Hirschi's Theories Of Attachment Or Delinquency?

Family does not only mean “mother” or father” a group of family is people that may be made up of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. A good definition of family is a group of people sharing common ancestors. Family shares the same household; they all live together as one. Family is a social group in society typically containing of one or two parents and their children. A respectable family is called a nuclear family as this consists of both parents and their children, nuclear family is seen as the healthy family as this is the way it should be. Both parents are important to a child as they learn majority of things from their parents, both the mother and father have different things to teach their children. It is not advised to parents

The first theory is a criminological approach as Hirschi (1969) looks at attachment as an emotive bond where children learn the norms of society. It is believed that crime would be low in families when the child is attached to the family and cares about the exceptions from their family, therefore less likely for that individual to perform anti-social behaviour. Hirschi states that the levels of delinquency will increase if the child’s bonds are weak with their family. (Cited in Sampson, R. and Laub, J. (1995) The second theory that links with attachment and delinquency is the attachment theory by Bowlby (1973). It has been stated that attachment is key in a child life. When an infant is separated from their mother they start crying and clinging and Bowlby calls this natural responses. If parent-child tie is disrupted during their early stage it will leave long-term affects and it is likely that delinquency behaviour will occur. (Cited in Cassidy, J.

Both believe if parents and children have weak attachments and if they do not recognize their children’s wrong behaviour and correct their wrong behaviour, that child is more likely to suffer from low levels of self-control. As a parent having weak attachment mean that their children are more likely to turn to crime. This makes the child feel alone in life so they might have good attachments with peer groups or even feel like they need to belong somewhere. (Cited in Vito, G., Maahs, J. and Holmes, R. (2007)

Thornberry (1998) found out that predictors of gang membership is growing up in neighbourhoods where social attachment is low. When parent-child attachment is low due to the effect of the neighbourhood. Thornberry states that absence of biological parents, low parental supervision and low parental attachments to child increases the probability of gang membership. (Cited in Clauss-Ehlers, C. and Weist, M.