Juvenile Delinquency and Single Parenthood

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Single Parenthood & Delinquency Eboni E. Nettingham Juvenile Delinquency and Justice – CRJ180, Professor Edwin Souza Strayer University Jennifer Morse’s view of the relationship between single parenthood households and delinquency states “without parents, two of them, married to each other, working together as a team, a child is more likely to end up in the criminal justice system at some point in his life. Without parents, prison becomes a greater probability in the child’s life. Second, if a child finds himself in the criminal justice system, either in his youth or adulthood, the prison will perform the parental function of supervising and controlling that person’s behavior”. (Morse, 2003) I lean on the side of agreeance with Morse’s assertion that single parenthood as one of the leading causations to juvenile delinquency. Parenthood is supposed to a team effort in raising a child or children. As an adult raised by a single parent, I know now in my later years that my mother was not to raise my siblings and I alone. Of course, it is helpful if there is a subsidiary family support system such as grandparents, aunts or uncles but ultimately it is not the same as having a mother and father cohabitating raising the child together. Single parents are not always the ones that make the choice of becoming a single parent. There are multiple factors that make this situation come into place such as adultery, domestic abuse, drug abuse, infidelity or simply irreconcilable differences between the two individuals. In any event, the result of becoming a single parent, being either mother or father, affects all family members including the parent, child and surrounding members (i.e. grandparents, aunts, uncles). “The absence of two parents, working together as a team, the child has more difficulty learning the combination of empathy, reciprocity, fairness, and

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