John Bender Criminal

Kristen Anstey
PSY34001
Kaci Allen
October 16, 2014
John Bender; The “Criminal”
They were five students with nothing in common, faced with spending a Saturday detention together in their high school library. At 7 a.m., they had nothing to say to each other, but by 4 p.m., they had shown one another things they’ve never shared with anyone and had become good friends, some with a little bit of romance on the side. To everyone else they were simply stereotyped as a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal, but to each other, they would always be the Breakfast Club. Although they all show key concepts studied that adolescence face, the main character from the Judd Nelson movie, The Breakfast Club, I want to focus on is John

Bender, the “criminal.” Bender is the one who first initiates the communication to start among the students, which ultimately resulted in them revealing secrets and becoming friends with whom they had never thought they would before.

There are many factors that contribute to the way an adolescent behaves. One of the factors is the hormone changes that occur in adolescence. In boys higher levels of androgens are associated with violence and acting-out problems. It also is important for parents, teachers, mentors, and other responsible adults to effectively monitor adolescents’ behavior. In many cases, adults decrease their monitoring of adolescents too early, leaving them to cope with tempting situations alone or with friends and peers. When adolescents are in tempting and dangerous situations with minimal adult supervision, their inclination to engage in risk-taking behavior combined with their lack of self-regulatory skills can make them vulnerable to a host of negative outcomes. This helps to explain Bender’s careless attitude and reckless behavior. Throughout the movie, Bender acts

out a lot, and at one point when Andy, the “athlete,” gets frustrated and tries to pick a fight, Bender takes out a pocket knife with the treat that he could kill him. As well, while talking to the other students and acting out, he expressed how his parents don’t monitor his behavior, but yet encourage his bad actions by smoking cigarettes, and saying how for a present his father had given him a pack of smokes. As well, Bender had marijuana, which himself and the other students smoked. To elaborate on some of Bender’s “acting-out” behavior throughout the movie, he doesn’t listen to the rules placed to them; instead of sitting still and not talking, he is the first to get out of his seat and talk to the other students, harassing them mostly at the beginning. As well he removes the screw from the door so it would no longer stay open and they couldn’t constantly be under supervision, and he takes the other students with him through the hall to his locker to collect his weed.
In relation to the parental supervision, the role the parents play in an adolescent’s life is very important to their development.

A key aspect of the managerial role of parenting is effective monitoring, which is especially important as children move into the adolescent years. Monitoring includes supervising an adolescent’s choice of social settings, activities, and friends, which Bender`s parents didn`t do. According to how Bender spoke about his home life and parents, his parents seem use a combination of authoritarian and neglectful parenting styles. Authoritarian parenting is a restrictive, punitive style in which the parent exhorts the adolescent to follow directions and to respect work and effort. The authoritarian parent places firm limits and controls on the adolescent and allows little verbal exchange. Neglectful parenting is a style in which the parent is uninvolved in the adolescent’s life. Neglectful parenting is associated with adolescents’ socially incompetent behavior, especially a lack of self-control. Adolescents have a strong need for their parents to care about them; adolescents whose parents are neglectful develop the sense that other aspects of their parents’ lives are more important than they are. Adolescents whose parents are neglectful are socially incompetent: they show poor self-control and do not handle independence well. Closely related to the concept of neglectful parenting is a lack of parental monitoring. When Bender did his little bit of

“role play” near the beginning of the movie, describing how he believed it was in “the brain`s“ home, which he considered more loving, and compared it to how it is in his home with his parents. He displayed how him and his father would have conflicts, and his father wouldn`t allow him to speak, and would beat him, while his mother just sat there and done nothing. He expressed how his father tell him he is good for nothing and other negative comments, and believes that he doesn`t have much worth as a person. As well Bender doesn`t have much self-control when it comes to following rules and laws, and is considered to be a “criminal.”
Along with this concept of parenting style and how it relates to parental monitoring and how it affected Bender as an adolescent, other concepts mentioned in the previous paragraph is parent – adolescent conflict, and self-esteem. In adolescence, conflicts among the adolescent and their parents increase, which account for numerous problems, such as rebellion. In the previous paragraph I discussed how Bender and his father didn`t get along, and Bender is more afraid of his father due to the lack of communication and the amount of physical aggression. This relates to Bender`s self-esteem in his adolescent years. Social contexts such as the family, peers, and schools contribute to the development of an adolescent’s self-esteem. One study found that as family cohesiveness increased, adolescents’ self-esteem increased over time. In this study, family cohesion was based on the amount of time the family spent together, the quality of their communication, and the extent to which the adolescent was involved in family decision making. In another investigation, the following parenting attributes were associated with boys’ high self-esteem: expression of affection; concern about the boys’ problems; harmony in the home; participation in joint family activities; availability to give competent, organized help when the boys needed it; setting clear and fair rules; abiding by the rules; and allowing the boys freedom within well-prescribed limits. Bender didn`t have this with his family. His parents had no concern for him, and his father used to beat him, not having any communication within the home, telling him he was no good for nothing and other negative things, and had no regard for his negative behaviors and habits, letting him do as he pleased. Bender had low self-esteem, believing he wasn`t worth much as a person and no one cared for him, leading him to reckless behavior and a lot of anger and hostility. For most adolescents and emerging adults, the emotional discomfort of low self-esteem is only temporary, but for some, low self-esteem can develop into other problems. Low self-esteem has been implicated in depression, anorexia nervosa, overweight and obesity, delinquency and other adjustment problems, and even suicide. In males, sometimes they are not diagnosed with depression because it is expressed as anger and hostility, which bender displayed, so he could have been suffering with depression.
As you can see, just touching on a few aspects about John Bender, there are a lot of key concepts and factors that influence an adolescent’s behavior and views of themselves. These concepts discussed include hormone changes, risk-taking behavior, parental supervision, parenting styles, parent – adolescent conflict, rebellion, and self-esteem, all of which are displayed in Bender and his negative behavior and attitude and interrelated with one another. All of these, along with more, factors influence all adolescent`s, but in Bender`s case, it affected him negatively, leading him to outbursts, risky behavior, low self-esteem, and many other negative aspects of him. If things were different in his home and more positive and healthy, rather than how he explained it, maybe he would have a more positive outlook on himself, and be better behaved.