Are juvenile more likely to be dysfunctial from single parent homes Essay

Are juvenile more likely to be dysfunctial from single parent homes - Essay Example Reynolds has referred to the comment of Yoshikawa (2004) that while the average expense for pre school intervention for a child is about 5000 USD, the average yearly expense for juvenile detention or incarceration is more than 30,000 USD and the results are not guaranteed in the latter case. Inner city region of Chicago was chosen as the program was implemented in the poorest neighbourhoods that have been associated with high unemployment, low social control and low quality schools that are predictors for delinquency and anti social behaviour. Reynolds (2008) points out that the tests conducted where based on certain indicators of delinquency such as school attendance, promiscuous behaviour, theft, aggressive behaviour and fighting and so on. Parents were encouraged and asked to attend counselling sessions for children. The author reports that delinquency incidents for children where both parents attended the sessions and homes where both parents were present showed a reduction of 30%. On the other hand, children who came from homes with a single parent, typically the mother who worked the whole day showed a remarked reported increase in the incidents of delinquency by as much as 47%. There were other factors such as education of the parents, income levels, if the single parent was an alcoholic or drug addict and so on. While the research was very professionally conducted, the author has hypothesised that Juvenile Delinquency is only in poor and black neighbourhoods. Studies should also be performed among middle class white youths to form a relational study that children from single parent homes have a higher tendency to commit juvenile delinquency incidents. Demuth (2004) has researched the occurrence between juvenile delinquency and single mother family versus two-parent family and single father family. This study was designed to identify the means by which single parent increases delinquency and if effect is mainly a function of parental