Do Parents Matter in Creating Self-Control in Their Children? A Genetically Informed Test of Gottfredson and Hirschi's Theory of Low Self-Control

• NCJ Number: 212619
• Journal: Criminology Volume: 43 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2005 Pages: 1169-1202
• Author(s): John Paul Wright; Kevin M. Beaver
• Date Published: November 2005
• Length: 34 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined whether “parents matter” in the etiology of self-control; specifically, the influence of parenting factors on a measure of child self-control.

Abstract

It was more than a decade ago when Gottfredson and Hirschi set forth a general theory of crime that assigned low self-control as the causal factor in the etiology of crime and numerous analogous behaviors. Gottfredson and Hirschi’s theory focused on the association between low self-control and crime. However, their hypotheses that link the development of self-control in children to parental behaviors have been less reviewed. Gottfredson and Hirschi attribute the development of low self-control in children solely to parenting practices, thereby rejecting outright potential genetic effects. However, the potential for genetic heritability to influence levels of low self-control in children poses a serious counter argument to this parenting thesis. This study was two-fold. First, it examined the effects of parenting on levels of self-control in kindergarten and first-grade children using a national dataset containing mother and teacher reports of child self-control. Second, a sample of twins was used, taken from the same dataset, to assess the influence of parenting factors. In addition, the study used hierarchical linear regression (HLM) analyses to control for the clustering of observations caused by genetic similarities. Overall, the research tested whether parents matter in creating low self-control once genetic influences are taken into account. The data for this study came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. In general, the analyses revealed that parenting variables were inconsistently and weakly related to contemporaneous measures of child self-control in kindergarten, and were inconsistently related to prospective measure of self-control in first grade. Results also indicated that in using a sample of twin children, parenting measures had a weak and inconsistent effect. References and appendixes A-C