Lost in the shuffle: an examination of Latino youth supervision within extended families

• In Event: CHOICES: Examining Impact of Brief Interventions to Reduce Delinquency

Abstract

The rate of minority involvement in the criminal justice system is disproportionally high and many theorize that adolescent social structure is a major contributing factor to early delinquency and continued criminal behavior. While many have looked at reduced family size as a predictive factor, increased family size may also play a role in delinquency. The Latino population has high rates of extended family involvement in children’s lives. While this may seem to be a protective factor, youth can get lost in the shuffle of living with uncles, aunts, and cousins, leading to reduced parental supervision. We seek to examine the number of adults living in the child’s home as a correlate to perceived parental supervision and impulsivity, two measures highly correlated with delinquency. We hypothesize that extended family in the children’s homes leads them to feel less supervised and allows them to experiment with delinquency given their impulsivity. A sample of 6th graders of predominantly Latino descent is being surveyed to discern if there is a correlation between the children’s family structure and their scores on impulsivity as they relate to how thoroughly supervised they feel by their parental figures.

Authors

• Courtney Wayne, University of Texas at Dallas

• Nadine M. Connell, University of Texas at Dallas