Family Disintegration and Deviant Behaviour
Family disintegration and deviant behaviour is rampant and has become a common phenomenon in Nigeria. Deviant behaviour today is common among the youths, many of who are caught in one deviant act or the other, such as examination malpractices, armed robbery, assault, rape, house breaking, forgery, larceny and culpable homicide. The family is no linger intact as it used to be with resultant effects on the society. The onset of crime can to a deterioration of the social bond during adolescence marked by a weakened attachment to parents, commitment to school and belief in conventional values. The beginning of criminal careers is supported by residence in a social setting in which deviant attitudes can be learned and reinforced by criminal peers. Hence, defective family relationship has more effect among criminals than the non-criminals (Thornberry, 1987).
A growing body of research has found support for the idea that children’sbehaviourdevelopment and school performance may be influenced as much by multiple changes in family composition during childhood as by the quality and character of the families in which children reside at any given point (Cavanagh and Huston 2006;Cavanagh, Schiller, and Riegle-Crumb200 Fombyand Cherlin 2007; Heard2007a; Heard 2007b; Heaton and Forste 2007; Osborne and McLanahan 2007;Wu 1996; Wu and Martinson 1993; Thomson 2001). Much of the research on instability has focused specifically on the effects for children of experiencing the repeated formation and dissolution of cohabiting and marital unions. Underlying the research on the effects of union instability is the concept that children and their parents or parent-figures of a functioning family system, and repeated disruptions to that system, caused by either the addition or departure of a parent’s partner or spouse, may lead to behaviours with potentially deleterious long-term consequences. An alternative explanation for the effects of union instability on children’s well-being is that children who experience multiple transitions in family structure also may be exposed to frequent conflict between parents and their partners prior to union dissolution, and the experience of conflict, rather than the experience of disruption to a functional system, undermines children’s successful development. Exposure to parental conflict in a single union has been found to be associated with children’s psychological and academic adjustment and the transition to adulthood (Amato and Booth 1997; Amato and Sobolewski 2001; Musick and Bumpass 1999).We expect that exposure to repeat conflict in multiple unions may have a compounding negative effect on children’s development. Cause to r the effects of repeated exposure to parental conflict potentially associated with union instability arises from research on divorce, which has investigated the relative effects of pre-disruption parental conflict and eventual union dissolution on children ‘swell-being. A substantial body of research indicates that parental conflict mediates the effect of divorce on children (Amato and Sobolewski 2001; Cherlin, Chase-Lansdale, and McRae 1998;Cherlin, Furstenberg, Chase-Lansdale, Kiernan, Robins, Morrison, and Teitler 1991); and that children whose parents exhibited high levels of conflict fare better after the parents’ divorce compared to children who remain in high-conflict unions (Amato, Spencer Loomis, and Booth 1995; Booth and Amato 2001; Hanson 1999; Strohschein 2005; Sun 2001) (but see
Morrison and Coiro 1999; Musick, Meier, and Bumpass 2006).
2.5 Factors That Affect Engagement in Deviant Behaviour
Engagement in deviant behavior can linked to a number of individual characteristics. This section will be used to examine the following characteristics of age, gender,.socioeconomic status as they relate to engagement in deviant behavior.
2.5.1 Age
There is evidence that age inform engagement in deviant behaviours, more so, adolescents are more likely than children or young adults to engage in developmentally problematicbehaviours (Farrington, 1997). This further showed that in marriage, the social and emotional support a family enjoys will dictate how the family bonds. Also, the risk of engagement in deviant behavior may be less, giving the fact that, the union is intact.
Adelekan (1992), in a similar work, argues that there are increased incidences of norm breaking behaviour, substance abuse, and risky sexual behaviour among youths and adolescents of broken homes. Additionally, studies that have compared alcohol drinkers with occasional drinkers and abstainers have found that alcohol drinkers exhibited more externalizing behaviors, such as truancy and delinquent behaviours which have direct relationship to level of stability in families.
2.5.2 Gender
Regarding gender, differences appear in patterns of participation in deviant behavior such as substance use. In fact, it has been suggested by the criminologist Sutherland (Sutherland andCressey, 1966) that being male is the single best demographic predictor of criminal behavior, a finding that is still argued to present day (Farrington, 2001). It is suggested that boys involve themselves in more risk-taking behaviours than girls (Adelekan, In fact, males in all age groups are more likely to engage in most types of risky behaviours than females (Harris, 2007).
