Peer Networks of Shared Family Disadvantage: Arenas of Comfort or Crime

• In Event: Contexts of Delinquency, Crime, and Victimization

Abstract

Most research suggests that adolescents from single-mother families are at risk of delinquency; however, research on whether poverty exacerbates or diminishes this risk is mixed. Some offer that single-mother households influence delinquency regardless of poverty status because single mothers have insufficient time to foster emotional bonds with children that encourage school involvement and protect them from delinquent peer influence and delinquency. Others suggest family and school bonding are undermined only in impoverished, single-mother families where maternal resources are particularly taxed. Alternatively, there is evidence that adolescents from non-impoverished single-mother families are at increased risk because single-mother families are common in impoverished communities but not in advantaged communities where single-mother families are stigmatized. We propose that consideration of peer networks across family structures – with an emphasis on whether peers are embedded in networks with high proportions of friends from impoverished, single-mother homes – can shed light on how family structures and poverty intersect to influence delinquency. Specifically, we derive alternative hypotheses about whether these networks serve as arenas of comfort that protect youth from stigmatization or sources of delinquent opportunity and learning. Using Add Health data, we estimate a series of network models that support the latter hypothesis.

Authors

• Stacy De Coster, North Carolina State University

• Kenneth J Sanchagrin, Appalachian State University

• Karen Heimer, University of Iowa