather that is more influential.

  4. For evidence that fathers can influence adolescent drinking, delinquency, and other problem behaviors see Cooksey and Fondell (1996), Harris and Marmer (1996), Harris et al. (1998), Amato and Rivera (1999), Bronte-Tinkew et al. (2006), Hofferth (2006), Antecol and Bedard (2007), Coley and Mederios (2007), Michael and Ben-Zur (2007). See Hofferth (2006) for a review of this literature more generally.

  5. See Cobb-Clark and Tekin (2011) for a more formal treatment of this issue.

  6. An alternative is to take advantage of the panel structure of Add Health data to exploit changes in family structure between waves 1 and 2. There is not enough variation to detect any meaningful effects, however.

  7. Unfortunately, Add Health data do not provide a measure of fathers' income separate from total household income.

  8. See Harris et al. (2009) for more on the Add Health research design.

  9. We also conducted our analyses using wave 3 data. These results are largely consistent with those presented here. For brevity, these results are not presented here, but are available from the authors upon request.

  10. Recoding observations with missing father figure information as having “no father” did not substantially affect our results.

  11. This is the age range in wave 1. However, it must be noted there are only 78 adolescents at ages 11, 19, 20, or 21 in wave 1, so the overwhelming majority of adolescents are between ages 12 and 18.

  12. Descriptive statistics for the independent variables of interest are consistent with those of the relevant literature and are available upon request.

  13. Mocan and Tekin (2005, 2006) show that the rates of delinquent behaviors reported in Add Health, e.g. crime and illicit drug use, are comparable to those in other national data sources.

  14. Factor analysis has been frequently used by researchers to reduce the data to a smaller set of dimensions (e.g., Cobb-Clark and Schurer (2012) and Okumura and Usui (2010)).

  15. Add Health relies on a school-based sample so we cluster standard errors at the school level to adjust for correlations within a school.

  16. Note that the independent effects of father’s involvement on delinquent variable are captured by the interaction terms between family structure and fathers' involvement.

  17. We conducted F-tests to assess the joint significance of the family structure and involvement interactions. Results from these tests indicate that most of these interactions are jointly insignificant for both adolescent boys and girls. The only exceptions are the family structure interactions associated with activities involving doing things together with boys in the models of any delinquent behaviour and violent crime. For girls, all the interactions are imprecisely estimated.

  18. Yuan and Hamilton (2006) analyze cross-sectional data from wave 1 of Add Health and find that fathers' involvement with their adolescents has no effect on depression and problem behavior.

  19. We have been unable to account for any income transfers that nonresidential, biological fathers may be making to biological mothers. To the extent that higher income is associated with a reduction in delinquent behavior, this would lead us to understate the reduction in delinquent behavior associated with having a nonresidential, biological father as opposed to no father figure.

  20. Specifically, the incidence of property crime and gang fighting is reduced as stepfathers' involvement increases for women with both residential stepfathers and non-residential, biological fathers in adolescence.

  21. The F-tests revealed that the estimates on the interaction between involvement and family structure are jointly insignificant in almost all cases. The exceptions are that the interactions between family structure and talking are significantly different from zero in the any delinquent behavior model for men and in the violent crime model for women.

  22. Cooksey and Fondell (1996) and Painter and Levine (2004) also find that the time that fathers spend with their children does not mitigate the effect of family structure. Yuan and Hamilton (2006) conclude that adolescent outcomes may be improved by a close relationship with stepfathers, but are not benefited and may be harmed by involvement with nonresidential fathers. Other researchers find small, but positive, effects of paternal involvement (e.g. Amato and Rivera 1999; Bronte-Tinkew et al. 2006). .

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Acknowledgments

This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by Grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth). No direct support was received from Grant P01-HD31921 for this analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne and IZA, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Deborah A. Cobb-Clark

  2. Department of Economics, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University, IZA, and NBER, P.O. Box 3992, Atlanta, GA, 30302-3992, USA

    Erdal Tekin

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  1. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark
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  2. Erdal Tekin
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Correspondence to Erdal Tekin.

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Part of this research was conducted while Erdal Tekin was a visiting professor at the Australian National University. Chandler McClellan provided excellent research assistance.

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Cobb-Clark, D.A., Tekin, E. Fathers and youths’ delinquent behavior. Rev Econ Household 12, 327–358 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-013-9194-9

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