Citation

Jennings WG, Maldonado-Molina MM, Piquero AR, Canino G. J. Youth Adolesc. 2010; 39(3): 315-325.

Affiliation

Department of Justice Administration, University of Louisville, Brigman Hall, Room 215, Louisville, KY, 40291, USA, wgjenn01@louisville.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s10964-009-9439-3

PMID

19657728

PMCID

PMC3136210

Abstract

Several studies have examined the factors associated with juvenile delinquency, but this literature remains limited largely because it has not moved beyond traditional factors generally and because of the lack of research conducted on minority-especially Hispanic-youth. This study seeks to overcome these two limitations by using data from a longitudinal study of 2,491 Hispanic (Puerto Rican) youth ages 5-13 (48.5% female) socialized in two different cultural contexts, Bronx, New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico, in an effort to examine the relationship between parental suicidality and offspring delinquency. Results indicate that while traditional risk/protective factors and parental mental health issues relate to delinquency in expected ways, youths whose parents attempted suicide engaged in more frequent and varied delinquency over time. Implications for theory and future research are addressed.

Language: en