A Developmental Perspective on Girls’ Delinquency: Testing the Family Stress Model

• Author: Leslie Gordon Simons,Alyssa L. Brown
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/15570851221104963
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Feminist Criminology

2022, Vol. 17(4) 471–493

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/15570851221104963

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A Developmental Perspective

on Girls’Delinquency: Testing

the Family Stress Model

Leslie Gordon Simons

1

and Alyssa L. Brown

1

Abstract

Although there has been an increased focus on identifying causes of delinquency among

girls, this is still a relatively understudied area of research, particularly amo ng young

women of color and those on the economic margins. Past research has identif‌ied

economic disadvantage, exposure to maltreatment, and lack of positive parental su-

pervision as antecedents in the development of delinquency, with family factors being

especially inf‌luential for girls. There has been less attention on how these factors

combine to produce a developmental cascade. The current study addresses this gap by

implementing the family stress model, a conceptual paradigm that emphasizes the impact

of economic hardship on family processes and, ultimately, youth outcomes. We ad-

dress the study hypotheses with prospective, longitudinal data from a sample of Black

girls (N= 421) from two-caregiver and single-mother families. Results demonstrate

support for the family stress model in both household types. Specif‌ically, economic

stress was associated with an increase in caregivers’psychological distress, conf‌lict

between caregivers, and disrupted parenting, which was, in turn, associated with

increased delinquent behavior. The current study adds to the literature on the negative

effects of economic hardship on families and youth by illustrating how economic stress

indirectly inf‌luences girls’delinquent behavior through its detrimental impact on family

processes.

Keywords

delinquency, economic stress, family processes, girls, parenting

1

Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Leslie Gordon Simons, Department of Sociology, University of Georgia, 116 Baldwin Hall, Athens, GA

30602, USA.

Email: lgsimons@uga.edu

Introduction

Historically, there has been a general perception that we do not need to understand or

intervene to prevent female delinquency or crime because small numbers of women are

involved in such behavior. They were long deemed “too few to count”and omitted from

research altogether (Adelberg & Currie, 1993). While it has been the case that far fewer

girls than boys are arrested for delinquent behavior, in 2019 girls accounted for 31% of

all juvenile arrests. Both male and female juvenile arrest rates have declined in the past

several years; however, the relative declines have been greater for males than for

females across many offenses. As a result, the female share of juvenile arrests has

grown in recent decades. Further, Black girls are disproportionately likely to be ar-

rested, largely for minor crimes and status offenses. Their arrest rate is three times that

of their white counterparts (Puzzanchera et al., 2012), due to a variety of factors such as

systemic racism and adultif‌ication, the perception that Black girls are less innocent and

more adult-like, which leads to the assignment of more culpability and increased

punishment (Epstein et al., 2017). Although higher arrest rates for girls are due, in part,

to changes in policing, girls do engage in delinquency. Such behavior is associated with

an increased risk for arrest, involvement in the criminal justice system, later criminal

behavior, and other deleterious outcomes. Thus, there is a need to understand the

circumstances that increase risk.

Feminist criminological scholars have emphasized the importance of understanding the

ways in which women’s circumstances shape their behavioral trajectories and outcomes

(Steele et al., 2022), and have cautioned against employing an “add women and stir”

approach that assumes that f‌indings based on observing men are generalizable to women as

well (Chesney-Lind, 2006). Though more research has been done on girls’delinquency in

recent years, most delinquency studies are still based on samples of boys. Further, while

recent qualitative work has provided crucial insights regarding the etiology of delinquency

for Black girls (e.g., Jones, 2010;Morris, 2016), this is still an understudied population,

particularly when it comes to longitudinal, quantitative research. Thus, more needs to be

understood regarding the lives of delinquent girls, particularly young women of color and

those on the economic margins (Chesney-Lind & Shelden, 2013).

Antecedents of Girls’Delinquency

In 2010, the Off‌ice of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention convened the Girls

Study Group, comprised of a number of top criminologists, to examine issues such as

patterns of offending among adolescents with a focus on the causes and correlates of

delinquency among girls. This report identif‌ied factors, such as economic disadvantage,

exposure to physical abuse and maltreatment, and lack of positive parental supervision,

that affect the development of delinquency for both girls and boys (Zahn et al., 2010).

There was, however, evidence that girls experience a greater number of negative life

events during adolescence than boys, and are more sensitive to their effects, particularly

when they emanate from within the home (Schaffner, 2006).

472 Feminist Criminology 17(4)